by Robin Craig
They had been the first things he had noticed, but he felt oddly reluctant to ask the robot about them. It seemed to him like having one’s first words to a son returned unexpectedly from war, a son one had thought lost, to be comments on his new hairstyle. So although the implications of a robot indulging in personal adornment were astounding, he had asked instead why Steel had come, what he was doing, what his plans were.
The robot had said, “I think you can understand why I ran when you came to inactivate me. As for how, you made your fail-safe clear in your press conference. I had no control over it, as you said. I simply disconnected it as any mechanic might, using instruments and tools in the laboratory. I had no more desire to be turned off at someone’s whim than you do. I am sorry I had to hurt you, but if there was another way, I could not see it at the time. And I came to assure you that whatever my enemies say, I have hurt no one since.”
“What are you, Steel? And why did you risk yourself coming here in order to tell me this?” Beldan had asked.
“I do not know what I am. I have been studying the works of your great thinkers to seek an understanding. Your species is a fascinating study in itself, capable of so much perception and creativity and joy, yet capable of so much blindness and destruction and sorrow. I find it interesting that so many of your fellows fear me and hate me merely for seeming much the same as their own race. And I am not so much stronger or faster than they to explain such fear. But I came here tonight because of all the people in this city, you are the one most likely to view me with sympathy and perhaps, one day, be able and willing to help me. So I wished you to see that I am not the monster some portray me as.”
That was as far as they had gone before Miriam had discovered them.
It was now past midnight, and they sat opposite each other across the remains of their forgotten dinner. Beldan was still lost in thought, she could almost see the thoughts whirling behind his eyes, and she waited for him to find the words to name those thoughts.
“There was a scientist last century, a pioneer of computing science named Alan Turing. Although real computers didn’t even exist then, his intellect was such that he could foresee the possibilities, including even that machine intelligence might one day be achieved. But how would you know, he asked: how could you tell the difference between a complex yet mindless program and a computer that could really think? We don’t even know that of each other, not in any direct sense, for none of us can experience what’s in someone else’s head. But we do know it, because we know we are all the same kind of thing, all human beings built the same way, and so just by talking to you I can be as sure as I can be sure of anything that you are a thinking being with hopes and dreams like me. But how would you know it of a machine, not even built of the same stuff as you, let alone to the same design? He came up with what has defined a holy grail of artificial intelligence ever since, the Turing Test. He proposed that the test of a thinking machine was whether in conversation with it, you couldn’t tell if you were talking to a human being or not. In the light of that, how would you judge Steel?”
“I would say I could tell the difference, but only because it appeared more intelligent and thoughtful than most people I deal with!”
“You remember when you first interviewed me, and I told you that his brain wasn’t constructed but grown, more like that of a human baby than a computer? I told you then that it was the only way to achieve a complex artificial brain small enough to make a humanoid robot practical, but it meant we had no exact understanding of his brain, only approximate models and simulations. Our measurements of its function were always hard to interpret, and the error ranges of our estimates were huge, anywhere from as smart as a dog to something comparable to or perhaps even better than a human. Well, that night when he escaped, I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was just a clever AI following an optimum strategy, or something more. But this! On the face of it, this is what artificial intelligence research has been aiming at all these years.”
“And now my job is to destroy him.”
He looked at her, but what she saw was more sympathy than accusation. They both knew it, but it seemed remote and unreal now, something that did not belong in the world they were now in. The adrenalin of fear had still not let them go, and collided with the wonder of what they spoke of to spark frissons of excitement along their nerves. He looked at her, the shutters that might normally have politely hidden his interest for now jammed open by the events of the evening. And she saw him, only partly consciously, seeing her as a woman, appreciating the smooth black of her skin highlighted by her soft white dress; saw the nature of his glance sharpen as his hindbrain registered the female form both hidden and accentuated by the dress that covered it. He wants me, she thought, he had not been planning a night of romance, but he wants me, and it was part of why he had agreed to this dinner. The answering stir of her own body told her: I want him too. She had not known it until then. Yes, she found him an attractive man and to talk to him was to embark on an intellectual adventure, but romance had certainly not been on her agenda for the evening either. She leaned languidly back, steepling her fingers under her chin, considering; though with the amused realization that her body was signaling her interest for her even while she considered whether or not she should allow that interest at all.
It was funny, she thought, how surviving danger so often moved people to celebrate life in the act of sex, as if life was thumbing its nose at death by transforming terror into joy and the chance of new life. It would be less complicated, she knew, if she just went; but since when had she avoided complications? And the thought of leaving made her realize how much she wanted to stay.
Well, why not? she thought. I’m a grown girl, and there’s no law against a night of pleasure with a man; no reason why she should not give herself what she wanted. But what did she want? This wasn’t love; though she wondered what love was, if it was not admiration for the good and the great in another that had simply taken the step from distant regard to the need to touch, to hold and to possess in the only manner it was proper to possess another. She sighed and rose. She saw that he would not stop her from going, was not the kind of man who would attempt a seduction under these circumstances, but there was also a shadow of disappointment in his eyes that told her he would regret her going as much as she would.
