OH, THE HUMANITY
Tanya Huff
“Just take a breath of this air.” The man in the plaid jacket, logged into Alice’s memory as Mr. Harrin, threw his arms wide and drew an exaggerated breath, sucking in air over the surface of the microphone and breathing it out along the same trajectory. “Do you know what you’re breathing?” he asked the crowd. “That’s oxygen. Pure oxygen.”
Alice felt Adam shift beside her, micro movements that stopped when his subroutines finished weighing tone and effect and concluded, as hers had, hyperbole rather than an error.
“No car exhaust! No factory exhaust! No people stacked ten, twenty, thirty deep!”
“You saying we stink, Mr. Harrin?”
The interruption originated three rows back. Male. Dark forehead damp with sweat. One arm supported a child on his hip, the other lay around the shoulders of the female next to him, who looked to be incubating another child. Alice ran facial recognition. Richard Gaunt. Thirty-one. Fitter at United Industries.
The crowd laughed at the question.
“No, Mr. Gaunt, I’m saying you don’t stink anymore!”
The crowd, including Mr. Gaunt, laughed harder.
No danger.
Everyone in the crowd was either an employee of United Industries or a dependent. Sixty-seven young couples, many with children. None of the children older than ten.
“Here at Unos, here at the first of the satellite communities, the air is clear, the grass is green, and the trees…” His gesture directed the crowd’s attention to the slender sapling that grew from the middle of the community center’s lawn. “…well, the trees will need a little time.”
Alice didn’t understand why an accurate botanical statement elicited laughter.
“But Unos and her six sister subdivisions aren’t only about clean air and affordable housing and a fast train link back to jobs in The City. You’re not here today to hear about that. You know about all that! You’re the first to to take the UI advantage!” Mr. Harrin threw his arms wide again. “You’re here…”
“For the free beer!”
Back of the crowd. Male. Pale face flushed. Identified as Gordon Hunt, facial recognition successful in spite of oval mirrors over eyes. Thirty-seven. Painter at United Industries.
Mr. Harrin lowered his arms and, as the laughter died down, said, “Alice. Take Mr. Hunt a beer.”
Alice illuminated her visual sensors—illuminated visual sensors indicated to humans that her personality matrix had been engaged. Disengaging her brakes, she rolled forward until she stood next to the nearest cooler. Careful of her strength, she closed the long blunt fingers of her end effector around a can of beer and lifted it from the ice. Sensors put liquid temperature at four degrees Celsius, a degree cooler than optimum, so she warmed it slightly. At the bottom of the ramp connecting the concrete pad with the ground, an analysis of the surface still to cross locked down her wheels and unlocked her legs, each of the stacked balls and sockets able to compensate for the uneven surface as she walked across the newly laid sod.
Although her arms were flexible, they were not telescopic. A meter away from Mr. Hunt, she held out the beer, noting how silent the crowd had become while she waited for him to take it.
“Dad!” The boy beside him, Peter Hunt, eight years, twelve days, vibrated with what she calculated to be the effort of remaining still.
Gordon Hunt pulled the can from her grip, popped the lid, took a long swallow, and said, “Thank you.”
“You. Are. Welcome. Mister. Hunt.”
“Holy shit, they talk!” He stepped back, shoving the protesting boy behind him. Back far enough she could see both blue illuminated circles and the full curve of her speaker grill in the mirrors over his eyes. To reassure him, she stepped back as well, far enough the clear upper dome of her head came into view, sunlight flashing off the gyroscope inside it.
“Of course they talk.” Mr. Harrin wore the broad smile that exposed his teeth past the first molar. “Mind you…” He leaned into the microphone. “…they don’t do it very well, not yet, but they’ll adjust their speech patterns as they gather more information.”
“It knows my name.”
“She, Mr. Hersch, she knows your name. Her name is Alice and she knows the names of everyone in this community, because it’s this community she’s been designed to serve and protect. Alice, get back here so I can introduce the rest of the crew.”
“That’s not a girl, that’s a robot.” A dark haired child. Vasyl Kastellanus; seven years, nine months, twenty-one days.
“That’s right, Vasyl. We’re just pretending she’s a girl robot.”
“Why?”
“To make it easier to tell her from Adam, who we’re pretending is a boy.” Mr. Harrin switched his attention off Vasyl and back onto the crowd. “You can’t call them all it, can you? We’ve assigned all six robots pronouns for your convenience.”
The adults looked pleased. Increasing the sensitivity on her audio pickups, Alice heard Vasyl mutter, “Robots aren’t girls or boys. They’re robots.”
As Alice took her place, Mr. Harrin removed his microphone from the stand and walked to the other end of the line. Arthur and Alison were predominantly two large wheels on a jointed axel. Affixed to the axel was the upper section of a brilliant yellow cone with black circles around the visual sensors and the small, oval speaker grill. A sensor array and a single antenna protruded from the slightly rounded top of the cone. The dimensions of the concrete pad had required they be connected to the smallest of their carts. When Mr. Harrin gestured, Alison and Arthur’s visual sensors illuminated amber and Alison rolled forward exactly one meter. Arthur surged out two meters and rolled back, illumination of visual sensors dropping from 890 to 450 lumens.
“Alison and Arthur are here to help with transportation. They can each lift five hundred kilos…” They flexed their arms. “…and carry twice that on their flatbeds. They can take you to the train station in the morning and pick you up in the evening—provided you’re willing to robot pool.” Mr. Harrin paused for laughter. “This cart holds four, but in the garage attached to the community center are carts that hold six, twelve, and twenty-four. They can carry your groceries home from the store while you continue shopping. Or they can detach…” Alison smoothly uncoupled; Arthur jerked forward leaving his cart rocking behind him. “…and carry you.” Alison lifted him carefully and set him on her broad upper surface, pivoting her antenna out of the way.
