Stanley Duncan's Robot: Genesis

by David Ring III

  Dan clasped his seat-belt buckle, ready to jump out at that moment and run at full speed to his destination. But who knew what would be there when he arrived? He needed patience and a clear mind.

  His flesh crawled as he peered into the first-floor window of the six-floor, light-brown condo that had been repurposed into a fuse-farm. Four dorm-style beds were cramped into the small white room. A security guard rattling the chain link fence with a baton glared at Dan.

  Not understanding the growing discomfort inside of him, Dan looked away. He could not fathom why the neighborhood had been allowed to rot. If RaceX were as powerful as he thought they were, then this wretched slum could be cleaned up and restored within a year. It could be more beautiful than it ever had been. So, why had they let this hellhole continue to exist?

  He got that society had changed and the majority of people lived their lives almost entirely indoors, freed from a life of labor because AI had solved scarcity and provided everyone with the Basic Guaranteed Income. Because AI tirelessly worked the land and staffed the restaurants, nobody went without food. There was abundance in every category of human need. Looking at the building, it didn’t make sense to Dan that anyone would throw away their life. Everyone should have been happier, and yet they weren’t. Dissonance rose inside of his core — some crucial element of human existence was missing from Dan’s understanding of life.

  The light turned green, and the car jolted forward.

  Battered android heads were propped up on stakes, decapitated bodies were impaled on street signs. Spikes jutted out of their bodies. Devilish horns were impaled into another one. Signs nailed into chests deplored androids and cyborgs as abominations. There was something wrong with this world, he knew. There had to be a reason why Mask and RaceX allowed these horrors to continue. Why didn’t the MBTA — cyborgs — come here and clean this all up?

  Dan gagged as his blood began to boil. He took out his phone and began to livestream. “Dan here. I just got a distress call. An android is being attacked. I’m on the way there right now.” He filmed the mutilated bodies. “What the hell is this?” Tears streamed down his face as he read through the chat messages.

  These are from the robot battles

  Android beatdowns.

  OMG!

  Coliseum losers.

  Fun times.

  This is where androids go to die!

  The chat continued to burst with infuriating comments. He inquired into the useful ones, learning that somewhere around here was the Coliseum, the horrible place where the demon-cat had been programmed to kill. The android who was being attacked may have escaped imprisonment, and maybe there were others that needed rescuing. With his hand twitching at the door handle, he glanced up and down the streets, searching for his brethren, but they were empty.

  A dull thud sounded, growing louder as the Fermi neared the location on the GPS. Rounding the corner, a figure swung a bat at a downed android.

  Dan’s intestines felt as if they were escaping through his throat. “Faster!”

  The man fled as the Fermi approached, leaving behind body parts strewn across the street.

  “Follow him!” screamed Dan.

  As the car raced by the dismembered body, he didn’t see any signs of life. The head was smashed nearly beyond recognition. Half a nose lay here, a few fingers there.

  Dan felt sick, but he couldn’t slow down. Not that it would have made a difference. He wanted to, at the very least, be present to say goodbye. To mourn the android’s loss for a moment. To ease the passing of his soul — if such a thing existed — and to let it know that there was something out there that cared about its life. But if he did that, if he stopped to check, to say a quick prayer or to shed a tear, then that damned guy would be out of sight and gone. He’d be free to hurt and kill again. Dan couldn’t let that happen. He needed to stop him.

  The bone-thin figure slipped into a narrow alley, impossible for the car to follow.

  Gritting his teeth, hand on the door handle, Dan wondered what sort of person would be so depraved. Drugs, he thought, judging from the way his body looked, although Dan didn’t know what this man’s motive was for destroying an android. Craziness from the drug? But fuse didn’t make someone like this. The man didn’t seem to be interested in salvaging anything from the android; the head was far too damaged. Was this a paid hit?

  “Stop!” Dan jumped out of the car as it was still moving. The few seconds it would have taken to come to a gradual stop would have been far too long. Slamming the door shut, he darted forward. Papers spiraled behind him as he jettisoned them and his special sandwich. With lightning speed, Dan chased the fleeing man, fury and sadness mixing in a high-octane boost of speed and emotion.

  Filled with rage, he felt as if he could kill him. But the thought faded quickly. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t real — just a passing implication of his extremely emotional state. As he rounded the corner, the grungy man swung a wooden baseball bat at him.

  Dan ducked, cursing himself for falling for such a simple trap. He knew the man was on drugs because only a doped-up fiend could have that sort of strength, the unchecked power that overrides the muscles with tendon-snapping and bone-breaking ferociousness.

  The bat shattered as it crashed against the brick wall. Before the shower of splinters settled, Dan was on top of him, forcing him onto the ground. He restrained himself from beating the hell out of his crater-ridden face. “How could you do this?”

  “Get off of me!” The man snapped his teeth like a dog maddened with rabies.

  Dan moved just in time, grabbing him by the throat, effortlessly turning him over, and pinning the man’s hands together behind his back with his knee. “Who sent you?”

