How It Ends: Part 1 - The Evaluation (10 page)

Gammons.

Sidney reflected on his first impressions of
Gammons while he waited in the waiting area for Eric to admit him.
He assumed that various pneumatics and high-technology wires and
motors made the face move in a narrow range of expressions.
Compared to the vast assortment of facial looks that he’d
discovered with Kilgore’s holographic face, Gammons was a bit of a
letdown.

The robot’s voice was higher in pitch than
Kilgore’s. Specifically designed to be heard above any din if
necessary. Specifically targeted toward his master, Eric.

“Yes, sir?”

“Gammons. Excellent. Could you explain to my
guest, Dr. Hermann, about your behavioral inhibitor?”

“Certainly.” The robot turned toward Sidney.
“Embedded in my programming is a logical constraint that keeps
robots such as myself from acting in certain ways. Harming humans
is one of the situations that calls up the constraint program.
Trying to dismantle the program itself is another. Trying to
dismantle another robot’s is a third way.”

“In other words,” said Eric, “these
constraint programs kick in if the robot exhibits some type of
specific behavior.”

“Exactly,” Gammons continued. “And should we
proceed with the action, the program is designed to shut down all
power systems and emit a radio wave frequency to the manufacturer
advising that a robot has violated its inhibitor protocols.”

Sidney waved off the robot. “I know all
this. I also know that Kilgore gets overrides for those
patients—and those patients only—who have signed the end of life
form and have had the revised protocol downloaded to his system
during the re-power cycle.”

“True,” Eric said. “But it would only work
on those patients we allow as an exception in the code. Any attempt
to harm anyone else would cause failure.”

“So the theories go.”

“You’ve never really seen it,” said
Eric.

“No. Why would I? These kinds of shutdowns
are so rare that almost no one has. I presume the programmers and
the QA guys have seen it, but why would I? Isn’t that what you test
and QA for? So that no one ends up ‘seeing’ it?”

Eric smiled at Sidney. He found
Sidney’s—what would be the best way to describe it? Rant?
Tirade?—amusing, almost quaint. He nodded. He looked at Gammons.
“Would you, please?” Eric asked.

Gammons did not respond. Instead it stared
without expression at Eric. Eric’s patience grew short and his eyes
narrowed. They looked harder somehow. Gammons needed no further
command. With the corners of his silicon mouth pulled down slightly
he nodded. Sidney watched the non-verbal communication between
them. He was still wondering what it meant when the robot
attacked.

Gammons lunged forward and grabbed a pair of
scissors that Eric had placed on the edge of his desk.

Once in his hand Gammons swung the scissors
outward in a wide arc. The point jutted out of the robot’s closed
fist. In the path of the downward swing was Sidney.

Sidney cried out.

As abruptly as Gammons attacked, it stopped
in midair. All movement in its body froze midway through the
attack. All motors and servos and gears and joints locked. Its eyes
went dead and it hung motionless in the middle of the room.

“That is how the behavioral inhibitor
works,” said Eric.

Sidney struggled to catch his breath.

For Eric, the conversation was over.

“That, I think, will be all for today,” he
said.

“Are you kidding me?” Sidney panted. “You
try to have me killed and then just dismiss me from your
office?”

“You were never in any real danger. It was
simply a demonstration of how the inhibitor works.”

“You scared the shit out of me!”

“Like any good horror movie or roller
coaster would. Again, no real danger.”

“Not the same thing. Not the same thing, not
by a long shot. And you know it.”

Eric sighed. Was this overweight blob of a
man really going to make a federal case out of this?

“What do you want Sidney? Do you want an
apology? If so, then accept mine.”

There was nothing apologetic about Eric’s
voice at all.

Sidney ignored him for the moment. His eyes
were now focused on Gammons.

“What happens to it now?”

“Who, Gammons? It’ll be led downstairs to
the Foundry floor to be cleaned up and reset.”

“Cleaned up?”

“Yes. There are a series of protocols for
resetting a robot whose shutdown was the result of an inhibitor
trip. Checking the moving parts, cleaning out the gears, things
like that. Surely you’re familiar with them?”

