51 Planets to See Before the Universe Collapses

Guhguhgoo (guh-guh-GOO)

Scort Muggins, Human Year 3270:

The name of the planet is pronounced exactly how it’s spelled. ...I just hope I spelled it right. 

When we first arrived on the planet, I couldn’t help but recognize the similarities to Earth - Guhguhgoo was also barren and lifeless with an overwhelming lingering feeling of hopelessness in the atmosphere. Dust filled the air and the planet’s star beat down on us with force. There wasn’t any organic life left on the planet, but we did find mechanical life. The intelligent species that formerly lived on Guhguhgoo seemed to have died off with the rest of the planet, but the robots they had built were still functioning. It was surprising, especially since my gadgets typically have to be replaced every couple human years because the companies only make them last a short time before you have to buy the new model.

The Guhguhgoo robots weren’t having trouble moving around, but didn’t appear to be performing any useful tasks whatsoever. We walked over to one robot in particular that had two arms coming from a body and two wheels at its base for mobility. A compartment with two slots on top jutted out of its center. The robot grabbed nothing in the empty space to its left and dropped the nothing down into the slots. Its right arm would then press a lever down next to the compartment, wait a moment for the lever to pop up, and retrieve the nothing from the two slots. Then it would repeat the task over and over (See Figure 35.1). I looked around at the other robots, and they all seemed to be performing repetitive movements in the dusty emptiness of Guhguhgoo, though the movements by each robot varied. 

“What are you doing?” I asked the robot. 

“Do you want some toast?” it replied. 

“You don’t have anything to toast… ” Pleeft corrected, rather brashly. 

“...Do you want some toast?” 

The robot handed us absolutely nothing with its left arm. Maybe they weren’t functioning as well as I had thought. We weren’t sure how advanced these robots were, but it was apparent that they weren’t aware of their own surroundings at all. Or maybe they just didn’t care. And every robot had been programmed to perform only one menial task each… in the sand… for absolutely no one. 

Each robot had some sort of lens over their cameras, and the lens on the toast-bot was detachable. When I took the lens away, the robot stopped repeating its movement and looked around the desolate surface of Guhguhgoo. It spun around in circles, looking all around, and changed it’s tone which grew more stressed with every repetition. 

“Do you want some TOAST? Do YOU want some TOAST? DO YOU WANT SOME TOAST???”

Then the robot came to a full stop after slowing and lowering its pitch in an inherently melancholy way. 

“Do… you want some toast? Do you want… some toast? Do you want some… toast?...”

I held the lens up to my eyes and could instantly see a completely new world. Each one of these robots was experiencing an augmented reality through the lenses. I could see that the now-depressed robot was surrounded by loaves of food and perfectly golden brown toast was ejecting out of the front compartment of the robot. And behind the food stood beings chanting for more and more toast. I presumed these beings to be the long-gone Guhguhs. Their faces were cheerful and had three black eyes and eight small tentacles growing from them. They were a turquoise color with freckles all over their bodies. Their smiles were toothless, yet infectious. All of the Guhguhs had two arms with four fingers and two legs much like a human (See Figure 35.2). I could see why this robot was so eager to please these delightful creatures with endless amounts of toast. I imagined the Guhguhs and humans would get along quite well together, that is, if the Guhguhs had not gone completely extinct.

Luskem noticed a robot charging station not too far away so we walked over there, passing a robot washing endless loads of laundry and another robot vacuuming rugs that only we knew to be sand. The charging station had a big GARO label on it that we assumed to be the company name. I asked a concierge robot where we could find the headquarters. If only the robot knew that it was helping three real beings for the first time in what I imagined to be hundreds or thousands of years. 

We found our way to the GARO headquarters and went through the nonexistent door. [Note: GARO stands for Guhguh Augmented Reality Operations.] Dozens of Guhguhs walked around busily with papers and places to be, and before I asked one of them where I might find the head of the company, Pleeft stopped me. I had already been swept up in the illusion of the augmented reality. I lifted the lens from my eyes and we saw a single robot sitting at a giant monitor a dozen meters away. The monitor showed every robot and the reality that they were seeing through their lens. It was where the augmented reality was being generated and maintained. The robot at the controls was the only robot we had come across on the planet that wasn’t looking at Guhguhgoo through a lens. This robot was the sole holder of the truth - the truth that the rest of the robots were being deceived by an augmented reality; the beings they thought they were servicing didn’t exist. The robot at the monitor must have been in control of the GARO augmented reality designed for the Guhguhs, but when they died off, it was unable to fulfill its task. Only this particular robot was able to find a different purpose for the same task. 

After figuring all of this out in record time, I went to the back of the monitor to shut it down and reveal reality to the other robots. They were all living a lie, and they needed to know. The truth was too precious, regardless of how painful. 

“Wait…” said Pleeft. “Maybe… don’t.” 

Of course Pleeft wouldn’t want me to do it. She’s a bitter, snarky plant that I’m sure took great pleasure in knowing a whole planet of robots were experiencing a false world. 

“After you implanted the education chip in me, I was confused and overwhelmed for weeks. Sometimes I think my life might be better not knowing everything in the universe that the Human Galactic knows. It can make me feel like I’ve wasted most of my life, and my entire species is wasting their entire existence on Spaltnia. But… they’re happy. They’re happy. Not knowing can be better than knowing.” 

I was taken aback. Luskem hugged Pleeft, sitting on their head-body. 

“Get off.”

Pleeft wasn’t much of a hugger. 

This was the first time I saw Pleeft show any compassion toward, well, anything. It was also the first time I considered that the truth isn’t always the best option. I thought about the toast-bot that now stood motionless, unable to satisfy its only purpose. I thought about how that might feel. Most humans go through their entire life in search of a purpose and never find it. On Guhguhgoo, these robots knew their purposes, and in their minds, were fulfilling them. If I was to rip that away from them, it wouldn’t do any good. It would be a new kind of torture to know your purpose but not be able to do what you were meant to do. I wouldn’t want that for myself or anyone else. I looked at the robot at the monitor. For the first time, it acknowledged me, but didn’t say anything. It only offered me a pair of lenses with a somber, knowing stare. In this case, ignorance was bliss. I did not envy this robot that held the burden of reality for millions, if not billions of other robots. 

We walked back to the toast-bot and returned the lens I had stolen. After I placed it back on the robot’s camera, it hesitantly went back to work, toasting fictitious loaves of bread. But I could see the nagging sense that something wasn’t right. It knew it’s world wasn’t real. It knew the truth. It was too late to go back to toast. 

Maybe I wasn’t ready to figure out what was on Meiti. Maybe I didn’t want to take off my metaphorical lens and find my father. I wouldn’t be able to go back to the way things were after. That was probably why I had been delaying going to the planet for so long. And I still wasn’t ready. We’d probably go to four more planets before I finally had the courage to go to Meiti. I don’t know why I’m saying four more planets. It’s not like this journey has already been written and planned out.

We took the toast-bot back to the robot at the monitor. It was able to reprogram the toast-bot for a new purpose - carrying Pleeft around on its head. Luskem’s head-body was finally free again, and Pleeft had control of where she went. Though, the toast-bot could still only say one thing.

“Do you want some toast?”

“No,” Pleeft replied. “Stop asking.”

RATINGS

Hospitality — N/A
Food — N/A
Sights — 3/10
Activities — 1/10
Family Friendly — 3/10
Chances of Contemplating Your Reality — 100%