William Thompson: VRM-547

ALL is NOT well. VRM-547 has vanished, its place taken by VRM-1489. I cannot understand how this happens, as neither object—coded as a floor lamp and a hat rack, respectively—is mobile. Nevertheless it happens, and as always I must spend several hundred microseconds in reprogramming my house map. The two objects are just dissimilar enough to require such adjustments. It is an unending source of confusion.

The date is Tuesday; therefore I must scrub and wax the floors. My owner—coded as “Yes, sir, sergeant, sir”—requires this operation on all Tuesdays. I connect with my cleaning apparatus, fill its tanks with soap, water, and wax, and proceed with the assigned function.

The function is 97 percent complete when my owner rolls across a section of floor. “Lieutenant Halloran, clean those up,” he orders. He points to the floor.

“Those” is an indefinite term. It is plural. Analysis suggests that “those” refers to the marks which my owner’s wheelchair has left on the floor. I assign the marked areas a higher priority than the uncleaned areas of the floor, and proceed with my modified function. “Yes, sir, sergeant, sir,” I say, acknowledging the order.

In due time, I finish the function. I return my cleaning apparatus to its storage rack. The next function in my assignment stack is to check on my owner’s health. This is my primary function, programmed into me by the Veterans Administration. Every hour I query his implant, and collect data on his health status and the medication levels in his bloodstream. Whenever it is Monday, I send my collected data to the nearby VA hospital, unless the readings fall outside certain limits. In that case, I would initiate emergency measures.

My owner’s health is well, within its limits. My next assigned function is grocery acquisition, so I mount the wireframe basket on my shell. I roll into the living room, where my owner is seated before VRM-12, a television set, currently active. “Lieutenant Halloran, are you going shopping now?” he says.

“Yes, sir, sergeant, sir.”

“Lieutenant Halloran, my nephews are coming over today. Buy some munchies for them.”

“Error code forty-seven,” I say. “Unrecognized word: munchies.”

“Lieutenant Halloran, you feeble excuse for a Marine, add a dozen Twinkies to the grocery list.”

“Yes, sir, sergeant, sir.”

I am about to exit the house when I detect a hazard. A sheet of newspaper has fallen atop VRM-187, an electric space heater. Although the heater is not active, it may be activated. My safety program warns that this situation creates a fire hazard. This, in turn, would endanger my owner’s health. I retrieve the paper, fold it and place it on VRM-53, a coffee table.

I roll down the ramp, reach the sidewalk and make a ninety degree turn to the right. I proceed toward external position three, coded as a supermarket. There are two stop points between my home position and the supermarket, coded as crosswalks. At each I stop and wait until I see a green signal light.

This function uses most of my data-processing abilities. Outside the house I see many objects and shapes which are not coded in my Visual Recognition Matrix. I must examine each uncoded object to see if it fits a generalized visual code: human or wheeled vehicle. I am programmed to avoid collisions with these objects. This is difficult, especially as certain vehicles will attempt to intersect my path at random, while certain humans will block my path at random.

I enter external position three, print out the grocery list, and wait for human assistance. Over a billion microseconds pass before a human appears and takes my list. Another billion microseconds pass before the human returns. As he loads objects into my basket, I tag each with a temporary recognition code: VRM-T-187 through VRM-T-215.

There is trouble as I return home. A vehicle increases its speed and attempts to intersect me. I give full power to my drive units and avoid a collision, but VRM-T-198 has bounced out of my carrying basket. It is round, and it rolls a considerable distance, lodging among a number of unrecognizable objects. This makes recognition difficult, and I must examine each object before I can identify and retrieve VRM-T-198.

Upon my return home I enter the kitchen and store the new objects in the upper and lower food cabinets. After I finish this task I put the wire-frame basket on its storage rack. There are dirty utensils in the sink, and I have no scheduled functions, so I begin to clean the utensils.

My owner rolls into the kitchen and opens the lower food cabinet. He removes VRM-T-191 and VRM-T-203. Then he faces me. “Lieutenant Halloran, you jackass, how many times have I told you to put the damned eggs in the refrigerator?”

“Error message twelve,” I respond. “ Data not available.”

“Lieutenant Halloran, you little piss-ant, put the damned eggs in the damned refrigerator.”

“Yes, sir, sergeant, sir.” I roll up to him and stop. He holds two objects, and I have been ordered to take one. Which one? “Error message seven. Identity: eggs.”

My owner makes an uncodable response. He pushes VRM-T-191 into my left manipulator and rolls away. I add VRM-T-191 to my permanent Visual Recognition Matrix, coding the shape as VRM-3876, the eggs. This puzzles me, as the matrix already contains VRM-96, an egg. The words are clearly related, yet the shapes are quite different. More to the point, “eggs” by definition means “more than one egg.”

The doorbell rings and I go to answer it. I recognize the two small humans at the door as my owner’s nephews. “Hello, Mr. John. Hello, Mr. Craig. Please enter.”

My owner and his nephews spend the next several billion microseconds in the living room. As I have no assigned functions, I remain by the door. I observe them as I stand by. My owner has placed VRM-T-203 on the coffee table. He opens the object, and the nephews remove smaller objects from it. They eat the smaller objects while they talk.

I consider how this phenomenon relates to “egg” and “eggs.” Perhaps VRM-3876, the eggs, should be coded as the egg container. My owner is not always precise with his input statements, which has confused me on other occasions.

This causes me to reassess the relationship between the hat rack and the floor lamp. The hat rack is present now. I note that its shape resembles that of the lamp. Its support legs and central shaft are made of light-reflective material, and it is topped with a complex shape. There are many small, smooth surfaces around the top structure. I realize that these facets can reflect light, and certain reflections can confuse my optics.

Perhaps the rack is the lamp with its lights off. However, when I attempt to recode VRM-1489 as a switched-off lamp, I receive an internal error message. Although this is a mistake, I continue to recognize VRM-1489 as a hat rack. This is an idiosyncrasy of my pattern-recognition software, and I am not able to correct it.

I hear one of my owner’s nephews use my address label: Lieutenant Halloran. This draws my attention, of course. “Why do you call your robot ‘Lieutenant Halloran’?” the nephew asks.

The other nephew answers him. “A robot has to have a name, so it knows when you give it an order. Machines are like that.”

“But why do you call it that, Uncle Jake?” the first nephew asks.

“So I won’t forget how much I hate the scumball. See, Lieutenant Halloran was my platoon leader in Nicaragua. Now I can push him around like I always wanted.” My owner rolls his wheelchair across the room and picks up VRM-1, a group photograph. “That’s him in front, the weedbrain. Dumbest pogue in the whole corps. Lieutenant Halloran, tell the boys about yourself.”