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Allen Steele: Agape Among the Robots

Art necessarily reflects

the artist–sometimes in surprising ways.

Then Samson met Delilah, the first thing he did was crush an apple against her head. Delilah

didn’t react in any way; she sat calmly on the park bench, her hands folded primly in the lap of

her long purple dress, staring straight ahead as wet pulp ran down her face and into the neckline

of her lace collar. She didn’t even look up as Samson walked around the front of the bench,

bowed from the waist, and gallantly offered his hand.

In the Samson Team control van, though, we were either cracking up or gaping at our monitors

in dumb surprise. All except Phil Burton; glaring through the one-way glass window, almost

apoplectic with rage, his mouth opened and closed several times before he finally managed to

give utterance to his thoughts.

"W-w-w-what t-t-t-the . . . what the hell was that?" he demanded. "W-w-who pr-pr-programmed

th-th-th-tha-that. . . ?"

"Nobody programmed it, Phil," I said. I had been worked with him long enough to intuit what he

meant when his speech impediment got in the way. He looked sharply my way, and I hastily

coughed into my hand to hide my grin. Phil had a tendency to think people were laughing at him

even when something else funny was going on. "Honest. I checked Samson’s routine myself.

That wasn’t supposed to happen."

"I-I-I know th-th-th-th. . . ." Phil shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and silently counted to ten.

While he was counting, I glanced past him at Keith D’Amico; although he was still chuckling, he

had already checked out his own screen. He caught my eye and shook his head. No, he didn’t

have a clue as to what went wrong either.

"Phil, Jerry . . . I’ve put Samson in standby mode." This from Donna Raitt, seated at the console

on the other side of me. Unlike Keith and me, she hadn’t lost it when Samson had assaulted

Delilah with a deadly fruit; she was watching her screen, her hand cupped over her headset

mike. "It looks like D-team has done the same," she added quietly. "I haven’t heard from Dr.

Veder’s group yet."

"Oh, but you will . . . you will." Keith was doing his Yoda impression again. "Beware the dark

side, Luke . . ."

"Knock it off." Phil had managed to get control of his stutter. He glared at Keith, then turned back

to me. "Okay, I believe you. It’s a glitch, that’s all." He glanced out the window, taking a moment

to study the two robots frozen in the wooded atrium. "Access his memory buffer from the

beginning of the test up to when Donna put him on standby."

"Death Star in range within ten seconds," Keith murmured.

If Phil heard that–and judging from the annoyed expression which briefly crossed his face, he

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did–he chose to ignore it. He turned to Bob, the kid operating the remote camcorders. "You got

everything, didn’t you?"

"What . . . oh, yeah, yeah, it’s all here." Bob was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "Do

you want a copy, Dr. Burton?"

"No, I want you to delete the whole thing." Bob stared at him in surprise, and for a moment his

hands moved to the editing board. "Goddammit, of course I want a copy!" Phil snapped. "Run it

off now! Move!" He returned his attention to me. "C’mon, Jerry, gimme everything you got . . ."

"Coming right now." I had already loaded a fresh 100 MB disk. A few deft commands on the

keypad above my lap, and a bar-graph appeared on my screen, indicating that the data Phil

wanted was being copied. I looked again at Keith; behind Phil’s back, he had his right hand

raised, and he was counting off the seconds with each finger he folded into his palm. Five . . .

four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

"Delilah Team just called in." Once again, Donna had clasped her hand over the wand of her

headset. "Dr. Veder wants to meet with you in the test area . . . umm, right now, Phil."

The color vanished from Phil’s face. "Uhh . . . t-t-tell her I’ll b-b-b-be there as . . . as . . ."

My terminal chirped. I popped out the disk, shoved it into Phil’s hand, then snapped my fingers

at Bob. He ejected the DVD from the camcorder, slapped it into a jewelbox, then passed it to

Keith, who tapped it against Phil’s shoulder. That seemed to wake him up; he blinked a few

times, then turned to snatch the DVD from Keith’s hand.

"He’s coming now," Donna said quietly into her headset. "Sorry for the problem. We had a

problem here, but . . ."

"Stick to the rules. No contact except between team leaders." Phil took another deep breath,

then clapped the two disks together as he turned sideways to squeeze past her and me as he

headed for the control van’s door. "Wish me luck."

"May the Force be with you," Keith said, and I shot a look which told him that I’d like to stick a

light-saber where a Jedi couldn’t find it. "Good luck," he added, albeit reluctantly.

"Thanks." Phil grabbed a roll of paper towels from the shelf near the door. Then, almost as an

afterthought, he looked back at Keith. "Wipe the memory buffer, will you? I don’t want this to

affect the next test." Then he stepped out of the van, slamming the door shut behind him.