“The IRC protocols you mean? I didn’t
realize you followed them.” His breath was almost normal once
more.

“Everyone follows the IRC standards. That’s
why they’re the IRC. They set the standards.”

“Yes, they are standards, but they’re not
laws. There’s no way to enforce conformity.”

“True,” Eric said, “but since we’re members
of the International Robotics Consortium, and we even have a few
people who sit on the Consortium’s board, it would be bad form
indeed to ignore their recommended practices.”

“So,” Sidney inclined his head toward
Gammons, “this thing gets reset based on those standards.”

“Yes.”

Sidney was silent for a minute and
stood.

“I’d like to watch the process.”

“What?” Eric was genuinely surprised.

“I want to see how it works in
practice.”

“No. I’m sorry but that’s a confidential
matter. Too many trade secrets floating around. I can’t allow that.
Sorry.”

Sidney nodded as if in agreement, then got
tough.

“Very well. I’ll simply modify my
conclusions recommending strongly that the robotic physicians
program be shut down pending further investigation and that a
congressional oversight committee should be established to monitor
the public health and safety. You are aware, of course, that all
formal evaluations go to the congressional archives? It would be a
shame if this one ended up before a committee. Could delay your
rollout by years.”

Eric’s eyes were like hot blue fire.

“Are you threatening me?”

“Not with scissors, no.”

Eric sat back in his chair. This fat little
man wasn’t a pushover after all. And the problem, Eric knew, was
that he would actually do what he suggests. And while he didn’t
think Sidney had the political muscle to get a whole committee
going in congress, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain.

“If I let you observe—“

“I won’t tell a single person about what I
see down there.”

“Nor about our little ‘demonstration’ up
here.”

“Absolute silence.”

Eric’s face formed strange shapes as he
considered the matter before he relented.

“Very well. Walk him down. His manual drive
button is under his left armpit. His servos will walk for him and
keep him upright. You just need to guide him.”

Eric swiveled his chair turning his back on
Sidney. The conversation was over. Sidney gathered himself and rose
from the chair. He reached under the left armpit of Gammons and
pressed inward at a soft spot. Nice and dry. Not like Sidney’s at
that moment
. Helluva bluff
, Sidney thought,
but it
worked
.

The robot’s manual drive engaged. He guided
it out of the office by gently touching its right arm and pulling
it forward. The auto-rotor in the hips engaged when he applied
pressure to the arm and the robot’s lifeless body walked to the
elevator where they waited for a car.

The Foundry was a converted manufacturing
plant in the lower end of Manhattan that had fallen into disuse
when the golden age of the US manufacturing had begun to wane in
favor of hipper and greener technologies which themselves had
lasted only as long as the public interest held them. Then, in
cyclical fashion, the newer technologies failed to catch a wider
audience. Suddenly the need for a greater output of manufactured
goods increased. By that time, the old factory, perched like a
sleeping malevolent giant in the middle of the meatpacking
district, had been reinvented and the spark of life found within,
waking the giant and giving him new purpose.

The corporate offices were the front face of
the building with tall windows and steel fixtures. Behind this
façade was the production area, known within the organization as
the Foundry. The old machinery of the previous tenant had been
stripped out. New production equipment was erected in its place.
Conveyer belts were converted. Unfinished and half-finished robotic
parts rolled along stopping at various points for this or that
mechanical component.

Back beyond the rooms at the back of the
Foundry where artificial brains were assembled were more rooms
dedicated to maintenance shops for robotic repair; rooms for
programming malfunctions; rooms for mechanical shut downs. These
were called operating rooms.

It was to an operating room that Sidney led
Gammons.

* * *

“Dr. Hermann, I presume?” asked Peter. A
clammy hand outstretched, his voice intoned in a lousy British
accent. A bad Livingston joke.

“Yes. Please call me Sidney.”

“Okey-dokey, Sid.”

