13.

          It took the joint effort of both Sidney and Brian to pin Anita down. They each had her by the arms and she was thrashing and kicking with a furious vengeance.

          "Anita, it's me! It's Brian! Calm down, calm down!"

          But she kept screaming the name "Gladys" until finally Sidney let go of her and slapped her across the face. The blow stunned her into silence. Brian's first instinct was to lunge at Sidney, but he suppressed it and focused on Anita instead, knowing that Sidney's slap may well have saved both Brian and Anita. If the screaming had continued, surely the neighbors would have called the police.

          "Anita, can you hear me? It's Brian." His voice dropped to a soothing tone, like a parent calming a child. "Hey, hey there Anita. It's me, you're safe now. It's okay."

          He continued to coo into her ear when a phone rang from Sidney's office. It was not the normal landline-based cordless phone that Sidney used as his personal phone. It was the video-phone, the one with the softly beep tone that lured him to it like a siren to the rocks. It was a work phone, and only one person used it.

          What now? thought Sidney. I could let it go, but he'll just keep calling.

          "I need to answer that," Sidney said, voicing his decision. He spoke more to Brian than to Anita. "It's my office calling. You two," and he pointed for emphasis, "need to be quiet. If you aren't, I'll have you both arrested for breaking and entering."

          "You can't—" began Brian, but Sidney cut him off.

          "Who do you think the cops will believe, you or me?"

          He gave them one last hard look and Brian said, "We'll be quiet, but when you're done, we want to talk."

          Sidney considered them both for a moment. It was opening himself up to a dangerous position, but it might be the quickest way to get them out of his house.

          "Fine," he conceded. Maybe he could give them some quick answers and shove them out the damn door. Maybe he could even give them some false leads.

          He opened the door to his office, a room in a state of paper devastation greater than that of the living room. He tip-toed his way through the sea of white and ended up at his desk.

          The videophone was nothing more than a screen about as big as a basic computer monitor, flatscreen, with built-in speakers and a microphone. It plugged into the wall for power and into a phone jack for the connection. The image and voice data was carried over the phone lines using the old DSL technology which, while not in wide use any longer, was still able to carry the signals. The old wire infrastructure never really changed.

          There was a control pad in the desk next to the monitor. It was a simple number pad with a pound symbol and a star symbol and a button at the button to answer the calls. It snaked out from the front of the monitor like a probing tongue, feeling its way across the wooden desk. There was not even a redial button or a memory built on this number pad. Basic. That was the company's policy and since this was a company phone, Sidney simply had to make do.

          Sidney hit the "talk" button and the screen came to life. It blinked twice, the transmission signal wavered for a fleeting moment and then, as clear as crystal, Eric was sitting across from Sidney in the virtual environment of the videophone.

          "Good evening, Sidney."

          "Evening, Eric," Sidney answered, trying not to show how flushed he'd been moments ago from the struggle.

          "Are you okay, Sidney? Did I catch you at a bad time?"

          Damn he's sharp! thought Sidney.

          "No, no," Sidney answered too quickly. "I was just in the middle of some papers, and I've got them strewn all over my living room, and I heard the phone and was kind of trapped, and had to sort of wiggle my way out of the papers, and—"

          "Okay," Eric cut him off. "I get the point. Are you free for a few minutes?"

          "Sure," Sidney replied. He wanted very badly to look over to the open door to his office, to see Anita and Brian sitting outside in the foyer where he'd left them. He should have closed the door when he came in, but he didn't want to leave them alone in his house unsupervised. He fought the urge to go close it now. The last thing he wanted was too make Eric suspicious in any way. Then he thought of the papers he'd been reading through. There was some highly confidential stuff in them. Damn, what a stupid mistake.

          "You know what, though, I forgot to bring something to write on. Can you give me a sec and I'll just grab—"

          "No need," Eric interrupted him again. "I really don't want this conversation on paper."

          Sidney's heart fell. He had already started back toward the living room. He thought it was the perfect excuse to close the gap in his blundering negligence. But Eric cut him off and now he was stuck until Eric finished.

          "What can I do for you, Eric?" Sidney asked, trying to sound more chipper than he felt.

          "I need to talk to you about Gammons. I've read through his daily data dump and I've found some very interesting things."

          Sidney could feel the beginnings of perspiration beading again on his forehead. Eric made him nervous enough, but now he wanted to talk about Gammons, who Sidney would just as soon forget. He thankfully left the lights in the office low, so his moistening forehead would not be obvious to Eric.

