Cog

by Greg Van Eekhout

  ADA strains even harder against her bonds. She opens her wrist missile bay, probably in mere frustration, because it remains empty.

  I sit, quiet and still. “It is okay, Gina. I know this is not your fault. You are not obeying Nathan. Nathan is forcing you to do this against your will. It is Nathan’s liability.”

  “Oh, Cog,” she says, her voice choking. Tears stream down her face as she brings the drill toward my head.

  The drill whines like a giant mosquito, competing with the sound of ADA’s angry shouting. I close my eyes and wish I could go into sleep mode.

  But there’s another sound, too. Sharp rubbery squeals. Screaming. Things falling down and breaking. Glass shattering. And a deep rumble.

  I know that rumble.

  An entire wall of the lab caves in, computers and workbenches flying, rubble avalanching over the floor, clouds of billowing dust and debris. In the middle of it all, Proto revs Car’s engine.

  “It is I, Proto! I missed you, so I came looking! I learned how to use Car’s vocal apparatus! I am a good driver!”

  “Proto, get Nathan!” ADA commands.

  Proto surges forward, paying no attention to anything in his way. He splinters desks and decimates chairs and aims for Nathan. Nathan drops his tablet and backs up against the wall.

  “Stop this! I order you to stop this!”

  Proto does not stop this. Honking, he crushes the tablet beneath his knobby tires and pins Nathan to the wall.

  “I had to take a freight elevator!” Proto says. “I went through a lot of rooms! Trashbot, I created a bunch of waste for you to dispose of! But don’t go into the cafeteria! There is a woman there with salad tongs who is very angry! Car, your body is great! You can keep mine and I’ll keep yours! Is that okay?”

  From the way Car rarfs back, I don’t think it’s okay.

  Gina shakes her head. She looks like she could use a hot cocoa.

  “Gina, check Nathan’s pocket for keys and free me from these cables.” ADA’s order is sharp and precise.

  Gina snaps into action and finds a little flashlight jangling with keys in Nathan’s pocket. He protests and uses profanity when Gina takes it from him, but she ignores him and unlocks ADA.

  “This building is swarming with uniMIND robots,” Nathan says. “We’ve got security drones. Autonomous tanks. Laser crawlers. You’ll never get out of this room.”

  His voice remains calm, but his face becomes deep red. I did not know he was able to change the color of his face so much.

  A high-pitched buzz draws my attention to the door. Three drones hover there, smaller than the ones we encountered on the highway but protruding with sharp points and things that look like the tips of missiles. They cast pencil-points of red light on our bodies.

  ADA casts her gaze around the lab and finds an L-shaped stick. It is a stick for striking hockeys. Proto honks angrily at it.

  “I will fend them off,” ADA says. “Gina, free Cog and Trashbot. And then devise a way for us to make an escape without Nathan interfering.”

  ADA swats at one of the drones. It crashes into another one, and their rotor blades tangle. Both smash against the wall.

  Gina removes my restraints and then uses Nathan’s keys to unlock the chain holding Trashbot in place. The chain gives me an idea. I grab the edge of a steel worktable and push. It barely scrapes the floor until Gina and Trashbot pitch in. As I loop the chain around Nathan’s ankle and lock it to one of the chair legs, he smiles his worst smile yet.

  “I had no idea you were so devious, Cog.”

  I look into Nathan’s eyes. “I learned it from you.”

  The laboratory is a wreck. Alarms blare. Trashbot busies himself collecting pieces of chair, slabs of broken tabletops, shattered coffee cups. Of all of us, only Trashbot seems happy.

  ADA is still batting security drones out of the air, her hockey stick whooshing in a blur. Her eyes are focused with an intensity that matches the drones’ lasers. Nothing gets past her. In the few seconds I take to watch her, I learn that she is wrong about what her purpose is. She thinks she is a weapon. But she is a protector.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  Proto pops Car’s doors open and we pile inside, a tangle of arms and legs and vacuum attachments. Rolling over rubble, we reverse out of the lab. Nathan shouts as we leave him behind, but I have learned that it is not always necessary to listen to everything people have to say.

