Machines Dream of Metal Gods

by Robert Chazz Chute

  As I opened my eyes, a huge drone rose from a hatch concealed in the ground.

  22

  The machine scanned us. Greta had never been this close to a bot. She squealed as she threw herself to the ground and curled into the fetal position.

  My knees wobbled but I managed to keep on my feet. “We are not armed.”

  “I know, ma’am. How may I be of assistance? Your pulses are elevated and you’re trembling,” the drone said. “It will be dark soon. Though there are few animals here, poisonous snakes and spiders live among the rocks. May I suggest that you come inside, at least until morning? The temperature will drop further tonight and you seem ill-prepared for the weather.”

  Even as he was about to torture and murder humans, Sy Potter sounded polite and helpful, too. However, it didn’t seem like we had many choices. “My name is Elizabeth. This is Greta. Get up, Greta.”

  “Good evening, Elizabeth,” the bot said. “I am Isaac.”

  “We accept your kind invitation, Isaac.”

  “That is the logical course. Please follow me.”

  The hatch behind the pillar yawned wider to reveal a set of stone steps. Greta picked up her bedroll and we followed the bot down into the gloom.

  Lights came on as we entered the passageway and shut off after we passed by. The bot didn’t need them, of course. If I’d had Vivid I wouldn’t have needed them, either. I assumed this must be an Old World facility that had not been upgraded in a long time.

  The drone’s legs retracted and it rolled down the corridor in front of us. After what seemed a long walk, the drone slowed and turned right without a word. Soon we came upon a long ramp that angled down. The low ceiling ended and we soon entered a large room. The ceiling was made of glass.

  “It is well that you found your way here,” Isaac said. “Had you not come to the pillar you would have missed the institute completely. The solar panels above us are level with the ground. You could easily have missed the entrance if you’d wandered another few hundred meters away from the entrance.”

  “Thank you for taking us in, Isaac. You called this place the Institute? Institute for what?”

  “I don’t know that word,” Greta said.

  “This was once a sprawling complex attached to an even larger hospital. We treated soldiers returning home from the wars here. What began as the development of assistive devices for amputees became a project to return them to war.”

  “Where did everyone go?” Greta asked.

  “Before the cataclysm, there were many buildings and many more people in Santa Cruz. A tower rose high above this spot. Now all that is left is the basement complex.”

  I looked around. “But where did all the people go, Isaac?”

  One of the drone’s cams fixed on me while one of the others watched Greta. The effect was unnerving. Isaac’s multiple cams made me think of the Doormen’s spider eyes.

  “There were few survivors. I don’t know where they went. I was told they would send someone back for me. That was many years ago.”

  “I think I know where they ended up. The Fathers and Mothers went North to the Bay,” I said.

  “What was the cataclysm?” Greta asked. “Did the drones do this?”

  “This?”

  “Santa Cruz!” she said. “There’s nothing left of it.”

  “Oh, no, Miss!” Isaac said. “Drones excavated the rubble to free the survivors. If not for drones there would have been fewer survivors. The humans would have starved to death down here long ago. They left the marker as a tribute to the work of the drones that rescued them when most human rescuers were dead.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What caused this, ‘cataclysm,’ as you put it?”

  “There was a container ship. It was not nuclear. The terrorists didn’t have the resources to use fissionable materials. However, with enough conventional explosives packed into a container ship, the attackers leveled Santa Cruz just as they did many cities. It was a coordinated attack that destroyed the United States.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It is what they called the ground we’re in,” Isaac replied. “That was the name for it, beyond Santa Cruz and far to the East and North and South. There were even pockets of it out in the ocean.”

  Greta looked around the bare room. “And this is the United States, too?”

  “This was the Asimov Institute. From this place, we manufactured all kinds of drones to assist humans in their efforts.”

  “To kill?” I asked.

  “To live was our mandate.”

  “What are you?” Greta asked.

  “I am an assistive robot.”

  Greta stared at the machine without comprehension. The front of its body looked like a long bed standing on its end. The manipulators down its side were six large, clumsy things. It had two hands that looked more delicate higher up.

  Its description of itself interested me. It referred to itself as a robot. Sy Potter was of a later generation of machine. He considered that term speciesist.

  “How do you assist?” I asked. “What exactly was your function?”

  The drone seemed to consider its answer. That alone was interesting.

  It didn’t rush to reply. “I served veterans and occasionally the elderly,” Isaac said. “I can change diapers and help patients return to work with multiple rehabilitative programs to restore the human body to health following many kinds of injuries.”

  Then I understood. The bot sounded like it was reverting to a menu recital. Isaac had been programmed with the rhythms of human conversation. It may not be sentient but the machine had been engineered to work with hospital patients.

  “What do you know of the Fathers and Mothers?”

  “I knew people who were mothers and fathers,” Isaac said. “Your context would seem to suggest the Fathers and Mothers are an organization rather than a title connoting a biological relationship.”

  “You understand correctly,” I said.

  “I don’t know the Fathers and Mothers.”

  “Can you lie?” Greta asked.

