Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"You're telling me you gave it a moral barometer?" Ariel demanded.

"Sort of. It relies on the human to which it is assigned to make that determination. It also recognizes a human prerogative to go in harm's way should circumstances require risk to prevent further harm."

"And when confronted with a clear case of Three Law violation?"

"It has memory buffers and a failsafe that shunts the data out of the primary positronic matrix. It prevents positronic collapse and allows for the opportunity for further evaluation. In a proper lab debriefing, the cause-and-effect of a situation can be properly explained and set in context. The robot can be reset and returned to duty."

"You gave it selective amnesia," Ariel said. "It can allow a human to come to harm and still function because after the fact it doesn't remember doing it."

"That's why Bogard left data out of its report," Mia said.

"That's why I have to take Bogard back to Phylaxis to debrief it."

Mia nodded thoughtfully. "So why don't you approve, Ariel?"

"A robot is a machine," she said. "A very powerful machine. It is intelligent, it can make decisions. I want them inextricably joined to the Three Laws so that they can never-never-circumvent their concern for my safety. If they fail to protect me, I want them shut down. I don't want them thinking it over. I don't want to ever be considered a secondary or tertiary concern by a robot who may decide that I ought to be sacrificed for the good of the many. Or of a specific individual. I think loosening the bonds like this can only lead to operational conflicts that will result in unnecessary harm."

"That's the only way to construct a robot bodyguard, though," Derec said.

"There should be no such thing, then!" Ariel shouted. "It didn't work! Somewhere in its sloppy brain it made a decision and sacrificed Senator Eliton! Explain it to me how that was for anyone's greater good!"

Derec stared at her, ashamed. He could think of no answer to give her. In fact, he had no answer for himself.

Mia watched the argument escalate, amazed at Ariel. She had always seen her friend as impatient but controlled, usually even-tempered, never enraged and irrational. But this was a side of Ariel with which Mia had no experience. The unreasoned hatred she directed at Bogard reminded Mia more of an anti-robot fanatic than of a Spacer who ought to be at ease with robots.

"Ariel-" Derec said tightly, obviously reining in his own anger.

Ariel left the room.

Derec closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair.

"You two have known each other a long time?" Mia asked.

Derec gave a wan smile. "Too long, I sometimes think. In a way, I've known her all my life."

"You're not-"

"Related? No. It's just I-we-both had amnemonic plague. Burundi's Fever. We've been complete amnesiacs. When I had my bout, Ariel was the first human I came into contact with."

"And you were with her when she had hers?"

Derec nodded.

"So… why don't you explain this dispute to me. I didn't understand half of what you were talking about."

Derec drew a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable. "Well. I started investigating the way positronic memory works, especially in the aftermath of collapse. Sometimes you can recover a collapsed positronic brain-not often, but it can happen. There's something… unpredictable… in the way they collapse. I was curious about that."

"Having been an amnesiac have anything to do with this?"

"More than a little. What differs between human and robot is in the way we're locked into our perceptual realities. The way we interface with the world. Humans have a plasticity robots lack-we can indulge fiction, for instance, and know the difference, even when it's a full-sensory entertainment that is designed to mimic reality in the finest detail. A robot can't do that. Tell its senses that what it is perceiving is 'real,' and it acts upon that stimulus. It can't make the intuitive distinction. If what it perceives causes a conflict with its Three Law imperatives, collapse is likely unless quickly resolved."

"Even a fictional crisis?" Mia asked.

Derec nodded. "Exactly. Convince a robot a lie is real, and it has no way to treat the lie as a conditional reality pending further data, like a human does. Now in either case, unacceptable realities can cause breakdowns. Humans still suffer nervous collapses, psychotic amnesia, reactive psychoses-a variety of disorders in which the brain tries to deal with an emotional or physical shock that the mind cannot accept. It happens faster and under more concrete conditions to a robot. But in the case of humans, the attempted resolution is also an attempt to circumvent the trauma to allow the organism to continue functioning."

"Amnesia victims can still carry on living even if they can't remember who they are or where they came from."

"Simply put, yes. I wanted to see if some sort of the same mechanism could be duplicated in a positronic brain."

Mia looked over at Bogard. "It seems you succeeded."

"Not completely. What I established was a bypass, true. The memory is still there, but inaccessible to the primary matrix. I shunted it over to a buffer. Eventually, it has to be dealt with or Bogard will start suffering from diagnostic neurosis."

"What's that?"

"It's what I tried to explain to you before. A positronic brain runs a self-diagnostic every few hours. At some point, Bogard's diagnostic will register the absence of a specific memory node as a chronic problem. It won't be able to fix it, so Bogard will start feeling the need to be serviced. It can impair function."

Mia felt a ripple of anxiety. She still did not want to release Bogard. "So tell me why Ariel doesn't like this."

"Anything that tampers with the full function of the Three Laws she sees as a step away from heresy," Derec said. "In her view, by giving Bogard the ability to continue functioning in the wake of a Three Law conflict that should shut it down, I've created a monster." He grunted. "It was her work that gave me the direction to go, though."

"How's that?"

"Her doctoral thesis from Calvin. 'Three Law Conflict Under Alternative Concretizations. ' Basically, she proposed the possibility of an informational loop that is created when a robot has incomplete data which strongly suggests the necessity of action." Derec frowned. "Unfortunately, it can't make the determination of which kind of action because the information is incomplete. It starts running probability scenarios, to fill in-basically by Occam's Razor-the blanks in its information so it can make a decision. But it still can't. It can theoretically create its own delusional scenario wherein collapse is imminent based on an unreal situation. One of Ariel's inferences was that a positronic brain could be lied to on a fundamental level and thus create a false standard of reality for it. The hierarchical response to perception would be distorted. And it would be stuck in it, the loop causing a cascade of alternative perceptions."

"How would you do that? Just walk up to it and say 'By the way, black is white, and people can fly'?"

"No, the hardwiring prevents the brain from accepting that kind of input. It would have to be a more direct interference, like a virus that could change pathways in the brain structure. Something that would directly affect the positronic pathways themselves."

"Doesn't that describe what happened to the RI at Union Station?"

Derec looked worriedly at her. "Yes. That's what I wanted to see by doing the physical inspection. There's evidence of a direct intervention at certain sensory nodes, but we can't tell which ones they were."

"Could anyone have accessed your research?"

Derec shook his head, but Mia saw uncertainty in his face. The notion had occurred to him, but he did not want to give it too much consideration.