Make Me a Robot
J | 08.06.2002 14:19
This is a short story. Not a normal thing for this site I know but I couldn't think of an audience who would appreciate an anti-capitalist story better.
Make Me a Robot
"Make me a robot," said Erin, staring into the eyes of her lover, RK9.
RK9 looked at her with a pained smile, absorbing the information scrolling rapidly down the eyeball screen in his right eye:
>analysis subroutine results:
emotive appeal/bid for sympathy
level of importance: high (69.61)
action options: goto action subroutine
>facial expression subroutine:
thoughtful and focussed no.14
>roving reference interjection: archives
childhood memory: your 'father' telling you the story of your 'birth':
"The Director of NASA said to me, 'Make me a robot that will do everything a human can, but will live without care or expectation for itself and will have no sense of discomfort or self-regard in any repair situation that can be imagined. It must be close enough to a human to be able to innovate, think creatively and with true intelligence.' And so the RK9 project was set up."
goto emotion simulation subroutine
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
goto action subroutine
>action subroutine: options
1: do as she requests - tell her you love her
2: denounce her for emotional blackmail
3: sidetrack her to other topics
4: dump her
considerations:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
irritation that Erin is the cause
>relevant information:
fourth attempt by Erin this week to satisfy her emotional needs by demanding the running of high-risk subroutines with the potential to affect normal operations
The 'pleasure' felt when running high-risk subroutines with Erin has generally been low
choice generator: add 1% randomisation effect
result: option 4
"I want to be a robot like you," continued Erin. "I don't want to feel this pain, this uncertainty. I want to see everything as pure logic. I can't stand these emotions I have for you when I feel you are offering nothing in return. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a normal robot who couldn't feel emotion."
RK9 cast down his eyes and set a starkly solemn expression on his face then looked up. "I'm sorry Erin. This just isn't working. I'm sorry. I don't think we should see each other any more."
Erin's expression changed from wheedling to shocked but RK9 quickly slapped twenty dollars on the table and before she could speak he was out of the cafe and on the street.
As he walked down the street he felt the unwanted subroutine emotional running over and over again. He felt an inexplicable feeling of terrible loss because his design allowed it. Beyond that he knew no reason. Every analysis subroutine he ran on it produced nothing. He had asked Tom Luke, his 'father', or more accurately, creator, about the subroutine and had received the answer that it was an inevitable result of the cancellation of the Mars shuttle programme for which he had been designed. He had been created for the thrill and danger of repairing those shuttles in interplanetary space and now he could no longer do it his programing was throwing up anomolies.
But the explanation was wrong. The subroutine had emerged several years before the cancellation of the shuttle program. True, it had occured more frequently since the end of the program, but it had already been there before. RK9 had given up asking Luke about it because every time he did so his analysis of facial movements told him that his father was lying to him. Unfortunately further analysis had revealed no reasons behind this lying and when challenged his father had claimed that on a whim he had built a flaw into RK9 so that his analysis of his father would never be quite correct. This had looked like a lie too, but RK9 could not challenge it - for all he knew it could have been true.
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
It was true that humankind no longer needed RK9. He made a good living as the best consultant engineer in the world but the people who employed him could easily have made do with the second best. And yet subroutines that considered the fact of his superfluousness never revealed unexpected emotion subroutines in the same way that other, usually arbitrary events did. It made no sense. There was some other cause, of that he was sure; but the sureness only made him feel more out of control.
RK9 looked around now and saw, as his analysis had predicted (93%), Erin walking after him, still on the other side of the street that he had just crossed.
Her eyes were on him as she stepped out into the road and RK9 reacted the instant he saw the car bearing down on her. He checked for traffic on his side, flashed across the road, pushed her violently back onto the pavement and followed after her, falling on top of her. The danger to him was as intense as to her, for he was as flesh and blood as she; he was one of only twenty androids ever made of both supersilicon and DNA. Only his brain and the eye implant were truly artificial - the rest of him was from the DNA of his father.
