Cog

by Greg Van Eekhout

  The man smiles at me. He does not have a gap between his two front teeth. The frames of his glasses are black, thick plastic. I like them. Glasses are worn by people when their eyes do not function at one hundred percent efficiency. Perhaps I can ask Gina to lower the efficiency of my eyes so that I, too, can wear glasses.

  “I am Cog,” I say.

  “I know. I’m Nathan, and you should be lying down.”

  He places a hand on my elbow and gently guides me back toward my bed.

  Correction: not my bed. The bed they have supplied in this room that is not my room.

  He flips my fingernails back up and reconnects the cables to my data ports.

  “How do you feel?” says Nathan.

  “I feel like I was hit by a truck and then went offline and then came back online in a place I have never been before.”

  He examines the readouts on the laptop. “Well, you haven’t been in this room, but you’ve been in this building before. In fact, you started out here. This is uniMIND headquarters.”

  For a moment I silently process this. “When will I be returning home?”

  Nathan displays his gapless smile.

  “You’re home now, Cog. This is home.”

  Chapter 4

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS uniMIND engineers and technicians make more repairs to my damaged body. They cover my new knee with syntha-derm, but my new arm remains white plastic because they have to order brown syntha-derm that matches the rest of me from another uniMIND facility. They also run many tests on my brain. I spend a lot of time with my fingernails flipped up.

  When they are not running tests or doing repairs, Nathan shows me around the uniMIND headquarters. Or as he calls it, the campus.

  He takes me to a giant central room with a ceiling that soars hundreds of feet above. It is many times bigger than Giganto Food Super Mart. A great redwood tree trunk rises from the floor, disappearing through a hole in the ceiling. It is by far the largest tree I have ever seen. A door in the bark slides open, and Nathan gestures with a sweeping hand. “After you.”

  “This is a tree,” I say. “We are entering a tree.”

  He laughs. “It’s an elevator shaft. I mean, it used to be a redwood, but we had it cut down and hollowed out and converted to an elevator shaft. Pretty cool, huh? It’s won a bunch of design awards.”

  “Where did the tree come from?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not from a national forest or anything like that. It came off uniMIND property.”

  I knew one could own a block of cheese. I did not know one could own a tree. Already, I am learning.

  The doors slide shut and we go up.

  Through windows in the tree, I watch people move along open walkways that ring the vast room, and behind the walkways are glass-walled offices. Some of the rooms are larger, with long tables and groups of people talking and examining charts and graphs projected onto screens.

  Nathan looks at me in a way that reminds me of Gina when she is about to teach me something important. “Cog, we’re doing very important work here at uniMIND. We’re pushing the frontiers of science and technology. And you are a crucial part of that work. We need your help with it. And my job is to make sure you’re taken care of. So, don’t you worry about a thing. Okay, partner?”

  “Okay. I will try not to worry about all the things I am worried about. Okay.”

  When the elevator stops, we exit the tree and I follow Nathan into another room.

  “This is the Biomatonics Lab.” Rays of natural sunlight stream in through the windowed ceiling. Vines crawl up the walls, and the air smells of flowers. Birds chirp. Water gurgles over rocks. A butterfly lands on Nathan’s shoulder.

  “Hold out your hand, Cog.”

  After a moment of consideration, I do as Nathan says. The butterfly flutters over to my finger.

  I have seen butterflies before, darting between the blooms in Gina’s backyard. This creature is similar, with twitching antennae and pearly wings of deep purple and yellow. This is all standard. But this butterfly also has little glowing red lights running down its back. This is not standard.

  “It is mechanical,” I observe.

  “You got it. It’s a biomaton, a robot modeled after a natural creature.”

  “Humans are natural creatures,” I say.

  Nathan nods. “True enough.”

  “That makes me a biomaton.”

  He seems surprised. “Well, yeah. Didn’t Gina ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “What did she call you, then?”

  “She called me Cog.”

