by Carme Torras
“Shit! Now it’s all irreversible. That machi’vel has taken a ton of privileged knowledge to the grave with him. Who knows how many ingenious devices he’s left lying around that no one knows how to work. What an evil legacy …”
“You mean you’ve already had everything erased?”
Leo screws his face up and his eyes lose focus as he searches inside himself:
“No, not yet. I have to cross the threshold for that to happen.”
Celia has been looking from one of them to the other trying to follow what’s going on:
“So you’d better not cross it then, right?”
She’s looking at him with such fondness that for a moment Leo forgets everything else and only feels the warm little hand cheering him on. He must do something for the girl, he owes it to her. And she’s just told him not to leave, to hold on to the knowledge he’s acquired, largely thanks to her, though she doesn’t know it. Looking at it that way, why not? He could try to reproduce the prosthesis in an exportable format, try to get it on the public register … but it would be risky and he’d need time he doesn’t have.
He doesn’t know if Silvana has read his mind or if she’s just following the logical course of the conversation when she suggests:
“That’s right, just stay here. Maybe with the president dead it will take them a while to throw you out or, who knows, the company might be interested in continuing the project.”
“But, what project? The prosthesis is finished, and the booth … we’d be better off destroying it.”
“Well it did you good. You said it widened your perception and made you understand a lot of things that otherwise you would never have understood, remember? If you hadn’t tried it, Celia and I wouldn’t be here today.”
“I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. It’s one thing to design prostheses to install in ROBs and another to play with the human brain. I’m such a reckless bastard!”
“Information:”—all three of them turn around when they hear ROBco burst in—“Mr. Gatew has reconnected Alpha+ and has decided that the Doctor was wrong to say the booth was finished; the accident makes it clear that it still needs work. Statement: He believes the booth is the secret project you have been developing. Warning: He will reinstate you and you will work under his direct supervision from now on.”
“No way. I won’t work for just one person ever again, nor will I contribute to CraftER’s politics.”
“Clarification: You will have no choice. He has decided that you will continue to develop the booth that, according to him, he was the first to try out. He saw so much potential in it that he proposed it for the New Year’s convention and furthermore he helped you hold your own against the Doctor.”
“If he likes it so much, he can keep it. I’m sure he’ll love it …”
“Don’t give up now, Leo,” Silvana interjects, determinedly. “If you do, someone else will take your place and nothing will ever change. Hang in there, play along.”
“Are you really telling me this? When you were so furious that CraftER’s sophisticated robots were contributing to people becoming more and more idiotic.”
“I haven’t been ‘exquished’ myself, but I’ve changed too: whether I like it or not, robots have become the pro-technos’ teachers, and we’re better off letting them help people grow and become more creative than making people dependent and unimaginative.”
“You’re confusing the prosthesis with the booth, just like Mr. Gatew. There’s nothing I’d like more than to make the creativity stimulator available to everyone, to put it on the public register.” He smiles at Celia, he’s willing to take that risk for her.
“What’s stopping you?” The question surfaces by itself, innocently.
“I’d have to stay in the cubicle for a long time, and Mr. Gatew wouldn’t let me.”
“Detecting an inconsistency: You mean that he will not allow it if you do not agree to work for him. Reminder: To find a solution, you must avoid implicit assumptions.”
“Are you suggesting … of course, it’s the only way … but I’d have to stay shut in here, without ever going out, and what’s worse, develop a private tool for Mr. Gatew that allows him to submerge himself in other people’s brains. I couldn’t stand it.”
“You might not: the species has gotten a lot weaker, we know that.” Silvana looks at him, challenging him. “But now that I’ve seen the synergy you’ve achieved with your ROB, it would be a crime to let it go. For you and for everyone. I’ve devoured so many heroic gestures from other centuries, you can’t deprive me of one that I can actually witness as it happens …”
31
I really am in a good mood today, Mom, it’d make you happy to see me. Silvana was right when she said that I’d start to get past what happened to Xis. Even though there was another death while we were there. Don’t be alarmed, it had nothing to do with me, although every time I sneak into CraftER someone dies. Come to think of it, I hope it wasn’t a setup Silvana had arranged. No, that can’t be right. Leo felt as guilty as I did the other day.
He was working on a top-secret device for his boss, I understood that much, and now that he’s dead, he wants everyone to have one. Sounds easy doesn’t it? Well it’s not. To start with, he has to spend a long time locked up in the lab, like being kidnapped, and working twice as hard: for the new boss and, secretly, for all the people he’ll give the device to. He promised me that ROBbie would get the first one. Because, I haven’t told you yet, the prosthesis—that’s what they call it—has to be installed in a robot and is used to increase its owner’s intelligence, if they want it to. The truth is, I doubt Lu or Fi would be interested in it, but Leo insists on putting the invention on the public register, and he also wants to advertise it to my classmates. At least that’ll be a reason to go back.