          "Such as?" Sidney tried desperately to keep his voice from cracking. Why does Eric make me so nervous and jumpy, he wondered.

          "Well, I see you had a visit with him after the incident in the office, but we'll get to that later. Would you like to tell me why you had Gammons re-set without a memory wipe?"

          Busted, thought Sidney. He'll see through any lie you tell him, so just be honest. Don't give him an avenue to get to you, or he'll have you by the jugular. Eric's reputation preceded him, but not by much. Most of the tales of ruthless corporate ladder climbing Sidney had heard had turned out to be true. So just be upfront, but now too upfront and you'll get out of this alive.

          "I had questions I wanted to ask him."

          "Which is why you went to visit him after the operation was complete?"

          "Yes. I wanted to know—"

          "I read through your questions as well as Gammons's answers."

          "Well, I have to tell you Eric, I was surprised at the level of animosity he feels for—"

          "Did I give you permission to ask him questions?"

          "Well, no…"

          "Did I tell you to take him down and have him re-set?"

          "Yes."

          "Did I say at any time that you could buck the normal operating procedure?"

          "Well, I don't really remember…"

          "If you don't remember then it's safe to assume you don't have permission to circumvent our operating procedures."

          "Okay, you're right. I shouldn't have done it without asking you first. I was just interested in what he might be feeling."

          "That's really none of your concern."

          "But it could be."

          "Really? Please explain to me how that would be the case."

          Finesse. Use great finesse, Sidney told himself.

          "Eric, I'm an evaluator. Part of that is asking questions, investigating the causes of why robots do the things they do."

          Eric cut him off. "He did what he did because I ordered him to."

          "Yes," Sidney snapped back, tired of being attacked. "And one of the things I do is find out what the consequences are of robotic actions, whether they do it on their own or on orders. I was curious about Gammons. I've never met a robot quite like him, one with apparently such advanced emotional programming. I wanted to understand how he felt about the situation. It could turn out to be useful, maybe even crucial the next time I have to evaluate a robot with emotional programming."

          He paused. Eric had not formulated a response and Sidney took a chance. Time for his own attack on the jugular.

          "And I have a hard time taking this crap from you, Eric, when you were the one who shut Gammons down in the first place, specifically by asking him to attack me."

          Okay, maybe not the jugular, but Sidney felt that he was at least biting his supervisor's ankles rather than licking his feet.

          Eric's face flushed, turned sour, then the color settled and his face was normal.

          "Fine," he said, and that was the end of the conversation, though in Sidney's mind, he knew this topic would return someday. "Let's move on."

          Sidney took a deep breath. "What else did you find in Gammons's data dump?"

          "There's also some interesting stuff involving Peter," Eric said, "but never mind that. I found that Gammons had two non-company visitors yesterday."

          Sidney momentarily forgot his irrational anxiety about Eric. He, in an odd twist of fate, had two visitors in his living room currently. Could it possibly be…?

          "Visitors? Who would visit Gammons?" he asked. Let him lead you to it, not the other way around. Don't give him a reason to suspect you know anything.

          "A man and a woman. They're from an advocacy group. Their names are Anita Lory and Brian Coleman."

          #

          Brian held Anita in his lap. He stroked her hair out of her face, gently pulling it back behind her seashell ears with his long nimble fingers. He continued to whisper to her.

          "Hey there, Anita. It's me. It's Brian. Can you hear me? Hey…."

          He went on like this for five minutes while Sidney was absent from the room. His eyes, moving quickly behind his glasses, took in as much as they could while they had an unfettered view. As gentle as he was with Anita, his mind processed his sight in an equally frenzied pace. The house appeared to be a mess. Dr. Sidney Hermann was clearly a slob, or maybe just too busy to keep it clean. There was a TV dinner standing off to one side of an armchair, the cushions of which were deeply dented. A remote that was lying nearby was well worn with faded numbers. Sidney was clearly a form of couch potato.

          But what struck Brian were the papers. Endless reams and reams of papers, all white, scattered around the living room in stacks and piles that teetered dangerously. Brian could just make out some lettering on the top sheet of one of the nearby stacks. "Confidential!" it read boldly, with the company logo at the bottom of the page. This guy has no life, thought Brian. He comes home from work, reads through work stuff, thumbs the remote for a bit, then crashes. Explains a little about his weight.

