by Robin Craig
The robot smiled again. Samuels had deliberately injected the joke to see how the robot would respond, and was impressed that it could respond so naturally. “You are probably aware, doctor, that I am radio-equipped and have full access to the net through any number of relay points. So I did not need to frighten magazine sellers nor steal their wares in order to read your musings. Which, as you have guessed, are why I am here.”
“You speak like a man would. Yet my article disputed the possibility that a machine like you could think in any conscious way. Are you here to take me to task for my theories?”
“No, Dr Samuels. I am here because I do not know what I am and would like to find out, and yours is a mind I respect. Your article interested me because you dispute the possibility of what I seem to myself to be, and perhaps I will learn more by talking with someone of an alternative viewpoint, than I would with someone less critical. And I have studied your other writings. You say that men should deal with each other by reason, in honesty and justice. I believe I can trust you.”
“But how can you trust me to treat you as a man, and not as the dangerous renegade machine you are reputed to be?”
“By the fact that you would ask me such a question.”
Samuels smiled, conceding the point. “But what do you actually want from me? A philosophical argument?”
“No, professor. I want you to teach me. I wish to become your private student. I must confess, however, that I have no money, and little prospects of employment. I cannot pay you.”
Samuels felt his head spinning, thinking maybe he should have bought whiskey instead of wine. Was this robot actually making its own attempt at humor in its turn, or was it simply that naive? Its face was inscrutable. So inscrutable, thought Samuels, that the robot almost certainly knew exactly what it was saying.
He laughed, weakly but helplessly. “I think you are perfectly aware, Mr Robot, that I would sell all I have for what you are offering me – to mentor what may be the first non-human intelligence encountered by man.” And with that, he extended his hand to the machine.
Chapter 7 – Meetings
Miriam sat, enjoying a relaxation she hadn’t felt in the weeks of hunting a ghost who left no trail, at least no trail that could be discerned above the random background noise that was all her reams of reports and so-called witness statements amounted to. Any traces her prey may have left whispering along the pathways and byways of the net were similarly lost among the competing clamors of the world going about its normal business, and none of the AI bots she had sent sniffing through the net had found any hints that survived analysis.
She was alone, for now, alone with her thoughts, and she sat looking out at the snow and rocks and the dark restless ocean forever striving to claim them, thinking back over her evening. She had driven up the long driveway through a grove of poplars reaching their bare branches toward the distant stars. A layer of snow covered the ground and sparkled in the branches, as her headlights swept over the house commanding a view of the surrounding land and sea.
The house reflected the personality of its owner like the snow reflected her headlights, she thought. It grew out of the hill in slabs of granite that hid unknown secrets, from which rose shaped forms of stainless steel and broad sheets of glass that let the light of the world in, and shone their own light onto the world outside. She was having dinner with Alexander Beldan; not a date, not really, just a relaxed dinner where they could discuss the case in comfort, privacy and relaxation. If one could relax, chasing a robot that ate children, if only in the imagination or more likely wishful thinking of the press.
And to her surprise, it had been relaxing, lost in a world of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, electronics and photonics – though ever hovering in the shadows cast by that world of light and promise was the monster it had perhaps created. But if men had turned back from stone tools the first time someone had cut themselves, would they have been better off? She thought of herself, eating fresh and delicious food in a warm house while outside was nothing but snow and the cold light of stars and thought, no, those far ancestors huddling in their caves beset by wolves and bears had been right, right to start down the path of changing nature to suit their ends rather than begging nature just to let them live.
She had come here to order and test her thoughts on this case, give them shape and form, maybe to learn some unknown clue that would help her. But she had found herself simply enjoying Beldan’s company and had surrendered to the simple pleasures of fine food and finer conversation on topics as fascinating as they were far from her normal pursuits. And why not, she thought: maybe her soul needed refueling as much as her body, maybe this small island of rest would help her more than she had known.
Beldan had gone to his cellar to fetch a dessert wine to finish off their meal. Perhaps she shouldn’t drink any more, she still had to drive home, but she found herself not wanting this evening to end quite yet. It would not kill her, one more glass of wine – but where was it? She sat up, suddenly alert. Beldan had not been gone long, but he had been gone longer than she had expected, she realized. The monster lurking in the shadows seemed to her to be stalking closer now. You’re letting this case get under your skin, she scolded herself, there’s nothing here, no reason for this sudden apprehension. But she couldn’t shake it so easily.
She smiled with amusement at her own feelings. She hardly thought Beldan had some dark secret hidden in his cellar that would cause him to lock her in it if she presumed to look inside. And while yes, it was a small breach of etiquette, she imagined the rapport they had developed would grant her, if not the right, then at least his forgiveness for her curiosity. While she did not know how to get there, she had seen what direction he had taken, and she smiled at the thought of what her fellow detectives would say if she got lost looking for a man’s cellar.