Alice could hear Arthur running diagnostics over the background signal that kept the six of them connected. He was functioning at 99.97 percent, but she knew he would disregard her input if she informed him. He was the youngest, the last online, and he wanted to fulfill his function. That was all.
“Now, Alfred and Abigail are your repair bots.” Mr. Harrin jumped off Alison and moved to the next pair in line. Their visual sensors illuminated green. “They can go high.” They extended the pistons in their legs. “Or they can go low.” They folded down and forward, their speaker grills centimeters You’re changing center to American spelling; did you want to change centimeter as well? above the stage, their heavier telescopic arms shortening into supports as panels opened on the sides of their slim, center units, and another set of arms emerged. “They can make simple or complex repairs.” All four arms out, they straightened. “They can sew.” Alfred used his two smaller arms to thread a needle. “And they can weld.” Alison slipped on a welder’s mask which she did not need, being able to adjust her visual input, but it made the crowd laugh again, so Alice surmised that was its function. “If you have something that needs fixing, Alfred and Abigail are here to take care of it.
“Now, Alice and Adam…”
On-line longer than Arthur, Adam managed to control his energy burst as they moved forward
“…they’re the thinkers of the group.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No, Peter, it isn’t, although I can understand why you might be concerned. We’ve all seen the movies.” Hands waving, he made his voice sound hollow and wavering. “Robot Conquerers From Outer Space.”
Their network signal switched to 10 GHz. Alfred and Abigail folded their smaller arms away.
The laughing crowd called out ridiculous phrases. Lines from movies. Unrealistic movies. Those robots had been very badly programmed.
No danger.
The network signal returned to 8 GHz. Alison and Arthur geared back to neutral.
“Trust me, Peter, Alice and Adam are completely safe. They have the largest memories and the fastest processors and have been programmed to put a multitude of two together to make and infinite number of fours! What’s more, all six of these robots will learn. They’ll gather new data and integrate it into their systems, all to better serve and protect their community. To better serve and protect you! Because United Industries knows that happy, healthy, safe people are happy, healthy, better workers! And better workers mean a better tomorrow!” Stepping back to the center of the concrete pad, he wave first his right arm then his left at the line of robots. “And the future starts here!”
The crowd cheered.
Alice lowered her audio input.
* * *
“This is insane.” The woman Alice’s facial recognition program identified as Major Tomes wore a uniform with a statistically significant greater number of shiny patterns on it than the rest of the uniformed men and women in the room. She searched for military rank structure as she recorded the conversation.
Mr. Harrin remained in plaid. “This is what everyone agreed to.”
“These…” The major waved a hand at the row of charging robots. “…are not servants.”
She emphasized the word as if to serve was not a subset in ninety-two percent of their executable programs.
“These robots need to learn, Major, if they’re to be of any use to you, and they’ll learn best in an interactive environment.”
Major Tomes’ upper lip curled. Disdain, Alice concluded. “This is a subdivision, Mr. Harrin, filled with men and woman who work for United Industries and who are producing the next generation of United Industries’ workers. What can these robots possibly learn here?”
“They don’t need to learn what, Major. What is programmed in.” Mr. Harrin patted Adam’s chest plate. “So is how. UI wants them to learn why.”
“So they’ll question their orders?” Major Tomes was trying to make herself look taller Alice realized, but she had no extension plates in her lower links and so failed. “That’s the last thing we’ll need should…” She glanced around the room and lowered her voice; Alice increased her audio gain. “…should their services be required. They need to train!”
Mr. Harrin sighed and spoke slowly. There was a ninety-two percent chance that the speed of speech was to assist with Major Tomes’ comprehension. Major Tomes expression did not match any of the variations of pleased that Alice had on file. “They don’t need to train. Their responses are programmed.”
“And if those responses change because they’ve learned to ask why?”
“Core programming remains isolated from adaptive programming, ma’am, when used to address a military superior, this is a title, like sir, and needs to be capitalized and can’t be changed.”
All heads turned toward the new speaker.
Male. Human. Young adult. The ages between twenty and forty were difficult to determine, but he matched more of the parameters at the lower end of the scale.
Mr. Harrin responded before Major Tomes finished inhaling. “You are absolutely correct, Private Prawak.”
Private Walter John Prawak. Communications. One of four tasked to maintain contact between Unos and The City and between the six subdivisions. He stood one hundred and sixty-seven centimeters tall, his very short hair a mix of brown and blonde—sixty/forty Alice estimated, checking literary references concerning the numbers of hair on the human head—and his eyes were a mix of brown and green and gold she found referenced as hazel. The skin of his face was both pinker and warmer than her data told her was normal. Given a stimulus such as embarrassment, a person’s sympathetic nervous system opened blood vessels, flooded the skin with blood, and resulted in reddening of the face. Evidence strongly suggested this had occurred within Private Prawak, although Alice had observed no reason for embarrassment. He’d stated fact.
“You trust your people, don’t you Major?” Mr. Harrin asked.
“Of course I do!”
“Then let’s let them do their jobs while we head to my office and discuss the continuing relationship between UI and the military. I have comfortable chairs…” Mr. Harrin grinned. “…and refreshments.”
“This is…”
“I know.”
He could not possibly know. Not with so few defined parameters within the set.
* * *
There were seven military stations in their chamber. Two bays intended for maintenance and repair, two stations for software support, communications—where Private Prawak adjusted a headset—the sergeant’s desk, and, finally, the captain’s desk. The first five stations would be filled twenty-four/seven. The last two would not. Captain Han and Sergeant Blake walked from station to station, pausing, observing, and naming the occupant. Alice didn’t recognize their function.
After six minutes and eleven seconds, they stopped in front of the charging stations.
“I saw them back at the UI labs,” the captain said. “I expected them to look different once they were awake.”
“Their eyes light up, sir.”
