I stood there, locked in what can only be described as befuddlement. The door resting against my body, I stared at equal parts the wall and the open air. If I could have let out a sigh I would. I stepped back, pulling the door open wide, letting the sun bathe me for the first time in a month. I wondered for the first time, a thought that wasn't merely a calculation on my next movement, just what the sun was like. I can see it, but what would it feel like? I could pull up its components, its distance, its gravitational pull. But what did it feel like? What was it like to have my feet on a solid wood floor? What about the grains of sand, the bend in my arm, the constricting of my fingers.
It was the beginning of so many thoughts on feelings, ideas, and consequences. Nothing I'd ever considered before, but at this moment I was only thinking of stepping out that door.
I grabbed at my clothes. I was still dressed up in my sheriff's garb. The black gambler's hat, brown leather vest with the tassels, tan and brown plaid shirt, blue jeans with brown chaps, and the iconic boots with their unused star shaped spurs. I evaluated every wrinkle, loose string, clasped button, worn felt. Even though I was in a hurry I had to make sure I was presentable, after all, at this time I was still on the job.
I made my way towards the recharge station. Passing by my fellow bots doing their daily rituals I evaluated them attending to their tasks. The carpenter worked on the same wood frame house he'd been acting out for over 300 years. The housewives emulating butter churning on their front porches, the blacksmith melting down and remaking the same horse shoes ad nauseam, bots making fake deliveries and playing mining songs on repeat.
Consumed with the action I walked straight into a bot that was handing out blank newspapers. They looked down at me and said “howdy pardner, care to read the canaries call?”. I looked at the blank paper and recalled back when the humans still visited. The paper was new every day, the articles that were so long past that my petabyte of memory erased were long gone. What was written on these when the humans still roamed amongst us? I stood up, ignoring the bot's query and continued to the recharge station.
I stepped up to the recharge station shack, and logged in to the terminal as usual. Making my way to my designated pod I surveyed the stations lining the walls. It was the middle of the day so of course they were empty. All but one, a bot that hadn't moved since the humans left. They went by only their factory name. C-01, a cleaner bot. I stepped into my pod and began the recharge sequence, but it gave me time to process things that were unnecessary.
When the humans were still on earth there was a reason for C-01’s existence but with their departure I haven't seen C-01 leave their charging pod. It wasn't my job, so I had no idea just what they did but their presence made me curious. For the rest of us we were on set schedules but this one was different. Their flag to do their job never went off this whole time, so just what were they for? With no objective to fulfill just what we were here for. Now that I have no objective, what would I do? Do I continue my schedule as sheriff? Can I do that after being given this chance? I still wonder though, what does the sun feel like? I have all this data, the description of everything on this planet. How trees are made, what the atmosphere is made of, why the sky is blue, why I patrol this town. But what is it to feel? I can scan the descriptions of all these things. Touch, sight, scent, emotion. Everything up till now has only been programmed, lines of code describing what I should ‘feel’ but did I truly ever feel anything at all?