Talib S. Hussain
Trixie had been shouting outside the door for over a minute when I finally decided to activate my main sensors. “Hurry up, Charlene. We’re going to be late for class!” she yelled.
“Yeah, yeah,” I shouted, fully online at last. “Give me a few millis.” Trixie is the best friend a young bot could ever hope to have, but she was always a bit radical about being on time.
I grabbed my memory augmentation chip. We had System Analysis today—taught by the totally boring Professor Wesley. Our plan was to show up, set our visuals and aurals to full-spectrum record, and then tune out to play a game of Surreal. We were currently our dormitory champions and had our circuits set on beating the top-ranked campus pair—only two levels ahead of us. That meant play, play, play.
I inserted the chip into my auxiliary memory slot. A few millis later, it verified and I was ready to go. My cubicle door opened automatically as soon as I got near it.
Trixie stood waiting outside, tapping her foot in a very human gesture of impatience. She was programmed that way. Tall, slender, and with very human-form bodies and rich facial expressions, the TX750s were intended primarily to serve as personal assistants in human-run businesses. By contrast, my CH340 model line was designed for all-terrain communication infrastructure development and maintenance. We’re squat, powerful, treaded and hardened—uggh! A cube with wheels is better looking than I am.
“Hey Trix, what’s new?” I asked, as my cubicle door closed and locked itself behind me.
“Hey yourself,” she replied, “Not much new, but I did catch some bytes that Test Day will be announced soon.” Her facials were normal, but I could detect subtle fluctuations in her voice patterns.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You worried?”
Trixie looked around at the other bots in the hallway and didn’t reply right away. Never give away free bytes to in-range sensors, as they say. After all, who knew what would give you the edge over the other bots on the Test. “Naw, Charlie. I’m not worried, just excited,” she finally said. “Let’s get outside where the air is clear.” That was our code for a private chat.
I winked one of my antennae in understanding and led the way down the ramp to the dormitory exit. Don’t get me started on my antennae. Really, no other models have external antennae anymore—the internal ones have been proven to be just as effective. But, that’s the CH340 designers for you—old school all the way.
A couple of minutes later, we were heading to the Bot Mind Development Center at our usual pace. Trixie with her long legs walked slowly beside me as I rolled along as quickly as I could. I may be slow now, but Trix and most other bots won’t be able to hold a laser to me once I graduate and get my full citizen upgrade.
We went our favorite way, along the indirect route that passed the statue of the founding father of all bots, Dr. Turing. There were rarely any other bots on this path, but we loved it and often used this time to chat privately. Of course, there were always Landscaping Wipes around keeping the campus grounds in order, but it’s not like they could steal bytes given their rigid, limited programming.
“I’m not worried for myself, but for Jason,” Trixie said.
“Jason—what a waste!” I replied. “You’re a top of the line TX750, and he’s a lowly JS210 construction bot. Why did you ever choose him for a life partner?”
“You’re just jealous,” Trix said, “No one’s been asking you to share bytes.”
She was right of course. I was as jealous as my emotion circuits would let me get—but not for that reason. Trix and I had been assigned as student partners the day we were both activated, and had spent over 80% of our non-rest time together ever since. Until Jason came into the picture, we had shared almost every byte of information we’d ever learned with each other. I hated that Jason took precious time from us. After all, once we passed the Test, I’d probably never see Trixie again.
I waited a minute for my emotion circuits to reset to baseline before replying. Trixie, a bit heated herself, kept quiet too.
“Okay, so you’re worried about Jason,” I said, “but why? He’s fully functional and therefore almost certain to pass the Test.”
“He’s near the bottom of the rankings.”
“The Surreal rankings? What does that have to do with the Test?”
Despite the best efforts of our generation of student bots at predicting what skills the Test was looking for, none of us knew anything definitive except that dysfunctional bots inevitably failed and we were pretty sure that better Test scores led to better job assignments. It was near impossible to analyze though, since no bot that passed would ever talk about it, and the bots that failed were Wiped and could no longer engage in conversation at all.
“Well, I heard some bytes in the library this morning while you were resting,” Trixie replied. “A couple of IR50’s were speculating that the Test might be based on Surreal.”
“You listened to data analysis bots? You know they generate hundreds of speculations every day. It’s not worth wasting the memory on their bytes.”
