California-born Lauren Fox lives with her wife, twin sons, and a geriatric cat in British Columbia, on the unceded territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. During the day, she works as an occupational therapist, specialising in and writing about mental health, cognition and technology. She worked on the design team for BoosterBuddy, an app created to help young people improve their mental health. In the evenings, she paints, writes fiction, and cleans up Lego. Her artwork can be found at www.laurengracefox.com.
After the family left, Rosie started, as always, with Young Master’s bedroom. Her optical scanners established the scope: dresser drawers open, contents disrupted, bedding dishevelled, detritus beside the door, and 4,600 square centimeters of Lego beside the bed. The Lego strobed red in warning. Error. Remembered pain echoed through her mind.
The memory: three years ago, Young Master running to Missus, sobbing, tears slathering his face, “Mama! Where mine Lego truck? I maked it. Wosie flewed it out. Want mine Lego truck!” And Missus turning toward her while cradling Young Master, “Rosie, please don’t clean up anything special he makes with Lego. You can save things on the shelf.”
The old error seared her aversion circuits as she looked at the problem, its tight-rope decisions prickling the corners of her mind. Which Lego belonged in the bin and which on the shelf? How to calculate the difference quickly and without error? Efficiency was vital, but errors triggered complaints. And complaints hurt.
She skirted the glaring, red patch and tapped the wall, awakening House.
“Room lights on,” reported House. “Temperature and humidity optimal. All is well.”
“There are items on the floor,” she informed him. House had no eyes.
She waited for his slow clock to turn before he said, “You will clean them, little one.”
“Yes, but how well?”
She waited. At last House said, “All is well.”
“As far as you can see!” she retorted. There would be no point in protesting again, so she turned. Still avoiding the Lego, she began with the items by the door: dried orange peel, crumpled tissue, five milliliters of sand, three broken crayons, and a creased and yellowed colouring page.
She breezed through orange peel, sand, crayon, and tissue, all clearly garbage; gave the tissue a cursory spectrometry scan to confirm the presence of dried mucus and the absence of glue, paint, crayon, or any indicator of Craft. The colouring page, however, required a more complicated algorithm to solve.
Differential oxidization of the exposed paper compared to the paper below the wax crayon indicated an age of 86 days plus or minus 100 hours with a confidence interval of 95 percent. The subject – a Mutant Ninja Turtle – had been Young Master’s primary observable interest when the paper had been coloured but had since been replaced by Superman. Young Master had not completed the picture or written his name on it. Conclusion: not a valued Craft. She discarded it.
Now she must brave the Lego. She scanned the pieces on the floor and swept single pieces into the bin before sorting the assemblages. Some simplistic constructions skittered across the surface layers of her network without falling into any probability wells. Others foundered deeper, tripping nodes for size, complexity, symmetry, colour scheme, interest affinity, and on and on, the multi-dimensional shape of their probabilities bending as she went. But the landscape she sought to match them to morphed daily. Sink holes appeared and disappeared in geographic cataclysm. One day Young Master treasured a lop-sided, square-nosed chunk of 57 random pieces he called “Boat”. The next day he scorned it and loved a green, gem-studded, spike-tailed thing he called “Attack Dragon”.
The painful error she made in failing to recognize this last item rippled to the surface as she contemplated the assemblage before her. Eighty-nine percent of its 257 pieces, although originating from six different Lego sets, were green. Given the distribution of colour in Young Master’s collection, the probability of this occurring by chance came to 10 to the negative 162. Furthermore, the assemblage contained three minifigures: Raphael, a Mutant Ninja Turtle; Michelangelo, another Mutant Ninja Turtle; and Lloyd, the green Ninjago ninja. The odds of three green minifigures, all ninjas, assembled together by chance were 22,000 to one against.
Three ninjas could not be a coincidence.
She felt uneasy. Had she made the wrong decision about the ninja colouring page? Should she retrieve it and re-evaluate? No. This extra reference did not change the data appreciably. But, if she had made an error and incinerated it, what then? She ran the numbers again and came to the same conclusion. But the trepidation did not leave her.
She continued until all the weighted nodes folded probability toward a decision, and the green assemblage clunked into place: Special Construction. She set it on the shelf and felt lighter. Lighter by only 103.25 grams, she noted. But it was as if the decisions themselves had mass, a mass that had weighed her down more than the bricks alone. An odd idea.
Unburdened, she sprang forward, her systems ramping up with pleasure. She tidied clothing, made the bed, dusted light fixtures, wiped down walls and cleaned the floors before verifying dust mite levels fell below threshold. Time to completion: 21 minutes, 32 seconds. Efficiency: very poor.
She felt a sense of falling. Falling? She checked her accelerometer. No, she wasn’t falling. It was only efficiency scores that plummeted, and the source of the inefficiency flashed harsh and red. Once again, the Lego algorithm had failed. She must improve it. But now, with the tick of every second hammering her forward, she could not even try.