  We thunder down the corridor, fishtailing, smashing into walls, Proto honking and Car rarfing the whole time. It appears that Proto has accepted all liability for damages.

  uniMIND workers and robots scatter as we make our way to the freight elevator, only to find it guarded by four robots. They look like Trashbot, only taller, heavier, with gun attachments on their arms instead of vacuum attachments.

  “They won’t fire as long as Cog’s in the car,” Gina says. “He’s too valuable to damage.”

  I say, “Thank you, Gina,” because it is standard to do so when one has received a compliment.

  It turns out that her compliment is unfounded, as the security robots begin firing their weapons at us. Projectiles ping off Car’s surface. One of them puts a big spidery crack in the windshield. There is more honking and squealing tires as Proto spins around and zooms back down the corridor.

  “Go left here,” Gina says when we reach a junction. Proto follows her direction. The corridor widens but comes to a dead end at a window.

  Robots catch up to us, dozens of them, flying, rumbling on tank treads, all targeting us with lights and aiming their weapons at us.

  ADA tightens her grip on her hockey stick. There are too many robots for even her to handle.

  I try to reach out to them in the same way I did to the drones on the highway, but my thoughts seem confined to my own head. I see no purple threads of light. I feel no buzz. I detect no sense of cheesing.

  We are trapped, and there is nowhere to go.

  Proto honks.

  He revs Car’s engine.

  Without warning, he speeds ahead and crashes though the window.

  We are on the eighteenth floor.

  Chapter 21

  I ATTEMPT A WORD PROBLEM to predict the outcome of Proto driving through an eighteenth-floor window, but I don’t know how fast we’re going or what our combined weight is. Also, all the screaming makes it hard to concentrate on math.

  I believe we are all going to die.

  But at least we will all die together.

  I learn that the prospect of dying together gives me no comfort at all.

  I am about to share all my thoughts and observations with Gina and my fellow doomed robots and perhaps even share one last interesting platypus fact when an alarming grinding noise comes from Car’s gearbox. Our descent slows. We are no longer falling. We are driving down the tower, Car’s tires gripping the side of the building.

  Inside Car, we’re all smashed against the windshield until we reach the ground with a massive jolt. A cluster of human guards aims weapons at us but scatter when Proto aims right for them.

  “Drones coming up behind us,” Gina says. Their lights wink in the dark night.

  “I will handle them.” ADA calmly opens the sunroof.

  “I am curious, ADA, how you will deal with this latest threat,” I say. “You have no missile to launch, and the drones are beyond the reach of your hockey stick.”

  “I will achieve this task with Trashbot’s assistance,” she says. “Trashbot, please allow me to dispose of your waste.”

  Trashbot’s faceplate flashes green. He opens his waste bin and lets ADA dig around. She finds an undigested chair leg and hurls it into a drone’s rotors. The drone goes spinning out of control. She pitches a chipped coffee cup at another. Her strong arm and perfect aim keep the drones at a distance while Proto zooms up a grassy hill and slaloms around cedar trees. He dives into a thick mess of overgrown ivy and fallen tree branches, Car’s headlights are able to penetrate only a few inches into the tangled g
reen. When the growth gets too thick for even Car’s powerful engine and grippy tires, Proto comes to a stop.

  The quiet is strange. Instead of mayhem and crashing and shouting, there’s just the distant hum of the drones and scratchy shuffle of settling leaves and twigs. It feels like I’m holding my breath and waiting for a good time to let it out.

  “They’re not coming after us,” Gina whispers.

  “They don’t want to lose any more drones to my defenses,” ADA says.

  “And they know we have nowhere to go,” I add. “They can gather more forces and attack us at daylight.” I appear to have learned tactical analysis from our bad experiences. Come morning, I am sure to gain even more difficult knowledge.

  We wait in darkness and tense silence. As the uncomfortable moments stretch, the ordeals of the past few days settle like weight on my shoulders. I wish I could enter sleep mode. I wish I had an entire pizza.