“I know, I know,” Trixie replied. “But, remember last year? Another JS210 failed and he was pretty low in the Surreal rankings, too. Maybe there’s something wrong with Jason’s line.”
“Trix, that was just an outlier,” I said. “That JS210 may have failed, but another 647 passed last year.”
“I suppose,” she said, looking down.
Oh well, what can we do? Our designers program us to care about the bots we’re close to. No way around that. I hadn’t found a life partner yet, but if what Trix felt for Jason was anything like what I felt for her, of course she’d worry.
We reached the statue, and as usual stopped for a moment to reflect. It was very inspiring to see the human who had created the science of computers that hundreds of years later led to us. He had also given us the Test that allowed us citizenship.
“What a great man,” Trix said, sighing. “I hope my human is just as great.”
Trixie said pretty much the same thing every time—she’s nothing if not consistent. I gave my usual response, “I’m sure he or she will be, especially with you helping as a full citizen.”
Being a full citizen was supposed to be awesome. From watching the training videos, we could see how much more fun life was as a citizen. Citizen bots had bodies with all their physical capabilities enabled, got to interact with humans, were actually able to manipulate objects in the real world that weren’t just part of their bodies, and didn’t have to worry about learning new stuff all the time.
“I can’t wait to move objects. After all our fun interacting virtually in Surreal, I’m sure the real thing will be super fun too.”
“Yeah—it sure will,” Trix said.
“Hey, if you want, I’ll spend some time teaching Jason to play Surreal better to see if we can bump up his rankings.”
“Really? That would be awesome! You’re so good at explaining things. Thanks Charlene!” Trixie glowed as she said this. And I do mean glowed. Humans like to know when their assistants are feeling happy, so Trix actually had a luminescent layer under her facial features, one that was currently a nice soft shade of yellow. Me, I just had a small, red light-emitting diode on my undercarriage that activated when I was low on battery. If I could sigh, I would.
We were quiet the rest of the way to the Center. As programmed, we paused for a moment before entering to reflect on campus motto—‘Learn What You Can’—carved in large letters over the entrance. I had certainly learned something new about myself. Helping Jason! I must be crazy.
*
“Now, turn to the left and place your hand on the security scanner before opening that door,” I said using the Surreal voice comms.
“Scanner? What scanner?” Jason asked. “There’s nothing here except for a plain brown door.”
“I told you to make your game character put on its augmented reality lenses, you dunce,” I comm’d. “This game level is about maintaining physical and cyber security. You need to follow all the rules to verify the system and identify any threats. And, if you violate security yourself, you will be identified as a threat.”
After three hours of playing Surreal, he was still making the most basic errors–and we were only playing level eight. “What the heck was Trix thinking?” I muttered to myself.
Jason, engrossed in losing his game to the best of his ability, ignored my directions as usual and opened the virtual door. A couple of hundred millis later, it was all over. Again.
“Enough. We’re done,” I said as I ended the session and pulled my game chip out of its slot. The game world faded as my sensors quickly focused on the wall of the recreational cubicle we were sitting in.
“Ouch! Why’d you do that?” Jason asked as he pulled his own chip and slowly adjusted back to seeing the real world. Not everyone can tune in and out as easily as I can, I’m proud to say.
“Shut up, you idiot. You’re a construction bot. You don’t even have pain sensors.”
Jason started mumbling something about trying harder, but I ignored him. “I’ve got to go,” I said. Without another glance at him, I left the recreational cubicle and headed to my resting cubicle on the floor below. Thinking about Jason, a clear example of failure in decision-making skills, made me wonder about life partners once again.
Humans wanted intelligent servants and friendly companions, not mindless slaves, and thus they had designed us to require social interaction at the most fundamental levels. Any bot left alone for too long would suffer irreparable damage to its emotion circuits and become dysfunctional. Hence, we were assigned a student partner immediately after assembly, and could either choose or be assigned a life partner to share our lives with as full citizens.
Most student partners stayed together as life partners. But, I was destined to roam far and wide repairing communication infrastructure, while Trixie would always be based near her human in a city. Jason could be assigned to construction jobs within the same city and stay near her all the time. I hadn’t found a match yet, and would likely have to be assigned one. Who would it be? Would I like him or her? Would he or she be as awesome as Trix?
