Alliance iarc:raa-4

by Jerry Oltion

  Ariel bit her lip again, but again she didn’t order the robot to shut up.

  “Again, I don’t know. It’s not quite a month along, and at a month its body is just starting to differentiate. It should have nerve cells, but the brain should just be starting to form. There’s no mental activity of any sort yet. You tell me, is it human yet?”

  “I do not have enough data to come to a conclusion. Any statement I made would have to be considered opinion.”

  Derec laughed. “That’s all any definition can ever be. You want to know what a human is? A human is whatever you’re pointing to when you call it a human. It’s all a matter of opinion, and it always will be.”

  “Then we could, if we wished, stretch the definition to include me.”

  Derec’s mouth dropped open in surprise. He stammered for words, but Wolruf’s throaty laughter only increased his discomfort.

  Wolruf’s mirth wound down, and she said, apparently with seriousness, “I’m willing to grant ‘u that distinction, if you grant it to me.”

  “It’s a two-edged sword,” Ariel put in. “If you’re human, then so is any thinking being, organic or otherwise.”

  Lucius was slow in responding, as if he had to think through the logical implications of her statement, but when he did speak it was with certainty. He said, “I still operate at a disadvantage under such a definition. Calling me human does not relieve me of my programming to obey humans. If you are correct, then calling myself human merely means that I must obey everyone’s orders. I cannot assume that other robots would obey my orders, or that humans would do so, so I have gained nothing.”

  “True enough,” Derec admitted.

  “Being human, it seems, is not the ideal I had expected it to be.”

  “Not surprising. Nobody said we were the pinnacle of creation.”

  Lucius stood up and went to the window. He looked up into the sky, as if seeking confirmation from above, but there was only gray cloud and rain. He turned back to Derec and Ariel and said, “We stray from the subject.”

  “Do we?” Derec persisted. “You’re trying to find out when something becomes human. Defining what isn ’ t human can be just as useful as defining what is.”

  Lucius returned to his seat. “Very well, then. Let us continue along this line of discussion. Can I or can I not ever expect to be considered human?”

  Derec looked to Ariel, then to Wolruf, then back to Lucius. “Like I said, it depends on your definition. But probably not. Genes are usually part of it, and you don’t have the genes.”

  “The test creatures I produced had human genes, yet neither Dr. Avery nor the city robots considered them human. Were they in error?”

  “No,” Derec said. “Not about that, anyway. They didn’t have to kill them just because they weren’t human, but that’s beside the point.”

  “I agree. The point is, genetics isn’t a sufficient condition, either.”

  “Maybe it is,” Ariel put in. “You switched off the genes for intelligence; if you hadn’t done that-if you’d left the entire genetic code intact-then what you came up with would have been human.”

  “Even though they would have been created, not from other human genetic material, but from an electronically stored map of that genetic material?”

  “That’s right.”

  Derec’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “I just realized what you would have wound up with. That stored code you found; it had to be the code for a specific person. You’d have gotten a bunch of clones of the same person.”

  “But they would all have been human.”

  “I guess so. Again, it’s all in your definition. There was a time when clones weren’t considered human, either.”

  Lucius paused in thought, then said, “So the definition of ‘human’ also changes over time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I am led to the conclusion that my search for a boundary condition which defines a human is doomed to failure. There is no boundary condition. A baby doesn’t start out human, but it grows slowly more so. Eventually, through gradual change, it becomes generally recognized as human, though no two will agree on an exact moment when that label becomes accurate. Similarly, I may become human in some beings’ estimation, but not in others, yet neither estimation is necessarily wrong. Have I reasoned correctly?”

  “That’s as close as you’re likely to get, anyway,” Derec said.

  Lucius stood up. “I have received enough input for the moment. Thank you.” Without waiting for acknowledgment, he strode from the room. Ariel waited until she heard the door close softly behind him, then burst into a fit of giggles.

  “You’ve confused the poor thing beyond hope!” she said between fits.

  Derec joined her in her laughter. “He asked for it.”

  Wolruf wasn’t laughing. She waited until Derec and Ariel had calmed down somewhat, then said, “Don’t ‘u wonder why ‘e asked?”

  “I know why,” Derec answered. “He wants to know who to serve.”

  “That doesn’t bother ‘u?”

  “Not really. At the worst, if he decides nobody’s human and he doesn’t have to follow anybody’s orders, then we’ve got another independent thinking being among us. True, he was trouble once before when he was on his own, but he’s matured a lot since then. He’s got a social conscience now. I’ve got no reason to believe he’ll be any more of a danger to us now than any other intelligent being would be, and we’ve still got plenty of robots who will follow our orders, so why worry?”

  “Famous last words,’“ Wolruf said.

  The breakdown happened that same night. It was well after dark but still before bedtime, and Derec was watching Avery trace the expansion of an accelerated chemfet infection in a laboratory rat he had created for the purpose, using the same technology Lucius had used in his human-creating project. The chemfets had replaced most of the peripheral nerve tissue already and were starting in on the brain, and Avery had the rat running mazes every few minutes to test its memory as the chemfets replaced its brain cells.

