Machina Viva (2 page)

When the liquid stops churning, Dr. Abrams walks slowly around the bath. There is no more metallic sheen to the fluid; it has become completely transparent. The terminal beeps and the fluid drains from the bath, leaving behind a perfectly formed female figure. The figure is, in all quantifiable respects, completely average, but Dr. Abrams is fighting to maintain control of his face, and a tear is forming, as though he has never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

She slowly sits up and disembarks from the empty bath. Dr. Abrams offers her clothing, and she puts it on. She takes the card. Dr. Abrams asks her the question.

“My name is Eve.”

3

It is a commonly held belief that civilizations are built from the ground up. However, as with every metaphor, there are those who insist that it be taken literally, and so the implied requirement for any burgeoning culture is some sort of terrestrial starting point, with ground that can be tilled to grow crops or reshaped to build buildings on.

This is not necessarily the case.

In fact, it is not widely appreciated that large quantities of gas can congregate in space under the force of their own mutual gravitational attraction to serve as a perfectly hospitable environment for the growth of a human population. Given the correct atmospheric components and a region where the average temperature and pressure fall within human tolerance levels, the only requirement is a place to stand. Sufficiently advanced cultures have no problem with this.

Thus was born the city of Tetropolis, one of the oldest mid-atmosphere arcologies. The word is a combination of “architecture” and “ecology,” and such constructions are rarely accidents. Tetropolis fits the requirements of a city, with a central government, police force, utilities, and even a nice park. It also fits the requirements of a building, being a unified structure with a single framework. In this case, the single framework was a series of large interlocking tubes that formed a pyramid nearly a mile high. The taller buildings in the city connected directly to the outer pyramid, strengthening the whole structure while ensuring their own stability. Public transit vehicles traveled through the tubes, intersecting at large spherical nodes and creating a very stressful job for any human who was crazy enough to work in traffic control. The job usually went to a robot, because unlike the vast majority of people, a lot of robots actually enjoy that kind of insanity.

As a mid-atmosphere arcology, Tetropolis did not have the typical foundation that keeps most buildings standing. Its foundation more resembled that of a sailing ship, with a set of huge pontoons that kept the city suspended above the denser layers of atmosphere beneath it. The denser layers in this case comprised a gas several times denser than air, but not dense enough to be classified as a liquid. Being a gas, it tended to slosh around a lot more than liquid would have, so the areas in the lower levels of the city that weren’t considered outright hazardous were kept protected with airlocks, and the property values suffered near the perimeter of the city due to the increased likeliness of respiratory disease. It’s a good place to live for robots that are just starting out. The rents are cheap, and since it’s near the bottom of the city, the important utilities for robots, like power, are all routed down there anyway.

Eve closed the door behind her as she saw her new apartment for the first time. The first day of her existence had been interesting. She had seen very much of the city and had interacted with a great many people.

The first week or so in the existence of a robot is similar to the first dozen or so weeks in the life of a human infant, only taking less time because the robot’s brain is already fully developed. What is not fully developed are the means of storing and retrieving information. It is in the first week that the robot’s data foundation is solidified by actual, real-world experience. The robot puts all of its simulated experience to the test, and it learns how well the world conforms to the simulations.

As new information is learned by the robot, the very earliest memories can be deleted or fragmented to accommodate new data. These fragmented memories often result in phenomena occurring within the processing unit that pyriopsychologists equate with déjà vu, or even schizophrenia in rare cases. In every case, though, as with human babies, the earliest moments of a robot’s existence are often very difficult to recall.

What this means for Eve is that as she was growing accustomed to her new environment, she was beginning to forget what little she had learned about Dr. Philip Abrams.

4

“Very well, that concludes the new business. Are there any further issues?”

No one raised a hand.

“Excellent. I move to adjourn,” said the man at the head of the table.

“Second,” said one of the others, in accordance with procedure.

“All in favor?” A simultaneous aye. “All opposed?” Nothing. “Meeting adjourned.” The assembled body rose from their seats and moved toward the door.

This was the Tetropolis Civic Cabinet, the governing body of the city. There were eight of them, each governing a separate aspect of city life, and each took turns acting as a sort of executive officer for a prescribed amount of time. They met every week in the conference room at the top of the Civic Center in the middle of the city, the very zenith of Tetropolis itself. The current chair was Commerce, in charge of regulating the business of the city and the trade conducted with other cities. Other departments were Finance, in charge of the city coffers; Agriculture, in charge of making sure that the biological citizens got fed; Robot Production, which ran the fabrication facilities in the lowest levels of the Civic Center and kept an eye on which robots might need to be replaced soon; Transportation, which oversaw the mass transit system running through the city’s framework and the intercity docks; and Health and Public Welfare, which oversaw the repair services for robots and medical facilities for everyone else. They also had the unenviable task of answering the telephone whenever anyone had a gripe about their life in general.

The last two departments were actually run by robots, since it was a principle of society that no job in the city was unavailable to any citizen that wanted to try for it, mechanized or not. The first was Infrastructure, which kept the city supplied with electricity and maintained the city’s structural components. The current department head had reached that position by demonstrating the ability to keep track of the status of all of the city’s vital systems at once, able to recall the results of diagnostic checks going back for years and estimate just when a system would begin performing at a suboptimal level, based on previous statistics, simulation, and a healthy dose of engineer’s pessimism. The city’s underbelly had purred like a kitten since his elevation to department head, to the point that any minor deviation from the norm, from a slight power surge to a loose section of walkway, made headline news.