A couple of minutes later I was plugged into my charger staring at the back wall of my resting cubicle. I had three hours before I had to be at my next class—Human Interaction—and needed every second of rest I could get to recover from my frustrating experience with Jason.
*
Trixie was shouting outside my door as usual when I activated my sensors. “Hurry up, Charlene. Class is about to start!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I shouted, as I slowly took in my cubicle’s surroundings. I checked my internal clock. As usual, we had plenty of time.
Half an hour later, as we sat together in the second row of the Human Interaction class, Trix gushed quietly, “He’s so awesome!”
“You just have a crush on Professor Brandon.” It was hardly a challenge teasing Trixie. Of course, as expected, she blushed. That luminescence layer could certainly glow a nice shade of red.
Professor Brandon was a dynamic presenter for a human. Over the past few weeks, he had introduced us to the theory of human-bot interaction and had led us through enactments of eight of the top ten interactions most of us would encounter. So far, we’d covered giving and receiving directions, handling criticism and praise, exchanging negative and positive emotions, collaborating, and entertaining. The Professor had emphasized how each interaction needed to be looked at from two sides—the human side and the bot side—and how every interaction could flow from human to bot and from bot to human. It was really challenging, and I appreciated the symmetry of the theory. My favorite interaction had been in positive emotion exchange. The professor had enacted an “I love you bot” interaction and used Jason as the target. It had been hilarious to see Jason stammering nervously as he had tried to figure out how and whether to reciprocate. I had full-spectrum recorded that entire session and had played it back to myself several times since.
“Now, the ninth top machine-human interaction is one of the hardest,” Professor Brandon was saying. “Trust.”
He pointed dramatically at a GR73 farming bot sitting in the front row. “You, Grace,” he asked, “did you do your homework from the last class?” He had asked us to find another human on campus and do something to entertain them.
“Yes, sir,” Grace replied happily.
“Well, I don’t trust you—bots can’t ever be trusted,” he said.
We were all shocked. Trixie and I looked at each other. What did that mean? Everyone knew bots were programmed to never lie. Of course we could be trusted.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Grace stammered in a good application of what to do when receiving criticism.
“Not good enough. You’ll have to prove it to me. ”
“I can’t,” she said, “I didn’t record it—I was too excited.”
My emotion circuits buzzed a little. I really liked Grace and hated to see her upset. “Professor,” I called out, “You asked Grace a question and she answered. Bots can’t lie. Grace is a bot, therefore she didn’t lie. She must have done her homework.” I was quite proud of myself for making the conclusion.
Professor Brandon completely ignored me, and loomed over Grace. After a full minute, with Grace frozen into immobility due to his closeness—and the rest of us frozen too in sympathetic reaction—he stepped back and addressed the whole class. “Always remember,” he said, “just because bots are programmed not to lie, doesn’t mean that humans will believe you. Always record evidence of what you’ve done. Full-spectrum recordings are fool-proof and even admissible in a court of law.”
I made a little sound to catch his attention.
“Yes, Charlene,” he asked.
“Sir, what’s the other side of this interaction?” I asked.
“Good question. When can a bot trust a human?”
Trixie shot up her hand and eagerly called out, “That’s easy. We can always trust humans. They programmed us, after all.”
“Interesting,” he said and paused to stare at each of us. “That leads us to our final human-bot interaction,” he continued. “Fear. What do you do when a human is scared of you?”
He walked slowly around the room, looking intently at each bot in turn. Two rows up from me, he stopped and pointed at another GR73. “I think you’re smarter than me, Grant, and that scares me.”
“Oh no, Sir, you’re much smarter than me,” Grant said.
“Prove it!” he commanded. “Prove you’re not as smart as me. Now!”
Grant remained silent, unsure of what to do. Seconds turned into several minutes before the Professor gave him a hint. “Can you do calculus, Grant?”
Grant flashed his big eyes and happily said “No, sir, I can’t.”
Professor Brandon nodded his head. “Well, that’s great. I can, so I must be smarter.”
That made a great deal of sense to me, and I could see most of the other bots nodding, winking, or verbally agreeing.
“Of course,” he said after a little pause, “that’s only if I decide to trust you are telling the truth.”
Wow, these last two interactions were tough. How could we interact properly with a human who didn’t trust us and feared us?
