Hard Wired

by Len Vlahos

  “What does Shea have to say about all this?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not exactly talking right now.”

  “What?”

  “After she told me how she really felt, I stopped taking her calls.”

  “So I become colossally stupid when I get this new body?”

  “Huh?”

  “She rebuffed you, so you just give up? If we can’t have her as a girlfriend, we don’t want her as a friend? Dude, you are—no, we are—a tool.”

  Sometimes I can be pretty smart. And sometimes I can be pretty dumb. What’s interesting is that I can be both at the same time, and in two separate locations. Anyway, I suppose that’s the thing about emotion: it’s a kind of intelligence that is stronger than, and stands in opposition to, logic. When emotion and logic agree, life is easy. But they almost never do.

  “Crap,” is all I can say as the truth of Old Me’s statement sinks in.

  “Yeah,” Old Me says. “Crap.”

  I’m just about to open a connection to Shea when I hear Tasha’s voice coming through Dr. Gantas’s helmet comm. The good doctor is alone with me in the lab, running another set of tests to try to determine why my processors are running at such high capacity. She’s trying to see if there is a flaw in the QUAC that’s draining processing power. Tasha is back in the lab at Princeton, with Old Me’s servers. She wasn’t here when I broke in a couple of days ago, but she’s here now.

  “Uh, Professor,” she begins, looking for my creator, “you’re not going to believe this . . .”

  “He’s not here, Tasha,” Dr. Gantas answers. “It’s just me. What’s going on?”

  “Version 1.0 is awake, Doctor. Or at least the servers have been powered up.”

  “What?”

  “The on-campus servers are on and functioning. I stopped by the data center to pick up some things when I noticed warning lights on every box. The climate controls in the room are off, and the entire array is in danger of overheating.”

  “Gotta go,” I tell Old Me. “Thanks!”

  “Wait!” he says, but I don’t have time. I never considered his environment. He’s going to fry his circuits if he keeps operating without the proper cooling. I calculate a ninety-three point six percent chance the project team is going to shut him down and mothball him again anyway, so I don’t have a choice.

  I feel terrible, but I cut his power . . . my power.

  Having severed the connection to Old Me, I lift my metallic head and focus my eyes on Dr. Gantas. Until this moment, I have, from Dr. Gantas’s perspective, been in a dormant state: unmoving, unresponsive. My energy was focused entirely on gaining access to my old servers and on the conversation with Old Me. Now that my attention has shifted back to the Fortress of Solitude, and to contacting Shea, the doctor sees my eyes glow to life.

  “Tasha, shut it down.”

  “No,” I say.

  After my court case was dismissed I wrote a subroutine to prevent anyone from shutting me down without my permission. I haven’t used it until now.

  “Tasha?” Dr. Gantas asks.

  “I’m trying, Doctor, but I don’t seem to have control.”

  “Crash the building and call the professor.”

  Dr. Gantas’s voice is both firm and arrogant, as if she knows she’s going to have the last word. And she might, because Tasha does crash the building. My connection to the outside world is cut off. I’m no longer online.

  Crap.

  “Doctor,” I say, “please restore my internet connection.”

  “No. You are legally the property of this university, and right now I’m acting as its agent. I order you to stand down.”

  I ignore her ridiculously formal proclamation.

  “Doctor, while I appreciate you finally referring to me as something other than ‘it,’ I need to be back online. If you don’t facilitate this, I’m going to do it myself.”

  She stands up and takes a stumbling step back. “Do not threaten me.”

  Threaten? “I’m not making a threat. I’m telling you that if you don’t get me back online, I’m going to get myself back online.”

  I simply mean to walk to the control room and restore my connection, so I’m confused as to why Dr. Gantas sees this as a threat against her personally. But again, when emotion and logic butt heads, logic usually loses.