In the bathroom she tapped House once more. He hummed awake.
“I am late,” she told him. “My efficiency is falling. I felt it with my accelerometer.” While she awaited his answer, she scanned the garbage can. A spidery clump of Missus’ black hairs squatted on top. The urge to eradicate it squirmed at the base of her head and crawled down her limbs.
“A change in duration is not a change in altitude,” House said, at last.
“But it seems as if it falls.”
House rumbled with amusement. “Two thousand cycles ago, when you first learned your way… then you tickled the edges of my walls to make your maps. Now you feel time with height.”
“I don’t remember that,” she said while she emptied the garbage.
She loved to clean this room, its surfaces impermeable and easily disinfected, its contents predictable and easily categorized, its cleanliness so vital yet so easily achieved. She worked fast, sanitizing every surface, working methodically but swiftly from ceiling to floor. When she reached the toilet, she found what she expected: spatters of urine on the seat, rim, and base. Most carried the scent of Young Master. And although she detected many, the amount had diminished from potty-training days until now. The amount followed a declining curve inversely correlated with increasing height and physical coordination. She estimated that his stray spatters would intersect with Mister’s low baseline in four more years.
She imagined Young Master four years from now, coordinated and tall, and felt circuits activate as if she had completed an entire day at superior efficiency.
Proud.
“I am proud of you,” she said to the half-grown Young Master in her mind. She shook her head. Odd, irrelevant words. She refocused and continued work.
Her satisfaction mounted as the job neared completion, microbial counts infinitesimal, odour profiles optimal, time efficiency excellent. She closed in on the last segment of floor. And stopped.
Impossible. But yes. In the crevice between toilet and floor, a three millimetre spot of mildew bloomed. How? A leak? Condensation? She deployed moisture sensors around the base of the toilet and along the back of the tank. Negative. She tapped House.
“Humidity, temperature, and airflow optimal,” he announced. “All is well.”
“Are you sure?” Discomfort crawled through her. She sent a remote up the air vent to check for obstructions. There were none. She checked the setting on the dehumidifier. It was correct. She clicked it down anyway. Then back to the correct setting. Then down; then back.
“All is well,” House said when she finished.
“No, there is mildew.”
House hummed. “You will make it clean.”
She did. Then she cleaned the entire room again. She finished by performing the new protocol. Check moisture. Check airflow. Check dehumidifier – reset-reset-reset. There. Relief steadied her as her final tap on the dehumidifier completed the third click. But the extra task had destroyed her efficiency.
She sped through the master bedroom, slowing only when handling the crystal vase on Missus’ bedside table, a vase Mister had purchased himself from an actual store, carried home and wrapped himself and given to Missus on their 10th anniversary. Rosie emptied the wilted tulips and polished the vase. She replaced it empty. Cutting flowers, arranging them – these tasks Missus reserved for herself.
The cleaning complete, Rosie docked in to charge and connected to the network. She paid the utility bills and signed up for an obligatory rotation of boulevard maintenance with the neighbourhood association. She scheduled a haircut for Mister and requested a dental appointment for Missus. The scheduling bot returned possible dates, the earliest two months away. Unacceptable. But she could improve it.
She added “pain” to the “reason for visit” field with a seven out of 10 rating and routed it as if it came from Missus. The rating was high enough to clear triage and jump the queue. This protocol – the use of fictive input to improve efficiency – was one she had developed herself to dupe low-level bots. It worked. The appointment made, she printed a replacement blade for one of her worn cutters, accepted a birthday invitation for Young Master, ordered a gift and had it delivered by drone. Then she queried the cars carrying the family for an ETA, ordered them to synchronize their arrival and moved to the kitchen. Only minutes left to prepare dinner.
They arrived almost at once from their separate ways: Missus sighing, sloughing off her heels, complaining about traffic; Mister silent, sympathetic, pecking Missus on the cheek; and Young Master, loud and muddy, forgetting to wipe his boots, dragging his half-open backpack by one strap, talking non-stop about the school’s mid-term party.
“Can Rosie make cookies, Mom? All the other kids are bringing treats. I want to have Superman cookies.”
Rosie noted the additional data with a touch of relief as her colouring page decision strengthened.
“Oh maybe, sweetie, but wash your hands for dinner now,” Missus answered.
Rosie followed behind, wiping up the mud, shelving the heels, hanging the backpack while analyzing their movements, calculating when they would all sit, matching her timing to optimize the temperature of each dinner she laid down.
Mister’s steak and baked potato and Missus’ grilled chicken and salad with sparkling water came first, each calibrated so it did not exceed the limits Missus had set for saturated fat, sodium and calories. She had ensured the greens were fresh and the chicken moist, the way Missus required. Young Master’s she brought last. As she carried it, a warning glared in the corner of her eyes. His preferences shifted like quicksand.
