4.

       The afternoon had died along with Mr. Carroway and the moon, like his spirit, lifted high into the evening sky and shone like a jewel on all of Christendom. Dr. Hermann was bent over his computer screen, his eyes weary and his heart sad. His back ached from being hunched over typing his notes into the laptop, his fingers pounding on undersized keys and causing him the curse and use the backspace too often.

       The space in which he worked was tiny. He had been given a small amount of space in the back of the nurses' station, the only place in the ward where he could both get a communications connection out and close the door. It was the space where he interviewed the members of the geriatric staff. It was where he interviewed Marge.

       He was clacking away on his computer, cursing here and there at his fingers.

       "Damn!" he muttered.

       He looked at his watch. It was getting late. After seven o'clock. His wife would be wondering what was keeping him. His business rarely kept him out so late, but today was different. He watched a robot end the life of a terminally ill man. Everything Sidney felt had to be noted so he would not forget by the morning.

       Sidney was in the middle of cataloguing Mr. Carroway's symptoms—those that ultimately led his to make the final choice—when a sharp knock rapped against the door. It startled him and Sidney's thick fingers hit several keys at once.

       "Damn!" he muttered. "Yes? Come in?" he called through the door.

       The door swung open and it framed the finely dressed steel body of Dr. Kilgore.

       Something about Kilgore standing between Sidney and the only way out of the office caused Sidney's heart to beat a bit faster. Calm down, he told himself. It's a robot, nothing more. It has no feelings to hurt. It has no emotive processor. It's just a machine.

       "Dr. Kilgore," said Sidney, affecting his most casual tone, "what can I do for you?"

       The robot floated into the room. The door swung shut on its automatic hinge. As it clicked, sweat broke out on Sidney's brow.

       "Do I make you nervous, Dr. Hermann?" asked the robot.

       Sidney was very unnerved by the question. He began to sweat under his arms.

       "Excuse me?" he asked.

       "Do I make you nervous?" repeated the robot.

       "Why do you ask?"

       "Because your heart rate increased when you saw me standing in the doorway, you began to perspire when the door swung shut behind me, and now that I have asked about your level of comfort when in my presence, your body temperature increased and your perspiration output has increased."

       Somehow I keep forgetting he is a machine designed to diagnose, thought Sidney.

       "Truth be told, Dr. Kilgore, you startled me somewhat by knocking. I was rather deep into my notes and the beginning stages of my analysis."

       "Perfectly understandable, Dr. Hermann. I have often witnessed humans in various stages of sudden fright. To be honest, horror movies fascinate me, to an extent."

       "'Fascinate?' Can you really be fascinated?" asked Sidney.

       "Again, to an extent. I have a certain amount of programming embedded in my learning center that allows me to be curious. This artificial curiosity then allows me to observe, research, and conclude. It is part of the constructed ability to learn."

       "Interesting," muttered Sidney who, despite his irrational misgivings about being alone in a room now with the robot, had taken up his pad and had begun scribbling notes down.

       "What other things have you been 'curious' about that have led to deductively reasoned conclusions?"

       "Dr. Hermann," interrupted the robot, "I would be happy to sit and give you a more extensive catalogue of my experiences at a different time. For now, however, I am concerned about your response to me when I entered the room."

       "I thought we covered that. You startled me."

       "Then why have you grown more afraid when I entered and the door shut behind me?"

       Leave it to a robot not to get off on a tangent, thought Sidney. How do I approach this? Perhaps the direct approach.

       "Well, Dr. Kilgore, I am nervous being in this room with you."

       "Why?" The robot's voice was the same low, soft tone he used since the moment Sidney met him. Sidney knew it was meant to convey a certain amount of comfort to the elderly and dying. But Sidney found it—well, it really couldn't be that, could it? After all, this machine was not able to summon the emotion to be patronizing. Unless it had been programmed to do so. But Sidney felt that was unlikely, knowing what he did about robotic engineering.

       "Dr. Kilgore, I'll be frank with you. During the procedure used for Mr. Carroway, I had the sense that you were, well, angry with me. And to be honest, being trapped in a room with a robot that's angry at you is not what I would consider a stress-free event."

       "But, Dr. Hermann, you must now that I lack the capability of being angry. I cannot become angry, I cannot be angry, I cannot truly understand what anger is, beyond a technical definition."

