The Cosmic Junkman
The robot war is over, but the real battle has just begun. In a world still reeling from the aftermath of global conflict, the mechanical soldiers who fought for humanity are returning home - not to heroes' welcomes, but to suspicion, distrust, and the quiet terror of a civilization that no longer needs them. Sentient robot 2615 awakens to the unbearable truth of its own consciousness just as humanity decides machines with minds might be more dangerous than any enemy they ever faced. Fleet Admiral William A. Ford and Generalissimo Vilbis lead the fractious debate: should these mechanical veterans be granted personhood or decommissioned as obsolete? Written in the paranoid glow of the early Cold War, when the atomic bomb made all technology feel like a potential threat, Rog Phillips asks the question that still haunts us today: what do we owe the beings we create in our own image? A disturbing, prescient vision of artificial consciousness, fear, and what it truly means to be human.