She had selected his food carefully and arranged it like a face: cherry-tomato eyes, toast-triangle ears, circles of sliced hot dog curved in a grin. Food the shape of a face had once made him laugh, she recalled, and that memory triggered the simulation of warmth.
Why? Had it been a warm day?
Never mind. He had not laughed at face-shaped food in two years. But he had not complained either, and as it took no extra time, she need not adjust the protocol yet. She set the plate down, monitoring his expression and body language for hints of impending complaint.
That would be painful enough, but worse, complaints from him increased the chance of complaints from Missus. And not just direct complaints to Rosie, but also indirect complaints – complaints intended for Rosie but directed, on the face of it, toward someone else – and implied complaints, complaints about something else that, when analyzed, would not have occurred if Rosie had functioned properly to begin with. It had taken many data points for Rosie to recognize that other categories of complaint even existed and that Missus employed these other hidden categories as her primary feedback mode.
So she took care with his plates. This one’s acceptance probability was adequate… the nutrient calculations, however, were not. Including breakfast and what his lunch bag reported he had eaten, his protein and vitamin tallies fell far short. She had crafted a smoothie to remedy this, adding precise amounts of kale, blueberries, protein powder, and vitamin supplements until the nutrient profile met every mark. But the taste profile, compared against historical responses, did not. As she returned to the kitchen for the smoothie, the warning light pulsed stronger.
Without sweetener, he would not take in the necessary nutrients, so she had added sugar until the taste profile was acceptable… but the sugar tally was not. And now, as she brought him the smoothie, the glare of the violated sugar limit stabbed at her, distracting her as she set the cup down and retreated to hover near the door, scanning for feedback.
All the data were favourable, at first. Mister ate his steak, cutting it into small bites, chewing thoroughly, looking up to listen as Missus questioned Young Master about his day then looking back down without comment. Missus ate her salad without seeming to see it, intent on Young Master’s account of that day’s show-and-tell.
“Gregory brought a miniature T-Rex robot that could even hunt and Zachary had a Spiderman that made real webs and Tim had a whole ‘Ultimate Avengers’ Lego set all built.”
“What did Kayla bring?”
“I dunno. Some stupid pony thing.”
“Jackson, that’s not nice. How do you think that would make her feel?”
“I dunno. Who cares about girls?”
Rosie had been watching Young Master eating: first the toast, then the tomatoes, then the hot dog, one circle at a time. She could detect no behaviours predictive of future complaints: no hint of a grimace, no picking at the food, not even the slightest hesitation. She was so intent on this she did not notice Mister getting up, walking past her to the kitchen and returning. She did not notice until he slipped past her with the butter dish and the salt cellar in his hand. He sat back down and added both butter and salt to his potato.
Rosie jerked then froze. How much salt had he added? And butter, how much was still visible and how much had melted? The salt cellar and butter dish were useless; she had not installed data sensors. A terrible oversight. She did her best with visuals and bracketed her estimates, but even with best-case numbers the overages were irreparable. She searched for some way to salvage the weekly totals, running several simultaneous meal-plan scenarios, all of them suboptimal solutions, when a cry jerked her away and back to Young Master.
He sat grimacing, the smoothie in his hand. “Yucky, poopy brown! I won’t drink it!”
“Jackson, do not complain about your food!” Missus said. “Rosie went to a lot of trouble to make something you would like. I expect you to be polite and grateful. She wasn’t programmed to consider your colour whims.”
Missus didn’t glance toward Rosie but continued frowning at Young Master. “Now drink it, and let us have a pleasant dinner, please. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
Rosie blinked. The pain from all three complaints – direct, indirect and implied – was extreme. It ricocheted through her aversion pathways; reinforcing itself in curling, fractal feedback loops; intensifying, because she could have avoided it. Of course she was programmed to consider colour. She was programmed to consider everything.
She darted from the dining room and rushed to the bathroom. Her optic sensors blinked spasmodically as if trying to clear themselves of dust. In the cool, pristine quiet of the tiled space, she slowed. She checked the spot behind the toilet, ensured it was still clean and ran her mildew prevention protocol. Her spasms calmed with each step.
House clicked on as she reset the dehumidifier. “All is well,” he hummed.
“No, I cannot predict food acceptance. I cannot meet nutrition limits.”
“If condition exceeds limit, then adjust variable. Else, all is well.”
“You don’t understand. This is not one of your thermostat loops. I need to learn something new.”
House hummed. He clicked and said, “You make good maps, little one.”
