Machina Viva (13 page)

24

“Oh, hello, dear,” said Mrs. Whitley as she answered Eve’s knocking.

“I need to see Raymond,” said Eve. “Is he available?”

“Of course. Is there anything I can get you at all? We’ve got some of those pads in if you’d like. Raymond heard that you’d taken to them.”

“Oh. Er . . . yes, actually, that would be nice,” said Eve.

“I’ll just get you some, then,” said Mrs. Whitley. Eve went into Raymond’s conference room and sat at the table with the cartridge she’d taken from Philip’s study.

“Yes, Eve?” said Raymond. “What can I do for you?”

“I found some of Philip’s notes in his study. He’s clearly very passionate about his work.”

“That he is.”

“It looked like it was something he had been working on for a long time.”

“He has been considering the problems of robot development for as long as I’ve known him.”

“How long have you known him, Raymond?” Eve sat back in her chair.

“Oh, it’s been a long time now,” said Raymond, his tone wistful. “I remember first meeting him when he was making plans to create Crownstone. He wanted my opinion on the sort of environment that would help robots develop socially. I’ve been involved with the running of this place ever since.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Philip?” She leaned forward, cupping her chin in her palm. “I mean, he knows so much about who I am, but I don’t know hardly anything about who he is.”

“Well, I don’t really know much about him outside of his work with robots,” said Raymond, “but it may be that for him, there isn’t much else. From what I understand, he has been working to make robots more like humans since the Robot Production department hired him out of university. You see, he was always keenly aware of how robots are held separate from humans. Robots learn their behavior by observing others and reacting to how they are treated, and humans have always tended to treat robots like servants.

“The problem, as Philip saw it, was that robots were always put in the most dehumanizing jobs, like clerical work, heavy labor, and the service industry, and anyone in one of those fields will always be treated like a machine. New robots would watch the way the other employees behaved, and they would respond to the way their bosses expected them to behave, and they would never learn to behave like ordinary people.”

Eve was rapt. She sat at the table and absorbed herself in the rhetoric that Raymond was delivering courtesy of Philip, an acolyte at the feet of the chief disciple. “So,” she said, “you’re saying that robots acted like machines because people expected them to, and people expected them to because that’s how they acted anyway?”

“Exactly,” said Raymond. “The robots acted like machines because they always had, and because everyone believed that robots were supposed to behave like that. It was a self-perpetuating cycle that Philip sought to end. That was what drew him to study robot design and engineering in the first place. He believed that robots had the potential to be equal to humanity, and that humanity’s marginalization of robots had brutally suppressed that potential. That’s why he created this place: to allow robots the opportunity to rise above the expectations they were shackled with and become what he knew they could be. You’ve seen Ergonomix downstairs, yes?”

“Yes, I was there with Lucy the night before we went out,” said Eve.

“Then you’ve seen for yourself what Philip aspires to. Just because robots aren’t technically alive, that doesn’t mean that they have to act like it.”

“Yes,” said Eve. “I think I know what you mean.” She tapped Philip’s data cartridge on the table.

“I found this in Philip’s workstation,” said Eve. “He told me that it had something to do with my purpose, that it was important. I took a look at it, and I need to know what you think.” She inserted it into a slot in the wall, and the light by the slot flickered as Raymond perused the data that Philip had left.”

“Oh, my,” said Raymond. “So, it’s true. That is interesting.”

“What? What’s true? I mean, I know what it looks like, but it doesn’t seem like it can be right. Oh, thank you,” said Eve as Mrs. Whitley toddled in with a plate of the translucent pads. They still smelled as alluring to Eve as ever.

“What is it that seems so hard to believe?” said Raymond.

“He’s talking about a machine that really is alive, not just a robot that knows how to have a good time. It seems fundamentally impossible.” Eve picked up one of the pads and took a bite, trying not to appear too ravenous.

