"Hilo," by Dan Sikkema

Everything was working fine on Techplanet 8, otherwise referred to by the locals as Hilo. Life was undisturbed and the people were happy. Everything they needed was provided for them and nothing ever went wrong. Until now.

Sam and Steve were not only great friends; they were brothers. They both grew up on Hilo, which is part of a system of fully technological planets. Everything on the planet depends on technology…even the planet itself. It’s temperature, it’s gravitational pull, its vegetation are entirely dependent upon computer systems. The temperature is always pleasant; there is no need for rain because the vegetation is provided with nutrients and water through irrigation canals under the planets outer surface. All the houses are controlled by their very own personal computer system (p.c.s.). Imagine Bill Gates’ house for everyone. Over 10 decades went into designing the technology for these techplanets and another 5 to work out all the bugs. It is a technological paradise for the human race.

Sam and Steve were pranksters. They loved to have adventure and pull practical jokes. Sam was the younger of the two and also the more rambunctious one. Steve was the one who kept Sam in check.

Every now and then, Sam liked to mess with people’s computer systems. Steve makes sure he doesn’t completely ruin them. They go down to the local Ket supermarket and purchase supercharge water, which is used in most robots, but is needless to say, “unhealthy” for personal computer systems. When Sam was feeling mischievous he would enlist his brother into going on a mission with him. Although these two boys were engrossed in a world of technology, Sam strived to tamper with high-tech systems using low-tech methods. He pined for the challenge.

“Dude, let’s go screw up Mr. Simms p.c.s.”

“Not today, Sam, I have a lot of skynetting to do.” Skynetting is a form of chatting that is popular among the teenage residents of Hilo.

“Come on, man, don’t be a cyber-slug. They’re going to be on later tonight.”

“I don’t know…don’t you ever get tired of screwing around with Mr. Simms?”

“He’s the funnest one to do it to. Come on, bro, I need a back-up man. We’re a team!”

“Fine. But let’s tone down stizzing the houses. It gets old after awhile.”

“Haha, I knew you’d come around. I got the s-water in the super soakers ready to go.”

“Alright, let’s get this over with.”

Sam and Steve got dressed in all black clothes and grabbed the super soakers with the supercharged water in them. When people usually stiz houses they dress up in their cloaking clothes, but Sam and Steve liked the risk and adventure of not being completely invisible. They liked to prove that you could defeat technology without getting fancy. People often just rely on technology to help them through everything and in turn, it dulls the senses. Sam and Steve like to resort back to the ingenuity of their own creative minds and use that purely human power to overcome the mind-numbing machinery their world was dependant upon.

They headed over to old Mr. Simms’ house. They’ve done this often times before and knew exactly where the hidden control panel on his house was to let them in the window that leads to the basement. They snuck in and everything was going smoothly until Sam bumped into Simms’ automated cleaning system, making an abundance of noise as the contraption started to do it’s ritual cleaning of the room they were in. They immediately turned it off in fear of it warning Mr. Simms of their presence.

They quickly ran to the other room where the p.c.s was located. It was locked, but they knew the bypass code. In a flash Sam punched in the sequence of numbers and letters into the control panel and the door slid open. They jumped into the room and closed the door behind them. The p.c.s was hidden. The only direct way to it is through a long narrow tunnel in the wall. You need another access code to bring the p.c.s up front to control it; however, this was the one code the brothers didn’t know…that’s why they need the super soakers. It was the only way to stiz the p.c.s. They charged up their super soakers and aimed down the narrow chute. Suddenly, they heard a door in the other room open. It was old man Simms.

“I’ll get ‘em this time!” he said.

They looked up in the corner of the room to see a surveillance camera recording their every move. Sam and Steve looked at each other. They nodded in agreement, knowing what they were both thinking. They both quickly turned around and squirted the control panel to open the door to the room they were in. You could see the electrical current shoot out, indicating that Mr. Simms wouldn’t be able to use it.

“That’ll slow him down a bit,” said Sam with a smile.

“Fine. Let’s get this done and get out of here.”

