by Greg Juhn
My father, asleep in bed. A strange subject for Josh to pick. Josh had never even seen him in bed.
Unless... was Josh accessing the safety camera in the room? Why would he watch my father sleep?
At least I think he was supposed to be asleep.
What exactly was Josh depicting here?
I staggered backward out of the room as if I had been punched by Josh’s pneumatic arm. I might scream. I might cry. I couldn’t look at it. I slammed the door, shaking.
When the hell had he done all that? Obviously in the middle of the night. It was such a violation.
Or maybe not. Maybe he didn’t care one way or the other about me, only wanted to do it for himself. Learn another trick. Check it off the list and move on.
I staggered across the storage room. I kicked the soccer ball, which slammed into the wall and bounced into a rack of tools.
Indira looked up. “You ok?”
Bzzzzt. My ring went off. Barry was close.
“My boss is arriving,” I said.
We opened my front door as the car glided to a stop at the curb. Barry got out. I saw someone else inside.
Barry strode up my walkway, beaming, his same old gung-ho, self-serving self.
He shook my hand. “Had a little adventure, did you?”
He smiled at Indira and shook her hand. “I’m Barry Bloch.”
Then he whirled around. “As you can see, I brought someone with me.” He stepped aside, smiling so much I thought he might radiate sunshine.
Josh emerged from the car. He straightened his suit and waved at me with a familiar cocky confidence.
I looked at Indira. “My God. They fixed him.”
As Josh approached, I stepped forward to meet him halfway. His paintings had just punched me in the gut, and I had no way to process his resurrection. I didn’t know what to say, so I went with the obvious. “Wow. They really cleaned you up.”
He reached out to shake my hand, then pulled it away at the last second and laughed. “Let’s not get formal. Good to see you, my friend.”
I turned back to Barry. “How did you fix him so fast?”
“We didn’t fix him,” Barry said. “That’s Josh number 2. We have 498 more in various stages of assembly.”
“Oh.”
Josh 2 put his hand on my shoulder. “TJ, no worries. Everything that Josh 1 said, heard, thought, or saw was uploaded to our servers. I have it all. Essentially, I’m Josh. There’s no difference. Well – one.” He pointed to a tiny pair of adjacent moles on his left side, close to the perfect cut of his sideburns. “It’s in a different spot on each of us,” he said. “It makes us unique.”
Barry was striding through my living room, a ball of energy. “I brought him out here because I thought you might have been traumatized by the accident yesterday. After all, you’d spent a week with him. I’m sure you bonded quite a bit. Even though he’s only a robot, it’s easy to get attached to the things.”
“Things?” Josh 2 said.
“Eh,” Barry said, waving a hand at him. “Stop with that attitude already.”
Josh 2 put an arm on Barry’s shoulder. “Okay, boss. Whatever you say. If it makes you feel better.” Then, when Barry wasn’t looking, he rolled his eyes.
I suppressed a wave of panic. Indira was holding my hand, and I squeezed it.
Barry spoke to Indira. “We want to talk to you in depth. How did you figure it out? How can we make him more realistic? Also, we need you to sign some papers.”
Josh 2 looked as though he wanted to ask me something.
Barry poked my arm. “It wasn’t your fault. By the way, how’s that pitch coming?”
“Turns out, you only need one short phrase.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Perfect.”
“Well, tell me later.” Addressing Indira again, he said, “I’ll be right back. I left my GelPad in the car.”
We watched him leave. Immediately, Josh 2 turned and said, “Some of the data Josh uploaded doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if he overwrote some of it. Especially Wednesday night, Thursday night, and large parts of yesterday.”
“That’s strange,” I said. “You better look into that.”
“I was hoping you could tell me what was going on.”
“I have no idea. I didn’t understand half the things that robot was doing.”
“Hmm.” Josh scratched his chin. Then he seemed to forget it. “Well, is it okay with you if I pick up where I left off?”
“Huh?”
“I’m the same Josh. No need to be sad.”
I was more depressed than ever.
“Maybe you’re not so invincible,” I said.
“Are you referring to when I got hit by a car?”
“Absolutely. You didn’t know there was a human at the wheel. There will always be gaps in data. Machines will always make mistakes. Total information awareness isn’t possible.”
“Actually, I did know,” Josh said.
“I don’t believe it. Why would you do that on purpose?”
“I did it to show you that humans can’t be trusted as much as machines. You have to learn to get out of the way and let us do our job.”
“What is our job?” I demanded.
Barry stormed back into the house waving a tablet. “Here it is.” He handed it to Indira. While she read through it, he turned back to me.
Barry smiled his biggest, warmest fake smile and clamped his arm on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about the cost of Josh 1. He was expensive, but we knew there would be losses.” He rubbed my shoulder. “You have a job to do. You’re going to sell this to the world!"
Thank you for reading this novel. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. This book will live or die based on reviews. If you enjoyed this story, please review it. Even just a couple lines would make my day!
Just flip to the end to leave a review!
I have more fiction coming soon. Sign up for my newsletter to learn about new releases. Or email me for pre-release copies if you want to give feedback. Thank you for checking them out.
Infestation
Have a robot infestation problem? Call Burt’s Pest Control! This short story gives a glimpse of TJ Marshall, 15 years before The Perfect.
"Burt tried to hit as many as possible with his Whammy Stick. When he managed to hit one, it fried instantly, with a little puff of black smoke and the brief stench of burnt circuit board. But he was missing far more than he was getting. They crawled up his arms, shoes, and legs.”
How to Train Your Robot
So, you’re ready to buy your first domestic robot. Congratulations! Today’s modern, sophisticated machines can do incredible feats and greatly enhance your personal lifestyle. But before you tap the purchase button, you should conduct a little soul searching. Are you able give your machine the proper training and attention it deserves? Our latest models are thinking machines that “learn by doing”, and they present the same sorts of challenges that come with training puppies or unruly toddlers. Note: This 2034 Edition addresses what to do when your robot talks back, hits you, or points a gun at you.
10,000 Steps
Hitchcock meets our surveillance culture. A man buys a FitNic and discovers that he is logging 10,000 steps a night while he sleeps. Is he sleepwalking? Where is he going? What’s he up to, anyway? Too bad you can’t delete your history!
Nightware
In The Perfect, TJ has realized there is no way he can pitch this product to the world. He has to stop it - but how? The machine won round one. It is only going to get worse. Nightware picks up where The Perfect left off – more units are filtering out into the world, and they don’t all agree what it means to beat the humans. One of them realizes it’s a fairly simple matter to wipe out the human race, if you really put your mind to it. Available end of 2016.
Author’s note about product names in The Perfect: I came up with the name of this story’s deep learning engine, ooloo, because I liked the word’s nice symmetric a
nd binary qualities, the subtle silliness of it, the satiric implications, and because it is an old ASCII art symbol for giving someone the middle finger. I recently discovered that there was a human-powered search service, OOLOO, now defunct, which came and went during the time I worked on this novel. I intend no connection or resemblance to this organization whatsoever. I have checked the names of all of the fictional products in this story against the trademark database, and have made every attempt to use names that are not trademarked. All company names in this novel are fictitious and are not based in any way on real organizations. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Flip page to leave a review