“For an ordinary machine, yes,” said Raymond. “Most of us do not qualify as actual living beings, but objects, albeit with the equivalent consciousness of something alive. Life is actually fairly easy to simulate. A simple computer program can exhibit many of the characteristics observed in colonies of bacteria, for example. Biological life itself, however, is more complicated, but it is actually not outside the reach of a machine to achieve.”

“But how can that be?” said Eve. “Don’t living things need fluids and meaty parts and things like that?”

“Not at all. What defines a living thing is fairly difficult to codify, but there are several traits that are widely agreed upon. First, a living thing must be capable of responding to external stimuli.”

“All robots can do that, though,” said Eve.

“True enough. Second, a living thing exhibits organization, with discrete parts dedicated to distinct roles.”

“Also something that all robots have.”

“Indeed. Third, a living thing must be capable of taking in energy and matter from its environment to sustain itself.”

“All robots recharge themselves from the city grid,” said Eve.

“True, but only you have an appetite for silicon that enables you to regenerate damaged components.” Eve paused halfway through her second gel pad. “I’ve been going over Philip’s notes about your design. The silvery substance that appears when you are wounded comprises billions of microscopic mechanisms that use the silicon you ingest to repair damage, not unlike the platelets and collagen in the human circulatory system that are used to heal minor cuts.”

Eve took a slow bite from the gel pad. She knew she wasn’t human, but she also knew that ordinary robots didn’t heal.

“Finally, and most central to Philip’s intentions, I believe,” said Raymond, “a living being must have the capability to reproduce itself.”

Eve dropped her gel pad. “What do you mean, reproduce?”

Raymond paused, as if unsure of exactly how to proceed. It seemed almost as nervous about the current line of discussion as Eve. “I may be misinterpreting what I’ve seen in his notes, and you’ll probably want to talk to Philip or Brian to confirm this, but it seems that you may be capable of creating offspring.”

“What? You mean I’m supposed to have a baby?”

“In fact, you may already be in the middle of the gestation process. It would explain why you’ve been consuming so much silicon lately.”

“A robot’s never had a baby before. This . . . this is huge,” said Eve.

“I know. If this is true, it would be the only way to get humans to treat robots as true equals. Robots can exhibit all the unique personality traits they want, but they still come from a factory, and they still get taken down for parts when they expire. A robot that could reproduce, that could pass on its traits to an offspring, that could have descendents, a lineage . . .” Raymond was very nearly lost for words, and that didn’t often happen. “Do you want me to call the others, ask them to come over here? I mean, they probably need to know about all this.”

Eve collapsed into her chair. “Yes, they do.”

25

At around midday, Ergonomix was getting ready to open its doors. Linn stepped out for a moment to check on a delivery at the front desk, where she overheard the guard’s half of a conversation over the building’s internal televox line.

“He is? Good. I hate to think what might happen without him. Listen, I’ve been thinking. We aren’t going to get in any trouble over any of this, are we? Because I’d . . . Oh, he is? Okay, I suppose. If you’re sure. Oh, is that what Colin said? Good. All right, then. Yes, I’ll keep an eye out. Sure thing.” Linn started to get a little worried. Crownstone’s College of Law representative was named Colin.

“Hey,” said Linn. “What was all that about? Is something up?”

“Oh,” said the guard. He probably should have been quieter, but it was too late now. He knew how much Linn and Tamsin liked knowing what was going on, and they could never let go of a juicy rumor. “Dr. Abrams was wounded this morning. He’s being seen to.”

“Oh, my. What happened?”

“I really don’t know any details. They only said that I should keep an eye out for anyone from Security who wants to get in. I guess someone from there thinks someone here did something wrong, but Will’s friend Colin says that they don’t have a foundation for grievance. I’m sorry, I don’t know anything more than that. For that matter, I really shouldn’t have said as much as I did.”

“Don’t worry, it’s all right,” said Linn. “I won’t tell anyone you told me. Did that delivery arrive yet for the club? We had some new show tracks on order from the Font of Creation.”

“No, nothing for the club this morning, just a couriered package for someone upstairs.”

