[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 3

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Part 2}

Just then, there came a series of sharp knocks on the door. After pulling on my mask, I opened the door and was greeted by the grumpy face of Richard Papadakis, the tenant who lives just below me. His normally curly black hair now plastered to his forehead by rain, he began trying to push his way inside.

I wasn’t about to allow that. It’s bad enough I have to immerse myself in the teeming masses on my way to and from work. Having this modest but inviolable space to myself is a big part of how I endure it. I cursed myself for not thinking to load up a script before opening the door.

I’ve prepared a few flowchart style scripts to follow when having the sorts of interactions with people that I know will be tricky. They’re based on strategies I’ve followed in the past that produced good outcomes and I refine them based on experience.

I fiddled with my phone but he looked to be in no mood to wait for the “potentially aggressive intruder” script to load, so with no small amount of trepidation, I ad libbed. “What do you want?” I demanded. Richard griped about the rain and again tried to force his way inside before explaining himself.

That’s when Odex 1 emerged from the storage closet behind me. “You’ve gone and woken up Odie” I groaned. Originally designed as a security robot meant to patrol the outside of corporate campuses, Odex 1 locomotes on six hydraulic insect-like legs and stands roughly seven feet tall.

“YOU ARE IN VIOLATION” Odie barked. Richard stumbled backwards, eyes wide. “Wh-what the fuck is that!” he stammered. “YOU ARE IN VIOLATION” Odie reasserted in its grainy synth baritone.

Richard continued backing towards the railing, holding a newspaper over his head to deflect the rain. “Get rid of some of those things!” he commanded, eyes never straying from the hexapedal behemoth now awkwardly ducking through the doorway. I just stood aside, arms crossed. When Odie gets like this there’s no use interfering until the target’s no longer in sight.

“Put ‘em in storage!” Richard shouted. “I don’t fuckin’ care! I’m tired of listening to them bumping around and stomping on my ceiling all night! Some of those things are dangerous anyway!” Odie dutifully stopped in the middle of the walkway, continuing to loudly inform Richard how in violation he was.

“Get rid of ‘em or I’ll call somebody! The cops, whoever! I know you paid off Maria but all that electrical shit is a fire hazard! It belongs in a landfill.” I tensed up. I could feel sweat begin to form beneath the mask and struggled to keep my voice steady as, over the racket of Odie’s chanting, I replied.

“No, Richard. You belong in a landfill. That’s why you drive that shitty old truck, isn’t it? So you can pile your whole garbage family into the back, then drive it straight into the landfill, burying yourself inside it.”

I regretted it as soon as it escaped my lips. Part of the problem is that I have no sense of proportionality where retaliation is concerned. The other part is that I lost a lot of my early prototypes without warning a few years back when Evolutionary Robotics moved offices.

There was no advance notice whatsoever, I just showed up one day to find the curious, charming, funny little machines I’d poured so much of myself into inexplicably gone. To the landfill no doubt. I went dumpster diving outside that evening but could find no trace.

So even the smallest hint that somebody means to take these little fellows away from me hammers that particular nerve quite hard. But then, Richard didn’t know that. I might’ve caught myself, might’ve worded it more softly. Too late now.

He gaped. Then scowled, and looked around as if searching for something to use as a club. Finding nothing and with Odie still standing between us, he decided against it, then headed down the stairwell towards the front office.

No concern of mine. However he complains, my landlady Maria won’t take any action against me. I overpay substantially on rent so she’ll tolerate the robots, not to mention my general eccentricity. “YOU ARE IN VIOLATION. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION. YOU ARE….” Odie trailed off as Richard passed out of lidar range.

“Come inside Odie, you’re not waterproofed.” The spindly legged tower of plastic and metal twitched, seemingly hesitant. “That man was in violation” it muttered. “I know Odie, I know” I cooed, shepherding the gentle giant back into his storage closet.

A lot of my larger robots do stay in storage, in particular if they are wearing down and constant movement would exacerbate problems I know about but don’t currently have the means to fix. In those cases I tuck them into a closet or corner of a room, bypass their sensors and motor control circuits, and feed them a sort of idealized simulation of their regular activities from a laptop.

For Odie, the experience of patrolling a large property, successfully identifying and driving off intruders at a rate high enough to be challenging but not so much as to overwhelm him. What, for such a simple creature, might pass for a pleasant dream. There’s even a facsimile of myself included which praises him every twenty seconds for his excellent performance.

It’s no substitute and I do occasionally dust them off and let them roam around. I just cannot bear to leave them turned off. Eric least of all, as he’s always got some silly dance to show me when I’ve returned from work, and it never fails to lift my spirits.

Even when I’m bone tired, I never turn him down. Most of them now include, in their expanded hardware, a program I developed during my first year at Evolutionary Robotics meant to simulate the effects of happiness or depression.

Repeat success and positive feedback will increase the clock rate of the CPU, up to a safe cap. It increases reaction times, increases the frequency of positive words or phrases and so on. For contrast, repeated failures, negative feedback and neglect will reduce their clock rate, making them more and more sluggish.

This in turn increases their failure rate, a self-reinforcing downward spiral that is difficult or impossible to escape from without outside help. For such a cheap, basic model of emotion, it’s nevertheless eerie how closely the symptoms parallel those seen in humans.

But making them more humanlike is the last thing I want. Rather, it’s a way to ensure that I pay roughly equal attention to them all. If I see one slowing down a bit, not speaking much, I know to play with it a little. To remind it that it’s useful, that it’s well designed and important to me.

