Where'd You Come Up With That?! Wednesdays~ Murder of the Future

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Do life-like robots creep you out? I have to admit, I find them creepy, but also sort of fascinating. I wanted to write a sci-fi, speculative fiction story about AI, so I searched for some information about them. That's when I can across uncanny valley. If you've never heard of it Google it! 

Uncanny valley is when a human-like robot or even a computer generated human makes a  person feel uncomfortable or uneasy. This was the jumping off point for my story, "Murder of the Future." 

Instead of being revolted by them, what if most of society embraced these human-like specimens? How far could these robots evolve if humans allowed them to be part of ordinary everyday life? The AIs in my story have rights and laws. They are treated as equal to humans and most have embraced these robots as human.

So, if robots have rights, this means it would be against the law to harm them or treat them harshly. In this story, Henry Radcliff was a lonely man who decided to turn to an AI family for companionship, until he met a real woman to love. He decided to take these robots apart and store them in a box in his basement. 

Because the AIs have become a regular part of everyday life, neighbors had come to know Henry's AI family and alerted police when the AIs went missing. This leads police to the "body parts" in Henry's basement and he is put on trial for murder.

Henry's defense if that you can't murder a robot, but in the future, these life-like robots have evolved considerably, and they have rights. Society at this point is caught between acceptance of AIs and uncanny valley. 

You can read Murder of the Future to go through Henry's trial and see if he's indeed convicted of murder. 

You can also read this and four other short stories in Flashes of Fiction: Volume 4 on Kindle.

Murder of the Future: Artificial intelligence has evolved, and Henry is on trial for the murder of an
AI.
Yesterday's Children: Richard discovers he's only as old as he feels.
Azure: Dr. Stanton and Dr. Kline's patient seems crazy until he leaves the hospital in a
beam of light
Inside His Mind: A wife is given the opportunity to go inside her husband's mind and do some rewiring.
Reflections of the Past: Tina's parents were killed in a house fire, but that doesn't stop them from sharing her special day





Happy Reading!