  “Let’s see some other biomatons, and you can decide for yourself if being a biomaton is a cool thing to be.”

  He shows me a glass box the size of a refrigerator laid on its side. Inside, a glimmering, jittery mass moves around rocks. When I lean in closer I see that the mass is made up of tiny silver bits, like little crawling pills with legs.

  “They look like ants.”

  Nathan joins me at the box. “That’s what they are. Autonomous Nature Technology. ANTs, for short. I came up with that.” He laughs and waits for a response, but I do not know what response is standard, so I remain silent. He clears his throat. “‘Autonomous’ means they function on their own without needing instructions from anyone. ‘Nature’ is because they mimic creatures from nature. And ‘Technology,’ because . . . well, technology.”

  The ANTs swarm across a bridge between two rocks.

  “We didn’t program them with knowledge of how to build a bridge. We didn’t even give them the materials. They figured it all out on their own.”

  “What did they build it out of?” I ask.

  “Look for yourself.”

  I step closer, putting my nose to the glass. I do not see it at first. It is like one of those smudgy paintings that you have to stare at a long time before you can tell what it is depicting, and I have learned that looking at something a long time is often the only way you ever actually know what you are looking at. So that is what I do.

  Finally, I see it. The bridge is made out of the legs of other ANTs.

  I watch as three of the ANTs pull the legs off a fourth ANT. When the legs are removed, they push its body over the rock’s edge, where it joins a growing pile of other legless ANTs.

  “Pretty clever, isn’t it?”

  “Clever,” I say, remembering that I, too, am an autonomous piece of technology based upon another creature. I rub my knee and follow Nathan to another lab. uniMIND workers tap things into tablets and work at computers and say things on phones. They all dress very much like Nathan in light-colored polo shirts.

  Here, Nathan shows me a cage housing three mice. They are small and clean and white, with shiny black eyes and pink paws and gleaming silver disks that they wear like hats.

  “Are these biomatons as well?” I ask.

  “No, they’re living creatures, but with a difference. See those disks? They’re connected to their brains. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt them.”

  The mice are very active. They gnaw on wood. They eat seeds. They run on their wheel. These are all standard mouse things.

  “What do the disks do?”

  Nathan answers by taking his phone out of his pocket. He taps the screen and brings up an interface with the uniMIND logo and buttons. He presses one of the buttons.

  The mice stop gnawing on wood. They stop eating seeds. They stop running on their wheel. He presses another button, and the mice all stand on their hind legs and look at Nathan. He presses a third button. The mice go to their food bowl. Working together, they push it to the center of the cage.

  “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “You made the mice do that?”

  He smiles. “Yep.”

  “What is the purpose of making mice move a food dish?”

  “It’s not about the food dish, Cog. It’s about the ability to make them do it. Or do anything we want them to.”

  I do not understand the purpose of making mice do w
hat you want them to. How many things can mice do that are useful?

  “Mice are just the beginning,” he says. “It’s proof of concept. If we can do this with mice, we can do it with other creatures. Dogs. Monkeys. Dolphins. Humans. uniMIND isn’t just the name of the company, Cog. It’s the name of the technology. The whole aim of everything we do is to develop the uniMIND. Now, I want you to understand that we don’t show the uniMIND to everybody. It’s very special. Showing it to you means you are very special. Understand?”

  I blink, processing.

  “No.”

  He laughs. “You will, Cog. You will.”

  “When will I see Gina?”

  Nathan clears his throat. Perhaps he has a cold.

  “Gina doesn’t work here anymore, Cog.”

  “Yes, I know this. Gina does not work at the uniMIND campus. Gina works at home. When will I be going home?”

  Nathan smiles, but it is a very different kind of smile. It is a smaller kind that shows no teeth. I am unfamiliar with this kind of smile. It does not convey happiness or excitement or agreeability.

