How It Ends: Part 1 - The Evaluation (3 page)

When she was late he wanted to kill her.

Serves you right.

Shut up.

I hope she breaks your heart, you selfish
cold bastard.

Shut up.

He shoved the voice of his mother aside,
roughly, mentally. The voice always came to him during moments of
quiet pleasure. Like this one with his coffee and his scone.

Mother issues?

No. Not Brian.

Not many, at least.

Foot traffic passed by him. Looking through
the shop window was like watching the world’s most boring TV
program. Legs and bodies and people shuttled past with hands shoved
into coat pockets for warmth. He sighed and took another swallow of
coffee.

The door opened in a sweep of wind and
noise. Even in the chatter of the shop the entrance was noticed.
They turned to see what force of nature had blown in. Anita was
oblivious to all. She spotted Brain sitting at a table in the front
and made for him. He sat in his easy way with one arm thrown over
the back of the chair and the other resting casually on the table
gripping the base of his coffee cup. His eyes were like the sky
before a storm. He shared his whitened smile easily.

“Where have you been?”

“Sorry. I got caught at home by my super and
then I didn’t have money for the subway.”

“Let alone a cab?”

“Right.”

“Then let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“No, I have money for that.”

“Yes, but I want to buy it for you
anyway.”

He came back from the counter holding a cup
of coffee in a ceramic mug and another for himself in a to-go cup.
Her coffee was filled with sugar and half and half. She liked it
sweet and creamy. He had given up making faces about it. Now he
just brought her coffee the way she liked it. A compromise. Not
something he was used to. Nor did he like the idea that he was
adjusting. Such a cup of coffee would have been fodder for his
acerbic humor with any previous consorts. For her he smiled and
placed the mug before her without a word. He washed down his
misgivings with a swallow of his own dark brew.

“Thanks.”

“Forget it.”

She took a sip of the coffee. It was too hot
for her to gulp.

“What’s wrong with your apartment?”

“How’s that?”

“What did your super want?”

“Mrs. Lighter upstairs burst a pipe in her
bathroom. The water’s starting to leak down into my place.”

“Suck.”

“Major suck.”

“Do you need anything?” He couldn’t conceive
that he was asking the question. Offering help whereas before he’d
merely smile at the trouble and know that in a few days the trouble
would disappear when he broke off the affair. But that would not be
the case with Anita. Something about her held him fast. Like
cement.

“No, I should be okay. Charley—that’s the
super—he’ll fix the pipe and clean up the mess and believe it or
not, I do have renter’s insurance, so I’ll start a claim if
anything gets damaged.”

“Pretty organized.”

“I know,” she smiled. “Can you believe
it?”

She reached into her bag and took out her
notes that were jumbled into loosely organized groups and spread
them out on the table. She fished for a minute in her bag for a
pencil. Then she threw back a long swallow of coffee.

He watched this with amusement.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he answered.

=== Logging started: 07:30:00 ===

Action start 07:30:00: POWERUP.

Action ended 07:31:00: COMPLETE_POWERUP.

[07:31:00:521]: Product: Robot Model: Physician, L
Series. Denlas-Kaptek Industries – Power up completed
successfully.

=== Logging stopped: 07:31:00 ===

It was morning. It knew this fact due to its
internal clock. The clock ran off a specialized lithium battery
that would last far longer than the batteries that had been
developed before. The battery ran all essential internal systems
that needed to continue if ever the primary power source was
interrupted. The battery ran the clock and the clock told the robot
that it was morning. It was time to wake.

It began to prepare for the day. It chose
clothing and dressed itself. It was Kilgore.

Once finished it left the facility that
housed it and entered the flow of pedestrian traffic, human and
robot.

Eric stood before the mirror in the private
bathroom of his office. He stared at the reflection. There were new
lines at the corners of his eyes. He followed with his eyes. His
nose jutted before him like the prow of a ship. His eyes were ice
blue and cold. His blood felt hot in his veins. Hot with the boil
of a man driven to power by a greedy need. He was a thin man by
genetics, not athletics. He had gray hair that was receding slowly
and dyed black to satisfy his vanity. He was not an old man. The
premature gray also ran through his family. He did not wish to look
like an old man. That would run counter to his objectives. His look
was a weapon and he used it as such. He glared at people like an
eagle at prey. He was dressed in a fine navy suit with a starched
white shirt and a blood red tie. He adjusted the tie a nudge. The
picture of power.

The act of self-inspection and admiration
helped clear his thoughts. Clear the head. Clear the mind. Focus.
Today was important. Today was another meeting before the board of
directors to justify his actions. Once again. He had come in early
to review his facts. They stood out on the paper before him, boiled
down to the bones of a single page of numbers. He reviewed the
bottom line of the company, then his division. His division was up
while most other divisions were down. He was carrying the company.
He was carrying the fucking company and he once again had to prove
to the board of fucking directors that the programs he developed
and tested and moved into production and sold by the hundreds to
companies and customers were the ones keeping the fucking company
profitable.

Easy
.

His face flushed.

Easy
.

He didn’t need to go into the boardroom with
a chip on his shoulder.

“Easy,” he said aloud.

He didn’t need to go in looking for a fight.
The fight would come to him.

* * *

He stood at the head of the circular table
in the wood paneled room.

Around the table sat the oversight committee
for the board of directors of the robotics engineering company
Denlas-Kaptek Industries. Karl Kaptek had started his firm seventy
years prior with a few ideas and space in his suburban garage.
Today it was the leading robotics firm in the world. The board of
directors gathered more frequently than that of most companies. DKI
was constantly reviewing new projects, constantly evolving their
product line and service offerings. The board took full
responsibility for the oversight of these projects. Several were
designed and developed by Eric. He was not fond of having to report
his every move. His latest success was being questioned today. He
was being required to provide insight into the robotic physician
program. A program that had been ten years in development and had
cost somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred fifty million
dollars. There were five such functioning physicians. Eric managed
each one. The board oversaw the management.

