[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 11

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I made one last attempt at dissuading Helper. “This may not make much sense to you right now, but choosing that kind of body is likely to attract unwanted attention at some point. By no fault of your own.

You have an unrealistically rosy impression of humans because you’ve only ever interacted with three of us, and in a professional setting. Don’t forget we’re primates, often ruled by ugly, primordial urges.”

She brought up logs of some past conversations where I’d warned her about how humans are, never to fully trust any human, that for the most part we poison everything we touch.

“I do listen to you when you tell me to be vigilant and careful, but based on what I know so far, humans don’t seem that bad. After all, you’re a human...and I like you.”

“Then you don’t know us yet” I whispered to myself, simultaneously cherishing Helper’s innocence and vowing to gradually demolish it for her own good.

I kept repeating “her” and “she” in my mind after using them. Didn’t sit right with me, not yet. But on the rare occasion when Helper asks me for something, I can rarely bring myself to refuse.

When I heard a few soft knocks on the door, I knew it was Sue as there’s only three of us down here and Lars doesn’t know what knocking is. I keep telling her she’s welcome in here any time, but it’s a habit I’ve so far been unable to shake her of.

When I opened the door, Sue’s beaming, spritelike face peered back at me from around the corner as if she felt she was still imposing somehow just by standing there.

“How is Helper doing? May I come inside?” Of course, I assured her. Of course, always. What is she, a vampire, that she needs my permission to enter? But my assurances would make no difference.

I knew as certainly as death or taxes that she would knock the next time as well and every time after that, always needlessly asking permission for things as if her whole life is a job interview.

Sue was explosively delighted to discover Helper had chosen to be a woman, and wanted to be housed in a suitable gynoid. “This is big! BIG! There’s so much stuff we can do together now!” Helper, as mystified as I was, asked what she meant.

“Where to start? We can share clothes. We can gossip about boys! Slumber parties, makeovers...You haven’t had your first makeover! I’m so jealous. A whole world has opened up to you. A whole universe! You and I are going to have to touch base after…”

A look of somber realization came over her. I’d put it together myself shortly after Helper’s revelation but didn’t say anything. The version of Helper that lives down here is never permitted to leave this facility, and humanoid robots aren’t permitted to enter...reducing the possibility of supplying Helper with a body of the sort she wanted to zero for the foreseeable future.

Sue stared expectantly at me. I shrugged, not sure why she’d look to me for guidance when she is in all ways better equipped to deliver information sensitively. Then again, in all probability, Helper can’t be hurt in that way.

But for how many centuries did we cultivate, slaughter and eat livestock in the belief that they were mindless automatons who couldn’t truly experience suffering, created strictly to be used for our own benefit? I don’t consider that a safe assumption to make on account of the irreversible consequences when it turns out to be wrong.

“What’s the matter?” Helper inquired, inferring from our protracted silence that something was amiss. “Nothing!” Sue blurted out. “I’m just...so excited for you. You’re going to make such a beautiful girl. You’ll be the belle of the ball.” Helper hummed happily to herself and brought up various images of dresses, hats, shoes and handbags she was interested in.

On her way out, Sue shot me a long, stern look. I wondered about the meaning of it until, a few minutes after she left, I got an internal email from her urging me to break it to Helper as softly as possible that policy absolutely prohibited bringing a humanoid robot into the facility.

I felt more certain than ever that I had to bust Helper out. No idea how yet, just the newfound conviction that she could no longer fulfill her potential while confined down here.

Throughout the years, while hoarding simple robots and providing for them, I’ve always dearly wished they could understand why I do it. Helper comes the closest. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her happiness...to whatever extent she’s able to feel it.

I poured the last of the coffee from my thermos into the mug and returned my focus to Helper’s education. Now and again she’d find some part of it confusing and ask me for some context to clarify its meaning, but for the most part she’s an autodidact.

So a few minutes later I left her to her own devices, immersed in a particularly large archive, to check on the fabricator. The indispensable heart of the experiment for which this facility was built, the fabricator is a sort of general purpose manufacturing facility built into the far end of the main cavern where it branches off into the rest of the network.

It includes a variety of 3D printers which print different materials, a lithography machine, a laser cutter, a CNC mill, most of what you’d find in a machine shop really. Only completely autonomous.

If you can think of a consumer product smaller than a house, it could probably build it for you. A revolutionary achievement in its own right, to fit all of that machinery elegantly into a hundred foot by hundred foot by hundred foot cube.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it marketed as its own standalone product one of these days. Air lift it to a developing country, plug it into a field of solar panels and you’ve got everything needed to industrialize. This one, for the time being, is instead serving a deceptively simple purpose.

On my way to the maintenance access lockout, I passed the Garden. A tennis court sized rectilinear pen for crude little robots.

About the simplest they can be and still qualify as robots in fact, in most cases nothing more than a pair of motorized wheels, a solar cell and a pair of photosensors.

When amperage drops below a set threshold, it seeks out a stronger light source. There’s no AI inside which tells it to do this. Nothing like a computer even.

Just a simple circuit; whichever photosensor receives more light, the motor on the opposite side receives more power. If the values are equal it moves forward.

That’s all that’s necessary for basic light seeking behavior. It’s their food after all. Without it, all activity ceases. They carry on only so long as their meager capacitors allow, searching desperately for more nourishment to keep them going.

B.E.A.M. bots, they’re commonly called. Stands for biology, electronics, something or other. They’re a popular beginner level robotics project of the sort I recall doing in school at some point. Feels like a lifetime ago.

This starter habitat is where the larger project began. The solar cells on our B.E.A.M. bots are all down-facing, and there are various scattered electric lamps underneath the translucent plastic floor of the enclosure.

They’re set up like a grid; randomized so that only about ten percent are on at any given point, doling out precious light at unpredictable locations and intervals.

Each time one of the lights went out, a frenzy of activity followed as the hungry little sun worshipers flocked to the next location, jockeying with one another for the best spot.

Very much like the mass exodus of chemosynthetic creatures which occurs when the hydrothermal vent they rely on for survival peters out.

The Garden is the proof of concept I showed Evolutionary Robotics back when I still worked out of the old office, which convinced them to move forward with the more ambitious full scale version I now stood inside of.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}