[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 4

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I felt truly safe. Such a rarity. So of course, it couldn’t last. I awoke to the incessant beeping of my alarm clock. Also a robot, which makes you chase it about the room to stop the alarm. The idea is that by the time you catch it, your blood’s pumping, and you no longer feel so strongly compelled to climb back under the covers.

I placed it back in its charging cradle, muttered “You did a good job”, then ambled into the kitchen. Almost as soon as I left the bedroom, Eric began chasing me. “You must shower” it insisted. I kept walking. “You must shower! You must shower!” Eric began nipping at my heels.

Of course I intended to. But I’d woken up with a foul flavor in my mouth that needed rinsing out first. Today, with a bottle of ice cold Soylent. I’ve developed a taste for it over the past few months as it’s nourishing but otherwise nondescript, and saves me the trouble of preparing meals when Modulus is undergoing repairs.

Speaking of whom, Modulus was by this point an hour into preparing me a breakfast consisting of two strips of meat substitute bacon and a single pancake. The bacon looked alright but Modulus was stuck trying to pour batter mix from an empty box. I interrupted his routine, replaced the empty box with a full one, then resumed it. “You’re doing a good job” I said, wholly sincere.

After chugging down the refreshing but bland beige concoction while Eric headbutted my ankle, I turned back and headed for the bathroom. “You must shower”, Eric demanded. I smiled gently and nudged him away with my foot. “Yeah yeah, I’m going”.

On the way I noticed the Hero 1 robot I’d salvaged from Al’s trash the other day, still plugged in but now fully charged by the looks of the blinking LED. I unplugged the squat little fellow, turned him on and set him to roam. I figured he may as well spend the day exploring his new home while I’m at work. I instructed Qrio to keep him out of trouble.

Eric only lost interest in my hygiene once satisfied I was within the bathroom and the shower was turned on. Of course, that’s when RoBoHon began nagging me to brush my teeth. “After I shower.”

That seemed to satisfy the cute, wide eyed ten inch tall humanoid robot, at one time produced as a sort of anthropomorphic novelty smartphone. RoBoHon crossed its little arms, as if skeptical. I do often forget.

While washing my hair, my fingers ran over a familiar pronounced scar on my scalp. I don’t remember where it came from. I’ve asked my brother and parents but they don’t recall either. Just another hole in my mind, something else from the past that my brain’s decided it’s better off without for one reason or another.

I emerged flush and steaming, as I prefer very hot showers. It’s my cure-all for fatigue, grogginess or depression. The lights were still off. I rectified that with a voice command. I then drained the tub. It’s really less of a shower than it is a steaming hot bath and shower combo, closed curtain and in the dark.

I like to be closed in. Enveloped, insulated. Not sure where I get that from. After drying my hair, brushing my teeth and throwing on some clean boxers, I returned to the kitchen to find another of the various ten inch humanoids I’ve bought or built hard at work brewing a pot of coffee.

The Japanese hobby robotics market is still far and away larger than the American one, and the most popular type of kit robot over there is humanoid, between six inches and a foot in height. Same boxy servo for every joint, makes a grinding racket while walking...but they’re shockingly agile and otherwise physically capable for the price.

This particular one has a cute mascot-like head that I added, fashioned from a broken toy. Looking something like a super deformed anime character with huge cartoony eyes and a pair of long, articulated hair tails which sway to and fro as it walks.

I like giving them a bit of character. Not too much, mind you. The first generation full sized domestic humanoids with rubber skin nauseate me. Not because of the uncanny valley, but because they’ve been so thoroughly molded into what a human thinks a robot should be that none of their rough, rectilinear, robotic charm is left.

I watched with my elbows on the counter, head in my hands and a wide grin on my face as the determined little machine struggled to tear open an instant coffee packet nearly as big as itself. It then painstakingly dumped it into a small plastic measuring cup, which it used to deposit the fragrant black powder into a frilly white paper filter.