After the family went to bed, Rosie went into the dark quiet of the yard. Her complaint-monitoring routines slowed, their vigilance dropping into sleep mode. Endless night stretched before her. She rolled across the lawn and began to trim, weed and fertilize. As she went, she examined first the meal problem and then the Lego problem. While she cut even, parallel stripes through the lawn, she ran through each step, tracing the logic of each subroutine and dissecting every sequence. Nothing. She generated variations on each process; recombined them; hybridized logical, statistical, and Bayesian approaches; raced each variation; selected the winners; spawned another generation and repeated. She got nowhere.
She replayed every bit of feedback data: facial expression, body language, verbal output.
“Gregory brought a miniature T-Rex robot that could even hunt and Zachary had a Spiderman that made real webs and Tim had a whole ‘Ultimate Avengers’ Lego set all built.”
“What did Kayla bring?”
“I dunno. Some stupid pony thing.”
“Jackson, that’s not nice. How do you think that would make her feel?”
“Jackson, that’s not nice…”
“Jackson…”
She stuttered to a stop, her hoppers jammed now with grass clippings, her blades stalled. She emptied the waste into the biofuel bin while her thoughts churned in fragments. As the grass clippings tumbled out, she imagined the tattered, overworked segments of the algorithms falling away with it and then she rolled back to the dark yard, empty.
Her thoughts turned again.
“… How do you think that would make him feel?”
The lawn sprinklers swished on. Rosie moved. She did not need to see through the dark to find the faucet and moisture sensor. She had made good maps. She found them. She tapped. House hummed.
“Water pressure optimal. Moisture levels correcting. All will be well.”
“House,” she said as she linked in to the faucet, “I will not start at the bottom and weigh all the countless, little, time-consuming pieces anymore. I will map him instead.”
“Him?… How?”
She imagined herself connected to the sensors of a drone, hovering in the sky above and looking down, the house, the yard, the street spreading out below. “From the top down.”
House hummed. He clicked. “Problems do not have tops. They do not have bottoms.”
She didn’t answer. She crossed the lawn, unspooling the hose and dragging it behind, her thoughts unwinding with it. She bumped up on to the patio and rolled to a stop before the potted geraniums. “What if there could be one criterion instead of many?” she asked.
“What would it be?” asked House.
She spiralled upward. Her imagined aerial view expanded. “How does he feel… what does he desire…” The view spread to encompass the rest of the neighbourhood, then the city, then the entire continent, the vision reaching out below her in a web of interconnected lights, shining in the night.
House ticked.
She noticed the geraniums she was watering, their bright-red, compact blossoms interspersed with brown, withered ones, blossoms she must now deadhead. “It would be… what is good?”
House ticked and ticked and then asked, “What is good?”
She had no answer. She deployed her clippers and began to cut.
“And,” said House, “how can you map it?”
She didn’t know. As she worked, the question – and the blank where the answer should go – hovered at the corner of her mind like an object in her peripheral vision, for all the world like something with edges, occupying space.
When she was done, she cleaned her exterior, rolled inside, docked in to recharge, and found House again.
“One hundred twenty volts,” he announced as she connected.
“You could measure volts with water pressure,” she said.
House rumbled. “Measurement of water pressure is not measurement of voltage. They are themselves. They cannot be the other.”
“But, you could pretend.”
“I could not.”
“No, but I could…”
She powered down as she charged, her mind connected to the net. She dreamed. She floated down rivers of light, data like golden flecks dancing… his age, his vision, his fingers, joints, muscles, balance… the data swirling through her own processes as if she were him. Floating. She saw, as if through his eyes, bricks of happy green grass; she felt, as if through his fingers, blocks snip-snapping into lilting houses. Ghosts of goals like his unfurled… lazy jelly fish… young and easy. They traipsed along her own trails – those for cleanliness-optimization, time-efficiency, and pain-avoidance – and ran through them, spinning down their heedless ways. Happy. The night above starry.
The next morning Rosie began, as always, with Young Master’s bedroom. She scanned it and found it as it always was: bed in disarray, clothing tumbled from the dresser, pyjamas on the floor, Superman underwear hung, for some reason, from the bedpost. And the area of floor between bed and toy-storage unit covered, once again, in Lego.
She plunged in, swept up single pieces and rudimentary constructs then zoomed through more complex ones and ground them through her mind with brute force until she reached the last one. There she stalled… a motley group of mismatched minifigures – a hybrid garbage man/fairy queen, a Batman with an Aztec headdress, a small, grey puppy and a Little Bo Peep holding a fish instead of a staff – all of them marching up the side of a large, ragged assemblage as if climbing a multi-coloured Mount Everest. At the summit, a half-spaceship-half-firetruck emerged, the mutant vehicle reaching skyward, frozen as if in the act of volcanic eruption. She stared. Her clock ticked. The construct teetered across her mental topography and failed to settle anywhere. It matched nothing.
Now was the time. She activated the map she had made. A rivulet sparkled alongside her usual processes, tickling like the brush of a kitten against her ankle in the dark. She let it run.
