We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (4 page)
Read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Online
Authors: Dennis E. Taylor
I snapped back to consciousness. “That’s getting really old, Dr. Landers.”
“Sorry, Bob. But it is standard procedure to put replicants into standby when they are not actively involved in training. You feel like you are operating at normal human speed when you interact with me, but once you are left to your own thoughts, you’ll find you experience time at a much higher subjective rate. Eight hours can be an eternity. I’ve had replicants that seemed to be doing okay suddenly go psychotic overnight.”
The doctor looked down at his shoes for a moment. “In fact, we’ve lost one of your competitors in the last twenty-four hours. She went into a loop and could not be brought back. We restored from backup, but the backup went down at the same point. So, now there are four.”
I sighed and noted with mild satisfaction that the sigh sounded real. It was pretty obvious that I was being kept as busy as possible when active, and not being given any quiet time. Probably that was an attempt to avoid the insanity issue. I was ashamed to realize that I was more glad than sad about the other replicant.
One less competitor.
And I appreciated Dr. Landers’ honesty, but sooner or later I was going to have to deal with this whole existential crisis thing. And I still needed time to grieve for my family.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But presumably we’re all being treated the same, so the switching off thing doesn’t seem to be the answer. Instead, how about keeping me busy with intellectual activity? How about some study time? Maybe with access to whatever the internet has evolved into? I’d like to see what I’ve been missing for the last hundred-odd”—
[117]
.
I didn’t ask!
—“years.”
“Ah. Well, the internet does not exist anymore, at least not domestically. Far too anarchic, far too hard to control. And too many opportunities for sin, wrong thinking, and temptation. However, we have online libraries, and some of the history might even be relatively accurate. I will see if I can connect you up to one of the better ones.”
“Are there genealogy records? I might have relatives still alive. I’d be very interested—”
“As a matter of policy, Bob, we don’t encourage that. In any case, such information is not in the public record. Under FAITH, information is not freely available by default. Sorry.”
At that moment, I was happy that I had no face. This was the final blow, cutting me off from my former humanity. Not only was my immediate family dead, I would not be able to reconnect with
any
descendants. I was truly, completely alone.
Then the damned endocrine controls kicked in, and my funk turned into a mild sadness. Wow, if I ever got control of my hardware and software, that was the first thing that would go out the window. Grieving required grief, and I was being robbed of that.
I didn’t like being property. I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it at the moment, but if the situation changed, there would be some adjustments. Meanwhile, I would shut up, listen, learn, and be a good little robot. The important thing was to not give them any reason for concern. And to stay sane. And to win the competition.
But no pressure.
Sigh.
“Morning, Dr. Landers. Didn’t you just leave?”
“Good morning, Bob…”
Uh oh. That wasn’t Dr. Landers’ normal tone. I had been playing around with tuning my artificial senses, and I’d discovered that I could run Fourier Analysis on voices in close to real time. The doctor’s voice indicated high levels of tension.
A second man stepped into view. Dr. Landers gestured toward him. “Bob, this is Senior Minister Travis. He’s here to evaluate your progress.”
I understood the unspoken message. This guy could pull my plug. I would have to tread very carefully. I would also have to clamp down on my tendency to make wisecracks, as his appearance seemed purpose-designed for a comedy routine. He reminded me of the old saying, ‘Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.’ The man was the cliché of the old-time, bible-thumping, fire-breathing preacher: tall and thin, with cheekbones and teeth that seemed to protrude from his face. Even when he smiled, he glowered.
“Good morning, Minister Travis. I’m at your disposal.”
Wow, worst opening line, ever.
“Good morning, replicant. I’m here to evaluate fitness yours for a task which is the glory of the Lord on today and to a much extent lesser, the kingdom of our spiritual leaders, Thomas Händel III.”
I was taken aback for a moment at his accent and mangled vocabulary. Of course, this was a hundred years later, but Dr. Landers always sounded like anyone you might run into on the street. On the other hand, Landers had made it clear that dealing with replicants was his specialty. Perhaps that included speech training.
“All right, shoot,” I said.
Minister Travis turned to Dr. Landers in confusion.
Dr. Landers shrugged. “Oh, there a twenty-first century is colloquialism. It means to have all the questions you desire.”
Minister Travis nodded, and glanced back at me. “I imagine statement in the current idiom is not a high priority, since the intended use of subject.”
Crying out loud. What?
The current version of English was just too mangled to make sense of. Well, maybe there was a translator. After all, even in my time, we had Google Translate. I dove into the library, and within milliseconds, I found what I needed. I played the minister’s last statement through the routine.
‘I imagine instruction in current idiom isn’t a high priority, given its intended use.’
