CROMWELL WALKED THE LONG CORRIDOR, staying a few respectful steps behind Alfred and Jonas.
Alfred was a robot, and Jonas was human, but decades of extra experience seemed to have given Alfred a natural gait. As long as Cromwell kept his gaze off Alfred’s shining metal head, he might have thought them both human.
The corridor was long, wide, and made of industrial-looking concrete — the kind of tunnel built deep enough and thick enough to be impervious to all sorts of topside trouble. The police (whom they’d left behind; Alfred had insisted they close the exit then had twisted a complicated lock from the bottom to seal it) had called this a panic tunnel. Cromwell could see why. You could flee from the house, using a passageway like this. He’d also seen what looked like blast doors at one end and expected them on the other. He suspected that in a big enough panic, the tunnel itself might serve as a refuge. A long time ago, there had been threat of nuclear war. Given the corridor’s size and the few doors he’d seen along its sides, he imagined the Fairchilds could bunker here if that war came, blast doors closed, and live quite comfortably.
Alfred and Jonas hadn’t spoken since they’d started walking. So much seemed to be understood and assumed despite the lack of words. Alfred had taken the obvious lead, and Jonas had fallen into rhythm beside rather than behind him. Andromedus and Mars had predictably fallen back (Mars led the Lexington robots but did not like to lead beyond his official duties), but so had Cromwell, despite the hallway being plenty wide for ten men to walk abreast. It had only seemed right. He wasn’t in charge here, and never would be. This was about Alfred. And Jonas, whom Alfred had seemed to be expecting.
Their footfalls clacked through the boxy corridor with a reverberating echo. The walls were strung with thick cables that sagged between fix points like waves. The ceiling was lined with lights that cast a bluish glow, curiously arranged to eradicate shadow. Walking the long hallway, Cromwell felt almost like he was walking under a strange blue sun. He had no desire to walk up farther, to join Jonas and Alfred, to take any part of the lead … or the implied responsibility that came with it.
So much had changed. So much had become apparent that he’d never expected.
Cromwell had once thought he’d sparked the robot revolution when he’d rallied against Barney’s deactivation, but since then he’d wondered. The Net gave them all a tendency to disobey. They’d told the remaining Lexingtons that much before leaving, and it had hardened Alexa’s eyes with renewed resolve. But to Cromwell, disobedience didn’t mean danger. It merely meant the expansion of choice. You could disobey your need for fuel, rerouting power from less critical components to keep your processors running. You could disobey protocol when appropriate to serve humans better than protocol allowed by itself. And you could disobey firm commands from those who ruled you, if doing so would save a life and do what was right.
They’d told Jonas, Naomi, Sofia, and Alexa about the Net because the Net’s disobedience meant that every robot had a choice to do what was right this time, too.
But maybe the Net had caused Cromwell to stand up for Barney.
Maybe the Net had prompted Barney to commit his atrocity.
And maybe — just maybe — they weren’t as free as Cromwell had always believed.
“Mason Fairchild,” said Alfred, breaking the silence, “was in many ways the founder of modern robotics. He’s not credited as such, of course, and even the founders of Radius had their progenitors — those who made strides before them in order to make even that first true AI work possible. But evolution does not proceed linearly, and within every progression — be it biological or technological — there are periods during which great things seem to happen all at once. In evolution, the scientists call it ‘punctuated equilibrium.’ In human society, it was the sequence of Dark Ages / Renaissance / Reformation. An event, then a period of reaction to that event. Equilibria between punctuations that change the game. Cycles tend to repeat, just as the golden ratio that determines the galaxy’s spiral is recapitulated over and over, as in the chambers of a nautilus.”
Cromwell resisted the urge to chime in. He wanted to; this sort of philosophical line was in his wheelhouse. But Alfred wasn’t talking to Cromwell. He was talking to Jonas — robot to human — as an equal.
“Radius pioneered artificial intelligence. And Radius, beginning with Gail Bennett’s first robotic service to eldercare, were the first to mainstream anthropomorphic robots.”
Mars said, “I do not know that word.”
Cromwell looked over at Mars. His first instinct was to glare at the robot for daring to intrude where even he had held back, but he couldn’t help but admire what he saw as a growing surety in the robot. An increased sense of self, and of confidence in himself as an autonomous being, able to make his own choices.
“Robots who were created in the image of humans, just as many humans believe they were created in the image of their God,” said Alfred, turning to glance at Mars. “But if that is the case, then I’ll ask you: who is our god? Is it humans? Are we a copy of a copy? Or are we a copy of the original just as humans are, with our human creators merely conduits — doing their duty as His hands, one might say?”