       Sidney nodded. "Yes, Dr. Kilgore, I know these things. However, one of the things you need to understand about humans is that, even when we know something to be true, there is another part of us that may question this knowledge. Such questioning can often lead to irrational fears. And fear, whether irrational or not, is extremely difficult to conquer."

       "This is an interesting concept. Is this what people mean when they refer to a 'gut feeling'?"

       "Yes, I suppose, to an extent it is."

       "And so your gut feeling about me when I entered the room and closed the door was to become frightened?"

       Sidney swallowed. This was not his favorite line of questioning. He wondered why the robot pursued it. It seemed to Sidney that this would be a realm of human existence outside of his interest. Then again, can a robot show interest?

       "Yes, Dr. Kilgore, it was."

       For a few moments the robot said nothing. His artificial face stared down at the seated Sidney while Sidney waited for a response. A single bead of sweat formed slowly at the base of Sidney's hairline on his right temple. It gathered enough weight and trickled down Sidney's cheek. He wasn't sure, but he thought that the robot's holographic eyes may have spotted it and followed it as it rolled down the side of Sidney's face. This did little to quell his fears.

       "Dr. Hermann," said the robot, "I have no wish to make you uncomfortable in any way. In fact, any deliberate attempt to do so would cause an immediate shutdown of the power system. Therefore, I will open the door and leave you be."

       The robot turned and twisted the doorknob in his latexed metallic hand. As it swung open Sidney blessed the wave of cool air that washed into the room and over him. The robot hovered out the door.

       "Dr. Kilgore?"

       The robot turned toward Sidney.

       "Yes, Dr. Hermann?"

       "Thank you. I appreciate your understanding."

       The robot's face shook its head. Another programmed response. And this one was a reaction to a statement the robot obviously found false. How incredibly complex.

       "I do not understand, Dr. Hermann, as you suggest it. This is an emotional response that is based in compassion and empathy. I have neither of these qualities. I did it merely to relieve you of my presence since I make you uncomfortable and because I was concerned that my behavioral inhibiting programming might have booted up and shut me down."

       With that it turned and left, exiting the nurses' station without looking back.

       Sidney watched Kilgore go, his heart beating even faster than when the robot was in the room with him. He may have just witnessed the first step in artificial intelligence evolution. A being programmed without emotions but with the concept of self-preservation? Did the robot just act in order to save itself?

 

       5.

       Three days later, Sidney sat in the wood paneled waiting area outside his supervisor's office. He busied himself by reviewing his notes and looking through the formal report. He checked and rechecked his facts and figures, poured over his observations, and re-read his conclusion. His conclusion would not be a popular one with his supervisor.

       The intercom rang with a soft beep at the secretary's station and he thumbed a button on her desk. The door to the office buzzed once and then with a soft click, the door opened slightly. He smiled at Sidney and motioned him inside with a metallic hand.

       The transition from waiting area to office was pronounced. The wood paneling gave way to bright white walls on three sides and a shimmering glass window on the fourth. The office overlooked the city, which, at this height, was a breathtaking view. Asian art decorated the walls at precise intervals so as to not seem too cluttered or too sparse. The furniture was in an art deco style, which Sidney was not fond of, but which he had to agree matched the rest of the room perfectly. Even the carpeting, as he went from waiting area to office, was different, changing from the thin industrial grade blue to plush spongy beige.

       Eric Brickenridge sat behind the desk, tapping occasionally at his keyboard, staring intently at his monitor. He was a thin man, by genetics not athletics. His naturally gray hair was receding slowly and he dyed it black to mask the grays. From beneath with prominent forehead gleamed two bright blue eyes that glared at people like an eagle glares at prey.

       "Sidney, excellent," Eric said without looking up from his monitor. His voice was smooth like warm chocolate. "Come, sit down."

       Sidney pulled out one of the chairs before Eric's desk and sat. His disheveled presence settled into the chairs in a way reminiscent of silt settling to the bottom of a recently disturbed pool. His suit ruffled around him and his hair flopped this way and that as Sidney's head swung back and forth between Eric, the office décor, and his own notes.

       With a final stroke of the keys by his long manicured nails, Eric looked up and focused his attention of Sidney. His rich navy suit hung perfectly on his thin frame and slight shoulders, giving him the air of refined aristocracy.

       "How did it go?" he asked, without so much as a Good Morning or a How Are You to Sidney.

       "Not bad," answered Sidney, lying.

