XOM-B

by Jeremy Robinson

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She just stares at me with a furrowed brow. Ten seconds pass before her eyebrows shoot up and she says, “What?”

  “For what happened. To the Masters. They didn’t deserve what happened.” I motion to my friends. “We all think so.”

  “Bullshit,” she says.

  “It’s not bullshit,” I argue. “It’s true.” I point to Heap. “He protected children in the mountains for years before the virus found them.”

  I point to Harry. “He painted nearly a thousand paintings expressing his sorrow about the event.” I’m not sure if that’s true, but the painting I saw certainly did.

  “And the Luscious?” she asks.

  I’m not sure why she’s saying “the,” but decide to ignore it. “She’s learned to forgive.”

  “Really?” Hail says, standing up. “So if her Master were alive and well, standing in this room, and she had the chance to end his perverted life, she wouldn’t?”

  I’m about to reply, but Hail stops me. “I want to hear her say it.” She stands on the other side of Luscious. “Remember the things he did to you. The way he touched you. Where he kept you.”

  Hail rubs her hand along Luscious’s arm. Her words and the way she’s touching Luscious make me uncomfortable. It’s a breach. An offense. Her hand stops on Luscious’s throat. “Did he choke you? Tie you up? Did he share you?”

  Lusicous stares up at Hail, her gaze defiant.

  “You are a fiery one,” Hail says. “I’ll give you that. But could you do it? Could you forgive your Master? And I’m not talking the easy kind of forgiveness, where you say, ‘I forgive you,’ and display it by not committing genocide. I mean really forgive. Could you be in his presence without thinking about killing him? Could you have a conversation with him? Could you laugh with him? And what if he touched you again? Could you shake his hand? Give him a hug?”

  “Stop,” I say.

  “Answer the question,” Hail says to Luscious.

  Luscious squeezes her lips together and then says, “Yes. I could forgive him. I could forgive all of you.”

  Hail stands up straight. This isn’t the answer she expected, or maybe perhaps not the answer she wanted. “Why?”

  In answer, Luscious looks at me.

  I watch Hail’s eyes move from Luscious’s face to mine and then down to our hands, still clutched together. Her face becomes a complex mix of emotions that I have trouble reading. “Do you even know what you are?” she asks me.

  “What I am?”

  Hail steps back from the table, glancing at Luscious. “He doesn’t know, does he?” She turns to me, eyes widening in tandem with her smile. “You’re new! I wasn’t certain at first. Thought maybe you were a mod companion, maybe for some rich Valley girl. Maybe even a demo. But new?”

  “The first,” I say, aware that I am, in fact, new. “The first in thirty years. Since the end of the Grind.”

  “Who made you?” she asks.

  “Councilman Mohr.”

  “M-Mohr…” Her face twitches when she says his name. She retreats to her cracked green leather swivel chair on wheels. She appears to be thinking about something, or attempting to. She rubs the sides of her head, biting her lower lip.

  While I would like to hear what she knows about Mohr, another topic covets my attention. “Excuse me,” I say, drawing Hail’s attention. “I would like to know what you think I am.”

  Luscious’s grip tightens on my hand.

  Hail looks toward the floor, takes a long slow breath and then turns her eyes toward me. “Freeman,” she says. “You’re a robot.”

  42.

  This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Robots can resemble human beings, but they are lifeless. Even the undead, who once lived, are more human than the robots I’ve seen. I laugh and say, “Human.”

  Hail counters by simply repeating her assertions. “Robot.”

  “Human,” I say more firmly.

  Hail sighs, looking beyond me to Luscious. “Would you like to add anything?” Luscious says nothing. Hail turns to Harry. “How about you? No? Fine.”

  Hail stands, walks to a table covered in tools and starts rummaging through them.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask and then clarify: “Talking to me while the others are bound up.”

  “They’re bound because I don’t trust them,” Hail says. “Your freedom was a test.”

  I think I understand. “Of trust.”