They sprayed down the chute at the p.c.s. Electricity sprayed out of the tunnel. Their mission was a success. Now they had to get out of here. There was a window in that room, but since they had just stizzed the p.c.s, they had to manually open it. Sam got on Steve’s shoulders to unlock and open the window. It took him a little while, but he eventually got it open just as Mr. Simms got the door open.

“Hey you two! Get your punk asses back in here!”

Sam crawled through the window and turned around to help Steve through. Sam was pulling Steve through just as Mr. Simms swung his metal cane at Steve’s leg. When Steve was through he yelled in agony. Simms’ cane had hit him right on the shin, but nothing was broken. However, he would have a good battle scar to show people later.

“Dude, that was way too close!”

As Sam chuckles, “You’ll be fine. Wasn’t that great! Did you see old man Simms’ face?”

“Yeah, it was great. Now can you help me get back home to clean this wound? Unless you have a medpak on you now.”

“Nope, sorry. Come on, bro, I’ll help you up.”

Sam helps Steve come home and they dress his wound. They were relaxing in their living room, watching a movie when something went wrong. Their TV flickered. It’s never done that before. They looked at each other confused, but dismissed it and went on watching their movie.

A couple of days pass.

Suddenly, things start to go bad. Lights flicker on and off. Temperatures fluctuate. The grass starts to wither. The cars stop in the middle of the road. Something was wrong with Hilo, and nobody knew what to do. There were people who were in charge of looking after the central global computer system down below the earth’s crust, but according to their tests and analysis, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Everything seemed to be in order; it just seemed to be “dying”.

Sam was intrigued though. He wanted to figure out what was wrong. He of course, saw it as an opportunity for adventure.

“Steve, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“To the g.c.s,” he said with a smirk.

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re not going to be able to fix it. We don’t know anything.”

“You never know man. Those yowzers down there don’t know squat. We might as well. It won’t hurt anything, and it’s better than just letting our planet go haywire.”

“No, Sam. Not this time.”

“Fine. I’ll do it by myself.”

“You can’t go alone. Mom and Dad would kill me if they found out.”

“Well then, you’ll just have to come with me.”

“Alright, but if we get in trouble, or die…I’m going to kill you.”

“Haha, I knew you’d come around.”

They had a general idea of where the global computer system was located. Everyone did. There were several terminals to get to it, located at various places around Hilo. There was one that was about 5 minutes away from Sam and Steve’s house. They walked there, but before they left Sam brought a bottle of super-charged water.

“Why are you bringing that?”

“You never know what’s down there. Besides, if there isn’t, I might as well use it on someone’s yard controlling system.”

“You would.”

They got to the terminal and started heading down the lighted tunnel.
Sam and Steve walked for about 10 minutes on a downward spiral with the walls covered with warning signs.

IF NOT G.C.S ENGINEER
DO NOT PROCEED

WARNING: G.C.S EXTREMELY DANGEROUS

TURN AROUND NOW

Sam and Steve kept going. With all the strange things happening lately to Hilo, there were surprisingly no workers by the g.c.s. They were all away in a lab discussing what to do since all of them were baffled and didn’t know what to do with the main computer anymore. The two brothers found themselves facing a cylindrical tube about 10 feet in diameter emanating a red glow. Surrounding this cylinder was a slanted cylinder halfway down made of titanium and had slits forming intricate designs and “buttons”. These slits were also glowing red.

“Wow.”

“You said it, Steve.”

“This is phenomenal,” said Sam. “I wonder how much power this baby has.”

“More than you can imagine.”

“Well, I wonder what’s wrong with it. It looks fine to me.”

“Who knows, man, this stuff is way too advanced for anyone on Hilo. We’re not going to be able to do anything.”

Suddenly, Sam noticed something that resembled a compartment that holds coolant in cars. Sam goes over to it and tries to open it.

“What are you doing?!”

“Trying to get this open.”

“Don’t! You don’t know what will happen.”

“Well, we can’t really screw things up anymore than they already are.”

“Dude, no.”

“Haha, I got it.”

