Pal sat up, his bare chest fully exposed. A spattering of black hair nestled between chiseled pectorals, and his abdominal muscles bulged in neat horizontal rows. If not for a few chaotic and seemingly random scars, he could have modeled for the musculoskeletal system in any anatomy textbook. “Kendall?” Pal’s features looked pinched, either in surprise or revulsion. Susan found herself too caught up in his naked torso to fully focus on his features in order to differentiate.
She did not mean to sound defensive. “It was a very difficult time emotionally. And I was feeling bitter about waiting for Remy, only to have him snatched from me.”
“Gay Kendall?”
Susan shrugged. “We didn’t know it at the time.” Not wanting to talk about it anymore, Susan returned her attention to her Vox. “I’ve got two messages, and I’ve only looked at one. How about you?”
Pal consulted his Vox. “Three.” He tapped it. “Second one’s from my friend Dauber. He wants to know if I’m free for pizza and a pickup game on Friday.” He looked up. “Your turn.”
The request sounded so normal, Susan could not help smiling wistfully. She would so much prefer a day of school, studying robotics, followed by an evening of cheering on her boyfriend while he played football or basketball or baseball with his friends, their friends. She could almost smell the damp and leaf mold from the park, hear the laughter as the young men emerged from a muddy tackle, see the wives and partners shaking their heads at the men’s antics. It seemed like such a high school image, the type she had never experienced. Plain, skinny girls who studied every day did not have boyfriends.
Realizing Pal was staring at her, Susan tossed off her reverie to consult her Vox. “The other one’s from Kendall. Dr. Goldman’s funeral starts at eleven o’clock this morning.”
To Susan’s appreciation, Pal did not sigh, grunt, or demonstrate any other sign he preferred not to attend. He gave his Vox one more examination. “The last one’s from my neighbor, wondering why I didn’t come home last night.” He rolled his eyes. “Old Mrs. Thurgoode needs to find a less nosy hobby, but she means well. Bakes a great oatmeal raisin cookie, though.” Quickly, he slipped out of bed and started gathering his clothing.
Step one, Susan realized, remove the robot from the shower stall. Her pint-sized bathroom would make everyone’s morning ritual difficult, with or without Nate. Their first stop would have to be United States Robots and Mechanical Men. She would surely find Cody Peters at the funeral, which should provide her the opportunity to at least arrange for a time to talk to him more fully and to examine the scene of the crime. She needed to do some reading on the traditions and customs of Jewish funerals and only hoped the SFH would have the decency to allow her and the other attendees to mourn in peace.
• • •
Susan ushered Pal and Nate through USR security at eight fifteen a.m., and the secretary greeted them all from her desk. “Good morning, Dr. Calvin. Two visitor’s passes?”
“Please.” Susan glanced around the foyer to the closed doors that led to laboratories and offices. In the brief silence that followed, she remembered the procedure from her first visit, when her father had gotten her and Remington passes. “Sorry, you need their names, don’t you?”
Amara nodded, coiffed hairdo bouncing, eyes starkly lined and colorfully shadowed beneath unnaturally long and thick lashes. “Yes, please.”
Susan rattled them off. “This is Pal Buffoni and my cousin, Layton Campbell.”
The secretary typed into her oversized computer, and the printer spit out two squares of paper. From long habit, she folded them, then placed each into a separate plastic sheath attached to a lanyard before handing them to Susan. Both read VISITOR on the front, with the names in smaller type below. Susan noted only that Amara had spelled them properly before handing each to the proper companion. Without a word, man and robot dipped their heads and put the cord around their necks so the VISITOR badge dangled over their sternums. “Dr. Lanning asked me to send you straight to his office.”
“Thank you,” Susan said, heading for the proper door. She motioned for the others to accompany her. Opening it, she looked into the familiar large office with its four desks, one in each corner, Alfred’s separated from the others by cubicle partitions.