  The rat had just negotiated a maze with apparently undiminished efficiency, and Avery had picked it up to put it back in its cage when the lights dimmed and brightened again as if something had momentarily drawn a heavy load. Derec thought nothing of it; the city’s mutability made for unusual power demands, especially when a building shifted or grew from nothing. He had subconsciously learned that flickering lights meant the neighborhood would probably look different when he stepped outside again.

  The lights dimmed a second time, and stayed dim. Derec just had time to think, Boy, there must be a big one going up next door, when they went out completely. The lab was in the interior of the hospital building and had no windows; the darkness was total.

  “What the-ouch!” Avery shouted. There followed a thump and the clatter of the rat cage falling off the table. “It bit me!”

  “What?” Derec reached for the table, found Avery’s shoulder instead.

  “I’ve lost it. Lights!” Avery shouted. “Lights on!”

  The voice-switch wasn’t working either.

  “I wonder what-” Derec began, but he never finished the question. He became aware of a deep, almost subsonic groan that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It grew in intensity, shaking the floor, slowly rising up the scale into audibility. The floor gave a particularly violent lurch, and half a second later a sudden loud crack echoed through the lab.

  Then came a sound like an enormous tree cracking at the base, splintering and popping as it toppled.

  Avery’s shoulder suddenly dropped out from under Derec’s hand. “Get under something!” he shouted.

  Derec obediently dropped to his knees in the dark and conked his head on the bench. Something furry-the rat, no doubt-squirmed under his hand and scurried away. Ignoring it, Derec reached out, found the kickspace under the bench, and crawled in. Avery was already there, but it was big enough for both of them.

  From beyond the lab,
transmitted through the floor and walls, came a last groan of overstressed metal, then a relatively silent rush of wind. Then came a peal of thunder that sounded as if Derec’s eardrums themselves had been hit by lightning, and the floor made a sudden rush for the ceiling.

  The ceiling got out of the way in time, but just barely.

  When the shaking and rumbling was over, Derec crawled out from under the lab bench and stood up, but he barely made it above a crouch before he banged his head again.

  “Ouch! Be careful when you stand. The place has caved in on us.”

  “Not surprising.” He heard Avery crawling out beside him, groping around in the dark and encountering the lab bench, the stool, which had already tipped over, and the remains of the rat’s cage and maze. A steady ringing in his ears accompanied the sound of Avery shuffling toward the door.

  A moment later Avery said, “It’s collapsed even worse over here.”

  “I’ll call for help.” Emergency, Derec sent, directing his comlink to the central computer. Derec and Dr. Avery are trapped in Avery ’ s laboratory. Send someone to get us out.

  He listened for a response, but none came.

  “The computer’s out,” he whispered.

  “Impossible. The backup is a network of mobile supervisor robots. Even if the central coordinating unit were destroyed, the supervisors could function independently. They couldn’t all be destroyed.”

  “Well, I’m not getting a response.”

  “Hmm. Try a direct local command to turn on the lights.”

  “Okay.” Lights on, Derec sent.

  The blackness persisted.

  “No good.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Now what?”

  “Call a specific robot. Call Mandelbrot.”

  “Right.” Mandelbrot. Do you hear me?

  Yes, master Derec. Are you all right?

  “Got him!” Yes, we ’ re all right, but we ’ re trapped in the lab. Is Ariel okay?

  She and Wolruf have escaped serious injury; however, I am engaged in bandaging a cut on Wolruf ’ s forehead. I will call assistance to get you out of the laboratory.

  “He’s calling help,” Derec echoed. There was a moment’s silence, then Mandelbrot sent, That is strange. I get no response on the supervisory link.

  I couldn ’ t either. Something has happened to them.

  Then I will gather what robots I can find and come myself.

  Make sure Ariel and Wolruf are safe first.

  Of course.

  Derec felt himself blush. He hadn’t had to order him to do that.

  Do you know what happened?he sent.

  It appears a newly constructed building has fallen over.

  Derec repeated his news for Avery, who had moved back to the lab bench and was fumbling around in a drawer for something.

  “Certainly sounded like it,” Avery replied.

  Derec shifted his weight from leg to leg. Crouching down was hard to do for more than a minute or so. “But how could a building have fallen over?” he asked.

  “Easy. Just shut off the power to it when it’s at an unbalanced stage in its growth. The cells lose their mobility, and the building acts like a solid construction. If it isn’t stable, over it goes. But don’t ask me how the power could get shut off; there’s an entire supervisory subsection devoted to power distribution. Ah, here we go. Where are you?”

  “Right here,” Derec said. He reached toward the place where Avery’s voice had come from, encountered his back.

  “Shield your eyes.”

  Derec just had time to raise his hand over his eyes before a brilliant blue light filled the room. He heard a loud hissing crackle from only a few feet in front of Avery, then the light dimmed and the hissing faded. Derec opened his eyes cautiously and saw Avery holding a cutting laser, now turned to low intensity and pointed up at an angle toward the ceiling. Avery played with the focus and the spot of light widened, but it was still painfully bright, and a wisp of smoke drifted away from it if he held it for too long in one place. It was made for cutting, not illumination, but at least it was light.

