Cog

by Greg Van Eekhout

  The worker lifts the object from the case and sets it on the ground.

  “Proto. Stand.”

  A blinking green light flashes on the front of the object, and a moment later, white-and-gray rods folded at its side extend. It stands on them like legs. Its feet are black disks like miniature shopping cart wheels, though hopefully not as buggy.

  It makes a noise.

  Rarf!

  “This is Proto,” Nathan says. “Short for ‘prototype.’ Do you know what a—”

  I have learned to interrupt.

  “A prototype is an original, or first model of something from which other forms are copied or developed.”

  Nathan’s smile returns. “Very good, Cog.”

  The man with the hockey stick walks around Proto. He gently taps each of Proto’s feet with the end of his stick. Then he straightens, and in a clear voice says, “Proto, climb the ladder.”

  Proto’s green light flashes. He goes “Rarf!” With a whir of moving parts, he walks to the foot of the ladder. I hear hissing air.

  “Proto likes to sniff before tackling a problem,” Nathan says. “His nose works like yours, but while you have about six million scent receptors, Proto has three hundred million.”

  The hissing stops, and Proto uses his four legs to climb the rungs up the ladder. He sits on the little platform at the top, his green light blinking.

  The man strikes Proto with the hockey stick. Thwack. Proto clatters to the ground.

  “Proto, climb the ladder,” he commands again.

  Proto’s light blinks. Again, he climbs the ladder to the top rung and sits there. Again the man strikes him with the stick and knocks Proto to the ground.

  “What is the purpose of this experiment?” I ask.

  “Proto, climb the ladder.”

  Proto climbs.

  The man strikes Proto. Thwack. Proto falls.

  “Proto is shaped like a dog, and you are shaped like a boy,” Nathan says. “But underneath your syntha-derm skin, you and Proto look much alike. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Yes, it is interesting. But it is not the answer to my question.” Perhaps he didn’t hear me over the sound of Proto hitting the ground, so I ask it again. “What is the purpose of this experiment?”

  “They’re testing his balance and mobility. But mostly they’re testing his ability to complete tasks while faced with distractions.”

  I do not know what to think about Proto’s balance and mobility, but as he once again reaches the top of the ladder, I conclude that he is very capable of performing despite distractions.

  “How many times must Proto be struck before you have learned enough?” I ask this question not of Nathan, but of the man with the hockey stick.

  He checks a piece of paper on a clipboard. “We’re scheduled for seventeen more applications of stimulus.”

  “Does ‘application of stimulus’ mean hitting?”

  “In this case, yes,” Nathan says. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt him.”

  Proto continues to climb. Thwack. And Proto continues to fall.

  After a while, my sensors start to malfunction. My vision gets strangely sharp. I can see the tiniest of scratches in the surface of Proto’s casing. With every blow of the hockey stick, there are more cracks, like fine splinters. And the noise of the impacts is too loud. Pain sensors in my head flash, as if I’m the one being hit. The feelings grow bigger, sharper. It is like being overwhelmed by cheese.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  I am cheesing.

  Thwack.

  It feels like my skull is cracking.

  Thwack.

  And something comes out of my head. It is like light, only I cannot see it. Nathan and the man with the hockey stick and the other workers in the room don’t behave as though anything unusual is happening. Perhaps they don’t see it either.

  Thwack.

  “Proto, climb the ladder,” says the man with the hockey stick.

  No.

  Proto. Stop.

  Stop climbing.

  I do not say these words out loud. I say them only in my cheesing, cracking head.

  Sprawled on the floor, Proto rights himself. He whirrs over to the ladder and puts his two front feet on the first rung. His green light blinks, and he raises a leg to continue climbing. But then he pauses. He lowers his front feet to the floor.

  The pressure in my head fades.

  “Proto, climb the ladder,” the man with the stick says again.

  Proto sits there, his rear antennae sagging.

  The man frowns. He puts down his stick and comes over to examine Proto. “He seems to be functioning.”

  “Then why won’t he run the program?” asks one of the other uniMIND workers.

  Everyone looks at Proto.

  Everyone but Nathan.

  Nathan is looking at me.

  “Cog, did you do that? Did you cause Proto to disobey his command?”

  I blink, processing.

  “I don’t know,” I say. Which is the truth.

  Nathan’s smile is tiny as he taps things into his notepad.

  “And that, Cog, is why we need to learn about the X-module.”

  Chapter 6

  I DO NOT SLEEP, but I do dream.

  When I dream, it is a little like cheesing.

  Here are some things I have dreamed about:

  Giant Chihuahuas with truck tires instead of legs.

  A world where houses and lawns and pavements are made of pizza.

  Platypuses that are like mammals except they lay eggs, which is actually how platypuses really work so this dream is both realistic and strange.

  Tonight, I dream of the face I saw on Gina’s screen when I brought her cocoa. The face belonging to the one that Gina lost. My sister. And I say to her, “Wake up. Wake up, ADA. Wake up and run.”