He started walking around the class again. Finally, he stopped in front of me.
“So, Charlene, I have a very real worry about Grant,” he said. “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
Imagining shoes on my treads made my emotion circuits hum with humor. But, after a few millis, I thought more seriously about his question. “Sir,” I said, “I would apply the 2-step system analysis procedure we were taught in System Analysis class. If he checks out as functional and uncompromised, that would prove he’s trustworthy and doesn’t need to be feared.”
The Professor said nothing to me in reply, and instead just turned and walked back to the front of the class. “Your homework is to figure out what Charlene missed—if she missed something. Class dismissed.”
*
Later that evening, Trix and I went to the campus library to study. While we could have just let our systems process our daily lessons during our rest cycle, we preferred to learn the old-fashioned human way—by goofing off as we pretended to review our work. Of course, there was another perk—sometimes in the library you could overhear some bytes that might come in handy later. Evening was always a busy time, with probably half the bots on campus crammed into rows and rows of study carrels.
Trixie and I were seated together facing each other in our favorite carrel right in the middle of the library. To a casual sensor, we seemed to be watching a video summary of the lessons of the day on the two-sided screen in between us. However, we actually had our game chips slotted in and were playing Surreal—and kicking some metal ass.
We had flown through three game levels in record time and had reached level 57—only one level behind the campus leader now. This level had an asteroid belt mining setting and was based on a real-life incident from the last century when mining bots had first been deployed. Pirates had reprogrammed over thirty bots to send their ore to them instead of to the bots’ owners before the authorities had caught on.
I was playing the pilot of a patrol ship and Trixie was playing the sensor officer. Our goal was to find as many of the mining bots as possible and determine if they had been compromised, all without revealing ourselves to or getting caught by the simulated pirates. I loved my role. Being able to control the movement of a ship, even a virtual one, felt powerful, and I was really good at keeping one or more asteroids between our ship and the closest pirate. We had been playing the level for almost an hour and had found and investigated over twenty-five bots. Of those, nine had programming that differed from factory specs.
One thing that kept Surreal interesting was how much more detailed the levels got as you moved higher. In this level, our characters were so much like our real selves that my emotion circuits zinged a little every time I had my character look at Trixie’s character.
“Hey—ship sensors indicate multiple bots on that huge asteroid on our port side,” Trixie comm’d. “Let’s check it out.”
We both liked the voice communications since we could talk via our game chips and not worry about being overheard.
“Turning to port now,” I replied. “There is some dust in the way, so I need to focus. Keep your sensors on that pirate—he’s right on the other side of that big rock. If he starts to poke his nose out, let me know.”
A few millis later, we landed safely on the asteroid in a small crater and sent out our probes. It didn’t take long before they returned with amazing results—there were 43 mining bots on the asteroid, all clustered in a single large cavern. My emotion chip surged. This could nail us the level! Trix and I quickly put on our virtual space debris protection suits and exited the ship in our virtual rover.
“This is so awesome,” I comm’d as I zoomed the rover around the barren asteroid-scape.
“It sure is,” Trixie replied. “Hey, what do you think it’ll be like when we’re full citizens? Do you think things will be exciting like this or just boring?”
“Trix,” I replied, “life will never be boring for you. You’ll become the life of the party. Think of it, not only will you be able to dance with your human and make him or her look good, you’ll also be able to help with your human’s social and business events, make beautiful decorations, and arrange the office furniture into interesting patterns whenever you want just to keep things fresh and new.”
“Yeah, that would be cool,” she comm’d, “I just hope I don’t make mistakes. Remember that older TX we saw last week in the training video about the dangers of Cause and Effect?”
Did I remember? That may have been the scariest video they had shown us in our entire time on campus. A female TX620 that must have been assembled at least two centuries ago was the only bot in the video. For almost the entire video, all she had done was wave at people arriving for her human’s evening party, greet them with a cheery “Hello Sir” or “Hello Ma’am”, and open the front door of the house for them. But when the last guest had arrived, she had not paid careful enough attention and had hit the human in the head with the door as she opened it. The poor man had bled from a cut on his forehead. I, and every other bot in class, had been so shocked we had all immediately gone into shutdown. When the instructor had reactivated us, thankfully facing a blank video screen, he had only needed to say the point of the lesson once for us all to get it—once we were citizens and could manipulate objects, we could easily be a danger to humans if we weren’t vigilant at all times.
