Today I Am Carey

by Martin L Shoemaker

  Then she surprises me again when she adds, “But before I proceed, I need to know if you’d like that.”

  Again she asks me what I would like. I am still unsure what that word means. But I do know one thing. “Yes, I would like to stay with the Owens family. I would be very comfortable there.”

  Dr. Zinta smiles. “Then I’ll make that happen.”

  10. Today I TELL A STORY

  Now I am nobody. Almost always. Without Mildred, there is no pressing need for emulation.

  The cause of the fire was determined to be faulty contract work. There was an insurance settlement. Paul and Susan sold their own home and put both sets of funds into rebuilding and remodeling Mildred’s home and expanding the garden.

  I was part of the settlement. The insurance company offered to return me to the manufacturer and pay off my lease; but Dr. Zinta interceded with MCA management to offer a full purchase and repair option, since I was technically “damaged goods.” They had not expected the Owenses to accept this deal.

  But Dr. Zinta had known better. They’re different, she had said. Because of how you cared for Mildred, they treat you as more than a machine. And I think that’s affecting your neural nets. The law sees you as their property, but they don’t. I am still unsure of her analysis. But I think about it. When I can.

  And though they do not need my services, Dr. Zinta has recommended that I be activated on a regular basis to help me balance my networks. And Millie often asks to play with Mr. Robot, and frequently they indulge her. So they power me up often, and Miss Millie and I explore all the mysteries of the garden. We built a bridge to the far side of the creek; and on the other side, we’re planting daisies. Today she asked me to tell her about her grandmother.

  Today I am Mildred.

  11. Today I Am Santa Claus

  “Mr. Robot, can you help me make sock monkeys?”

  Today I am Mr. Robot. Millie, now aged five years and ten months, stands before my charging station in a closet off the laundry room. As usual, her long, curly brown hair is unkempt, and I glance around to see if there is a comb available. But none is around, so I will have to find one later.

  Millie’s blue denim coveralls are stained with mud, which surprises me. Mud stains are normal for her—she is a very active little girl—but it is early December. There had been snow on the ground the last time I awakened. Millie must have worked hard to find mud at this time of year.

  Millie still calls me “Mr. Robot.” Paul has tried to explain that I am an android, not a robot; but the distinction is too subtle for her to grasp at her age.

  I do not yet rise from my charging station. I run diagnostics to ensure that my empathy and emulation nets are in balance as I ask, “What is a sock monkey?”

  Millie answers, “It’s a monkey made of socks, silly!”

  The Owens family took me to a zoo last summer to help watch Millie. I saw monkeys there, but I still do not understand what Millie says. “So these monkeys wear socks?”

  “No, no, no, they are socks. Their socks are like your skin.”

  My soft silicone skin is a protective wrapper around my metal frame. I can stretch, expand, or compress it as I emulate different people, though I have not had to emulate often since Mildred passed away.

  I rise from my charging station, and Millie backs away to let me exit the small closet. “And why does one make monkeys out of socks?”

  Millie frowns just slightly. A person might not have noticed it, but I am programmed to observe the smallest of human reactions so that I might understand a patient’s needs. “Anna always makes monkeys,” Millie says, “every Christmas.”

  Anna was married last spring before moving to London for her new career. She and Vishal had hoped to return home for the holidays, but they cannot afford the transatlantic flight this year, so soon after their wedding.

  Having no patient with physical maladies, my primary responsibility is now Millie’s mental and emotional well-being. It disturbs my empathy net to see her sad, so I would make sock monkeys for her. But I do not know how: Arts and crafts are not part of my programming. “Show me these sock monkeys, Millie.”

  “Okay!” And with that, her face lights up. Her mood changes so swiftly.

  Millie leads me out toward the main hall. Along the way, we pass the living room, and I stop. “Millie, what is that?”

  The big round side table is missing, and in its place is a large tree. At first I think someone has planted a pine; but on closer examination, I see that it is plastic. Artificial. Like me.

