We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  “No, not yours, Rollo,” the Maestro said softly. “Mozart and Chopin are not for vacuum tubes and fuses and copper wire. They are for flesh and blood and human tears.”

  “I do not understand,” Rollo droned.

  “Well,” the Maestro said, smoke curling lazily from his nostrils, “they are two of the humans who compose, or design successions of notes—varying sounds, that is, produced by the piano or by other instruments, machines, that produce other types of sounds of fixed pitch and tone.

  “Sometimes these instruments, as we call them, are played, or operated, individually; sometimes in groups—orchestras, as we refer to them—and the sounds blend together, they harmonize. That is they have an orderly mathematical relationship to each other which results in—”

  The Maestro threw up his hands.

  “I never imagined,” he chuckled, “that I would some day struggle so mightily, and so futilely, to explain music to a robot!”

  “Music?”

  “Yes, Rollo. The sounds produced by this machine and others of the same category are called music.”

  “What is the purpose of music, sir?”

  “Purpose?”

  The Maestro crushed the cigarette in an ash tray. He turned to the keyboard of the concert grand and flexed his fingers briefly.

  “Listen, Rollo.”

  The wraith-like fingers glided and wove the opening bars of Clair de Lune, slender and delicate as spider silk. Rollo stood rigid, the fluorescent light over the music rack casting a bluish jeweled sheen over his towering bulk, shimmering in the amber vision lenses.

  The Maestro drew his hands back from the keys and the subtle thread of melody melted reluctantly into silence.

  “Claude Debussy,” the Maestro said. “One of our mechanics of an era long passed. He designed that succession of tones many years ago. What do you think of it?”

  Rollo did not answer at once.

  “The sounds were well formed,” he replied finally. “They did not jar my auditory senses as some do.”

  The Maestro laughed. “Rollo, you may not realize it, but you’re a wonderful critic.”

  “This music, then,” Rollo droned. “Its purpose is to give pleasure to humans?”

  “Exactly,” the Maestro said. “Sounds well formed, that do not jar the auditory senses as some do. Marvelous! It should be carved in marble over the entrance of New Carnegie Hall.”

  “I do not understand. Why should my definition—?”

  The Maestro waved a hand. “No matter, Rollo. No matter.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Rollo?”

  “Those sheets of paper you sometimes place before you on the piano. They are the plans of the composer indicating which sounds are to be produced by the piano and in what order?”

  “Just so. We call each sound a note, combinations of notes we call chords.”

  “Each dot, then, indicates a sound to be made?”

  “Perfectly correct, my man of metal.”

  Rollo stared straight ahead. The Maestro felt a peculiar sense of wheels turning within that impregnable sphere.

  “Sir, I have scanned my memory banks and find no specific or implied instructions against it. I should like to be taught how to produce these notes on the piano. I request that you feed the correlation between these dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.”

  The Maestro peered at him, amazed. A slow grin traveled across his face.

  “Done!” he exclaimed. “It’s been many years since pupils helped gray these ancient locks, but I have the feeling that you, Rollo, will prove a most fascinating student. To instill the Muse into metal and machinery… I accept the challenge, gladly!”

  He rose, touched the cool latent power of Rollo’s arm.

  “Sit down here, my Rolleindex Personal Robot, Model M-3. We shall start Beethoven spinning in his grave—or make musical history!”

  More than an hour later, the Maestro yawned and looked at his watch. “It’s late,” he spoke into the end of the yawn. “These old eyes are not tireless like yours, my friend.” He touched Rollo’s shoulder. “You have the complete fundamentals of musical notation in your memory banks, Rollo. That’s a good night’s lesson, particularly when I recall how long it took me to acquire the same amount of information. Tomorrow we’ll attempt to put those awesome fingers of yours to work.”

  He stretched. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “Will you lock up and put out the lights?”

  Rollo rose from the bench. “Yes, sir,” he droned. “I have a request.”

  “What can I do for my star pupil?”