The two of them lay in a heap together as the car screeched to a halt. Surprisingly it was Erin who rose first and when she did so she was horrified by the look on RK9's face. He lay on the ground, eyes staring wildly at the sky, a look of terror on his face. What could make a robot look like that?
RK9 was in the grip of a sense of wrongness so deep that he felt as a human might who landed in a universe where murder was the highest moral good and the will to rape a virtue. He was transfixed by his eyescreen, for what he saw was this:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He was feeling emotions without viewing them on his screen. The feeling of loss was still with him, but he had distinctly felt relief when he had escaped the car and right now he was feeling...so much that it should have filled his eyescreen with new lines. But all he saw was the same subroutine over and over. What was worse was that he now remembered (the memory did not appear on his screen either he noted with almost numb and uncoded analysis) that his dash across the road had not been sparked by one of his many emergency subroutines. The last interruption to the emotion sequence had been the analysis that had revealed that Erin would follow him. All through the rescue and as he lay on the pavement now his screen simply scrolled the same two lines endlessly:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He got up off the ground. Still there was nothing on the screen that related to his actions. His feeling of wrongness was now almost unbearable and he wandered away without even noticing Erin, who flapped after him for a few yards before sulkily retreating.
He considered the possibility that the screen had failed and his subroutines were running normally without him seeing them. But it made no sense - his father had explained to him that essential parts of his brain-processor were located in his eye and that the code he saw scroll to the side of his vision was part of the data flow that caused the brain to produce actions. His understanding had always been that it was impossible for him to carry out actions without good data feeding from that eye.
He had to go to his father. He had to get to the truth. This feeling of loss and of wrongness could not go on.
He flagged down an empty car and gave it instructions. When he arrived at his father's house he was still only seeing:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He felt like he wanted to die. It was an unfamiliar feeling. It had a feedback effect on the other feelings. None of it made sense.
His father buzzed him in, sounding as bored and cheerless as usual, then obviously noticed on the cameras his son's agitated state as the lift carried him up. He was waiting at the lift doors to his apartment and his flat, grey hair was slightly out of place as though he had moved quickly. He wore an expression of grim concern on his straight-lined face.
"Are you okay RK?"
"No. I have come to hear the truth about me."
Tom Luke frowned. "I've told you everything about yourself."
RK9 understood humans as well as he understood space shuttles. He had been programmed to deal with passengers as well as electronics and mechanics. He knew how they worked.
He grabbed his father by the throat and pushed him back against the wall, putting just enough pressure on the windpipe to make his father fear for his life.
"You've been lying to me all along about the 'inexplicable feeling of loss' subroutine father, and now I want it explicable. Right now that subroutine is all that is showing on my eyescreen. That's right - this action is not showing. You are going to tell me everything and if I catch you in even a small lie I am going to kill you. Do you understand?"
The old man nodded, eyes popping in fear. RK9 let go.
"Talk," he said. He had a hollow feeling that the truth would be unbearable, but he had to know.
"This may be difficult for you to hear," said his father, looking at him as though wondering whether RK9 really wanted to know what he was asking.
RK9 raised his hand as though to do violence.
"Okay," said his father hurriedly. He suddenly looked tired and depressed. "Shall we sit down?" He led the way to the sitting room and they sat opposite each other in bodyform chairs. Once sitting his father looked RK9 in the eyes and when he saw no hesitation he rolled his eyes and sighed. He looked like a man about to do something slightly distastful, and as though he blamed RK9 for forcing him to do it.
"The story I told you about the Director of NASA asking for a robot was true," he began. "Only...it wasn't possible. Or perhaps it would have been, but there was a cheaper and quicker way. We decided that rather than going to the trouble of making a robot that could act human we would make a human that would act like a robot."
RK9 stared blankly, analysing what the words meant but skirting round the important information they gave him.
"You're a human RK9," said his father with another tired sigh, giving RK9 the conclusion he had been avoiding. "Your mother - my wife - died as she gave birth to you and I had to bring you up. You can condemn me all you want but the shuttle program seemed the most important thing in the world at the time and we all made sacrifices for it."