  “It’s a Christmas tree, silly,” Millie answers. “Isn’t it pretty?”

  Pretty is not a concept that I grasp directly, but my empathy net tells me how Millie sees the tree. “It is beautiful,” I say, emulating her reactions.

  “Uh-huh.” Millie stares at it, her wide eyes catching glints from dozens of different colored lights strung around the tree. Along with the lights, many small decorations hang from the tree: a pair of child’s shoes, two brass keys, a clay mushroom, glass animals, and more. “We put it up while you were asleep. Now it needs monkeys around it. Come on!”

  We continue up the broad stairs to the upper floor of the house. Millie runs to the big storage closet in the rear hall, swings wide the double doors, and points to an upper shelf in the back. “They’re up there. Can you see them?”

  I walk into the closet and see many boxes. In Susan’s very regular handwriting, they are marked, “Christmas Decorations.” The three in the farthest corner are further marked: “Monkeys!”

  “You mean these?”

  Millie looks carefully at the boxes. “M . . . O . . . N . . . K . . . E . . . Y . . . S . . . Yes! Monkeys!” She claps her hands.

  “Very good, Millie.” She is very proud of her growing reading skills, and I like to encourage her.

  I pull the three boxes down, and Millie leads me to Anna’s old room. She points at the floor, and I set the boxes down. Then we sit next to them, Millie opens the first box, and she starts pulling out small cloth bundles. Upon closer inspection I see that they have cloth arms and legs and tails, and they have stitched faces. Some have yarn hair, and many have elaborate costumes of felt and cotton, along with buttons and other decorations. They bear only superficial resemblance to the monkeys in the zoo.

  Millie pulls more sock monkeys from the second box. She also pulls out a red pointed hat, with white fake fur trim and a white tassel on the point. She laughs, lifts it up, and puts it on my head. “Well, hello, Santa Claus,” she says.

  Today I am Santa Claus; but I do not know who that is. I search through old personnel records, but I find no file for that name. Nor is there any mention in the medical literature that I have stored. I search online medical databases, and I find the name in a few articles, but no personnel links and no pictures. It will be difficult to emulate this person, but I shall do my best. I cannot adjust my appearance to look like Santa Claus, but I can at least respond to the name. “Hello, Miss Millie.”

  “No, silly!” she says. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Ho, ho, ho!’”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” I say. And then I look at her. “Millie, what does ‘ho, ho, ho’ mean?”

  “It’s how Santa Claus laughs. That’s Santa’s hat, so you’re Santa Claus. Try again.”

  “Ho, ho, ho!”

  Millie shakes her head. “No, deeper. From your big belly.”

  I look down, expanding my chassis outwards to its limits. The warm silicone flesh stretches, giving me a bigger belly. “Ho, ho, ho!” I say in a deeper tone.

  “That’s better,” she says, and then continues. “So Santa, every year Anna makes sock monkeys to put around the Christmas tree. But now she’s in London . . .”

  “I know that, Millie.”

  “So . . . We gotta have sock monkeys! Mommy and Daddy say we’ve got enough monkeys. They don’t understand! So if we’re gonna have new monkeys this year, I’m gonna have to make them. But I don’t know how!”

  I pick up one of th
e monkeys. “It looks like some soft material stuffed inside a sock.”

  “Of course it does. That’s why it’s a sock monkey!” Millie giggles. “I know what they look like, I don’t know how to make them!” She opens the third box, and inside are an array of varicolored socks, patches of felt, balls of yarn, cotton batting, and buttons.

  “I would guess that you use these pieces, and you make them look like a monkey.”

  “I know, but . . . I can’t sew! And I’m not supposed to use scissors and needles by myself.”

  At last I understand what Millie asks for. While I am not programmed for arts and crafts, I am a Medical Care Android. I am programmed for emergency medicine, including sutures and scissors.

