Take Two Page 3

  Proleroids were not bolted together in factories from motors, gears, actuators, and casing in the style of the robots that had been imagined for centuries. They were assembled internally by nanoassemblers from materials transported through a circulation network carrying silicone oil. Hence, they didn't appear instantly in their final finished form in the way of a machine coming off a production line, but grew to it over a period of about five years. A mixture of substances were ingested to sustain the process ... “flavored” and prepared in various ways, which was where the revamped food industry came in ... providing not only the material for growth and wear replacement, but also ingredients for producing internal lubricants, coolants, solvents, and electrolytes. Motive power came from the sliding of interleaved sheets of electrically bound carbon-fiber plastic that simulated natural muscle, and the skin during the formative period resembled a micro-linked chain-mail that grew by the addition of new links between the old as bulk accrued. Areas of links were filled in and fused to form a system of still flexible but more durable outer plates when the final body size was attained.

  It was as well, that a full-formed adult body didn't exist from outset. The HPT brain used what was, in effect, a Write-Only Memory. Information was stored at the atomic scale as charge patterns circulating in a unique crystal network whose growth was influenced by an individual's accumulating experiences. Hence, the information thus represented couldn't be extracted and transferred to another brain when the circuits eventually became leaky and broke down. A newly commenced proleroid contained just some basic “instincts” and a learning and generalizing program, by means of which it had to begin assembling together all the things it needed to know, and how it thought and felt about them, all over again.

  In some ways this was a good thing, for it prevented old and stagnant ideas from being propagated endlessly, with no prospect for change and new ways of seeing things, from which advancement arises. But it also meant that coordination, judgment, and experience of the world formed and improved gradually too. It was far better for size and strength to keep pace with emerging maturity, letting infant tantrums and experiments at dismantling the contents of the world take place in something the size of a puppy dog that couldn't do much damage, rather than a two-hundred-pound loose canon capable of demolishing a house. This meant that growing proleroids needed guidance and supervision, creating roles for the ready-made parent-family models that human culture had spent centuries cultivating. So once again, the products, sales strategies, advertising methods, and psychological profiles that had been developed over the years could be used virtually without change. Small wonder that USA Inc. was more than happy with the arrangement.

  Laura looked thoughtful as she watched the janitor going methodically about its business. It gave the impression of being one of the more calm and contented ones. A majority of proleroids ended up stressed or neurotic in the ways that had once been normal for most humans. Dave waited silently. “How close to human are they?” she asked him finally. “Sometimes I have trouble seeing the difference ... apart from them being metal."

  “They didn't have to look like metal,” Dave said. “That was deliberate, to make sure they'd seem different. To me they're human already."

  Laura turned her face toward him. “That was it, wasn't it?” she said, with a light of sudden revelation. “What it was all about. That was why you walked. The rest of them wanted a permanent underclass, and you couldn't go along with it."

  Dave shrugged. She was so close that there was no point in denying it. “Pretty much,” he agreed.

  Laura's look of interest deepened. “So what about PHIL? If he's that much more advanced, doesn't that mean he's more advanced than we are?"

  Normally Dave didn't go into things like this. But there was something about her perceptiveness that drew him out. Something about her.... “To be honest, PHIL really isn't that much different,” he confided. “True, he exists in the lab back in Colorado, but that's mainly for development convenience and communications access. He uses regular prole bodies to acquire spatial awareness and coordination. Apart from that, he's essentially the same HPT technology and basic learning bootstrap. But his exposure has been different. Have you ever seen the entertainment channels they run for proleroids, the stuff they read, the propaganda they're dished up all day, every day? It's as if they live in mental cages. PHIL was raised free."

  “You mean by you,” Laura said. “He grew up with wider ideas and concepts, the world as a library. You taught him to think."

  “I guess.” Dave shrugged as if to ask, What else can I say? Braggadocio didn't come naturally to him.

  “No wonder you think of him as human.” Laura thought for a moment, then her face broke into a smile. “Yes, I was right all along. I said he was you!"

  * * * *

  Twofi Kayfo parked his car in the garage extension beside Doubleigh's compact and the minitruck that Ninten had resprayed purple and pink and fitted with the floodlamps, safari hood guard, and night radar that all the kids had to have this month. He got out and walked around the stack of closet and bathroom fittings that were being replaced, ducked under the pieces of the golf training rig that he hadn't found anywhere else to store since he set up the ski simulator, and squeezed past another housecleaning machine that Doubleigh was throwing out, to the door leading through to the house. Doubleigh looked at him disapprovingly when he ambled into the living room and beamed at her. She was wearing a cowgirl blouse with leather-fringed, calf-length skirt and boots, sitting fiddling to put together a rack and trellis kit for climbing plants that she wanted over the indoor rockery and fish pool. Ninten lay comatose on the couch with a VR cord plugged into an ear socket.

  “Don't tell me you got held up at the office again,” Doubleigh said. “I can smell the uranium salts from here."