  Trashbot comes to my room to ask if I have any waste to dispose of. He always comes in the morning and again late at night before I go to bed. I do not have waste now. I almost never do. His head sags and he turns to depart and almost bumps into Nathan. Nathan tosses a coffee cup in Trashbot’s waste bin. “Good morning, Cog. We’ve got a big day planned, so let’s get moving.” He seldom says anything to Trashbot.

  He takes me to a lab I have not been to before. The sign on the door says “Artificial Intelligence Neuroscience Laboratory.” Sharp-looking tools glint on a steel cart.

  Nathan motions toward a padded chair. “Please have a seat, Cog.”

  It’s a struggle to climb into the chair, but it’s comfortable once I’m settled in. The back is high and angled, and there’s enough room for me to stretch my legs.

  A big screen mounted to the wall displays a diagram of a head with labeled wires and screws. It is not just any head. It is my head.

  “What will I be learning today?” Despite my unease about missing Gina and witnessing Proto being struck by a hockey stick and being asked about the X-module without being told what the X-module is, I remain eager to fulfill my purpose.

  A technician begins flipping up my fingernails and attaching cables.

  “Today you’re taking it easy,” Nathan says. “Just leave the learning to us.”

  Technicians move around me, checking connections, doing things on computers, looking into my eyes without really looking at me.

  “Is learning taking place now?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, Cog,” Nathan says again. “Just take it easy.”

  “What does it mean to take it easy?”

  “It means . . . Don’t do anything. Just lie there and relax.”

  “I am lying here. I am not doing anything. Is learning taking place?”

  “We’re ready,” says one of the technicians. “Arrest his motor functions.”

  I try to turn my head to see Nathan, who has stepped out of my view, but I can’t. I cannot turn my head. I cannot move my head at all. Nor my hands. Nor my arms or legs.

  I try again to ask what is
being learned, but I cannot move my jaw or lips.

  I cannot move. I cannot speak.

  “Elevated circulation pump rate,” says one of the technicians.

  Nathan bends over me, his face filling my vision.

  “Hey, buddy, relax. This won’t hurt.” That is what he said when they were beating Proto with a hockey stick. He smiles down at me. “We’re just going to remove your brain.”

  “Once your brain is out, we’ll plug it into the computer and run some simulations to see how you learn under conditions of accelerated experience.”

  “What does that mean?” I would say if I were capable of speaking. I would also tell him that my circulation pump is beating so quickly it feels as though it might burst out of my chest.

  Nathan looks at me. Not like the other technicians are looking at me, through readouts on their computers, or just seeing little bits of me one system at a time. Nathan looks like he’s trying to see me.

  “I’m sure you’ve got some questions. Accelerated experience means that instead of experiencing the world like you do now, in real time, from moment to moment, you’ll experience hundreds of hours in seconds. Remember when you went grocery shopping?”

  Nathan must have read about that in Gina’s files.

  “It’ll be like that, but many, many times over. This way, you’ll gain experience a lot faster. You’ll learn a lot faster. That’ll be awesome, right?”

  I don’t know quite what to think.

  It will be good to learn faster. To learn more. To more efficiently fulfill my purpose.

  But I want to experience and learn with my brain still inside my body. I want to choose where my brain resides.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” says a technician. “Hand me the drill, please.”

  Why do they need a drill? Does this have something to do with finding the X-module? If the module, whatever it is, is located inside my brain, then it makes sense to look inside the physical structure of my cognitive processor to find it.

  I wonder why Nathan is not mentioning the X-module.

  I think what he is doing is a form of lying.

  Lying is saying something that is not true, but it is also not saying something that is true.

  I wish Nathan were not lying to me.

  I wish I were not here now.

  I wish I were at home with Gina.

  I wish I had never run into the street to save the Chihuahua.

  Nathan steps away again, outside my view. All I can see is the ceiling. It is white. The lights are bright.

  “Uh-oh, there’s a problem,” says a technician.

  “What problem?” That’s Nathan’s voice.

  “The UM-2112’s malfunctioning. Give me a second. . . . Yeah. This unit’s busted.”

  “Don’t we have another drill?” Nathan asks.

  “We lent it to Automotive Robotics. I can go see if they still need it.”

  “That’s going to put us off our schedule,” another technician says. “And I can’t work late today. My kids have soccer practice.”

  There is a lot of sighing and muttering as they discuss what to do with me. None of them sound happy.

  In the end, they decide to postpone removing my brain until tomorrow. By then they’ll either have fixed their drill or gotten the spare drill back from the Automotive Robotics lab. They won’t have to rush things. They’ll have enough time to do everything they want to do to me.

  My circulation pump is still beating fast.

  “Sorry, Cog,” Nathan says to me as they return my speech and ability to move. He begins to unplug the cables from the data ports in my fingers. He smiles. “We’ll have our act together tomorrow, I promise.”

  The technicians are now talking about other things. Other projects. What they’re going to have for lunch. Their kids and soccer. They don’t seem to remember I’m here until Nathan tells me to get up.

  “I do not wish to have my brain removed,” I say as Nathan walks me back to my room.

  “Cog, I told you it won’t hurt. And it’ll only be out for a little while.”

  “I understand. I do not wish to have my brain removed.”

  Nathan’s smile is tight.

  “Look, you just get some rest and take it easy.”

