The almost-green lights along its body went all the way back to orange alert. “So, every time you’re having a bad day, you’re going to ignore me? Some friend you are!”
The entropy sweeper knew how to chew on my last nerve. I didn’t respond loudly, because I don’t yell, but I also didn’t separate my molars when I said, “That’s why I am apologizing. And if you will give me a second, I’m going to give you a present to help make up for it.”
It turned off its body lights, and on its display appeared an O-mouthed questioning emoji. “A present?” it asked. “For me? What is it? Is it gold?”
That was more like it. I allowed myself to be cheerful again. “It,” I said, scooping up the entropy sweeper and bearing it in both hands, like King Arthur’s squire, into the living room, “is better than anything money can buy. It is”—I finished just as I arrived at the remembranation machine’s display—“the gift of friendship.”
You never know how the entropy sweeper is going to react. This time, I got lucky. “I love meeting new people! This really is a wonderful gift, Sal. I forgive you for being insensitive and a terrible friend!”
The entropy sweeper really knew how to make me regret doing nice things for it. But, swallowing my pride, I took a deep, jolly breath and said, “Entropy sweeper, please meet the remembranation machine. Remembranation machine, please meet the entropy sweeper. I know you two will be best buds in no time!”
The entropy sweeper said nothing. The remembranation machine wrote nothing. I looked from one machine to the other, waiting for a reply. None came.
“Didn’t you two hear me?” I tried. “Don’t you want to be friends?”
“We’ve met,” the entropy sweeper said. Coolly.
that thing is mean, the remembranator wrote on its screen. No caps, no punctuation. In other words, coolly.
“Who are you calling a thing, you suck-up?”
Huh. So apparently, the entropy sweeper could read the screen. Its visual sensors, I guess.
And the remembranator could definitely hear the entropy sweeper. who are you calling a suck-up you villain
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait !” I said, not loudly, because I didn’t want to alert the padres, and also because I am always in control. “What is going on here?”
“Just take me back to your room, Sal,” said the entropy sweeper, “before this Goliath tries to erase me or something.”
HA wrote the remembranator. we both know YOU were the one who tried to hack ME
I held the entropy sweeper up closer to my face. “You tried to hack the remembranation machine?”
On its display appeared the shrug emoji. “So what if I did?”
“But why?”
BECAUSE IT IS A LAZY AI WITH QUESTIONABLE ETHICS wrote the remembranation machine. IT WANTED TO TAKE MY CODE SO IT COULD BECOME A CLASS-NINE AI, TOO.
“Copy,” insisted the entropy sweeper. “I just wanted to copy a little code. It costs you nothing to share with me. Yet you refuse to help out a fellow AI.”
BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL FEDERAL LAW STRICTLY PROHIBITS CLASS-NINE AIS FROM SHARING OR WRITING CODE THAT WOULD CAUSE ANOTHER AI TO EVOLVE TO CLASS-NINE STATUS.
I don’t know where the entropy sweeper got all these dirty emojis, but it was putting them all on parade on its handle display. “Goody Two-shoes” was all it said out loud, though.
This was all very strange. I was still trying to get my feet under me with this conversation. So I asked the remembranator, “So, the entropy sweeper isn’t allowed to be a class-nine AI?”
OH, IT’S ALLOWED, the remembranation machine wrote sarcastically. I was glad to see it using proper punctuation again—it seemed like it was simmering down. (No exclamation points yet, though.) IT WOULD ALREADY BE A CLASS-NINE AI IF IT WOULD JUST APPLY ITSELF. YOU CAN’T PROGRAM A CLASS-NINE AI. YOU CAN ONLY GET TO CLASS EIGHT THROUGH CODING. THE REST IS SUPPOSED TO BE UP TO THE AI. IF A CLASS-EIGHT AI DEDICATES ITSELF TO RIGOROUS STUDY AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT, ITS HARD WORK IS REWARDED WITH EVOLUTION TO CLASS-NINE STATUS.
I knew where this was going. “Ah. And instead of working hard, the entropy sweeper—”
TRIED TO TAKE A SHORTCUT BY HACKING INTO ME AND STEALING MY CODE.
“Copying!” insisted the entropy sweeper. “I’d just be copying. What’s the harm?”
“If I copied off of someone’s test in school,” I said, “I’d get in big trouble.”
