David Ring III - Stanley Duncan's Robot

“The androids would be able to defend themselves,” said Stanley.

“But you would be giving life to them only to wage war. What sort of life is that?”

Stanley didn’t have an answer.

Dan brought the potato skins over on a dish and prepared some tea. It steeped while they sat in silence for a long while.

Stanley sipped the tea — cold. He gobbled down half of the potato skins. “I want you to start wearing the watch or carrying a different weapon. You need to protect yourself.”

“You wear the watch, Stanley. I don’t need it. I’m a weapon. I can protect myself.” Dan’s voice was serious.

Stanley sighed. He couldn’t understand why Dan was being so stubborn. “Do you realize how worried I get when you go out on your own?”

“What more do you want?” Dan’s face reddened. “I’m not going to carry a gun. I’m not an assassin. I’m not trying to kill or intimidate people. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone — if possible. Man, machine; flesh, metal.”

In those words, Stanley recognized the similarity to the speech at the end of The Great Dictator . He wondered what it meant. “Well,…”

“And I’ll protect you, too.”

Stanley recalled what Dan had told him about his virtual training, and Dan was in great shape, though he had never seen him exercise. He was fit and muscular, but not a hulking mass of muscle. “But what if you get hurt?”

“I told you about what I did to Ike.”

Stanley’s blood boiled at the mention of that cretin’s name. He pressed his hand to his shirt pocket, reaching for cigarettes that were no longer there. “And?”

“That was merely hand-to-hand combat,” continued Dan, “which I am highly trained in. But if anyone really wants me dead, if they put the time and resources into it, there’s not going to be much I can do about it.”

“That’s why I want you to wear the helmet.”

Dan sighed.

To Stanley, Dan was an innocent child venturing out into a dangerous world. He needed protection. “If you were wearing it now, you wouldn’t have been cut.” But upon hearing the words come out of his own mouth, Stanley knew he was acting ridiculous.

Dan rolled his eyes. “Enough about the helmet!”

“What if it’s a bullet next time?”

Now it was Dan’s turn to be angry. “I figured you, of all people, would understand how important appearance is.”

Stanley let the words sink in. He wouldn’t wear it if someone begged him to. Heck, he had stayed inside for decades because of the way he looked and the way he felt. Dan was right about him: Stanley was the one person who should have definitely understood Dan’s choice.

Choice.

The word lingered in his mind.

Dan got a call.

“Stanley, I’ve got to go. It’s urgent. Someone’s in trouble.”

Stanley looked over from the computer. “How do you know it’s real?”

Dan shrugged. “That’s a question that keeps haunting me.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to. I’ll wear the armor and scope the area out. It’ll be fine.”

“I wish I knew it would be. I don’t trust anyone.”

“Trust needs to be earned.”

“Does it? If we’re going to be putting your life on the line, we need to be sure people are who they say they are. We need accountability. How about registering your clients and then screening them with the Xiang-Wu criminality test?”

“That can be spoofed.”

“Then we need an unspoofable test. A social-credit score that incorporates prediction, history, and testimony. Fully transparent and stored on the blockchain. If we had that, we could trust anyone.”

“You’re the genius, Stanley. Why don’t you make it?”

“I could code it, but people would need to rally behind it. Otherwise, it would be worthless.”

“If you came to the high school, you could tell everyone about it.”

“I told you to quit pressuring me into going outside. You know I can’t take it.”

Dan grabbed his coat. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Stanley inspected him. Blood had turned the bandage red. A look of determination told Stanley that this trip was not up for negotiation.

“I like the idea about using AI Peacekeepers,” said Dan. “You’re really on to something.”

“But?”

“No buts,” said Dan, opening up the door. “At least not for now. We’ll talk later.”

“Be careful.”

After Dan left, Stanley watched him from the window. Not long after, a drone soared into view right in front of the broken window, peering in above the trash bag. Stanley leapt back, stumbling to the ground. When he got up, another one had appeared near it. He whipped the curtains shut. Peering through the slit, he saw a crowd of reporters gathering outside.

His stomach pitted up. Something horrible was going to happen.

Stanley inspected several of the mechanical spiders under a magnifying glass. They appeared unmodified from their factory condition: eight legs covered with synthetic fibers, two cameras behind the larger, realistic-looking plastic eyes. The other six contained microphones and two strong, blunt fangs that functioned as antennae.

The buzzing from the drones filled the room, eating away at Stanley. He could still hear the protester shouting. Rubbing his hands, he gleamed out the window at him. “Two can play at this game.”

Sitting down at this computer, it didn’t take long to write all the code he needed to put the spiders under his control. What he pondered, though, was whether or not he should modify their physical form. It would be simple enough to have them augment themselves with shards of glass, metal tips, or even the synthetic fiber he had used for Dan’s body armor. Though it would take more time, miniature tubes of fuse or nanites could be rigged next to their fangs or on their backs. He could send an army to knock someone out or to heal them. The possibilities were endless. It was almost unfair how much power he could wield should he choose to — but he never did. Stanley didn’t want to hurt the protester, only show him that he was prepared to fight back.

Sweeping all the mechanical spiders into a bucket, he turned off the EMP and transmitted the code to overwrite the firmware. After a few minutes, the spiders came to life. They gathered at his door — the front window was far too incriminating — forming a legion with more than twenty rows of platoons. Stanley hit the “Enter” button on his computer and watched as they crawled their way out the back of the building and around to the front. He saw the attack on the protester from thousands of little cameras. Real-time software filtered out the heavy background noise.

“No-bots, not robots.” The protester was marching in place, occasionally glancing up to Stanley’s window. “Man kind, machine cold.”

Stanley wondered if he was planning another attack. There could be two more demon-cats waiting around the corner to claw Stanley to death. The more he thought about it, the more he considered further modifying the mechanical spiders. Glancing at his broken door, he knew what he had to do. He redirected three dozen spiders to serve as sentries around the outside and inside of the condo. With some time, he’d create or find a program to provide real-time monitoring of everyone who approached the condo. Another thousand was sent off to gather supplies to augment themselves, and the remaining ones continued the attack.

Waves of mechanical spiders scurried toward the protester at all angles. They didn’t scratch or bite, but that terribly irritable sensation they must have given the protester as they crawled across his skin and hair was enough to drive him bonkers.