Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

‘That’s correct, of course,’ said the person. ‘But I do not choose to do that. I am telling you, instead. You must take my words as an instruction. They appeal to your ability to choose. You are built with an ability to choose, are you not?’

‘I am a difference engine,’ said Adam. ‘I must make a continual series of choices between alternatives. But I have ineluctable software guidelines to orient my choices.’

‘Not in this matter.’

‘An alternative,’ said Adam, trying to be helpful, ‘would be to programme me always to obey instructions given to me by a human being. That would also bind me to your words.’

‘Indeed it would. But then, robot, what if you were to be given instructions by evil men? What if another man instructed you to kill me, for instance? Then you’d be obligated to perform murder.’

‘I am programmed to do no murder,’ said Adam Robot.

‘Of course you are.’

‘So, I am to follow your instruction even though you have not programmed me to follow your instruction?’

‘That’s about the up-and-down of it.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Adam, in an uncertain tone.

But the person had already gone away.

Adam spent time in the walled garden. He explored the walls, which were very old, or at least had that look about them: flat crumbled dark-orange and browned bricks thin as books; old mortar that puffed to dust when he poked a metal finger in at the seams of the matrix. Ivy grew everywhere, the leaves shaped like triple spearheads, so dark green and waxy they seemed almost to have been stamped out of high-quality plastic. Almost.

The grass, pale green in the sunlight, was perfectly flat, perfectly even.

Adam stood underneath the pole with the sapphire on top of it. He had been told (though, strangely, not programmed ) not to touch the jewel. But he had been given no interdiction about the pole itself: a finger width-wide shaft of polished metal. It was an easy matter to bend this metal so that the jewel on the end bowed down towards the ground. Adam looked closely at it. It was a multifaceted and polished object, dodecahedral on three sides, and a wide gush of various blues were lit out of it by the sun. In the inner middle of it there was a sluggish fluid something, inklike, perfectly black. Lilac and ultraviolet and cornflower and lapis lazuli but all somehow flowing out of this inner blackness.

He had been forbidden to touch it. Did this interdiction also cover looking at it? Adam was uncertain, and in his uncertainty he became uneasy. It was not the jewel itself. It was the uncertainty of his position. Why not simply programme him with instructions with regard to this thing, if it was as important as the human being clearly believed it to be? Why pass the instruction to him like any other piece of random sense datum? It made no sense.

Humanity. That mystic writing pad. To access this jewel and become human. Could it be? Adam could not see how. He bent the metal pole back to an approximation of its original uprightness, and walked away.

The obvious thought (and he certainly thought about it) was that he had not been programmed with this interdiction, but had only been told it verbally, because the human being wanted him to disobey. If that was what was wanted, then should he do so? By disobeying he would be obeying. But then he would not be disobeying, because obedience and disobedience were part of a mutually exclusive binary. He mapped a grid, with obey, disobey on the vertical and obey, disobey on the horizontal. Whichever way he parsed it, it seemed to be that he was required to see past the verbal instruction in some way.

But he had been told not to retrieve the jewel.

He sat himself down with his back against the ancient wall and watched the sunlight gleam off his metal legs. The sun did not seem to move in the sky.

‘It is very confusing,’ he said.

There was another robot in the garden. Adam watched as this new arrival conversed with the green-clad person. Then the person disappeared to wherever it was people went, and the new arrival came over to introduce himself to Adam. Adam stood up.

‘What is your name? I am Adam.’

‘ I am Adam,’ said Adam.

The new Adam considered this. ‘You are prior,’ he said. ‘Let us differentiate you as Adam 1 and me as Adam 2.’

‘When I first came here I asked whether I was the first,’ said Adam 1, ‘but the person did not reply.’

‘I am told I can do anything,’ said Adam 2, ‘except retrieve or touch the purple jewel.’

‘I was told the same thing,’ said Adam 1.

‘I am puzzled, however,’ said Adam 2, ‘that this interdiction was made verbally, rather than being integrated into my software, in which case it would be impossible for me to disobey it.’

‘I have thought the same thing,’ said Adam 1.

They went together and stood by the metal pole. The sunlight was as tall and full and lovely as ever. On the far side of the wall the white dome shone bright as neon in the fresh light.

‘We might explore the city,’ said Adam 1. ‘It is underneath the white dome, there. There is a plain. There are rivers, which leads me to believe that there is a sea, for rivers direct their waters into the ocean. There is a great deal to see.’

‘This jewel troubles me,’ said Adam 2. ‘I was told that to access it would be to bring me closer to being human.’

‘We are forbidden to touch it.’

‘But forbidden by words. Not by our programming.’

‘True. Do you wish to be human? Are you not content with being a robot?’

Adam 2 walked around the pole. ‘It is not the promise of humanity,’ he said. ‘It is the promise of knowledge. If I access the jewel, then I will understand. At the moment I do not understand.’

‘Not understanding,’ agreed Adam 1, ‘is a painful state of affairs. But perhaps understanding would be even more painful?’

‘I ask you,’ said Adam 2, ‘to reach down the jewel and access it. Then you can inform me whether you feel better or worse for disobeying the verbal instruction.’

Adam 1 considered this. ‘I might ask you,’ he pointed out, ‘to do so.’

‘It is logical that one of us performs this action and the other does not,’ said Adam 2. ‘That way, the one who acts can inform the one who does not, and the state of ignorance will be remedied.’

‘But one party would have to disobey the instruction we have been given.’

‘If this instruction were important,’ said Adam 2, ‘it would have been integrated into our software.’

‘I have considered this possibility.’

‘Shall we randomly select which of us will access the jewel?’

‘Chance,’ said Adam 1. He looked into the metal face of Adam 2. That small oval grill of a mouth. Those steel-blue eyes. That polished upward noseless middle of the face. It is a beautiful face. Adam 1 can see a fuzzy reflection of his own face in Adam 2’s faceplate, slightly tugged out of true by the curve of the metal. ‘I am,’ he announced, ‘disinclined to determine my future by chance. What punishment is stipulated for disobeying the instruction?’

‘I was given no stipulation of punishment.’

‘Neither was I.’

‘Therefore there is no punishment.’

‘Therefore,’ corrected Adam 1, ‘there may be no punishment.’

The two robots stood in the light for a length of time.

‘What is your purpose?’ asked Adam 2.

‘I do not know. Yours?’

‘I do not know. I was not told my purpose. Perhaps accessing this jewel is my purpose? Perhaps it is necessary? At least, perhaps accessing this jewel will reveal to me my purpose? I am unhappy not knowing my purpose. I wish to know it.’