  “Cog, this is your home now. Your home is with us, here at the campus. You got damaged at the house with Gina, and we don’t want to let that happen again. So, you’ll be staying here.”

  I attempt to regulate the beating of my central circulation pump. “Gina . . . does Gina not wish to be here with me?”

  Nathan crouches down so our eyes are on the same level. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not that, Cog. Of course Gina wants to be with you. It’s just . . . after you were injured, she was reassigned to another uniMIND location. One far away, where they do . . . other kinds of work. But, listen, buddy, don’t worry about her. She’s a great engineer. She’ll be fine. And believe me, she didn’t want to leave you. She’s heartbroken.”

  I ask Nathan to discontinue our tour of my new home and take me back to my room. Though, of course, it is not my room. My room is in the house with Gina.

  Gina is damaged.

  Her heart is broken.

  When one is broken, one must be returned to headquarters for repair.

  One must be taken home.

  If Gina’s heart is broken, she will attempt to go home.

  I will find her there.

  Chapter 5

  I REMAIN BAD AT SLEEPING. Gina said sleep is difficult is for me because my brain is always working, thinking, learning, and she didn’t want to “go monkeying around” in my brain before she fully understood what was going on inside my head.

  I know about monkeys. Monkeys are nonhuman primate mammals. They are intelligent. But “monkeying around” means to go about things in a way that is not intelligent.

  It does not make sense.

  Being awake wasn’t so bad when I was home. I could lie in my bed and process all the things I learned during the day and look forward to the things I would learn tomorrow. And when I no longer wished to lie awake I could go downstairs and find Gina. Gina is not very good at sleeping, either. Even though she is not a robot, we have some of the same bugs.

  On one such night, I prepared two mugs of hot cocoa in the microwave oven, which is a machine that is not capable of learning but is very good at making hot cocoa. Gina was in the laboratory, sitting at her computer. I put her mug on the desk.

  Usually she would say “thank you,” which is standard behavior. And then I would say “you’re welcome” or “no problem” or “think nothing of it,” all of which are standard responses. But this time she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even seem to notice I was there. She just stared at her computer screen with abnormally hydrated eyes. A drop of fluid fell down her cheek.

  A face stared out from the screen. Eyes, brown like mine. Nose, a similar shape, narrow in the bridge with a rounded tip. Skin the same shade of brown as my syntha-derm sheath. Hair like mine, only longer, tied into a ponytail that hugged the left side of the neck.

  At the bottom of the picture were three letters: ADA.

  “Who is that?”

  “Oh!” Gina said, startled. She looked at me, then at the mug on her desk. She took a sip. “Thank you, Cog.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  I was pleased that we had returned to standard behavior.

  I waited a moment, and when Gina did not answer my question, I again asked whose face was on the computer screen.

  Gina wiped the fluid from her face.

  “That’s ADA,” she said. “Your sister.”

  She pronounced it “Ayda.”

  I blinked, processing.

  “That’s how I think of you two. Brother and sister. Because I designed and built you both.”

  I continued to blink.

  Gina’s eyes continued to hydrate. She sniffed.

  “Where is ADA now?” I asked.

  Gina clicked her mouse, and the face disappeared. Her screen went into sleep mode. “I lost her.”

  I reasoned out ways ADA might have become lost if she was like me.

  “I’m not going to lose you,” Gina said, wiping her sleeve across her nose.

  The uniMIND cafeteria is a large, sunny place with light beaming down from the glass ceiling. Outside, white clouds tower like mountains against a blue sky. I feel like I want to climb them. But between me and the clouds there is glass and impossibility.

  Nathan hands me an orange tray, and we go down a long counter of bins containing sausage and ham and bacon and waffles and pancakes. There are piles of bagels with tubs of butter and jam and cream cheese (which is a kind of cheese I encountered at Giganto Super Food Mart).

