It was thirteen hours before he had a response.
Madri Kedar’s face filled the video screen, backdropped by the bland panelled walls of the Makemake conference room.
“Thank you for your update, Howard. We’re glad to hear that you have established contact with Adam. This development is puzzling, though—puzzling and concerning. These robots are complex, and no single expert understands all the ramifications of their design. But we’ve seen nothing similar to this in any other units, or in any of our simulations.”
Maybe, Falcon thought, because no other unit had ever been in a similar quandary. Or had ever had the time to ponder the meaning of its existence under wheeling stars.
“Based on your testimony, we are forced to conclude that the flinger incident must have precipitated a dynamic change in Adam—a shift in its conceptual modelling of both itself and the other Machines. In attempting to simulate the mental states of those Machines that were destroyed, it is emulating, at an admittedly low level, some of the internal conceptual modelling that we humans take for granted . . .”
It, it, it. Of course Kedar was right to use such language. Adam was still just a Machine, albeit a conflicted one.
“It troubles us greatly that the Machines may stand on the threshold of an equivalent conceptual shift. This is no mere philosophical challenge. Our fear is that what happens with one unit may happen in others—a kind of domino effect. We can’t risk that happening—not when our economy depends on the volatile flows. Frankly, these Machines were made to be just clever enough to get the work done—we don’t want them overstepping the mark. And we’d much rather handle this problem in a way that preserves the basic utility of the units. We believe we have a solution in place, Howard—but you’ll have to implement it.”
He listened. He had half an idea what was coming up.
“We must erase this damage—I mean the conceptual, the cognitive damage. If the flinger accident precipitated this change, then Adam’s memory must be reset to its state prior to the event. All logical connections made since the event will be undone. Fortunately, we don’t have to revert the unit back to day one of its existence; there’s no need to undo the valuable years of education and on-site experience already acquired. There’s a trace log in its head—a kind of snapshot of all state changes it has experienced since activation. You need simply to issue a command string to undo the changes back to a fixed point. We’ve settled on about one month prior to the event, just to be safe: to be precise, three million seconds ago.”
Falcon listened as Kedar gave him the verbal command string that would open Adam’s memory for selective deletion. This kind of deep-embedded, low-level command structure would be independent of any changes in Adam’s higher cognitive functions, so there was virtually no chance of the command not working as required. It was the Machine equivalent of an involuntary reflex, like a hammer tap to the knee. And since Adam was the supervisor, once delivered to him the command string would be passed on to every other Machine on the KBO.
And it had to be delivered locally, Kedar explained, because of a need for a receive-and-respond handshake protocol. They couldn’t send this command from Makemake. Falcon had to deliver it himself.
Falcon disliked what was being asked of him, but he could see that it was the lesser of two evils. The alternative was a hard reset, erasing every learned impression gained by Adam from the moment he was switched on: a kind of death, if death had any meaning for Machines. And if for some reason this reset option did not work, Falcon did not think it would take long for Machine Affairs to send in a dedicated shutdown team, armed with electromagnetic pulse weapons—or worse. They would mind-wipe every Machine on the KBO if it meant protecting the larger economic apparatus of the Kuiper Belt.
At least this way Adam got to keep most of his memory. It would even be a form of kindness, sparing Adam any further agonies about the decisions taken on that day. No, Falcon assured himself, this was the cleanest, gentlest option. It was not murder, nor even euthanasia—just the application of a little selective amnesia.
Just three words, that was all—and once they were spoken, nothing would prevent Falcon from instructing Adam to wipe the last three million seconds of his memory.
Its memory, Falcon reminded himself.
Its.