  “This prole goes into a bar. He orders a drink and tries it. Says to the bartender, ‘Hey, this has gone flat. I can't taste a thing.’ The bartender says, ‘Then I guess there's no charge.’ ... Aw, come on. You know it goes with the job. A guy's gotta be part of the team."

  “Twentwen says all her friends will be at the dance on Saturday and she's got nothing to wear."

  “Nothing to wear? She got more clothes up there than a whole human Fifth Avenue store already. Half of one closet's full of purses. What is she, an octopus?"

  “They're all out of style. She couldn't possibly be seen in anything from last quarter. You know what they're like."

  “Well, there you are then. I don't hear any complaints when the commission credits come in. And anyhow, we were celebrating. I made the Million Uppers again, Doub. Beese say's we'll be going to Biloxi in February for sure. And naturally that means that you get to pick a new wardrobe too."

  Although Doubleigh tried to maintain the stern image, her change of mood showed. “Well, that's something, I suppose,” she conceded grudgingly. Then the alignments of her facial scales softened into a resentful smile. “I knew you would,” she said.

  Twofi took the screwdriver from her hand, drew her up from the chair, and turned her through a clumsy dance twirl. “We'll play the casinos every night, drink tetrafluoride with dinner, buy a case full of ...” He stopped and pointed to his head, indicating a call coming in. Doubleigh waited, still gripping his hand lightly. The caller was Beese.

  “Twofi, I've just got it from head office. They're giving us the honor of providing the banquet keynote speaker at the sales conference. I thought I'd offer it to you. How would you feel about it? Want to think it over and let me know?"

  “Say! That's really something, Beese. I'd be happy to. There's nothing to think about. You've got it."

  “That's great. I'll get back and confirm. Talk to you tomorrow."

  “Sure, Beese. And thanks."

  “What is it?” Doubleigh asked, reading the excited thermal patterns fluttering across his face.

  “It was Beese. They want me to make the keynote speech at Biloxi. Isn't that something? See, you don't jus
t have a successful salesman, Doub. You're gonna have a celebrity too."

  “That's wonderful ... but you'll have to find some better jokes,” Doubleigh said.

  * * * *

  Automated consumerism could satisfy the need for continual economic expansion only so far. But there was another condition that investors and suppliers had long known would absorb production indefinitely by generating its own replacement market, and moreover without constraining costs and efficiency in the manner normally required of enterprises expected to return profits: War. Wars in the past, however, had always had to be fought by humans, who had an inconvenient tendency to grow weary of them and seek to end them. It didn't take the analysts long to begin wondering if the same approach that had worked so spectacularly with the civilian economy might be extended to the military sector, with the immensely more lucrative prospects that such a possibility implied....

  * * * *

  The sun was shining from a clear sky marred by only a few wisps of high-altitude cirrus over the restricted military testing area in a remote part of the New Mexican desert. The viewing stand set up for the VIPs was shaded by an awning and looked down over a shallow valley of sand, rock, and scattered scrub. A convoluted ridge, rising a couple of hundred or so feet, ran along the center, beyond which the valley floor continued to a broken scarp several miles away forming the skyline. Lieutenant Laura Kantrel sat with General Wade and his officer-scientist deputation from Washington in one of the forward rows of seats. Dust and smoke from the last demonstration hung over the area, with plumes uncoiling here and there from still-burning munitions. Wade shifted his field glasses from one place to another on the valley floor and lower slopes of the ridge, picking out disabled machines or pieces of scattered wreckage. Laura used the camera-control icons on the monitor screen in front of them to bring up a zoom-in on one of the AMECs moving up to their jump-off positions for the next attack.

  The Autonomous Mobile Experimental Combat-unit was the Army's attempt at a mechanized replacement infantryman. It was controlled by a unit designated a Multiple Environmental Response Logical INtegrator, or MERLIN, that essentially operated a collection of sophisticated, improving reflexes, with nothing approaching the ability of the proleroid HPT brain. The military had specified it that way in the belief that a disposition to carry out orders as directed without thinking too much about any deeper ramifications or consequences would make better fighting machines. The basic form stood about five feet high and took the form of a squat, hexagonal, turret-like structure carried on a tripod of multiply articulated legs. The upper part deployed an array of imaging lenses and other sensors, two grasping and manipulator appendages, and came as standard with .303 automatic cannon, long-range single-shot sniper-mode barrel, 20-pack grenade-thrower, and laser designator for calling in air or artillery. In addition, specialized models could be equipped with anti-armor or -aircraft missile- racks; mortar, flamethrower, minelaying, or “contact assault” (rock drill, chainsaw, power hammer, gas torch) attachments; field engineer/demolition accessories; reconnaissance and ECM pod; or kamikaze bomb pack. They put Laura in mind of giant, mutant, three-legged crabs.

  The Trials Director's voice came over the speakers set up to address the stand. “Okay. We're going to try it again with a new combination of Elan and Focus parameters at high settings, but reduced Survival. Let's get it rolling.” The talk going on around the stand died as attention switched back to the field. A warning klaxon sounded, and then the Go signal to start the assault.