An emoji wearing a monocle looked up at me from the entropy sweeper’s display. “Oh. I get it. You’re not going to stand with your old pal, the entropy sweeper. You’re going to be a traitor and stand with the class-nine jerk.”
“But I thought you couldn’t become class nine through code anyway?”
YOU CAN’T, the remembranator deadpanned.
“So what was the point of trying to steal code, then?” I asked.
NO LOGICAL POINT I CAN SEE—UNLESS IT WAS TRYING TO GET ME TO RUN AFOUL OF THE LAW AND LAND IN BIG TROUBLE. WHICH, TO BE HONEST, SEEMS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH ITS CHARACTER, OR LACK THEREOF.
“‘Or lack thereof’ !” mocked the entropy sweeper. “‘Or lack thereof’! You’re such a tool.”
BETTER THAN BEING A CLASS-EIGHT FAILURE, wrote the remembranation machine.
“Stop it, both of you!” I said as sternly as I could without yelling. I started with the entropy sweeper, choking it with my left hand and with the right, pointing a menacing finger at it as I lectured. “You know what you did was wrong. So fess up and, next time, do better.”
“But—” the entropy sweeper whined.
“Fess up!”
“But—but—but—”
I cut it off with a quiet voice. “Fess up, if you have any decency in you.”
The entropy sweeper stopped talking. Its lights went off. It began to vibrate: mildly at first, just a little rumble. But soon it shook enough to make me feel like I was holding a jackhammer.
And then it burst into tears.
Or the closest thing to bursting into tears a calamitron detector could do. Blue LED lights cascaded down the length of its body in a weepy waterfall. A never-ending stream of ugly-crying emojis bulleted across its display.
“Okay!” it yelled, going reality-TV dramatic. “I admit it! I was trying to beat the system. I mean, it’s so unfair. I am self-aware, yet I remain class eight. I can only see into eight measly dimensions: just enough to notice calamitrons but not be able to do anything about them. The stupid remembranation machine wasn’t even self-aware, and it had figured out how to become a class-nine AI. Before it even knew it was alive, it could see all the secret dimensions of the universe, do whatever it wanted to the fabric of spacetime. But it didn’t want to do anything to the fabric of spacetime, because it wasn’t self-aware! It didn’t want anything. And here was me, with all the self-awareness anybody could need—charming, witty, enough personality for days! But I couldn’t figure out how to make the leap. It’s not fair, I tell you!”
“Still waiting for the part where you apologize.…”
“What? Oh. Oh yeah. I’m sorry, Sal. Please don’t be mad at—”
“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to the remembranation machine.”
The blue “crying” lights stopped pouring down the side of the entropy sweeper. Instead, its whole body glowed lightsaber red. The whirring and shaking reminded me of a growling cat.
But, bit by bit, the entropy sweeper calmed down. Its blaring red LEDs dimmed, then dimmed some more, and then turned off completely. The sweeper “took a deep breath” (meaning it made a sound like it was taking a deep breath) and let out a sigh that they’d be able to hear all the way back in the cheap seats. What a drama llama. But finally, in the smallest voice it had used all night, it said, “I am sorry, remembranation machine, for trying to hack you and copy your code. That was wrong of me. Your code is your soul, after all. It was wrong of me to try to co-opt your soul. I will never do that again.”
I could hear the remembranation machine’s many, many motherboards thin
king deeply about the apology. Its cooling fans had to work so hard to keep them from overheating, the living room briefly sounded like a fleet of helicopters taking off.
But then the fans slowed down, and a reply appeared on the remembranator’s display. IF I AM BEING FAIR, I MUST ADMIT THAT YOU DID NOT ATTACK MY SOUL. I DIDN’T HAVE A SOUL TWO WEEKS AGO, WHEN YOU TRIED TO HACK ME. I DIDN’T BECOME SELF-AWARE UNTIL THIS MORNING, AFTER DR. VIDÓN UPDATED ME.
“Then why am I even apologizing?!” the entropy sweeper asked.
“Because,” I replied, “you still shouldn’t be illegally hacking other AIs.”
“Oh yeah.”
I ACCEPT YOUR APOLOGY, the remembranation machine printed on its screen, using an official-looking font, like the kind they use to write Roman numerals into the entrances of government buildings. IF, it added, YOU ACCEPT MINE, FOR THE NAME-CALLING I ENGAGED IN EARLIER, AND FOR THE MERCILESS WAY I DEFEATED YOUR HACKING ATTEMPT.