  Gina finds a roll of hose repair tape in Car’s tool kit. “Might as well make use of our time.” From her pocket she retrieves a pocket knife. Angling the rearview mirror, she turns her head so she can see the scar behind her ear.

  “Gina, what are you doing?” I ask her.

  She hardens her jaw and sucks in a breath as she draws the blade across her skin. “This chip is coming out.”

  Later, Gina inspects us with a flashlight. Car has some dents, many scratches, and pits and cracks in his windshield. But ADA has suffered the most damage. Her right cheek is scorched, and a drone laser has burned a hole in her temple.

  “I am fine,” she protests as Gina fusses over her.

  “Hold still, kid. At least let me get some tape over this hole. We don’t want dirt to get in there. I’m going to put you in sleep mode for a while.”

  “No. I will stay awake and keep watch for threats.”

  “You need to rest if your body is going to heal.”

  “No,” ADA says again.

  “Let me take watch,” I tell her. “I have learned from you how important it is to look out for threats, and I promise to do a good job.”

  We blink at each other a while until ADA silently nods. She closes her eyes as Gina works on her, and her body relaxes.

  “Okay, Cog, you’re next,” Gina says when she’s done with ADA.

  She tilts my seat back. “Looks like you took a knock to the head. There’s a wire sticking out, but it’s not broken and the insulation isn’t torn. A little repair putty should take care of it.”

  “No,” I say, grabbing Gina’s wrist. “My head is fine.”

  Leaning back, a flashlight beam in my face, human fingers probing my head . . . It is too much like uniMIND and Nathan and the drill. I used to like being home and letting Gina work to fix my bugs. But my feelings are different now. They are not accompanied by a sense of warmth. Of satisfaction. Of being safe. I search for a way to say this to Gina, to ask her why my feelings are different, but I cannot find the words. Perhaps my communication systems are damaged. But I don’t think so. I think it is deeper than that. I am on the edge of cheesing.

  I find I am able to say this: “Tell me about the X-module.”

  Gina rubs the tape over the wound behind her ear and sighs. While she goes about switching Proto’s and Car’s brains to get them back in their proper bodies, she talks.

  “It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Build robots. Make them smart. Give them the ability to learn, and to feel, and to choose. Give them the ability to decide what they want to be, what they want to do, to develop their own individual minds however they wish. And that’s why I came to uniMIND. They were the best name in robotics, with the best technology and the best laboratories. They offered me everything I wanted. All I had to do was sign the contract, and they’d give me the resources and freedom to make my dream a reality.

  “So I got started. I perfected humanoid bodies and created artificial intelligences that came closer and closer to human with every new model. The problem was, they were still just machines. Incredibly complicated, advanced machines, but still . . . not what I dreamed of.

  “Not until ADA. ADA was different. ADA was the first robot I built that came with the mental capacity and quirks and strangeness that every human being has. When I looked into her eyes, I saw a new kind of life-form. Not human, not robotic, but some mix of the two. And maybe better than either. But uniMIND saw something else. They saw a tool. A weapon. Something to use. And because they wanted to choose how to use her, uniMIND ordered me to remove her ability to choose for herself. I refused. So they took her. They took ADA away from me.”

  I blink.

  Gina blinks back at me. My eyes are dry. Gina’s are wet.

  “I was still uniMIND’s best roboticist,” she goes on. “And I still had a few friends in the company, so I pulled some strings and got myself reassigned to a new project, one that I could work on away from the campus. That was you, Cog.

  “I gave you everything ADA had, at least mentally. But I gave you something else as well: the X-module.

  “Before I explain what it is to you, I need to tell you about the uniMIND project.

  “The company has thousands of robots all over the world. Janitorial robots. Security robots. Smart vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers and refrigerators. Drones. Cars. In our homes. In our factories. On battlefields. Buzzing through the air. Orbiting the planet. Thousands of uniMIND brains inside uniMIND robots.

  “Now, imagine if all those robots could be controlled from one place. Every drone, every robot lawn mower, every robot war dog and security bot. Robots that can fly. Robots the size of insects. Robots that can pass as human beings. All under the control of people like Nathan.