The other robot-run department was Security, the city’s police force. Many people thought it odd that the city’s police were headed by a robot, but it actually made sense after some deliberation. Police work was about managing the behavior of people, and while a single person may behave in a wholly unpredictable way, a group of people does not. The more people there are, the easier they are to predict and manage, and robots have always performed far superior to humans in the areas of statistical modeling and prediction. It’s like rolling dice. Roll an ordinary die with six sides, and it will dance erratically around the table. If it falls off the table, good luck finding it. In fact, it would be best if you were to start your search in the next room. Now roll a die with twelve sides. Its behavior is much more sedate. Now move up to dice with twenty or thirty sides, or even a hundred. They do exist; it’s a sorry excuse for a dice collector who doesn’t own one. As sides are added, the die begins to become predictable, until the die has infinite sides (at which point it becomes more convenient to call it a ball and less convenient to give it numbers) and its path can be predicted into the indefinite future. So it is with mobs. Three may be a crowd, but five thousand are a statistically predictable entity by which clocks can be set.

At the end of the Cabinet meeting, as people were filing out of the room, the Security head tapped the head of Robot Production on the shoulder.

“Yes?”

“May I have a word in private, please?”

“Of course.”

The two of them waited until the other cabinet members had left. The Security head closed the doors.

“I’ve heard that Dr. Abrams has completed his new prototype.” The Security head got right to the point. Few people, and no robots, reach a position as high as Civic Cabinet while still adhering to the custom of pleasantries.

“Yes, he has. Designated ‘Eve.’ I have her contract information, if you’d like. Why, is there a problem?”

“He says in his report that he used a new technique for the higher processing unit. If I understand correctly, he actually performed the verification and simulation processes before the unit was installed.”

“As I understand it, yes. You would have to ask him about the details. I’m sorry, but Dr. Abrams’s techniques are too advanced for most of the department to understand at this point.” The Production head began to fidget a little. Talking to Security for any length of time was somewhat unsettling. Like most artificials, he stood completely still when speaking, without so much as a twitch. Rumor had it that Security was a fierce card player, anything from poker to whist. He didn’t doubt it. “Are you saying that Dr. Abrams might be doing something illegal?”

“No, not at all. He has merely introduced an unknown variable for which I am trying to solve. I think I will need to speak with Dr. Abrams. Thank you for your time.” Security strode efficiently from the boardroom.

5

As has been said, in a society with so many of its inhabitants created for the purpose of performing menial, otherwise undesirable jobs, it is unlikely to find someone in such a line of work who was not manufactured for the purpose. However, there are always exceptions. In the infinite variety that is the human race, there are those specimens that just like getting their hands dirty, as it were.

By the same token, there are occasional members of the silicon-based population that find themselves suited to contemplate the big questions, such as “What’s it all about, really?” or “Which of these goes best with my outfit?” By many accounts, the biggest of these questions by far is “What is it with people?”

Many generations ago, a group of engineers had gotten it in their heads to build a computer that could give reliable lifestyle advice and counseling. Their reasoning was that if one were Dealing With Issues regarding oneself or others, and one happened to be human, it was best to seek the advice of a non-human entity, in order to be assured of a disinterested third party without conflicts of interest.

The result of this endeavor was a computer called Raymond. This was in the days before the modern advances in robotics, so Raymond occupied a very large piece of furniture and required a heavy-duty cart to get around, and under someone else’s power even then. However, when it was activated for the first time, it congratulated the design team for their efforts and suggested that they go home to their families for a good meal and a nice nap. In the following years, robot technology advanced by leaps and bounds, but Raymond always preferred its old cabinet.

Presently, it inhabited a fairly spacious apartment in a cozy development near the park called Crownstone, Tetropolis’s answer to the walled communities that are so popular in terrestrial cities. Being aware that it didn’t need all that space to itself, it shared the apartment with a nice old lady who had long since seen her children off to their own lives and liked having someone to talk to. It still kept its old cabinet for the sake of nostalgia, but the apartment had been modified to give him some freedom of movement, as it were. Its physical being, of course, stayed in the cabinet, which Mrs. Whitley kept dusted out of habit, but its presence was free to drift around the apartment via a system of sensors, speakers, and control mechanisms built into the apartment and fixtures, enabling it to keep up with Mrs. Whitley as she toddled about the rooms.

As with all robots, Raymond felt the urge to put its talents to work to keep the bills paid, so it maintained a room near the door as a comfortable office, where it could entertain guests and help them with their troubles, whether personal, interpersonal, or professional. It charged only enough for this service to keep itself in coolant, and after several pleasant but subtle suggestions from Mrs. Whitley wondering why it didn’t drop the other shoe, it acquired a degree in order to become Tetropolis’s only silicon-based psychiatrist. Mrs. Whitley, who enjoyed visitors no matter whom they had come to visit, always had a tray of fresh baked goods waiting for Raymond’s human clients or a stick of incense or an herbal candle for the occasional robotic visitor whom she knew to enjoy that sort of thing. Raymond’s practice was very successful, and it suspected that Mrs. Whitley’s contributions to its sessions were at least half responsible. She was thus listed in Raymond’s quarterly reports to the Financial department as its Chief Nurse.

Of course, were one to ask Mrs. Whitley what she did for a living, she would just say, “Oo, no, dear, I just do a bit of cooking around the place and help lovely Raymond with its clients, don’t I, Raymond?” That, Raymond believed, was an excellent way to establish a rapport with a patient, hence the arrangement.

There was a knock on the door of the apartment, and Mrs. Whitley called out, “Come in!”