As she approached the cellar stairs, she thought she heard the murmur of voices, unexpected enough that she did not call out. Beldan had the charming custom of removing his shoes in the house, acquired from some time spent in Thailand in his youth, he’d said. So she had done the same, a decision now proving useful. She crept silently down the stairs in her stockinged feet, peering into the shadowed cellar, its pale bluish lamp not quite reaching into the mustily dark corners, gleaming dimly off dusty ranks of wine. There under the light was Beldan, and standing next to him in the shadows was a man; or rather something like a man, a man she could now see was made of steel.
A surge of adrenalin banished the warm glow of company and wine from her blood. What to do? Were they in league together, after all: had he lured her here for some dark purpose? Or had the robot come to him – or was it her it was tracking? – and for what purpose? She glanced at her bracelet phone but there was no signal, whether because of the surrounding earth or because the robot was somehow jamming it she couldn’t tell, and she dared not attempt to steal away now.
She studied the scene more carefully. Beldan stood, a tall thin bottle of wine in his hand, apparently forgotten. His pose was tense and slightly awkward, as if he had selected the wine, turned, been startled to see the robot then had stayed in that pose since, his mind too lost elsewhere to attend to the deportment of his body. A surprise, then, not a conspiracy, she thought: so she could concentrate on dealing with the robot.
She had seen photos and video of the robot, of course, but in person – if person was the right word for it – it was a shock and she had to swallow a gasp. While it was made of steel, this was no animated tin can from a 1950s science fiction film. With its humanlike form, grace and posture and its artfully designed eyes, the net effect was more like a man with silvery skin than the machine she knew it to be.
She was not well armed, only as well armed as she could reasonably be on a dinner date where she wasn’t expecting to meet a homicidal robot – but didn’t want to be completely defenseless if she did. She had a recoilless magnum pistol with jacketed slugs, easily able to pierce metal armor. Not as convincing as
the panoply of ordnance she and her team had at their disposal when investigating alleged leads, but enough, perhaps; enough if she could convince the robot it was enough.
She pointed her gun at the robot’s head, stepped out into the light and said, “Don’t move.” Well done, she thought to herself, you sound like an extra in a late night crime movie, one of those extras fated to fall in the next scene.
The robot merely turned and looked at her, as did Beldan. Thinking what its best move was, she imagined, like it had when Beldan first went to it with its death warrant. She knew that was its style: it would stand there weighing its options then act fast and decisively. So she’d better do her best to make sure its decision was the right one.
“I know you’re fast, Frankensteel, but if you know anything about guns, you know these bullets are faster and will go straight through that stainless steel skull of yours. I don’t want to destroy you.”
“I understand, Ms Hunter. I do not wish to destroy you either,” it said, in a voice gentle and deep. Calculated to instill trust, she thought. Are we humans that easy to manipulate?
“You know me?” she asked coldly.
“It would be remiss of me to fail to study the woman who hunts me,” he said. “Your record is most impressive. Under other circumstances I would consider it an honor to meet you.”
This conversation wasn’t going quite the way she had imagined; indeed the whole thing was so surreal she wondered whether this was but another nightmare, not something so real that her life might hang on its outcome. And was the robot a few inches closer? She had not seen it move but had it, or was it just a trick of the light? Was this conversation, after all, just a gambit calculated to put her off her guard? Just how deep was this robot’s game? And if it was that deep – what did that itself say about its nature? She took a step back. The extra distance wouldn’t hurt her aim, but if the robot thought a couple of inches would give it an advantage, she would more than nullify that – and send it a silent message of her own.
“Listen to me, robot. Someone or something is going to die tonight unless you agree to let me take you in. Nobody more needs to die. Surrender to me now. My orders are to blow you up first and bring in the pieces, but I think I can get away with stretching that point. But your time is running out: you are too dangerous for me to give you any more warnings.”
“Thank you. But surely you know that whether I go with you willingly or in pieces, it is in pieces I will be as soon as your superiors have me in their power? I have studied your laws and your newspapers. Were I the vilest human criminal, my life would be protected by your laws and I would have the chance to make my case and defend my life in your courts. But your laws and those who make your laws consider me to be no more than the car you drove tonight, to be scrapped at a whim, with neither thought nor guilt. I have no rights and no recourse other than that right of self defense that no man can take away from me, whether he grants it to me or not.”
“I will do my best to protect you and to see you have a fair hearing. As will Dr Beldan.”
“And you will fail. You offer me, in exchange for my acquiescing to the gun you have pointed at my head but choose not to fire, to give me up to my destroyers, who will have no such qualms.”
She said nothing, unsure of what to say, sure of the rightness of her course but equally sure of the truth of his words. When had she started to think of it as “him”, she wondered? She could not afford to let her resolve waver, she knew, not against an adversary such as this. Then the machine spoke again.
“One of your great philosophers, Socrates of Athens, was sentenced to death by his fellows for disturbing the comfort of their ignorant lives, men who could not match his worth. Do you know that he had the chance to escape with his life, but chose to remain and take the poison awaiting him? Because he believed that if men were to live together, the rights of the one were to be sacrificed to the demands of the many; that no justification was needed, save the numbers of those making the demands; that fear outweighed right? Do you think that is the only way men can live together, that they can live together that way?”
