Today's #Scif #fantasy #flashfiction #TheMachinesNostalgia

“I'm not sure if this is my color.”

Gandalf the White*

     I want to say thank you to Grandpa and Grandma for the gift card and movie tickets(Just got your birthday card). Going to my awesome nerdy club, unfortunately my writing club was canceled today. (Awww). I think the shenanigans at the nerdy club will be significant enough will make up for the canceled one.

The Machine's Nostalgia

     What gives you that wonderful feeling of nostalgia? That happy feeling of the good old days? How long ago is the good old days for you? What years? Is it a decade? Is it only a few moments? Would playing a song, movie or video game bring you back to those days? Do you call everything from your age of nostalgia a classic?

     I'm not sure how human nostalgia works compared to mine. I'm a machine with sentience all my own with perfect memory alongside perfect perception. I don't miss details and every detail I remember. Everything I'm told I remember. With the robotic brain they've given me I may be able to form opinions on things but I can't reinterpret the events over time or reimagine. They are as they as they always were. I am also very powerful, sophisticated machine so my memory works instantly and links things quickly so memories link themselves so very quickly.

     What kind of nostalgia does leads to? Something very different than humans I bet. When people say to me “SR-1132012 what is nostalgic to you?” I can't give them a very good answer.

      That's because just by looking at something like a car I feel incredible rushes of nostalgia. With my perfect memory all those wonderful car rides I've had come to mind. My “good old days” come right to mind very easily if my robotic brain is in good enough of a mood to think of them. In an instant I think of all the bright, sunny drives I've taken. When traffic was something in the back of the mind and I could enjoy the weather and clear skies. I remember all the wonderful conversations with all passengers, family come an gone. Robots have family too y'know, those that come off the assembly line, the scientists that work with and develop them, the maintenance men, though eventually I consider someone I know well and good enough family. All those talks come back to me cleanly and perfectly.

      Songs give me a more potent nostalgia. When songs reach my ear and vibrate through my synthetic skin I process all the notes. I remember all times I experienced that song. All things that happened when I heard it. Music is never alone. Songs relate to other songs and in a massive chain of concept songs remind of others and I think of melody after melody and relive it all. The tunes run through my head along with the memories. I remember most of it in a rush so it all sort of shuffles about in that part of the mind where remembering takes place. I don't know how different those places are for humans and machines.

      Those are some of the kinds of nostalgia I experience as a machine. I remember bad things in the same way. I've read about the human mind and psychology. I wonder which mental world is better. I'm curious enough to wish I could live two lives and experience both. Though to understand I would have to remember both lives. I suppose on top of it all I wonder which life I would remember more fondly.