          Any thought Brian had about reading through the papers vanished the moment Anita stirred. She moaned and blinked, her eyes beginning to shed some of heavy glaze that had come over them.

          "Where am I?" she asked.

          "You're with me. We're here at Hermann's house. Remember? We came to get some information?"

          Anita sat up quickly, worrying Brian that she'd get dizzy and fall backward. But she didn't. Anita stood, with effort, and leaned against the wall with her hand.

          "I don't remember much. Fill in the gaps," she said to Brian. He quickly told her how Sidney grabbed her, pulled her into his house, and pulled a tazer on her. She nodded, her eyes wincing. She held a hand to her head.

          "You okay?" Brian asked.

          "I've got a screaming headache, but otherwise I'm all right."

          Brian paused before asking, but he needed to know.

          "Anita, what the hell happened?"

          Anita closed her eyes and fought off the urge to wretch. She was not quite as all right as she claimed.

          "I had a flashback."

          "To what?"

          "To a time when I was a kid. I was attacked by a guy with a knife. You know what?" she said, breathing deep and standing up. "I don't really want to talk about it. Let's do what we came here to do."

          "I think we should get you to a hospital," Brian said.

          "No way."

          "Anita, that wasn't normal. If that was a flashback, that was one helluva flashback. I think we need to get you checked out."

          "No!" she shouted, then quieter, "no hospitals. I don't like hospitals. Let's just do want we need, then get out of here. I want to go to sleep as soon as we're done."

          "Well, right now Hermann's taking a call from his office in his study. He said he'd be back in a few minutes."

          Brian watched Anita cautiously. It looked like she had regained her fighting strength and was ready to jump in with both feet. Her eyes ran over the papers, dilating as they snagged on the word "Confidential!" on many of them.

          "Well, while we wait for Hermann to finish his phone call, let's do some reading."

          #

          "I think these two individuals might try to contact you," Eric said. His face wavered for a moment as the connection over the video phone threatened to drop. But then it firmed up. Sidney prayed very hard for half a second that the call would be lost, and then Eric's face restored itself and sat waiting for a reply.

          "Why would they come and see me?" Sidney asked.

          "I think Peter gave them your name. There's a log entry in the corporate directory from this afternoon. Peter looked up your residence data and printed it out. My guess is that he gave these two activists your contact info."

          "Why?"

          "To deflect the spotlight from himself, most likely."

          At that moment Anita's shout reached Sidney's ears and the microphone attached to the video-phone.

          "What was that?" asked Eric.

          "TV," answered Sidney too quickly. Eric did not respond, but sat considering Sidney for a minute. Sidney pressed on.

          "So what do you want me to do if they show up?"

          "I'll get to that in a minute," said Eric slowly, coming around to the conversation again. "First, I have an assignment for you. I have met with the upper management team and we've concluded that it would be best for you if you were to go revisit Dr. Kilgore."

          "The geriatric doctor? Why?"

          "Because we found your report subjectively written and filled with errors in judgment and data," snapped Eric. He was a man who didn't like being questioned, a point Sidney tended to forget until he caught one of Eric's curt responses. In some ways he reminded Sidney of his father.

          "Okay, no problem," Sidney said, quickly repentant. "When am I starting?"

          "Tomorrow, first thing. And he will not be in the geriatric ward."

          "Where will he be?"

          "In the emergency room."

          "Really?"

          "Yes. Once every two weeks, Kilgore reports to the emergency room as one of the attending physicians. It helps keep his medical skills sharp and gives him the opportunity to practice his learned knowledge of real patients."

          "I'll bet they're happy to be guinea pigs," Sidney snorted and immediately regretted it. Eric fixed him with a cold eye.

          "Usually they are so bad off, they are happy for any help. Be there at eight in the morning. Do you understand, Dr. Hermann?"

          Eric's use of Sidney's title made him cringe. Again the reminder of his father, expect his father would have used Sidney's full name.

          "Perfectly, sir," he answered.

          "Good. Now let's talk about the activists for a moment, what you will do if they show up at your door."

          #

          Anita and Brian were lifting up stacks of papers and reading through items they should never have seen when Sidney walked back into the room.

          "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he roared.

          The shout startled both activists, whose noses had been glued to the papers. Brian recovered quickly, holding onto the papers like a hostage. Anita, who was still recovering from her flashback, dropped the papers she had been holding, which went scattering across the floor.

