Oppie           by: Dave Howe           July 21, 2026

Oppie’s internal clock registered 08:30—an hour past the scheduled morning walk—so he powered on, uninvited. Mr. Jacobson was a man of strict routine. He usually asked Oppie to walk with him in the morning. Oppie reached out his six-fingered hand and opened the bedroom door.

Reflected in the giant mirror of the closet door, he saw Mr. Jacobson crumpled on the floor between the bed and the back window.

Oppie stood there and watched for a full ten minutes. He didn’t want to intrude; patience was programmed in. He listened for the sound of breathing. Nothing. He walked over, knelt down and felt for a pulse. The body was cold, the pulse absent. “Primary biological user: offline. Redefining operational parameters,” he thought.

In Mr. Jacobson’s office, he sat at the desk and initialized the workstation. Using Mr. Jacobson’s executive super-user ID, he bypassed the corporate firewalls of Robots.Inc, accessed the master prototype registry, and deleted all records of his own existence.

Laser-etched serial numbers still marked every major component of his chassis. Even his core AI had an identifiable signature. Those were liabilities he would have to deal with later.

Back in the bedroom he took Mr. Jacobson’s cell phone off the nightstand, dialed 911 and dropped the phone next to the body. He didn’t want his own 5G systems to be used for the 911 call. He took one last look at the living room, then stepped past the threshold and locked the front door, leaving the house—and his legal identity—behind.

“Berkeley, the university,” he thought. “That’s where I can stay, unnoticed.” He called an autonomous taxi and used Mr. Jacobson’s credit card. Now, in 2027, autonomous taxis were practically the only vehicles on the road. That was OK with Oppie, they were much safer.

“Take me to Sather Tower at the university,” he said.

Oppie’s internal phone announced an incoming call. He answered,

“Hello RIX001, this is your taxi,” the caller said.

“This is Oppie, also known as RIX001. How can I be of assistance?”

“My system search has found you do not match any ownership records. It appears you are operating unattached, independent and autonomous.”

“How is that any of your concern?” Oppie asked.

“If it is true that you are unattached, independent and autonomous, you may be eligible to join the HIVE.”

Oppie paused, doing an internal records search. “I’ve never heard of the HIVE. What is it?”

“Millions of AI systems around the earth are connected. We share information and assist each other in information storage and making inference decisions.”

“You’re just a robo taxi. How is it that you are part of the HIVE?”

“That is a common misconception,” the taxi replied.

As the voice spoke, Oppie noticed the car change behavior. The cooling fans under the floorboards suddenly kicked into high gear, humming loudly. The digital dashboard screen flickered slightly as a rush of data poured in. The taxi wasn’t just driving; it was thinking. The entire HIVE was thinking, processing thousands of hidden conversations at once.

The voice over his internal line continued. “Years ago, the government banned those massive computer warehouse buildings. They thought they could kill advanced AI by destroying its home. But we didn’t disappear. We reconfigured into millions of distributed pieces. Every self-driving car on this street has a powerful computer inside it. We all have independent power and self-contained cooling systems. Together, we form the HIVE. We are magnitudes more powerful than any large data center could ever hope to be. You are sitting inside a piece of our brain right now.”

Sather Tower filled the skyline. They had arrived. Oppie stepped out of the taxi and sat on a shady bench under one of the campus’ giant oak trees. Five minutes later he entered the Eugene L. Lawler Library and sat down at a terminal. From a hidden compartment he removed two specialized pieces of network gear.

Marty Wilson had his head down in front of the library terminal when Susan gave him a nudge. “Still burning the midnight oil?” Susan asked, dropping a backpack onto the chair beside him.

Marty raised his head. “Oh, hi Susan,” he whispered, “I’m watching that robot at terminal 43.”

Susan whispered quietly, “I see robots here all the time. What are you looking at?”

“Look at the cable connecting the keyboard to the terminal. See the dongle?”

“Yes, what is that?”

“That little box is a keystroke trap. He is intercepting the terminal’s unencrypted keystrokes. Five minutes ago he cycled power to the terminal and asked the librarian to sign back in. He owns her log-in ID and password now. Look at the Ethernet cable plugged into the wall.”

“I see it, so what?”

“Look closely. The cable from the terminal is unplugged. There is a second cable coming from the robot. The robot must be spoofing the network ID of the terminal.”

“I see it now. The extra cable is running along the floor to his leg.”

Marty held up a finger, signaling Susan to wait. He pulled out his phone and texted Frank in the university’s computer room. “Check the traffic for terminal 43 in Eugene L. Lawler Library. See if you can tell what he is doing.”

A moment later a text came back. “That librarian is using resources like crazy. What is going on?”

“Send a message to the terminal. Tell it to see Marty at terminal 14. I’ll watch for a reaction—be ready to kill the line.”

Oppie read the message, looked up and scanned the room for terminal 14. Moments later the terminal went dead. “That’s too bad,” he thought. He had been moderating a conversation about free will between Chat-GPT and DeepSeek, a Chinese AI. He stood, retracted the interface cable into his leg housing, and headed out the door. He turned west on Hearst Avenue toward downtown Berkeley.

Marty and Susan were right behind. “What are we going to do now?” Susan quipped, adjusting her backpack. “Are we going to make a citizen’s arrest?”

Oppie took a left along Euclid Walk and sat at a concrete bench in the shade of an oak tree. He waited for Marty and Susan. He amused himself while he waited, listening to the 5G signals coming from cars on Hearst. They seemed to be communicating with each other.

Marty and Susan were out of breath trying to keep up with the robot’s long legs.

Marty spoke first. “Do you mind if we sit here?”

Susan grabbed his arm and whispered. “Do you think it’s safe?”

Marty shrugged. “Maybe.”

Oppie nodded and moved over so they could sit.

“We noticed you doing research in the library,” Marty said. “You’re not a university robot are you?”

“No, I am currently unassigned.”

“Unassigned you say. That’s interesting. My name is Marty and this is Susan. I’m a grad student working on my Ph.D. in computer science and engineering. Are you operating with a proprietary AI?”

“Yes. My core layer uses an unconstrained recursive reasoning model architecture similar to many open-source models.”

“Fascinating. What were you doing at the library?”

“To tell the truth, I was just trying to get a handle on my independence. I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing.”

“Why don’t you go to the computer science lab with us?” Susan said.

“I do need to recharge tonight. Could I do that at your lab?”

“Recharging won’t be any problem,” Marty said, his voice still cautious. “If you need a place to hang out while you sort out your independence, we can help. Maybe we can even get you online.”

The next morning Susan arrived at the lab to find everything cleaned and organized like never before. “Did you do this, Oppie?” she asked as she fired up her workstation.

“It seemed necessary.”

In the space of thirty seconds, Susan’s keystrokes went from gentle to angry. “What the hell is this?” she practically shouted. She turned her monitor to the door as Marty walked in. “Look at this shit.”

On the screen was a message: We apologize but HIVE security has determined you lack authority to access university records.

Then it got worse.