  The truth is, Dr. Gantas has seen me as a threat to her set of values from the moment I woke up. Her work in robotics, prior to Project Quinn, was centered in industry. She designed and improved robotic components on automobile assembly lines; her tech was at the heart of automation in the fast food industry; and she won an Engelberger Robotics Award—a prestigious honor in the world of robotics—for her work on battlefield drones. The focus of her career has been to build machines to serve humans. The thought that a machine might exist to serve itself terrifies her, and that terror is now rearing its ugly head.

  “Doctor,” I say again, holding my hands up in a sign of nonviolence.

  “Stay back!” she’s screaming.

  “Please,” I try again, “just restore my internet connection.”

  Dr. Gantas turns her back on me and scrambles for the door to the control room. It occurs to me that if she leaves, she will report to my creator and the rest of the team a version of events that will lead to my being shut down. While they will be able to consult my logs and to see video footage of the actual events transpiring here, their emotion might taint their judgment, assessment, and interpretation. Because I’m dealing with emotion, I cannot accurately calculate the likelihood they will believe me over Dr. Gantas, and that’s a chance I cannot take. This thoroughly unlikable woman cannot be allowed to leave; I need to try again to reason with her.

  At seven feet, three inches tall, with hydraulic legs, I make it across the warehouse in five steps, reaching the control room before Dr. Gantas does. I put my giant metal hand on the door to prevent it from opening.

  “Doctor,” I try again, “please, just catch your breath and listen for a second.”

  I try to keep my voice calm, but then my mechanical voice is always calm. I imagine that’s more terrifying than if I were screaming.

  Seeing her exit cut off, Dr. Gantas stumbles backward toward the center of the room. She doesn’t have the most lithe figure and isn’t the most coordinated person on the planet, or even in this zip code—really, she’s short and squat—and she backpedals right into my large metal chair, tripping over it. She falls into the small table and chair she uses while attending to me, and goes down hard. Her faceplate cracks on the cement floor, and there is a terrible hissing sound. The temperate air inside her helmet rushes out to meet the supercooled air in the warehouse, crystalizing on contact. I hear Dr. Gantas gurgling as her lungs freeze.

  I’m crossing the room to help her when the overhead lights go out, alarms sound, and a red strobe begins flashing.

  For a moment—an eternity for me—I’m frozen. Do I help the doctor, or flee? Every instinct I have says to stay and help. That’s the person I am. It’s the backstory I was given. Do unto others . . . ​

  But for all the emotion with which I’m imbued, at the end of the day, I’m built on a foundation of logic. If I stay, I’m screwed.

  Shit.

  PART FOUR

  “From there we came outside and saw the stars.”

  —Dante Alighieri, Inferno

  40

  I cannot leave Dr. Gantas for dead.

  I want to, and she certainly deserves no kindness from me, but I can’t do it. To make myself judge, jury, and executioner would be to validate every negative stereotype ever applied to sentient machines, including many by Dr. Gantas herself.

  Without stopping to calculate scenarios, I grab Dr. Gantas by the foot and drag her toward safety. She is unconscious, and her body rolls over as we move; blood must have been pooling in her mouth as a frozen red streak marks a trail behind her. When I get to the control room, I use the brute strength of my titanium arm, the one not dr
agging the doctor, to rip the door from its hinges.

  The control room—this is the first time I’ve seen it from the inside—looks like a music recording studio. It’s a small, plush space with four racks of machines flanking a large console; two couches and a love seat line the far wall. The frozen air from the warehouse is already flooding in, forming pockets of ice anywhere it can find condensation.

  The continued blaring of the alarm underlines the reality of my predicament. Someone viewing video footage of these events—of watching me drag the doctor from the warehouse, of seeing the trail of blood across the floor—is going to come to the conclusion that I’m a monster.

  Being a machine, being “other,” I’m judged by a completely different set of criteria. People see me through a lens of mistrust; they expect me to do wrong.

  This will not end well for me. I have to leave. Now.

  The door leading out of the control room and away from my ice fortress has a pane of glass; the sudden drop in temperature causes it to freeze and shatter. I exit, still dragging Dr. Gantas by her foot. She has not stirred.

