Noor began to listen to Keno with great interest. Keno told him his story when he met Yassin. Then he began to tell him what had happened to Yassin.
"After I took out that silver robot—it’s a combat model in the robot army called a Cypher-13," Keno began. "That thing doesn’t have feelings or awareness like the others. It’s just programmed to follow a set of orders, which is why it’s easy to defeat."
Noor interrupted him, astonished. "Are you saying there’s another type of robot that has feelings like us?"
"Not feelings in the way we understand them, like love, hate, and so on. They’re artificial emotions. They couldn’t create complete, natural feelings like ours, so they made something similar, but it’s still different—it’s just internal programming. There’s a code that makes you ’fear’ a certain thing, and another code that makes you ’love’ a certain thing. That’s how they tried to mimic the idea of feelings, to make it seem like they were living beings. But the most important thing they achieved was consciousness—awareness of everything happening around them. That’s why they refused to be slaves and rebelled—but not against humans."
Noor furrowed his brows in confusion and apprehension. "Not against us? What do you mean? And why would they want to be living beings that feel like us? You have no idea how much I wish my own feelings would disappear right now so I could become a cold, unfeeling robot."
"I’ll tell you in a moment what I mean by ’not against humans.’ As for your second question, I understand why feelings wouldn’t seem like something worth wanting. Feelings are the root of so much pain and suffering in our world. To chase that rush of happiness, a person will do foolish things that hurt themselves and the people around them. And those people, in turn, do the same to others. It’s an endless cycle—personal interests tearing down nations so that other nations can rise. Countless conflicts, all driven by feelings and unchecked desires.
"But in the end, this is what makes us human—what makes us alive. The passions inside us push us forward, bring us together in joy and sorrow, and often point us toward what we must do. Imagine if we were cold beings with no feelings at all. Would anyone care about the poor, the sick, or the weak? The world would turn into nothing but a market of production and efficiency, everything contractual, purely for public interest. Compassion would vanish.
"If your mother became sick and unable to work, what would stop you from throwing her into the street or killing her because she was no longer ’useful’? We throw broken machines into the garbage without a second thought. But our feelings—the bonds between us—are what make you spend your own money, your time, and your energy to help her recover, to sit by her side until she stands again.
"From a robotic, materialistic perspective, that’s a waste. But from a human perspective, it’s one of the things that makes life worth living. That’s why robots wouldn’t hesitate to toss a comrade into the scrap heap if they broke down."
Keno paused, letting his words sink in.
Noor spoke up. "I remember a quote from Asimov that says "Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." He was pointing out that humans are far more complex. We’re not one-dimensional beings that follow orders perfectly. We get bored, we lie, we make mistakes—sometimes deliberately—because of how we feel about our work, our situation, and our dreams.
"A machine doesn’t feel, doesn’t dream. It just follows its codes. And I think the materialistic mind is no different—it lives entirely within the material world, unable to go beyond it. It follows the same laws as nature, existing as nature’s tool. It can direct nature only by merging with it and submitting to it.
"It’s a neutral mind—no morality, no higher purpose, no connection to the sacred or to anything beyond the reach of the five senses. It’s good at processing data, but it can’t transcend it. So it ends up producing what I’d call ’the ethics of becoming,’ or ’the logic of the status quo.’
"It’s even anti-historical, because history is an unnatural, non-material structure—messy, complex, ambiguous—and that kind of mind can’t handle it well. It can manage numbers, density, weight, volume. But it reduces reality to overly broad laws that erase complexity, or it gets lost in tiny details. It’s like an X-ray—it can show you a skeleton, but not the expression on a face. Or like a microscope—it can show the details of a cell but not the whole picture of life.
"From that mindset comes rationalization—the use of the best means to serve any end, no matter what that end is. A man can learn to build a bridge, but whether it leads to heaven or to hell doesn’t matter. The focus is on how to build it, not why. That’s why even irrational goals can be pursued with the most advanced scientific and technological tools. Science and technology don’t stop irrationality—they can serve it perfectly.
"And when rationalization happens inside the materialistic model, it tries to reshape human society—and even humans themselves—to fit that model. The paradox is that it ends up stunting human reason, because it demands total submission to an inhuman, external structure, stripping away moral, spiritual, and human considerations piece by piece. Eventually, materialism takes over entirely, and life becomes utilitarian, people reduced to one-dimensional, functional beings like robots but more messy.
"Globalization is just that same process on a global scale—turning the entire world into one massive market, and turning all humans into predictable, functional tools."
Noor stopped, realizing he had spoken a lot.
Keno smiled at the depth of his words. "Sounds like you’ve read a lot of Frankfurt school of sociology and Al-Messiri books."
"You know them?" ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝕟𝕖𝕥
"Of course. I’ve read some of their books. Completely changed how I see reality—made me start looking for something beyond the material world. Anyway, picture this: you’re a robot with no feelings, no purpose in life, but somehow you’re alive. You have a sharp awareness—or so you think. What would you do, having never experienced emotions, but convinced they’re the only way to give your life meaning, to rise above the programming and mechanical limits holding you prisoner?"
Noor fell silent, thinking. Then, expressionless, he said, "Yes. I get it. You’d seek feelings—believing they’re the key to becoming a living being with a purpose in this vast universe, something more than just matter and code."