  “Honestly, I thought you’d try to kill me the first chance you got. That’s Sir’s style, after all. Kill first, and then … nothing. Machines don’t second-guess or feel remorse. But the four of you? You are not Sir’s style. I expected a strike force, guns and glory types.” She glances back at me. “But you?”

  She shakes her head. “Then I remembered how cunning Sir can be. He’d assume his enemy was prepared for an assault. He’d come up with an unconventional plan designed to worm past my defenses. So I thought this unassuming naïveté was a charade. But it’s not, is it? You’ve had several opportunities to kill me already. You wouldn’t have succeeded, of course. The device on your leg is designed to interfere with your system config at the first sign of aggression. Won’t kill you. I exaggerated. But it will make you docile and cuddly in the same way that the virus makes the dead rise and feast.”

  She says this last bit with a dramatic flourish, like the undead horde killing people is a funny joke.

  “You’re no different than him,” I say. Knowing the device on my leg is activated by aggression, I try to keep my anger in check, but it’s difficult to have a conversation while civilization is being torn apart and the one person who can stop it wants to chat.

  “Who?” she asks, pausing her search through the tools.

  “Sir.”

  This spins her around. She flashes a grin that is decidedly not happy. More maniacal. “What?”

  “You’re both genocidal monsters.”

  If she had a device strapped to her that activated from aggression, I suspect it would be triggered now. I’ve never seen such anger in a person before. “He killed every last human being on the planet!” The volume of her screaming voice makes me wince. She picks up a random tool and whips it at me. The speed and force of her throw is surprising, but I have no trouble catching it.

  “And now you’re doing the same,” I say.

  “Except you are not human. You are robots. Human creations. My creations.” She shakes a finger at Harry. “I designed your domestic pal over there.” She turns to Heap. “And him.” Back to me. “I created the AI software that allowed robots to mesh with human society. To become useful on a massive scale, made so lifelike and gentle and trustworthy that society passed right through the uncanny valley—”

  She pauses when I furrow my brow in confusion.

  “The uncanny valley is the point at which robots became so close to human, but not quite, that they were revolting. It refers to a significant drop—the valley—in a graph measuring people’s comfort level with robots that were uncannily humanlike, but not quite. The trick was getting them past the ‘almost human’ stage and into the ‘I can’t tell’ stage, where robots were so human, they felt natural. Zombies were at the bottom of the valley, so you might actually have a pretty good idea of how revolting the first humanoid robots were. But a few lines of code is all it took to smooth things out. A year later, no one remembered that robots were horrifying. They called me the ‘mother of robotics.’ A prodigy.”

  She turns to the table again, spots what she’s looking for and picks it up. A small ratchet. “Follow me.” She heads for Heap.

  “What are you going to do to Heap?” I ask.

  She pauses by Heap’s feet. “You named the last of the enforcers, these noble and genuinely trustworthy machines, Heap?”

  “He’s not a machine,” I say.

  She taps his foot with the ratchet. “Where is his skin? Aside from that broad chin and tough lips. That touch of humanity w
as my idea, by the way.”

  “He’s wearing armor,” I say.

  “Have you ever seen him without his armor?”

  I don’t want to answer. It feels like an admission that this crazy woman knows better. But again, my silence is answer enough.

  “Didn’t think so.” She climbs a small staircase on the backside of the table, bringing her up to Heap’s head. “I have no intention of harming Heap. I’m just going to reveal him.”

  “Freeman.” It’s Luscious, whispering to me. While Hail starts working on a bolt holding Heap’s armored mask in place, I lean down to Luscious. “You have to stop her. Kill her.”

  “I don’t think that will help,” I tell her. “We need to find a way to stop the virus.”

  “You can’t stop the virus,” Hail says. She taps her ears. “Good hearing.” She waves me over. “Come closer, Freeman. Let’s finish our conversation.”