"I have a human brain?"
"Yes. But it is wired to your eyeball, which does have an artificial processor in it. The task of that processor is to simplify your subconscious thought processes and remove any unwanted inhibitions or unstable emotions, then feed them back to you via the eyescreen."
RK9 had begun to shake, for the true revelation was gradually creeping up on him. He began to consider the idea that he hated his father.
"You mean..." he began, but could not finish.
"Yes," said his father. "The eyescreen does not show your true thoughts; it shows modified thoughts - and it actually gives your conscious brain orders. It was our greatest discovery you see - that we could fool the human brain into thinking it was seeing its own thoughts when actually it was reading its orders." He shook his head in sudden puzzlement. "Apparently though the data feeding that emotion subroutine has become so strong now that the eye processor is malfunctioning. We tried to guard against overload but obviously...."
RK9 didn't think that he hated his father. The man had always been so cold that RK9 had never had strong feelings for him. There was something here he hated though; something to do with the attitude behind his father's words.
There were questions now that RK9 could barely bring himself to ask so he chose a simple question first.
"Why did you allow the processor to show this subroutine?"
His father shrugged in scientific despair. "We had to. On early test subjects we suppressed it altogether. They went mad or killed themselves. It seemed they needed some conscious outlet for what was going on in their subconscious."
RK9 felt as though some monstrous machine was stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and that the machine had a camera on it that watched impassively his every agonised scream. He shut his eyes and spoke without looking. "What was so important that you...dared to do this to people?" He opened his eyes quickly then, because even with his eyes shut he could see the disturbing monotony of the eyescreen.
His father looked at RK9 as though expecting him to understand and said, "You know why if you think about it. The economy was shrinking - it was the worst recession ever and there was no way out because we had used up earth's resources. We had to use Mars. The non-biological oil sources had just been discovered there. The Dragon Comets had recently filled the solar system with debris and we had to have intelligent repair and maintenance crews awake on the shuttles. After a few accidents and deaths several crew went insane during crossings - and then there was sabotage by crews for political reasons, and eventually we knew we couldn't rely on humans any more, we would have to use robots."
"So you made me a robot." Visions of violence passed before RK9's consciousness - did he want to destroy something? He was new to such extremes of thought.
"Yes. I just had to train you to obey the eyescreen absolutely. It wasn't too difficult - we started so young you see."
Started so young.
"You had no right." RK9 noted from some hitherto unknown distance in his mind that his voice had lost all intonation.
"It was necessary at the time - all our progress would have been for nothing if we hadn't. We didn't know the matter-transference matrix would soon replace the shuttles."
RK9 watched his father speaking and saw no apology or shame. It was because he believed what he was saying, decided RK9. The man believed what he had been told, absolutely, without conditions. His truth was unrelated to any desire that RK9 might have had - if he had been allowed desires.
"You said that you chose this method," RK9 pointed to his eye, "because it was cheaper than a real robot?"
"And quicker, yes." His father shrugged. "I know that sounds bad, but the whole global economy was at stake."
The argument gouged a hollow in RK9's chest then departed and was lost in whatever hell impersonal abstractions are consigned to.
For a moment RK9's newly released brain was a complete blank. His father's reasoning was so meaninglessly indisputable that he could not argue against it.
Then suddenly the emotion subroutine before his eye changed. Now it said:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
RK9 looked at his father and smiled grimly. "Like I give a fuck about the economy," he said. "You never asked. You took...humanity from me."
"You don't understand the necessities of the time..."
RK9 stood up suddenly and held his clenched fist at his father's throat. "I said that I don't give a fuck about your 'necessities'," he grated in his ear. "Now. Tell me about my mother."
Yes, he thought to himself, that was the important thing now.
"Let me up," said his father in a shaken voice. "I'll get some photos."
