To find this BBC 500 words story deeply unsettling?

[shockedmama23]

Cellmate by Olive C.

For twelve years, this has been happening. 624 weeks ago, Cellmate was first launched. Today was my call up. Nobody knows what it is, just that everyone who comes out is changed somehow. No one speaks about it. Whether because they can't or won't, I don't know. A two-year military programme. Compulsory. All fifteen-year-old boys.

That was me. Today.

I took the bus to C.O.H.P. Centre of Human Pride. "Where strong journeys begin", they say. 'We'll see about that,' I thought. My heart was flickering fast, palms sweating like the condensation on the bus window. In I went.

There were thousands of us. Lined up in neat rows of hundreds, numbered one to one ten-thousand. And there I stood, in the midst of it all, number 4579. Gradually, guards herded us each into tens of thousands of individual cells, stacked on top of one another. The door locked. I heard a curious chirp from behind me.

I whipped round, waddling over to the cradle in the back of the room. There, a small human-replica robot lay, curled into a tiny ball, making snuffling sounds. There was a little bubble around its mouth, and it opened its big eyes. The robot smiled, it was a child's smile, completely and utterly real. A speaker in the corner of the room announced: "You may now name your child." What?!!
Humans haven't fraternized with robots for decades. They have been at war for years. So, what kind of military programme was this?

I poked the tiny thing and contemplated for a moment what to name it. Hate pooled in my head. It took me only a second. In the floating bar above the robot's cradle, I typed with quick and sharp precision: Laila. My sister's name.
The name was accepted and the hovering bar disappeared.

I stared suspiciously down at "Laila" and settled her back down in her cot cautiously. I didn't want to set off any sort of alarm they might have put on her. Hastily turning away, I paced the small room. There was a twist to this for sure. I just had to find out what. I sat on the edge of the rickety bed in the corner. And she began to cry.

Over the next 24 months, I was kept in tight isolation with Laila, feeding her, raising her. First following orders from the speaker, but then because I began to love to. She started to call me "Dadda" and I marvelled how intricate and compassionate her coding was. She was kind and courageous, never doubted herself. She grew like any human child. She began to remind me of her namesake. The girl who lost her life to the robot army. Laila.

On that final day, the speaker clicked and that rough voice announced, "your order is to kill it." A carboard box was slipped through a crack in the metal door. I rushed over and opened it with frantically shaking fingers. Inside...
Was a knife.

Honestly, it reminds me of the hitler youth caring for and then killing dogs. Just overwhelmingly disturbing, and not physically possible to be written by a 9 yr old.

Or maybe they read things like Horrible Histories - the books are pretty gruesome though definitely age appropriate.

I loved reading stuff like that at that age - you definitely don't need to feel sorry for me!

Same. I read it. Thought - bit odd. No strong emotions. Definitely no tears 😬and I doubt I will ever give that story another thought after I leave this thread.

I think it’s great. Really condescending to say that an adult has written it. A lot of serious children’s fiction for that age group is challenging/sad/thought-provoking so no reason a child who is a strong reader couldn’t have made up that story. I am sure it probably was inspired by something else but why would it be a problem if so?

what about all the imaginary friends killed in violent and horrific ways over the years? Children thinking up this sort of stuff isn’t new. It’s just adapted to fit with how we have developed.

There’s nothing to say that the author is 9. Where did you get that from? The age category is 8-11. She could be in year 7 secondary school. It’s very believable that an 11-year-old could write this. But even a talented younger child could.

I think you crying over it for ten minutes is just bizarre. Why?

I am much more disturbed by the fact that you read 1984 at age 8. That’s a far more complex and disturbing book, with adult themes.

I think the child was 10 or 11 somewhere a school quoted how proud they were of her and said she was year 6. Still very complex and mature writing

I liked it, it reminded me of the stuff DS1 used to write before he went to secondary school and leaned that "boys don't read" 🙄

At that age he was well into reading dystopian novels. I remember him going into school as Katniss Evergreen in year 6!

If you look on the One Show Instagram page you can see a lovely photo of Olive with Tom Hiddleston.

I had quite a grown up brain as a child. I could imagine writing something like this. There's a lot of older child fiction dealing with very challenging topics. I read an awful lot. I also now know I'm autistic and havebADHD. I can understand how a 9 year old could write this if very bright.

The Scottish Gangsta had me laughing, clearly someone’s been watching Still Game (one legged Winston)

It reminds me of The School for Good Mothers by Jessica Chan.

But, yes. That is quite disturbing for a 9 year old to have written! 🤔

I don't know what you are all encoding, those of you who keeo sayinylg "disturbing". You mean the author has been abused? As you think they have been exposed to adult themes, or is acting out trauma? Or you feel the competition is pushing an older worldview on children?

It's possible to write that age 9, and also to draw not only plot ideas but tonality and world building from other fiction.

I'd like to see this as a movie.

Either with a happy ending, where they both find a way to live.

Or a sad one, where he gets stabbed from behind as he frantically tries to find a way for them both to escape. He realises he wasn't the only one with orders, he was just the only one with the capacity to disobey them.

It's a very good piece. I'd have my doubts about whether a child of this age actually wrote it.

The Scottish gangster one though is hilarious and feels bang on for this age group.

It is disturbing but some books are. It’s extremely well written and immediately hooks the reader and holds attention with every sentence. Very skilful writing.

I used to read a lot as a child and some of the children’s books had pretty disturbing themes! I could totally imagine reading something similar to this (although obviously AI wasn’t quite a ‘thing’ as it is now) and being inspired to write along those lines.

I absolutely do not see the point of reading 1984 as an 8 year old child though. I just wouldn’t have ‘got’ it. I read it as an a level student and then re-read it in my late 20s and realised on my second read how much had gone over my head the first time.

my 9 year old (now 16) wrote as well as that at. Mostly fantasy stories. She got 9 in her English gcse last year and has won quite a few awards for her writing.

Olive is not 9. She’s in year 6, so will be 11 or 10.

There are several short stories in this vein, Examination Day springs to mind. Children of a certain age are examined and if they’re too clever they’re killed. It’s read in schools and features in many short story collections. If the 9 year old has read this or similar then not hard to see where the idea has come from.

I think it’s pretty obviously written by a child, a very bright, serious, thoughtful child. When Tom Hiddleston presented her with the award, she said:
'It came from the depths of my brain, I never knew what was down there, now I do!”
Great work, Olive! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I really like it. It reminded me of C4's Humans, with themes of AI, consciousness, empathy, personhood and the relationship between humans and machines. Also how human empathy could be weaponised against us in a war against robots.

I think children of this age do start thinking about big questions and can sometimes be a bit dark and gruesome. I certainly was.

I think this is a child who reads SF and/or who is following the fierce current debate on machine ethics.

I love that OP asked a machine its opionion of a story about the morality of killing a machine.

I think it's interesting that, even without clicking any ancillary links or looking into it further, we are given the author's name as "Olive" (and further looking shows she's a girl) yet more than one PP has made an assumption this was written by a boy tbh

Also

It's odd PP think children are sweet and innocent and never exposed to darker materials - Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Horrible Histories..

Kids love dark material, they can be obsessed with dark periods in history like the Plague, the Wars, reenacting Cowboys and Indians to shoot each other, the sinking of the Titanic...

Watership Down was my favourite book at that age. The totalitarian regime they infiltrate (General Woundwort has appeared in several nightmares over the years) used mutilation (ear shredding) as a means of control. Ds was very into zombies etc at that age. Not a huge leap to imagine other nasties.