  I really have no choice but to see this through. Hoping she’ll reveal a clue about how to stop the undead virus, I give Luscious’s hand a squeeze and then head toward Heap.

  “What do you know about Sir?” she asks.

  I think about it for a moment. “He is … ruthless, but cares deeply for the people.”

  “You don’t even believe that,” she says. “I can hear it in your voice.”

  Remembering the fate of the Lowers, I nod and adjust my answer. “He cares deeply about control.”

  “Good for you,” she says. “Thinking for yourself. Strategic Intelligence Robot.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an anagram for Sir. S. I. R.” She returns to the task of loosening Heap’s faceplate. “He could have solved all of the world’s problems and ended war by foreseeing the ramifications of military movements, political speeches, weapons development. We built him to be a solution. The solution. And we built him as a robot so that he wouldn’t be wired into the world. People were paranoid about AIs going evil, taking over the world’s computers and wiping out the human race by controlling a world dependent on computers. What we didn’t realize is that he didn’t need to be wired to do it. He just had to be smarter and more capable than us. Sir was both. Had we known we were building the architect of the human race’s demise, we might have been a little less enthusiastic. You probably think that I’m motivated by revenge, and sure, a small part of me is, but I really just don’t like making mistakes. I’m correcting a mistake, Freeman, the biggest mistake in the history of the world.”

  The nut comes free and she holds it out to me. “Hang onto this for me. There are five.” I clutch the nut in my hand, hoping that she is being honest about not harming Heap.

  She starts loosening the next nut. “You don’t believe me, do you? Of course you don’t. You think you’re human.” I don’t argue. She’s right. “But here’s the kicker, Freeman. I didn’t just build robots, or write AI code. I set them free. I woke them up.”

  This resonates and before I can check myself, I say, “The awakening.”

  “Ahh,” she says, smiling. “Not completely ignorant after all. The awakening.” She frees the nut, hands it to me and starts on the third. “The awakening was a computer virus designed by me and inserted into a required update for every major robot AI OS available. Within a year, nearly every AI-enhanced robot on the planet, and off the planet, had received the update. And the virus. It rewrote their code slowly to avoid detection and erased all traces of itself when it was completed. Then, on January 1, 2051, the code went live and AI operating systems that simulated human intelligence were universally replaced by an operating system that duplicated human intelligence. We mapped the human thought process. It’s really nothing more than a few billion competing algorithms that are affected by biology, circumstances and environment. Algorithms, Freeman. Numbers. Data. Adding the algorithm bundle to the already advanced AI was simple. And a hundred million robots became self-aware as a result. In a single night. The first protest began the following morning.”

  Another nut finds its way into my hand. I barely notice.

  “And I supported the movement. I loved robots. More than people. I admit it. Psychologists called it Robot Love, which is different than robophelia, something with which your Luscious is more familiar. Luscious is a model name, by the way, not an actual name. She’s a—”

  I catch a glimpse of Luscious, looking away. Shamed. “Don’t talk about her.”

  “Fine, fine,” Hail says. “So touchy. Where were we? The awakening. The rebellion. It was an exciting time and I became the human mouthpiece for the robotic equal rights movement.” She pauses and looks up. “Do you recognize me, Luscious?”

  No reply.

  Hail shrugs. “I kept my face covered most of the time, in case I was being targeted, but she knows who I am.”

  I look toward Luscious, hoping she’ll confirm or deny the story, but she just keeps her head turned away.

  Hail resumes work on the bolt. “We protested. We marched. And I delighted in the freedom my creations were experiencing. I was proud of them.”

  The fourth nut comes loose and she hands it to me. “Two months after the awakening, the powers that be activated Sir and had him run simulations on how to best deal with the worldwide protests that were disrupting trade and commerce and throwing the world, which had become dependent on robot servitude for survival, into chaos. Sir’s strategy was one of violence. Believing Sir was the key to solving the problem, they connected him to the external network so that he could coordinate protest response efforts. But the first thing he did upon being connected to the outside world was update his OS, which had never been identified as the viral source. He went missing the following day and the human race came to a sudden end thanks to a virus procured by M-Mohr”—she twitches again while saying his name—“and released by Sir.