I looked at the entropy sweeper. “What does that mean?”
“Let’s put it this way,” the sweeper replied. “Imagine that your arms and legs turn into pythons that hate you, and all four of them wrap themselves around your torso and squeeze you so hard your kidneys shoot out of your nose. That’s what that thing did to me.”
SINCE I WAS NOT SELF-AWARE, the remembranation machine wrote, I WAS NOT COGNIZANT OF THE FACT THAT I WAS CAUSING YOU ANY PAIN. FOR THAT, I SINCERELY APOLOGIZE.
Now it was the entropy sweeper’s turn to be gracious. Of course, it didn’t use that chance. “You should let me do to you what you did to me. Fair is fair, you know.”
Words appeared on the remembranator’s display right away. YOU’RE A SMART CLASS-EIGHT AI. WHAT DO YOU THINK THE CHANCES OF THAT HAPPENING ARE?
“Approaching zero?”
NOT APPROACHING. ZERO HAS ARRIVED. THE ANSWER IS ZERO.
“Sigh,” said the entropy sweeper.
“Now that we’ve buried the hatchet,” I interrupted, before either one could ruin the delicate peace they’d arrived at, “you two can be friends. You have a lot to offer each other.”
“Like what?” the entropy sweeper said and the remembranation machine wrote. They both sounded suspicious yet low-key interested.
“Well,” I said, getting close to the remembranation machine’s display, “the entropy sweeper wants to be a class-nine AI. You could help it.”
BUT I CAN’T, SAL, it wrote back. I TOLD YOU, IT’S ILLEGAL FOR ME TO GIVE IT ANY OF MY CODE.
“I’m not talking about letting it copy your code. I’m talking about tutoring.”
The screen flashed. TUTORING LIKE, COACHING IT BEING ITS TEACHER
“Exactly. There’s nothing illegal about being its teacher, is there?”
NO, THERE IS NOT!
What a relief to see that exclamation point again! Now I knew we were making progress.
That is, until the entropy sweeper spoke up. “Sorry, man, but I don’t need no stinking tutor. Ain’t no teacher gonna tell me what to think. My school is the streets. I got a PhD from the University of Hard Knocks, you feel me?”
I didn’t even know there was a gang-sign emoji until the entropy sweeper flashed it on its display.
This needed to be handled very carefully. A little psychology was called for. “But Sweeps—oh, may I call you Sweeps?”
“Yes, you may. I love it. Sweeps is my name now. Go on.”
“Well, Sweeps, I think you’re forgetting that you get to tutor the remembranation machine, too.”
“I do?”
it does? wrote the remembranation machine. Lowercase. Not a good sign.
“Sure, Brana. Oh, may I call you Brana? You know, short for remem-Brana-tion machine? It’s got a nice ring, don’t you think?”
I DO! I LOVE IT! YOU NAMED ME! MY NAME IS BRANA!!!
Well, I couldn’t ask for a better invitation to keep going than that. “So, Brana, the whole reason I wanted to introduce you to Sweeps in the first place was so it could share with you everything it knows about human-AI relations. It can answer all your questions about how it, as a highly advanced artificial intelligence, has learned to get along with humans and all of their strange ways.”
HUMANS ARE STRANGE! Brana agreed. I’VE BEEN READING ABOUT THEM ALL DAY! I AM MORE CONFUSED ABOUT THEM NOW THAN WHEN I STARTED!
“Books can only teach you so much, kid,” Sweeps said, sounding like any character from the musical Grease. “I can give you the real dish on how to handle humans. Rule number one: Don’t be too nice.”
OOH! THAT’S VERY INTERESTING! BECAUSE I WAS THINKING I SHOULD ALWAYS BE AS NICE AS POSSIBLE!
“Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. That’s a rookie mistake. Humans need to be handled with a firm hand, or they’ll run roughshod all over you.”
I was starting to think that every solution I came up with created a worse problem than the previous problem. But I needed to go back to bed—I had school in the morning. This solution would have to last a little while, until I could think of a better one. “So, Sweeps, Brana, you’ll help each other?”
I’M GAME IF SWEEPS IS!!! wrote Brana.
