Benjamin X Wretlind

Sunset on Maior Pales: A Sci-Fi Western Novella Benjamin X Wretlind

CYN-4329-2316-ACBS-092134853a--known to itself as Cletus and assigned a male gender in one of its first acts as an AI consciousness--has a bug in its programming. Against all logic, the ghost of a young man has muddled its circuits and promised to give it a soul...provided one small thing that only a self-aware robot with a yearning to self-actualize can do.

After centuries of exploration, humans are finally on the move to settle new worlds. To better facilitate settlement, advance teams of sentient robots have been sent ahead to build new towns and roll out the red carpet for the arrival of their masters. Now, just one month before the big event known as Arrival, Cletus is about to mess it all up.

The ghost of Boone Richards claims his family was murdered hundreds of years ago, and on board the shuttle that will deliver the humans to the western-themed town of Free Point, the direct descendant of that murderer has put together a gang of other outlaws to wreak havoc on the newly dubbed planet Maior Pales. When the ghost of Boone's sister, Delphine, speaks up, Cletus finds himself faced with a dilemma for which its programming is incapable of processing.

How do you follow orders when doing so would break one law but not doing so would break another? And just how does a robot gain a soul?