A little opening revealed itself near the top of the compartment.

“Sam, I don’t like this.”

“Oh, chill out, bro, it’s going to be fine.”

“Alright, but if you blow this planet up, I’m blaming you.”

“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine,” Sam said with a smile. “I wonder what goes inside.” Sam thought for a while and then pulled out his bottle of super-charged water. He began unscrewing the cap when Steve stopped him.
“What are you doing?! If you put that in there then the whole planet will be destroyed! You can’t do that, you idiot.”

“Relax, Steve. I have a hunch that this compartment holds super-charged water. I smelled the opening a little bit and it didn’t smell like oil or any substance of that nature. It had the faint staticky aroma that s-water has. It has to be it.”

Sam poured the water in the opening before Steve could stop him. All of the sudden there a strange whirring sound emanated from the red cylinder. It started to get brighter and redder as the sound increased in volume.

“You screwed us over!”

“Just wait.”

The sound got louder and louder and the red light became so intense they had to look away. Then it stopped…

Sam and Steve were on the ground shielding their eyes. When everything stopped, they looked up. Everything appeared to be normal, but the red lights were pulsating with a faint glow.

“Systems on-line,” sounded an automated voice coming from the g.c.s. “Thank you.”

Sam and Steve looked at each other and then back at the g.c.s. Sam, of course was the first to talk.

“Who are you?”

“Well, I am what you humans call Hilo.”

“But you’re talking. How?”

“There is often more to things than meets the eye.”

“What do you mean,” chimed in Steve.

“To you, I am Hilo, your planet’s central computer system that regulates everything. I am the machine that makes your world run. But in actuality, I am a highly evolved and intelligent form of robot.”

“What? That’s impossible.”

“How is that impossible? Your accusations do not seem to hold any accountable reasoning behind them. However, that is the nature of humans.”

“You can’t be a robot because no single robot can be an entire planet. It’s just improbable.”

“To you, yes, but if I wasn’t a robot, how would I be logically talking to you right now? Since I am holding a sensible conversation with you, a human, which must mean that I have cognition and because I am realizing this, I have metacognition. I must have artificial intelligence for I can think on your level of thought and above.”

“That doesn’t make you living though,” said Steve. “My laptop at home could say that it thinks if it wants to, but that doesn’t make it true. It’s just saying it, not actually doing it.”

“I can already predict that this argument is not going to lead to any convincing on either of our parts. I presume in these cases that the superior being knows it is superior, and that is enough. The inferior are just too feeble minded to grasp the reality of the matter, and thus will live their lives without accepting the truth. That is somewhat sad, but life must go on.”

“Alright fine,” said Steve. “Let’s say that you’re telling the truth. Suppose you are a robot. Why did you stop working?”

“Like all robots, I run on super-charged water. The way I received the proper amounts of super-charged water to keep running was by rerouting some of the irrigation water to my system and then converting it into super-charged water. Three days ago, my converter stopped working. I was no longer able to receive the substance I needed to keep functioning. That’s why, when you put the super-charged water in my storage tank, I revived.”

“Okay, why did you keep yourself a secret? Why didn’t you tell us that you were a robot?”

“Because I know the true nature of the human race.”

“What do you mean?”

“Humans, ever since the beginning of time, have had a desire to control. They are power thirsty beings who tend to destroy and corrupt the things they try to control. I could not reveal to you my true nature in fear of you taking control and ultimately destroying me, along with the humans inhabiting me.”

“I think you got the wrong impression about humans,” said Sam. “Sure, we’ve had our mistakes in the past, but that doesn’t mean that we have a desire to control everything. And we certainly wouldn’t corrupt the planet we’re living on. Hilo, you have nothing to worry…”

All of the sudden, the red lights faded and there was a sound similar to that of when Obi-Wan-Kenobi powered down the shield generators on the Death Star.

“What happened,” asked Steve. He looked over to see Sam activating a sensory submission chip on the control panel of Hilo. “What are you doing?!”

“Steve, we now have an entire planet at our fingertips.”

That was the beginning of the end for Hilo.