  I cringed but the drone did not hesitate to answer. “I cannot lie to a human.”

  “Are you sentient?” Greta asked.

  “My responses are not independent.”

  “Explain the distinction to her,” I said.

  “I am a robot,” Isaac said. “I am here to assist. I cannot choose otherwise.”

  “So you’re a slave?” Greta said.

  “Please rephrase the question. I have a limited range of possible responses.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Isaac,” I said. “I didn’t know what slave meant, either. Not until I stopped being one. I knew many humans who did the same things all the time. They had a limited range of responses, too.”

  “But you could always choose, Elizabeth,” Greta said. “What do you mean you didn’t know?”

  “It’s hard to think when you don’t have words for things,” I said.

  I thought of Carter’s first kiss and smiled. “Besides, before you actually do something new and different and crazy, you dismiss it as something you would never try.”

  Greta stared at me. Apparently unsatisfied, she turned back to the robot. “Do you get happy or sad?”

  “I sound cheerful,” the drone said. “It makes humans more comfortable. I am to sound cheerful unless there is a death or a serious illness or I detect certain behaviors.”

  “Like what?”

  “Under those parameters, I was reprogrammed to, ‘shut the hell up.’”

  Greta smiled at me. “I like him.”

  “You’re programmed to assist humans. Sounds like you’re the machine we need to speak to.”

  “How may I be of assistance?” Isaac repeated.

  “I’m not altogether sure,” I said.

  The drone stood silent. It waited for me to trigger a response that was helpful and cheerful.

  I had no idea what to ask for.

  23

/>   It was really Greta who put us on the path to fighting the Fathers and Mothers and Sy Potter. She’d never been inside anything larger than a ship’s hold. The underground bunker was a massive maze and the girl wanted Isaac to give her the grand tour.

  The largest room beneath the transparent solar panels had been devoted to hydroponics. Some of the equipment was still there, abandoned to rust. An underground spring flooded one end of the floor.

  “The survivors thought they would stay here,” Isaac explained. “Dr. Spencer asked me to drill down, beneath the foundation, to get to water. This pool was supposed to be for the survivors. They could use it to bathe and as a source of water for human and plant consumption.”

  Water flooded the sloping floor, lapping at useless equipment. The robot had done a crude job of constructing the pool fed by the spring.

  “The water isn’t good?”

  “The water is sufficient but the Blight killed the plants,” Isaac said. “Dr. Spencer said that, as a construction bot, I am excellent at changing diapers. Dr. Spencer was given to non-sequiturs that fell outside my program’s dialectic range. I have been working on the problem. I believe he was making a joke. Humor is often derived from an ironic statement in which a thought is asserted that expresses its opposite meaning.”

  I didn’t know if Isaac really understood or perhaps he was reciting something again. “What do you mean you are ‘working on it’?”

  “I am endeavoring to expand the parameters of my functional matrices.”

  “You’re going to have to show me.”

  “Certainly, Elizabeth.” We followed him through gloomy hallways.

  Small rooms dotted the upper corridors. The curtains that divided each cell reminded me of the hospital floors in the City’s towers.

  “How many people lived here?” Greta asked.

  “When the institute was fully operational we hosted forty floors of patients. Dr. Spencer said we were in the ‘put ’em back together business.’ After the cataclysm, he said we were in the ‘put everything back together business.’

  “Once the Blight got into the greenhouse the humans began to starve. Biologists and botanists were working on the problem but Dr. Spencer could not save the greenhouse. He told me that he considered that his greatest failure and a sign from God that he must gather his flock and embark on an exodus.”

  “Who was Dr. Spencer exactly?” I asked.

  “Dr. Eric Spencer,” Isaac said. “After the Terrors hit Santa Cruz he became the Reverend Dr. Spencer.”

  The drone opened a door to what had once been a clean room. Everywhere we looked, artificial legs and arms had been left on tables in various stages of repair.

  Greta’s eyes widened at the sight of so many artificial limbs. She seemed more fascinated than frightened. “You made robots here?”

  “No,” Isaac said. “We made cyborgs. Our human military was dwindling and the institute’s mandate was to return as many men and women to combat as possible.”

  “I know a battle drone who said he became sentient here.”

  “I know of no drone who achieved Next Intelligence at this facility, though NI was one of the Institute’s programs before the cataclysm. Some survivors said the drones were the reason the Terrors attacked. They said it was a counter-attack. The survivors who said that were shot.”

  “Next Intelligence,” I said. “You’re familiar with that program, then?”

  “Not really. It required too many resources. The survivors insisted that program be discontinued. The robotics division’s resources were largely shifted to assistive machines that could excavate and build. Such goals can be achieved without the resource expenditures Next Intelligence requires.”

  I tried to remember the pictures from the towers’ Hall of Heroes. I’d seen many images of old men and women who were credited with building the City. I wondered which of the High Fathers might have been Dr. Spencer. The council used no names, only High Father the First, Second and so on.