  They surveyed the remains of the lab. The ceiling had indeed come down, stretching rather than crumbling. It met the floor near the door, and they could see the remains of the wall in which the door had stood smashed beneath it. Nothing had shattered; the building material had simply bent and crumpled under the stress. The monochromatic blue laser light made for stark shadows, accentuating the destruction.

  “Evidently the core of the building collapsed,” Avery said. “We’ll have to go out through an exterior wall.” He turned the laser’s intensity up to full again and fired it at the wall opposite the door. The ceiling was still at the proper height there; Avery stepped closer until he could stand comfortably and began cutting a ragged rectangle into the wall. The light beam was nearly invisible at first, except where it met the wall, but within seconds it became a solid blue rod lancing through the smoke.

  “Don’t breathe that stuff,” Derec cautioned.

  “Good idea.” Avery stepped back and continued to cut. He got the sides and the top done, but the panel remained standing, so he cut along the floor as well. At last the section of wall twisted and toppled outward, landing with a clang on the sidewalk outside. Avery turned the laser intensity back down, took a deep breath, and rushed through the hole.

  Derec followed. They jogged out into the street-a peculiarly empty street for one that had just suffered a major disaster-breathed deeply in the fresh air, and looked around them.

  The entire city was dark. The rain had stopped earlier in the day, but clouds still masked the stars. The only illumination anywhere came from the laser in Avery’s hand. He turned up the intensity again and waved it around like a spotlight, and they saw collapsed buildings all around them. Most, like the hospital, seemed to have fallen inward rather than crumbling and Calling sideways like a more conventional building would. It was evidently an effect of the building material, though whether it was by conscious design or merely accidental Derec didn’t know.

  Their apartment, far down the street from the hospital now that the constraint to hold it next door for Ariel’s vigil had been cancelled, was in an area of lesser damage, but even so Derec felt the urge to run down to it. He held himself back. Mandelbrot had said she was all right; he should concentrate his effort on finding out what had happened and preventing it from happening again.

  When Avery shined the light down the street in the other direction, the cause of the destruction became evident.

  For a moment it had probably been the tallest building in the city. Now it was the longest, what was left of it. The end nearest them had flattened everything in its path, but it had survived the fall relatively intact. It was still rectangular, at least. That part had to be the base. Farther along its length, where it would have been moving faster when it hit, they could see where it had ripped apart on impact, fragmenting. It crossed the street at an angle, so they couldn’t see what had been the top of the building, but they could see what had become of it all the same. Out there the force of impact had been enough to dissolve the intercellular bonds in the building material, spewing it in all directions. In short, it had splashed.

  It had taken quite a few other buildings with it. The destruction fanned out in a wedge, with the narrow end of it nearest the building’s base, which had been less than a block from them.

  And now that he looked closely, Derec could see something moving along the building’s edge. It was a single robot, walking slowly toward the sheared-off base.

  You,Derec sent. Can you hear me?

  Yes. Master Derec. is it not?

  That ’ s right. What ’ s your designation?

  I am Building Maintenance Technician126.

  Was that building your responsibility?

  It would have been upon completion. I believe it has now become the responsibility of Salvage Engineer34, but I cannot get supervisory confirmation of that.

  You can
’ t reach your supervisor?

  That is correct. I cannot reach any of the seven supervisors.

  Then I order you to assume general supervisory duties until you regain contact. Can you contact Salvage Engineer34?

  I can.

  Inform him that he is also a supervisor.

  Acknowledged.The robot immediately sent the order, then began directing the robots under his guidance in assessing the damage elsewhere in the city.

  “I just promoted two robots to supervisor,” Derec said aloud.

  “Good. Tell them to make power restoration their first priority.”

  Derec relayed the order, then turned around to look back down the street toward their apartment. Avery obediently shined the light that way again.

  A light appeared in the street. It bobbed up and down with the regular rhythm of a robot’s stride, and within moments Mandelbrot stood before them, four more robots flanking him. Even though robots could see perfectly well by infrared light, he carried a more conventional flashlight, presumably for the humans he had come to rescue.

  “I am glad to see that you escaped uninjured,” he said. “I was growing concerned. There seems to be no organized effort to restore city functions, and I have been unable to contact any of the normal supervisors. They all seem to have abandoned their duties.”

  “That’s impossible,” Avery stated flatly. “Their jobs have been programmed into them. They can’t just up and leave!”

  “I do not wish to contradict you,” Mandelbrot replied, “but they appear to have done just that.”

  “I suspect they had help,” Derec said. “And I bet we all know just who it was.”

  Over the comlink, he shouted, Lucius!

  Chapter 8. Revolution

  Static.

  A familiar type of static.

  The static of robots in communication fugue. Many robots, from the sound of it.

  Derec turned his head from side to side, trying to get a fix on them. There. Of course.

  “They’re in the Compass Tower.”

  Avery nodded. “Mandelbrot, get us some transportation.”

  Mandelbrot handed one of the other robots the flashlight and obediently moved off at a run down the street.