  Nathan selects an orange and a banana and some smoked salmon with no bagel and two slices of bread that look like they have pieces of wood in them. “High fiber, low fat, and good protein, that’s what I’m made of.” He pats his flat stomach. “But you go ahead and pile on anything you want. You’ve had a few hectic days, and I bet you need to fuel up.”

  “At home my first biofuel of the day is most commonly cereal. Although sometimes Gina makes bacon and eggs.”

  “This is your home, Cog. And bacon and eggs sound good to me.”

  He leads me to a line where bacon and eggs are distributed and asks me how I like my eggs cooked. Cooking is when biofuels are combined, often with the addition of heat. Gina has used many different cooking methods to prepare eggs.

  “I like my eggs cooked by Gina,” I say.

  The constant smile on Nathan’s mouth falters. “Let’s do scrambled,” he says to the man behind the counter.

  Moments later we join other uniMIND workers at a table. Nathan says hello to them and they say hello to Nathan, and then Nathan says, “This is Cog. He just arrived a few days ago, and he’s going to be staying with us now.”

  The other workers seem friendly when they greet me. I try to seem friendly when I greet them back. They speak of things I do not know about: budgets and schedules and spreadsheets and inventories. But all the time they are watching me eat. They remind me of the way Gina observes me when I perform new tasks, such as assembling a jigsaw puzzle or figuring out how a yo-yo works. They are paying such close attention to me that I think they’re trying to hear my jaw hinges whirr.

  “So, Cog,” says Nathan. “What can you tell us about the X-module?”

  I review my memory and find that I know nothing about anything called an X-module.

  He squints at me. “You must be able to tell us something.”

  I find it confusing that he wants me to give him information that I don’t have, but I do my best. “Platypuses lay their eggs in watery—”

  “What do platypuses have to do with the X-module?” he interrupts.

  Gina never interrupts during learning sessions. I transfer a forkful of eggs into my mouth.

  Nathan taps something on his tablet.

  “Maybe Gina called it something else,” says another uniMIND worker. She wears little round glasses that magnify her eyes.

  Nathan rubs the bridge of his nose. I have learned that he does this
when he is processing. “Cog, what did Gina tell you about your programming?”

  This is a question I am able to answer, and I am pleased.

  “She told me that I am programmed for cognitive development, and to learn by consuming information with my sensors, which are similar to human eyes, noses, ears, tongues, and skin. I am capable of learning through reading, through smelling, through hearing, through tasting—”

  “This is going to take a long time,” says the woman with the magnified eyes.

  “—I also learn by taking risks and engaging in bad experiences. In addition, I have, at last count, seventy-three bugs. I will list them for you. One: I swallow gum. Two: I sometimes consume biofuel too quickly, which results in gas bubbles within my biofuel container. Three: I release my biofuel gas in loud eruptions that are considered nonstandard. Four—”

  “I think we’re going to have to try another method,” the woman says to Nathan.

  Nathan nods and types something on his tablet. He and the woman and the other uniMIND workers engage in conversation. I continue to list my bugs, but they are not listening.

  I wonder what the X-module is.

  Nathan brings me to a laboratory that smells of machine oil and burning wires. Three uniMIND workers are there, drinking coffee from paper cups. One of them leans in a relaxed fashion on a hockey stick. In the center of the room stands a ladder, about my height.

  “Hi, Nathan,” says one of the workers, a man in a blue short-sleeved shirt tucked into tan pants. So many uniMIND employees dress this way that I am starting to have trouble telling them apart. “We were just about to run Proto through some obedience tests. Would you and Cog like to stay and watch?”

  Nathan hasn’t introduced me to these workers, but they know who I am. Probably everyone at uniMIND knows who I am.

  “That’s exactly why we’re here,” Nathan says. He takes my hand and leads me to the side of the room.

  A worker snaps open a black plastic suitcase. Nestled inside is an object about the size of the Chihuahua from the day of rain and boogers. It is a box of metal and plastic, with exposed servos and circuit boards and bundled wires in all the colors of the rainbow.