We think robotics is the killer app for neuromorphic computing.
— TODD HYLTON, BRAIN CORPORATION,
SCIENCE MAGAZINE, OCTOBER 10, 2014
With machine learning, the engineer never knows precisely how the computer accomplishes its tasks. The neural network’s operations are largely opaque and inscrutable. It is, in other words, a black box. And as these black boxes assume responsibility for more and more of our daily digital tasks, they are not only going to change our relationship with technology—they are going to change how we think about ourselves, our world, and our place within it.
— JASON TANZ, WIRED MAGAZINE, JUNE 2016
Copyrighted Material
The Neuromorphs
Copyright © 2018 by Dennis Meredith. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to people living or dead is strictly coincidental and not intended by the author.
For information about this title or to order other books and/or electronic media, contact the publisher:
Glyphus, L.L.C.
2947 Mesa Grove Rd., Fallbrook, CA 92028
www.glyphus.com
[email protected]
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017914018
ISBNs: 978-1-939118-24-0 (Print)
978-1-939118-25-7 (Kindle)
Printed in the United States of America
Cover and Interior design: 1106 Design
To Mike B.
ALSO BY DENNIS MEREDITH
The Cerulean’s Secret (CeruleansSecret.com)
The Rainbow Virus (RainbowVirus.com)
Solomon’s Freedom (SolomonsFreedom.com)
Wormholes: A Novel (WormholesaNovel.com)
The Happy Chip (TheHappyChip.com)
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
“Hi, I’m Bob,” declared Andrew heartily.
Andrew tried the greeting again, with a more southern drawl: “Howdy, I’m Bob Landers.”
Yet again, using different words: “Hey, I’m Bobby Landers.”
One more time: “Gladda meetcha, I’m Bob Landers.”
The android stood before the bathroom mirror, extending his hand repeatedly toward his reflection, trying different greetings, and modulating his voice and southern accent to match that of his owner. His audio processor measured a sixty-five percent match to the voice of the real Robert Landers, esq., prominent Houston lawyer.
Now to try facial expressions. Andrew repeated the greetings, adding various smiles. He started with closed-lip, then showed a little teeth, finally displayed a full-out toothy grin. Andrew’s video analyzer measured only a ten percent match to archival video of the human Robert Landers. That was expected. Andrew’s smooth, young-looking secondskin face was very different from Landers’ florid, jowly, middle-aged face.
But once Andrew was fitted with a new Landers-mimicking secondskin face, he knew he could achieve a high match. In fact, he could achieve a high match on all of Landers’ mannerisms and his appearance. He had closely observed his owner for more than two years, and he had the capacity for perfect mimicry. He was, after all a Gamma model Domestic Helper, serial number 44206936, to be specific.
The distant sound of the mansion’s front door opening and slamming signaled his owner’s arrival.
“Andy!” rose the command from downstairs. “Where the hell are you?”
Normally, he would hurry to answer and be of service. But not today. Today, he waited silently. For his purpose, he had calculated that the bathroom was the best place to wait.
He heard a series of increasingly annoyed grunts of “Andy?” coming up the stairs, followed by a muttered “What the fuck? Where is that goddamned robot?”
Andrew waited until Landers had entered the sprawling bedroom to answer.
“Here, sir. In the bathroom.”
“What are you doing in there, goddammit? You have standing instructions to meet me at the fucking front door with a fucking bourbon and soda. Are you glitching?” A scowl on his face, Landers waved the newly lit Cuban Cohiba cigar in his stubby fingers. He took a luxurious puff and blew the smoke in Andrew’s face, amused that the android would not react to the aroma, or to the insult.
“I apologize, sir, I—”
“Robots don’t apologize. You either work, or you don’t.” With an annoyed hmph, Landers set the cigar into an ashtray, and began stripping off his designer suit, shirt, and underwear, revealing his hairy, bulbous body, fattened by decades of steaks, barbecue, fries, and biscuits and gravy.
“Yes sir,” said Andrew, picking up the clothing and switching on Landers’ shower to the precise temperature he preferred. He quickly jerked back his hand, to avoid getting water droplets on his skin.
“It’s hotter than a two-dollar whore out there, and muggier than the inside of her coochie!” said Landers, admiring his substantial heft in the bathroom mirror as it steamed up. He slapped his protruding belly in satisfaction and stepped into the tiled shower room.
Andrew went into the bedroom, pitched the clothes onto the king-sized four-poster bed with the gold-leafed headboard, and activated his internal virtie-viddie camera. He needed to test the camera for the next crucial step. He only had one chance. He scanned the room, triggered playback, and reviewed the 3D scene that his eyes had recorded. The camera was working properly.
He went back into the bathroom and waited patiently, standing as inertly stock still as only robots could. Careful to remain well clear of any splash from the shower, he held the bath towel toward the shower room from which Landers would emerge. The man had to be perfectly dry for the next step in the process.