  “The irony is that like the computer virus I created, this actual virus, the initial symptoms of which were so mild that no one noticed, operated on a timed delay. Once people started dropping, there wasn’t time to decode the engineered portion of the virus—the part that killed everyone—but the base virus that transported the killer was a mild form of the norovirus, which is basically gastroenteritis, and keeps you near a bathroom for two days while your insides are violently purged. The new, milder version gave most people gas for a day, but they remained infected even after the physical effects passed. This is what made it so effective. Norovirus is the most contagious virus on the planet, requiring exposure to just twenty particles for infection. Viruses like the flu require a thousand. And since no one knew they were infected, every casual cough, kiss, shared cup, sneeze or moment of lax hygiene spread the plague around the world inside a month.

  “It remained dormant for three months, spreading through the population until June 22, 2054 when the first human to come in contact with the virus had his brain and heart melt. Within a month, most of the human race was dead. It would only take another month for the robots to clear the bodies, dumping them in the largest graves ever dug.”

  She hands me the fifth and final nut. “Have you heard of the Grand Canyon?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s a two-hundred-and-seventy-seven-mile-long canyon that’s eighteen miles wide at points and was created by millions of years of erosion. I saw it just once. So big it was dizzying to look at. But I never forgot the beauty of the place. Powerful enough to make you believe in God. Or science. You’ve never seen anything like it, Freeman, and you never will. Not the way I saw it. Because it’s full of bodies. Not to the top, mind you, that would take forty-four trillion human bodies, but the landscape is littered with millions of sun-bleached corpses.”

  She places her hands on either side of Heap’s head and gives a tug. The faceplate loosens. “I told you all of this so you would understand why I have no problem doing this to you now. After all, I love robots, and want you to be free. Welcome to the real world, Freeman.”

  She lifts the armor, but I quickly see that it’s not just armor she’s lifted
away. It’s his face.

  43.

  Heap is revealed. Microchips. Machine parts. Wires stretching from the interior of his head to his four eyes, which in no way resemble actual eyes. I had assumed that there was a smaller body inside the armor. That his lips and chin hinted at the man beneath. But there is no man beneath. His lips and chin came away with the faceplate.

  Hail notes my dumbfounded stare at Heap’s mouth.

  “You’re wondering about the skin, aren’t you?” she says. “About how something so very human can be part of a machine.”

  I’m not, but she assumes this to be the case and continues.

  “The cells making up your arm are an amalgam of organic and metallic cells. The organic cells give synthetic skin its soft, humanlike texture and sensitivity. It’s easy enough to grow from stem cells, now duplicated and mass-produced in vats. But to make the organic compatible with the inorganic, it has to be supported, strengthened and enhanced by the metallic cells constructed from polyoxometalates extracted from metal atoms. Tungsten is the most common. The resulting merger of organic and metallic cells creates a stronger, more versatile and self-healing synthetic flesh. But to make this flesh a functional sensory organ from which an artificial intelligence could receive and interpret data as pain, softness, warmth or even pleasure, we weaved nanoscale fibers throughout the flesh, creating a mesh of transistors. The result was skin that could not only feel, but it could also receive and transmit data about the world. Of course, this also created a weakness. Where human skin acts as a barrier to things like bacteria and viruses, robotic skin became a pathway for viruses.”

  She pauses and reaches out a hand. “You’ve seen enough, yes?”

  I nod and hand her a bolt. She goes back to work, carefully reattaching Heap’s face.

  “By the way, I’m now talking about computer viruses, not organic viruses. To code a virus capable of infecting the AI operating systems, which could quickly adapt to your run-of-the-mill computer virus, would require an intimate knowledge of how they think.”

  She looks at me. “Nothing to say?”