When RK9 released him he went over to a bureau and put his finger on the print-reader to open it. He turned to RK9 with a pile of photos of a young woman with short brown hair, intelligent eyes and a solemn smile. RK9 saw that he looked a little like her. Of course - he didn't only have his father's DNA. Everything he knew about his body was wrong because he had always used the doctors and technicians NASA provided him free of charge.
"She was a librarian," said his father. "Janice. Her name. Janice. I've got some disks you could watch too."
"Would she have approved of what you did?" The question was suddenly the most important that RK9 had asked today.
"She thought that the progress of science was important."
RK9 grabbed his father's ear between two fingers and crushed it with all his strength. This man felt even less his father now than before he had learned the truth. "Answer the fucking question," he said.
"Oh, probably not," said his father, speaking airily despite his grimace of pain. "She didn't always keep things in perspective."
RK9 let go and looked steadily at his father. "Give me one good reason not to kill you right now."
It was a melodramatic thing to say he realised, but it felt good. Yes, it felt good. It felt true.
His father saw the danger in his son's eyes and looked away, struggling for something to say. Then his face brightened. "I'm the only one who can tell you about your mother."
"Like what?" RK9 felt his mind as a blank, a void of emotions. His next acts would truly depend on what his father said.
"She wanted to call you Carlo if you were a boy - after her grandfather. Rosie if it was a girl. Rosie was her best friend. I can find her address for you if you give me time."
RK9 felt this working in his mind. He kept his face blank as he considered this offer, feeling his father's eyes on him, no longer full of their accustomed authority; pleading now.
"Maybe I'll let you live," he said finally. "My mother must have seen something in you once, so maybe you weren't all bad. But if you ever lie to me again I will know and I will kill you. Give me all the records you've got of my mother."
It felt strange to say that. He had never had a mother before. It felt good. He wanted to know everything about her.
His father went to get a case to put the photos, papers and disks in. By the time the case was packed RK9 had decided on the punishment for his father. It was a fit punishment for a scientist, for a believer in progress and the intrisic beauty of technology, for a man who had never considered the cost to his son of his own and his institution's desires.
It felt strange and fey, the making of decisions not seen on his eyescreen; dangerous, and now RK9 knew that although he had been conditioned to cope with danger he was for the first time experiencing the only danger that mattered: the danger of choice. There was a thrill to it that made him feel alive. Alive. Yes, this was what it must feel like to be human.
"Call for an ambulance," he said to his father.
Fear sprang back to his father's face.
"Do it," said RK9 in a tone that brooked no argument.
When his father had pressed the call button RK9 drew in a tense breath then grabbed the man and slammed him against the wall again. He put his face very close to his father's and through teeth clenched with anger he said, "You are going to watch me now, and if you shut your sick, lying eyes for even a second I am going to kill you. Okay?" It felt good to let the anger rise, unbidden by the eye.
His father saw the depths of the anger and nodded dumbly, eyes darting impotently. RK9 pulled away a little from the man who had formed him, still keeping him pinned against the wall with his left hand. He took one last look at his eyeball screen. It still said:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
And all the time staring at his father RK9 reached up to his right eye with his right hand and before his father's horrified gaze he tore the eye out. There were sounds to the brutality, as well as the pain and gore. It was purified excruciation. Afterwards RK9 could not imagine how he had done it - but it was the anger, the pure anger.
When it was done there was an unrecognisable mass of flesh hanging down his cheek and blood pouring out, sprinkling over both of them - and his father was so shocked that he couldn't speak.
His dreams will never be the same again, thought RK9 fleetingly, through the boiling pain.
One-eyed now, and whole, RK9 staggered back and picked up the case of memories of his mother just as the medics entered the apartment. Still conscious, and suddenly very aware of his dignity, he lay himself down on the stretcher and tucked the case by his side. Only then did he give in to the agony.
The medics electronically anaesthetised him in the lift on the way to the ground floor. They heard him mutter the same thing over and over again, until his mind surrendered to the healing technology and fell into sweet darkness.
"My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo...."