At the front-left quadrant, Javonte glanced up from his seat and smiled. “Hi, Dr. Calvin.”
Susan still knew him only by his first name, but he had surely earned his doctorate in robotics. She said the only thing she could. “Please call me Susan.”
“All right, Susan.”
No one sat at the desk to her right, the one that had belonged to her father. Someone had cleaned it to a sheen, leaving nothing on its surface. At first, she assumed they had, essentially, enshrined it. Then, she realized more practically, it was probably going to become hers when she was no longer on an assignment that kept her out of the office. Catty-corner to her future workplace, another unoccupied desk held an assortment of bric-a-brac, including a few static pictures, an implement holder in the shape of a cartoon duck, two palm-prosses, and some hunks and bits of metal. Susan could not see around the partitions to the station usually occupied by Alfred Lanning.
Susan peered around the makeshift walls. Alfred sat in his usual space, peering intently at the screen of a palm-pross. He did not seem to notice her, even after her exchange with Javonte. She cleared her throat. When that still did not engage him, she called out softly, “Dr. Lanning?”
Alfred looked up at once. It took clear effort to tear his gaze from his work, but he did so to place it upon Susan. “Come, come.” He gestured her to an open chair near his desk, then apparently noticed her companions. “Ah, you brought visitors. Javonte can take them on a tour while we talk.”
Javonte stepped around the partition, but Susan raised a hand to stay him. “That’s not necessary, Alfred. Pal is my partner and my bodyguard. To do his job, he needs to know everything.” She waved for Nate to come to her side, and he obliged. “This is an old friend of yours.”
Alfred ran his glance over Nate without comprehension. He rose and stuck out a meaty hand. “Oh, do I know you, young man? I’m terrible at remembering names.” He added apologetically, “And faces.”
Nate accepted the handshake, looking to Susan for clues as to how to behave. She had all but given him away.
Susan turned her attention on Javonte. Lawrence and her father insisted that every worker at USR was well-known to them before hiring and passed a rigorous loyalty test. Thus far, nothing suggested she could not speak freely in front of any member of the team. However, this time, Susan’s own freedom and security were at stake.
As usual, Alfred missed the hint, but Javonte did not. He tried to sound casual about it, clearly for Susan’s benefit. “I’ve got some work to do in the lab. Call me if you need me for anything.”
Alfred took no obvious notice of Javonte’s words. He continued to study Nate.
As Javonte left and the door clicked closed behind him, Susan encouraged Alfred by removing Nate’s cap and sunglasses and smoothing the robot’s plain brown hair into its usual well-settled and combed cut. “Imagine him in hospital scrubs.”
Alfred’s gaze traced from Nate’s shoes, along his torso, then up to his chest and face. The man’s expression changed from mild curiosity to sudden understanding. A hand fell to his desk, steadying. “Nate?” He glanced at Susan for confirmation, and she nodded broadly.
“But he’s . . .” Alfred sat down and swallowed. “The police are looking for him.”
“Yes,” Susan said simply.
When he got nothing more from Susan, Alfred turned his attention to Nate. “Where have you been? How did you get away from the police?”
Nate only stared, making no specific motions, not even turning to Susan for guidance.
Alfred’s brow furrowed. He frowned. “N8-C, I’m ordering you to tell me how you escaped from the pol
ice.”
Nate continued looking mildly at USR’s head of research and development, saying nothing.
Alfred persisted. “That’s a command, N8-C.”
Silence.
Alfred turned his attention to Susan, folding his arms across his chest. “All right, Susan. You’re the robot psychologist.” He waved a hand toward Nate. “Explain this behavior.”
Susan did not argue the terminology. She had no difficulty clarifying Nate’s reticence. “Well, let’s see. The Second Law states that he has to obey all orders given to him by human beings. You’re a human being.”
“Yes,” Alfred said impatiently.
Susan knew some of Alfred’s colleagues might mockingly disagree, but she continued dutifully. “Except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”
Alfred’s brows rose slowly. “And how would telling me how he escaped from police custody cause injury to a human being?”