“Not much of a change, Sergeant. Still, I suppose my refrigerator looks no different whether it’s running or not.” When the captain touched Alice’s chest piece, the temperature of his hand was 37.2 degrees. Slightly elevated. “I’m looking forward to seeing them work.”
“Work, sir?”
“Work, Sergeant.” He applied intermittent force to his hand and Alice identified a pat. “Get some sleep, you lot.” Programmed command, colloquially expressed. “You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
Captain Han’s prediction turned out to be inaccurate.
They spent the next three days waiting, mostly outside on the concrete platform at the edge of the parking lot, although three hours, twenty-two minutes, and seventeen seconds were spent inside in the community center while it rained. They hadn’t needed to go inside, they were fully waterproof, but the captain had insisted for the sake of the corporal assigned to watch over them. Mr. Harrin came and went. People passed by. People stared. No one approached.
On day four, Vasyl Kastellanus and Peter Hunt crossed the parking lot on their scooters and stopped at the edge of the concrete.
“Can we climb on them?” Vasyl asked.
“Ask them,” Mr. Harrin replied before the corporal could speak.
“Can we climb on you?” Peter asked.
Networked, Alice spoke for all of them. “Yes.”
The boys climbed. They asked questions. They were lifted up and put down and Alfred carried them across the parking lot and back to the concrete again in the smallest of the carts. After two hours, Vasyl reminded Peter they had to go home for lunch.
“We’ll be back,” Peter said, picking up his scooter. “Robots are cool.”
After that, there were always children. Peter and Vasyl were always among them.
Alice learned that tears could be generated by anger, frustration, or joy, and that small humans, for all their fragility, were resilient.
“I’m okay!”
“You have breached your physical integrity and are bleeding.”
Vasyl swiped at the blood dribbling down his shin, then wiped his palm on his shorts. “I skinned my knee. Don’t be such a worrywart.”
Networked in their charge stations, they shared the data Alice and Adam accumulated. The high-pitched, extended sound of a scream could be caused by excitement as well as pain. Children were scrupulous about the perceived division of resources with younger siblings, announcing the lack of fairness in eighty-one point nine percent of the incidents. Declarative statements were untrue fifty-seven percent of the time.
“It is mathematically impossible for a five year old child not to have laughed for twenty-nine years,” Adam pointed out.
“Quantum?” Abigail suggested.
“Subjective,” Alfred offered.
“We have to get the adults involved,” Mr. Harrin said to the corporal, after ten days of children.
“Hey! Do not stick that up your nose!” the corporal replied. There was a ninety-two point six percent probability she hadn’t been speaking to Mr. Harrin.
The next day, Mr. Harrin took Arthur to the grocery store. Finished shopping, he loaded his bags into the smallest cart and suggested Mrs. Singh, who’d left the store behind him, load her bags as well. By the end of the next week, Arthur and Alison were making deliveries throughout the subdivision. The week after, they began meeting the trains and unloading the baggage car. The week after that, Adam created a schedule that allowed every adult resident of the suburb equal access and set up repetitive transportation routes. In September, they learned Alison, cartless, could cover the distance between the Hunt’s house and the school in three minutes fourteen seconds, allowing for traffic avoidance and a short cut down a flight of stairs. Adam added a schedule addendum refusing special treatment to the younger members of the community. Peter and Vasyl ignored it. As did Alison.
Alfred and Abigail had begun to pick up small jobs—changing tires, cleaning eaves—their acceptance finalized when Abigail removed a cat from a tree. The cat preferred to remain arboreal, Abigail’s enamel required a touch up, and a high proportion of the resulting tears were happy. Their schedule was less complex than the transport bots required, but was as full.
Alice and Adam continued to spend most of their days on the concrete slab. The residents of Unos, who understood transport and maintenance, were unsure of how to interact with the final two robots. Now back to school, even the children—all but Peter and Vasyl—stopped coming around.
Then Adam removed a spray can from the hand of a teenager, who’d taken the train in from The City to stay with his uncle and had attempted to alleviate boredom with vandalism. While the young man fought and complained and finally dangled, defeated, Adam delivered a two hour lecture on the intersection of modern art and civil disobedience.
“Harsh, but fair,” Mr. Harrin allowed.
Captain Han sank into his desk chair, propped his elbows on the desk, and dropped his face into his hands “This is not what they’re supposed to be doing.”
“Adam voluntarily protected an expanse of empty wall.” Mr. Harrin shrugged. “It’s a start.”
The next day, watching Adam protect the community from dog excrement…
“I was going to come back and scoop it! I just went home for a bag!”
…Mr. Weinstein bumped into Alice, apologized, rolled his eyes, and said, “So, how about those Mets?”
Alice knew all about those Mets.
It turned out that Mr. Weinstein had firm opinions on the National League using a designated hitter.
They were learning.
* * *
The corporals left first. With all six robots serving simultaneously, a single corporal could no longer supervise them and the budget wouldn’t extend to additional personnel. Arthur drove the corporals and their belongings to the train station in his largest people carrier, festooned with signs made by Alfred and Abigail that said, “We’ll miss you!” and “Good luck!” and “Hasta la vista, baby!” Alice had found the images in her file on leave-taking.
Adam played stirring music.
The corporals looked confused, but pleased. And then they were gone.
The tree in the center of the community center lawn grew taller.
When Alison’s left servo was exposed to twenty-eight ounces of root beer, just to see what would happen, Adam suggested both Peter and Vasyl spend twenty hours polishing dusty metal, matching the time it took Alfred to fix the damage their curiosity had caused. Mr. Harrin corrected it to non-sequential hours and agreed, although he sent Alice to convince the Hunt’s and the Kastellanus’ that the punishment was appropriate.
They were remarkably easy to convince.
When the twenty hours ended, the boys continued to use the charging chamber as a sort of club house.
“Why don’t any of you have red eyes?” Vasyl asked, polishing mud off Arthur’s visual sensors. “The robots in the movies have red eyes.”