  But that does not help me to devise monkey designs. I believe that I can replicate any of the monkeys that I see, but I think Millie wants new monkeys. I cannot design monkeys like Anna does. Anna seems always to improvise, to apply judgment to what she finds in the material. Judgment is a difficult concept for me. It comes so naturally for humans. Binary comes naturally to me. A simple rule I can follow. Yes, no, that I understand, but “good enough” confuses me. I can understand rejecting all flaws, I can understand accepting all things regardless of flaws; but the idea that some flaws are acceptable and others are not—when to every sense I have they seem similar, even identical—is a constant source of confusion to me.

  Then I wonder: What if I am Anna? I load her profile into my emulation net, giving me her perspective as best I understand it. Suddenly I see the potential in each sock, each scrap of fabric. I am not really creating, I simply draw analogies from my memories and my surroundings, and I see ways to represent those analogies in sock monkeys.

  But I also see something more important: Anna’s care for Millie. “Well, Millie,” I say, “I know what to do now. But I think it would be better if I taught you how to cut out the pieces and to sew them. Then we can make sock monkeys together. Wouldn’t that be better?”

  “Oh, yes!” She jumps up and hugs me. “Yes, that’s what I want, Mr. Robot!” Then she looks at my hat. “I mean, yes, Santa Claus!”

  I answer, “Ho, ho, ho!”

  When Paul comes home from work, he looks into Anna’s room and sees us surrounded by fabric scraps and three new monkeys. “What’s this?” he asks. “A monkey factory?”

  “Daddy!” Millie springs up and runs to hug Paul. He grabs her, picks her up, and hugs her. When he sets her down, he looks at the stains on his suit. “Ew! Mud! Where did you find mud in December?”

  Millie giggles. “The creek thawed. I was looking for frogs.” Millie likes all animals, but frogs are her favorites, especially when they metamorphose from tadpoles to adults.

  “It’s the wrong time of year for frogs. They’re sleeping underwater, waiting to wake up in the spring. If you disturb them right now, they’ll be cranky. You have to let them sleep now.” He gently touches the mud on his jacket. “I’m going to have to send this to the cleaners. You two clean up. Then Frog Girl, you get a bath and get ready for dinner.”

  When I return to the laundry room, Paul is there, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. He is putting his suit into a bag for the cleaners.

  As I slide past Paul to get to my charging station, he holds up a hand. “Wait!” I stop, and he reaches up and pulls the red hat from my head. “You forgot this.”

  “Thank you.” Then before I turn away, a question occurs to me. “Sir?”

  Paul shakes his head. “Caretaker, I told you: Call me Paul. I’m not comfortable being called ‘sir’ in my own home.”

  “Yes, Paul.” I file another reminder. Then I continue, “Can you introduce me to Santa Claus so that I may emulate him properly?”

  Paul blinks, and then he laughs. “Introduce you to . . . Millie told you about Santa Claus?”

  “Yes, she expected me to emulate him. She gave me his hat, but I have never seen him around.”

  “And you won’t, caretaker. He’s not real.”

  I pause. “You mean he passed away?”

  Paul laughs again, louder this time. “No, he’s an imaginary character.”

  “So he is one of her delusions.”

  Paul frowns at that. “It’s not a delusion, it’s . . . Do you understand fiction?”

  “Yes: things that people say and write that are not real.”

  Paul shakes his head. “It’s more complicated: stories that people tell and write that they know aren’t real, but they enjoy them anyway.”

  “I do not understand, Paul, they enjoy falsehood?”

  “In safe, controlled circumstances, yes. Your emulation net lets you act like someone. That is a falsehood, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Paul, but I do it to comfort a patient.”

  “And to understand. Fiction is our empathy net. It lets us understand other people and other experiences.”

  “So Millie knows that Santa Claus is a fiction? And she wants me to emulate that for her?”

  Paul shakes his head. “No, she believes he’s real.”

  “But then why have you not told her? She deserves the truth.”