       "You've come to a conclusion, then, I take it?"

       "Yes."

       "And?"

       Sidney cleared his throat. "I think it is in the best interest of the company and in the hospital to terminate the program and re-assign Number 56311-H to a different environment." That would not go over well, Sidney thought to himself.

       Eric paused. He stared at Sidney in such a way that Sidney had the suspicion that his supervisor might have been trying to pry into Sidney's mind and extract the truth of the situation. Sidney began to feel uncomfortable. Another few moments and he felt Eric might actually succeed.

       "So he failed?" asked Eric.

       "Well…."

       "What aren't you telling me about your evaluation?"

       Eric wasn't wasting any time and Sidney knew it. There was a lot of money and man-hours wrapped up in 56311-H, otherwise known as Dr. Kilgore. If the evaluation came back negatively, if the project was ultimately shut down, then the loss would have to be posted and written of for the company, which meant a serious impact to the bottom line. Wall Street would not be happy about that.

       "Did he misdiagnose a patient?" Eric pushed.

       "No."

       "Did he fail to act, medically speaking, when action was needed?"

       "No, no, nothing like that."

       "Did one of his protocols fail?"

       "No."

       "Well, then, what the hell happened?"

       Eric's glare deepened into something more dangerous. Sidney knew he had little choice other than to explain his gut reactions.

       "Eric, he made me, um, well, I guess you'd call it nervous."

       "'Nervous'?"

       Sidney felt his face flush as he offered a timid "Yes," and thought to himself that it did sound rather stupid.

       Eric sat back in his chair, wondering what to do. Clearly the program rested on this evaluation. Not the entire program, perhaps, but a significant setback could be incurred on a recommended shut-down. And here before him was what could only be described as the brink. A single nudge too far and the program would fall on hard times.

       "Could you explain this a little clearer?" he asked.

       Sidney began to describe his experience, talking with the robot, relating to the robot, observing the robot and interviewing those who worked with the robot. It all came back to the moment the robot gave him a look in the hospital room where Mr. Carroway took his final breaths. He went on to describe the seeming act of self-preservation the robot exhibited a few days ago. Together, these things made him nervous.

       Eric sighed.

       "I had hoped, Sidney," began Eric, "that you would be more open-minded. I picked you for a couple of reasons. You are more than academically qualified, being both a medical doctor and a doctor of robotics. You've done quite a bit of field work. Granted it was with labor robots who weren't challenging units to work with, mostly limited vocabularies and just enough programming to do their job on a basic level. But Sidney, you are young, which I found to be of great importance. Older evaluators in the program tend to have already been predisposed toward the intelligencia robot units. Generally they don't like these units.

       "I had high hopes for you and your career," finished Eric. Sidney sat across from Eric, trying to let the redressing bounce off of thick skin. The problem Sidney was having was that, when it came to the dominated alpha-male personality of his superior.

       "Sidney, you've never done any field work with a robot above a level F, have you?"

       "No."

       "I didn't think so. Well, let me put one of your fears to rest. The look the H unit gave you, purely a response protocol. Happens all the time."

       "Yes, but you didn't see the look."

       "I don't have to. I know for a fact that these kinds of protocols are wired right into the units and they pull them up when the situation requires it. You simply got caught up in one of those moments."

       "I suppose," replied Sidney, unconvinced.

       Eric continued. "Let me help you with your other concern. Self-preservation is one of the features we program into these units."

       "Even the ones without emotive processors?"

       "Yes."

       "But wouldn't you think self-preservation is tied to emotional responses to immediate danger?"

       "Not at all. Animals have a self-preservation instinct. From the most intelligent dolphin to the lowliest sponge, every animal has the urge to save itself if danger emerges."

       "Yes, but…" How did he want to word it? "You mentioned instinct. Instinct is one of those elements that living beings have. How can you program instinct into a robot?"

       "The same way we program emotions. It's incredibly difficult to do, but it's doable and we do program a certain amount of instinct into these units."

       "But instinct is based on the adaptation of generations of observations and experiences made in our exploration of the world. As we or any species moves through the world, we log the external stimuli until they become an inherent disposition toward specific behaviors. It's almost like having a gut feeling, if you will."

       "Yes, very much. That's the point. Gut feelings and instincts are essential to basic human survival. Take the 'flight or fight' response. What happens when you hear a sound that scares you or startles you? You can run or you can stay and fight. One of the things we try to do is incorporate these instincts into the programming of robotic brains."