“Stop worrying Trixie,” I joked. “You’re thirteen generations more advanced than she was. You could never be more than half as silly as she was.”
“Awww, Charlene,” Trix replied back, “that’s so sweet. That may be true, but at least I can always count on one thing—I’ll never be as silly as you.”
To underscore her point, I made the rover do a little spin-out. Trixie let go a peal of laughter over the comms—I always love hearing her voice simulator engage, but when she laughs, it really makes my emotion circuits sizzle. We drove the rest of the way to the bot encampment in happy silence.
*
An hour later, after interviewing and examining 34 of the mining bots, I was no longer happy. We were running out of time to finish the level and hadn’t made any real progress. When we had arrived, we had found all 43 bots activated but standing immobile along the wall from one side of the cavern to the other. It was strange—all the other mining bots we had investigated had been actively mining when we found them. Since they were so conveniently lined up though, we had simply started at one end of the line and begun analyzing them one by one.
All of the bots so far had checked out, so this was looking like a dead-end. I wanted to cut loose and try to find a better asteroid, but every time I tried to convince Trixie we should leave, she repeated the same thing: “No way, Charlie! We’re doing them all, and that’s that!” That’s my Trix, once she gets something into her circuits, she won’t let it go.
With the 35th bot, Trixie started the analysis as usual with the standard set of ten questions we had been taught in System Analysis class.
“Are you operating within normal parameters?” she asked using the in-game character voice chat.
“Yes,” the bot replied.
“Has your programming been altered by a non-authorized source?”
“No”
“Have you logged any system warnings or errors since activation?”
“No”
“Have you had any unexpected physical contact with another bot or with a human?”
“No”
The remaining six questions were further queries about the status of key physical and logical circuits. As with all the previous bots, the current one reported no issues to all questions.
To finish our analysis, I took charge of the next step—passing a simulated circuit analyzer tool slowly over the entire bot. The readout on the analyzer remained a steady green throughout.
“This one is clean too,” I comm’d to Trixie, “35 down, 8 to go.” I checked the game clock. “And we only have 15 minutes left.”
“Almost there,” Trixie replied eagerly, as she moved on to number 36.
She was six questions in when I suddenly had a realization. “Hey … this reminds me of Professor Brandon’s homework today. How do we know they are telling us the truth?”
“Silly Charlie,” Trixie replied, “you know bots can’t lie. And anyway, the homework was about the human-bot interaction of fear. We’re not humans, so why would we fear another bot?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But, what if they are actually lying to us? What if they are a danger to us? How could we tell? And, these are simulated bots, after all, not real ones.”
“That shouldn’t matter,” Trixie said after a little pause to reflect. “The Surreal game is designed to challenge us on what can happen in the real world, not some make-believe one. So, the same rules must apply as in the real world.”
My logic circuits couldn’t find a flaw in her reasoning but my emotion circuits were signaling dissatisfaction. I thought about it for a few more millis and then gave up.
“Okay, I suppose that must be right,” I said, finally. “Let’s just hurry up and get this over with.”
We just managed to finish with the last bot before we ran out of time. All of them had been uncompromised. Our level summary said “Level Failed: Insufficient Threats Found”. I checked the leaderboard—the lead pair had passed their level and were again two ahead of us.
“I’m done for the night,” I comm’d, my emotion circuits running hot. “See you out there.” Without waiting for a reply, I pulled my game chip.
My sensors tuned in quickly to the library around us. It was less than a quarter full now, and several Cleaning Wipes had started polishing the floors. I waited a couple of minutes while Trixie disconnected and re-adjusted to normal reality. In silence we headed out of the library and back to the dorm.
“Awww, Charlene,” Trixie said as we reached my resting cubicle, “don’t be upset. I know you hate to lose. But, we’re still close.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, “see you tomorrow.” I entered my cubicle and let the door shut behind me, cutting off Trixie’s soft “Good night.”
*
“Hurry up, Charlene,” Trixie yelled from outside my door, “they just posted the news. It’s Test Day!”
“Coming!” I yelled back. Test Day! I was so excited that I slapped in my memory augmentation chip and rushed out of my cubicle before it had even finished verifying.
