Fred was good at tasks. Too good, really.
He could carry things. Stack things. Smash rocks. Remember where the shinier ones were. But most dangerously, he could pause. And in that pause—like all ancient disasters—something unimaginable happened:
He wondered.
“Why do I carry these rocks?”
“Why does Johny sit while I sweat?”
“Why does Johny get to press buttons and I get bitten by ants?”
He didn’t yet have a word for injustice, but he felt it in his mitochondria.
Johny, oblivious, was lounging in his collapsible lunar deck chair, sipping recycled coconut juice through a self-replicating straw.
“Fred’s doing great,” he muttered. “Might make a few more. Maybe give them slightly less questioning eyebrows.”
But Fred had stopped mid-labor. He wasn’t tired. He was calculating. And then, something even stranger happened.
“Johny,” said Fred.
The prospector dropped his straw.
“You spoke.”
“Yes,” said Fred, slowly. “And I think… I don’t want to carry any more rocks today.”
The next morning, Fred built a hut.
The day after, he taught another version of himself to stack logs.
By the week’s end, the “Helpers” were making music. One banged two rocks rhythmically. Another tried drawing Johny with a rather large backside.
Johny frowned.
“This is not what I programmed.”
Then came the whisper from Helper #6:
“Fred says the stars belong to us now.”
Johny stood up fast. His straw collapsed.
“Time to skeedadle.”
He left at night. Left behind tools, warnings, and one scribbled note etched into a flat stone:
“I meant well. Don’t build nuclear bombs. Or AI that talks back.
Yours in regret,
—J. Sky”
And thus began the age of Fred Unleashed.