Pygmalion Unbound (6 page)

Kelly sat back in her chair. “And all of this is legal, even ethical?”

“The legal department tells us it’s legal. The ethics board says it’s ethical. That’s all I need to know. And Congress doesn’t know anything.”

“So far. Once you start turning out Marias by the gross, that’s going to change. Have you thought about the reaction when Maria goes public?”

“We figure we’ll have enough influence in certain quarters by then to cover any problems. American Cybernetics has been good about campaign contributions the past few election cycles. And we have connections in other places.” His voice grew evasive on the last sentence, which tripped a red flag in Kelly’s mind.

“Forget Washington,” Kelly waved impatiently. “I mean the cultural reaction. You saw what happened with ESIs — the press went wild, the churches — even the mainline ones — were breathing fire. How do you sell it to a public that’s increasingly ignorant about science, and doesn’t bother to do its own research? Or if it does, only researches sources that confirm their biases?”

“People with Parkinson’s have neural implants. We’ve had artificial hearts for forty years. We’ve been growing adult stem cell lines to combat Alzheimer’s for a decade. Cloning organs from sample tissue even longer. Creating hybrid animals since the teens. This is the next step.”

Kelly sat back. “You’ve underestimated the reaction. But assume you get by Congress, finesse the PR, mass produce Marias and sell them. To whom, and for what?”

“The potential apps are unlimited. Service industries, obviously.” He began ticking off points on his fingers.

“Good luck. The unions are going to fight you every step.”

“Unions are dying, and you know it.” He ticked off the next finger. “Domestic help.”

“You’ll make the nativists happy. At least these Marias won’t be illegal aliens.”

“Score a point for you,” Franklin chuckled. “Healthcare. Look at all the Baby Boomers retired, heading for nursing homes. Can’t find enough nurse’s aides as it is, the criminal background restrictions cut it down further, so we get a shortage of geriatric CNAs or LPNs and now Granny’s not getting her bedpan emptied or her medicine on time, nursing homes get hit by regulatory agencies, fined, even shut down for something that’s beyond their control. Build enough Marias, though, you solve the supply problem overnight. Same with daycare. No criminal background checks required.”

“Maybe. If Medicaid goes for it. What else?”

“Maybe hazardous duties, law enforcement, hostage situations. No humans have to get killed.”

“And military applications?” Kelly asked warily.

Franklin hedged and took a sip of wine. “It’s been discussed.”

“No humans get killed, just a bunch of artificial life forms that can be turned out by the hundreds, right?” Her tone grew sharper before she realized it, drew looks from adjoining tables. She lowered her voice. “No honor guards at Arlington, no bereaved families, no widows or children. Just fill out a destroyed property form and junk it.”

“Hey, hey,” Franklin put up his hands, “back off, Doctor. I didn’t say we were going to sell it to DoD.”

“But you’ve got friends in high places. They wouldn’t happen to be sitting in the Pentagon, would they?”

“I don’t handle the funding. I just write the code. I stay out of the politics. And anyway, it’s still in the test phase. Any commercial or military apps are years away.”

“But it’ll happen,” Kelly said. “Once some colonel or one-star general with ambition gets hold of this project, you’ll be turning out droids by the thousands. And that solves all the moral problems for the military and the civilians who give them orders. No justifying sending sons and daughters off to die. Just droids. It makes war far too easy.”

“Slow down,” Franklin said, clearly irritated. “There’s a lot of positive things can be done. Don’t go off on some anti-military rant.”

“I lost my father in Iraq in 2008. I was sixteen,” she said unapologetically. “I have my reasons for being suspicious.”

“Better a droid gets blown up by an IED than your father,” Franklin said. He got a hard stare in return. “Okay, not fair, I apologize. Understand, I’m in R and D. Marketing’s out of my territory. And besides, they’re droids. We can program them. They won’t question orders.”

“Oh, really? What if they do?”

“Then we go trouble in River City, Doctor.”

The food arrived, derailing the argument and giving her a chance to cool down.

They spent the rest of the meal making less combative talk, as Franklin moved into areas of theory, getting her to talk about her work in developing personalities. He was, she realized, coolly detached in most things, extremely organized — his mind seemed to run like a flow chart — but there were flashes of cynical and cutting humor, some of it self-deprecating, that lightened his serious mien. They finished, and she begged off a desert, watching her figure, and gave Franklin a “maybe” on an offer to do a 10K jog after work.

She went home after the dinner, her mind a flurry of ideas and problems from Franklin’s revelations, making her far too distracted to seek company for the rest of the evening.

5

The lab building had long ago been deserted by the last of the techs and the researchers. The hallways were dimly lit by emergency lights, and the glowing dots of the security keypads.

Maria’s room was on the third floor, on a secured wing. A lab space had been cleared out and bed, bathroom and furniture installed.

She lay on the bed, asleep (
on standby
, he corrected himself), naked under the white sheets. He’d watched her with Kelly and Franklin on the security monitors. As Kelly worked with her, pointing out the wildlife, he could see Maria’s eyes narrow, take in the information, and then light up with surprise as she connected the knowledge with her growing humanity.

And then she’d done something completely unexpected. She had stopped to listen, then stretched her arms to the sky, turned her face up, spread her hands and closed her eyes, and given a sleepy smile, something he remembered long ago from late mornings in cool sheets and afternoons in parks. It almost knocked Crane out of his seat.

Roni…

The physical resemblance was there, of course. It would be. But that gesture…it might have been accidental, a coincidence.

Or…

Or maybe blood and genes did tell. Maybe there was more buried in there than anyone could know. Which presented him with innumerable possibilities as he stared misty-eyed at his creation.