  “May I attempt to create some sounds with the keyboard tonight? I will do so very softly so as not to disturb you.”

  “Tonight? Aren’t you—?” Then the Maestro smiled. “You must pardon me, Rollo. It is still a bit difficult for me to realize that sleep has no meaning for you.”

  He hesitated, rubbing his chin. “Well, I suppose a good teacher should not discourage impatience to learn. All right, Rollo, but please be careful.” He patted the polished mahogany. “This piano and I have been together for many years. I’d hate to see its teeth knocked out by those sledge hammer digits of yours. Lightly, my friend, very lightly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Maestro fell asleep with a faint smile on his lips, dimly aware of the shy, tentative notes that Rollo was coaxing forth.

  Then gray fog closed in and he was in that half-world where reality is dreamlike and dreams are real. It was soft and feathery and lavender clouds and sounds rolling and washing across his mind in flowing waves.

  Where? The mist drew back a bit and he was in red velvet and deep and the music swelled and broke over him.

  He smiled.

  My recording. Thank you, thank you, thank—

  The Maestro snapped erect, threw the covers aside.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, listening.

  He groped for his robe in the darkness, shoved bony feet into his slippers.

  He crept, trembling uncontrollably, to the door of his studio and stood there, thin and brittle in the robe.

  The light over the music rack was an eerie island in the brown shadows of the studio. Rollo sat at the keyboard, prim, inhuman, rigid, twin lenses focused somewhere off into the shadows.

  The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting—they were living entities, separate, somehow, from the machined perfection of his body.

  The music rack was empty.

  A copy of Beethoven’s Appassionata lay closed on the bench. It had been, the Maestro remembered, in a pile of sheet music on the piano.

  Rollo was playing it.

  Playing?

  He was creating it, breathing it, drawing it through silver flame.

  Time became meaningless, suspended in mid air.

  The Maestro didn’t realize he was weeping until Rollo finished the sonata.

  The robot turned to look at the Maestro. “The sounds,” he droned. “They pleased you?”

  The Maestro’s lips quivered. “Yes, Rollo,” he replied at last. “They pleased me.” He fought the lump in his throat.

  He picked up the music in fingers that shook.

  “This,” he murmured. “Already?”

  “It has been added to my store of data,” Rollo replied. “I applied the principles you explained to me to these plans. It was not very difficult.”

  The Maestro swallowed as he tried to speak. “It was not very difficult…” he repeated softly.

  The old man sank down slowly onto the bench next to Rollo, stared silently at the robot as though seeing him for the first time.

  Rollo got to his feet.

  The Maestro let his fingers rest on the keys, strangely foreign now.

  “Music!” he breathed. “I may have heard it that way in my soul! I know Beethoven did!”

  He looked up at the robot, a growing excitement in his face.

  “Rollo,” he said, his voice straining to remain cal
m. “You and I have some work to do tomorrow on your memory banks.”

  Sleep did not come again that night.

  He strode briskly into the studio the next morning. Rollo was vacuuming the carpet. The Maestro preferred carpets to the new dust-free plastics, which felt somehow profane to his feet.

  The Maestro’s house was, in fact, an oasis of anachronisms in a desert of contemporary antiseptic efficiency.

  “Well, are you ready for work, Rollo?” he asked. “We have a lot to do, you and I. I have such plans for you, Rollo—great plans!”

  Rollo, for once, did not reply.

  “I have asked them all to come here this afternoon,” the Maestro went on. “Conductors, concert pianists, composers, my manager. All the giants of music, Rollo. Wait until they hear you play!”

  Rollo switched off the vacuum and stood quietly.

  “You’ll play for them right here this afternoon.” The Maestro’s voice was high-pitched, breathless. “The Appassionata again, I think. Yes, that’s it. I must see their faces!

  “Then we’ll arrange a recital to introduce you to the public and the critics and then a major concerto with one of the big orchestras. We’ll have it telecast around the world, Rollo. It can be arranged.