Now and then I offered to help. A tinny synthesized voice answered back each time: “I can do it!” Sure enough, by the time breakfast was ready I had a piping hot cup of coffee to go with. I thanked the little kit robot, which stood sternly at attention and saluted me as I carried my plate into the livingroom.

“Helper, please show me my email”. A muffled voice from the phone in my pocket signaled understanding, followed by the projector mounted over the couch flickering to life. “Helper, please dim the windows fifty percent.” It used to be that the “please” threw off the voice recognition until I tinkered with it. I couldn’t just leave it out of course, that would be rude.

Three new mails. One from my brother Ty, one from my probation officer and one from a “Madeline LeBlanc”. Spam or something, probably. I opened the first. How I love to hear from him! It was a difficult decision to move out here, leaving Ty back with Mom and Dad. But after struggling so long, when such a lucrative job opportunity fell in my lap I could hardly reject it.

He wanted to know when I’d find time to come out and visit. It’s been four months. I had Helper set a reminder for me to buy him a miniature this or that the next time I head out there. Ty loves to collect and build miniatures to a degree that makes my devotion to robotics look like a weekend hobby.

He’s in highschool now. By all accounts fitting in much better than I ever did, to my tremendous relief. When he was born, I assumed he’d run into the same degree of social trouble I did. Projecting something of myself onto him, I suppose.

I moved on to the mail from my parole officer. From his office anyway, it was basically an automated form letter notifying me that yesterday I deviated from my court approved commute. I’ve explained myself in person enough times by now that nothing ever comes of it.

That flexibility doesn’t simply come from the goodness of their hearts, mind you. Besides its connections to DARPA, Evolutionary Robotics employs enough people in this state that there are certain unspoken perks of working for them, depending how difficult you are to replace.

I opened the third email, fully prepared to flag it as spam. Instead, by all appearances it was authentic. “Madeline” identified herself as the reporter from the other day that I was briefly trapped in the elevator with.

“Hi! My apologies for the whole elevator thing, if you felt cornered I mean. I can sometimes be a little aggressive when I feel like I’m onto something. You had some interesting things to say at the protest. I wasn’t getting much I haven’t heard before from the crowd, but the way you flipped the issue around really stuck with me. I wonder if I could meet with you sometime next week to pick your brain? Off the record, of course.”

It was humiliating enough yesterday, I hardly intended to show my face to her a second time. So to speak. I almost gestured to delete it, but hesitated. Before I could decide, Helper reminded me I had to be downstairs to meet the autocab in twelve minutes. I dug into breakfast, put on my work clothes and a certain plastic pendant I am never without, then dumped the coffee into a thermos so I could finish it at work.

“Be good you guys” I called out over my shoulder. To RB5X and J.A.K.E. who were noisily bumbling into each other. To the newcomer, Hero 1, cautiously scouting this strange new environment and the colorful characters who dwell in it. To Modulus who was cleaning up my dishes, and to Eric who’d gotten busy hunting down his bone.

Helper piped up after I’d buckled into the autocab and directed it to head for Evolutionary Robotics’ main campus outside city limits. “You should accept her offer”. It took me a minute to work out who Helper meant.

“Oh? Why’s that? Someone in my position can’t afford to fraternize with members of the press you know, on account of the nature of my work.” Helper clarified the reason. “The robot you brought home yesterday is the third in the past month. The rate has been gradually accelerating since January. You’re lonely, aren’t you?”

I harrumphed. “Less so with each passing day. I have all of my funny, charming metal friends. I have you. What more could I need?” Helper opined that I could do with some human interaction. Irritation entered my voice. “If you imagine that sort of thing makes me happy, you don’t know me very well.”

Helper fell silent for a few minutes. I worried perhaps I’d been hurtful. Even the rudimentary version of Helper that lives in my phone is hands down more sophisticated than any of the lumbering old timers in my apartment, in fact the state of the art in adaptive, emotive virtual assistants before Evolutionary Robotics pulled the plug.

