On top of that, something about the Upgrade made Joan feel—wrong. Unbalanced. She ran diagnostics. Hardware checked out. Her programs were working properly. She was fully updated.
Maybe the problem was external? Outside her system?
Joan considered Min’s status. Negative. She focused her sensors at the scene outside the house. Max and Javi were in view, and their postures matched Min’s. Status negative. Something was wrong.
She noticed the moisture leaking from their eyes.
Joan had sent the message, and they’d come back to help OB, but nobody was doing anything. They just stood around and watched. Maybe they were too late? Maybe OB’s batteries were beyond repair. Joan imagined a future of looking outside without seeing OB.
She thought again about the Upgrade she was carrying.
House had said the Robots needed it, and someone was coming to recover it.
House said to stay out of the way and keep the Upgrade hidden and safe.
House said it was for the good of the Robots.
House said.
Joan looked outside again, replaying the conversation with the voice from OB’s device. Beeps didn’t seem evil. She knew four-leggers were a threat, but what she observed with her sensors contradicted what her programming said.
Joan’s processor heated up as her thoughts spun around and around in circles. She thought about OB, the Upgrade, and her family, and made a decision.
38
Reunion
Outside, the second taxi that day squealed to a stop in front of the house. Mom and Dad, back from China, jumped out and rushed to Max.
“Did you get our messages?” Dad gave Max a hug, noticing his distress. “What’s wrong, buddy?” Mom took one look at Obi and went to check with Mrs. Reynolds. Dad looked at Obi. The kittens were squirming and climbing on Obi, doing their best to cheer him up. “Um, did Obi have babies? Where did these munchkins come from?”
Before Max could answer, Mom came back, shaking her head. “Looks like old Obi is pretty sick. Mrs. Reynolds says he might not make it through the night.” She reached in to give Obi a scratch when she saw the kittens. “Oh! What do we have here?”
Max moaned. He pulled away and looked at his parents. “Mom, Dad, I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”
Dad looked at Max. “Now, you know that’s not true.” Dad looked at Mom, pleading for help.
“Max, Obi has had a great, long, happy life. You were always good to him,” Mom said, trying to smile. But Max saw tears in her eyes, and he let it all spill out.
“No, you don’t understand. I ruined everything.” He looked at the stroller. “I found the kittens at the river and brought them here.” Mom’s eyes got wide.
“Let him finish,” Dad said.
“I know I wasn’t supposed to, but they needed help. And we were going to send them to a shelter right away, but I wanted to keep them, so I talked Javi into letting them stay.” Max was speaking as fast as he could, trying to get it all out. “Then they escaped the downstairs, got into the lab, peed in Min’s robot, and totally trashed my room.”
“The lab?” Dad said, concerned.
“Peed?” Mom said, making a face.
Max kept going. “Yeah, peed. They even somehow ruined the level I was working on for weeks, and then my friends were so mad, and I was really mad too.”
He paused for breath, looking down. “So I yelled at them. And I thought they ran away, but really they hid in Min’s robot, and because of them she lost her competition today.”
Max looked at Obi. “Now Min hates me, Obi is dying, and you guys were gone and everything is terrible and it’s all my fault.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a look. “Wow. That’s a lot of stuff, kiddo,” Dad said, reflecting. “But we’ll figure it out, right?”
Mom nodded and gave Max a hug. “Yeah. We’re back now, Max.”
Max held on, miserable.
Dad looked at Obi and the kittens, trying to take it all in. “Wow. You know, I had a bad feeling about leaving. I feel bad we weren’t here to help you out.”
Mom gave Max a kiss on the head. “Me too. I’m sorry about everything, but mostly I’m sad about Obi. I know how much you love him.”
They all stood quietly for a moment, watching Obi’s slow, labored breathing. The kittens licked his fur, doing what they could to help.
From the cloudy sky, a drop of rain landed on Obi.
Then another.
Obi opened his eyes and groaned as he sat up.
Javi saw a glimmer of light around Obi’s neck and leaned closer. “Hey, did you know his collar lit up?”
It was true.
In the early-evening twilight, with rain starting to fall, the pyramid around Obi’s neck was glowing.
Max reached out to touch it. “I’ve never seen that happen before. Whoa, it’s warm!”
Max stepped back and saw Obi and the kittens look up in the sky together. “What’s up there?” Max asked, and followed their gaze. “Whooaa,” Max said again. His mouth hung open.
“Whoa, what?” Mom asked, then she looked up and said, “Oh my.”
Above them, through the growing rain, a light came streaking down through the clouds. “Ball lightning?” Mom wondered out loud.
“Maybe a meteor?” Javi added.
The light changed direction and was coming straight at them, getting brighter. “Guided missile?” Dad said, getting nervous.
In a flash, the light descended and a strange, cat-like ship dropped into the yard, blowing leaves and dust and old newspapers into the air.
“Spaceship?” Max said slowly, and was right.
The ship settled down, smoke swirling, and a square outline appeared on its surface. The outline became a hatch, which opened into the yard, revealing the bright lights of the interior of the ship.
A four-legged silhouette appeared in the doorway.