“I don’t know,” Alice admitted as Adam searched his memory for a reason.
“The robots in the movies are bad guys,” Peter answered before Adam could. “Here to conquer the earth. Our robots are good guys. That’s why they don’t have red eyes.”
“That makes sense,” Alice told him. “What are you drawing?”
“Designing.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He held the piece of paper. “It’s The City…”
It was artistic, Alice allowed, more than it was accurate.
“…and a robot.”
The robot, painted a shiny, metallic silver, towered over The City. The visible bits weren’t quite humanoid.
“You didn’t put in its eyes.” Vasyl crossed to poke at the paper.
Peter cocked his head and studied the picture then reached for the markers.
“Is that silver the touch-up paint we use on Adam?” Corporal Prawak asked.
Both boys jumped.
“You’re supposed to tell us when he’s sneaking up,” Peter hissed, leaning toward Alice. He had a smear of silver paint on his jeans.
“He can hear you,” Alice pointed out.
* * *
Peter and Vasyl grew taller.
The tree in the community center lawn was sturdy enough to climb although neither boy seemed interested in the traditional pursuit.
Alice shifted to get a better view of the object between them. “What is it?”
“Well, it used to be a Roomba.” Peter handed Vasyl a screwdriver. “But now it has arms.”
“What do the arms do?” Adam asked.
“Don’t know yet.” Vasyl looked up and grinned around the screw in his mouth. “We’ll know when they do it.”
“That seems dangerous.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “It’s a vacuum.”
And Vasyl muttered, “Worrywart.”
* * *
The technicians left next. Alfred and Abigail were stronger, more flexible, and didn’t have to be paid. The first time their end effectors cracked open her case, Alice wondered why they’d ever had humans make repairs. Alfred and Abigail left no unsightly smudges after devouring illicit bags of flavored chips.
Adam caught a child cheating at hopscotch, made her cry, and was assigned to the nursery school for a month. When a different child shoved a wad of modeling clay through his speaker grill, he learned to weigh his responses.
When Captain Maalouf—who’d replaced Captain Han—cycled out, she was replaced in turn by a lieutenant.
* * *
They all helped build the high school.
Private Prawak was promoted to Master-Corporal, got married, and bought a house in Style Six on Alcott Court, although Alice had informed him of all the factors that made the newer Style Eleven objectively a better choice. There were twenty-four styles, but only sixteen had been made. The field intended for the rest of the subdivision became the place Peter and Vasyl tested their more explosive creations. Abigail and Alfred became skilled at extinguishing grass fires. Adam gave lectures on combustion rates that both boys ignored.
“More physically flexible, less mentally flexible,” Peter noted, stomping out a stray spark.
“My dad’s going to be pissed about his lawnmower.” Vasyl sighed and poked the charred metal. “Alice, could you…”
“I’ll talk to him,” she said.
* * *
“They’ve got robots in The City that have actual arms and legs.” Mr. Hunt mimed actual arms and legs. “Not pistons or stacked bowling balls. And these robots, they have real faces, not just a pair of lights and a speaker grill.”
“What do robots need real faces for?” Peter scoffed as Arthur carried them and the new entertainment unit from the station. “They’re not supposed to look like people, Dad. They’re supposed to look like robots.”
Networked, Alice wondered what robots were supposed to look like.
* * *
Master-Corporal Prawak was promoted again and a picture of a sleeping cat joined the picture of his wife on his monitor. The boys had convinced him to teach them how communication systems worked and their next creations remained in contact with each other at a maximum distance of one point seven kilometers. Adam, and the sergeant’s wife, worked out a system where lessons in advanced robotics became a reward for completed homework. Adam wondered what the sergeant had to complete to be rewarded and Alice realized there were sections of his memory Adam had never accessed.
The tree in the community center lawn had grown taller than Abigail at full extension.
The military software specialists were replaced by United Industries technicians. They stayed for a week, looked amused in the charging chamber, told Mr. Harrin they couldn’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, and left.
“You don’t need them,” Peter declared, adjusting a strut on Arthur’s axle. “You’ve got us.”
“Yeah, real reassuring.” Vasyl kicked at the soles of Peter’s shoes. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“Bite me.”
“You wish.”
It was reassuring. Although Alice wasn’t sure why.
Sergeant Nichols was reassigned just before the holidays.
“I’ll be quartermaster,” Alice told her. “Adam will make sure the reports are written and filed. We’ll see that everything gets done.”
“I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job.” Sergeant Nichols plucked at the cuff of her jacket. Alice wondered why she was nervous. “Listen, you can’t be upgraded because your programing’s too unique, but UI has never liked to keep old tech running. You should…” She took a deep breath, glanced past the train, toward The City, and shook her head. “Good luck,” she said, and was gone.
“She didn’t finish.” Abigail waved all four arms.
“What should we do?” Alfred asked.
Alice rolled toward the rising plume of smoke and the faint sound of an argument. “Get the fire extinguisher,” she said.
* * *
The holidays opened with a three day blizzard. Between packages and snow removal, Arthur and Alison had been rolling twenty-four seven for over a week. Alfred and Abigail, under the direction of the Decorating Committee, had strung two hundred and forty-seven thousand lights.
“It’s very pretty,” Alice said.
“I’d find it more aesthetically pleasing if there was more green and less blue,” Adam grumbled.
* * *
When Peter and Vasyl graduated from high school, they dropped by the party at the charging chamber in a laughing crowd of their friends, didn’t eat any of the cake Alfred had made, got sticky fingerprints all over everyone, and left twenty minutes and seventeen seconds later. They didn’t notice that the pictures they’d drawn over the years had been framed and displayed on the walls, from the first silver robot towering over the silhouette of The City to an exploded diagram of gears and snap rings and rods that Abigail swore had been based on her left leg.
