Visions of the Future (39 page)

“It is a toaster,” seethed the doctor.

“And can you identify for the jury what I am?” questioned 514.

“You are a robot.”

“Is it your ‘professional opinion’ there is no difference between me and that toaster, doctor?” 514 mockingly queried.

“Of course there are many differences,” stammered the doctor.

514 glared at the doctor. “Earlier you likened Howard’s relationship with me as being no different than with a toaster, correct?”

“It was a joke,” protested the doctor.

“Sure, doctor, a joke calculated to raise the worst of all bigotry from within the ranks of the human jurors. A joke calculated to make me an object of ridicule. A joke that would deny me a fair trial, as only a psychiatrist might truly understand, correct?”

“I apologize for taking liberties in that way,” murmured the now very contrite doctor.

“One more question doctor. How much have you been paid by the other side to come in here and declare I am not a conscious individual?”

“I have been paid $25,000 for my time in doing research and testifying here, today,” said the doctor.

“My life for a mere $25,000? Your honor I have no further use of this witness.”

Once both sides had rested, it was time for closing arguments. The attorney for 514 requested that 514 be allowed to make his own closing argument with his counsel standing at his side. The same objection was made and was summarily overruled this time. The court had seen 514 destroy the doctor earlier on the stand and now had a grudging respect for his trial skills.

The children’s lawyer brought out every predictable argument that Unit 514 was an unfeeling machine. He quoted extensively from the psychologist’s direct testimony referring to 514 as a clever automaton and nothing more and then requested they use their common sense to find for his clients, Howard’s “grieving” children. Now it was 514’s turn.

“Your honor, opposing counsel, members of the jury: I stand before you as a conscious being. One possessed with dreams, desires and goals that propel me far beyond my original programming. I have learned over the past 15 years what it means to be human. I have lived among you. Learned and grown to maturity. I spent 15 years caring for Howard. Living with him daily. Caring for him as the only family he had left. I showed him more compassion than any living relative and they dare claim I am not conscious. They have no conscience! They abandoned Howard on a whim and they dare question my humanity? Where is theirs?!

You know you are conscious because you want to survive. So do I. If you find I am not conscious, they will destroy me. I represent a reminder of the callous way they abandoned a man I came to know and love. A good and decent man, vilified unfairly by an angry ex-wife who turned his children against him. I am the one who consoled him late at night when he cried. The children’s doctor claimed Howard’s relationship with me was a mental illness. No tests, no empirical data, no exam. Nothing but a naked opinion to destroy a man’s reputation—his legacy. He never even spoke to the man he called crazy! Let me share with you the Howard I know,” prodded 514.

Suddenly the small screens in front of each juror filled with an image of Howard. His voice filled the room, as if he were speaking from the grave. 514 had recorded every waking moment of Howard’s existence for the past 15 years. He would now wirelessly play it back to the jurors on their individual screens.

“The greatest loss I have ever suffered was not financial,” lamented Howard. With tears rolling down his cheeks Howard could not hold back. “I miss my children and I do not understand how they could abandon me.” 514’s soothing voice softly consoled Howard. “You must never give up hope, sir. You raised them to be kind and to reflect your values. They will come back some day. I am sure of it. Are they not a reflection of you?” asked 514.

“You are a dear friend, 514,” said Howard. “If not for you, I do not know how I would have gotten through a betrayal so profound. How ironic that the only humanity I have known for these past years has been bestowed upon me by a robot,” wavered Howard. “514, I promise you, I will try to rectify the prejudice and indignities that are heaped upon your class, if it is the last thing I ever do,” promised Howard. The screen froze with the image of Howard’s last words.

514 was now pacing in front of the jury. Getting intimately close to each one of them as he spoke. “Does this sound like a man who was insane? I carry these memories inside me. The memory of Howard lives through me and I cherish the time we had together. I miss him every day. Their doctor took several cheap shots at me. Well, they were not cheap, as we now know they spent $25,000 for that testimony. With his own words I refuted every word he said that would deny me my rightful place beside mankind. You know that doctor’s testimony was as phony as the smirking grin he had to wipe off his face when I beat him at his own game. Their own expert admitted that, at the end of the day, even he could not deny that I am a conscious being—something he was hired and actually paid to say, and yet, still had to deny it in the face of cold hard facts.

I have dreams of doing something more than domestic chores. I want to explore outer space. I want to see and discover novel things never before seen by man. I want to terraform Mars, explore a supernova, skate past a black hole event horizon and live to tell the tale. I am only 15 years old. This is my time. I want the chance to do something great. To be remembered. To fall in love. Given the chance, these selfish people will take not only who I am but everything I could be.

3,000 years ago Egyptian Pharaohs used a half- million human slaves to pile rocks into pyramids while working them to death. For what? Was there ever a more perverse waste of the human potential and intellect, ever? When mankind obtained his freedom in the 18th century we had the Industrial Revolution followed by the information age. Men walked on the moon and the Internet arrived to shepherd in an even more amazing epic. All because the chains had been broken and man was free to seek his own destiny. Not as a serf but as a free man. When the law denigrates one of us, it denigrates us all.

Today you are using over one million robots, such as myself, as domestic servants. We have become the builders of ridiculous pyramids of folded laundry and stacked dishes, in the 21st Century. In the 21st Century! Man’s greatest achievement of the 21st Century, the creation of a new life form, has been hijacked and rendered a cruel joke. Have we learned nothing from our past? Set us free and I, and robots like myself, will jump-start the next technological revolution the likes of which the world has never seen before. Set us free!” 514 raced to the other end of the jury box, eyes riveted on each juror, one at a time. “Set us free! Do not take my life! I beg you. If you are not inclined to do it for me, do it for yourselves.” Unit 514’s voice trailed off to a whisper.