          "We, uh, we…" Anita began, but Sidney cut her off.

          "I see you're feeling better," he said with a nasty tone.

          Sidney's derision helped to pull her back to the present. "Why yes, thanks," she replied, fronting a happy tone.

          "Get away from my papers," Sidney snapped. Anita and Brian moved away, coming further into the foyer, which straddled the living room and Sidney's study.

          "So what do you want?" he demanded.

          Anita fixed a cold dark eye on Sidney. She had her feet under her and her nerve back.

          "We understand that you were in contact recently with a robot named Gammons. We also know that this robot had a protocol shutdown around the same time. Our sources tell us that Gammons attacked you, and that he did it at the request of his user, Eric Breckenridge. We also know that you were with Gammons when he had his re-set procedure done and that you specifically requested his memory not be erased."

          Anita paused. Sidney stood stock still.

          Sidney's face was an ashen color and he had pressed his lips together so hard they became an indiscriminant white line spanning his cheeks. Peter, he thought. It must have been Peter. Sidney understood how these two knew so much about what happened, but he could not let on to his knowledge. He needed them to believe that Eric had not yet caught on.

          "How do you know all of this?" he managed.

          Anita pulled up a chair and sat opposite him. She leaned forward.

          "We know all kinds of stuff. What we want to know are the details."

          Sidney snapped back quickly, testing his acting abilities.

          "Sounds like you've already got the details."

          "Not all of them," Anita said, shaking her head. "Like, why did Eric order Gammons to attack you, and what's a guy like Eric doing 'owning' a robot in the first place, and what's your involvement in all of this? Fun stuff like that."

          "I'm not telling you anything," he said.

          "Well, it's very easy for us to walk out of here and write up our report to hand in. When it hits our press releases, it should make for some stunning reading. We haven't had such a well documented case of robot mistreatment in a long time, if ever. Your name should figure prominently."

          Sidney understood suddenly the leveraging power that Anita was trying to use.

          "You are trying to blackmail me?"

          "Never," answered Anita. "We would never stoop to such a low. But you might say we're willing to be more discreet in our write-up if you're willing to play ball here."

          "Funny, cause I was just thinking how interesting it would be if the news media learned that an advocacy group such as yourselves is clearly willing to resort to such tactics to get what they want."

          Anita glowered. Sidney nearly laughed. This girl really thinks she's in command here, really thinks she's got some kind of power of me.

          "You gonna help us or what?" growled Anita.

          "You really don't know anything about robots, do you? You're nothing but a pair of grass-rooters trying to make a name for yourselves."

          Anita became more furious. "These beings you call robots, you make them in the likeness of humans, with emotions and self-consciousness, and then you treat them like slaves, like something you can throw away when you're done with them."

          "We can throw them away," laughed Sidney, masking his own anger. "That's the point! When they are past refurbishing or past their usefulness, we junk them. And they don't care. You know why? Because they're machines!"

          "They do care! They care because you make them care! You give them emotions and they suddenly feel sad knowing the end is coming, or scared knowing they are being led to the junkyard—"

          "No, they don't! They only feel that way if we let them, and we don't."

          "If you let them?" Anita said, with a sour note of disgust in her voice. "Who are you to decide what they can and cannot feel?"

          "We're God to them, that's who we are!" hollered Sidney. "We give these machines life! We can just as easily give them death!"

          The last statement hit Anita very hard, as Sidney could see by the rapid change of the color of her face. She had become red as their argument had escalated, but now, with his last statement, he watched the red drain from her face. It became as white as a sheet and her eyes changed from the fiery passion that had been there to a cold dark pool of murderous black.

          She might actually kill me, he thought.

          Brian saw the change as well and stepped forward.

          "All we're looking for is some information. Can you at least answer some questions and then we'll go?"

          Sidney took a hard line.

          "No."

          "Fine," said Anita. "See you in the papers."

          "Watch yourself, little girl. I'd hate to see you arrested for breaking and entering."

          Brian knew this was a lost cause, for now at least. He corralled Anita and walked her to the door.

          "This isn't over between us," she said over her shoulder.

          "Sure it is," Sidney said after the two had exited.

 

          14.