For a moment no one said anything, then everyone collapsed in their seats. "Man, oh man,"

Keith muttered, covering his face with his hands. "I thought he was going to have a stroke . . ."

"Thought he was going to have a stroke?" Donna shook her head. "You should have heard what

was going on in D-team’s trailer. Kathy sounded like she was ready to . . ."

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"Are you off-line?" I asked quietly, and her eyes went wide as she lunged for the mute button.

Keith chuckled as he reached for the two-pound bag of Fritos he kept stashed beneath the

console. I glanced at Bob; he said nothing as he hunched over his screen, replaying the test on

his monitor. Fresh out of MIT, he had been working for LEC for less than five months now, and

only very recently had been assigned to the R3G program. He was wisely keeping office politics

at arm’s length, nor could I blame him.

Through the window, I watched Phil as he walked toward the bench where Samson stood

frozen, his right hand still extended. He glanced nervously toward the opposite side of the

atrium, then he tore a wad of paper off the roll and began hastily wiping the apple shards off

Delilah’s spherical head. I had to wonder why someone on her team had felt compelled to put

her in a dress. Perhaps to accentuate her feminine role; although the test was supposed to work

out bugs in their handshaking procedures, the scenario Phil and Kathy had mutually devised

was supposed to playfully emulate a quaint, old-fashioned courtship. So far, though, the results

weren’t very promising.

"Oh, such a nice man," Keith said, propping his sandals up on his console as he shoved a fistful

of chips in his mouth. "Look, he’s cleaning . . . uh-oh, here she comes."

From behind him, Dr. Katherine "Darth" Veder came stalking through the trees, her hands

shoved in the pockets of her lab coat. Even before he saw her, Phil must have heard her

coming, for he fumbled with the roll in his hands as he reluctantly turned to face her.

"Oh, boy, is she pissed or what?" Bob murmured.

"What," I replied, and Donna arched an eyebrow knowingly.

" Dum-dum-dum-dah-de-dum-dah-de-dum, " Keith hummed. "Volume, please. I don’t want to

miss this."

The van was soundproofed, but we had a parabolic mike aimed at the test area. Donna started

to reach for her board to activate it. "Don’t," I said quietly, shaking my head at her. "Let’s let

them handle this themselves." Smiling a little, Donna withdrew her hand.

Keith sighed in disgust, then pulled on his headset and tapped a command into his console. I

had little doubt that he was patching into Samson’s external mike to eavesdrop on their

conversation, if it could be called that. Through the window, I could see Kathy yelling at Phil, her

small hands gesturing wildly as she pointed at him, at Samson, at Delilah, at our van, and back

at Phil again. Although Phil’s back was half-turned to us, his hands were almost as busy, first

making gestures of supplication and apology, then briefly returning to his sides–he was probably

counting to ten again–before rising again to make irate motions of his own.

Donna rested her elbows on the console and cupped her chin in her hands. Bob picked up the

month-old issue of Spin he had placed on top of one of the mainframes. Keith pawed at his bag

of chips, watching with interest while the two team leaders ripped into each other.

"I wish these guys would hurry up and admit they’re in love," he muttered.

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Meanwhile Samson and Delilah patiently waited nearby, ignored yet omnipresent, as stoical as

only robots can be.

Okay. Time to backtrack a bit.

You know about LEC, of course . . . or at least you should, if you pay attention to TV

commercials, browse the web, or visit shopping malls. Lang Electronics Corporation is one of

the three major U.S. manufacturers of consumer robots; it started out as a maker of IBM-clones

in the early ’80s, then diversified into robotics shortly after the turn of the century, introducing its

first-generation robot vacuum cleaners and home sentries about the same time that its closest

competitors, CybeServe and Cranberry, entered the market with their own household ’bots.

CybeServe was the leading company, and solidified that position after it was bought out by

Mitsubishi; Cranberry, on other hand, was hurt by poor sales and a reputation for making second-

rate ’bots that tended to forget instructions, burn actuators, and taser the mailman. By the time

CybeServe and Mitsubishi merged, Cranberry had laid off one-third of its employees and was on

the verge of declaring bankruptcy.