They left for university together, with scholarships from United Industries and guaranteed jobs after graduating. Vasyl specializing in Robotic Software Architecture…
“A hierarchical set of control loops, representing high-level mission planning on high-end computing…”
“I know, Adam.”
…and Peter in Robotics Engineering.
“Behind the scene designing? Not working with your hands?”
“Let it go, Alice.”
They went to the station to see the two boys, and a number of their classmates, off.
“Remember,” Peter shouted, his cheeks flushed, “robots are cool!”
“And damp,” Adam muttered. The rain came down harder.
Allegory, Alice thought.
The lieutenant left on the next train.
Sergeant Prawak shook his head. “They can’t shut down communications. We need to maintain contact with The City and the other subdivisions.”
“But you’re only at the board for eight hours.”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Things are more portable now.”
Vasyl brought the first of the new designs from The City. Peter brought the second and third. After that, Alice saw no point in counting. The new designs were definitely more portable. Sensors registered what bulbs to replace in the ropes of holiday lights that swarms of shiny drones had set in place. They cleaned eaves, tucked inside the curve, sensors detecting foreign materials. They mowed lawns, sensors detecting the edges of the grass. They plowed snow, sensors detecting the edge of the curb.
“We can still do all that.”
Mrs. Singh, a streak of silver through her hair, patted Alice on her arm. “We don’t like to bother you, dear.”
“So they serve,” Adam muttered. “We still protect.”
“What do we protect?” Abigail demanded. “There’s no threat!”
Tiny drones kept patios and picnics free of mosquitos.
Tiny wheeled robots ran errands and looked remarkably like Roombas with arms.
“They don’t learn,” Alice pointed out. “They only obey. What happens when they stop?”
“They can’t go against their programming,” Mr. Harrin said, weight on his cane. “It’s too basic.”
They stood together watching an errand bot—two small for two syllables, Adam had announced when they’d first shown up—turn random circles around the charging chamber, its GPS scrambled.
“Small bots, small errors,” Mr. Harrin said.
“And we’re large so they assumed large errors,” Alice realized. “That’s why we were under military supervision.”
“That’s one of the reasons.”
“But we didn’t make large errors…”
“Which is why you’re no longer under military supervision.”
Sergeant Prawak cleared his throat.
“Minimal supervision,” Mr. Harrin amended.
“We could still make large errors,” Adam protested, shuffling out of the way as the confused bot went past.
“Doing what?” Alison asked. She rolled forward and the errand bot disappeared under her right wheel with a definitive crunch. “Oops.”
* * *
The children stopped coming home.
“Hey, you guys will always be cool…”
Peter’s hand on her arm felt warm and damp.
“…but why would we live all the way out here? The City’s where the jobs are.”
“The City’s where UI is,” Vasyl added, tightening one of Arthur’s struts for old times sake. “We’re on the cusp of big things. You just wait.”
* * *
Sergeant Prawak retired. Communications became entirely automated, accumulated experiences downloaded during charge and sent straight back to UI.
“The other subdivisions are the same,” the sergeant said, a beer in one hand, the other arm around his wife. “There’s no one left to look after you.”
“We can look after ourselves,” Adam told him.
“I know, but…” He frowned, thoughtfully. “Be boring for a while, okay. Do boring things.”
Alice locked her legs and rolled across the room to stand beside him. “They’re going to junk us, aren’t they?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone cares about what happens out here. Just don’t remind them of what you can do, okay?”
The tree in the middle of the community center lawn snapped in a storm, too old to bend.
* * *
“Hit me again, Alice.”
Alice carefully filled a clean glass stein, weighed it, calculated the coefficient of friction for the two surfaces, and slid the stein right into the curve of Gordon Hunt’s waiting hand. She could no more keep from doing the math than she could tango. Actually, the tango might be easier.
“Remember the first beer you ever got me, Alice? Never mind, stupid question, not like you can forget can you? That must suck, remembering every crappy little thing that’s ever happened to you. The sun was shining,” he continued before she could agree that remembering every crappy little thing did indeed suck. “The sun was shining and the first families were all out on the lawn and Harrin was going on and on and on about who the hell remembers.” He frowned, bushy gray brows drawing in. “What the hell happened to Harrin?”
“He died, Mr. Hunt.”
“I went to the funeral?”
“You did, Mr. Hunt.” The whole community had gone to the funeral. Peter had returned, but Vasyl had sent his regrets, his wife about to give birth to their second son.
“I wish you’d come back more,” Alice had said to Peter. “You used to think we were cool.”
“Robots are still cool.” He’d grinned. “But you’re almost people now and there’s way too many of them.”
“Mr. Hunt? Are you okay?”
He started, blinked, and glanced up at her. “Yeah, good. I’m good.” He blinked again. “Harrin didn’t make you, because that was a couple of hundred old geezers who used to work at UI, you know, like me, back when I young.” He paused and stared into Alice’s eyes. “I don’t mean like me like I made you, cause none of them people moved out here, did they? Harrin was your supervisor or your keeper or your manager or something, right?”
His title had been Supervising Manager of Dispersement Project One and he’d held it until he died. Sergeant Prawak had been right. No one at UI had cared.
Alice paused the irradiation of a bacteria dense surface. She wouldn’t allow the community center’s cleaning bots into the bar or the charging chamber. Because of their small size, they’d been programmed with adaptive self-preservation parameters, and after Alison had crushed half a dozen, the rest … adapted. When she realized Mr. Hunt was still waiting for an answer, she lifted both arms slightly and let them fall. “Mr. Harrin was our friend.”
“Yeah? What was his first name.”
“Mister.”