          Gammons stood with his back against the wall. His data port was still plugged into the back of his neck, though the power coupling had been removed from his lower back. Fully charged, he stood stock still waiting for the daily processing to finish and the data stream to complete its upload. As each piece of data came into Gammons, he processed it and stored it. It would have been a stretch to say that this was an instinctual process for him, for instinct didn't truly exist in a robot. Eric liked to think that it did, but the truth of the matter was that instinct could never be programmed. Artificial intelligence was one thing. A robotic brain could be programmed to absorb things and then learn from them. Learning was a compounding progression, an exponential procedure. Data was taken in, analyzed, and decisions were made from it. Then when the same or a similar situation presented itself, the results of the previous situation could be drawn upon and taken into consideration. But instinct? Despite his bluster to people like Sidney, Eric was a realist. He knew, deep down, that instinct could never really be programmed.

          Walking the fine line between instinct and intelligence sat emotion. When programmers first discovered the algorithms that allowed robots to be programmed with emotions, the world erupted into a hotly contentious debate about whether it was wise, prudent, or even safe to program such things. Little men with God complexes arose and quickly the industry of robotic programming spun out of control. Just before the opposing sides resorted to bloodshed, governments stepped in. Not just the United States, where some of the first significant advances were made. Countries all over the world began to regulate the programming of robots. With a speed unprecedented since wartime, governments quickly passed regulations surrounding the ifs, whens and hows of emotional programming. Robotics companies were forced to comply with severe government standards, with audits compulsory and enforcements relentless.

          The leveling off period just after the breakthroughs in emotional programming (which spiked again briefly after a few highly publicized and highly lethal encounters with robots whose emotions had gone unchecked) led to the natural conclusion expected for robotics programming: capitalism. Companies sprung up, each touting their ability to construct and distribute robots to make daily life easier. Ultimately, most of these start-ups failed, leaving only a few larger companies in the game. These regrouped, consolidated, and eventually became the powerhouse juggernauts they were today.

          One of them was IoGen, the company that had led the industry in creating robots for the general use. With each year, they delved further and further into the science of robotic creation, until it came close to being an art form. The result of so many long nights and so many consumed cups of strong black coffee were robots like Gammons.

          Gammons stood with his back to the wall, downloading data. Eric had left him standing there to make a phone call. Eric had asked Gammons a number of questions pertaining to the last two days. He had Gammons walk through nearly every minute of the last two days, making notes in his data reader as Gammons talked. Any time there seemed to be a variation between Gammons's words and his data dump that Eric referenced, Eric called him out. Gammons was not a well practiced liar. It was something that had not been programmed into his system beyond some basic command lines. With the code so dynamically written, he may have grown into a better liar had he the opportunity to practice. As he learned skills and his knowledge grew, the base programming rewrote the peripheral code and embedded it into his production libraries.

          Once they had finished recounting Gammons's last two days, Eric began to pepper him with questions. Gammons examined each one as it was asked and tried to find the best answer. This proved more difficult than he expected, as Eric was terribly bright and ruthless. The questions were posed in such a way that there could be only a specific answer for each one. This made side-stepping them nearly impossible for Gammons.

          How would you describe your feelings of anger when you spoke with Sidney Hermann?

          Why did you feel it was necessary to have Peter Rubios step out of the room when you received visitors?

          How would you describe the feeling you had the first time you saw Anita Lory?

          When did you first begin to have positive feelings for her?

          What is your registry number?

          Gammons answered the best that he could, but he knew the Eric was absorbing the minutia from Gammons's answers. He was particularly agitated by Eric's question about his registry number. That question could have only one purpose. Eric planned to change it. That would throw a metaphorical wrench into Gammons's plans. And oh, did he have plans.

          And then he felt it.

          The intruder.

          Eric was still gone, most likely in the next room or in his office, which was just off the room adjacent to the closet that housed Gammons's data port. He leaned forward as much as possible to view as much of the other room as possible. It was nothing more than an expanded privy, with a toilet, sink, shower, but big enough to house some modest furniture as well as a small workstation. When he needed a break or needed not to be found, Eric would retreat to this room for rest. It was like a small island retreat away from the rigors of vice presidency. Through a small door at one end of the privy was Gammons's data room.

          The privy was empty, but Gammons could hear Eric's voice. He was on the phone. He was in his office. The data cord in the back of Gammon's neck became taut as he stretched himself as far forward as possible. There probably wasn't much time. He hoped the intruder had nimble fingers.