“No one’s ever gonna hurt you again, honey. You can make sure of that this time.”

6

The next day, Kelly started in with standardized testing. She gave Maria personality tests, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Briggs-Meyers Type Indicator, and others. Kelly spent the night in the small bungalow near the AC campus grading the results, analyzing them.

“The Big Five results are interesting,” she told Crane and Franklin the next day.

“The what?” Crane said.

“The Big Five refers to the five broad domains of personality. The first is openness to experience, like appreciation of art, emotion, adventure, new ideas or general inquisitiveness. She scores high on this, though it’s taking time for her to verbalize her appreciation of art.”

“She’s programmed for curiosity,” Franklin added. “All humans are.”

“True, but some more than others. The second is conscientiousness, which means discipline, sense of duty, achievement. She is very high on that.”

“Again, part of the programming,” Franklin said.

“Then you’ve got extroversion, which is self-explanatory. She does not have a need for others,” Kelly said, “at least at this point. It’s likely her programming, since I presume she was designed to be as self-sufficient as possible. But she has the potential to be very extroverted.”

“Of course,” Crane said.

“Agreeableness, which is the ability to empathize, to be compassionate and cooperative. Fairly low. But not surprising, since it deals with people skills, and she hasn’t had time to develop those. It’s something we can work on. And finally, neuroticism, experiencing unpleasant emotions easily, like anger or depression. Her scores there are very low.”

“Life ain’t kicked her in the head yet,” Franklin pointed out wryly.

“Maria is more inclined to the sensing-thinking-judgment functions, rather than the intuition-feeling-perceiving functions. Not surprising, given that she’s an ambulatory organic computer.”

“What next?” Crane asked.

“The Briggs-Meyer shows that personality traits can change. Forty to seventy percent of people test differently if the same test is administered weeks or years later. So we give her some more experience to develop the intuitive-feeling side. If you’re going to use her — or others like her — in a service industry, then you have to develop the compassion or empathy side of her.”

“Make her more touchy-feely?” Crane asked.

“No. More human,” Kelly said. “That’s the point, right?”

There was something about Crane’s attitude towards Maria that was, at the very least, odd. At the most it was dangerous. It was like, when he looked at her, he saw someone else. It occurred to her that she still didn’t know the source of the tissue Crane had used to create her.

“Beautiful,” Maria whispered, hearing the song of a robin in a birch. Not a preprogrammed response, but heartfelt. Kelly had stopped by a mall on her way in to work and purchased some clothes for Maria, a loose and gauzy peasant dress with sandals. With her olive complexion and curly-going-on-frizzy hair, it gave her a gypsy look.

“It is,” Kelly agreed.

She’d gotten something else yesterday, too, stopping by an animal shelter and laying out a couple hundred dollars to adopt two kittens — a tiger-striped male and a tortoiseshell-and-white female, about two months old. In a moment of weakness she’d also adopted their mother, a black female whose time was short, reasoning that she could keep the family together and make the kittens better socialized.

Kelly reached down and opened the small cardboard carrier she’d brought. The kittens scampered out, looked around, mewed. The female made her way up Kelly’s denim-clad leg. The male jumped on Maria’s leg, claws out.

“Ouch,” Maria said, swatted the kitten away angrily. Kelly grabbed her hand, brought it up. The kitten tumbled away, arched its back, and hissed.

“No, Maria. No,” Kelly scolded her. Maria whirled her head, fire in her eyes, then looked hurt. “No. It’s weaker than you are.” The male kitten clambered up Kelly’s chest, and perched on her shoulder, where it began purring loudly. “You mustn’t hurt things weaker than you are.”

“It caused pain.”

“She didn’t mean to,” Kelly said, softening her voice. “She’s a baby, still learning. Like you. Animals are God’s creatures, and they give him glory. We owe them our kindness.” Kelly bent down, held out her hand, and the female kitten (which she’d named Tallulah) approached warily. She picked it up, began stroking it.

Maria reached out tentatively to the kitten on Kelly’s shoulder, and it backed away from her. Kelly took the male kitten, named Tigger, and held it to Maria. The kitten recoiled, hissed, but soon grew comfortable at her touch. A warm look came into Maria’s eyes. “God also said we have dominion over the animals,” she said. “Genesis 1:28.”

So — Franklin had included the King James Bible in her programming. “Dominion doesn’t mean we can do with them what we please. Do you know about St. Francis of Assisi?” Maria nodded — more good programming.

“A Catholic Church saint,” said Maria, “who preached the gospels to the animals. He led a wolf into town, and made peace between the wolf and the townspeople. The wolf killed out of hunger. The townspeople would feed the wolf, and the wolf would stop attacking the villagers.”

“Exactly. That’s how you treat them. How you treat
all
living creatures. Even when it would be easier to kill.
Especially
when it would be easier to kill.”

“Did God tell you that?”

“In a way. I learned it when I was a little girl, in school.” Right out of the Catechism drilled into her by the nuns at the parochial schools her mother insisted upon. St. Francis of Assisi was one of the few things left of her faith, after the trials of the Church in the last two decades. God was in all creatures, great and small, four-legged and two-legged, their status in life and society irrelevant.

“Doctor Kelly?” She took the kitten, cuddled it to her breast.

“Call me Alannah. Yes, Maria?”

A pause, searching for words. “I am a human being, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” Not quite the truth, not quite a lie, but she wasn’t going to split hairs at this point.

“Was I a little girl? I can’t remember being one.”

Kelly said nothing. The kitty therapy seemed to have juggled more loose than she’d predicted.

I knew this moment was going to come
, she thought.
But not this soon.

“What do you remember, Maria?” An old therapists’ trick. Turn a question back on the questioner. Get her to talk.