This left LEC in somewhere in the middle. It remained strong enough to fight off hostile takeover

attempts by larger electronics companies in both America and Japan, and its Valet and

Guardian series of home ’bots held their own in the marketplace, not only selling as many units

as CybeServe but even surpassing their sales in Europe. The success of its first-generation

robots prompted LEC to invest considerable capital in developing a second-generation series of

universal robots. Biocybe Resources in Worcester, Massachusetts, had recently introduced its

Oz 100 biochips, pseudo-organic microprocessors capable of handling 100,000 MIPS–Millions

of Instructions Per Second, the robotic equivalent of megabytes–and LEC had built them into its

Gourmand, Guardian III, and Companion ’bots, successfully bringing them to market nearly two

months before CybeServe brought out their rival systems. It also helped that CybeServe’s ’bots

were more expensive and that their CybeServe Butler had an embarrassing tendency to

misunderstand questions or commands given in less than perfect English (e.g., "Is the

dishwasher running?" No, it’s still in the kitchen. "Answer the door, please." But it hasn’t asked

me anything. And so forth.).

(If all this is beginning to make your eyes glaze over, please be patient. Home ’bots may be

rather commonplace these days–if you don’t already own one, chances are one of your

neighbors does, and your kids may be dropping hints about how nice it would be to find a

CybeServe Silver Retriever or a LEC Prince barking and wagging its tail beneath the Christmas

tree–but I’m relating events which occurred about ten years ago. It may seem like business talk,

but it has quite a bit to do with the story at hand, so bear with me, okay?)

CybeServe wasn’t about to let itself get stampeded the way Cranberry was several years earlier,

so after it spent a small fortune working out the bugs in its second-generation ’bots and an even

larger fortune in consumer advertising, it took the next logical step: the development of a third-

generation, all-purpose universal robot, one which could serve as butler, housekeeper, sentry,

cook, chess-player, dog-walker, babysitter . . . you name it. And just to put the icing on the cake,

CybeServe intended its new ’bot to be humanlike: bipedal, about six feet in height, with

multijointed arms and legs and five fingers on each hand.

This was probably the most significant factor, for with the exception of a few experimental

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prototypes like Honda’s P2 of the late ’90s, virtually every robot on the market looked like a fire

hydrant, an oversized turtle, or a vacuum cleaner with arms. A humanlike robot, however, would

not only be aesthetically familiar, but it would also be able to adapt more readily to a household

environment, since it would be able to climb stairs or place objects on tables.

Although CybeServe tried to keep their R3G program secret, the cybernetics industry is small

enough–and the Robot Belt along Route 9 in Massachusetts short enough–that it was only a

matter of time before word leaked out of its Framingham headquarters. The fact that their R3G

project was codenamed Metropolis, an ironic allusion to the robot in the 1927 silent film directed

by Fritz Lang, was a clear signal that CybeServe meant to pull an end-run around its rival in

Westboro .

When Jim Lang, LEC’s founder and CEO, learned that CybeServe was actively engaged in the

development of a third-generation ’bot, the lights stayed on all night in the fourth-floor

boardroom. The following morning, Slim Jim summoned his department heads to the executive

suite, where he read them the riot act: LEC was now in a race with CybeServe to be the first

company to produce a third-generation universal robot.

As luck would have it, though, the company wasn’t caught flat-footed: during their spare time,

two of its senior engineers had already been working on third-generation robots.

Where Phil Burton or Kathy Veder managed to find any spare time at a company where

everyone in the R&D divisions typically puts in a 7-by-14 work week is beyond me, yet

nonetheless these two had been using their downtime to tinker in their labs. On their own

initiative, both Phil and Kathy had drafted plans for universal ’bots which would utilize the new

Oz chips being produced by Biocybe. Since the Oz 3Megs were capable of processing three

million MIPS, this meant that a third-generation robot could have the approximate learning ability

of a Rhesus monkey, as opposed to a second-generation ’bot with the IQ of a well-trained

mouse.

The fact that they had designed their robots independently of each other, without one being

aware of what the other was doing, was no great surprise to anyone. Phil Burton was in charge

of the division which developed the Companion robot, while Kathy Veder was the senior

engineer behind the Guardian III. Their departments were located at opposite ends of the LEC

quad, and their staffs shared little more in common than the company cafeteria. Not only that,

but the two couldn’t be more unalike: Phil Burton, tall and rather skinny, with thinning blond hair,

and a lifelong stutter which betrayed his shyness, and Kathy Veder, short, plump, with unruly

black hair which was seldom combed and an aggressive manner which bordered on outright

hostility (hence the nickname). A pair of über -geeks who couldn’t have agreed on the proper

pronunciation of banana if someone threatened to take away their Usenet accounts.

Nonetheless, Lang was delighted that they already had a head-start, and asked them to show

him their work. However, Kathy was a little more reluctant than Phil to comply; in fact, rumor had

it that Jim had to memo Darth three times before she finally coughed up her notes and

blueprints, while Phil delivered his material almost immediately. The rest of us chalked up her

reticence to peer rivalry, never realizing that there was something else going on just under the

surface.

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