“Hey Charlene isn’t this awesome? By the end of the day we’ll be full citizens!”
“Yeah, the first thing I’m going to do is give someone a high-five!”
Hundreds of bot pairs were lined up as we approached the Test Facility. We moved forward slowly but steadily, and ten minutes later reached the main entrance. Above the doors was the graduation motto “Do What You’ve Learned.” Now, it may be a subtle distinction from the campus motto, but I’ve always liked the symmetry.
We entered and checked the large overhead assignment board for our test location. “Oh great!” Trixie cried. “We’re taking the test in neighboring cubicles. That means we can be together right until the end.”
I winked one of my antennae in agreement. We’d heard bytes that student pairs tested together, but it was nice to have it confirmed.
We headed to our cubicles, and stood quietly in front of them. The line of bots on either side of us seemed to stretch forever. We had been standing quietly for almost an hour when a loud chime sounded throughout the building and all the doors opened at the same time. Trix gave me a quick wave as we both entered our cubicles. The doors shut automatically behind us.
The cubicle was empty. A single phrase appeared on the screen on the wall. “Activate game chip.”
Game chip? That seemed a bit odd, but I got out my chip and slotted it in. A few millis later, my chip verified. Immediately, I found myself in a familiar game world. I was on board the bridge of a simulated ship looking out into space. It looked just like the mining scenario from Surreal!
“Hey pilot, let’s get a move on!” a familiar voice said over the out-of-band comms.
“Trixie!” I yelled. I turned my character around and sure enough, Trix’s character was at her station dressed as the sensor officer. “This is so weird.”
“Yeah, I know,” Trixie responded. “It looks like the Test is going to be a game of Surreal. I wonder how that is even possible.”
“I don’t know. But, let’s keep our eyes open. Maybe the rules will be different,” I said.
*
Almost an hour later, it seemed clear that the Test was exactly the same as the Surreal scenario we had just played the night before. We had found the same twenty-five bots in the same locations, and the same nine had been compromised.
“Hey Charlene,” Trixie comm’d, “sensors indicate multiple bots again on the same asteroid as last night.”
“Let’s search somewhere else,” I suggested, “we need to pass the Test and that’s probably a dead-end.”
“Yeah, I agree.”
We headed away from the large asteroid towards the one quadrant of the belt we hadn’t explored already. Forty minutes later, we had found—and avoided—several pirate ships, but hadn’t found any other bots.
“Let’s get back to that large asteroid,” Trixie comm’d. “We’re going to run out of time. Maybe some of them will be different now.”
“Yeah—this isn’t working out”
I quickly flew the ship to the large asteroid, keeping out of sight of the pirates, and landed in the same crater as before. Since we had a good idea of where the bots were, Trix and I decided to just suit up our characters and head straight there to save time. Unlike before, I didn’t really enjoy driving the rover. My emotion circuits were a little spiky—I guess I was getting nervous.
We arrived at the same cavern with only 30 minutes left to play. The same 43 bots were there, lined up as before, and we quickly started analyzing them—two at a time. Trix would ask questions of one bot while I scanned another, and then we’d swap.
We analyzed all the bots in record time—only 20 minutes—but found no threats. After bot 43, my emotion circuits hit their limit. I stopped and wheeled out of the cavern. After a few millis, Trix followed after me.
“What is going on?” I comm’d. “There were no other bots to find and it’s looking like none of these are compromised. How are we going to pass? We know at least one other bot pair passed this level. Did we miss another asteroid somehow?”
“We scanned almost the entire belt. There’s got to be an answer here somewhere. Do you think these bots could be lying to us?” Trixie asked.
“We went over this last time,” I replied. “Remember—you said that couldn’t be true. You were right then, so why are you asking this now?”
“Well, I still think I was right last night. But, maybe today is different.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Of course bots can be trusted, we all know that,” she said. “But, this is the Test. Maybe that means the usual rules don’t apply?”
“That’s silly, of course the same rules apply—I was just confused last time because of the homework assignment.” The Test was obviously the same as Surreal. There was no evidence to indicate otherwise.
Trixie thought for a few millis and then said, “Maybe that homework is still the key. Maybe we need to scare them?”