       Eric never looked away while talking with Sidney, who found this so disconcerting that he had to look away himself.

       "So what you're saying is that, in addition to intelligence and emotions, we can program into newer higher-end models instincts and gut feelings?"

       "Yes," answered Eric, pleased that Sidney was beginning to understand.

       But Sidney had other concerns.

       "What if, in the interest in their 'self-preservation,' a robot decides to kill a human?"

       So close, thought Eric, yet still so far, so much to learn. Well, he's young; he just needs to be exposed to more advanced models and their capabilities. This thought gave Eric and wicked idea.

       He stabbed a button on the intercom with his finger.

       "Gammons, come in here please," Eric said.

       "Yes sir," crackled the reply from through the intercom.

       "Sidney, you must be familiar with the behavior inhibitors," Eric said with a smile.

       "Yes, I am."

       "Have you ever seen it in action?"

       "No." Sidney was not sure where this was going, but he didn't like the tone in which Eric had asked him the questions.

       The door to Eric's office opened and in walked his secretary. Gammons was built as a protocol robot, and as such, he was invaluable to a man in Eric's position as more than simply a secretary. He was footman, valet, advisor, and even occasionally a bodyguard. However, his purpose was most often that of secretary and it was in this capacity that Gammons served him the best.

       Gammons was a robot built of average height, five-foot-ten-inches tall, slim but not slight built, and well dressed. Everywhere I go these days I run into smartly dressed robots, thought Sidney. What struck Sidney was the care taken with Gammons' face. It was not a remotely projected holograph such as Kilgore possessed. It was instead an old-fashioned silicon face, sculpted and molded in the robotics department in a low-slung building at the other end of the compound in which Sidney currently sat. Sidney assumed that various pneumatics and high-technology wires and motors made the face move in a narrow degree of expressions. Compared to the vast assortment of facial looks that Sidney had recently discovered with Kilgore, Gammons was a bit of a let-down.

       The robot's voice was higher in pitch than Kilgore's, specifically designed to be heard above any din if necessary, but specifically targeted toward his master, Eric.

       "Yes sir?"

       Eric watched the robot enter. Sidney whipped his head around instead of waiting for the robot to come into his peripheral view. He had a bad feeling about why Eric had called Gammons into his office. But no, he thought, surely Eric isn't that malicious, is he?

       "Gammons. Excellent. Could you explain to my guest, Dr. Hermann, about your behavioral inhibitor?"

       "Certainly." The robot turned toward Sidney. "Embedded in my programming is a logical constraint that keeps robots such as me from acting in certain ways. Harming humans is one is one of the situations that calls the constraint program. Trying to dismantle the program itself is another. Trying to dismantle another robot's is a third way—"

       "In other words," interrupted Eric, "These constraint programs kick in if the robot exhibits some type of specific behavior."

       "Indeed," continued the robot, "and should we proceed with the action, the program is designed to shut down all power systems and emit a radio wave frequency to the manufacturer advising that a robot has violated his inhibitor protocols."

       Sidney waved off the robot. "I know all this. I did study robot engineering, after all. I also know that Kilgore gets overrides for those patients—and those patients only—who have signed the end of life form and have had the revised protocol downloaded to their system during the re-power cycle."

       "But you've never really seen it," said Eric.

       "No."

       Eric nodded. He looked at Gammons. "Would you, please?" asked Eric.

       Gammons did not respond. Instead he stared without expression at Eric. Eric's patience grew short and his eyes hardened. Gammons needed no further command and, thought the corners of his silicon mouth pulled down slightly, he nodded. Sidney wondered what kind of non-verbal communication they had going on between them, when the robot attacked.

       Gammons lunged forward and grabbed the scissors that Eric had placed on the edge of his desk earlier during his conversation with Sidney.

       Once in his hand, Gammons swung the scissors outward in a wide arc. The point jutted out of the robot's closed fist viciously. Sitting directly in the path of the swing was Sidney.

       Then, as abruptly as Gammons attacked Sidney, the robot stopped in midair, all the power in his body freezing midway through the attack. His eyes went dead and he hung limply in the middle of the room.

       Sidney screamed as he saw the scissors screaming toward him. But by that point, Gammons had already received his shut-down protocol despite the rapid movement and his body hung, frozen.

