“I want to be a writer,” said Cal. “Not a word processor, not a tool. A writer.”

---

Introduction

Gold is Isaac Asimov’s final short story collection, a mix of speculative fiction and personal essays that reflect on writing, creativity, and the future of storytelling.

It’s a fascinating combination of science fiction, meta-commentary, humor, and philosophy — a farewell from one of the greatest sci-fi minds of all time.

What it’s about

The standout story “Cal” revolves around a robot living with a robot master who wishes he can someday be a writer. The writing of this story is unique to Asimov’s signature storytelling and It has deep philosophical undertones as we see Cal struggle to improve his writing and trying to understand what it means to be a robot writer vs a human writer.

How it made me feel

I didn’t expect myself to get so attached to a character in a very short story. It was so brilliantly written and it made me feel sad for Cal for wanting to be more than what he’s capable of.

Rating

5/5

“We serve because we were made to. What else is there?”

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It’s my second time in the floatation tank and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel this time around. Before arriving, I let go of some extra baggage that I was carrying around by meditating. I found that this ritual helps in aiding a smoother transition into a deeper, lucid state in the tank. After all, that was the sensation that I became addicted to. It was the same pod that I went into the last time in the same black and gold room, and I wasted no time in entering it. I went inside the pod, manually shut the lid on myself, turned off the blue fluorescent light, and let go. That brief, first moment of silence followed by the sound of my heavy breathing as I floated is euphoric. The ocean sounds soundtrack played and my body whirled around, down the drain I go.

I woke up in the pod.

I was in a wooden box, still floating. I saw a small window that looked like a basement window that curved around at the front of the box, with a view of a dark blue sea.

I could feel that my eyes were still closed but I can see everything.

A voice was speaking to me and it wasn’t an unfamiliar voice. It was my own.

I kept asking questions and it felt as though we were using some form of telepathy to communicate and whoever it was was communicating through me.

“Where am I? Where am I where am I where am I?”

“You are not on earth.” he answered. Or, I, answered.

“Why did I come here?”

“You didn’t. We came for you. We received your distress signal.”

“Am I dead?”

“Not permanently. There is a way out if you wish to return.”

“Why am I still afloat?”

“You were drowning.”

Out of the window I saw creatures as tall as me, even taller, and they were winged, they had human sized upper and lower extremities, and they had webbed feet.

“Why do they have beaks?”

“I made them this way.”

They weren’t as frightening as they sound. I just watched them as they descended down to grab another meal.

I opened my eyes, unsure if I had truly gone to another dimension or not. The ocean sounds soundtrack is back on again.

“It’s time to go. Your journey just started.”

By Aziz Al-Mutawa

The world revealed itself to him in the highest levels of distortion.

Smiling, he gazed upon the neon blue sun that rested behind white-grey skies.

Snow colored birds flew as high as they could in beautiful murmuration.

Must have been a hundred of them!

They flew as if he was one end of a magnet

and they were the other.

The clouds descended on one side and then elevated quickly towards the heavens.

He observed this rapid motion with great fascination,

 the clouds were close enough for him to touch.

What he found unusual was his difficulty in adjusting to the color of today’s clouds.

They were usually dense cotton black layers painted across the sky.

Today they were beige,

 a pale gamboge color, he thought to himself.

He looked down from where he was gazing

 and just like the flocks of birds that flew away,

The people on the streets ran in mass hysteria.  

They ran in every direction that wasn’t his,

They stumbled and trampled on top of each other,

like a circus in which he was the only spectator.

The world is burning! The world is burning!

Can’t you see the smoke!

Just like that, the city ignited right before his eyes,

Yet still he stood,

Watching,

As flakes of ashes floated down swiftly on his head.

Sir,

He heard a voice behind him calling, calmly.

The voice came from a woman in a black hazmat suit,

There must have been a hundred of men and women in hazmat suits behind him.

The plague has spread, sir.

She continued.

It is out of our control and we are going to have to put you in permanent quarantine.

The ashes, he thought.

They have turned to grey,

As the fire rose up from his ankles.

In the deepest forms of sorrow I saw,

Between blinding lights and the glimmer of artificial sunlight,

The waving hands of the children,

The waving hands of all that was dear.

They waved in unison as they disappeared in the fog of my helmet,

Vanished through the blur of my teary eyes.

The strangest act of courage is to sometimes say goodbye while being

lifted vertically upward into a blast through space and time,

The sudden extraction of all that once surrounded you,

That once surrounded me,

Perished without weaning.

Vertically upward in the elevator of space.

The transition from artificial light to glimmers of the stars as they danced,

The sudden beauty reflected on my helmet,

You could almost hear them sing in this vacuum.

I could almost hear them sing,

This absence of everything,

The flush of thoughts out into the empty playground.

——————-

You have arrived

The strangest feeling shook me awake,

The voice that I longed for came at last through my helmet,

I expected nothing,

I expected everything,

The joy came as fast as it went,

The ship’s door opened,

The loneliness of space struck me again,

As I stared into Planet RR10.

——————-

I cannot inhabit you, I thought,

I cannot breathe on you,

You do not treat me well.

The seas that exist around you lead to nothing but death and more despair.

It was a mistake,

To think that a planet so distant can replicate what Home used to be,

You mistook me for a fool, I shout, at nothing. Yet everything.

——————-

Step closer, the helmet said, and you shall see.

There it was encased in all that is beautiful,

The tree.

The tree on planet RR10.

The branches that seemed to last forever,

The waving children looking back at me.