  “I do not wish to rest. I do not wish to take it easy. I do not wish to have my brain removed.”

  He starts to tell me again how painless it will be.

  “Nathan, if I told you I was going to remove your brain with a drill, and that it would only be outside of your skull for a short time, and that it would be painless, would you want me to do it?”

  “That’s an entirely different thing, Cog.”

  We reach my room. Nathan opens the door for me.

  “How is it different?”

  “In more ways than I can count. Get in.”

  I step inside and he closes the door. The lock buzzes and hums.

  I try the knob. It doesn’t move.

  I am locked inside.

  I have been hit by a truck and separated from Gina and I have lost my home and been strapped to a chair without the ability to speak or move. Of all those things, being locked in my room is not the worst.

  But it is enough to push me into formulating a plan.

  I am going to leave uniMIND.

  In order to do that, I will require an accomplice.

  An accomplice is someone who helps you perform a task that is against the rules.

  I have already decided who my accomplice will be.

  Together, we will exercise poor judgment and have bad experiences and learn things.

  My accomplice is very lucky, I feel.

  Chapter 7

  WHEN TRASHBOT COMES TO MY room late at night to ask his usual question, I give him something other than my usual answer.

  “Yes, I do have waste to dispose of.”

  Trashbot’s faceplate lights up green. He rolls back a few inches and then forward. He raises his arms and clenches his graspers. I think he’s excited.

  “Please direct me to your waste,” he says.

  “It’s not here. It is elsewhere in the complex.”

  I am not saying anything that is untrue, but I am leaving out things that are true. I am lying. I find it surprisingly easy to do this. I wonder if my ability to lie is part of the X-module.

  “Trashbot, do you have access to all parts of campus? And can you select routes that avoid encounters with uniMIND employees?”

  His face blinks green. I take it as a yes.

  “Then lead me to the laboratory where Proto is stored.”

  He rolls down the corridor, and before I close the door behind me, I take a last glance into my room. I see the books Gina gave me, sitting in straight, organized rows. I see my posters of spacecraft and dinosaurs on the walls and my models hanging from the ceiling with fishing line. I see my stars.

  These were my things when I lived with Gina. But somehow, once transported to this room at uniMIND, they stopped being my things. They are like me. I was myself with Gina. Here, I am property.

  I close the door and resolve to never come back.

  The route to Proto takes us into janitorial supply rooms, toilet stalls, the cafeteria kitchen, and a room with a Ping-Pong table. The building is quiet at night, fortunately, and by pausing before turning corners and crouching behind water fountains and diving behind potted plants, I manage to avoid being spotted by uniMIND workers. Trashbot doesn’t have to bother with that. People are used to seeing him all over campus.

  “Where is the waste you wish to dispose of?” Trashbot asks when we arrive at Proto’s lab.

  The ladder is still in the middle of the floor. The hockey stick the uniMIND worker used to hit Proto leans against Proto’s case.

  “You can have the stick,” I tell Trashbot.

  Trashbot races over and picks up the stick with his graspers. There’s a violent grinding noise as he feeds it into his waste bin. A wisp of wood dust twirls in the air before Trashbot vacuums it up.

>   Nobody will ever hit Proto with that particular hockey stick again.

  Meanwhile, I snap open the case and lift Proto out of it. I find the “On” switch under his belly. Proto’s lights flash green. He stretches his legs and wags his antennae.

  “Proto, I am escaping uniMIND. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Rarf,” Proto responds.

  “Good. Trashbot, there’s more waste to dispose of in the Automotive Robotics Laboratory.”

  Trashbot flashes green and leads the way.

  The Automotive Robotics Laboratory is a dim underground parking garage. Bare cement walls echo every sound we make, from the rumble and whir of Trashbot’s treads to the squeaks of my sneakers.

  A variety of vehicles fills the space. I think most of them are tanks. There is also something that looks like a cross between a bicycle and a helicopter studded with carrot-sized missiles. In the shadows looms a giant spider with a seat on top, and parked next to it is a single wheel with what appear to be steak knives poking out of it.

  I spot the vehicle that most closely resembles the van Gina drove. It’s a car painted in a kind of black that does not reflect light. Its windows are darkened, and it is low to the ground with big chunky tires, and it really doesn’t resemble Gina’s van much at all. But at least there are no steak knives.

  “This way, Proto.”

  I creep between other vehicles to the black car. Creeping seems like a good idea because I do not wish to attract the attention of anyone who might interfere with my attempt to escape.

  But a noise attracts my attention: footsteps clicking hard on the concrete floor.

  I crouch low, hiding behind the bumper of a truck that looks like scissors with wheels. Trashbot cannot crouch, and Proto does not need to, but they are both capable of making noise, and if they do, our presence will be detected. I will end up back in a chair with my skull drilled open.

  The footsteps tap ever closer. A flashlight beam crawls along the wall behind us.

  It lands on Trashbot’s faceplate.

  In the side mirror of the truck, I spot the reflection of a worker in a dark blue uniform with the uniMIND logo stitched on her jacket. A security guard. Is Trashbot allowed in the Automotive Robotics Laboratory alone?