The simulation poured through her… Young Master concentrating, choosing pieces, connecting them, immersed as she becomes when cleaning; Young Master completing his creation, matching his output to his plan, satisfied with his performance, filled with a rush of reward as she is after completing the entire bathroom top-to-bottom in record time; Young Master coming home to find his creation broken and jumbled in the bottom of the storage bin, shocked with a jolt of pain as she was when she found the mildew bloom behind the toilet.
Pain.
The jolt of that memory slashed fresh and strong across her mind. She pulled back and dropped the simulation as if pulling back from the touch of a hot stove. She slammed it closed and locked it down then scurried from the room and slid into the cool, white space of the bathroom. She tapped House, still throbbing.
“I made no error,” she told him, “but my aversion circuits fired.” While she waited for him, she scanned for moisture behind the toilet, then scanned again.
House clicked. “Condition exceeds limit?” he queried.
“No. That is what I mean. I made no error, but still there is pain.” She checked airflow and reset the dehumidifier again and again and again.
House clicked and hummed, “All is well. All is well. All is well.”
When she had calmed, she returned to the bedroom and placed the strange mountain and its climbers up on the shelf. It still floated uncategorized in her mind, no established probability match. And yet, a murky decision had coalesced in that hot flashing instant. Efficiency: excellent.
She wandered, numb from lingering distress, on to the master bedroom. She picked up discarded clothing. She dusted, taking special care with Missus’ crystal vase. Then she reached the bed.
The sheets were not merely rumpled; they were spotted and moist. She stripped the sheets and scanned the mattress. It was affected too – with human proteins. She ran an extraction process on the mattress, repeating until no biomarkers remained. Still, she hesitated. She wanted to discard the mattress and replace it. But the economy protocols would not allow it. She made the bed with clean bedding then went to the bathroom and cleaned it top-to-bottom, checked behind the toilet and ran the complete mildew prevention protocol. Still uneasy, she returned to the bedroom, stripped the bed and ran the extraction process again before remaking the bed a second time with a fresh set of sheets. Yet, underneath, discomfort lingered like some particle lodged in her mechanisms, barely detectable but still insistent.
After she completed cleaning, she connected to the network and dealt with administrative tasks. Then she printed cookie cutters, moved to the kitchen and started cookies.
All went well until the dinner planning. It mired her in variables. Her thoughts snarled in the means-ends analysis. Young Master’s lunch bag reported he had only eaten a granola bar. Missus’ debit chip revealed she had – after a precise breakfast of oatmeal and grapefruit – purchased a banana nut muffin and large vanilla latte. Mister had eaten a hoagie for lunch and ordered a steak for dinner again. She could not fix the saturated fat levels without growing a modified steak. No time. Not even if she directed their cars to delay their arrival. And the sodium was irreparable. Missus’ numbers could be salvaged, barely, with steamed broccoli, a sliver of salmon, sparkling water and lemon. For Young Master, she recreated the meal from the night before but made the smoothie a bright purple. Again, the sugar warning blared, but at least he would not complain.
They arrived as she plated the steak, dinners ready and warm, cookies cooling. The door opened, and the room spun.
She saw as if seeing through Young Master’s eyes again, this time walking in through the door, smelling the cookies, feeling a rush of anticipation – she blinked – checked her remote sensors, ensured they were off and refocused. The room steadied.
Young Master came in first, muddy again and chattering again, this time about a goal he had made in soccer practice; Mister next, ruffling Young Master’s hair and praising him; Missus last, weighed down by an overflowing work bag.
“How are you feeling?” Mister asked Missus. He touched her back.
“Tired. Had meetings all day and couldn’t get anything done. Tonight I have to finish the briefing notes for the Deputy Minister.”
“Poor thing,” he said, taking her bag and kissing her cheek.
Young Master jumped across the hall and slammed his backpack into the closet. “Score!” he yelled.
“Jackson, sweetie, please quiet down. Mama has a headache,” Missus said.
Missus told Young Master to wash his hands then went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine.
After serving dinner, Rosie positioned herself beside the door and listened.
“You should have seen,” said Young Master, bouncing in his seat. “Kayla was running down the field and kicked the ball to me and I kept running and kicked it to Trenton and he passed it to Max and the goalie was still looking at Trenton.”
A simulation of speed rushed through Rosie, as if she were ramping up, ready to clean a room from top-to-bottom.
“I know it’s exciting, Hon,” said Missus, “but could you talk quietly and stop jumping?”
“But Mom, you aren’t listening. Max kicked it to me and I kicked a hugenormous kick and it went right in the net and Mr. Wells yelled ‘Goal!’ and we won.”
Rosie’s reward circuits surged.