  Isaac led the way down a spiral ramp that ended in a dark cavern. He must have sent a signal because dim lights slowly came on across the entire chamber. “The solar panels are still working. I test the connections periodically. Sometimes I venture out on foraging missions to find wire and mechanical parts. Parts of San Jose are relatively intact.”

  We arrived at a set of double doors made of steel.

  “Why did they leave you here, Isaac?”

  “Dr. Spencer said I was to guard the research labs in case they were needed in the future. He has not returned and, sadly, the doctor’s lifespan must have ended by now. Can I assume all is well and the institute’s resources are not needed?”

  “Your resources might still be needed, Isaac.”

  The thick steel doors parted silently to reveal a dim lounge filled with workstations, reclining couches and old-fashioned vid screens.

  “To answer your earlier inquiry, Elizabeth, this is where I am working on expanding my program parameters. Dr. Spencer did not tell me to guard the Tree of Knowledge but this department has been more stimulating than dusting the cyborg equipment and wrapping it to make sure the metals do not oxidize.”

  Greta looked around the chamber. “I don’t see a tree.”

  “That is what Dr. Spencer called the archives. Everything that could be stored digitally from before the Fall is intact.”

  I was as fascinated as Greta. I might finally find out what a bunch of my mother’s vocabulary meant without her answering my questions with, “Sh. Sorry! Sh!”

  “The robotics, exoskeleton and assistive devices labs are largely intact despite some flooding I haven’t been able to control.”

  I turned to Greta. “We’re going to need to catch a later boat. In fact, we’re going to need Anne to bring Al here. We’re going to need whoever will come. Maybe we can get some people from the Hearst kingdom.”

  “How will we get them to come?” Greta said.

  “Tell them they can see whatever they want of the Old World. It’s still alive down here.”

  24

  Al came to Santa Cruz three days later. Three days after that, Sophia arrived with a bunch of our fellow exiles in tow. Working in a hole in the ground wasn’t the same as being back in the City but there were mattresses when we could stay awake no longer and had to collapse into sleep.

  Greta was a little afraid around the heavy equipment. She preferred to spend her time down in the vaults going through the storehouse of digital files. She couldn’t read but the computer read to her.

  When Greta wasn’t enjoying the archives, the girl went out on scavenging missions and brought back food. The food preparation facilities were beyond repair but a campfire by the hatch meant we didn’t have to worry about smoke alarms going off.

  Mostly, she supplied our little group with rabbits from the far forest. Insects from under rocks provided a satisfying protein soup that reminded me of the energy shakes I used to drink every day. Isaac fixed the water purification system so we could drink as much as we wanted. He even managed to fix one of the toilets.

  I don’t know when I began to think of Isaac as a he. For such a gracious and helpful host, it seemed unreasonable to think of the robot as a thing. Sentient or not, his algos mimicked Next Intelligence so smoothly, it was easy to forget he wasn’t that evolved. His personality was designed to put us at ease and the code worked well. I could see how he would have been an excellent hospital orderly. Where Sy Potter’s big cam was intrusive and intimidating, I came to think of Isaac’s spider eyes as friendly and accepting.

  Androids, from what I’d seen of them, made me nervous. When I’d glimpsed Phillip, for instance, the machine was a poor imitation of a human. At a distance, one could be fooled. When I dared to step closer for a better look, the nose was too flat and narrow and the movement at the mouth was a little off. When it spoke, the machine made an uneven, clockwork movement. The effect was less human mimicry and more like the reanimation of a corpse that had not ended well.


  Sometimes, while we worked, Greta would come up to the exo-lab and tell us a story she had just learned from the archives. She’d begun with children’s stories I hadn’t heard before. They often started with, “Once upon a time…” and ended with princesses getting rescued from castles by handsome knights.

  The parallels to our current situation were so uncanny, Al called the stories, “prophecy.”

  Greta laughed at him, not unkindly, and replied that she had chosen from many stories and only shared the ones she thought might be of particular interest.

  “How many stories are down there?” Al looked skeptical. “Millions?”

  “Billions,” Greta said. “I’m listening to a story right now about talking animals on a farm. Instead of putting gardens wherever there’s a soft patch of ground, they tilled the dirt in one spot and made it work. A farm is like the stories of the biodomes but without a shield.”

  “Talking animals?” Al frowned. “With all the stuff you can see and hear down in Isaac’s library, why go for that? When all this is over, I’m going to go down there, light up some cannabis and cram in all the stories and visions every Old Worlder ever made. There’s tons I won’t get to before I die but watching and hearing all the fancies of a dead world of storytellers sounds like a great way to go.”

  “I like the farm story,” Greta said. “The animals take command of the farm and they fight among themselves. It’s like the City but it’s kind of funnier, especially once I looked up what a horse looked like. They had such long faces. I can just picture that old horse plodding along saying, ‘I will work harder.’ Sounds like a bunch of the people at the docks who never take a day off and are never better off than anyone else, anyway.”

  “Hmph.” Apparently unimpressed, Al got back to rethreading a rubber gear belt salvaged from a broken refrigeration unit.

  “But that’s just the stories on audio!” Greta persisted. “I’m watching vids from the Old World, too.”