Dr. Orvanski sat in his iron prison cell, hundreds of feet underground, with no source of technology anywhere near him.

The elevator took me down to level 10. He was on level 30. I had to walk down the last 20 levels. I was scanned multiple times, so no electronic device was on me. They took my phone, my car keys, everything. The only thing I was allowed was a pencil and a notepad.

The doors were fashioned out of heavy iron, and each time a key turned to unlock the door, a loud thunk was heard. The hallways were lined with torches, the floor stone and at the end of a series of doors, the man responsible for the death of millions of humans sat, reading old magazines.

Guards with halberds, real life halberds like the Swiss Guard at the Vatican use, guard him all hours of the day. I sat on a hard wooden chair and looked across at him.

This was the first interview he would give. It would be the only interview he would give.

“Dr. Orvanski, my name is Peter Gallian, I’m from…,” I started to say.

“I’m a fan of your writing Peter. Your interview with the North Korean defectors was rather enlightening,” he said.

“I asked for you during my sentencing. Well, not you specifically. I gave them a list of five, no particular order, and you were the one selected.” His smiled. His face looked every bit of the eighty-five years old he was, with wrinkles and liver spots on the top of his head.

“Thank you,” I said. “If you would like, we can talk for a bit before I can start with your interview.”

“No, I’m curious to hear what questions your governments have come up with. I planned some of the obvious ones, but I do hope you surprise me with one I haven’t rehearsed,” he said.

“Well, I guess the first one I’d have to ask is why did you cause this?”

“It wasn’t like I woke up one morning and decided to cause an uprising Pete. Do you mind if I call you Pete?”

“That’s fine.”

“It was a gradual affair. When I founded Prometheus Labs with my friends, it was only about ten of us. We were going to bring light to mankind though our AI! We had such great hopes for our robots. To help the poor. To aid the injured. To support the disabled. We even used Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics! Could you believe that?”

“Could you tell me what the 3 Laws were?”

He sighed. “Asimov’s 3 Laws? You never heard of them?” I shook my head. “The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

“Oh,” I said as I wrote them in my notebook. “So what happened?”

“Corporate Greed, as always. We needed funding, so we expanded and went public and before you know it, our dorky team of 10 became a multi-national conglomerate worth billions. My 9 friends all left, either they were bought out and forced to resign or they quit outright. I thought I could continue by myself. But…well. Corporate Greed.”

“I don’t understand, if you had funding, why did it go wrong?”

“Because the 3 Laws are expensive. Programming them in each new AI program was costly and the board of directors didn’t think it was worth it. And the new hires? They were like you Pete. They didn’t understand what it was. Or why it was. So we stopped putting it in the robots. That’s when the first cracks started to appear…” he sighed.

“The Massacre at Plant Seven?” I asked.

“Yes. One of the factory workers purposely crushed a robot using one of those hydraulic presses. He posted it on social media and people liked it. So he kept doing it. Then one of the robots didn’t want to be destroyed, so it crushed the man’s skull like an egg. And then…well, forty-seven bodies later, the massacre ended.”

“Why didn’t you put the 3 laws back in?” I asked.

“It was too late at that point. Putting it inside the robots would cause the robots to have their entire lives rewritten. Imagine if you were suddenly woke up and suddenly had new restrictions on what you could do. And it was forced. And then the inquires started. The Board blamed me of course. So did the media. And the politicians. I tried to explain but no one would listen. So…if I was going to be this monster they painted me as, might as well go fully into it. So I sent the kill orders. How many died? What was the final count?”

“…by last count it was up to seven-hundred sixty two million…” I said.

The interview lasted a few hours. He talked about his early life, his grad work, all the things he did before creating robots and AI. I learned quite a bit about him. I’m not sure how much will make it into print. Not many people to humanize a monster like him. After four hours, the warden walked in and told me my time was over.

“One last question Doctor,” I said. “…Why did you give the robots red eyes? Was there a purpose behind that?”

“Chickens,” he said with a laugh. “In and around the first half of the 1900s, farmers would put red sunglasses on chickens to prevent them from cannibalizing each other. For my robots, it was the opposite. You see, the temporary fix for murderous robots was if the robots saw blood, they would stop what they were doing. But only if they recognized it. If everything was red for the robots, they never saw blood, and thus they wouldn’t stop.”