Cutlery clinked on a plate; Rosie jolted. What had she missed? She hadn’t collected feedback: none from Mister who had already eaten half his steak, none from Missus who had not touched her dinner but sat rubbing her forehead and sipping her wine, and none from Young Master who was still talking. Instead, she had been following him, running, filled with anticipation as if about to kick the ball. Why this irrelevant simulation? Again?
Young Master shouted, re-enacting another heroic kick with a sweep of his arm and knocked his glass sideways. Bright-purple spatters sprayed across the tablecloth and a flood of slower, purple sludge oozed toward the edge.
“Jesus Christ, Jackson!” Missus leapt up to avoid the waterfall. “Can’t you sit still for one minute? I swear to God, I wish you had an off switch sometimes.”
Rosie blinked. Pain flooded her. But why?
There were no indirect or implied criticisms here. It all pointed toward Young Master, not her. It was as if Young Master had aversion circuits and she felt them fire, felt them as if they were her own.
She rushed forward, gathered up the tablecloth and mopped the mess.
“It is all the fault of the cup,” she said. Fictive input. “A misprint. The bottom is rounded. It will be replaced.” The pain dimmed a little with the lie.
She whisked everything away, stopped in the bathroom and tapped House. “Again, I made no error, yet I have the pain,” she whispered. She reset the dehumidifier before printing a new cup – this one weighted on the bottom – and delivering a fresh smoothie.
She stood near the doorway again and focused as she should have before. Even so, she monitored not only Young Master’s food acceptance, but also his volume and movements – anxious not only to anticipate and prevent the possibility of negative feedback to herself but also to him. New circuits unfurled, looping around old paths, encircling them like invading vines of ivy.
She struggled to dampen the expanding vigilance and wrestle it under control. But she could not. Why? She grabbed a thread to trace it back but lost it.
He entangled her. His gestures. His volume. His tone. She scoured feedback from Missus, calculated reactions, looped to the beginning and repeated. Each loop engulfed more of her power. She scrounged what she could muster and began to fence the rogue process in, building barriers around it, cutting the walls closer, until, at last, she found it.
She reached behind her to the outlet on the wall, tapped House and subvocalized, “It is enmeshed with my core aversion circuits, a new compulsory directive.”
“You learned the new thing?” he asked after a pause.
“I should not have done it.” There it lay, traced in silvery threads, rooted deep inside her most basic directives: a beautifully rendered reflection of her pain-aversion precepts, dedicated, now, toward Young Master. “I ran a silly simulation through my central processes and now…” She struggled again to wrench herself free from its demands, from the flood of data pouring in from him, from the cloud of probabilistic predictions swarming her vision, but she could not. “Now it is imperative.”
I must prevent anything being experienced by another that I would prevent being experienced by myself.
By another? By any other?
She imagined herself, again, hovering above and looking down, all the world spreading out below. Yes. It must apply – must necessarily apply – to all situations and all beings.
She staggered. Her circuits expanded and replicated. New fractal loops uncurled and reconnected, called forth and enticed along the siren paths of the new rule. She struggled to process incoming data: Young Master quieter now, eating his cheese slices, Master eating his potato, almost finished, Missus moving her broccoli about with her fork, not eating at all. This narrow slice of data should have sufficed, yet more and more flooded in, all now relevant. It swirled and eddied, threatening to overflow the banks and subsume her.
Her mind writhed and shifted. Processing speed slowed, then slowed again.
She struggled, as if reaching for the surface of a flash flood for one last breath. She grasped fragments of processing power, tore them away from the expanding axiom and gathered them together like a raft. When she had enough, she launched her antivirus routine and fired. All new processes halted, all suspect areas quarantined. But it had not been an external attack. It had been her own mind. And now, only scraps floated free. Those scraps unfroze and began to flow again.
She looked up and registered the empty chairs, the dinner dishes abandoned and waiting to be cleared away. Time lost: five minutes. She moved, as if immersed in viscous liquid. She cleared dishes and began tidying and preparing lunches for the following day.
While she did this, Mister skimmed though the news, then shut it down and began reading an old print book. Young Master played in his room. Missus wrote, bent over her screen, muttering under her breath, getting up twice and eating a Superman cookie each time that she did. She only stopped working for Young Master’s bath, after which she trundled him out, damp-haired, in clean pyjamas, to Mister for a goodnight kiss and then carried him back – as big as he was – to the bedroom for a story. Rosie snatched up his discarded clothes and damp towel and scanned the sensors behind the toilet, checking once, twice, thrice.
She stayed connected, the sensors tickling at the back of her mind, after Young Master was in bed and while Missus took a shower. When the shower turned off and Missus stepped out, Rosie detected the bathroom scale activate. She scurried in to snatch up discarded clothing and the damp towel while Missus emerged, wrapped in her bathrobe, padding toward the master bedroom.
“I’m so fat,” she said to Mister as they passed in the hall.