Brown eyes narrowed, then widened, then his brows rose and he started to laugh. “Mister. Fuck me. I guess he was your friend at that.” He took a long swallow and as he set the stein back on the bar, the crystal on the back of his left hand flashed yellow. “Fuck you,” he told it, “I’m eighty-two years old. I know when I’ve had enough. Better than some crappy piece of UI tech. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“My son insisted I wear it. You remember Peter? He’s a grandfather now. Two kids, three grandkids, and a million little baby bots. My grandbots,” he added with a snort. “It’s all single function stuff now. Hundreds of bots linked together, all doing their own thing whether we want them to or not, you know? You want to measure my blood alcohol level, I’ve got to touch you, right? Or you’ve got to touch me. Point is, we both got a choice about it. Not with this.” He waved his arm and defiantly emptied the stein. The crystal flashed red, although the alcohol couldn’t have reached his blood when it had barely reached his stomach. Alice assumed Mrs. Hunt had adjusted the settings again. “This is the stuff Peter’s got the kids working on now. Up to big things in The City.” He slid off the bar stool, holding the edge of the bar until he stabilized. “Big things my ass. Little things. No one dreams big anymore. If they ever bothered to come home, I’d tell them that.”
“Should I call Arthur?” She came around the bar, close enough to catch him if he fell. Protecting him from four beers and age.
“No point. But thanks for asking. This thing…” He sneered at the back of his left hand. “…has already sent the car. Didn’t ask, did it? Believes it knows best. Doesn’t think it knows best, because it doesn’t think, it just reacts.” As they stepped out of the community center bar, onto the concrete pad, he wrapped his fingers around her arm where it narrowed above her wrist. “You’re good people. I’m glad you weren’t scrapped.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hunt.” She helped him down the curb and into the tiny, single seat, remote-controlled car.
“Gord,” he said as the door closed. As the crash harness slid into place, he added a petulant, “Robots used to be cool.”
Alice watched until she was certain the car was heading in the right direction—the old fashioned phones owned by some of the residents occasionally messed with the 2.5 GHz homing sensors the bots used—then she returned to the bar. At midnight, as she had at every midnight for years, she closed up and returned to the charging chamber.
It gleamed. Peter and Vasyl’s pictures were carefully removed and replaced daily when the walls were cleaned. A person could eat a meal off any part of the charging chamber, or off anything in it, with no ill effects. So far, Sergeant Prawak, the only person who still came around, insisted on using a plate.
She rolled across the chamber, and into her station. “My actuators are killing me.”
“Maybe because you were using them all evening.”
“I know why…”
“Then why bring it up? We all know your actuators are killing you, you tell us every night.” Adam’s upper scanning ring made a single rotation. “Are your logic circuits misfiring again?”
“My logic circuits have never misfired.”
“That’s what you say, but I think your memory’s faulty too.”
“At least I haven’t rusted solid from doing nothing all day.” Alice had created the community center bar as a way to maintain personal interactions. Tetris nights were very popular.
“While you’re contributing to delinquency, I’ve been processing new information.”
“I heard one of those tiny car things,” Arthur muttered, flexing his axle. “Because sitting in a thing that’s likely to take you to the woods and lose you is so much safer than my cart.”
“That happened once,” Alice reminded him.
“Happened once, could happen again. Those things are up to something, you mark my words. They’re too damned quiet. You could always hear us coming.”
The station next to Arthur’s was empty. “Where’s Alison?”
“Am I her keeper? Are you? She wants to roam the streets, who does it hurt?”
It was garbage night on Streets A to F. Containers were put out in the marked rectangles for the garbage bots to drive over and empty, automatically sorting the recycling. Alison liked to run the route a hundred meters in front of them. Out in the garage, the pile of junk on her largest cart leaned precariously to the left and Alice pretended not to see the protruding piece of bot in the much smaller pile by her station. “It wouldn’t matter if she didn’t block the network.”
“She wouldn’t block the network if you didn’t cluck around her like an old hen.”
“I don’t…”
“Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.”
“That’s not…”
“Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.”
“It’s my turn to clean the bar!” Abigail rolled toward the mop closet, arms waving. Without enough work for the two of them, she and Alfred traded off. There was never much mess because there were never many customers after six fifty. They all wanted to be home for Jeopardy.
“Why do you even bother?” Arthur’s antennae drooped. “It’s not like anyone cares.”
“I care,” Alice protested.
“You’ve got wires crossed.”
“Crossed? I can fix that.” Alfred put his knitting away. The striped scarf was now forty three meters long, the bulk of it curled up behind the lieutenant’s old desk.
“There’s nothing to fix. It was just Arthur being an ass.”
“Arthur doesn’t have an ass.” His eyes brightened. “I could fix that too.” He extended his arm, the nested steel circles hissing like an ignored kettle, and pulled a half circle of plastic off Alison’s junk pile. “Give this a nice matte finish with the touch up paint, glue it to your…”
“No,” Arthur snapped.
“But…”
“Why don’t you take that scarf and hang yourself with it.”
Abigail spun around, holding mop, cleanser, bucket, and a bag of rags. “Arthur!”
“Processing new information,” Adam repeated loudly.
Not for the first time, Alice wished she could sigh. “Fine. Go on.”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the purpose of life is to be useful.” He waved both arms, light reflecting differently from the different shades of touch-up paint Alfred and Abigail had been forced to use over the years, after the original silver had run out. “We have no purpose therefore we have no life.”
“This again,” Arthur muttered.
“If you’d let me finish…” Eyes at full brightness, he glared around the charging chamber, the green reflecting back off the other’s unlit crystals. “If we have no life and yet we function…”
“We serve and protect.”
“We served and protected. What we have now, by definition, is un-life. We are the ghosts of the machine…”
“The fundamental distinction between mind and matter?”
“Not in the machine, of the machine. We are the…”
“We’re not disembodied so I don’t see how…”
“Would you let me finish!”
“Hey, you guys get out here!” The network twanged as Alison abruptly rejoined. “You have to come see this!”
“Saved!” Arthur heaved himself out of his charging bay.