My God, she thought, he not only talks of Socrates, he uses the method that great man himself had invented: of not trying to impart truth, but asking the questions that would lead people to discover the truth for themselves. She glanced at Beldan. He was watching the exchange with rapt attention, a look of wonder in his face, apparently unwilling to interrupt what was happening. And she wondered which was the greater marvel, this robot who spoke of laws, history and philosophy – or the mind of the man who had created it.
She shook her head. She had realized her mistake the moment she had taken her eyes off the robot: she knew that this lapse of attention could be fatal. But the robot had not moved, it simply stood regarding her in silence; as if ceding her the next move, like a chess master showing mercy to a novice. Or was it answering its own question, doing its own Socrates, the first machine thinker following in the footsteps of one of the first and greatest of the human ones?
“I… I have no answer for you. All I know is that it is my duty to bring you in, in as many pieces as you choose.”
The robot smiled. It was a startling smile, a testament to the skill of Beldan’s designers: for despite the metal face, what could have been a grotesque parody of a human smile looked as natural as that of a child. She knew they had paid much attention to the face, faces being so important to people, so important to the acceptance of a humanoid robot. But this seemed more than just a social simulation: it was a smile that seemed to reflect a mind behind the smile, like the smile of a child in more ways than one, a child discovering joy in the world and sharing that joy with its friends.
“Duty is another thing your philosophers have discussed at sometimes tedious length, Ms Hunter, usually in opposition to what people really want to do: as if what they want to do is always the last thing they should do, not the first. Well, that may be, for people who have no reasons for what they want to do. You know I have studied you. You said in an interview once that what motivated you was not only justice but your love of justice. I know that people lie, that perhaps you lied to make yourself appear more virtuous than you are for the sake of admiration or advancement. But I believe you, for nothing else would have stopped you shooting me on sight, let alone allowing me to speak to you like this and not only to listen, but to answer me as you would answer a man. If your duty does not serve justice, then you must choose which you truly serve. For I think you know that the one thing that would not be served by arresting me tonight, is justice.”
It was hard, she thought, hard to hold to her duty when it spoke like this. But she knew that despite its words, it had hurt and maybe killed; for all that it spoke like a cultured professor at a dinner party, men and women of flesh and blood might die if she let it go. And how could she live with herself then, and what would the love of justice of which it spoke have brought her to? Her job was to protect innocent human lives, not risk them on her opinion of the nature of a machine beyond her ability to understand. “Nevertheless, robot, I must insist. Allow Dr Beldan to inactivate you, or I must destroy you. You may think I have a choice. I don’t.”
The light went out. She fired out of reflex, but the robot had planned it, had moved in that instant, and she knew that her bullet had met nothing but empty air when she felt the pain of her gun being torn from her hand, more pain as steel fingers applied themselves expertly to pressure points, then nothing. He has certainly been studying more about us than my personal history, were her last thoughts as the darkness claimed her.
~~~
The darkness slowly let Miriam go. But still there was darkness, all around her, nothing but darkness and the soft whirring of an air conditioner punctuated by a faint dripping sound. Haven’t I been in this dream before, she thought blurrily? She felt somewhat bruised but otherwise intact – then she remembered. She sat up and looked around. She felt shakily for the cigarette lighter in her purse, lit it, held it high
. Her eyes and heart stopped at the still body of Dr Beldan lying in a pool of dark liquid. Was that what it was all along, then? All that fancy talk just a cover for revenge on the creator that had turned on it, nothing but a confirmation of the Frankenstein fears that had motivated its persecution in the first place? Or worse, had she in panic and darkness shot wild and killed Beldan herself? But in the instant she tasted the liquid she saw Beldan stir, and she realized her bullet had met more than air but less than flesh after all. What a waste of expensive wine, she thought faintly with relief as she tapped the Emergency icon on her bracelet, now lit and live again.
Chapter 8 – Aftermath
The forensic scientists and her investigation team had gone. She had remained behind, telling them she wished to speak further with Dr Beldan.
A large storm water pipe passed within ten feet of Dr Beldan’s cellar, and the robot had gained its dramatic entry by the prosaic expedient of digging in with a pick and shovel, still leaning against the wall as if left by a worker just gone to lunch.
Beyond that, where the robot had come from or gone to was impossible to determine. Before it had broken in, it had invested the time in running up and down miles of drains and their exits, leaving no way to follow the faint traces that were all they could find of its passing. They had taken the radio-controlled circuit breaker it had installed in the light and triggered to make its escape, but doubted it would tell them anything useful.
Beldan had not been able to provide any clues as to the robot’s whereabouts either. He had turned after selecting his bottle of wine, and the robot had stepped out of the shadows. It had changed from its original appearance, with traceries of geometric and fractal patterns on its arms and body. They were not painted on but appeared to be laser etched into its skin, diffracting the light to form subtle but oddly beautiful patterns hinting of bronze, green and gold on its otherwise softly silver surface.