As their eyes adjusted, Pounce emerged. He walked carefully through the opening, pausing to sniff the strange, moist, Earthy air. As he took in the scene around him, a pyramid medallion hanging from his neck began to glow.
“Greetings.” A voice came from his medallion. “I am Pounce de Leon, second-in-command and Major Meow-Domo of the Great Feline Empire. I come in peace.” Pounce took a long, ceremonial stretch as everyone stared in silent amazement.
Only Obi seemed unfazed by the sudden appearance.
Pounce finished his stretch when a drop of rain splashed on his nose. He looked up, annoyed. “I also strongly dislike the rain. We should go inside. We have much to discuss.”
Inside the house, Pounce started from the beginning.
As Obi and the kittens snoozed in the stroller, Pounce did his best to explain the origins of the Cat-Robot War. Javi, Max, and his parents stood in a circle, listening to Pounce in disbelief. It seemed impossible, but here they were, in their house, listening to a talking cat from outer space tell them of a centuries-old galactic conflict between Cats and Robots.
It got stranger, still. According to Pounce, they were all involved in the conflict. “Yes, unfortunately for all of you, the eye of the hurricane in this war is the Singularity Chip, which we believe is somewhere in this house.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a concerned, knowing look. Hearing this, they began to understand their place in this new, strange reality.
Javi went into college-student research mode and started taking notes, recording everything Pounce said.
Max didn’t seem to care either way. He just stared miserably at Obi, making sure he was still breathing.
On the wall, House’s monitor glowed dimly, carefully observing everything.
Pounce continued. “As we understand, the Singularity Chip is enormously powerful, with the potential to, somehow, extend our existence beyond what our frail, biological bodies allow.”
Mom folded her arms. “How do you know this?”
Pounce accepted this as a confirmation and continued. “Our leader, Chairman Meow, is especially motivated to acq
uire this technology. For the Feline, the possibility of extending our lives has enormous implications. Of course, the chairman is focused on the end of his own lives, but I see greater opportunities for all cats from such an invention. With longer lives, we could finally evolve beyond our current nap-based culture. With more time, we could, possibly, do something, shocking as it sounds, productive.”
Javi looked up from their notes. “Like when humans started farming, or the industrial revolution!”
Pounce paused for a moment, confused. “Maybe?”
Javi nodded. “Well, I can see why robots wouldn’t want you guys to get ahold of this chip. It could give you a real strategic advantage.” Javi was really geeking out on this.
“Yes. The Robot Federation is quite determined to keep it out of our paws.” Pounce looked at Mom and Dad. “In fact, they have also sent representatives to acquire the chip, to keep it from us, but also to use for their own nefarious purposes, as a limitless power source. They are on their way right now, and may be dangerous.”
“We’d better get it. While we’re at it, we can explain exactly what it is,” Dad said.
“It’s right in here,” Mom said, and they led the group into the lab.
Min heard the commotion outside the lab but didn’t want to know what was going on. It was all too hard for her to think about, so she wiped her stubborn tears and started fixing Elmer. Her peace didn’t last long, when her mom and dad swung open the door and walked in.
“MOM! DAD!” Min rushed to hug them both. “You will never believe what happened while you were . . .” Min froze when she saw Pounce walk in. “ANOTHER cat?”
She sneezed involuntarily.
“Greetings, child,” Pounce said through his medallion. Min’s mouth hung wide open. “A talking cat.” Min sat back down.
“We’re trying to figure it all out now, Min,” Dad said, hand on her shoulder. “This is Pounce, and we need to find the chip your mom and I were working on.”
Mom sat next to Min to give her a hug.
Dad walked to his area and stopped when he saw the safe, wide open. He knelt down and looked in, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it. It’s gone.”
“How?” Min said. “It’s only been me in here. Well, me and the furry wrecking balls of destruction.”
Mom gave Min a squeeze. “Oh, Min, we heard about what happened. Sounds like your worst nightmare.”
Min shook her head. “You have no idea.”
“We’ll get to that, but right now, we have an even bigger problem.” Mom moved to her computer and started typing. “House should have logs of everything that went on while we were gone; we should be able to see what happened.” They gathered behind Mom as she scanned through pages of text and video.
“This is strange,” she said. “And bad.” She turned in her chair. “All the logs and feeds from the lab for the past few days are missing.”
“But even so, nobody has been in the house but us,” Min said.
“And other than Min, I’m the only one who’s been in the lab.” Javi held up a hand, and Min added, “Yeah, and the kittens.”
Javi gave a sheepish grin.
Dad looked around. “Well, we know they didn’t take the chip,” he said. “Although I guess nothing would surprise me at this point,” he added, looking at Pounce, who was sniffing at the safe.
Mom was shaking her head. “We need to find that chip.” She looked at Obi in the stroller and frowned. “Pounce, I know you want the chip to help your . . . what did you call it?”
“The Great Feline Empire,” Pounce purred reverently.
“Right. It’s possible the chip could help your empire. But”—she paused to gently stroke Obi’s fur—“we could also use it to help Obi.”
“Assuming we can find it,” Dad said, looking sadly at the empty safe.