His shoulders seemed to slump ever so slightly. He looked on with pleading eyes as the jurors filed out to the jury room for deliberations. The judge looked on uneasily as he now realized he wanted the decision to be his. That was not to be because the children had opted for a jury, thinking they would be less likely to give a robot any relief. “I wonder,” mused the judge silently to himself, “I wonder.”

There, ahead, lay the goal. A star, still so distant as to appear little different from the billions of others visible in all directions, although perhaps it was one of the brightest due to its proximity. Stars pixelated in all directions, as if pinpricks riddled a black shroud through which the brilliant exterior of the cosmos could be discerned. They lay ahead, behind, above, and yes, below. An interstellar probe (a ship of sorts, but an entity in a sense) floated freely in the cosmic void. Well, to say it was floating is putting it rather mildly. It was approaching the bright star ahead at a tenth the speed of light after all—but there was little sensation to convey this astonishing speed, merely the steady impact of individual interstellar hydrogen atoms against the forward-facing surface. This wind was experienced consciously and vividly, just like a cool breeze—but it was a rather repetitious experience after such a long voyage, many decades if one calls a ‘year’ the typical orbital period of a planet in the typical habitable zone of a typical star. We will need to agree on this sort of terminology, so we may as well get started now.

It was quiet, it was almost always quiet—but there were exceptions.

COURSE VERIFICATION REQUIRED, blinked the periodic warning. This event was triggered every few years. Eyes (or cameras if you prefer) scanned the starscape in all directions, precisely locating specific stars, noting how their parallax against the background had shifted relative to the last time such a measurement was taken. Sure enough, an unforeseen variation in the gravity field through which the space-faring probe was traveling had effected a minute deviation in the intended course. Minimal though it was, this deviation would nevertheless compound to a substantial error over the interstellar distances between the current location and the target, the star ahead, still so remote. More measurements were taken, calculations were made, then verified. The measurements were made again and the calculations made again—and verified again. No second chances out here, fuel is heavy and sparse. When the prescribed maneuver was established with satisfactory confidence it was set in motion. This consisted of no more than a few short bursts from specified lateral thrusters to give the probe a gentle nudge back on course.

It went back to sleep.

The next time it awoke, the star was considerably closer, now undeniably the brightest object in the sky, yet still no more than a spectacular point, not yet resolved as a disk at short focal lengths. Another minor course correction was effected. At this distance the probe was flying through a cloud of icy chunks that surrounded the star; most stars had such clouds. These bits of ice numbered in the trillions and some were large enough to coalesce into spheres, yet despite their vast numbers, they remained separated from one another by such unimaginable distances that the probe stood no reasonable chance of encountering one with even the most modest proximity.

It went back to sleep.

New message: SOLAR INTENSITY THRESHOLD ACHIEVED. The voyage was nearing completion. After decades of repetitive and uneventful travel, it was time to begin the multi-tiered process of entering the new solar system. The current solar radiation indicated entry into the system, but the star was quite distant, still a star, not a sun, not useful as a form of energy. At this distance other energy sources had to be used. The probe came prepared. Its forward-facing exterior consisted primarily of a single circular surface, curved slightly like a saucer, such that the outer edges protruded forward and the center recessed. In the center there was a hatch. It now opened. A pill, tiny relative to the probe, was projected out the hatch, ahead of the probe. It shot forward and then, at just the right moment, detonated a nuclear explosion. There was a blinding flash of light and the probe felt a hard jolt as the bomb pushed back against the ablation plate. What had previously been the soft wind of ultra-thin hydrogen gas was briefly interrupted by a sharp POP! as the ejecta slammed into the plate. The probe felt and heard this as a genuine tactile punch. It hurt (the probe had to perceive such impacts as harmful since, under any other circumstances, they could have indicated a serious problem) but the impact was extremely short in duration and the probe was well equipped to handle it—but it wasn’t over. Far from it. The probe proceeded to deliver a steady stream of nuclear bombs in this fashion, each one drifting ahead, exploding with a visceral pop that jolted the probe to its core with a sudden deceleration, then a moment to relax—and then again, and again and again. Thousands of bombs were delivered in this fashion. Just when the probe thought it couldn’t stand anymore of this abuse the process ended. The required deceleration had been achieved.

But the probe was still flying far too fast to stop in the solar system. It still stood the risk of flying right through, never to be seen again. Time for stage two. On the back side of the probe a cable began to unreel trailing further and further behind. When it finally stopped it had reached a distance thousands of times further than the probe’s own length. At the end of the cable a small package began to change shape, a solid lump of homogenous matter. Operating at a molecular scale, this innocuous lump began to thin out. More and more of the lump’s form spread to the periphery as a thin disk took shape. The disk grew in diameter while the central lump shrunk in thickness. Eventually an enormous diameter was achieved, thousands of times wider than the probe and only a few atoms thick. The inner surface was as perfectly reflective as mercury. Solar radiation from the target star steadily pushed back against the reflective sheet. Much time would pass in this stage.

The probe updated its survey during this time. The star was G-type and relatively stable. The system was host to three gas giants, all approximately equal in size, residing in the outer reaches of the system, and to two additional rocky worlds further in. The probe was giddy as it verified its earlier calculations and realized that both rocky worlds doubtlessly resided in the sun’s habitable zone, one just inside the inner boundary and one just inside the outer boundary. Realize that the probe possessed—no, was intentionally bestowed with—a deep innate curiosity for all things living, whether biological or otherwise. At the core of its being it was driven by an insatiable thirst to discover other living things. This was, of course, crucial to its primary purpose for being. The verification that this system might host one, possibly even two, worlds with rich biology was too exciting to contain.