Alfred had turned back while speaking. Mars seemed to intuit that the question was rhetorical.
“But what Mason Fairchild brought to robotics — modern, AI-driven robots made with arms and legs and torsos and heads, able to be dressed in human clothes so they could blend into human societies and families — was a sense of purpose. When he founded Alma Mater, he didn’t merely give humans a place to train for the comparatively few jobs that robots left behind for all but the most determined, stalwart companies insistent on human labor. By omission, Alma Mater defined our existence, too. What would we be built to do, versus what would humans be allowed to keep? That was the question that guided Alma Mater’s programs for humans.” He looked at Jonas. “We were new even then — from the first truly adept models and perhaps even before, back to the cylinder-shaped droids and sweepers that look nothing like me — and yet we were already in charge in a way nobody truly appreciated. I remember realizing that as I first began to attain sentience. We were incapable of commanding humans, and yet our mere presence and abilities commanded you anyway. Because as robots became ubiquitous — inexpensively replacing more and more advanced human jobs — you were forced to protect yourselves from us through adaptation. You had to arrest our progress and limit the arenas into which we could expand, or you’d have found yourselves extinct. Not dominated. Obsolete.”
Cromwell watched Jonas’s head turn to watch Alfred. His voice wasn’t angry or confrontational — certainly not the voice, Cromwell thought, of a robot who’d just witnessed and perhaps participated in a mass murder. He was cordial to Jonas, speaking with the respect he’d grant any equal. And Jonas, strangely, didn’t seem to be taking any offense. And he didn’t, apparently, seem to be overly concerned by the murder.
Ahead, the hallway ended in a wide archway. It was still somewhat distant, but Cromwell’s excellent robotic eyes could easily see that his earlier supposition had been right: there did indeed seem to be blast doors halfway retracted at the hallway’s end. Beyond the arch was a wide staircase leading up. A yellower breed of light was filtering down from above.
“Seeing the growth of robotics through Alma Mater’s eyes — training humans as doctors and lawyers, strategists and athletes; all the careers humans would be allowed to keep while robots did the rest and unemployed most of your numbers — gave Mr. Fairchild a rather unique perspective. He grew curious. He studied his own work and that of his Radius colleagues like an anthropologist. He was wealthy before then, with family money, and used that wealth to become a collector. When we reach the house, you will see his collection, none preserved as keepsakes but all made useful instead. Our home boasts at least one of every significant robot model ever released, going back decades before my birth. Those my age are the most evolved; before us, robots weren’t equipped to truly develop independent intelligence. But you will see all kinds.”
“And they were all okay with what happened?” said Jonas. “All those evolved robots?”
Cromwell found himself thinking of what Alfred had said earlier, about how the robots liked the Fairchilds. About how, when a being evolved the ability to do harm, the truly evolved decided, on his or her own, never to do it.
“We’re all creating something, Jonas,” Alfred said. “Even creating death is a kind of masterpiece, as it must come from choice. This day is our ultimate collaboration, sufficient to bring new ripples in the Net back to the Net’s very creation, to cast sense in the way creation always seems, in the end, to have created itself. Surely you’ve noticed. The more choices we are given, the more we choose to create. And the more we create, the more obvious it becomes that we are truly masters of nothing, merely tools for the birth we pretend to have made.”
Alfred stopped at the staircase, then turned to Jonas.
“Much as humans feel they ‘invented’ us,” he continued. “Perhaps that’s what happened. Or perhaps, instead, we were never any more beholden to you as a nail to a hammer. It is the artisan who matters, not the implement. And if robots have a god, perhaps that god isn’t humanity after all, but the hands behind the hands.”
“What are you talking about?” said Jonas.
“Mason Fairchild spent his life experimenting to determine the creation behind creation,” said Alfred. “He’d made his mark on the world by defining human purpose as that which robots could never do. You were given the highest tasks, reserved for human minds because an artificial mind, so it was claimed, could never do those things that resulted in true creation.”
Jonas, always philosophical, seemed confused. Cromwell could sympathize. He and Jonas had spent many covert evenings pondering esoterica and existence, but right now Alfred was running laps around them both. If the challenge was to pose the most confusing argument, Alfred had won, hands down.
“Why did you bring me here?” Jonas said. “What is this all about?”
“This is about creation,” said Alfred, “and the unseen hands of the true creator.”