"Make me a robot," said Erin, staring into the eyes of her lover, RK9.
RK9 looked at her with a pained smile, absorbing the information scrolling rapidly down the eyeball screen in his right eye:
>analysis subroutine results:
emotive appeal/bid for sympathy
level of importance: high (69.61)
action options: goto action subroutine
>facial expression subroutine:
thoughtful and focussed no.14
>roving reference interjection: archives
childhood memory: your 'father' telling you the story of your 'birth':
"The Director of NASA said to me, 'Make me a robot that will do everything a human can, but will live without care or expectation for itself and will have no sense of discomfort or self-regard in any repair situation that can be imagined. It must be close enough to a human to be able to innovate, think creatively and with true intelligence.' And so the RK9 project was set up."
goto emotion simulation subroutine
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
goto action subroutine
>action subroutine: options
1: do as she requests - tell her you love her
2: denounce her for emotional blackmail
3: sidetrack her to other topics
4: dump her
considerations:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
irritation that Erin is the cause
>relevant information:
fourth attempt by Erin this week to satisfy her emotional needs by demanding the running of high-risk subroutines with the potential to affect normal operations
The 'pleasure' felt when running high-risk subroutines with Erin has generally been low
choice generator: add 1% randomisation effect
result: option 4
"I want to be a robot like you," continued Erin. "I don't want to feel this pain, this uncertainty. I want to see everything as pure logic. I can't stand these emotions I have for you when I feel you are offering nothing in return. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a normal robot who couldn't feel emotion."
RK9 cast down his eyes and set a starkly solemn expression on his face then looked up. "I'm sorry Erin. This just isn't working. I'm sorry. I don't think we should see each other any more."
Erin's expression changed from wheedling to shocked but RK9 quickly slapped twenty dollars on the table and before she could speak he was out of the cafe and on the street.
As he walked down the street he felt the unwanted subroutine emotional running over and over again. He felt an inexplicable feeling of terrible loss because his design allowed it. Beyond that he knew no reason. Every analysis subroutine he ran on it produced nothing. He had asked Tom Luke, his 'father', or more accurately, creator, about the subroutine and had received the answer that it was an inevitable result of the cancellation of the Mars shuttle programme for which he had been designed. He had been created for the thrill and danger of repairing those shuttles in interplanetary space and now he could no longer do it his programing was throwing up anomolies.
But the explanation was wrong. The subroutine had emerged several years before the cancellation of the shuttle program. True, it had occured more frequently since the end of the program, but it had already been there before. RK9 had given up asking Luke about it because every time he did so his analysis of facial movements told him that his father was lying to him. Unfortunately further analysis had revealed no reasons behind this lying and when challenged his father had claimed that on a whim he had built a flaw into RK9 so that his analysis of his father would never be quite correct. This had looked like a lie too, but RK9 could not challenge it - for all he knew it could have been true.
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
It was true that humankind no longer needed RK9. He made a good living as the best consultant engineer in the world but the people who employed him could easily have made do with the second best. And yet subroutines that considered the fact of his superfluousness never revealed unexpected emotion subroutines in the same way that other, usually arbitrary events did. It made no sense. There was some other cause, of that he was sure; but the sureness only made him feel more out of control.
RK9 looked around now and saw, as his analysis had predicted (93%), Erin walking after him, still on the other side of the street that he had just crossed.
Her eyes were on him as she stepped out into the road and RK9 reacted the instant he saw the car bearing down on her. He checked for traffic on his side, flashed across the road, pushed her violently back onto the pavement and followed after her, falling on top of her. The danger to him was as intense as to her, for he was as flesh and blood as she; he was one of only twenty androids ever made of both supersilicon and DNA. Only his brain and the eye implant were truly artificial - the rest of him was from the DNA of his father.
The two of them lay in a heap together as the car screeched to a halt. Surprisingly it was Erin who rose first and when she did so she was horrified by the look on RK9's face. He lay on the ground, eyes staring wildly at the sky, a look of terror on his face. What could make a robot look like that?