Oh boy. If I still had eyebrows, they would have risen right to my hairline.
He looked at me. Or maybe toward me. I got the feeling he was addressing a microphone rather than talking to someone. I routed all dialog through the translation routine.
“Did you go to church when you were alive?”
Can they tell when I lie? Dr. Landers never said anything about it. Well, I doubt I’d end up worse off being caught in a polite lie, rather than being honest about my opinion of religion.
“Occasionally, Minister Travis. Easter and Christmas, mostly. Without a family, there was no real pressure.”
“No children, then?”
“Not… no.”
Not that I know of. Hah! That would have gone over well. Moron.
“Not?”
“Not yet, Minister.”
And not likely, now.
Minister Travis nodded.
The conversation continued in that vein for several minutes. The questions were decidedly non-technical. The minister seemed to be primarily interested in my attitude toward religion in general. I was very careful to be respectful and non-confrontational, to come across as a team player, and to avoid any hint of my true feelings about theism in general.
Finally, Minister Travis seemed satisfied. He nodded to me, said goodbye to Dr. Landers, and left.
Dr. Landers withdrew a hankie and wiped his brow.
“Damn, doc. Was it that dangerous a situation? He didn’t seem belligerent.”
“There was no way to predict, Bob. He showed up unexpectedly, and I had no time to prepare you or research the minister to find out whose side he’s on.”
“Side? Uh, FAITH has sides?”
“Surely you don’t think our government is in complete agreement about everything?” Dr. Landers looked at me with a wry expression. “FAITH is riddled with factions and power-blocs. Maybe even more than most governments. I guess it goes with the territory.”
Dr. Landers pulled out the chair and sat down. “As it happens, Minister Travis is with the Ministry of Truth. They are financing this venture, so he would be considered friendly.”
“Truth? How does that connect to colonization?”
“The Ministry of Truth is concerned with
spreading
the truth, of course. Their reach is considerable—military, colonization, diplomacy…” He stared into space for a moment, obviously choosing his words. “But there are other ministries arrayed against us. There are factions that think all artificial intelligences, AMI and replicant alike, are abominations. There are those who think we should give up all technology from steam power on up. And they
all
think they have direct divine approval. Needless to say, debates are low on logic and high on rhetoric. Except when they’re even higher on assassinations and sabotage.”
Since I hadn’t actually asked for all of this detail, his outburst came as a surprise. I had a feeling this was a sore spot with him.
“Why do people put up with it? This sounds like a version of hell.”
The doctor sighed. “I am granted a lot of latitude when working with replicants, but if I were to repeat some of my statements outside of this building, I would be up for immediate re-education. That consists essentially of operant conditioning, reinforced by direct brain and nerve stimulation of the thalamus, amygdala, and vagus nerve. When the Ministry of Proper Thought is done with you, you will go into spasms from simply
thinking
an unacceptable thought.”
Dr. Landers stood up. “Sorry to be so negative, Bob. Ministry visits are traumatic at the best of times, and in this case, we’ve got a lot riding on you. And the other replicants.”
Huh. ‘A lot riding on us’ doesn’t go with ‘driving a garbage truck’. I wonder when he’ll spill the beans.
He picked up his tablet. “I’ve set up a simulation exercise for you today. We will cut off your real I/O and establish a number of virtual reality interfaces. I’ll also add access to one of those libraries I mentioned. You can exit the simulation any time it becomes too much for you, just by querying your GUPPI.”
The doctor poked at his tablet…
***
I found myself floating in nothingness. I immediately queried my GUPPI for available interfaces. GUPPI returned with a list of video/audio feeds, a reactor control interface, a traffic control interface, and an environmental control interface. I also found a library interface. I queried the meaning of GUPPI.
[General Unit Primary Peripheral Interface]
Lame.
The mission summary indicated that I was in control of a space station.
That
was interesting. I wondered if I was training for something space-based. I had a look around, using whatever feeds I had available. A quick check of the library indicated that the simulation was an accurate representation of real-life locations. The fact that FAITH even allowed actual space stations earned them some brownie points in my book.
The station seemed to service military and transport vessels. I couldn’t find any indication of the existence of
tourists.
Space tours and space hotels would have meant that interplanetary travel was a safe and routine experience, ripe for commercial ventures.
The library did reference a number of military and scientific stations, and even a colony or two on the moon and Mars. Well, better than nothing, but not hugely impressive for a hundred years of elapsed time.
I queried my location and duties. The scenario consisted of a space station in geosynchronous orbit, with me in charge of the power, traffic control, and environment. As an engineer, this was right up my alley.