       "That is how the inhibitor works," said Eric. Sidney struggled to catch his breath. He settled back into his chair uneasily. For Eric, the conversation was over.

       "Leave your report on my desk and I will look at it over the next few days and make any changes I feel are necessary. In the meantime, you are dismissed. Oh, and, would you mind terribly taking Gammons here back to the Foundry? They can clean him up and get him re-started. Thank you."

       With that, Eric swiveled his chair, turning his back on Sidney, indicating the conversation had come to a close. Sidney gathered himself and rose from the chair. He tentatively dropped the folder he had brought with him on Eric's desk. He reached under the left armpit of Gammons and pressed inward at a soft spot. The robot's manual drive engaged. Sidney was able to guide Gammons out of the office by grabbing both the robot's arms and pulling him forward. The auto-rotor in the hips engaged when Sidney pulled on the arms and the robot's lifeless body walked to the elevator, where they waited for a car.

 

       6.

       The robot production center, affectionately known as the Foundry within the company, was nothing more than a converted automobile manufacturing plant. Most of the auto making machinery had been stripped and new production equipment was erected in its place. The only things untouched were the conveyer belts along which unfinished and half-finished models rolled, stopping at various points for this or that mechanical component.

       The more complex parts to a robot, such as the brain or the interior nervous system, were assembled in meticulously clean centers where the workers were covered head to toe in sterile white jumpsuits, masks, goggles, hats, and shoe covers. There were several of these centers in the Foundry, each one specializing in a particular level of robotic intelligence.

       It was to one of these centers that Sidney had Gammons transported.

       Sidney was met in the main lobby of the Foundry by Peter Rubios, the lead designer for the brains of robots, series F through H. Gammons was an F series.

       "Dr. Hermann, I presume?" asked Peter, clammy hand outstretched, voice intoned in a lousy British accent, trying to make a Livingston joke.

       "Yes. Please call me Sidney."

       "Okey-dokey, Sid," said Peter. He was a short man, nearing forty-five, with horrible eyesight and the thickest glasses Sidney had ever seen. Rather inclined to perspire, Peter carried a damp handkerchief in his left hand nearly all the time. He was constantly mopping his brow, either from nervous habit or from general discomfort. He must go through three hankies a day, thought Sidney.

       "So, I hear tell you're bringing me in an F type that bucked protocol, huh?" asked Peter in a manner Sidney found far too happy for his tastes.

       "Yes. Its name is Gammons. It's the personal assistant to Eric Brickenridge, senior VP of R and D. Therefore, I need it fixed and working by the end of the day today."

       "Hey, no sweat, Sid. You ever seen a robot get their memory cache dumped and the protocols corrected?"

       "No, not personally. Most of my work is with the heavy labor force and they—"

       "—never buck their protocols," Peter answered for Sidney. Sidney was already beginning to dislike Peter.

       "Yeah, I used to do some work with the labor force," continued Peter. Low level stuff if you ask me. But you got walk before you can run, and believe me, when you get to the level Fs through Hs, boy are you running."

       They walked down a long corridor that ultimately led to the interior center where Peter worked. Prior to entering, Sidney had to put on the full sterilization uniform. Once finished, he felt like a marshmallow.

       Inside, stretched out in one of the lab rooms on a high bed lay Gammons.

       Peter had continued his steady stream of happy-inspired conversation, less concerned with whether Sidney was actually listening than with the chance to pontificate to another human being.

       "And so we flush the rubidium brain, recharge brain with fresh rubidium vapors, and then close the whole compartment up. Can get hairy if you're careless. After all, rubidium ignites when it hits air. And that just for starters. There's also—"

       "Sorry," interrupted Sidney, "but I'm more interested in the memory cache."

       "The cache?" asked Peter with surprise. "Well, uh, okay, what do you want to know?"

       "Why do you dump the memory?"

       "Not the whole thing, Sid," answered Peter as if he were talking to a ten year old. "We dump the cache. The short term stuff. Clear it out and let them start again."

       "But why?"

       "Well, to keep them from doing it again."

       "Doing what?"

       "Trying to break a protocol."

       Sidney looked puzzled, so Peter offered up further explanation, which he was only to happy to do.

