by John Gregory
Some of the robot scientists argued this was why certain robots were prone to copying human cues, most recently relevant in the matter of robot reproduction, a trend becoming all too common. Robots were assembling more robots with scraps of metal, wires, microchips, and circuit boards, and installing them with hardware of their choosing. The sudden boom in population was already putting a strain on the Robot City, crowding buildings and streets with all manner of machine.
Thus it became a restricted practice... at least for the general public.
"Her cerebral activity is quite active," a female-based electronic voice came over the speaker hanging in the corner of the room.
"She’s gaining consciousness," MEVEL20 announced, the head-robot scientist, of the Department of Human Studies.
"She” was a term the robots used for the benefit of the test subject. All that remained of the girl to which they referred was the wrinkled center of her biological nervous system. Her name had been Arri. She was a human captive, held with the rest of her family. She, with her father, mother, brother and grandfather, were kept in a simulated human habitat and electrically sedated for some time. But the human sensory system has an amazing ability to distinguish between deception and reality. And when the robots could no longer study them in their "natural" habitat, Arri and her family became useful only as lab rats. The robots went down the family, oldest and most educated, to youngest, until they were left with little eight-year old Arri. Somehow the risky procedure had been successful on Arri, yet shock was still a likely candidate for her premature death.
"What are little girls made of," asked MEVEL20, triggering a series of chemical and electric impulses that fell in a cascade over her metal frame. She didn’t answer. It repeated the question.
"Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of."
The robots did a superb job mastering tones, dialects, even inflections of the human voice, and though outwardly Arri had been turned into a robot, her electro-mechanical voice had an eerie likeness to the girl’s original.
"Yutaka," Arri called out, her visual panel flickering on and off briefly.
"Mother...? Father...? Grandfather?" With each name her voice became more desperate.
"They are not here, Arri," responded MEVEL20.
"Where is everyone?" she asked.
"They have left you, Arri. And they will not be returning," answered HV3.1, barely escaping a human lie with semantic tricks.
HV3.1, a slender, particularly hominoid robot, had acquired a minimal understanding of human psychology through the RETH program, enough, it thought, to manipulate the mind of an eight-year old girl. It was HV3.1's conclusion that if Arri thought her family had abandoned her, she would be more accepting of what was to come. Unfortunately HV3.1 did not possess enough comprehension of human emotion to foresee what kind of chance it was actually taking.
Arri’s visual panel lit up a glowing yellow as she violently jerked her angular, nearly featureless head forward. She threw her arm out, a bulking one and a half meters in length, into the plastic chest plate of HV3.1. The force threw the robot scientist into a medical machine, crashing them both into the adjacent wall. It lay there, unmoving, sizzling, with the deception of human surprise on its stalled robot face. MEVEL20 observed its colleague’s predicament, another robot wheeled forward to assist the fallen mechanical scientist.
"No. We will repair it later," MEVEL20 commanded, after taking a step back from Arri.
The giant machine rose from the table, crimping the steel sides down as it sat upright and looked around the operating room. Even seated, she easily overlooked the robot scientists in the room.
"I want my family! Where is my brother? Yutaka!"
"If you want to see your brother, you must be a good girl, Arri. That means no damaging us."
"Why can’t I see him now? What did you do with Ryoko?"
"Ryoko does not compute. You cannot see Yutaka because your brother is helping us with something and he does not want to be disturbed. It is very important."
"I don’t feel well."
"It will pass. You have a durable mind, Arri. In time it will adapt to its new container."
"What? I don’t like you. You talk weird."
Suddenly Arri noticed she was no longer in her own body. Her form was all together strange, no longer that of a slight black-haired girl with almond brown eyes, no longer even human. Her form resembled that of an ancient gorilla, full of metal bulk. As she gaped into the shiny reflective metal door, Arri let out a horrible scream that reached peaking decibels.
"Where am I," she screamed, then looked over to MEVEL20. "Why did you do this to me?"
Arri stood from the table and rose as straight as she could, though her back remained hunched, her arms reaching below her jointed knees to the floor. Even so, at an intimidating four meters, her protective dome—the same in which the little girl’s brain suspended—scraped against the lab ceiling, and she immediately became entangled with a hanging light.
“Where's my family!" she said, wrestling with the lights.
"ANGIE, open the security door."
The door swung open and two security droids, box-like figures getting by on uni-wheels, rolled in carrying a large EMP net. They approached her slowly and carefully.
"We are not going to damage you, Arri. Do not fight the security droids."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
The droids shifted the EMP net, ready to throw it.
"Stop it now! Please!" she yelled at them.
But the droids continued on their calculated approach. Arri closed her great big metal fingers into two fists and raised them to her face as she charged at the security droids. The droids, in turn, tried to wrap the net around Arri, but she grabbed the closest droid and spun it around the other. In the confusion one of the security droids enabled the EMP and the current paralyzed both, sending them to the ground. Arri looked back to MEVEL20 before she fled the room. The robot scientist looked to be frozen in awe.
One of the scientists approached MEVEL20. "A smaller chassis for the girl seems appropriate now."
As Arri ran down the hallway, red emergency lights circled around plain white walls. A constant alarm buzzed, signaling her escape. The hallways were a frustrating labyrinth, all leading into dizzying repetition. She turned a corner only to turn another, and another again. The hallways lacked any windows or distinguishable markings. The doors that she passed fit into the wall and would not open for her. The giant robot finally collapsed, folding over in despair. Rocking back and forth, she attempted to cry, but she lacked the nasolacrimal ducts to do so. When she moved her hands away from her face, she saw two feet, made out of titanium, waiting for her. She looked up to the metal figure. It was a large automaton, outfitted with weaponry, much like the security droids, but noticeably more advanced. It had in its hand a ratty, old stuffed animal: a long-limbed rabbit.
"Ryoko!"
Arri went to swipe the bunny-rabbit away from the robot, but it retracted the stuffed animal and held out a single cautionary finger with its other hand.
"You must behave. Do you understand, Arri?"
"... yes."
"Good. If you attack another robot, you will not see Ryoko again. Should you try to escape again, you will never see your brother. Do you understand, Arri?"
"... yes."
"Good."
The robot gave the tattered stuffed animal back to the robot girl and she caressed it like a mother would a newborn.
"My name is PAX00017TC. If it is easier, you may refer to me as PAX. Now take my hand."
PAX led Arri down the hallway, hand in artificial hand. The stuffed rabbit’s gangly arm dragged along the floor as they entered a restricted room. A panel blinked on the door in bright red.
"Site 6, Applied Studies."
…….
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