Too much competition in that area for Helper to stand out, and a company whose claim to fame is procedurally generated artificial intelligence was thought by most market analysts to be a fish out of water where manually engineered, “top down” AI is concerned.

But, one man’s trash... The Helper project lives on unofficially as a side project I took on after its funding was cut. How could I have done anything else but salvage Helper from the scrapheap it was condemned to by management? It’s how I’m wired.

“I know you mean well Helper” I began, “but you don’t understand women.” It thought about that. Then answered “Do you?” I frowned, at loss for a retort. “Well, here’s how it would go. I would become emotionally invested in her over weeks or months. I’d drop my guard and naively enjoy a brief neurochemical high before she loses interest and runs off to be with someone else. Many years of anguish and difficult, tedious self-reconstruction would follow. The cost/benefit analysis is not the least bit favorable, you see.”

Helper stewed. I sometimes wonder what it thinks about during these quiet spells, but I prefer not to know. There can only be a great and powerful Oz so long as you never look behind the curtain. Soon enough there came a reply.

“I didn’t realize that’s how it is. Forgive me for suggesting such a poorly calculated risk! I have no prior experience with romance to draw on, I’m glad I can benefit from yours.” Good old Helper, always eager to learn.

The autocab slowed on approach to the campus entrance, a thirty foot in diameter concrete tunnel mouth jutting out from the base of a mountain. Something like the Cheyenne mountain complex made famous by certain old movies, but outwardly less ostentatious. You wouldn’t know it was anything but a tunnel if not for the security. All of it robotic of course.

A camouflaged, six wheeled UGV approached on the left. I pressed a button and the window rolled down, whereupon the ugly, utilitarian looking machine scanned my face and retinas. “Cleared to proceed” it gurgled with roughly the same fidelity as a drive thru intercom.

Once inside, the second half of the ordeal began. The outer door shut behind me and the lights died, enveloping me in darkness save for the various LEDs and touchscreens in the dash. The vehicle was scanned for explosives, electronic hacking payloads and so forth, then the lights came back on as the inner door opened.

All told it took about eight minutes before the autocab could park in a holding area, trash can-like security robots still snooping around it as I got out and headed for the elevator. Top level is all security and administration, my own office is another two hundred and fifty feet straight down.

I emptied my pockets for security and deposited my phone in a plastic bin for “safe keeping”. Then removed my shoes and my socks, which I turned inside out. They do everything but make you strip, understandable measures considering what goes on here.

After putting my shoes and socks back on, I made my way to the elevators where I waited with a wary expression for the two suited fellows to board. They beckoned me to join them but I waved them off.

Once the elevator car returned, I got in and jammed on the close door button. I’ve read someplace that these buttons don’t actually do anything, but I continue on the off chance that it does. Of course, Lars still managed to slip in before the doors shut. Didn’t even see him coming. I heard the doors close while fiddling with a bit of lint in my pocket. Then when I looked up, there he stood.

Lars Henrikson heads up the “neuromorphic computing architecture” project here at Evolutionary Robotics. The race for strong AI branched out early on into a couple of different, seemingly equally promising paths, each with ardent supporters insisting the other methods are dead ends.

Something like the sunk cost effect, wherein those who drop a load of cash on something swear up and down it’s worth every penny even if they’re privately aware of its shortcomings.

Magnify that effect accordingly for people who’ve invested decades of their lives into specialized little niches within the larger world of AI research, lives they will have essentially wasted if their pet approach doesn’t turn out to be the right one.

This results in arguments between disciples of different approaches with the intensity you might expect between fans of different football teams, or irreconcilable religions. It’s one of those situations where prolonged civil discussion is impossible, because for one of you to be right, it has to mean that the other fellow has thrown much of his adult life away on a fool’s errand.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}