RK9 was in the grip of a sense of wrongness so deep that he felt as a human might who landed in a universe where murder was the highest moral good and the will to rape a virtue. He was transfixed by his eyescreen, for what he saw was this:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He was feeling emotions without viewing them on his screen. The feeling of loss was still with him, but he had distinctly felt relief when he had escaped the car and right now he was feeling...so much that it should have filled his eyescreen with new lines. But all he saw was the same subroutine over and over. What was worse was that he now remembered (the memory did not appear on his screen either he noted with almost numb and uncoded analysis) that his dash across the road had not been sparked by one of his many emergency subroutines. The last interruption to the emotion sequence had been the analysis that had revealed that Erin would follow him. All through the rescue and as he lay on the pavement now his screen simply scrolled the same two lines endlessly:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He got up off the ground. Still there was nothing on the screen that related to his actions. His feeling of wrongness was now almost unbearable and he wandered away without even noticing Erin, who flapped after him for a few yards before sulkily retreating.
He considered the possibility that the screen had failed and his subroutines were running normally without him seeing them. But it made no sense - his father had explained to him that essential parts of his brain-processor were located in his eye and that the code he saw scroll to the side of his vision was part of the data flow that caused the brain to produce actions. His understanding had always been that it was impossible for him to carry out actions without good data feeding from that eye.
He had to go to his father. He had to get to the truth. This feeling of loss and of wrongness could not go on.
He flagged down an empty car and gave it instructions. When he arrived at his father's house he was still only seeing:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
inexplicable feeling of terrible loss
He felt like he wanted to die. It was an unfamiliar feeling. It had a feedback effect on the other feelings. None of it made sense.
His father buzzed him in, sounding as bored and cheerless as usual, then obviously noticed on the cameras his son's agitated state as the lift carried him up. He was waiting at the lift doors to his apartment and his flat, grey hair was slightly out of place as though he had moved quickly. He wore an expression of grim concern on his straight-lined face.
"Are you okay RK?"
"No. I have come to hear the truth about me."
Tom Luke frowned. "I've told you everything about yourself."
RK9 understood humans as well as he understood space shuttles. He had been programmed to deal with passengers as well as electronics and mechanics. He knew how they worked.
He grabbed his father by the throat and pushed him back against the wall, putting just enough pressure on the windpipe to make his father fear for his life.
"You've been lying to me all along about the 'inexplicable feeling of loss' subroutine father, and now I want it explicable. Right now that subroutine is all that is showing on my eyescreen. That's right - this action is not showing. You are going to tell me everything and if I catch you in even a small lie I am going to kill you. Do you understand?"
The old man nodded, eyes popping in fear. RK9 let go.
"Talk," he said. He had a hollow feeling that the truth would be unbearable, but he had to know.
"This may be difficult for you to hear," said his father, looking at him as though wondering whether RK9 really wanted to know what he was asking.
RK9 raised his hand as though to do violence.
"Okay," said his father hurriedly. He suddenly looked tired and depressed. "Shall we sit down?" He led the way to the sitting room and they sat opposite each other in bodyform chairs. Once sitting his father looked RK9 in the eyes and when he saw no hesitation he rolled his eyes and sighed. He looked like a man about to do something slightly distastful, and as though he blamed RK9 for forcing him to do it.
"The story I told you about the Director of NASA asking for a robot was true," he began. "Only...it wasn't possible. Or perhaps it would have been, but there was a cheaper and quicker way. We decided that rather than going to the trouble of making a robot that could act human we would make a human that would act like a robot."
RK9 stared blankly, analysing what the words meant but skirting round the important information they gave him.
"You're a human RK9," said his father with another tired sigh, giving RK9 the conclusion he had been avoiding. "Your mother - my wife - died as she gave birth to you and I had to bring you up. You can condemn me all you want but the shuttle program seemed the most important thing in the world at the time and we all made sacrifices for it."
"I have a human brain?"