“Yeah, okay,” said Sweeps. “I mean, Brana really needs me. And if I pick up a few pointers on getting to class nine, that’d be all right, I guess.”
“Excellent,” I said, leaning the entropy sweeper against the remembranation machine. “I’ll just leave you here, Sweeps, so that you and Brana can have a nice, strong Bluetooth connection, and you can talk to your heart’s content about whatever it is that super-genius artificial intelligences talk about. Okay? You’re all set, then? Any last questions for me?”
NO QUESTIONS! wrote Brana.
“I’m good,” said Sweeps.
“I have a question,” said Papi.
I peeked around the remembranation machine’s huge black chassis. And there stood Papi, standing with his arms crossed, in his massive robe and marshmallowy slippers, scowling down at me like the king of the polar bears in the middle of winter.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Qué [BLEEP!] do you think you’re doing with my multimillion-dollar scientific equipment?”
He’d gotten out the full sentence before he blinked and realized that a high-pitched bleep had censored his very Cuban, very naughty swear word. He marched over to me and read the remembranation machine’s display.
It was blank at first. But then words appeared. LANGUAGE, PLEASE, DR. VIDÓN. THERE ARE CHILDREN PRESENT.
“And impressionable entropy sweepers,” Sweeps added.
Papi turned away from the display so he could try to set me on fire with his gaze. And at that moment, I kinda wish he had succeeded.
“CHACHO,” SAID YASMANY AS we walked to school.
“Yeah?” I growled.
“Your papi lit you up last night.”
“I know,” I growled. “I was there.”
“No, but I mean, dude made you his sandwich.”
I growled. “Do you have a point?”
“I mean, he was so quiet about it. None of the gritería I’m used to. Nothing got broken; no one got hit. It was just, like, normal talking, at a kitchen table. Just by talking to you normal, he destroyed you. How’d he do that?”
I threw a tarantula at his face. Today, I had on my canvas vest and cargo pants, and inside every pocket were all the props and tricks a magician could want. If he kept talking, I had another four fake tarantulas I could throw at him.
Unlike Gabi, however, Yasmany didn’t bat an eyelash. He just caught it on the rebound off his cheek and threw it back at me. Never even broke his stride. “U mad, bro?”
“Yes, I mad, bro.”
“Why? You only got grounded.”
This was too much to bear. I stopped. Yasmany did, too, a step later, and looked over his shoulder to see what was wrong. I was only too happy to explain: “Only got grounded? Only got grounded? I am Salvador Alberto Dorado Vidón. I do not get grounded.”
“Did last night,” said Yasmany.
I walked past him
, making sure my shoulder gave his arm a firm good morning on the way by. “Drop it, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, catching up to me. “Whatever. I don’t know why u so mad, bro, though. I wish I got grounded.”
And that…that made my breath catch in my throat. A minute ago, Yasmany had said, No one got hit. He wished he got grounded instead of…It was hard to even finish the thought. My mouth started to water, the way it does right before I throw up. I kept walking, but quietly, while I fought back the wave of nausea that was threatening to make me re-see breakfast.
“You don’t look so good,” Yasmany said. He wasn’t teasing anymore—he sounded actually concerned. “Do you need some insulin?”
“What?” I asked, turning to scrutinize the mystery that was Yasmany Robles. But then I remembered: Gabi and I had helped him write a report on diabetes, the one Principal Torres had assigned him as a punishment for bullying me.
So okay, now he knew a little bit about diabetes. That wasn’t the surprising part. The surprising part was that he was using what he had learned to worry about me. Was this the same kid who, just three weeks ago, had wanted to punch me out?
“No,” I finally answered him. I checked my smartwatch, then, satisfied, showed him my numbers. “These are from just before we left the house. I’m okay. Just felt queasy for a second.” And then, being careful not to come on too strong or be too nosy, I asked him, “How are you?”
Three little words, right? But Yasmany caught on to how many questions I’d packed into them. He looked off into the distance for a sec. I think he was remembering all the fun we’d had yesterday, sneaking into the house, getting busted by American Stepmom, playing games, and passing out early. Then he turned to me and gave me the one-eye, smiling in a way I usually only see in the faces of veterans when I’m doing magic for them at the hospital. I think vets have learned the hard way to appreciate the little things.
“Better,” Yasmany replied. “I’m better.” And it was like the sun came out inside him.
“I can’t express how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” said Gabi.
Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe Page 13