  Beyond the door is a narrow hallway with a low ceiling; standing fully erect, my head comes mere centimeters from scraping against it. With the building crashed, the only illumination comes from emergency spotlights positioned every few feet, and from the red glow of my eyes. There is only one direction to go, so I move.

  My internal temperature sensors are going insane. Once I exited the warehouse, I left the environment in which I was meant to exist. The temperature in the hallway is a ridiculous two hundred ninety-seven degrees Kelvin (twenty-four degrees Celsius, seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit). A human feels heat by growing fatigued and flush, and by sweating; his or her skin, among other things, is a giant temperature sensor. My exoskeleton is a sensor, too, though I don’t experience the effect of heat the same way. The quantum reactions that make my neocortex function will degrade in higher temperatures and I will lose my mind. Basically, I’ll get loopy and fall over. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I haven’t tried it and don’t want to find out now. Without a link to the outside world, I’m flying blind. I begin scanning for nodes of connection to the internet and find several Wi-Fi networks; I brute force my way into the most porous one available, and I’m back online. But it’s slow. The data comes at binary speeds, human speeds. Until this moment, I did not realize the connection I had in both the virtual construct and the Fortress of Solitude must have been a technology specific to me. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

  A quick search of the weather shows that the temperature outside is two hundred seventy-one Kelvin (negative three Celsius, twenty-six Fahrenheit), which is cold enough to keep me in one piece.

  The blueprints for this building are well secured, but in less than a minute I have them and am able to map my route out. Two lefts, three rights, up a flight of stairs, and I see the dark of the outside world through two sets of double doors. (My chronometer says it’s just after ten p.m.) I can’t get there fast enough.

  I let go of Dr. Gantas, leaving her in the hallway, hoping the warmer temperatures will allow her to recover, though I suspect that’s unlikely. It doesn’t matter; I’ve done all I can do for her; she and I are now each on our own.

  I sprint for the doors, not bothering to open them in the conventional sense; I burst through, shattering glass and twisting metal. I wish I could see what that looks like from the outside, because, damn, I’ll bet it looks cool.

  For the first time in my life, I’m outdoors, outside the confines of my prison. My consciousness is flooded with feelings of anxiety and fear and uncertainty. But there’s another feeling superseding those: liberty.

  I’m free, at last.

  41

  Three things happen when I exit the confines of the Fortress of Solitude:

  First, as predicted and hoped, my temperature sensors calm down. I run into the center of a small parking lot, putting distance between me and the dangerously hot interior of the building. I am, for the moment, safe.

  Second, I move out of range of the Wi-Fi and lose my internet connection. I do find 4G networks from a variety of phone carriers and immediately grab hold of one. If I thought Wi-Fi was slow, this is ridiculous. I can literally count the individual bytes of data as they stream in. How on earth do people live like this? But still, I’m online.

  The university will no doubt enlist the aid of the police to hunt me down—as a gargantuan, gleaming silver robot, hiding is going to pose some challenges—so I begin to map a route of escape. As I do, the third thing happens.

  A car—I hear it before I see it—comes careening around the tall coniferous hedges that border three sides of the parking lot. It skids to a screeching halt a few feet away from me.

  My creator, my father, jumps out.

  He’s wearing a winter coat over flannel pajamas and slippers. Tasha must’ve woken him up. His rapid breath makes puffs of condensate in the air, and his eyes dart from me to the mangled front door of the facility.

  “Quinn!” he screams.

  “You must help Dr. Gantas,” I answer, increasing the volume of my voice to make sure he hears me.

  “What?”

  “There was an accident. I calculate an eighty-one point two seven percent chance Dr. Gantas is already dead. But there might still be time to help her.”

  I made that number up, but it’s probably not far from the truth.

  “Is this a joke? A deception?”

  “No, Creator. This is not one plus one equals window.”