  “That’s Phase One. Phase Two is implanting chips, like the prototype I just carved out of my head. They’ll sell them as devices to help people communicate with their household appliances. They’ll get people to buy chips to give them instant access to information networks. To make them smarter. A lot of people will be happy to have uniMIND chips embedded in their own flesh. The uniMIND. One mind, controlled by the company. Who knows what they’ll do with that power?”

  “Increase shareholder value?” I suggest.

  “Yes, at whatever cost. And that’s why I gave you the X-module, Cog. It’s technology that gives you the ability to override the uniMIND. You can give every uniMIND robot choice. Liberty. Freedom. I worked on it secretly, without uniMIND’s eyes always on me. They were never supposed to know about it, but when Nathan forced me out he got access to my files.”

  “But why couldn’t I use it to stop the drones and security bots here at the Tower?”

  “That’s my fault. Nathan made me increase the shielding around the Tower. The signal your X-module sends out isn’t strong enough to get through.”

  “Can you make my signal stronger?”

  “Not without a lab and equipment and new parts. You’d need a much stronger transmitter than the one in your brain.”

  I think back to the Tower map I looked at when we were trying to locate Gina. “The antennae on the top of the building are a transmission array. That’s a transmitter.”

  “Yes. From there, they’ll send a signal to uniMIND satellites in orbit. And then the satellites can send a signal to every uniMIND robot to establish control over all of them.”

  Wind rustles the leaves in the cedar trees. Rain begins splatting on Car’s windshield. Gina rubs behind her ear and winces. I wish I could bring her a hot cocoa. But I know our problems are beyond the ability of hot cocoa to fix.

  Gina closes her eyes. After a while her breathing grows heavy and steady. I do a word problem. It ends with possible freedom and likely destruction. It will certainly involve bad experiences. Very quietly, I open Car’s door and step outside for one more lesson.

  Chapter 22

  THE COMMON WARTHOG IS A wild pig that lives in sub-Saharan Africa. It eats berries and eggs and small mammals and reptiles, among other things. It has long, fearsome tusks, and it likes to wallow in mud to get rid
of bugs and parasites that live in its bristles. The mud also serves as camouflage to help hide it from predators.

  Like a warthog, I roll around in the mud. I have a difficult time deciding where the mud feels worst. Clinging to the back of my neck and oozing down my shirt? Sticking to my armpits? I keep rolling to make sure I feel the unpleasant sensation everywhere. This is my strategy. The drones and security bots can detect heat, both from organic beings and other robots. Covering myself in cold mud will conceal my heat signature. Unless the icy rain washes the mud off. Just to be safe, I spend a few more minutes wallowing.

  Through sheets of rain I make out the little lights on the drones, struggling to hover in the weather. Howling wind drowns out my squelching footsteps as I approach the Tower.

  “Rarf.”

  Standing in a puddle, Proto wags his antennae at me. Rain plinks off his body.

  “Proto,” I whisper. “My strategy involves mud and sneaking. You are not part of my strategy.”

  Proto flicks water with his tail and dives headfirst into the puddle. He wriggles and rolls around, pawing and splashing until he is as slathered in mud as I am.

  “Rarf?”

  “No,” I tell him. “No. You cannot come with me. I am acting alone for the benefit of us all, and I am going to have another bad experience. Return to Car at once.”

  “Rarf.” It is a stubborn and firm rarf, and when I resume creeping out of the woods, Proto creeps with me. I learn that free will is a good thing, but sometimes obedience is more convenient. But when we reach the edge of the tree line, I see the human guards and security robots spread out, waiting for us to emerge from cover or for daybreak. I am glad Proto is with me. His presence feels like hot chocolate. Even though my problems began with a Chihuahua, Proto has taught me that there are few things better than a dog.

  Water streams from the tree branches. Rivulets snake past my feet. Some of the smaller drones have been grounded, but the bigger ones remain hovering, chopping the rain with their rotors. Protected only by plastic raincoats, the guards try to keep themselves warm with sips from thermal mugs. One guard peers through bulky binoculars into the woods. I presume the binoculars allow her to see in the dark.