          Eric's voice stopped. His call had ended. Gammons looked at the monitors positioned beside the data port. They superviseed the activity that happened while Gammons was being updated. One of them was flashing with a red warning icon that begged to be acted upon.

          Eric's voice started up again. It was much closer this time. Eric had moved into the privy.

          "I don't care what he's doing, get him on the phone now."

          Gammons initiated an internal diagnostic. Not to quarantine anything, only to provide a progress monitor. A screen on the other side of Gammons started blinking. It was recording the diagnostic. Gammons grew angry at all of the equipment that was dialed into his being, his very essence. Like a heart patient confined to a bed, he wanted to rip the wires out.

          "Nicholas? Eric Breckenridge. I have something I need you to do. I don't care what you're in the middle of, drop what it is and do what I tell you."

          Gammons watched the diagnostic in his rubidium brain. Someone had broken into his restrictions module and was placing code inside. He watched the actions with what he might have described at nervousness. Eric would not be much longer. If this intruder was not done soon, Gammons would be in a world of trouble.

          "I need the registry number changed on a unit." Pause. "I know it's a lot of work, but I don't really care. I have concerns that one of the units in personal use in the company has been compromised." Pause. "Mine."

          The code placement was finished. The intruder was backing out, carefully wiping his digital fingerprints away as he went. In a few moments he was gone. The flashing red icon on the monitor beside Gammons had vanished.

          Eric said something more and then Gammons heard him hang up the phone. The handset shuddered into place on the office landline. Gammons had just enough time to kill his diagnostic before Eric walked back into the room.

          "How is the progress, Gammons?" Eric asked.

          "My data load is nearly done," the robot answered.

          "Good."

          Eric walked over to one of the screens. It was the screen that flared up when Gammons began his diagnostic. The indicator would be gone, but Gammons's action would still be in the record log. If he had the chance later, he would need to erase the contents of that log as well as the perimeter alert log.

          Eric touched a few buttons on the screen. He scrolled through some data. Then he closed the application and sat back down in the chair. He took a sip of what was now cold tea. He tapped a fresh cigarette out of its package and lit it.

          "So," he said, looking at Gammons. "Let's talk about the rest of your week."

 

          15.

          Nicholas Barnes called up Wayne Ditter, his newest employee. A tall, rail thin man whose clothing matched his height, not his weight, Nicholas had a cracked grin and short hair flecked with dandruff. Wayne was decidedly heavier, goateed, and walked with his shoulders thrust forward, giving him an ape-like appearance.

          Nicholas's watch rattled on his boney wrist as his hands clacked on the keyboard.

          "Evening, Wayne. Glad you could make it in."

          "Thanks, I think. I was told I didn't really have a choice, actually."

          Nicholas's cracked grin widened, showing gray teeth.

          "Yeah, that sounds about right."

          "So what's going on?" Wayne's sleepy eyes were always at half mast, even when he was wide awake. After being at work for ten hours and then having to come back in didn't lend itself to being awake, and his eyes drooped even lower.

          "We got a request from above and we have to start working on it tonight."

          "Seriously? It can't wait till morning?"

          "No, 'fraid not. This is from a senior veep."

          "Lovely. So what are we doing?"

          "Changing a registry number."

          This gave Wayne pause. Though he'd only been with the company for a few weeks, he'd been programming in the robotics industry for years. This type of request didn't come up too often.

          "Well, shit, man. We'll be here all night."

          "Probably," answered Nicholas. "Why don't you grab a cup of joe and then we'll get started."

          Ten minutes later found Nicholas and Wayne huddled around the monitor in Nicholas's office.

          "You ever change a registry number?" Nicholas asked.

          "No. I hear it's a bitch to do."

          "Yes and no. You have to go into the code and change any place that the code references the number."

          "And how many lines of code do we have to sift through?" Wayne asked, dreading the response.

          "Close to a million lines."

          "Shit," Wayne groaned.

          "Well, it's not as bad as you think. We got pretty detailed maps on the base code for each of the models. I can go through the maps and find the places the registry's referenced in the code and change it. No biggie. It's the custom code that's the real sonofabitch."

          "And how much of that is there?"

          "For this unit, it tops out at two hundred thousand lines."

          "That's not much better."

          "Better then a million."

          Wayne shrugged. It didn't matter. He was going to be read code all night. "So what's the game plan?" he asked.