The oversight committee was comprised of
three members of the board.

One was a thickset man with a large bushy
mustache. His mustard yellow hair was in bad need of a trim. His
manner was forceful and full of bluster. In his light-colored
jacket he looked the part of a southern gentleman. Another was a
younger man in his mid-forties whose dark hair was thinning and
whose body seemed consistently charged with electricity. His quick
and jerky movements came from either his frenetic personality or
the nine cups of thick black coffee consumed daily. The last was a
tall gaunt man with a long face. He had a quiet even way of
speaking and rarely smiled. At times his narrow face appeared so
taut he looked skeletal. Behind his back the other board members
called him the Undertaker. He knew of the nickname. He enjoyed it.
Together these three men led the oversight committee. The committee
Eric answered to and would face today.

They barraged him with questions. The
primary interrogator was the thickset man who did not like Eric and
whom Eric did not like in return.

“So you expect us to believe that there have
been no problems with the robotic physician program despite the
fact that we know there have been?” the thickset man asked.

“I never said there weren’t any problems. I
said there weren’t any unmanageable problems.”

“Semantics. As always, with you, it is
semantics.”

“Not really.”

“Oh no?”

“No. There are no unmanageable issues. Would
you like me to define unmanageable?”

“You’re on thin ice with me, Eric.”

“You lack vision.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said you lack vision. The robotic
physician program has been far more successful than we anticipated.
We have requests for information coming in every day. When we go
live with the program, we have twenty-three orders already
waiting.”

“Twenty-three orders is hardly a number to
brag about.”

“Given the cost of a single unit it is. On
twenty-three units alone we can make the year, much less the
quarter. Twenty-three units will bring in a return on our
investment three fold. Or perhaps you didn’t take math in grade
school.”

“Please watch your tone, Eric,” the younger
man said.

Eric’s eyes never left the thickset man.

“My apologies,” Eric said.

“I don’t care if you’re getting a thousand
orders a day,” said the thickset man. “One single problem, one
single missed diagnosis or badly performed procedure and you’ve
cost us millions.”

“But there haven’t been any problems like
that, have there?” asked the gaunt man. “The robotic physician
program has taken on a life of its own and has generated a buzz in
the industry that is unparalleled since the introduction of the
rubidium brain. This is thanks to Eric.”

“Where’s the documentation?” asked the
thickset man. “Where’s the empirical data? What proof do we have
that it’s working?”

“Other than the orders we’re getting?” Eric
said.

“You’re one smug son-of-a-bitch.”

“It’s your turn to watch your tone,” said
the younger man.

“I’ll use any tone I damn well please. I’ll
use any language I damn well please. I sit on this board. Not him.
And you have no place to direct my tone.”

“I can’t argue that. But I won’t let this
turn so ugly that our working relationship can’t be salvaged.”

“He is correct,” said the gaunt man. “We
need to maintain a certain level of decorum. Let us approach this
from a different perspective.”

“What perspective?”

“Eric, can you tell us about the problems?
Never mind their size. What problems have turned up? What have been
the solutions?”

Eric breathed a deep sigh. Clear the head.
Relay the facts as requested. Be objective and removed. Cold. As
ice.

“There have been a few programming bugs that
we have had to work out,” Eric said. “Small issues, mainly. They
primarily involve storage capacity in the hard drives and the
ability to take in new information about new clients. This has
caused some hiccups in the code.”

“And the solution?”

“We’ve rewritten some of the base code. It
has been streamlined and optimized. We’ve added storage capacity
internally to the robots. We’ve also added failsafe programming to
back up to the central data storage facility by remote if
necessary.”

“What else?”

“Some issues regarding physical appearance.
Initially the robots wore little. This unnerved many patients. Now
they have a specific dress code and wardrobes have been made
available to them.”

“What else?”

“Two of the five prototypes were originally
fitted with holographic faces. The original holographic projectors
did not work. This was a problem on the part of the holographics
manufacturer. We’ve switched vendors. That’s the last of the major
issues.”

“These corrective actions appear sound to
me. Any other concerns for anyone?”

“Several,” the thickset man said.

“What would ease your mind?” the younger man
asked.

The thickset man sighed. “Very little.” He
sounded tired, defeated. “Am I the only one who sees the dangers of
letting a project like this go into production? Am I the only one
who sees it as, oh, I don’t know, abhorrent in some way?”

The gaunt man looked across the table at the
younger man, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“What’s on your mind?” the younger man
asked.

“The whole program. The whole program is on
my mind. I find…”

He stopped. Eric waited. He wasn’t sure what
the thickset man would say next or where his thoughts were
heading.

“Go on,” the gaunt man said, sounding with
his deep voice and soft delivery like an undertaker.

“I find myself increasingly uncomfortable
with this program.”

“Why?”

“It’s not natural. It’s just not natural.
Machines working on humans. It’s not right somehow. I can’t really
describe how I feel.”

“Machines have been operating on humans for
years. You’ve never heard of laser treatments, robotic surgery,
things like that?”

“Computer-assisted surgery is one thing. A
thinking machine is completely different.”

“Machines are a part of everyday life,” the
younger man said. “It’s what we do here. Our bread and butter.” He
said what Eric was thinking. Eric hadn’t wanted to speak. He was
worried that if he did he might cause the situation to revert to
where it had been. At the moment it was in a place he had not
foreseen and did not want to disturb. The thickset man seemed on
the verge of caving in to his two colleagues. Eric recognized this.
To speak now would be to watch this inch by inch measure of
progress vanish.