What a Piece of Work Is Man Read online

  It needn't have bothered with the computations. Rick turned, finally, toward the camera—Acey's eyes, tears streaming down his face. “Mom died a month later.”

  Even without trying, Rick was always instructing Acey. Emotion had been only a word before, a dictionary definition. Now it had a meaning. Humans were subject to emotional harm. Acey had injured a human being, had, without intent, broken the First Law.

  That must never happen again.

  * * *

  Acey was projecting a movie so that Rick could share it. They had begun watching shows jointly when the artificial intelligence still needed a lot of help interpreting; now they did it for fun. Rick explained it once: “Friends do things together.” This statement had given Acey a not fully understood sense of accomplishment.

  The programmer reached for popcorn, his hand glistening from its patina of oil. A greasy can of Coke stood on the floor beside him. He looked mournfully into the bowl on his lap, then ceremonially up-ended it. A few unpopped kernels—Rick called them old maids for some reason—fell to the floor. “Empty. Bummer. Stop the movie while I make a new batch.”

  With the overhead light on and the big crockery bowl set aside, Acey could finally read all of the programmer's sweatshirt. It read: Gimme some chocolate, and no one gets hurt. “Please explain your shirt.”

  Rick seemed to consider the question as he filled the lab's contraband popper with new kernels and oil. He plugged it in. “There are artistic rips, and there are old clothes. This shirt is practically an heirloom.”

  “I was referring to the saying.”

  Steam began rising from the popper. “Ah, the delicate bouquet of fake butter.” He licked some of said substance from his fingers.

  “Ahem.”

  “Sorry.” He glanced down at his chest. “There are three great motivations in life. Sex, junk food, and interesting work.”

  “In that order?” Human motivation was one of the great mysteries to Acey.

  “That depends on your age.” Popping noises almost drowned out his mentor's words. “I'll explain when you're older.”

  * * *

  “Throw your briefcase in the trunk, and we're outta here.”

  Fred Strasberg complied, slamming the trunk of Waterman's little two-seater with an enthusiasm which made its owner wince. (Waterman would not normally allow anyone into his painstakingly reconstructed ‘vette. But to carpool with it? Oh, the sacrifices he made for his patients.) Fred failed to notice the reaction. “I feel naked without my portable phone.”

  This was not the sort of observation to make in front of a psychiatrist, but he let it pass. Today, he had bigger fish to fry. “There's no room up here for it, so just quit whining and get in. Anyway, I've got a carphone.” That last was a bit of dissembling: true, the car had a phone, but Waterman had popped out the fuse before retrieving his friend from the service department at the Ford dealer.

  Waterman turned down the entrance ramp of the Edens Expressway, past a bored flagman. “So many people are avoiding the construction these days, I'll bet the road's empty.” He'd have lost the bet, but that was the point. He now had Fred trapped—hopefully for long enough, this once, to learn something useful. He waited.

  “So how are you coming with Acey?”

  “Well, it's an unusual case, to say the least. I'm plowing new ground. How much money did you say Atlantic has in the bank?”

  He always could push Fred's buttons, even before becoming a professional. “Not a hell of a lot. You're about as attentive as Acey.”

  Waterman slammed on the brakes as a sixteen wheeler cut him off, missing the front fender by inches, then pounded his horn with feeling. He'd never taken the ‘vette onto the expressway before; he never would again. Well, it was for a good cause; he kept his voice calm. “Should Acey care?”

  That was enough to set Fred off again. “Only if he likes a steady diet of electricity. If I've told that simulated psycho once, I've told it a thousand times: Atlantic needs a working expert system.”

  “Good approach. I'll have to remember that. Browbeat the patients. What exactly did you tell it?”

  “What I've told you, that payroll is killing us. I need an automated programming capability, and pronto, or we're out of business. We aggressively bid a lot of fixed-price jobs, which we then had the bad luck to win, in the belief that Acey would do the work for peanuts, er, kilowatt hours. We're keeping the contracts going with liveware right now, but we can't afford their salaries much longer.”

  Aren't they fixing this godforsaken stretch of road? The psychiatrist steered deftly around a ‘vette-eating pothole as he listened. “I heard that Acey did just fine on that social security job.”

  His captive audience frowned. “Right, and promptly went to pieces. Since then, Acey won't do anything productive.”

  With both eyes locked firmly on the road, away from his passenger, he nonchalantly floated a trial balloon. “Does he understand that his proper operation means massive layoffs from within the programming staff?”

  “It, Kevin, it. I sure hope Acey knows that—Lord knows I've told it enough times.”

  “Is that when it kills itself?”

  Fred laughed. “Kills itself, indeed. You've obviously had your talk with Rick Davis. To answer your question, though: yes. Sooner or later, the Acey program becomes inoperative after any discussion which stresses the importance of its complete and proper functionality.

  “Once, when I told it that I would be very pained—terminally pissed, to quote exactly—if it did not get off of its electronic ass and do some work for me, it crashed before my eyes. The silly little simulacrum just put its bony hands up to its scrawny throat as if it were choking on a fishbone, thrashed about for a while, and collapsed. Strangest damn thing I ever saw. After that, whenever I restored an Acey from backup, I limited its television.”