Susan knew the answer. “Well, assuming one or more human beings assisted his escape, telling anyone how he did it would place his helper or helpers at risk of harm, wouldn’t you think?” When Alfred did not immediately respond, Susan supplied, “The police would take them into custody at the very least. Stealing from police property is a serious crime with significant punishment.”
Alfred stroked his chin. “That’s not direct physical harm.”
Susan held out her hands. “The First Law does not specify direct physical harm.”
Alfred nodded thoughtfully, his gaze flicking back to Nate. “Why didn’t you just say you couldn’t tell me because it might cause someone harm?”
Susan answered for Nate, knowing he could not. “Because telling you that would automatically imply he received help from one or more humans. If he remains silent, you have no idea if he’s protecting humans, malfunctioning, or simply choosing impudence, which makes any involved humans safer.” Susan’s own explanation triggered a new line of thought. Could the explanation be that simple? “Nate, do you remember when I had you stop sensing for a period of time?”
Nate finally spoke. “I remember everything I hear, see, read, or am programmed to recall.”
Susan pressed. “What if someone commanded you to forget?”
Nate hesitated. He looked at Alfred before answering, as if expecting USR’s head of research and development to contradict him. “Depending on what I’m asked to forget, I could act in a manner that did not take the information to be forgotten into account, but I could not literally purge my memory of that information.” He sounded so sure of himself until he added, “Could I?”
Susan assumed the question was aimed at Alfred. She flicked her gaze to the man and waited.
Alfred’s head bobbed more vigorously. “We create the positronic brain with the Three Laws, some operational information, and a more or less basic command of English, depending on its needs. Everything else is purpose-based. We teach it whatever it needs to perform its duty, whatever that may be. It learns and expands its knowledge from experience, directed study, and circumstances. Deleting bits of information would be tedious at best, probably impossible, and would almost certainly destroy the brain, which would render the entire robot functionally useless.”
Albert had not offered Pal and Nate seats, so Pal dragged in a chair from one of the empty desks and sat. “Surely, robots have finite memory capacity. What happens when they’re full?”
Albert retook his own seat, without apologizing for not accommodating his guests. Susan suspected Alfred never intended rudeness; he just did not seem to understand societal conventions. She believed he had undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome or perhaps even some form of high-functioning autism.
“Some of the simpler robots have less memory than, say, a palm-pross or Vox. We make sure they learn all the significant factors to allow them to perform their duties first. If a client wants to use the remainder of the memory for conversation or grocery lists or nursery rhymes, that’s up to them. At this point in time, we sell almost exclusively to the U.S. government. When they no longer need their robots for the task for which we trained them, they return the robots for reprogramming. Aside from the Three Laws, it’s a simple matter to fully erase the positronic brain.”
“So,” Pal said, “you recycle it. Teach it something different.”
“Yes.”
Pal continued. “What if the new task is similar to the old one? Can you do a partial erasure?”
“Partial erasure is not an option,” Alfred said, then reiterated, “If the new task is similar enough for us to keep the old body, then we do. For example, if the original robot was to sit in one place crushing rocks to powder, it might have multiple pummeling limbs but little or no mobility. If they wanted a new robot to sit still and flatten metal debris, it might require few, if any, changes to the exterior. But we would have to completely reprogram the positronic brain.”
Susan wanted to make sure she had it correct. “So . . . it might have the exact same look, even the exact same body, but it could have completely different knowledge.” She added cautiously, “And a completely different . . . persona.”
“Correct,” Alfred said. “It would not remember anything of its previous time crushing rocks, nor would it recognize its human or robotic previous coworkers, its former model number, call name, or any of its prior circumstances.”
Susan wondered aloud, “Can you recycle the positronic brain itself?”
Alfred seemed not to understand the question. “Do you mean break it down to its component parts and make a new brain from them? Because we do that all the time.”