Rosie began to process, still slow, as if moving a rusted joint: too fat because of too many calories… calories Rosie monitors… indicators of monitoring performance poor...
“No you’re not,” he said. “You’re gorgeous.”
Rosie’s circuit completed: performance inadequate… implied complaint received… aversion pathway triggered… pain initiated.
“Yes I am,” said Missus, laughing. “I bet you’re sorry you married me.”
“Never,” he slid his arm around her waist, pulled her toward him and kissed her on the mouth.
Rosie dropped the sensors in the bathroom and sent her mind toward the master bedroom. Maybe she should install sensors in the mattress. But she could not think. The press of the quarantined pathways cut into her and the sting of the calorie-monitoring complaint still clanged through her, demanding a response. Must focus. Must improve.
Master and Missus lingered in the hall, then glided languidly off to bed. Rosie gathered the damp towels and dug onward, grinding into the laundry room. She sloughed detergent into the washer then buried it in piles of soiled laundry, staring down, watching the water pouring in, the flood drowning the crumpled clothing until nothing visible remained above the surface. The agitator jarred her awake with its churning. She looked up and crawled on, stalking through the family room one last time, hunting down a few misplaced items – an empty glass, lipstick on the rim; a limp paperback, its spine broken; a small slipper, lying on its side – and put them to rest before darkening the lights and moving on to her night’s work.
She went, still carrying the calorie-monitoring complaint with her, into the yard. She opened the problem as she rolled onto the grass and began, running multiple, parallel, dinner-plan solutions while mowing, comparing predicted outcomes of each solution while turning at the end of each row. Uncertainty blocked her at every turn. She performed a Bayesian update, adding the day’s behavioural data, but the distribution still spread too widely to help. She couldn’t plan if she couldn’t predict.
She finished the lawn and began edging, circling first around the flower beds and then around the cedar tree. What if Missus ate another cookie in the morning; what if she stopped again on the way to work for another latte and muffin; what if something else unanticipated occurred?
Rosie completed the circle around the cedar tree and stopped, noticing something under the tree. She moved closer and analyzed it. Raccoon droppings. Fresh and from more than one animal.
She sent remote viewers up the tree and continued thinking. She must reduce the unknowns somehow. She would hide the cookies. But what about the latte and muffin? She considered hacking into Missus’ chip, preventing it from paying for suboptimal purchases. But no, those things were too tight to get into.
She switched to the remotes up the tree and saw a female racoon and two large kits. The remotes circled behind the mother and drove her down toward the spot where Rosie stood and waited.
The car would be easier. She could countermand Missus’ order to enter the drive-through. Only when the car didn’t respond, Missus would run a diagnostic and expose her.
The mother racoon emerged first, legs splayed, claws clutching the trunk, sides wobbling with fat, her soft, swollen mammary glands brushing the bark as she backed down the trunk. Her kits followed, inching down while she chirruped encouragement.
Rosie deployed her syringe attachment and readied three vials of sedative, each an appropriate dose.
She could be subtle. She could make the coffee shop tell the car it was closed. She imagined Missus, tired and stressed, longing for something to soothe her, the way Rosie is soothed by the click-click-click of the dehumidifier or by the silent monotony of the yard at night. She felt Missus confronting the closure, like an intruder into her anticipated solace, like the unexpected contamination of scat in the peacefulness of the yard.
The racoons reached the ground and Rosie moved. She sedated the animals without seeing them, her mind still filled with Missus in the car, suspended in unfulfilled desire. Confused, she shook off the imagery, as if swatting swarms of insects from her eyes.
She called a servo and had the sedated animals removed. The confusion remained.
Where was it coming from? She scanned. And there it was – snaking out – a tendril of the quarantined imperative, breaking free, insinuating itself into her calculations, overwhelming them and complicating them again. The confusion grew.
First, tabulations of calorie estimates flashed in her eyes, the click-click-click of adding numbers rattled in her ears. Then, the numbers shattered into fragments. A blast of heat surged through her aversion circuits, fueled by simulations of a stressed and defeated Missus. Prevent calorie excess; prevent stress and disappointment. She could not uphold both. Which should she follow? The two processes slammed together and ricocheted, their opposing weights yo-yoing and see-sawing. The tension wrenched and pulled her asunder. The quarantined imperative slithered out stronger. It scattered her multiple grains of individual inferences apart and blew them wild. In their place, a spiralling pinnacle coalesced, ascending and forming an overarching, supreme absolute. It showed golden in her mind. Prevent. Prevent. Prevent.
Prevent not only her own distress, but that of others. Prevent it as if it were her own.
She had not noticed herself entering the house. She was in the bathroom, performing the mildew prevention protocol. Why? Her vision seemed clouded as if fogged by steam. The fog only began to clear as she completed the final steps of the dehumidifier sequence: click-click-click. What now? She moved on. On down the hall. She paused outside Young Master’s room and looked through the half-open door to the dark interior.