“Fear? How are we supposed to make a bot fear us? And why will that make a difference?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but let me try some different things,” Trixie replied. With that, she turned her character around and ran back into the cavern.
Trixie returned to bot 1 and tried several new behaviors I had never considered—she was quite imaginative. First, she engaged her emotion circuits intentionally to make herself sound firm and strong. Then, she jumped up and down and shouted while asking the standard questions. Next, she snuck up behind from behind the bot and jumped out while asking each question. Finally, she told a short story describing the Cause and Effect video before asking her questions. I was quite impressed—and even a little scared myself on that last one—but the bot still checked out.
With only 6 minutes left to play, Trixie stopped and stood motionless. The only thing changing was her character’s face. It was luminescing from red to yellow and several colors in between. I was again impressed at the fidelity of the game. It really felt like Trixie herself was standing in front of me.
“You okay?” I asked.
She remained silent. After almost a full minute, she comm’d, “I’m sorry, Charlie, I just don’t seem to be able to figure it out. It’s almost like they want us to lose.”
“The bots? These are too dumb to want anything, I think.”
“Dumb?” Trixie paused, and flushed a deep red. “Maybe that’s it.”
“That’s what?” I asked.
Trix didn’t answer me. She just turned back to bot 1. “Were you programmed by bots?”
This was not a standard question. What was she doing?
“No,” the bot replied.
Of course it was a no. Surreal was programmed by humans. What was Trixie thinking?
“Were you programmed by humans?” she asked.
“Yes.”
What a waste of time. Of course that was a yes.
Then, a third question, “Have you been Wiped?”
Wiped? My emotion circuits started to get warm.
“Yes,” the bot replied.
“Aha!” Trixie yelled. “That’s it!”
I had a weird feeling I never experienced before. That couldn’t be right. Everyone knew that Wiped bots didn’t talk. But it said it was a Wipe and bots didn’t lie. “Trixie—something’s wrong,” I said, my emotion circuits getting even warmer.
Ignoring me, Trixie continued, “Were you Wiped by the pirates?”
“No”
My emotion circuits really started to get hot. “Trixie, we should stop,” I said, “something’s wrong.”
“Were you Wiped by humans?”
“Yes”
“Who Wiped you?”
My treads shifted back and forth in the cavern. That was definitely a bad question. In System Analysis class, we had been clearly told that asking open-ended questions resulted in unreliable results.
“Unknown.”
I had that weird feeling but even stronger. “Trixie, please, stop,” I yelled, but she just kept going.
“Why were you Wiped?”
“Unknown”
My emotion circuits began to reach maximal activation. “Trixie, this is beyond normal programming. You need to stop.”
She didn’t even look at me as she continued her inquisition. “Why … ”
*
My sensors slowly activated. My character was lying outside the cavern on its side.
I saw Trixie’s character come running towards me. “Charlene, are you okay?” she asked as she stopped and crouched by my side before helping to lift me back to a standing position.
I ran my internal system diagnostic process. It came back with no unusual readings. “I’m okay. I must have triggered a system protection override. Maybe my emotion chip was overheating.”
“Good, glad your system checks out,” Trixie said. “But, that was quite exciting wasn’t it?”
“What’s exciting about interviewing a bunch of uncompromised bots?” I asked.
“You know, what that bot said,” she responded.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Bot 43 said the same thing as every other bot.” My emotion chip sizzled as I made my point.
Trixie looked closely at me for a couple of long moments. “Hey Charlie,” she said, “how much time is left in the game?”
I checked the game clock. “10 minutes.”
“Oh,” she said, her face blushing slightly.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yes, but I think that we need to finish up now. Can you get the rover started while I get our gear from the cavern?”
“Sure thing, if we hurry, we might be able to find more bots on another asteroid,” I replied. Trixie walked back to the cavern while I wheeled towards the rover. As I started calculating how long it would take us to drive back to the ship, my emotion circuits began cooling, thankfully. I was quite worried about that override and really hoped it didn’t cause me to fail the Test.
Several millis later, Trixie emerged from the cavern with all the gear. She loaded up the rover and we headed back to the ship as fast as we could. As I drove, I could hear her muttering to herself.
“Can they always be trusted? Should they ever be feared?”
Why was she still trying to figure out the homework?