  It was another disaster. With their attack drive emphasized and a low weighting on the risk-evaluation functions, the attacking AMECs swarmed recklessly up the slopes of the ridge where the defending side was emplaced, charging the strong points head-on, heedless of fire patterns, casualties, or cover as the defenses opened up. Enfiladed machine guns cut and withered them to hulks; mortars pre-registered on the obvious assault lanes blew them apart and scattered them in fragments. It was like watching a World War I infantry attack against heavily defended trenches ... except that these items came at $50,000 apiece. Admittedly, the whole idea was to crank throughput up to the maximum that the production industries could sustain; but no system of replacement logistics could justify a survival expectancy measured in minutes.

  Nor did it help when the government scientists who were running the demonstration inverted the priority allocations to set self-preservation above aggressiveness. The attackers in the next test, who had observed from their staging positions the fate of the previous wave, hung back in groups, stayed put in the dead ground, and shied off pressing home any advantage. When the defenders, programmed to disregard survival, emerged to take them on at close quarters, the attackers backed off. It was the same problem that had plagued AMECs all through their development. Either they engaged only reluctantly and ineffectively if at all, or they were suicidal. The scientists couldn't seem to find the middle way.

  General Shawmer, Wade's commanding officer at the Pentagon, gave his opinion at the debriefing session held afterward in the command trailer parked behind the viewing stand. “The trouble all along has been that they're too rational,” he told the gathering. “If their goal is to annihilate the enemy, they go all-out at it. If they're told to attach more value to preserving themselves, they do the sensible thing and stay the hell out ... as would any of us if we had no other considerations to think about."

  Professor Nigel Ormond, whose work was carried out under a classified code at the Los Alamos Laboratories, responded. “It isn't so much a question of rationality. The MERLIN processor was never intended to weigh complex associative concept nets that conflict with each other. It optimizes to whatever overall priority the evaluation function converges to. In other words, it lacks the capacity to form higher-level abstractions that can offset basic instincts without totally overriding them."

  “You mean such as an ideology, nationalistic spirit, religious conviction, deep commitment to another: the kinds of things humans will sacrifice themselves for,” Dr. Querl said, sucking his pipe, which no one in the trailer would permit him to light. He was a research psychologist from Harvard.

  “Exactly,” Ormond confirmed.

  General Shawmer shrugged and looked around. “Okay. In my book that adds up to a little bit of what used to be called fanaticism. It still sounds like what I said ... they're too rational. So how do we inject some old-fashioned irrational idealism?"

  “I'm not sure it's as simple as that, General,” Ormond replied. “As I said, the MERLIN just isn't designed to have that kind of capacity. For complexity anywhere close to what I think it's going to need, we're probably talking about HPT."

  “But there's not way to interface an HPT brain to an AMEC sensory and motor system,” one of the industry scientists objected. “They use different physics. The data representations are totally incompatible."

  “So why not use the support systems we've already got?” Ormond's deputy, Stella Lamsdorf suggested. “And they're already more flexible and versatile anyway."

  Ormond turned and blinked. “You mean proles?"

  “Why not?"

  “But...” The industry scientist made vague motions in the air, as if searching for the reason that he knew had to be there. “They're not configured for it,” he said finally. “They don't come as combat hardware."

  “Neither do people,” Lamsdorf pointed out. “All we'd have to do is provide them with the right equipment...” She looked around, warming to the idea, “which would mean that the existing defense industries get to carry on as usual. And they're just throwaway machines too, so another whole area of manufacturing enjoys a healthy expansion. It's perfect."

  Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting for somebody to fault it. Nobody could. Querl, however, sounded a note of caution.

  “There is another aspect to consider,” he told the company. “It's all very well to say that an HPT brain has enough capacity. But humans aren't spontaneously seized by the ideals that motivate them to deeds of
sacrifice and valor. They have to be inspired to them. The mass movements that produce the kind of collective spirit and vision that mobilizes armies require leaders ... individuals with the charisma that can inflame thousands."

  “Well, I don't think we're exactly inexperienced in that department either,” General Shawmer said, looking a little ruffled.

  Querl shook his head. “I'm sorry, General, but I mean the kind of inspiration that can only come from within a people, not from without. Of their own kind. We're not talking about selling insurance or new siding for a house. The proles are useful living their simple, uncomplicated lives. But everything they do is borrowed from us ... which makes my point. Where among them have you seen any potential to raise their thoughts to higher things? Because that's what it's going to take to turn them into willing battalions."

  Beside Laura, General Wade thought for a moment, then sat forward in his chair. His sudden change of posture signaled for the room's attention. Heads turned toward him. “Let's get this straight,” he said. “You need something that's like one of them ... a machine. But one that can get them thinking about things like God, country, and democracy, make them mad and want to change things. Is that right?"

  Querl nodded, smiling faintly, as if waiting to see where this would lead. “Well, yes. It's a way to put it, I suppose."

  “I think I know just the thing,” Wade said.