"Yes. But it is wired to your eyeball, which does have an artificial processor in it. The task of that processor is to simplify your subconscious thought processes and remove any unwanted inhibitions or unstable emotions, then feed them back to you via the eyescreen."
RK9 had begun to shake, for the true revelation was gradually creeping up on him. He began to consider the idea that he hated his father.
"You mean..." he began, but could not finish.
"Yes," said his father. "The eyescreen does not show your true thoughts; it shows modified thoughts - and it actually gives your conscious brain orders. It was our greatest discovery you see - that we could fool the human brain into thinking it was seeing its own thoughts when actually it was reading its orders." He shook his head in sudden puzzlement. "Apparently though the data feeding that emotion subroutine has become so strong now that the eye processor is malfunctioning. We tried to guard against overload but obviously...."
RK9 didn't think that he hated his father. The man had always been so cold that RK9 had never had strong feelings for him. There was something here he hated though; something to do with the attitude behind his father's words.
There were questions now that RK9 could barely bring himself to ask so he chose a simple question first.
"Why did you allow the processor to show this subroutine?"
His father shrugged in scientific despair. "We had to. On early test subjects we suppressed it altogether. They went mad or killed themselves. It seemed they needed some conscious outlet for what was going on in their subconscious."
RK9 felt as though some monstrous machine was stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and that the machine had a camera on it that watched impassively his every agonised scream. He shut his eyes and spoke without looking. "What was so important that you...dared to do this to people?" He opened his eyes quickly then, because even with his eyes shut he could see the disturbing monotony of the eyescreen.
His father looked at RK9 as though expecting him to understand and said, "You know why if you think about it. The economy was shrinking - it was the worst recession ever and there was no way out because we had used up earth's resources. We had to use Mars. The non-biological oil sources had just been discovered there. The Dragon Comets had recently filled the solar system with debris and we had to have intelligent repair and maintenance crews awake on the shuttles. After a few accidents and deaths several crew went insane during crossings - and then there was sabotage by crews for political reasons, and eventually we knew we couldn't rely on humans any more, we would have to use robots."
"So you made me a robot." Visions of violence passed before RK9's consciousness - did he want to destroy something? He was new to such extremes of thought.
"Yes. I just had to train you to obey the eyescreen absolutely. It wasn't too difficult - we started so young you see."
Started so young.
"You had no right." RK9 noted from some hitherto unknown distance in his mind that his voice had lost all intonation.
"It was necessary at the time - all our progress would have been for nothing if we hadn't. We didn't know the matter-transference matrix would soon replace the shuttles."
RK9 watched his father speaking and saw no apology or shame. It was because he believed what he was saying, decided RK9. The man believed what he had been told, absolutely, without conditions. His truth was unrelated to any desire that RK9 might have had - if he had been allowed desires.
"You said that you chose this method," RK9 pointed to his eye, "because it was cheaper than a real robot?"
"And quicker, yes." His father shrugged. "I know that sounds bad, but the whole global economy was at stake."
The argument gouged a hollow in RK9's chest then departed and was lost in whatever hell impersonal abstractions are consigned to.
For a moment RK9's newly released brain was a complete blank. His father's reasoning was so meaninglessly indisputable that he could not argue against it.
Then suddenly the emotion subroutine before his eye changed. Now it said:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
RK9 looked at his father and smiled grimly. "Like I give a fuck about the economy," he said. "You never asked. You took...humanity from me."
"You don't understand the necessities of the time..."
RK9 stood up suddenly and held his clenched fist at his father's throat. "I said that I don't give a fuck about your 'necessities'," he grated in his ear. "Now. Tell me about my mother."
Yes, he thought to himself, that was the important thing now.
"Let me up," said his father in a shaken voice. "I'll get some photos."
When RK9 released him he went over to a bureau and put his finger on the print-reader to open it. He turned to RK9 with a pile of photos of a young woman with short brown hair, intelligent eyes and a solemn smile. RK9 saw that he looked a little like her. Of course - he didn't only have his father's DNA. Everything he knew about his body was wrong because he had always used the doctors and technicians NASA provided him free of charge.