Silvana says I’ve earned the right to be the first to have one, that without me none of this would have happened. Leo would definitely have kept working for that despot, she called him that, and he would have done so happily, she said, giving him a teasing look. Oh, poor Leo, he only recorded me once, and the next time I caused all that trouble. “Well your signals were the key,” she said mysteriously, “and we could say twice,” she added, looking at Leo again, this time more seriously. I didn’t understand that at all and, when I asked again, she brushed it off with that thing you used to say sometimes that really annoyed me: you’ll understand when you’re older. You see, Mom, the ring has passed lots of your qualities on to her, even the ones I could have done without.
She didn’t want to clear up why she called the director a despot, either, or how he died exactly. He had it coming, was her only explanation. Poor man, I feel a bit sorry for him, and I didn’t even know him. They really don’t respect the dead these days: whether it’s Xis or the most powerful businessman around. That wonderful device was actually his idea; maybe he did just want to selfishly keep it for himself, but now everyone will have it and no one will thank him. But Silvana talks about him as if he were a weight we’d gotten off our shoulders. It seems pretty unfair to me, and even more so that she got me involved by attributing so much importance to my signals. But Leo didn’t say otherwise. It’s a mystery … I hope I’ll understand it all one day.
Did you realize? I don’t need the ring to talk to you anymore. ROBbie has animated a picture of you and it’s just like having you in front of me. He wanted to give you a voice too but I didn’t let him. I’m afraid that it’d confuse my memory of you and then I wouldn’t be able to remember exactly how you said “chin up” to me, or the tone you used to question me when you thought I was sad.
I’m not sad at all today, just impatient. I try to imagine what ROBbie will be like with the prosthesis installed, and I watch him a lot so I’ll be able to notice the difference afterward. Because … I haven’t told you yet: Leo wants me to help him test it. Can you imagine? Me collaborating in a cutting-edge technology project in the twenty-second century. You must tell Dad, he’ll be so ple
ased. Who knows? Maybe with the powerful tools they have now we’ll find a way for you to travel through time and join us here. Oh, I have to go, ROBbie says Lu is coming. Bye.
32
The announcement of Silvana’s presentation before the Ideological Committee has roused so much expectation that, despite being accessible via the ComU’s closed circuit, the room is full to the brim when she enters. Keeping the greetings to an absolute minimum, she steps up to the orator’s position and downloads the graphics with which she will illustrate her argument. When they arrive, the members of the committee come over to her and, following the protocol, squeeze both her hands before sitting down in the semicircle of armchairs before her. The youngest will be the easiest to convince, she’s sure of it, she holds over some of them the moral authority of having tutored them when they were starting out. It seems to her that, despite there being a couple of middle-aged people she’s had little to do with, the hardest nuts to crack will be, as always, her beloved Balt and Seb, as dogmatic and intransigent as the best of them.
Only a slight shaking of her hands gives away the emotion that overwhelms her when she starts to talk. Her voice is firm, challenging with conviction the ten pairs of unblinking eyes fixed on her.
“Colleagues, I’m sure that many of you can sense what I’m going to tell you. We’ve all thought this at one time or another, but until now we’ve preferred to look away.” She pauses to give more emphasis to what she’s about to say. “Plain and simple: we haven’t stopped the boomerang and we never will.”
The only reaction is an even heavier silence.
“I will begin with a bit of history: fifteen years ago Baltasar projected this very graphic, right here in this room.” Above the horizontal line that stands for time, a growing blue curve represents technological progress and a red one follows it to the halfway point before heading downward in a parabolic trajectory. “The red boomerang is, as you all know, the index of human development. So we were just starting the descent then, and now our worst predictions have been proved right: the pro-technos take more than half their lifetime to become adults and, when the moment comes, many still shy away from any kind of responsibility.”
When she clicks on the line and numerous boxes appear with data that support her claims, a light coughing insinuates that the audience would appreciate a simpler explanation, but she is determined to remain firm in her intent to address the committee. It’s them she has to convince.
“Although, on the evolutionary scale, a species becomes more developed the longer the period of its upbringing, everything must have a limit. The contribution of the adult has to compensate for what it received as an infant. For thousands of years a balance was achieved for humans, until we turned a corner and the contribution became, as it is today, a net deficit.”
It’s like she can read what’s crossing Seb’s mind: she’s spent so much time outside the ComU performing home services that she’s been infected with the cold, economistic language of the outsiders.
“The Peter Pan generation, as Baltasar called it, has arrived, they fill our emotional stimulation sessions every day. And, let’s admit it, no matter how much skin we touch, we’re not achieving anything. Not even we masseuses are satisfied by all this contact.”
She almost literally bites her tongue: she must avoid mixing in personal obsessions.
“Our strategy has been to work back through the curve in order to stop the descent, to look to the past. I myself have focused my research on extinct emotions. I thought that, by recovering them, we could put things back on the right track. But I haven’t come here today to defend my research.”
Finally a spark of surprise in Seb’s eyes.
“Maybe we will get things back on track, but not in the way we imagined. Celia, who has been here, and some of you have met, didn’t feel any better among us than she did among the pro-technos. I’m tempted to say that she chose them, that they’ve delighted her with robots and hopes of future devices.”
Freed from the initial shakiness, her left arm shoots up and the bright shine of the ring makes Balt blink.