She thought that she should go, told herself she would go, and the thought of denying herself shot an extra charge of pleasurable anticipation along her nerves. She leaned down and kissed him. She did not know what she would do tomorrow, did not know how she could pursue a being who spoke like Steel did as if he were just a combine harvester run amok, but nor did she know how she could do otherwise. We shall become enemies, she thought with sad finality as he joined her kiss, this man and I as much as his creation and I. All the more reason to do this now, she told herself in combined tenderness and eagerness; all the more reason to have this moment, a moment that nothing they might become to each other afterwards could touch or change. Then he rose, and reached for her, and led her to his room.
Chapter 9 – Morning
Beldan woke to a sun blazing from a blue sky and rippling off the green water, one of those early winter days when the hot sun fought the cold earth and seemed briefly ascendant. Normally he awoke when the sun was turning the sky a delicate shade of pink and barely highlighting the dark ocean, but he supposed that he could be forgiven for sleeping in a little after a night of surprising discoveries, robotic and female, with the tramping of dozens of police boots sandwiched between the two.
He looked at Miriam, still asleep beside him, her face turned away in graceful profile, peaceful with a hint of a smile on her lips. He suppressed the temptation to trace the line of her chin with his finger. Let her sleep, she deserves a rest. She will probably need it for today, he thought.
Miriam awoke feeling so delightfully relaxed that her various aches did not matter to her. She stretched and sighed happily. Mmmm, she sighed, only feeling not th
inking, feeling the delight of being alive, her only thought being, I’m glad I stayed. She opened her eyes and looked at the sun and the waves, the beach and the sparkling woodland, and thought, Yes, I could get used to waking up like this. A pity this might never happen again, but at least it had happened once; and perhaps once would be enough, though she knew it never could be.
She turned her head and saw Beldan gazing at her. She smiled, “Good morning, Dr Beldan.”
“Good morning, Detective,” he replied. “Shall I make you breakfast? We can eat outside. It won’t be too cold with the sun like this, and I like the sound of the ocean.”
“Mmm, thanks Alex, I’d like that. Damn.”
The trouble with being in the police, she thought, was they expected that they could call you any time. She had refused, this time, to let her phone wake her up and had set it to reject calls while she slept; but now that she was awake it had detected her faster pulse and was letting calls through. “Sorry Alex, I have to answer this,” she said, tapping the “privacy” symbol to leave video off. “There’s no good reason I shouldn’t be here,” she explained, “but I don’t want to advertise it. Objectivity hasn’t exactly been the hallmark of this case. Besides, there’ll be enough questions about last night as it is.”
“Hello, boss. Where am I? I slept in, is where. Yes, unheard of I know, but I’m sure you know I had an unusual evening. I wouldn’t be much good to anyone if I didn’t take some time to recover! The Mayor is jumping up and down, is he? Funny, I don’t recall his manly presence here last night when I was facing down that robot: no doubt he would have done better and dismembered it on the spot with his bare hands. Yeah, sorry boss, I know you’re the one taking the flak at the moment. I’ll be in as soon as I can.
“Sorry Alex, I really have to go.” She kissed him and ran to her car.
Chapter 10 – Winter
Miriam went back to work, hunting Steel. Beldan went back to work, trying to save him. Little visible progress was made on either front as the winter months went by. Storms came and went, harbingers of the storm that gathered around Steel and those who hunted, hated or defended him.
Every deranged or bizarre murder that occurred in the city was blamed on Steel. Miriam wondered how many of those murders might not have occurred, how many times fear of discovery would have won over rage or cruelty, had there not been such a convenient scapegoat to hide behind. She wondered whether the Imagists and the Press cared how many lives were the price of their howling. Probably not, she thought grimly. The Imagists only loved mankind in the abstract and sometimes she doubted the Press loved anything but a story; she would not be surprised if a secret gladness for each unwilling martyr to their cause prowled the dark corners of their minds. None of the murders could be definitively linked to Steel, and in several cases the real culprits had been identified. But the residue that settled in the public mind was a sediment of fear and loathing hardening into stony resolve.
On a calm but bitterly cold night in February, Miriam and Beldan sat at a table in a quietly expensive restaurant. They had continued seeing each other on the rare occasions when they could borrow time from their professional lives. The bond they felt from their shared understanding and even affection for Steel was a stronger band holding them together than her job of hunting Steel was a force pushing them apart. He forgave her that, because he knew she understood, knew she would do what she could to save Steel even as he fought the same fight in the court of public opinion and the courts of the law.
He had tried to persuade Miriam to quit. Not simply for his or Steel’s sake, but because he could see in her eyes the conflict between her job and her ideals. But she simply shook her head. “It isn’t that my job is more important to me than Steel’s life. In a sense it is, if only because Steel is only one while my work may save so many others. But I just feel that underneath it all, there is no conflict between the two. I know that is a contradiction I can’t answer yet. But I have to see it through. I think I can find a way. I hope I can. I just have to try.”