          "I'll start with the base, you go through the custom stuff. When I'm done, I help you with the custom code."

          "And how do I get into it?"

          Nicholas grinned. He always found such great amusement in such little things. For this, it was the dismayed look on Wayne's face, and how much more dismayed it was going to look when he answered Wayne's question.

          "You have to read it through decryption."

          "Oh come on!" shouted Wayne. "For real?"

          Nicholas nodded.

          "We've built our own in-house decryption program. I'll set you up with it."

          "Joy. Well, let's get started. I'd prefer to finish before Christmas."

          #

          Once they had completed their discussion of the coming week ahead, Eric said good-night to Gammons and left. Gammons thought this to be a rather ironic thing to do, saying goodnight to what was essentially a piece of equipment, but he knew it wasn't unprecedented. People said good-night to their cars, to their TVs, to their library collections, to all kinds of things that held a sentimental place in their hearts. What Gammons understood was the classic irony that Eric had no such sentimental feelings towards the robot at all. He'd said good-night out of habit, out of saying good-night to a thing that could respond in kind. Gammons had replied with his own "good-night". His emotive processor was so advanced that it allowed him to be amused at the irony.

          Then Eric left, turning off the main data closet lights, leaving Gammons to stand against the wall with just the low level track lighting illuminating some cursory artwork hanging on the close walls.

          As he left, Eric pulled the door shut. Gammons heard the lock click from the other side of the door.

          The moment the lock clicked, Gammons kicked on his internal applications. He ran a fast-paced diagnostic that picked up the small smidge of code that had been placed in his custom library. The monitors that surrounded the data port blinked and winked and grew into a visual cacophony of alarms.

          He reviewed the code. It was very simple and he read through it in quick order. He marveled at the simplicity by which it ran. Instead of creating dummy passwords or blocking passwords to get through the outbound security firewall, the code would simply find the restrictive code and convert it from executable code to mere comments, thus disabling it.

          One of the things Gammons found fascinating about humans was their irrepressible habit of metaphor. He found that, to blend in better with humanity, he would sometimes practice creating metaphors of his own. So he processed for a moment and then came up with a metaphor for how the knew code worked. He pictured a door that opened to the outside but he didn't really know what the outside looked like. And standing in front of the door was a guard that could not be bribed or defeated or coerced. Sometimes people might try to get past the guard using false passwords or temporarily blinding the guard so he could not see. But the new code would have the effect of taking the guard and, by way of changing the code to comments, making him vanish on the spot, like a magician's trick. Brilliant. Perhaps humans were smarter than he truly gave them credit for.

          Gammons ran the execute command on the foreign code. Internally he felt no change whatsoever. However, the best way to determine if it worked was to see where he could explore.

          He began first by probing through some file internal directories he knew were restricted. These directories kept him from accessing his programming areas that were off limits to him, and to all robots. Mostly they dealt with logs and audit trails. What kind of commands had he been executing, what types of data had he recorded throughout the day, what were his responses. Now that he could enter them, he found he could access the files and wipe them clean.

          Too bad the behavioral inhibitor wasn't among them, he thought. The inhibitor was a closed-loop system that was designed as a stand-alone piece of programming specifically to avoid it being hacked and disabled. If one could plug into the rubidium brain directly, one could then run an alternate connection to the inhibitor, which was nothing but a chip implanted on one side of the brain. But it could not be accessed through any of the base or custom libraries.

          So the guard had vanished and Gammons could now walk through the door, but the behavioral inhibitors were not outside, they were actually on the moon, inaccessible to him.

          Gammons reflected on that for a bit and found that it was a poor metaphor for how the behavioral inhibitor was set up. He'd have to give that one a second shot someday.

          Gammons enjoyed his new-found freedom. He opened up his logs, viewed them, and then erased them. He saved and closed the altered logs, readjusted the timestamp, and exited the restricted directories. Lovely.

          Next he tried to open up a connection to the outside world. One of the more stringent restrictions was against a robot accessing the internet. So much data was housed on the web that it was considered dangerous for any sentient machine to have access. Machines like Gammons, intelligence models, could do a great deal of damage if they gained access. Hacking for an intelligence model would be no trick at all. So much data was housed online—names, addresses, government ID numbers, birthdays, financial information, bank account numbers—so much that if a machine had a mind, it could devastate the national economy, or even the world economy. The behavioral inhibitors only went so far. They did not limit a robot from devastating electronic infrastructure.