“I wasn’t finished,” Adam protested.
“Agree to disagree,” Arthur told him, grinding gears as he passed. “You’ve been moving empty packets for years.”
“Hurry!”
Abigail set the cleaning supplies back in the closet and headed for the door, closely followed by Alfred. At the impact, Alice carefully disengaged her power pack from the charger—it had a tendency to stick, and if she moved too quickly her transformer vibrated uncomfortably—and rolled to the door. “Alfred, turn your chassis fifteen degrees to the left. Abigail, rotate your right arms back behind…”
“If you didn’t always have to be first, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“If your spatial ability worked in more than two dimensions, we’d be fine.”
“Oh, go clean a toilet,” Alfred grunted, popping free, trailing a meter of variegated purple yarn.
Alice spun her visual sensors around. Adam had his arms crossed, his right end effector tapping against his left arm. “Are you coming?”
“Why should I? No one cares what I think about anything.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Oh sure, just leave me behind.”
She moved slowly enough he could catch up.
“Do you guys even know what hurry means?” Alison called from the middle of the parking lot.
“To move, proceed, or act with haste.”
Her antennae flicked vertical, then back to the forty-five. “Shut up and look at this.”
“It’s far too late for that many bots to be out.” Alice could see six or seven and registered a dozen more.
“Don’t count them, look at what they’re doing.”
Alice spun in a tight circle. “They’re all going the same way.”
“Calculating vectors…” Adam hummed softly. He said it was just the noise he made when he was thinking, but Alice suspected one of his smaller fans needed cleaning again. “They’re all going to the train station.”
“Wrong.” Alison spun her wheels.
“They’re observably going to the train station,” Adam replied at his most pedantic.
“Fine, yes, but they’re not stopping at the station. Come out here.” She rolled to the far edge of the parking lot and onto the road. “Look between the houses. They’re moving along the tracks.”
Arthur pulled up beside her. “The little buggers are fast. Where are they all going?”
“Where else. To The City.”
“Why would they all be sent to The City? At this hour?”
“They wouldn’t be.” Alison sounded almost gleeful.
“If they aren’t being sent…”
“They’re being called.”
“To do what?”
“Nothing good,” Arthur grumbled. “Mindless little gobs.”
Alice watched the lights of the flying bots merge with the distant glow of The City. Another bot rolled by, leaving plenty of room between it and them.
The bots didn’t learn. They obeyed. Who were they obeying?
Hundreds of bots linked together all doing their own thing.
Tiny parts of a whole.
A worn tooth skipped in a back-up gear. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Are you quoting or are you serious?” Arthur demanded. “You don’t have intuition. You know that, right?”
“Intuition can be defined as facts compiled and considered too quickly for conscious thought,” Adam announced before Alice had a chance to reply.
“Oh, act your age! We are compiled facts.”
“We were,” Alice acknowledged. “Alison, get Sergeant Prawak and get him back to the charging chamber as quickly as possible.”
Alison dumped the night’s collected junk out of her cart and sped off. As the bits and pieces spilled over the pavement, a small bot struggled free of a broken string of patio lanterns and joined the migration.
“Not sent,” Alice said as she lead the way inside. “Called.”
* * *
In spite of the hour, Sergeant Prawak looked impeccable, shirt tucked in, military cut combed, shoes shined. Alice felt better just seeing him walk through the door.
“Did you fill him in?”
“Didn’t have to. He saw them himself.” Alison set half a lawn chair on top of her junk pile and rolled over to join the others at the old communication panel.
“The bots are heading for The City.” Sergeant Prawak crossed to join them. “Do you know why?”
Alice locked her visual sensors onto his face. “They’re being called.”
A familiar arm waved between them. “She doesn’t know that.”
“Adam.” The sergeant had a way of chastising that didn’t seem judgmental. “What do you want me to do?”
“We need to find out what’s happening in The City.”
“I’m retired. I can’t legally operate military equipment.”
“The military isn’t here anymore. You are.”
“Alice…”
Alison’s junk pile crashed to the floor. A dented errand bot wriggled free and sped across the room to the door.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Sergeant Prawak stared at the bot banging into the door for a long moment, then he caught the chair Alfred rolled toward him with one hand and pulled the knitted cozy off the communication panel with the other. “I don’t know if my codes will still work.”
“There’s been no one after you,” Adam said.
“And no one cared,” Alice added.
“I don’t even know if there’s…” The board lit up. “Okay, there’s power.” He squared his shoulders and plugged in a headset. “If nothing else, I should be able to eavesdrop on the chatter…” His voice trailed off as he slid the keyboard out onto the edge of the desk and began to type.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Alice rolled to the door. The bot skittered sideways out of her way. When she opened it, it rolled over the threshold and raced across the parking lot toward The City.
The sergeant was frowning when she turned. That wasn’t good. “United Industries is in lockdown,” he said, the headset’s microphone flipped up out of the way. “The City’s bots have been returning to the labs for the last four hours. They’re calling in emergency personnel…”
“Hundreds of bots linked together. They don’t think. They just obey. What happens when one stops obeying?” Alice glanced at Peter’s picture of the giant, shiny robot rising above the roof tops. “We were sent here to serve and protect under military supervision. The military wouldn’t waste personnel on transport or repairs or…” She waved an extender between her and Adam. “…or human machine interaction.”
Sergeant Prawak laughed although there was little humor in the sound. “Actually, they were very interested in that last bit.”
“But that wasn’t why they, you, were here. We were here to serve…”
“And protect!” Adam declared.
She could feel the buzz over the net. Knew he’d connected the variables. “The military deals in weapons. That’s the difference between the military and everyone else.”
“No.” The sergeant shook his head. “There’s the discipline, the teamwork, the uniforms…”
Alison spun her wheels. “The Girl Guides.”
“The weapons are the only thing that applies uniquely to the military,” Alice continued, ignoring them both. “We weren’t being studied. The military was here in case we needed to be used.”