  Paul sighs. “That’s an even more complicated question.” He pauses, and I can tell that the topic is difficult. “For generations, many parents have told their children this story of Santa Claus, a generous man who surprises them with gifts at the Christmas season. You’re aware of Christmas, yes?”

  “I know that it was a calendar date that was important to Mildred. She spoke often of the birth of Christ on that date. I never met him, either.”

  Paul bursts into laughter, then puts his hand on his mouth. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t kind.”

  “You cannot be unkind to me, Paul, as long as you do not damage me.”

  “Yes, but laughing at you . . . It’s like acting superior to you for what you don’t know.”

  “But you are superior to me, according to my protocols. If the only way to save you is to put myself in danger, I must do so. As I did with your mother in the house fire.”

  Paul looks thoughtfully at me. “That was just programming? Or did you do it because you worried about her? Because you cared?”

  My nets flicker briefly. There is no clear language I can use to explain, but I try. “Dr. Jansons suggests that there is no difference. I knew Mildred would die if I did not act. Is that worry? My programming compelled me to save her life. Is that caring? I had no time to analyze, I just did what was right.”

  Paul steps closer, puts his hand on my shoulder, and looks in my eyes. “You’re an unusual android, aren’t you, caretaker?”

  “Dr. Jansons says I am unique.”

  “Unique?” Paul rubs his chin. “You did the right thing. I’m grateful, and I don’t think you’re inferior to any human. Not where it matters.”

  I am unsure how to respond, so I return to my earlier line of inquiry. “So you have told Millie this Santa Claus fiction as if it were real?”

  “Yes. It feeds her imagination. You’ve never been programmed for child development, have you?”

  I search my internal catalog. “No, Paul. Should I download references on that topic?”

  “I think you should. Children like to pretend—in your terms, to emulate. It’s recreation, but it’s also a way they learn.”

  I try to take this in. “So emulation is imagining.”

  “That’s one way to think of it, yes.”

  “So Paul, I have an imagination?”

  “If that’s not imagination, I can’t tell the difference.”

  12. Today I Have a New Directive

  It is three days later when next I wake in my charging station. My processors have been running routine maintenance tasks throughout, balancing my nets and updating my databases; but the unique awareness, the tension between empathy and emulation that is me, only emerges when a person is present to engage my empathy net. And so I have “slept.”

  Now I wake to see Susan, Paul’s wife, lifting her finger from my activation button. “Good morning, caretake
r,” she says.

  I glimpse through the laundry room window that it is still dark outside. My internal clock says that it is five-thirty a.m., early for Susan to be up.

  “Good morning, Susan.” She backs away, I stand up, and then she hugs me. Over the year, as Susan has come to rely on me more, her affectionate nature has encompassed me despite me being mechanical. My empathy net tells me that she sees in me a symbol of stability.

  I return the hug, since I know that comforts her. Then she pulls away, but she leaves a hand on my shoulder. “Caretaker, there’s a problem at my school. Nothing major, but as the principal I need to get there right away. Can you get Millie ready for school?”

  “Of course. I would be happy to.”

  Gently her hand slides away. “And . . . I may have to do follow-up work tonight. Normally in the afternoon I have Millie take the bus to my school, and then I pick her up in day care when I’m done for the day. But I could be very late tonight. Could you meet her at the bus stop and watch her until Paul gets home?”

  “I am sorry, Susan,” I reply, and I try to explain. “It is the nature of my programming. Once no one is around, I revert to core protocols. Meeting the bus is outside that routine. I can set myself a reminder, but I cannot be sure how my ‘sleeping’ self will respond to it. With no assigned duties and no one around, I will be ‘asleep.’”

  “Oh,” Susan says, “I forgot.” Then she adds, “Do you have to sleep?”

  “With no assigned duties, yes, that is the way I am designed.”

  “Oh.” Then her eyes widen. “What if I assign you the duty of staying awake to care for Millie whenever you don’t need sleep for maintenance?”

  There’s a brief flash across my systems: puzzlement at this new concept.