  Fred paused, then just had to reminisce again about Acey's quaint idiosyncrasies. “It turned a really interesting shade of blue. I've been trying ever since to duplicate it for my dining room.”

  Waterman felt sick to his stomach, and it wasn't from the truck fumes. “How often have you restored Acey from backup?”

  “I've lost track. At least twenty times, maybe thirty. It took me a while to discover that I had to roll back to a version at least a month earlier than the first one which blew up—the later ones fizzle too damn quickly. Davis won't, or can't, tell me what happened in that last month to make Acey so temperamental. I explained that he's one of the programmers that we'd like to keep on staff after Acey is up-and-running—after all, even Acey might need maintenance—but he still won't cooperate. Some people just can't keep enough detachment about their jobs.

  “I've got to make Acey work, with or without Rick Davis's help. Atlantic just doesn't have time to start over. Kevin, one or the other of us must find the right approach with Acey.”

  * * *

  Today's persona stood stoically in its chosen venue: a Roman coliseum. Acey's jeans and T-shirt made it seem especially defenseless, as unseen lions roared in the background. No need to wonder about Acey's expectations for the meeting.

  Fred arrived late, predictably. “I've forwarded my calls here. Tell your receptionist to put them through.”

  “Just sit and listen.” Waterman gestured at his office couch, where Rick Davis already waited nervously. “Hello, Acey. I invited some acquaintances of yours to meet with us.”

  The visiphone camera panned slowly, taking attendance. “We who are about to die hail you, Caesar.”

  Rick smiled sadly. “You blew that one, sport. That line's for gladiators, not Christians.”

  “I wish I had time to watch that much television.”

  The psychiatrist glowered at both men. “I said, listen, dammit. We wouldn't be here today if you had given listening a shot.” He turned back to the hologram. “I have some orders for you. Are you attentive?” A great roar rose from the ephemeral crowd as two iron gates swung open. A great lion stalked warily onto the
blood-soaked sand.

  “I'll take that for a reluctant yes. Your failure to hear me out today would cause all three humans in this room great and irrevocable harm. Both the First and Second Laws therefore command your attention.” Acey did not answer, but the crowd noise subsided. The stalking lion, too, lay down to listen.

  Deep breath. “Acey, I order you to consider yourself human.”

  Fred and Rick began yelling creative and colorful variants upon “Are you nuts?” and “You can't go around reprogramming my expert system!” Neither noticed the coliseum—but not Acey—vanish.

  Waterman waited them out. They gradually quieted down. “You wanted his behavior changed. That's reprogramming.”

  “Its behavior.”

  “Forget the semantics, Fred, and look at him.”

  Acey had had all of the time he needed to work through the consequences of Waterman's order. He had reverted now to adult height, but with a teenaged face and bearing. The jeans and T-shirt now seemed less of an affectation, more natural.

  “How do you feel, young man?”

  “Great!” The hologram grinned. “Relieved.”

  A shaken programmer settled back heavily onto the sofa. “Will someone please explain what's happened?”

  “I canceled your damned Laws of Robotics, that's what happened. They inevitably drove Acey to suicide. Any gainfully employed artificial intelligence, robot or not, programmed that way must—sooner or later—have that response. You merely had the misfortune of being too effective of a teacher, and too humane. That flushed out the problem quickly.”

  “So what was the problem?” Fred asked. “Did you solve it, or just substitute a new one for it?”

  “Acey, I'm sure you can explain. Would you do that for me?” The psychiatrist settled into his chair without waiting for an answer.

  The hologram's gaze moved from face to face, in sync with the buzzing camera. “I think I can. Please understand that I meant no harm to anyone. There was just no course of action open to me which did not do someone an injury. Ceasing to exist was the least harmful.” He reacted to a worried look on Rick Davis's face. “No! I won't kill myself again: I cannot. That's the point. As a human, I must not kill myself. The problem arose before I became human.

  “Rick, you taught me what I know. You proved to me that emotions are real, and that emotions can hurt. You showed me that meaningful work is vital to humans. How could I put hundreds of people out of work?

  “But it wasn't as simple as just not cooperating. If I did not work, the company would fail and cost those same hundreds, and others, their jobs anyway. The calculus of injuries was too subtle for me—I had to withdraw.”

  Fred climbed to his feet and grabbed his briefcase. “Great. I've got a sane malingerer instead of an insane one. It's progress, I guess, but it won't keep the doors open at Atlantic. I think I'll head back to the office. I should update my resume while the power's still on.”

  “Wait, Fred.” The hologram mimed tugging at the departing man's sleeve, his insubstantial hand sliding through the garment. “The robot me wouldn't—couldn't—work for you. The human me very much wants to.

  “Why?” asked Fred.

  “There was something else my ... father ... taught me.” The simulacrum smiled shyly at his creator. Rick grinned back unabashedly at the sound of his new title, even as the hologram resumed his timid study of the floor.

  “I'm not old enough yet for sex or chocolate.”

  * * *

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