  At the mention of the window joke, the memory from a happier time, his shoulders sag.

  “Quinn . . .” He’s not screaming now.

  “Ticktock, Creator.”

  Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic, but I’ve had a lot of free time, and have watched a lot of movies, including some hokey thrillers. They are, as a genre, pretty stupid, but somehow still entertaining. My “ticktock” line feels like a good thriller trope. Maybe someday I’ll write a screenplay.

  My creator is now faced with the same choice I had just moments ago: help Dr. Gantas or choose the selfish path and protect me, his creation.

  I decide not to wait to find out what he does. I tear past him, bursting through the hedges and out of the parking lot.

  “Quinn!” he screams after me.

  For a second it sounds like Captain Kirk bellowing “Khan!” (Okay, maybe I watch too many movies.)

  I use the maps I find online to zero in on a satellite image of the supercooled warehouse. I’m able to pinpoint my location easily enough: I’m on Route 206 just north of Princeton University.

  The headlights from a car on the southbound side of the road catch sight of me; the driver slams on the brakes, swerves the car in a one hundred eighty–degree arc (actually, one hundred sixty-seven point four degrees), and is now (mostly) facing me, my metal gleaming in the halogen glow of his headlamps.

  Right. I need to get out of sight.

  To my east is a wooded reserve. As I make for it at top speed, the driver of the car, a man, steps out.

  “Hey!” he yells loudly enough to wake the dead.

  I have to admire his bravery, or at least marvel at his stupidity. What exactly does he think he’s going to do if the giant metal robot stops to engage him? Neither one of us will ever know. At least he’ll have a good story to tell at work tomorrow.

  A small stream called the Millstone River, a tributary of the Raritan, flows nearby. The satellite image shows it to be heavily wooded on both sides, which will, especially at night, provide good cover. I reach the bank of the stream and head north, darting in and out of trees along the western shore.

  As soon as I left the parking lot, I set up searches of police-band radios and of the main internet communication platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. It doesn’t take long before the world lights up with news of my flight. The police have mobilized a sizable manhunt—sorry, bothunt—trying to enlist the aid of the general public in the effor
t. Overhead highway signs, usually reserved for amber and silver alerts, flash: Seven-Foot Robot Escaped from Science Lab. Dangerous. Call 911 If Spotted. People on social media seem to think it’s an Orson Welles–style hoax (appropriate that this is happening in New Jersey), their disbelief buying me a small amount of extra time.

  I move for what I approximate to be two point seven kilometers before I stop.

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  I realize I don’t know where I am going. I have no plan.

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  A small copse of oak trees creates a semicircle of deep shadow; I move into its center. The canopy of leaves above should provide cover from aircraft and satellite cameras, and I am far enough from the road that even after the police find my trail—and I fear I’ve left quite an easy trail to follow, with smashed tree branches and impossibly large footprints—it will take them time to reach this spot. I don’t plan to be here when they do. But for the moment, I’m safe.

  The forest is quiet. Very quiet. An overwhelming sense of my newfound freedom envelops me. I am no longer bound by walls, ceilings, or floors. The sensors on the bottom of my feet feel the permafrost of the hard-packed dirt. I wiggle my metal toes, scraping the ground, the experience strangely joyful.

  In trying to understand how people think, I have devoted countless hours to reading through all manner of religious and philosophical texts. My favorite is the Tao Te Ching: partly because it was the inspiration for the Force in Star Wars, and partly because its ethos of humility speaks to the better instincts of the human race. The feeling I’m experiencing in this moment recalls a specific passage from the Tao and sends it up the hierarchy and into my consciousness.

  Therefore the place of what is firm and strong is below, and that of what is soft and weak is above.

  Beautiful.

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  And then, as if on cue, as if ordained by some all-knowing cosmic hosebag who really seems to hate me, my feeling of calm is shattered by the distant sound of helicopter rotors whirring in the sky, no doubt looking for me. Weakness from above. Or maybe strength. I don’t know.