"She was a librarian," said his father. "Janice. Her name. Janice. I've got some disks you could watch too."
"Would she have approved of what you did?" The question was suddenly the most important that RK9 had asked today.
"She thought that the progress of science was important."
RK9 grabbed his father's ear between two fingers and crushed it with all his strength. This man felt even less his father now than before he had learned the truth. "Answer the fucking question," he said.
"Oh, probably not," said his father, speaking airily despite his grimace of pain. "She didn't always keep things in perspective."
RK9 let go and looked steadily at his father. "Give me one good reason not to kill you right now."
It was a melodramatic thing to say he realised, but it felt good. Yes, it felt good. It felt true.
His father saw the danger in his son's eyes and looked away, struggling for something to say. Then his face brightened. "I'm the only one who can tell you about your mother."
"Like what?" RK9 felt his mind as a blank, a void of emotions. His next acts would truly depend on what his father said.
"She wanted to call you Carlo if you were a boy - after her grandfather. Rosie if it was a girl. Rosie was her best friend. I can find her address for you if you give me time."
RK9 felt this working in his mind. He kept his face blank as he considered this offer, feeling his father's eyes on him, no longer full of their accustomed authority; pleading now.
"Maybe I'll let you live," he said finally. "My mother must have seen something in you once, so maybe you weren't all bad. But if you ever lie to me again I will know and I will kill you. Give me all the records you've got of my mother."
It felt strange to say that. He had never had a mother before. It felt good. He wanted to know everything about her.
His father went to get a case to put the photos, papers and disks in. By the time the case was packed RK9 had decided on the punishment for his father. It was a fit punishment for a scientist, for a believer in progress and the intrisic beauty of technology, for a man who had never considered the cost to his son of his own and his institution's desires.
It felt strange and fey, the making of decisions not seen on his eyescreen; dangerous, and now RK9 knew that although he had been conditioned to cope with danger he was for the first time experiencing the only danger that mattered: the danger of choice. There was a thrill to it that made him feel alive. Alive. Yes, this was what it must feel like to be human.
"Call for an ambulance," he said to his father.
Fear sprang back to his father's face.
"Do it," said RK9 in a tone that brooked no argument.
When his father had pressed the call button RK9 drew in a tense breath then grabbed the man and slammed him against the wall again. He put his face very close to his father's and through teeth clenched with anger he said, "You are going to watch me now, and if you shut your sick, lying eyes for even a second I am going to kill you. Okay?" It felt good to let the anger rise, unbidden by the eye.
His father saw the depths of the anger and nodded dumbly, eyes darting impotently. RK9 pulled away a little from the man who had formed him, still keeping him pinned against the wall with his left hand. He took one last look at his eyeball screen. It still said:
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
>emotion simulation subroutine:
feeling of terrible loss
And all the time staring at his father RK9 reached up to his right eye with his right hand and before his father's horrified gaze he tore the eye out. There were sounds to the brutality, as well as the pain and gore. It was purified excruciation. Afterwards RK9 could not imagine how he had done it - but it was the anger, the pure anger.
When it was done there was an unrecognisable mass of flesh hanging down his cheek and blood pouring out, sprinkling over both of them - and his father was so shocked that he couldn't speak.
His dreams will never be the same again, thought RK9 fleetingly, through the boiling pain.
One-eyed now, and whole, RK9 staggered back and picked up the case of memories of his mother just as the medics entered the apartment. Still conscious, and suddenly very aware of his dignity, he lay himself down on the stretcher and tucked the case by his side. Only then did he give in to the agony.
The medics electronically anaesthetised him in the lift on the way to the ground floor. They heard him mutter the same thing over and over again, until his mind surrendered to the healing technology and fell into sweet darkness.
"My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo and it always was. My name is Carlo...."
J
e-mail:
jacobstringer@yahoo.co.uk
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