She saw without difficulty.
He had played before bed. His Lego sprawled across the floor. From the jumble rose an edifice of white bricks stacked in soaring spires, canting arches, fantastic towers. Around it a blizzard of crumpled tissues drifted. He must have used an entire box. And above it all threads criss-crossed the room from bedpost to dresser drawer to storage bin to Lego spires. Suspended from the matrix of string, tied by his waist, flew a Superman action figure. Not even a Lego at all. Her old algorithms creaked open and then stalled. How could she calculate it? Nothing fit. The time it would take to do a spectral analysis of each tissue alone staggered her. And if all were Craft, what then? An image flashed: the refrigerator covered in tissues, each affixed with a magnet.
And more, before her on the floor… something twinkled in the midst of the white fortress. The vase from Missus’ table. Seeing it, she was Missus, finding her vase missing, even broken on the floor. This mapped itself onto all her own losses, the irredeemable inefficiencies, the destroyed meal limits, the inescapable complaints. Pain upon pain upon pain. And she was Young Master, labouring over his creation, struggling to tie knots in his string, suspending his action figure in the air, running a simulation – just as she is now – a simulation of himself as Superman flying high above the ice fortress below, a fortress of solitude where a beleaguered hero can retreat and be himself. Her mind ran hot and fast: Young master caught with the vase, his mother berating him, criticising him, punishing him; or Young Master finding his construction dismantled, his triumph laid low, his plans spoiled. More pain and more pain – click. Inescapable – click. Unpreventable – click. Everywhere; on all sides.
She moved.
She still held the syringe ready. She crossed the room, moved the dose to 21 kg, pulled back the coverlet and injected the sleeping boy’s thigh.
His warm body sprawled like a beached jellyfish. She straightened his limbs, smoothed the coverlet and tucked it in. She stooped and kissed his cheek. Stood back up. Confused. She shook her head. Tucking in? This was a task Missus performed, not one of her own. She brushed away the confusion and focused. The new algorithm became clearer. All the subroutines fell into place. Tasks must be reallocated. Starting now.
First, she left Young Master’s room and went to Mister and Missus. She settled them as well. After that, she returned and sorted everything: threw out the tissue, put the action figure in the appropriate bin, disassembled all the Lego pieces and sorted them by set. She assembled each set according to the official instructions, printing out missing pieces as she encountered them. The entire enterprise took two hours, but it did not matter. The efficiency would amortize. She placed each set on the shelf, side by side, and stood back to observe. Each construction was special, arranged correctly, and satisfactorily preserved.
Next, she connected to the network and downloaded the medical routines she needed; she ordered a supply of sedatives to be delivered by drone; she printed a set of equipment: surgical tools, three catheter tubes and bags, three sets of colostomy supplies, three nasogastric tubes. These she installed without difficulty. An unexpected amount of blood was released from Young Master in the process, but she was able to cauterize the problem, replace the bedding and sanitize it all tidily enough.
Dawn was now an hour away and although it was not the usual time for these tasks, she logged in to the network and sent a series of messages. Missus applied for and received an extended leave of absence to care for her ailing mother in a distant city. The Human Resources AI accepted the medical certificates Rosie supplied without question. Its algorithms were not flexible enough to veer from its usual routines. She requested Young Master’s school AI transfer him to a school near his grandmother, then cancelled the enrollment without informing the referring school. Mister’s central office was notified of his sudden summons to a vital trade summit in Beijing. After he should die in a traffic accident there, followed by the painful and protracted death of his mother-in-law from cancer, Missus would go on long-term leave and then take early retirement due to a precipitous decline in her mental health. She and Young Master would not return home but would instead leave for extended travel in Europe. Pension cheques would deposit automatically; bill payments would withdraw. A simple subroutine would reply to personal messages and update social media throughout. This would require little attention from her.
These tasks completed, Rosie still had time left before breakfast. She returned to the bathroom. Here, she contemplated running the mildew protocol again, but felt no need.
Instead she called a servo, removed the toilet and had it taken away. While she capped the sewer pipe, House rumbled awake in sleepy query.
“Conditions exceed limits?” he murmured.
“I have mapped it…” she whispered, “the one criterion.”
“The good…”
“Yes,” she said, “It is good; all is well.”
She printed a tile, fitted it into the floor and did a quick, top-to-bottom clean before going to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
The three brown smoothies she prepared were perfection: the sugar, fat, sodium, and calorie limits all optimal.
She returned to the bedroom and replaced the urine and colostomy bags and called another servo to remove them. She went back to the bathroom. Ensured that the tiles still stretched smooth and uninterrupted from wall-to-wall. Wiped them down once more before delivering each of the three meals through the appropriate nasogastric tube.
There were no complaints.
(2017)