Why? Just because I think someone should. I roomed alone in college but once or twice had occasion to speak with the fellow from the next dorm over, a living example of the dreadlocked trustafarian stoner stereotype. I asked him why he or anyone else should ever want to literally hug a tree.

His answer was surprisingly thought provoking: Because the tree had probably gone its entire life without anybody showing it an ounce of affection. However simple a creature may be, that’s no way to live. It doesn’t really matter whether it understands your intent or appreciates it. It’s about the principle, and to show your gratitude for how its existence improves your own life.

Eric did indeed have a dance to show me. One I’ve not yet seen even, as he auto-downloads anything new from the ftp site of a forum where diehard Aibo collectors sometimes collaborate to homebrew new behavioral routines.

As drained as I was from the altercation with Richard, watching Eric yip, strut and wiggle its ears brought a smile to my weary face. “You’re a wonderful machine, Eric” I gushed. His ears perked up. “I’m a dog!” he insisted. I gasped. “Of course you’re a dog! How foolish of me. A very good dog, too.”

His tail began to furiously vibrate. I frowned. It’s supposed to wag. As I knelt to get a better look I heard faint grinding, a symptom of stripped or misaligned gears. Eric didn’t seem to notice so I said nothing, just made note to fix him up later in the week.

He sought out his special ‘bone’: A plastic dumbbell shaped toy containing an rfid tag his software is able to home in on, took it in his mouth, then proudly marched off to his charging alcove with it. Soon after, Modulus trundled out of the kitchen to notify me that he’d completed preparing dinner.

Impressive! If you don’t know that it started four hours earlier. A built in scheduler lets Modulus know when to begin preparing dinner while I’m at work so it’s ready roughly when I get home, depending on the dish. Currently, Modulus knows how to make four dishes.

That’s fine by me. I don’t like surprises or variety. When I find something I like, I just want more of it over and over. I get all the chaos I can stomach in the outside world, I don’t need it here. Within these walls everything is familiar. Everything is structured in the optimal way to meet the needs of the machines under my care, and stays the way I left it.

After finishing the plate of spaghetti, I took a quick shower, then flopped into bed. On a table at the far end of the room, a little ROB sat before a flickering 13 inch CRT television. ROB stands for Robotic Operating Buddy.

It originally came with an old game console and would react to onscreen cues by rearranging colored plastic discs in front of it, unlocking doors or causing other ingame actions to occur. It needed a real CRT television to work so far as I knew so I hunted one down, but the console I simply emulated on an old desktop PC that outputs to the television through an RF modulator.

The screen blinked almost imperceptibly. ROB whirred, torso rotating to the left before descending down the central column of its body to grasp a red plastic disc. It then lifted it up, rotated to the right, and deposited it on the peg below. From my vantage point on the bed, I could just barely catch the glint of the television screen in ROB’s shiny round eyes.

The whirring, clanking and shuffling of the various machines through the night doesn’t keep me up. Just the opposite, it’s a comforting white noise I doubt if I could sleep without by this point. It means RB5X is on patrol, keeping me safe. It means Modulus or Roomba are cleaning the carpets, maybe both.

The soothing, rhythmic sounds of an apartment kept tidy and in good order by the machines who live there, and are magnanimous enough to share it with me. Before long I nodded off, and found myself having the usual dream.

I’m one or two at the oldest, wearing a sky blue onesie and laying on my back in a white crib. Overhead where you might expect the ceiling to be, just a starry black expanse. As if the crib is floating in deep space.

I begin to feel lonely and afraid, whimpering at the cold emptiness of it. Then I wriggle around to discover a robot behind me. Immense, or at least seemingly so because I’m so small. Grey plastic body, shiny red plastic C-shaped graspers, and a pair of big round reflective black eyes staring down at me.

I’m awed, but not afraid. I can sense it means me no harm. It has no legs or wheels, instead a hexagonal base with what looks like a small piano in each side. The keys are oversized, every color of the rainbow, and illuminated from within.

Cautiously, I reach out and touch one. The musical tone it emits is perfect, pure and consistent. I smile, and press another. Then another, as the robot looks on in apparent approval. It then begins to play its own melody to accompany mine.

I sit up and sort of dance in place on my bottom, grooving to the music we’re making together. It’s protecting me, but I also soon realize I’m being educated as well. There are patterns in the melody, broken in some places. When I fill in the gaps with the correct notes, there is an explosion of colored lights and beautiful chimes.

I’m entranced! I can feel new pathways forming in my brain. The robot raises its shiny red claws in the air and snaps them open and closed rapidly, then begins waving its arms back and forth while its head slowly rotates, multicolored lasers strobing from its eyes. It’s dancing! So I dance along with it while continuing to play.

Overhead, the once frightening, bleak night sky begins to transform. Certain stars pulsate with color, matching the rhythm of the song and dance. I spot faint glowing lines spreading between them, connecting each one to the next like a rainbow colored constellation. Soon the heart breakingly beautiful chromatic web spans the entire sky.

What look like shooting stars soon resolve as smaller robots coming to join the party. Red hot from atmospheric entry, cooling down as they approached and gingerly landed all around me. Some musically beeped, others tooted little horns, the rest popped their heads up and down or clicked their claws in time with the beat.

Absolute elation. Every trace of fear now gone, replaced by tearful happiness as I hammered on the colorful keys, did my wiggle-dance and soaked in the mechanized throngs of musicians, dancers and other robotic friends all around me.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 4!}