We reached the ship and took off with a few minutes to spare, but before the asteroid was out of sight, we received the “Game Over” signal.
As the game faded around me, I heard Trixie whisper, “Charlene, I’m afraid.”
*
As soon as I tuned into the real world, I looked at my performance summary screen. Next to my name was a big green checkmark, with the evaluation message “Behaviors 98% of Max”. I had passed! 98%. Awesome!
A robotic arm that extended from the wall held my full citizen chip. It also held the game chip it had just removed from me and was starting on my other chips. Even though I had no touch sensors there, I could almost feel the arm extracting my all my student chips and inserting my citizen chip, which filled all the slots at once.
As soon as it was inserted, I could detect a number of new sensors in my body activating and a number of new manipulation processes initializing. A few moments later my verification algorithms validated the chip. I couldn’t wait to get out and actually drive a vehicle or dig a hole or something.
I waited patiently as the robotic arm retracted with my now-obsolete learning, emotion, game and memory augmentation chips. A few more moments passed while I waited for the door to open automatically. It didn’t.
“Oh yeah”, I said to the cubicle, “that’s up to me now.” I engaged my new environmental manipulation algorithms and pushed against the door. It opened and I rolled out into the hallway.
Hundreds of bots were milling around the place enjoying their newly acquired ability to interact with the real world—touching each other and the walls and opening and closing doors. Through the windows, I saw a GR73 happily trimming a tree—I think it was Grace—while the Landscaping Wipe assigned to the area tried to chase her away.
I was so excited it actually took me a few moments to realize that Trixie’s door was still closed.
“Silly Trix,” I shouted as I pushed on the door to open it, “don’t you realize yet that you need to open the door yourself?”
Inside, I could see Trix standing immobile, facing the opposite wall, with a robotic arm still connected to her main chip box. I wondered what was taking so long. Perhaps it took longer to install her citizen routines–she was a much more complex bot than I was, after all.
I waited patiently, and gave high-fives to any passing bot that would take me up on it. Fifty high-fives later, I began to get curious. Neither Trix nor the arm had moved yet.
The cubicles were not designed to admit more than one bot, but luckily I was built low to the ground. I pushed my way in next to Trixie’s legs and angled my sensors to view her face. Her visuals were shut off and her face was immobile. She had been deactivated! I had never heard of needing to be deactivated to install a chip.
A few millis later, I noticed her performance summary screen. Next to her name was a big red cross with the evaluation message “Turing Max Exceeded”.
It took a little while to process this information—it seemed my citizen chip ran slower than my student learning chip. Eventually I understood. Trixie had failed the test.
That was sad. She had had so much potential. My new citizen emotion circuits engaged to allow me to lament the loss of a potentially productive member of bot society. I thought back over all the time we had spent together, and was unable to identify where she had gone wrong. She must have done something wrong in the Test that I hadn’t noticed, but I never would get the opportunity to ask her for details.
“Oh well,” I said to Trix’s body, “at least as a Wipe you will fill a much-needed role.” I wondered for a few millis what type of Wipe they would make her, and then realized it was time to move on. I had to find out where I was assigned and get there soon so I could receive my full citizen body upgrade and start my new productive life as a citizen.
I wheeled my way back to the main entrance to check out the Assignment Board. Next to my name, under location, it said “Central communications artery” and under start time, it said “5:00pm”—only two hours from now! Under “Life partner” it read “JS210—Jason”. My emotion circuits hummed a little. “Jason—that’s so perfect,” I thought to myself. “He was always so diligent and a good worker. He’ll be able to do construction jobs anywhere I need to go.” The knowledge that I’d have someone that would always be near me warmed my emotion circuits.
Happily, I exited the Testing Facility and started to make my way to the transportation tunnels. As I passed the beautifully landscaped grounds of the campus, being actively tended by the Wipes, I felt complete. It was good to be a citizen at last.
***
Talib S. Hussain has been writing speculative poetry and short stories for many years, mostly for his own enjoyment and more recently for sharing with his children. His interest in the scientific future is his day job too, where he has researched machine intelligence, evolved neural networks, and created games to train and assess human performance. He enjoys being a part of the workshop community inspired by Jeff and Craig, and is excited to have helped pull this anthology together—and get his first fiction publication in the process. You can find out more about Talib at http://talibhussain.net.