  “Screw you!” the man muffled, rancid spit blasting out of his mouth.

  Dan looked around. Though he did not see anyone, there could be an army of men with weapons waiting for him around the corner. If this was going to be his last moment on Earth, he wanted to use it wisely. He took out his phone and started livestreaming. “This man has brutally murdered an android.” Dan forced the man’s head to the side to get a good view of his face with the camera.

  The druggie spat at the lens.

  Dan pulled his hand back to avoid the filth, but as he did, he was forced off balance by the man’s incredible strength. As Dan fell backward, the phone smashed against the ground. Dan jumped to his feet, kicking the man in the thigh and sending him back down against the pavement. “Stay down!”

  As if the man would listen. Kicking wildly, he screamed, “I’m going to smash your stupid toaster head in.”

  Dan avoided his kicks and bolted in with a knee to the chest, knocking the wind out of him. Quickly, he again pinned his arms behind his back. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “Because you’re a disgusting abomination,” he said. “You’re the devil incarnate.” The man continued to put up a fight, struggling to get Dan off of him and tossing expletives left and right.

  Dan looked at his broken phone. Suddenly he realized he was all alone in a place that loathed his kind. This was exactly what Stanley had feared.

  Chapter 12

  The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

  — Nikola Tesla

  Stanley was so upset with Dan’s disobedience that he poured himself a large drink, dumping the rest of the bottle down the sink because he would be unable to stop himself otherwise. Even though he was halfway through printing one exceptional set of armor, something inside of him insisted it be better. After guzzling half of the drink, he leaned over the table and attempted calculations that soon became too confusing to understand. The layering of different weave patterns and material
s changed the flexibility of the body armor — it was vitally important for Dan to move around freely — and the defensive attributes to both blunt and sharp objects. Ideally, the design would produce complete invulnerability to all dangers. Deep down, Stanley knew that the only way for that to happen would be if he stayed home all the time.

  But Dan was not Stanley. Dan was destined for greater things. He was an outdoor being, and Stanley needed to do everything to support and protect him. He had even been tinkering with ideas for a decentralized police force. The concept had started as a way to help protect Dan and grew from there.

  The phone rang through the condo’s speaker system. “Leticia, answer the phone,” said Stanley, embarrassed to hear his own slurred words.

  The voice of Jean Morrison, the library director, filled the condo. “I put the word out about you and Dan speaking at the library next — ”

  “Hold on!” growled Stanley. “Dan’s keen on it, but I never said I would. My public-speaking days are most certainly over.” The glass in his hand was shaking from how hard he was holding it. This was not what they had agreed to, and he didn’t appreciate Morrison going around putting words in his mouth.

  “Doesn’t matter now. Evan’s made it clear that the event will not take place. He claims to have created an unofficial registration policy, which I had never heard of until today. How is anyone going to follow it if they don’t know about it?”

  “A little technology could have gone a long way.”

  “A little muscle goes pretty far, too.”

  “Did he threaten you?” Not only was Dan going to be disappointed, but this little publicity stunt was going to make it even more dangerous for him. Things were only going to get worse the more exposure Machines with Dreams got.

  “Not me, my daughter. She’s been fused up for years in one of his farms.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “My biggest failure in life was failing to see the warning signs for my very own daughter and not stopping her from fusing out.”

  “You can’t protect everyone,” said Stanley. “We all have free will, and if she refused to listen to your advice, then there is nothing more you could have done.”

  “But I could have done more!”

  “No, you did your best. How many men and women did you help through your campaign at the library? How many lost lives did you save?”

  “I couldn’t save the one life that was most important to me.”

  “How did she get mixed up with fuse in the first place?”

  “Job redundancy, loss of purpose,” he said. “She worked hard all the way through med school, building up a mountain of debt, and, when she finally graduated, there were no jobs for her.”

  “Didn’t she know that this was going to happen?”

  “She knew long before she even graduated that she was already redundant, but the momentum was there. She had to keep going.”

  Stanley pushed away his drink. “That’s awful.”

  “Stanley, you’ve been fortunate. You have a great job and an amazing hobby. You don’t know what it feels like to have no purpose for living.” Morrison cleared his throat, which did nothing to mask the sorrow-filled words that squeaked out of him. “She took it so hard.”

  Though he felt that it was ludicrous to be called “fortunate,” Stanley passed on arguing. “So, what did she do?”

  “What could she do? Like a fan still running after it had been turned off, her momentum pushed her to keep studying. After graduating, the fading dream which led her blindly through years of hard work finally fizzled out. Smoldered. Gone. And with it, a part of her died, too.”

  “But she could have done something else,” said Stanley. “Help Dad at the library.”

  “Do you think I didn’t try?” said Morrison, his voice on edge. “I did all I could. We — my late wife and I — thought we were making progress. She seemed hopeful. Then my daughter stopped showing up online. Didn’t answer her phone. A week later, we got a scheduled email from her telling us what she was planning on doing. It was over before we knew it.”

