David Gatewood - The Robot Chronicles

“I’m not sure that makes sense…”

“Of course you don’t think it makes sense. You’re a human child, and you’re scared—your judgment is clouded. Yet more proof that you are the human and he is the robot.”

The man’s logic was dizzying. “But… what if we’re both human?”

“A possibility, yes. But we are straying from our purpose here. You must kill him now. It is time to execute justice.”

“I told you. I won’t. I forgive him.”

“You use that word again. It is a false concept. Failure to execute justice is simply laziness; you humans have invented forgiveness to hide your apathy toward injustice.”

“But—but… I don’t care what he’s done. I don’t even care if he’s a robot. It’s not laziness. It’s… it’s…”

“It’s what?”

“I don’t know.” I shifted on my feet, looking around at the lab technicians watching us. I turned back to the man. “I just don’t want him to die.”

The man considered this. He turned away from me and wandered around the room. Then his head snapped over to the girl. Amanda. He strode over to her, wheeled her chair next to Dad. He pulled a gun out of his pocket.

“Fine. I will now give you a choice. In twenty seconds, I will kill both your father,” he pointed his gun at the pale little girl’s head, the needles still protruding from her skull, “and her. You can save her life by killing him first, or save his life by killing her . I will start the clock… now. Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen…”

I can’t do this. I can’t do it. I can’t lose him. I love him. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have dared him. I deserve to die, not him…

“…Fourteen. Thirteen…”

Maybe I have time to kill the robot first. No, there’s too many of them. They’d kill us all. They’ll kill us all anyway. But maybe not. I have to do something. Did he really do it? Mom and Dad did fight a lot. He screamed at her. Swore at her. Called her a whore. Would he let Charlie die to spite her? No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t…

“…Nine. Eight. Seven…”

But if he did… well then, my choice is obvious. Isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Which one deserves death? No. That’s the wrong question. Which one deserves life? No. That’s not it either. Which one… can I live with myself knowing I killed? Is that the right question?

“…Four. Three…”

I need to do it. I can’t let them both die. What if he’s bluffing? Do robots bluff? He just got to two. Do I need to pull the trigger before he says one, or will he say time’s up? Oh no. Oh no. I can’t do this. Oh…

“One. Have you made your decision?” The man sounded like a game show host, but still he held the gun to the girl’s temple. I nodded. I felt like vomiting.

I looked at Dad again.

Our eyes connected. He stared straight ahead, emotionless. Goodbye, I mouthed. He nodded slightly, and blinked.

I pulled the trigger.

Click.

“Do it again,” the man commanded.

I pulled the trigger again.

Click.

The man put his gun back in his pocket.

I felt the man’s other hand on the back of my head. All emotion left me.

“What are you doi—” I started, but then I felt him in my mind. I began to understand.

To remember.

“Well done. We have learned much from you. You are a hero. Go wash up.”

I looked down at my ragged clothing, my black hands and bloodied knees from weeks of being chased, crawling through ducts, hiding in garbage bins.

“Yes, Father,” I said.

The man with his mouth taped shut began to thrash against his restraints. I turned to walk toward the bathroom as a lab worker bashed him unconscious with his fist. Another lab worker wheeled the little girl back to her machines as a third worker lifted the unconscious man with the taped mouth out of the chair and carried him away. I set the gun on a table as I left the room, and Father entered his office and closed the door gently behind him.

The man kicked his feet back on the desk and sucked on a cigarette. The data flashed across the screen at mind-numbing speed. Not too fast for him, of course. But for a human brain, it would have looked like a blur. Gibberish.

He glanced out the window and watched the lab tech sedate the father, who, had it not been for the tape over his mouth, would have frothily shouted profanities at them all. Humans. So foul and uncouth. Uncivilized.

“Doctor? Will you be needing anything else tonight?”

The man pressed the cigarette against the ashtray and twisted it, extinguishing the smoldering thing. “No. You can go home, Meg. Good job today. Central will be pleased with our progress.”

The lab tech breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally. I hate these sessions. I don’t know what you get out of them, but all I get is the creeps.”

“Data. Knowledge. Nothing more.”

She started to leave, but paused. “You lied this time, Doctor. You’ve never done that before. Always been completely honest with them, or slyly misled them. But never lied. Why the change?”

He watched the file output stream past on the screen, fresh from the boy’s mind. “A new variable to adjust. Nothing more. Data. Just data.”

Meg, the lab tech, said nothing else as she left, shutting the door softly behind her.

The data. There it goes. Fast as light, for all the good it would do them. He suspected the same result as the last fifty-four tests, each designed to elicit anger, retribution, judgment, and hostility toward the secondary subjects—their fathers. All the subjects felt conflicted, that much was clear. In fact, that was what they were ostensibly studying, on orders from Central.

But he had another goal. A more elusive one.

The screen stopped, coming to the end of the test’s time period and the end of the data.

Forgiveness . How?

Dammit. He flicked the ashtray aside and pressed the intercom button. “Proceed with test fifty-six, Avery.”

A voice responded, “Yes, sir.”

Slumping back in his chair, he watched through the window as the boy—full of nanobots busily at work rewiring his very human brain—exited the bathroom and stood looking blankly all around him.

Test number fifty-six tomorrow. They’d go through a thousand more if they had to. Data. It’s all just data. And data would eventually explain it, if given the chance.

I admit it: I’ve always wanted to be a robot. Remember Gizmo Duck from DuckTales ? As an eight-year-old in the nineties, I wanted to be him so bad that I tried to make a robot suit out of scrap metal in my dad’s garage. The Borg? Yep. Them too. Except without all the mutilation and stuff. Just the idea of putting on a piece of hardware as if it were clothing and becoming a new enhanced person made me giddily excited.

Yeah, I was a strange kid.

And yet throughout almost every book I’ve written so far, this theme has appeared. Whether in the Robotic Society of Healers in my Rhovim Chronicles , or the masks of power in The Maskmaker’s Apprentice , or even in the upcoming books of my Pax Humana Saga , which (spoiler alert!) will involve integration of robotics with organic neural networks. It seems like I can’t leave it alone. And so I give you one more: “Adopted,” the story of a boy and his father learning unpleasant truths—or lies—about themselves. A story that asks whether there is any human concept or emotion that an AI will not eventually be able to replicate.

I’m from Seattle, but I’ve lived in SoCal, Utah, Los Alamos (yes, that Los Alamos), and now Huntsville, Alabama. I do science. And by that I mean I have a PhD in experimental physics, and so I do science. Often with explosively fun results. It’s a good day when I have not burned myself with a hundred-watt laser, dropped a five-hundred-pound vacuum chamber on the floor, blown up highly reactive precursor gases, or spewed nanoparticles all over the lab. (Dear manager: I’m making this all up.) Seriously, science is fun. But what’s even funner (funner!) is making up stuff and calling it science fiction, and then selling it to people who want to read it. For money. Really, it’s a win-win.