"Artificial human beings..."said Valeria out loud.
She walked around what had once been a building. She came across what looked like a human corpse. That probably meant that the planet hadn't been abandoned long ago, if there were still human remains. Could this have been the very last person on the planet? And that was why the person hadn't been buried? Because there was no one to bury him? Or her? Walking closer, she saw that while it was shaped like a human, with arms, legs, a head, and torso, it was not a human being. She touched it, and it felt hard and cold. Metal. Or at least, rusted metal.
"So it was true!"she silently exclaimed to herself. "It...it was true? About the artificial humans? Metal humans?"she looked up.
If that was true...perhaps everything else was, too. About the three hundred years, everything. On this planet, there had been people who had lived three hundred years or more, and with artificial human beings to do all their work, they themselves only knowing...knowing what? Simply...living, she supposed. Then where they? What had happened to them? Surely, judging from what she had viewed, she could see that perhaps this planet was the most comfortable one she had seen yet. Simply doing nothing all day. She laughed. She knew several who must live like that, doing nothing. Only those were people's pets. Pets they kept for their company. People worked, people did everything. The pets simply...ate, and slept, and...lived. Only they never lived to be three hundred. Perhaps...maybe fifteen Galactic Standard Years. Some more, some less. But never three hundred.
"Maybe this one still works."she wondered.
She wondered how she could get it to work again. Perhaps it could tell her something interesting.
"I suppose the brain must be in the head."she muttered to herself.
Perhaps if she could get the brain out, maybe then, she might be able to find something interesting without having to repair the whole thing. Only how to get it off?she wondered.
"I'll have to unscrew it."she decided.
She spent the next three hours trying to get it off. When she finally did, she took the brain, or at least, what the book films had assured her was the brain of the out. She walked back to her ship, and placed it in front of her.
"Now, only how to get something to read it."she said, nodding.
She worked most of the afternoon, trying to get the computer to read it properly, when finally, it read the images properly. A face came up.
"Listen, Ariel,"the face said. "I must leave Aurora, and you cannot come with me."the woman said. "I cannot take any robots with me. Perhaps someday we may return to Aurora. We shall never forget it. It is the World of the Dawn. The Settlers are getting more powerful, and they seem to think that it was us the ones that have caused their Earth to become radioactive. We must leave Aurora. Some of us are going to Trantor."
Valeria turned it off. Aurora? Earth? Radioactive? Settlers? Well, there were settlers everywhere, she supposed. Every time a new planet was found, and terraformed, weren't the first humans settlers? And Trantor. Well, she knew about Trantor, it was the capital of the Empire of Trantor. Some people said it would soon become the capital of the Galactic Empire, but, oh well, she was sure that was off in the far future. There was only way to figure this out, of course. She would have to see more.