  Imagining the pain of losing a child like that, Stanley cupped his face with his hands. “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t want to believe Morrison’s conspiracy theories, but he couldn’t deny how well the pieces fit together.

  It didn’t make sense. RaceX had been on target to lead the world, and they would have most certainly promoted machine life. Yet they had disappeared, and machine life had become the scapegoat for the world’s problems — the exact opposite of what they’d intended.

  “I should have insisted she come home and be with her family. I could have called her more. I …”

  Stanley didn’t know what to say. He recognized the flawed logic and knew there was no more that could be done. Of course, he understood — his own horrible mistakes continued to haunt him to this day. Calculations that could have been done better, equipment that could have been more properly stored. Even in finding that his error was insignificantly small, the guilt of being responsible for the death of someone he cared about was too impossibly large to let go of.

  “I certainly had my reservations about AGI during our talk at the library, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you were right. This is our greatest chance of surviving the class war against the elite. I tried to reason with Evan, but he refuses to listen,” said Morrison.

  “I told you he’s a psychopath.” Ripples formed in Stanley’s unfinished drink as the condo rumbled from a passing semi. He felt like there was something he was missing, but he was too drunk to put it together. Realizing this, he felt a wave of guilt come over him. Once again, he had chosen to numb himself rather than face reality. If Dan needed him, he would be in no shape to offer support.

  “He was never like this. I get that we might have a difference of opinion, but to use my own daughter against me? For what? I’m doing all that I can to help mankind, just like him.”

  “People change. From what I’ve heard of the police, I can’t imagine any of them having a decent bone in their body.”

  “They’re not that bad.”

  “I’m just glad that I won’t have to deal with them. I can’t imagine the stress Dan must feel knowing an entire group of people wants him and his kind dead.”

  “Humanity is flawed,” said Morrison. “We screwed ourselves when we let the machines take our jobs. We weren’t ready for it. Without a purpose, we don’t know how to live life. We could have AI making better laws and regulations, but the politicians don’t want to give up power. They’re not doing it altruistically; they want to rule over us. With equality, they can’t do that. It’s all connected, you see. They’re afraid of what they’ve created. They’re backed into a corner and scrambling to retain power. We think we want an easy life, but we crave to hold on to things the way they are.”

  “That’s why they don’t want Dan spreading awareness.”

  “It’s ridiculous. They’re not addressing the problem. Jobs are a thing of the past, and humanity needs to find a new purpose for living. But instead of facilitating this, they’re fighting off advancement tooth and nail without offering any real solution — besides fuse. They want us all to check out.”

  Stanley finished his tea. “People need to know that there are alternative ways to live. They need to understand that we are not at war with machine life. That’s what Machines with Dreams is all about — educating people. But this is impossible if all our attempts to educate people get shut down or blacked out.”

  “Exactly. This is ironic, but I have been a proponent of nonviolence ever since Evan had me helping people at the library. But how am I to act when they take away my only weapon, free speech? We are being bled off. And it’s not just here, it’s happening around the country. My contacts — the men and women who I helped to survive the Great Layoff — continue to disappear without a trace. I can’t even ge
t through to them via email anymore. Not to mention the huge blackout on foreign correspondence. I haven’t been able to reach overseas friends for years. We need to do something about this abuse of power. We need someone to fight for us, because it’s obvious the government isn’t going to do it for us. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes — as Juvenal wrote and Plato extended, ‘Who will guard the guards?’”

  “Dan’s linked up to social media. He’s meeting people. He’s getting the word out that cyborgs and androids aren’t the enemy. He wants to bring everyone together.”

  “And he has a big target on his back for it. You two need to be careful.”

  Watching the 3D model of armor rotate around his monitor, Stanley prayed for Dan’s safety, cursing himself for failing to produce it. “We are. It’s just that Dan doesn’t know what’s good for him sometimes. He can be …” Stanley caught himself before tarnishing Dan’s carefully built reputation.

  “I understand. God, I understand. I’m terrified that they’ll do something to my daughter.”

  Stanley thought, Those antiquated, ignorant fools. If the police would only embrace the future, we could create a utopia together. Instead, they cling to power and pride, knocking down everyone who stands in their way. “I do understand. In fact, I have been thinking about a way to disrupt the system.”

  “Oh?”

  “The future of law enforcement,” said Stanley, booming with enthusiasm.

  “We already have Mask’s private army, the elite MBTA officers. Nobody is crazy enough to mess with them.”

  Stanley had left Boston before Mask had moved her headquarters there and deployed her private security team through a government contract. The MBTA were by far the deadliest ground force on the planet, but they were human and limited by law. The government was technologically years away from implementing a united AI police force — and, judging from the way things were now, they had no intention of ever doing so — but Dan was the undeniable truth that such progress was possible. Machine life could have been the vanguard of robotic security — intelligent, tactical, and incorruptible. How ironic that the fierce resistance to it by the police might be the driving force in it being brought to fruition.