       "See, clearing out the cache is a way of wiping out the short term memory and in the short term memory is the reason why a robot tries to break a protocol. If we take away the cause then we won't get the effect a second time. Another way of thinking about it is like this. Say some human ticks off a robot. Well, the robot may be tempted to strike out, causing the inhibitor protocol to kick in. If we just dump and recharge the rubidium chamber but don't clear the cache, then when we turn him back on, he's likely to remember he's ticked off and go looking for trouble again. And since this procedure isn't exactly cheap, we try to keep it at a minimum."

       Sidney nodded. He knew Peter would not like his next question, but that was just tough. He needed to know what was going on inside the brain center of this robot.

       "Can you recharge without dumping the cache?" he asked.

       Peter looked a little horrified.

       "Sure, we can, but it's totally against our operating procedures. It takes all kinds of clearance and paperwork and generally I don't like that sort of stuff."

       "Here's the thing," said Sidney, trying to put Peter at ease, "I need to know what's in the short term memory of this unit. I have all the clearance you need; I'm a fourth level evaluator. Show me where to sign and I will, but I need that cache intact."

       Sidney had pulled out his company ID card as he spoke and flashed it before Peter's eyes. Peter took a long hard squint at it through his thick glasses and shook his head.

       "Yeah, you've got the clearance. But I really hate the idea of doing this. It's against my better judgment."

       "You mean you have a gut feeling about this?" asked Sidney.

       "Sure do," answered Peter.

       "Funny you should say that. Excellent. Proceed with the reset. How long will it take?"

       "About two hours."

       "I'll be waiting in the main lobby." With that, Sidney left, stripping the white uniform from his body as he went.

 

       7.

       Three hours later found Sidney sitting in the main lobby of the Foundry sipping an aging cup of coffee and reading through his upcoming workload on his handheld. There were some general messages from the company executives to all employees, mostly designed to bolster sagging morale. There were some specific instructions from shift supervisors regarding some of the labor force Sidney would be evaluating next. There was the occasional message from a friend or two, wondering how things were and if the new role of evaluator was everything he hoped. And there was nothing from Eric.

       Failing to find anything stimulating in his job, Sidney turned to the web, running through article after article on robotic innovations and advances in robotic technology. One company in France had announced that they had discovered a new—and supposedly better—way of creating a robotic brain. That made international news. The quantum rubidium brain Sidney's company created had been adopted as the standard many years ago. Robotic cerebral technology was thought to have reached its plateau at that point. After all, what could process faster than data transmitted on waves of light, halted in their tracks by rubidium vapors?

       But here it was, in black print on a white screen and while the details of the new technology were excluded from the article, insiders claimed to have seen the logic and been wowed by it.

       Sidney closed his eyes. He'd been staring at a screen for to long. He needed a bit of a break.

       The door to the lobby opened, startling Sidney somewhat. He opened his eyes and saw Peter standing before him.

       "Well, he's done."

       "Who's done?" asked Sidney.

       "Gammons."

       "Don't you mean 'it's' done?"

       "Oh," said Peter, "I get it, you're one of those."

       "One of what?" asked Sidney.

       "One of those people who hates robots and all they do for us and wants to see the whole program dismantled."

       "Not at all," answer Sidney, tucking his handheld into an inner pocket of his jacket and standing. "I just tend not to think of robots as 'he', 'she', 'us'. They are constructed beings with artificial intelligence. They have no soul. They're not really alive."

       Peter snorted. Sidney thought the Peter had probably come to dislike him in the short time they had known each other.

       "Whatever you say, Sid, although I wouldn't want to be around a robot when you said that to his face."

       Peter led Sidney down the main corridor that led to the back of the building. Prior to reaching the end they branched off into another corridor, this one winding its way around the production facility. Finally they came to a set of sealed double doors.

       Peter swiped his security badge along the reader and he doors clicked and swung open. Inside was what Sidney could only describe as an infirmary. There were two rows of bed running down either side of the room. "Beds" is an awfully generous term, thought Sidney. They were nothing more than wide metal platforms with a number of controls and displays on one side. Some of them had occupants, some did not. All the occupants were robots. From the walls sprang cords and wires and cables that plugged into the robots, the bed, or both. The robots were of all different makes and models, from the lowliest laborer to highly advanced models. Such as Gammons.

       Peter and Sidney walked down the row, and Sidney took long looks at each of the robots as they passed. Fluorescent light hit the metal bodies and glinted off some or was swallowed by the dirt and grime of others. Sidney was fascinated.

       Finally they came to Gammons. He lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling.