Peter was a short man twenty-five years old
with horrible eyesight and the thickest glasses Sidney had ever
seen. Lanky with just the earliest beginnings of a pot belly. Just
wait, thought Sidney. Just wait until middle age catches up to
you.

“So, I hear tell you’re bringing me in an F
type that bucked protocol, huh?”

Peter had a manner too happy for Sidney’s
tastes.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, we got the signal trip here a little
while ago. Set off all our monitors. Doesn’t happen every day, you
know.”

“How often, really?”

“Honestly? Never. Almost never.”

“Almost. But not never.”

Peter shrugged.

“Enough so that I can say never and pretty
much mean it. We average something like three trips per year in the
department.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Me? Three and a half years.”

He opened a personal handheld computer and
scrolled through the items on the screen.

“Let’s see. Gammons, right?”

“Yes, Gammons. It’s the personal assistant
to Eric Breckenridge, senior VP of—”

“I know who Eric is. I’ve met him
before.”

Sidney did not like being interrupted.

“I need it fixed and working by the end of
the day today.”

“No sweat, Sid.” Peter smiled. “You ever
seen a robot get their memory cache dumped and the protocols
corrected in a QA environment?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re in for a treat.”

“It’s that interesting?”

“If you’re a geek. Like me. You a geek, Sid?
You look like a geek.”

Sidney was beginning to dislike Peter.

“I’m a professor. Most of my fieldwork has
been with the heavy labor force—”

“And they never buck protocol.”

Frown. Interrupted again.

“I used to do some work with the labor
force,” said Peter. “Low-level stuff if you ask me. But you’ve got
to walk before you can run, and believe me, when you get to the
level Fs through Hs, boy, are you running.”

A long corridor led to the interior center
where Peter worked. Prior to entering Sidney had to put on a full
sterilization uniform.

“You’re lucky, though,” Peter was saying as
they climbed into the suits. “They usually don’t let outsiders
watch the inner workings of our little plant here. You must have
some dirt on somebody,” he joked. Sidney smiled wanly.

Once finished and ghostly white in loose
plastic garb and breath masks, they entered. Sidney felt like a
marshmallow.

Stretched out in one of the lab rooms on a
high bed lay Gammons.

“They brought him here after you dropped him
off at the service counter.”

“Him?”

“Him. Gammons.”

“You mean it?”

“Oh I get it, you’re one of those.”
Something in Peter’s voice changed. It wasn’t happy anymore, not
the way it had been. There was an undertone of dislike.

“One of what?”

“One of those people who hates robots and
all they do for us and wants to see the whole program
dismantled.”

“And you get that from…?”

“From the fact that you call Gammons ‘it’
rather than ‘him’.”

“Then you’d be mistaken. If robotics
programs were dismantled then I’d be out of a job.”

“So then?”

“So what?”

“Why the it, not him?”

“I just tend not to think of robots as he,
she, us. They are constructed beings with artificial intelligence.
They have no soul. They’re not really alive.”

Peter snorted.

Sidney cocked an eyebrow at Peter. “Have you
ever heard of Bakserworth, Mr. Rubios?”

“The British nut? Yeah, we read him in
school. Why?”

Sidney was about to answer, when Peter
caught on. “Oh, I get it. The enslavement of robots, the
disenfranchised worker class, the uprising, blah blah blah. Yeah, I
read it. Che Guevara with bolts. Whatever, Sid.”

“Don’t be so quick to brush off what he had
to say.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. Except that I’ll
say that there’s a reason he’s not around anymore.”

Sidney said nothing.
Dislike in the short
time they had known each other grew rapidly and it was
possible,
Sidney mused,
mutually
.

* * *

“And so we flush the rubidium brain,
recharge it with fresh rubidium vapors, and then close the whole
compartment up. Can get hairy if you’re careless. Rubidium ignites
when it hits air, you know. And that just for starters.”

“I’m more interested in the memory
cache.”

“The cache? Okay, what do you want to
know?”

“Why do you dump the memory?”

“Just the cache. The short term stuff. Clear
it out and let them start again.”