I also had an Escape button, in case I needed to abort the scenario. It took me very little time to establish the requirements for my control duties. I determined boundary parameters for each and instructed GUPPI to interrupt me if anything fell outside of specs. I expected there would be lots of emergencies.
I then dove into the library in earnest.
“Dammit!”
Dr. Landers leaned back with a surprised expression. “Problem, Bob?”
“Sorry, doc. I was reading up on current electrical engineering standards. You yanked me in mid-paragraph.”
Dr. Landers looked down at his tablet and cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Bob, you’ve been in that simulation for two days subjective time. During that period, nothing went outside of specs, despite everything we threw at you. That’s very impressive. The logs from your GUPPI indicate that you’ve set up some interesting monitoring interfaces and scripts. Our software people are jumping around in excitement. Several of them have asked to keep a copy of you.”
“Is that possible?”
“Technically, of course it is. We back you up every night. Just a matter of doing a restore, assuming we had a matrix of our own big enough to hold you.” The doctor blew out a breath and shrugged. “Unfortunately, FAITH owns you, as they are financing this project. So we don’t have a lot of leeway.”
“On that subject, when are you going to tell me what I’m being groomed for?”
Dr. Landers cocked his head. “What
one of you
is being groomed for. There’s still one other candidate.”
“Wait, we lost two more? When?”
“One was due to a psychotic break a few days ago, and the other was determined by Minister Travis to be unsuitable.”
“Oh. What happened to him?”
“Purged. No reason to save it, once the Ministry said
no
.”
Wow. Even Dr. Landers is pretty matter-of-fact about this. They just
killed
someone.
I couldn’t afford to let my feelings show, though. At least some of the evaluations were going to be subjective, and I didn’t want to alienate anyone.
“So, the final goal of this whole exercise…”
“Soon, Bob. Right now, I’d like to talk to you about your previous life. You handled two days subjective in a simulation with no human contact at all and were irritated when I pulled you out. Silly question, perhaps, but would you consider yourself a loner?”
I chuckled. “Let me tell you a little story. There was a movie out a number of years ago called
Castaway
.”
[133 years ago]
.
Chrissake, GUPPI. Shut it.
“Heard of it?”
Dr. Landers shook his head. “It is part of my job to study and understand your era, but I can’t watch every single movie ever produced.”
“And so many stinkers, too. Really, if you’re up on
Star Wars
and
Star Trek
, you’re golden. Anyway, back to
Castaway
… Cliff Notes version, a guy gets shipwrecked on a desert island for four years. I watched the video with a girlfriend. Afterward, she described it as a nightmare. I was surprised, because I’d been thinking of it as a fantasy. Four years of no interruptions. Of course, it would have been more enjoyable with something to read.” I waved my waldo in what I hoped was a human gesture. “Point is, that’s when I really realized that I don’t think like most people. I’m fine with solitude. In fact, I get antsy when I’m around people for too long a period without respite.”
The doctor took a deep breath, put his tablet down, and leaned back in his chair. He looked pensive for a few moments, then leaned forward on his elbows. “Okay, Bob. That’s about what I thought, but it’s nice to have confirmation. So, here’s the bottom line. Do you know what a Von Neumann probe is?”
“Yes, of course. It’s an automated interstellar probe that builds copies of itself as it visits systems.” There was a moment of silence as my brain caught up with the conversation.
Oh…
“Wait, are you saying—?”
“That is correct. We are preparing one of you to be the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe.”
***
I watched through several video feeds as the small roamers reassembled a 3D printer that I’d been required to diagnose and repair. Roamers, it turned out, came in various sizes, from a huge monster spider eight feet across, through the medium-sized units that I had access to, right down to something the side of a gnat. Below that size, nanites were available, but they were single-purpose devices with very limited flexibility.
At the moment, I was working on coordinated activities using several different sizes of roamers. The 3D printer was only one of many challenges I’d been given.
The roamers required minimal supervision once the tasks and dependencies had been laid out. The trick was to figure out the proper level of detail in the instructions—to avoid errors from giving too much leeway without micromanaging them to a standstill.
Without my kibitzing they could do any job up to ten times as fast, so I tried to lay out the plan and then stay out of the way. Once I figured out how to define conditions under which the roamers would interrupt me, even active supervision became optional.
While they worked, my mind wandered. Once Dr. Landers had spilled the beans, he had made some of the project documents available to me. I hadn’t been this impatient since the day I signed the papers for the sale to Terasoft. Every second had dragged on that day, and every millisecond dragged now. I wanted today’s training to be
over
so I could concentrate on studying and reading. The doctor’s little robot was going to be enthusiastically cooperative from now on.
Oh my God, this is like every nerd’s dream job. I could be going to the stars!