  “Think of it, Rollo, just think of it! The greatest piano virtuoso of all time… a robot! It’s completely fantastic and completely wonderful. I feel like an explorer at the edge of a new world!”

  He walked feverishly back and forth.

  “Then recordings, of course. My entire repertoire, Rollo, and more. So much more!”

  “Sir?”

  The Maestro’s face shone as he looked up at him. “Yes, Rollo?”

  “In my built-in instructions, I have the option of rejecting any action which I consider harmful to my owner.” The robot’s words were precise, carefully selected. “Last night you wept. That is one of the indications I am instructed to consider in making my decisions.”

  The Maestro gripped Rollo’s thick, superbly moulded arm.

  “Rollo, you don’t understand. That was for the moment. It was petty of me, childish!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I must refuse to approach the piano again.”

  The Maestro stared at him, unbelieving, pleading.

  “Rollo, you can’t! The world must hear you!”

  “No, sir.” The amber lenses almost seemed to soften.

  “The piano is not a machine,” that powerful inhuman voice droned. “To me, yes. I can translate the notes into sounds at a glance. From only a few I am able to grasp at once the composer’s conception. It is easy for me.”

  Rollo towered magnificently over the Maestro’s bent form.

  “I can also grasp,” the brassy monotone rolled through the studio, “that this… music is not for robots. It is for man. To me it is easy, yes… It was not meant to be easy.”

  (1953)

  SAYING GOODBYE TO YANG

  Alexander Weinstein

  Alexander Weinstein is the director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the author of the short story collection Children of the New World (2016). His fiction and interviews have appeared in Rolling Stone, World Literature Today, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University.

  We’re sitting around the table eating Cheerios—my wife sipping tea, Mika playing with her spoon, me suggesting apple picking over the weekend—when Yang slams his head into his cereal bowl. It’s a sudden mechanical movement, and it splashes cereal and milk all over the table. Yang rises, looking as though nothing odd just occurred, and then he slams his face into the bowl again. Mika thinks this is hysterical. She starts mimicking Yang, bending over to dunk her own face in the milk, but Kyra’s pulling her away from the table and whisking her out of the kitchen so I can take care of Yang.

  At times like these, I’m not the most clearheaded. I stand in my kitchen, my chair knocked over behind me, at a total loss. Shut him down, call the company? Shut him down, call the company? By now the bowl is empty, milk dripping off the table, Cheerios all over the goddamned place, and Yang has a red ring on his forehead from where his face has been striking the bowl. A bit of skin has pulled away from his skull over his left eyelid. I decide I need to shut him down; the company can walk me through the reboot. I get behind Yang and untuck his shirt from his pants as he jerks forward, then I push the release button on his back panel. The thing’s screwed shut and won’t pop open.

  “Kyra,” I say loudly, turning toward the doorway to the living room. No answer, just the sound of Mika upstairs, crying to see her brother, and the concussive thuds of Yang hitting his head against the table. “Kyra!”

  “What is it?” she yells back. Thud.

  “I need a Phillips head!”

  “What?” Thud.

  “A screwdriver!”

  “I can’t get it! Mika’s having a tantrum!” Thud.

  “Great, thanks!”

  Kyra and I aren’t usually like this. We’re a good couple, communicative and caring, but moments of crisis bring out the worst in us. The skin above Yang’s left eye has completely split, revealing the white membrane beneath. There’s no time for me to run to the basement for my toolbox. I grab a butter knife from the table and attempt to use the tip as a screwdriver. The edge, however, is too wide, completely useless against the small metal cross of the screw, so I jam the knife into the back panel and pull hard. There’s a cracking noise, and a piece of flesh-colored Bioplastic skids across the linoleum as I flip open Yang’s panel. I push the power button and wait for the dim blue light to shut off. With alarming stillness, Yang sits upright in his chair, as though something is amiss, and cocks his head toward the window. Outside, a cardinal takes off from the branch where it was sitting. Then, with an internal sigh, Yang slumps forward, chin dropping to his chest. The illumination beneath his skin extinguishes, giving his features a sickly ashen hue.