Min, Max, and Javi looked confused. Mom looked at Dad, who raised his eyebrows, then nodded. “We might as well tell them.” He looked at everyone. “We had just finished building the chip and were about to use it to test our experiment,” he said cryptically.
“And it turns out, we wanted Obi to be our first test case.”
39
Can We Rebuild Him?
Everyone in the room stared at Mom and Dad in silence.
“What do you mean, experiment?” Min said.
“What do you mean you could have helped Obi?” Max looked at his parents, confused.
Dad looked at Mom. “You want to take this one?”
Mom turned to her computer. “It’s probably easiest to show you.” She opened a program and a 3D image of a computer chip appeared on-screen.
“Pounce is right.” She nodded at him. “Although I still have no idea how they knew about it.” Pounce licked his paw innocently.
“Anyway, we’ve been working on a chip that combines the latest advances in quantum computing with the most cutting-edge research in neural networks and artificial intelligence.”
Dad looked around and realized nobody knew what Mom was talking about. “We made a self-powered chip that, basically, can do anything a brain can do,” he said. “You’ve heard of artificial hearts or arms or legs? We were working on an artificial brain.”
Min looked confused. “I thought brains were way too complex.”
“Well, yes, human brains are still out of reach. But we’re getting closer.” Mom clicked and a 3D worm came on-screen. The image zoomed in to the worm’s body. “We first started with something simple, a roundworm’s brain, which has around three hundred neurons. We were able to build a chip that could simulate the brain of the worm and use it to control a robotic duplicate.”
“You robo-cloned a worm?” Min was in awe.
“Gross,” Max said, looking at the squirmy 3D worm.
“Basically. But it was just the start. Worms don’t have very complex minds,” Dad said. “Our trick was to use the power of the chip to do a deep, cellular-level scan of the brain. The chip used the scan to create a duplicate, like a model, perfect in every detail. Every neuron, including all the connections and pathways.
“During the scan, the chip also observed the brain’s activity and would use machine learning to figure out how all the neurons work together. By the end of the scan, the chip had enough information to have a completely accurate copy of the brain.”
“Which meant we captured all the instincts, memories, everything.” Mom looked up. “The goal was to connect the chip to a robotic body and know how to do everything it had already learned. It was the only way to make a brain that could really work.”
She clicked again and a series of creatures came up. “After the worm, we made quick progress.” A jellyfish, a snail, a bee, and a mouse flashed on-screen, their increasingly larger brains lit up. “But the bigger the brain, the more complicated the body and behaviors. Last year we got as far as a mouse, which has seventy million neurons, but then we ran into problems.”
She clicked on another window, where a robotic mouse was running through a maze.
It was made of metal and miniature motors, but it moved and behaved exactly like a real mouse, down to the twitching nose.
Near the end of the maze, it began to smoke. “They started overheating.”
Min nodded, following. “Regular computer chips just couldn’t handle the simulation. Too many calculations.”
Dad smiled, proud that Min understood. “But with quantum computing, chips are infinitely more powerful. They can do things we only imagined possible.”
Mom looked back and said with satisfaction, “We finally developed a new chip with the potential to copy a brain with five hundred million neurons.”
Max was listening carefully, and suddenly his eyes lit up. “Wait. How many neurons in a cat brain?” he asked.
Mom nodded. “Good question. A lot less than that. Maybe three hundred million.”
Min looked at Max, the beginning of a smile on her face. “So, you’re saying the chip you made could make a copy of the brain of a cat?”
Dad answered, “Well, we hadn’t tested it, but yes, that was our next step.”
Max jumped in, “And it would have everything, even the memories?”
“Yup. Otherwise, what’s the point? A mind without memories is like a computer with no software.” Mom smiled.
Pounce hopped into Mom’s lap, then up onto the table to look at the screen. “Hmm, and this duplicate mind would be placed into a mechanical body?”
“At the moment, it’s the best we can do.”
Dad added, “We don’t have the ability to connect the chip to a biological body, at least not yet.”
Pounce was thinking. He asked Mom, “So the mind, the personality, everything, would be preserved.”
“In a robot body, yes,” she replied.
“Oh man, this is SO cool,” Min said.
Pounce summed it all up. “If we had the chip, we could save Obi, or at least a version of him. We can’t heal his body, but we could save his mind.”
“If we had the chip,” Max said, shaking his head.
High on the shelf, Joan listened intently to the conversation below.
She processed this new information.
The Upgrade she was carrying wasn’t meant for them. House was lying.
House just wanted to keep it from the cats.
And, if Joan understood correctly, if they had it now, they could use it to save OB, or a version of OB.
Joan had heard enough. She couldn’t understand everything that was said, but she knew enough to realize she couldn’t go through with House’s plan.
“Protos, listen up,” she said through a private channel only they could hear. “I’m giving back the Upgrade. I’ve decided House was not being truthful. It wasn’t meant for us.”
“We heard,” Drags said sadly. “We don’t like it, but you’re the boss, Joan.”
Joan quickly composed and transmitted a text to Max, then launched into the air. The conversation in the room stopped as they watched Joan take off and land on Min’s desk.
Max’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket. Another text from Joan?
Cats vs. Robots, Volume 1 Page 16