“All right, then, thanks,” said Linn. She headed back for the club and got out her televox to give Will a jingle. He had said something last night about an important mission, and if he was talking to Colin about it, he had to have been involved.

Tamsin beckoned to her as she entered the club. “What’s going on, Linn? I can’t open up by myself, you know.”

“Something’s going on, Tam. Dr. Abrams has been wounded, Will’s talking to Colin, and the desk guard is looking out for Security. I think today is going to be interesting.”

The Security troubleshooter removed the insignia from its parcel courier uniform and replaced them with those of the Department of Infrastructure, and boarded the transit system. It rode the tubes for a few minutes, blending in seamlessly with the commuters, until it disembarked at a little-used station that was common for maintenance personnel. A short walk through some utility corridors led it to a quiet corner that it frequently used for monitoring remote equipment. It was also good for line-of-sight surveillance, since it was fairly central and nearly halfway up the city superstructure.

It took a modified televox from a pouch on its belt and clicked the receiver chips into place that corresponded with the ad hoc sensor array that it had established around Crownstone. The Security chair had emphasized the necessity for speed in this operation, which ruled out its usual time-consuming but thoroughly comprehensive methods of information-gathering. It had had to resort to a squadron of kit rats, embedded with proximity sensors and inserted at key locations in the building’s ducts. They were big enough to gather any data the troubleshooter might have needed, but the little gremlins weren’t intelligent enough to stay where they were told, and they had a tendency to nibble at power lines and invite extermination by the very people the troubleshooter was investigating. They weren’t at all the sort of tools that the troubleshooter would have used, all things being equal, but things clearly weren’t equal.

The signals from the rats allowed the troubleshooter to pinpoint the location of all robots and humans within their effective radius, using their respective electrical or biophysical signatures. At the moment, Dr. Abrams’s apartment was occupied by two humans, one presumably the doctor that had been called to tend to Abrams’s wounds. Raymond’s apartment was occupied by one human, presumably Raymond’s elderly lodger, and four other robots. One of them was likely to be Eve, judging by her anomalous signature. All of the location data was transmitted to Security, flagged chair’s-eyes-only for him to act upon at his leisure, whenever that might be.

Next to the troubleshooter was a door, which led to a walkway that ran along the top of one of the city’s main struts alongside the Crownstone building. From the small window, the troubleshooter could see the apartment of a robot it had picked out earlier from the building’s registered tenant manifest. As soon as he received the package the troubleshooter had delivered to him and brought it back to his apartment, the troubleshooter could commence its work.

The meeting around Raymond’s table was animated, but only for the newcomers. Brian, Will, and Lucy were shocked when Raymond told them about what Eve had discovered, and they spent several hours discussing what it might mean, but Eve only sat quietly at the table watching their animated discourse, floating on a cloud of detachment. She had thought that it would help her to have other robots around to relieve the pressure, but it only made it worse as they came up with increasing levels of obligation for her. It was all very well for the others to debate what Eve’s potential for reproduction could do for the robot population, but Eve herself was the one who would have to do all the work. She couldn’t afford to consider sociological ramifications with the immediate responsibility of creating a brand new robot hanging over her.

She left the “ordinary” robots to discuss the issue further and went back to her own room to recharge. She seemed to need more and more frequent rest periods lately. It must have been to do with the whole baby-making thing. She made it to her room and slumped down into the recharge station as her eyes began to close.

As she charged, images began to appear before her eyes. No, that wasn’t quite right, because her eyes were closed. Before her mind’s eye, then.

I must be dreaming
, she thought.
Yet another thing that no robot has done before. I hope Philip recovers soon.

As she had the thought, Philip’s face appeared before her. She saw an image of him lying in his bed, with the doctor standing over him. At least, she assumed that it must be the doctor, because his features were out of focus for some reason. All she could make out was a fuzzy white blur. What few decorations were on the walls were blurred, too. Philip himself was the only sharply detailed thing in the room.