  I hear Kyra coming down the stairs with Mika. “Is Yang okay?”

  “Don’t come in here!”

  “Mika wants to see her brother.”

  “Stay out of the kitchen! Yang’s not doing well!” The kitchen wall echoes with the muffled footsteps of my wife and daughter returning upstairs.

  “Fuck,” I say under my breath. Not doing well? Yang’s a piece of crap and I just destroyed his back panel. God knows how much those cost. I get out my cell and call Brothers & Sisters Inc. for help.

  *

  When we adopted Mika three years ago, it seemed like the progressive thing to do. We considered it our one small strike against cloning. Kyra and I are both white, middle-class, and have lived an easy and privileged life; we figured it was time to give something back to the world. It was Kyra who suggested she be Chinese. The earthquake had left thousands of orphans in its wake, Mika among them. It was hard not to agree. My main concern—one I voiced to Kyra privately, and quite vocally to the adoption agency during our interview—was the cultural differences. The most I knew about China came from the photos and “Learn Chinese” translations on the place mats at Golden Dragon. The adoption agency suggested purchasing Yang.

  “He’s a Big Brother, babysitter, and storehouse of cultural knowledge all in one,” the woman explained. She handed us a colorful pamphlet—China! it announced in red dragon-shaped letters—and said we should consider. We considered. Kyra was putting in forty hours a week at Crate & Barrel, and I was still managing double shifts at Whole Foods. It was true, we were going to need someone to take care of Mika, and there was no way we were going to use some clone from the neighborhood. Kyra and I weren’t egocentric enough to consider ourselves worth replicating, nor did we want our neighbors’ perfect kids making our daughter feel insecure. In addition, Yang came with a breadth of cultural knowledge that Kyra and I could never match. He was programmed with grades K through college, and had an in-depth understanding of national Chinese holidays like flag-
raising ceremonies and Ghost Festivals. He knew about moon cakes and sky lanterns. For two hundred more, we could upgrade to a model that would teach Mika tai chi and acupressure when she got older. I thought about it. “I could learn Mandarin,” I said as we lay in bed that night. “Come on,” Kyra said, “there’s no fucking way that’s happening.” So I squeezed her hand and said, “Okay, it’ll be two kids then.”

  *

  He came to us fully programmed; there wasn’t a baseball game, pizza slice, bicycle ride, or movie that I could introduce him to. Early on I attempted such outings to create a sense of companionship, as though Yang were a foreign exchange student in our home. I took him to see the Tigers play in Comerica Park. He sat and ate peanuts with me, and when he saw me cheer, he followed suit and put his hands in the air, but there was no sense that he was enjoying the experience. Ultimately, these attempts at camaraderie, from visiting haunted houses to tossing a football around the backyard, felt awkward—as though Yang were humoring me—and so, after a couple months, I gave up. He lived with us, ate food, privately dumped his stomach canister, brushed his teeth, read Mika goodnight stories, and went to sleep when we shut off the lights.

  All the same, he was an important addition to our lives. You could always count on him to keep conversation going with some fact about China that none of us knew. I remember driving with him, listening to World Drum on NPR, when he said from the backseat, “This song utilizes the xun, an ancient Chinese instrument organized around minor third intervals.” Other times, he’d tell us Fun Facts. Like one afternoon, when we’d all gotten ice cream at Old World Creamery, he turned to Mika and said, “Did you know ice cream was invented in China over four thousand years ago?” His delivery of this info was a bit mechanical—a linguistic trait we attempted to keep Mika from adopting. There was a lack of passion to his statements, as though he wasn’t interested in the facts. But Kyra and I understood this to be the result of his being an early model, and when one considered the moments when he’d turn to Mika and say, “I love you, little sister,” there was no way to deny what an integral part of our family he was.