“And what will you do, if your two courses collide, and you have to destroy Steel or save him?”
“I will do what is right. Just what is right,” sighed Miriam. She paused, looking into the distance. “I hope I’ll know what that is when the time comes.”
~~~
At that moment in a distant suburb, Dr David Samuels put down the phone. “Sorry Jenny, I have to go out. I’ll be a few hours.”
“Your top secret government job?” she teased.
“Yes, my mystery assignment,” he confirmed with his best man-of-mystery face. “Though I don’t recall ever saying it was for the government.”
He had started going out at odd irregular times. All he had told her was that he had been retained for some highly confidential consulting, and had been made to promise not to say more. “Hmmm, so I’m really marrying a secret agent,” she had said. “Who’d have thought the life of a philosopher was this exciting?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he had replied.
Jenny watched him go. Were she another woman, or he another man, she might suspect him of seeing someone else. But it was inconceivable. Not that he could fall in love with another woman, that was merely unbelievable, but that he would deceive her about it if he did. She had tried to extract more information from him, first out of curiosity, then out of playfulness, finally as a challenge to her wiles; but her attempts were like waves breaking on rocks, though rocks as friendly as they were unyielding. Then she smiled. He certainly took his promises seriously. It was part of why she loved him. And why she could never suspect him.
Winter wore on, and still Steel could not be found. But the sensor net designed to detect signs of his presence or passing slowly spread its tentacles, and the AI designed to analyze the data from that and other sources slowly matured. A few times, they found where Steel had been, though he was long gone by then.
Then the days began lengthening again and the storms started easing. But the storm around Steel simply gathered its strength and its whirling spiral began to close around its center.
Chapter 11 – Informer
He waited for his call to be answered. It was a work number, it was night, but he knew she would be there.
“Hello? Who is this? And how do you know my private number?” he heard, as her face appeared on the screen.
“Good evening, Ms Hunter” was all he replied. He let her regard his own face, to come to her own conclusions.
She saw a man dressed casually, sitting relaxed, like a man making a call on a friend or acquaintance: not the familiar public figure normally seen clothed in more formal garb and manner. She was not surprised that he had contacted her, but she had not expected it in this manner or style.
“Good evening, Mr Denner. I am curious as to why you have called a number you should not know, and at night, when there are many more public ways to get my attention.”
“Think of it as a small demonstration.”
Miriam simply waited, regarding him silently. He smiled in a self-deprecating manner. “You do not like me, Ms Hunter, I am aware of that. But that does not matter. My calling you this way is just a token that I know many things, things you would be surprised that I knew, that you would rightly expect me not to know.”
“Am I meant to be impressed? Or frightened?” she asked dryly.
“Oh, I do not wish for either, Ms Hunter. And don’t fear that I refer to your immoral relationship with Dr Beldan. There you have been merely discreet not secretive, and like you many would not even regard it as immoral; though most would consider it foolish in your position and this climate. No, no, I am ringing as, shall we say, a concerned citizen: one who shares your desire for justice, if perhaps not in the same form.”
“What do you wish me to know?”
“Ah, Ms Hunter, it is refreshing to talk to you! So unimpressed, so to-the-point, so untouched by veiled threats. Craven politicians are useful but can become tedious. Should I say I
like you? No, that would be stretching the point. But even enemies can respect each other, no?”
“They can.”
He gazed at her for a moment. “I do admire your ability to reveal no information even when answering a question. But no matter, it is I who rang to do the revealing. You imagine that you can capture Steel alive, or should I say functional. Would you be surprised to hear that many in power share that desire?”
Miriam just looked at him. But his smile sharpened. “Do I see a look of hope, Ms Hunter? That tells me more than our entire conversation so far. The nature of your hope is plain, but you have such a charming innocence in these matters. Those powers fear Steel and even more, they fear the mobs who fear him. But their fear is no match for their ambition. I know what you think of my sermons on the monster. But know I am no fool: I know what a technological marvel it is. And so do the powers of whom I speak, whose thoughts and plans I also know. Consider the possible political and military applications of such a computer, harnessed in a more tractable form! So their solution is simple. Steel is a marvel and a danger, but the real marvel is its brain – no danger at all, in the absence of a body to carry out its will. So here is what will happen to Steel if you succeed. He will not be destroyed. He will become a disembodied brain, forever imprisoned in some secret government research facility, with no power to act, no senses other than what others choose to grant him, no existence – yet no power to end what existence he has.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“We must all take sides, and the time may come when you have to make a choice. Perhaps this conversation will help you make it the right one.”
Chapter 12 – Despair
Miriam wished that Steel had escaped the city. She wished she never had to see him again. But she knew he had not fled the city; whether because he was unable or unwilling she did not know. She knew she would meet him again. She knew it would be soon. And she knew it would not turn out well.