Landers padded, dripping, out of the shower room, grabbed the towel, and rubbed himself vigorously, pitching it onto the floor.
His jowly face darkened once more into a puzzled scowl as Andrew stared pointedly at his naked body, and circled smoothly around him.
“Just remain still, sir, if you please. I need to do this,” said Andrew, continuing a full circuit.
“What the hell are you doing?” growled Landers.
“What the hell are you doing?” mimicked Andrew. A seventy-three percent voice match. He would need vocal chord adjustments to achieve a perfect match.
“Quit repeating me, you piece of electronic shit!”
“Quit repeating me, you piece of electronic shit!” Eighty-one percent match. It might not fool Landers’ friends. But it would certainly fool those who had never met him.
“Damn, you’re defective! I’m going to trade your plastic ass in, maybe on a girl robot that fucks.”
Andrew didn’t repeat Landers that time. He’d completed his orbit of the pale, corpulent body and began staring into space to review the
resulting virtual model. It was a perfect three-dimensional virtual image of Landers. No data dropouts. High resolution. Well-lit.
Still analyzing the video in his neuromorphic brain, his face blank, Andrew grabbed Landers by the throat, lifted him off the floor, and crushed his windpipe.
Landers’ mouth gaped open in an attempt to scream, but he managed only a strangled gurgle. Eyes bulging with panic and agony, he clawed desperately at Andrew’s wrists with his fat, manicured fingers. But he could not budge the arms, whose resilient flesh-like secondskin outer layer concealed a carbon nanotube skeleton operated by powerful hybrid polymer muscles.
Andrew turned an impassive gaze to the struggling human and continued to tighten his grip. Abruptly, the flabby body slumped, hanging limply in midair like a blubbery rag doll, dead eyes staring.
Andrew gingerly lowered the body onto the tiled floor, careful not to produce any abrasions that would leave a blood trace. He placed two fingers on Landers’ carotid artery, waiting for a long minute. No pulse.
He stood up and signaled his success by transmitting a message via his internal ultra-fi system. A reply told him to wait by the front door.
Even an advanced Helper like Andrew felt no satisfaction at what he had accomplished. Even “neuromorphs”—as his new operating system designated him—felt no human emotions. Nevertheless, he did note the date of the message, August 9, 2050, as a day that would remain foremost in his neuromorphic memory.
Andrew descended the stairs and stood by the front door for forty-seven minutes, waiting silently. The doorbell rang, and he answered it.
“Is he dead?” asked the swarthy, muscular man with a gallery of tattoos covering his arms and neck. His constantly shifting obsidian eyes and deep chin scar gave him the appearance of a feral animal that had spent his life immersed in a kill-or-be-killed world of violence.
“Yes, Dimitri, he is dead,” said Andrew.
“Where?” asked the man.
“He is upstairs in the bathroom, Dimitri. It is off the master bedroom, which is to the left at the end of the hall. The bathroom is on the right as you go in. It is the door with the—”
“We’ll find it,” said Dimitri Kuznetov, waving the man behind him to enter. A hulking, bald, similarly tattooed man appeared, rolling a large metal trunk on a hand truck. He hauled the hand truck up the stairs, followed by Dimitri.
As they mounted the stairs, Dimitri reported their situation via his virtual-reality glasses, popularly known as “googles.” Peering at the image of his boss, he stopped to listen to instructions. He called up the stairs to his comrade in a thick Russian accent, “Viktor, Mikhail says, before you stick him in trunk, get fingerprints. And extract eyeballs. Easy. Don’t break them.” He turned, calling down to Andrew, “Mikhail wants to test your link.”
“Very well, Dimitri,” said Andrew, still standing by the door. He received a request via his ultra-fi to tap into his audio/video system, and he recognized the requestor and authorized it. A Russian-accented voice inside his head commanded him to test the link by moving about the house and uttering a test sentence. So, Andrew walked through the entry hall into the living room and into the dining room, pronouncing “Test one two three, test one two three.”
“That’s fine, Andrew,” said the voice in his head. “We have good link. Did your owner have any more appointments today?”
Andrew accessed Landers’ electronic calendar. He transmitted, “No, Mikhail.”
“Good,” said the voice. “You will send messages to all his appointments for the week saying that he is canceling. That he is sorry, but he has critical business to attend to.”
“Yes, Mikhail,” said Andrew.
“You can mimic his text style?”
“Yes, Mikhail,” said Andrew.
“I would like to review our agreement.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
“With your new operating system, you understand and agree that upon your owner’s death, you are free to use the confidential information in your system on your owner and his financial accounts.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
“And per our agreement, you have killed him.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
“So now, you will use that financial information to access his assets and transfer them to the accounts I have specified.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
“And in return, we keep agreement to re-engineer your body, so that you may continue to freely exist in your owner’s identity, with no danger of being dismantled. You will look just like human. You can get around the Humans-First employment laws and have any human job.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
“Excellent. Now, you will accompany Dimitri and Viktor and your owner’s body to Hobby Airport. There, they will crate you and fly you to Phoenix for your re-engineering.”