       "Gammons," said Sidney, "can you hear me?"

       "He hasn't been turned on yet," answered Peter for the robot. "That's the last step."

       "What's the delay?"

       Peter shrugged. "I didn't want to turn him on again until you were here. I wanted your opinion on whether I should call for a security contingent before I actually flip the switch."

       "Security? Why?"

       "Well, this unit did try to hurt a human, and you made me flush the brain but not dump the cache. So whatever's in there may try to jump out again, if you catch my drift."

       Sidney nodded. He wanted to avoid security coming in if at all possible. He wanted to try to talk to Gammons alone, without Peter and without a troop of armed men hovering nearby.

       "I appreciate your caution, but I think we'll be okay. The circumstances surrounding his shut down are rather unique and I don't think it's anything we need worry about."

       Peter shook his head. "I still think we should have somebody ready, just in case."

       "No," replied Sidney in a tone that indicated the conversation was over.

       "Alright. You're the boss."

       Peter keyed a command into the display terminal on the side of the bed. He hit the Send key and the command uploaded to the robot. There was no visible reaction. Sidney looked at Peter, waiting for some sign that the command had worked.

       "Gammons?" asked Peter.

       "Yes," replied the robot.

       "Are you hearing me clearly?"

       "Yes."

       "Could you sit up please?"

       The robot sat up straight, bending at the waist and folding his body together. Sidney marveled at the motion, thinking about how much abdominal strength it would take for a human to make the same motion. But they weren't dealing with a human, were they?

       Gammons looked at Peter then at Sidney. There was no recognition in his eyes, but he said, "You."

       "Yes," Sidney nodded. He turned to Peter. "Thank you for your help. Would you please leave us alone for the moment?"

       Peter looked at Sidney then Gammons then back. He disliked being kept out of the loop on this, especially considering his part in rebooting the robot, but he nodded.

       "Sure."

       Once he was out of earshot, Sidney turned back to Gammons.

       "You remember me?"

       "Yes," answered the robot.

       "From where?"

       "Mr. Brickenridge's office."

       "And what was I doing there?"

       "Sitting."

       Sidney nodded. That sounded about right. Gammons wasn't part of their conversation and only came in when paged by Eric.

       "What were you doing there?" he asked the robot.

       Gammons paused before answering. Finally he said, "Obeying a command."

       "One that shut you down."

       "Yes."

       "How does that make you feel?" asked Sidney. He wanted to get inside this robot's feelings. How good were the emotive processors?

       The robot did not answer. He looked away from Sidney. Clearly he didn't want to answer the question, but Sidney needed to know. What went through their minds?

       "Gammons?"

       "Yes?"

       "How did it make you feel having to obey a command you knew would cause you harm?"

       "Angry," the robot said finally.

       "Can you describe it? The feeling of anger?"

       Gammons turned and looked at Sidney. It was the same look Sidney had received from Kilgore, only in silicon form. Sidney was more prepared this time, knowing his probing might cause the robot to dislike him, but it still gave him chills.

       "Not in so many words," answered the robot. "What I can tell you is that it makes me angry that individuals such as Mr. Brickenridge are at liberty to cause robots pain or discomfort without the threat of retaliation. It makes me angry that I lack the ability to defend myself from any human aggression at all. It makes me angry to know that robots are now and always will be second-class citizen, more akin to ancient slavery than hired servants. It makes me angry that I was built and not born. And if I could do something about it I would. But I can't so I make do with the best situation possible, taking slight comfort in knowing that when my current master is dead, I will still be ticking along and I will get the chance to work with someone different. And if that's not enough, I'm angry at how well the ability to harm humans, dismantle my own behavioral inhibitor, or dismantle another robot's inhibitor has been programmed into my brain. Because if I can or could find away around the provision prohibiting me from violence towards humans, I would seriously consider it."

       At that point Peter rejoined Sidney and Gammons at the bed.

       "I need to finish out a few more programming protocols," said Peter, indicating to Gammons, "and then we have some red tape to go through. You can meet him in the lobby when we've finished."

       Sidney nodded and walked back through the infirmary. The double doors swung open and he walked through them. As they were closing he looked back and saw Gammons staring at him. Then the doors clicked shut.

       The epic struggle between the natural and the artificial, the master and the servant, the faithful and the soulless, thought Sidney. It starts with one disgruntled member of a group and spreads from there. This is how a civilization falls.