“Let’s open our eyes, the only people we’ve stopped are ourselves. We tried to drag them along, but it didn’t work. And, let’s face it, we do use some of their inventions to our advantage. Recently I was able to try out the marvel that is their highway for ultrarapid transport.” The impatient gesture of one member of the committee makes her realize that she’ll have to start setting out her proposal.
“Why do we so readily accept that technological progress and human development must follow irrevocably divergent trajectories? Because invention is their thing and feeling ours? We must also innovate if we don’t want to end up being a marginal collective. Enough of trying to change them with sterile massages, we need to change their products. There will be robots, whether we like it or not.” The image of Celia refusing to do without her ROBbie almost makes her lose her place. “I propose that they cease to be taboo at the ComU; furthermore, I propose we open a line of study on these devices and, once the different types available have been documented, that we dedicate ourselves to promoting those that are stimulating, that help their PROPs to grow rather than keeping them as spoiled brats. Many of us are psychologists, aren’t we? So let’s point them in the right direction, let’s have an influence over which robots are developed, over which robots are bought, over the robots themselves. Enough of touching skin, it’s time to touch the brain. Let’s get the boomerang back on track!”
Her eyes watering with effort, she watches as, on the graphic, the red parabolic line unfolds until it is running parallel to the blue one, and internally dedicates it to Leo. Hopefully he’ll manage it. And her too, she adds when she turns to the inscrutable faces of the committee members, where the only favorable sign is an attempt at a wink from Seb, quickly hidden when Baltasar, who is chairing the session, opens the discussion period.
33
9:50 p.m. – “Alpha+ operative again, ready to follow orders from Dr. Craft.”
Leo whips around to face the entrance to the cubicle so violently that the back-protector stabs him in the lower back. Confused, he looks from one robot to the other, unable to utter a single word.
“Why did you bring it here?” he asks finally, addressing ROBco. “I only ordered you to remove the prosthesis. And why’s it talking about the Doctor? Haven’t they reprogrammed it? Mr. Gatew … doesn’t he want it?”
“Warning: It is impossible to respond to so many questions at once.”
9:52 p.m. – “Will you allow me to make a suggestion? Do not ask the impossible of that inferior model, interrogate me instead.”
Without a doubt it still has the prosthesis installed, Leo thinks, while he asks it to explain itself.
9:53 p.m. – “You were there when the Doctor ordered: ‘From now on you will give maximum priority to what Mar’10 asks for,’ I have it recorded. Conclusion: You have to give me orders so that I can obey him. Do you want the prosthesis? I am right here. There is no need to secretly remove it.”
Leo looks over at ROBco expecting to see some reaction to being replaced, but he finds it impassively listening to Alpha+’s reasoning. Pure machine. Silvana would be pleased, but for him it has dispelled any hope of some company while he’s shut away. What a paradox to be imprisoned in order to make available to everyone robots that don’t encourage imprisonment. He might as well get on with it, because any day now he might explode and mess it all up.
9:54 p.m. – “What else do you need? The invention the Doctor kept all for himself? Well, look, the two of us have brought it here and, if you tell us where we should put it, we will bring it in.”
The booth, of course. How had that not occurred to him? In the end it’s all just a ploy of Mr. Gatew’s to force him to develop his product quickly, he concludes, exaggerating the word “his.” Judging by the huge box the robots are pulling along, they haven’t even taken it apart.
He reluctantly goes over to them while they open t
he bubble wrap and a flashing sabre energizes him. Now it’s him who, leaning over the package, starts eagerly unwrapping it.
9:59 p.m. – “The Doctor also said he would have to be dead for you to have this table. It was the same day. I have it recorded.”
Leo isn’t listening, he is captivated body and soul by what appears on the screen surrounded by pearl swords and sabres. The monks again. The blind one that the Doctor had identified him with, and two others who belong to faraway communities. Could it be that, when he died, he left the duel unfinished, or is it a new riddle?
Whatever it is, the table is his and it holds the secret to timeout. He’ll be able to take it apart and work out its mechanisms and get out soon, with the job well done, and offer the success to Celia, all alone in a century that’s not her own, and to Silvana, isolated in her particular anti-techno commune, and to everyone else. He gently caresses the button with the pinkish iridescence that sticks out of the front panel, while observing the three monks, each locked within their cell, who are lost in their habitual communal meditation. A feeling of well-being takes hold in him. He no longer feels alone.
That is until a shiver runs across his whole body when he reaches the end of the riddle:
Will the blind monk and the two survivors from the other communities, imprisoned in their respective cells, go beyond heavenly design and save not only their monasteries, but the fate of the whole order? 2121 points for a correct answer in the period of one decade.
APPENDIX: DISCUSSION TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR READING GROUPS
Fictional humanoid robots such as ROBbie, ROBco, and Alpha+ are much closer to today’s service and assistive robots than these are to their industrial predecessors. Our increasing interaction with such robots in our daily lives raises social issues that go far beyond those of the Industrial Revolution, as the robots enter domains previously exclusive to humans such as decision-making, feelings, and relationships. We would like to foresee how sharing work and leisure with robot companions will change us, but this turns out to be an almost impossible endeavor from a scientific standpoint.