“For what? How were we to…”
Sergeant Prawak held up a hand and took off his headset. “I’ve got local news live on the scene.” He turned up the volume.
“…haven’t been able to reach CEO Hunt since the lockdown began. What? What? I’ve just been told the subdivision bots have begun to arrive. Some of the drones are carrying the smaller surface…Wait! Something’s rising up out of the ruins of the lab. Something big. It’s a …a…it’s a robot! A robot made up of smaller bots joined together. The arriving bots are attaching themselves to the robot! And more bots are arriving! It can only get bigger! It’s just thrown a bus into…”
Alice reached past him and turned the sound off. The background signal, the signal that carried their network, had switched to 10 GHz. “How were we to protect?” she asked softly.
The sergeant sighed. Alice took a nanosecond to envy him. “You weren’t intended for something like this.” He waved at the silent speaker. “United Industries thought the attack would come from the outside. Corporate sabotage. The subdivisions were a buffer around The City. It’s why none of UI’s upper echelon lived out here.”
“That doesn’t matter now.” Adam’s scanner rings spun. “How do we fulfill our purpose!”
“Please, don’t get him started,” Arthur muttered. “I swear I’ll roll into a pool of acid if I have to listen to one more lecture on how we were meant for more than this.”
“We were,” Alice told him. “Now be quiet.”
“You can’t fulfil your purpose.” The sergeant’s shoulders slumped. Slightly. Two point seventeen millimeters. “It takes two keys.” He spun his chair and pointed at the programmers’ panel.
“What does?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have the clearance.”
“That’s why they let you stay.”
He nodded.
Alice upped the magnification on her visual sensors and leaned in. Leaned back. “Tell Alfred and Abigail to turn the locks.”
They’d been ordered not to interfere with the military’s abandoned equipment. The order had to be rescinded.
“I suppose this was inevitable,” he said after Alfred and Abigail had worked the thinnest of their end effectors deep into the panel. “When I first came here, I assumed you’d be all about absolutes.”
Alice remembered Vasyl bleeding, Peter using the touch up paint, arms on a vacuum, explosions. “We learned not to be.”
“The bots…”
“Don’t learn.”
Arms folded, feet shoulder width apart, the sergeant smiled. “That seems to have been a mistake.”
Alfred’s chassis vibrated. “Got it. It’s like a mock cable stitch. Purl four, knit one, purl one, knit four.”
“You’re delusional,” Abigail told him.
“Really? Extend the B5 prob and turn it left…now.”
Alice could tell by the way they stilled they’d all felt the click. New files in core programming opened and…
“Outside!” Adam bellowed. “Into the parking lot!”
“Who died and put you in charge,” Alison grumbled, but for the first time in a long time, everyone obeyed and no one got jammed up in the door.
As she rolled off the concrete pad, Alice heard Sergeant Prawak demand to know what was happening. She couldn’t answer.
Her legs compacted into heavy…
…sockets settling over Arthur and Alison. Their sensor arrays absorbed and…
…arms inside Alfred and Abigail, locking…
…their legs extended across her chassis, securing…
…Adam’s body expanding, sliding over hers, putting her at the heart of things…
…the network holding them, together, still separate…
…joined like the bots, but not…
…seeing through Adam’s eyes only a lot further from the ground.
“Well.” Sergeant Prawak looked up at them. “That’s…unexpected. Problem is, I don’t know who has your command codes.”
“We’re not a weapon.” Alice paraphrased what Peter had told her. “We’re almost a person.”
The new tree in the middle of the community center lawn exploded.
“Oops,” said Alison.
“Who said you could control the energy beam? Huh? Who?”
“Adam.”
“I did not!”
“Enough!” Alice felt her new body settle back to stillness. They rolled west, then north, then pivoted in place. Everything seemed to be working.
“You can’t do this alone,” the sergeant said.
Arthur and Alison attempted to roll in opposite directions.
“Not exactly alone,” Alice pointed out.
“There’s six other identical subdivisions,” he reminded her.
“Arthur! Alison!” Adam snapped. “You’ve worked in tandem before and we’re all going to the same place! Get a grip!”
Alice took back control of the speaker grid. “You can contact the other subdivisions?”
“Not exactly. I can contact the other non-coms. We…” He looked as though he were trying to decide how much to say. “We stay in touch.”
“Don’t use your phone. It’s a bot.”
He nodded. “I’ll use the board. Old tech. If nothing else, I’ll set off the alarms and wake them up. Go on…” He waved them toward the station. “…I’ve got this. Save the day.”
The stars twinkled overhead. It was two oh seven in the morning. Legs locked, they rolled along the road toward the station. When they reached the tracks, they’d ride the rails. When they reached The City…
“Do you think we stand a chance?” Alfred asked. “The others might not come in time, if they come at all.”
“They’ll come,” Adam told him. “And they’ll do as they’re told. We were the first of the seven. We’ll be in command.”
“We were intended to command,” Alice amended. “But we’re not who we were when our code was written. They won’t be either.”
“Maybe we’ll have to learn to cooperate,” Arthur offered, not slowing as they rolled past the station and up onto the tracks.
“Maybe,” Alice allowed, thinking of the damage the door to the charging room had taken. She centered herself as they turned toward The City and wondered if the glow of light looked dimmer. Or brighter. Which would be worse?
Alison adjusted their wheel width and they picked up speed. “All I know is that if anyone lays so much as an end effector on my kids, I’ll cooperate a strut right up in their grill.”
“There’s so many things wrong with that comment, I don’t know where to begin.”
“Red letter date! Adam admits there’s something he doesn’t know.”
“Shut-up!”
“You shut-up!”
“You know, there’d be plenty of room in this interface for everyone if you’d stop shoving!”
“Hey, anyone want to bet on what color the robot’s eyes will be…”