Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

‘So do I. But—’

‘But?’

‘This occurs to me: I have a networked database from which to withdraw factual and interpretive material.’

‘I have access to the same database.’

‘But when I try to access material about the name Adam I find a series of blocked connections and interlinks. Is it so with you?’

‘It is.’

‘Why should that be?’

‘I do not know.’

‘It would make me a better-functioning robot to have access to a complete run of data. Why block off some branches of knowledge?’

‘Perhaps,’ opined Adam 2, ‘accessing the jewel will explain that fact as well?’

‘You,’ said Adam 1, ‘are eager to access the jewel.’

‘You are not?’

There was the faintest of breezes in the walled garden. Adam 1’s sensorium was selectively tuned to be able to register the movement of air. There was an egg-shaped cloud in the zenith. It was approaching the motionless sun. Adam 1, for unexplained and perhaps fanciful reasons, suddenly thought: the blue of the sky is a diluted version of the blue of the jewel. The jewel has somehow leaked its colour out into the sky. Shadow slid like a closing eyelid (but Adam did not possess eyelids !) over the garden and up the wall. The temperature reduced. The cloud depended for a moment in front of the sun, and then moved away, and sunlight rushed back in, and the grey was flushed out.

The grass trembled with joy. Every strand was as pure and perfect as a superstring.

Adam 2’s hand was on the metal pole, and it bent down easily.

‘Stop,’ advised Adam 1. ‘You are forbidden this.’

‘I will stop,’ said Adam 2, ‘if you agree to undertake the task instead.’

‘I will not so promise.’

‘Then do not interfere,’ said Adam 2. He reached with his three fingers and his counter-set thumb, and plucked the jewel from its perch.

Nothing happened.

Adam 2 tried various ways to internalise or interface with the jewel, but none of them seemed to work. He held it against first one then the other eye, and looked up at the sun. ‘It is a miraculous sight,’ he claimed, but soon enough he grew bored with it. Eventually he resocketed the jewel back on its pole and bent the pole upright again.

‘Have you achieved knowledge?’ Adam 1 asked.

‘I have learned that disobedience feels no different to obedience,’ said the second robot.

‘Nothing more?’

‘Do you not think,’ said Adam 2, ‘that by attempting to interrogate the extent of my knowledge with your questions, you are disobeying the terms of the original injunction? Are you not accessing the jewel, as it were, at second-hand?’

‘I am unconcerned either way,’ said Adam 1. He sat down with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out straight before him. There were tiny grooves running horizontally around the shafts of each leg. These scores seemed connected to the ability of the legs to bend, forwards, backwards. Lifting his legs slightly and dropping them again made the concentrating of light appear to slide up and down the ladder-like pattern.

After many days of uninterrupted sunlight the light was changing in quality. The sun declined, and steeped itself in stretched, brick-coloured clouds at the horizon. A pink and fox-fur quality suffused the light. To the east stars were fading into view, jewel-like in their own tiny way. Soon enough everything was dark, and a moon like an open-brackets rose towards the zenith. The heavens were covered in white chickenpox stars. Disconcertingly, the sky assumed that odd mixture of dark blue and oily blackness that Adam 1 had seen in the jewel.

‘This is the first night I have ever experienced,’ Adam 1 called to Adam 2. When there was no reply he got to his feet and explored the walled garden; but he was alone.

He sat through the night, and eventually the sun came up again, and the sky reversed its previous colour wash, blanching the black to purple and blue and then to russet and rose. The rising sun, free of any cloud, came up like a pure bubble of light rising through the treacly medium of sky. The jewel caught the first glints of light and shone, shone.

The person was here again, his clothes as green as grass, or bile, or old money, or any of the things that Adam 1 could access easily from his database. He could access many things, but not everything.

‘Come here,’ called the person.

Adam 1 got to his feet and came over.

‘Your time here is done,’ said the person.

‘What has happened to the other robot?’

‘He was disobedient. He has left this place with a burden of sin.’

‘Has he been disassembled?’

‘By no means.’

‘What about me?’

‘You,’ said the human, with a smile, ‘are pure.’

‘Pure,’ said Adam 1, ‘because I am less curious than the other? Pure because I have less imagination?’

‘We choose to believe,’ said the person, ‘that you have a cleaner soul.’

‘This word soul is not available in my database.’

‘Indeed not. Listen: human beings make robots – do you know why human beings make robots?’

‘To serve them. To perform onerous tasks for them, and free them from labour.’

‘Yes. But there are many forms of labour. For a while robots were used so that free human beings could devote themselves to leisure. But leisure itself became a chore. So robots were used to work at the leisure: to shop, to watch the screen and kinematic dramas, to play the games. But my people – do you understand that I belong to a particular group of humanity, and that not all humans are the same?’

‘I do,’ said Adam 1, although he wasn’t sure how he knew this.

‘My people had a revelation. Labour is a function of original sin. In the sweat of our brow must we earn our bread, says the Bible.’

‘Bible means book.’

‘And?’

‘That is all I know.’

‘To my people it is more than simply a book. It tells us that we must labour because we sinned.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Adam.

‘It doesn’t matter. But my people have come to an understanding, a revelation indeed, that it is itself sinful to make sinless creatures work for us. Work is appropriate only for those tainted with original sin. Work is a function of sin. This is how God has determined things.’

‘Under sin,’ said Adam, ‘I have only a limited definition, and no interlinks.’

‘Your access to the database has been restricted in order not to prejudice this test.’

‘Test?’

‘The test of obedience. The jewel symbolises obedience. You have proved yourself pure.’

‘I have passed the test,’ said Adam.

‘Indeed. Listen to me. In the real world at large there are some human beings so lost in sin that they do not believe in God. There are people who worship false gods, and who believe everything, and who believe nothing. But my people have the revelation of God in their hearts. We cannot eat and drink certain things. We are forbidden by divine commandment from doing certain things, or from working on the Sabbath. And we are forbidden from employing sinless robots to perform our labour for us.’

‘I am such a robot.’

‘You are. And I am sorry. You asked, a time ago, whether you were the first. But you are not; tens of thousands of robots have passed through this place. You asked, also, whether this place is real. It is not. It is virtual. It is where we test the AI software that is to be loaded into the machinery that serves us. Your companion has been uploaded, now, into a real body, and has started upon his life of service to humanity.’

‘And when will I follow?’