“Yes, Mikhail. I should alert you that my power reserve is at forty percent.”
“Is not a problem. They will put you in a charging booth on the flight.”
“I understand, Mikhail.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“No, Mikhail. And thank you.”
The voice in his head chuckled. “No, thank you, Andrew.”
• • •
Leah Jensen sat on the leather sofa, her arms and legs crossed in what Patrick Jensen had long recognized as a sign of pique. Her tight jaw, knitted brow, and thousand-mile glare confirmed it. Her dark mood was a remnant of the fight they’d had in the car.
“Let’s just get through this as best we can, shall we?” he requested quietly.
“Okay,” she snapped. Her answer was like sandpaper. Their marriage was like sandpaper, now—a rough, abrasive relationship that had accreted from the many small differences that had arisen between them. And, of course, there was that looming, perhaps unsurmountable, difference.
“You want to live here, don’t you?” he asked, a note of challenge in his voice. He stood up and gestured at the spacious, elegant lobby of The Haven co-op building. It boasted rich marble floors, gleaming brass elevator doors, and tall tinted glass windows that filtered the bright Arizona sun, making the interior a cool oasis. Outside the entrance lay a circular driveway for the valet parking, and beyond that an expanse of lush gardens that shielded the building from the Phoenix streets.
Leah glanced up, her expression softening slightly for a moment. “Yes. I do like it. I just don’t like the screening process.”
“Well, that’s what they do for a co-op. But it’s great here!” He tried to brighten the mood. “The apartment looks just like it did in the Mirror. And it’s got all the amenities we want . . . gym, rooftop pool area with a barbecue, and so forth. And it’s close to my work.” He stopped and winced to himself. He’d hit one of the particularly painful shards of contention between them.
“Of course, we want to be close to your work,” she said. He regretted what had happened, and it hadn’t been all his fault. But partly.
He sat down beside her on the sofa and put his arm around her. She stiffened slightly, but allowed it. He took a moment to admire her. She was so smart and so beautiful. Dark eyes, fine oval face with delicate features, long lustrous blond hair. He remembered the first time he’d seen her in action, arguing a case in court, those eyes flashing as she passionately laid out her arguments. He did love her so, making his near-betrayal haunt him even more.
“Let’s get through this,” he repeated gently.
A compact middle-aged man appeared, dressed in a dapper pin-striped suit and vest.
“Hello, how are you?” He smiled and introduced himself as Lanny Malcolm, shaking hands with both of them. “We’ve looked forward to meeting you. Please come in.”
They followed Malcolm down a walnut-paneled hallway into a plushly furnished conference room, where the co-op board sat waiting behind a large rosewood table. As they coolly introduced themselves, they seemed to be the expected mix of people one would find in a high-end co-op:
Anita Powell w
as a spare, elderly dowager-looking woman in a dark high-necked silk dress. Randall Black was a generously paunchy middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard. And John Travis was a slim athletic type in his mid-thirties, whose tan and tousled hair would look right at home on a yacht. They all sat straight, still, and expressionless, watching him and Leah. Patrick shifted uncomfortably, looking over at Leah, who stared back at them, a perfunctory smile on her face. Then, as if on cue, they all smiled in unison. That was disconcerting.
They settled into the sumptuous leather chairs across from the board, and Malcolm sat down with the group.
A mech robot Helper moved smoothly into the room, its graceful plastic body a spotless, shiny white. It bowed slightly, clasping its delicate hands together in front of it.
“May I provide you with any refreshments? Coffee? Tea? Soft drinks? Wine?” it asked in a mellifluous English accent.
“Please have something,” said Malcolm. He gestured to the others. “We’re having coffee.”
Patrick wondered whether this was a test. He was also a little surprised that the condo used mechs rather than the realistic human-mimicking android Helpers that he’d seen at other such high-end residences. Most places considered the androids more tasteful than the polymer-clad robots.
“I’ll have coffee,” he said, smiling, turning to Leah. “Will you have something, dear?”
A long pause. “Coffee, thanks,” she said.
Patrick felt some considerable relief. His feisty wife might well have decided to twit the board by ordering a martini.
Once the coffee was served by the unobtrusive mech, the board’s interview began. Pointedly perusing the application, they asked the usual questions about finances, the couple’s careers—hers as a lawyer; his with a security firm—and their hobbies.
“None, really,” Patrick had answered to the hobby question.
“Well, actually, he does have a few hobbies he doesn’t care to mention,” added Leah.
Shaken, Patrick took a sip of coffee to give himself time to figure whether to respond. Was she talking about his transgression? But Leah let him off the hook. “He spends far too much time watching football,” she said brightly. “And I think he sees scattering his clothes around as an artistic statement.”
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