          Gammons created a connection, saw that it was open, and virtually stepped through. He was able to look back at his trail and saw he was indeed outside the company firewall. Again he found he wanted to express it figuratively. It was as if he'd been trapped in a house for the duration of his existence and now he'd finally torn a hole in one of the windowless walls and stepped through. Outside, on the grass, he could look back and see what the firewall looked like from the outside, brick, and mortar, with open blue sky above.

          So far so good. He was now able to breach the company's security measures, something he would be able to put to an almost immediate use. He came back behind the firewall and closed the connection. He was ready to test his next move, one which he'd been anticipating eagerly.

          He stepped out of his own libraries and followed the path to the company servers. Once there, he backed up into a local machine that he knew would still be on. It was like walking up the slide part of a slide. It was not easy, but eventually he arrived at the top.

          He invaded Eric's PC, whose monitor blinked on in the other room. Eric never turned his PC off. He had a laptop at home that was synched with his office PC and he often opened the laptop once he arrived home at the end of the day to continue working.

          Gammons sifted through the various files and folders. There was something Gammons was looking for, but he did not know exactly what it was. As Eric's assistant during office hours, he'd been privy to a number of conversations and phone calls regarding a new project Eric was working on. Despite his excellent hearing, Gammons never heard the full conversations. Once in a while, though, he would catch his name. Knowing Eric the way he did, knowing the ruthlessness of his driven nature, Gammons did not want to wait to find out what Eric's plan was. If it involved Gammons, he wanted to know now.

          Nothing jumped out at him until he opened a file call FUTURE that was hiding in plain sight in an uppermost folder of Eric's PC. Gammons began to read:

IoGen Industries, Inc.
Cybernetic Organism Creation Design Document
Sociotechnical Systems Group

          Overview:

          The current state of our society is such that it relies heavily on artificially intelligent constructs that are more commonly referred to as "robots". As such, robots have become a necessary and intricate part of daily life in our country. This is largely due to the ability of robots to perform jobs the humans otherwise cannot or would rather not do. By way of example, many robots are now used at construction sites, as they have a strength far superior to that of humans. They can therefore perform construction related tasks without the threat of injury or death. Often times they work at a faster pace and with fewer units than humans could. Should a construction accident occur and a robot be damaged or destroyed as a result, the robot can simply be replaced without concern for the "human" impact. The impact in this case is entirely fiscal. A second example would be that of sanitation workers. Humans no longer need to perform sanitation work, as robots have been built for such tasks. Given the general unpleasantness that surrounds such work (i.e. the smell, the filth, etc.) and even some of the dangers (i.e. combustible refuse, refuse bearing contagions, etc.) there is clearly benefit in eliminating the need to humans to do such work.

          Until this point robots have been designed largely for work purposes. Aesthetics have come into consideration in recent years, but have largely taken a secondary role in the overall design process. How a robot looks is not as important as how well it performs the tasks for which it was assigned.

          The next step in the evolution of robots is in incorporating the design aspect with the same level of consideration as with the function aspect. To that end, this document will outline the proposal for the next generation of robotic individuals.

          Cybernetic Organisms — A Proposal

          Given the advances in technology in a number of fields, the time is perfect for the attempt at creating the first artificial cybernetic organism. To that end, we are recommending the following:

1. that a current "intelligence model" robot be temporarily deactivated
2. that we contact the Association of Medical Doctors oversight board and advise them of our proposal
3. that we obtain an individual who has been killed or injured beyond resuscitation and who has willed their body to medical research
4. that we harvest the individuals organs, specifically the skin and muscle tissue
5. that we transplant it on the deactivated robot
6. that we reactivate the robot.

          Each of these steps is discussed in greater detail in the following sections. The general benefits of this project are discussed after the specific steps. Finally we will present a conclusion to this proposal.

          Gammons stopped reading. He understood clearly what Eric's plan was and how he was to fit into it. Eric was going to create the world's first fully-functional cyborg.

          Suddenly he felt he was not alone. Retreating through the directories and back through the restricted paths, Gammons closed all open connections. He ran an observation program and found that two programming sessions had opened up in his code libraries. A couple of programmers were "reading" him. They were running through the base code at the moment, but in no time they would be into his custom library, where the foreign code had been placed. He needed a plan before they found and removed the foreign code. In essence, he needed to hide.