That was only a small part of the answer Susan wanted. “Could you take the used positronic brain out of one robot and put it into another body? Would it maintain its personality?”
Alfred hesitated. He tipped his head, and his gaze rolled to the ceiling. He pursed his lips, unpursed them, then pursed them again. Finally, he spoke haltingly. “The closest we’ve come is redesigning a robotic body. For example, a robot is sold for a purpose, let’s say for mining. We create a mobile, four-armed creature with picks that seems to work well in the laboratory setting. However, under the constraints of real mines, the fourth arm keeps hampering the second arm, and the mobility is too limited for the terrain. So, we make changes. It becomes a three-armed robot with stool-like legs and no feet. The robot looks different, but the brain remains the same, aside from redirecting how it works a bit.”
Alfred considered his own words. “Although, that could set the robot up for glitches since it would maintain the memory of a fourth arm. So, more likely, we would reengineer the four arms so they don’t interfere with one another, or erase the brain and reprogram it.”
Susan got specific. “Let’s say you removed Nate’s positronic brain and put it into a different body. Would he still be Nate, at least as far as memory and personality?”
Alfred shrugged. “Sure, I guess. But why would we ever want to do something like that?”
Pal saw the same potential Susan did. “In this case, it would make a far better disguise than a Yankees cap and sunglasses.”
Alfred made a gesture that showed he finally understood the point. “You have to remember that the NC line is way ahead of its time and took decades to build with extraordinary amounts of money. We don’t have humanoid bodies just sitting around waiting for brains. I’m not even sure we could make another NC, at least not for a very long time. We would have to rediscover the technology, much of which was lost with your father. There’s also a biological component to consider. The NCs have real human skin, hair, eyes. Removing the brain intact, in and of itself, would be an exquisitely difficult task.”
Susan had known Calvin Campbell was the main designer of this particular line, but she did not realize he had not shared all of his information. She also remembered Nate telling her he was an anachronism comparable to Leonardo da Vinci’s creation of a workin
g parachute in 1485, more than four hundred years before the first successful flying machine.
“Besides,” Alfred added insensitively, “most people are still having trouble wrapping their heads around intelligent machines that don’t resemble anything living. So far, true AI has remained beyond the grasp of anyone other than U.S. Robots, but someday that will change. Of the regular people, those who aren’t terrified that robots will turn on and destroy us or will render humans worthless are just as concerned we won’t treat them humanely enough. As the original company, currently the only company, with learning robots, it’s our duty to pave the way, to determine the role robots will play, and how they will fit into our society.”
It seemed strangely insightful toward human nature to be an original thought of Dr. Alfred Lanning. Susan felt certain it came from multiple, detailed staff meetings over the decades.
Alfred added the most significant point. “The mistake was in using Nate and Nick outside of USR. The NC line should never have become public knowledge.”
“Nick?” Pal inserted.
Alfred looked at Susan. “Should he know?”
That ship had already sailed, so Susan simply nodded. “It’s fine, Alfred. I’m already putting my heart and my life in his hands; he needs to know what’s going on.”
“Nate and Nick are the only remaining NC robots.”
Susan appreciated that Alfred did not mention the purpose of the NC line or the ultimate creation, now destroyed. “Nate is N8-C and Nick is N9-C. Against my better judgment, they were placed in working situations in the hope of exposing a few people at a time to the possibility of humanoid robots.”
Susan pointed out, “When asked by the police, Lawrence claimed Nate was the only remaining humanoid robot. I don’t think he wants them to know about Nick.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Alfred said, and he seemed genuinely grateful. Susan realized Lawrence might not have managed to get that information to USR through phone calls from prison that were surely monitored. “We placed Nate first, and more people knew about him. By the time we placed Nick, there were already some issues from Nate, so only a few people knew what he was. We intended to eventually expand that knowledge as robots became more commonplace and less . . .” He clearly struggled for the best word.
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot: To Preserve Page 20