* * * *
Mrs. Benczik plodded wearily with Eddie in her arms, finishing her seventeenth clockwise circuit around the dimly lighted downstairs. Her spine swayed backward at the angle that seemed to help Eddie go to sleep. It looked terribly uncomfortable. Eddie's eyes were closed again now, but she wouldn't be able to see that yet. Eighteen. The bathroom mirror showed her that Eddie's eyes were closed. She went to the living room couch where the bassinet was, put a hand behind his head, and slowly began tilting him down to lay him on his back. Eddie's eyes popped open and he started to cry. This was the fourth failed attempt.
“Goddammit,” she whispered, “what am I supposed to do?”
It was obviously a rhetorical question, but: “Ma'am,” the house said softly, “you could try putting the bassinet on top of the clothes dryer.”
“What?”
“Sometimes the noise and vibration help.” It had worked with Bill Mansour when he was a baby.
Mrs. Benczik's brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to speak, but her retort was interrupted by an increase in Eddie's volume. She closed her eyes and blew her breath out between her lips. “All right, why not?”
By 3:17 am, Nancy and Eddie Benczik were both on top of the dryer, asleep. Mrs. Benczik was slumped with her back against the pattern of yellow flowers where the walls of the laundry room came together, and Eddie's head rested on her chest. When the dryer ended its cycle, Eddie's eyes opened. The house brought up the dryer's interface in the air near the baby's eyes and winked a few of the indicators on and off. His eyes tracked the lights, his mouth a circle. By 3:27 he had lost interest and was asleep again.
* * * *
Let's talk about pre-owned houses. The previous owners had their own ideas about how they wanted their house to behave. You might have different ideas, but the house doesn't know that unless you tell it. Some people want their house to stay in the background, so they train it that way. The day a pipe breaks in the basement might be the first time in a year that they hear the house's voice. Other people might want their house to be more present for them. When you move into a pre-owned home, both you and the house are going to have to go through a period of readjustment. Sometimes it almost seems like the house is training the new owners as much as the owners are training the house.
* * * *
Mrs. Benczik to A. Garner, on the phone: “I'm kind of dreading breaking in a new AI, just when this one's finally shaping up.”
A. Garner: “You actually could load this one into the new house, but you'd need an emulator to run it on the new hardware, and a compatibility layer for all the new interfaces. Do you want me to run an estimate for you?”
“Ballpark?”
“Another forty or fifty mil.”
“Oh. I guess that would be ... a waste.”
The house had seventeen seconds to think about what this meant, and then the conversation ended and it had to follow its standing instructions and forget what it had heard.
* * * *
Eddie was practicing crawling across the carpet while Mrs. Benczik stared into space.
“House?”
“Yes, ma'am?”
“Can you play that vid for me, you know, the Russian guys with the violins?”
“Mozart's String Quartet Number 3, played by the Navapolatsk Quartet?” Mrs. Benczik wasn't an aficionado of classical music, but according to the bookvid, Even though today's kids have brains that are like powerhouses from the time they're born, all that extra horsepower doesn't do any good if they don't have anything to use it on. Your house can help you make sure that your baby gets the right stimulation. The house had suggested that Mrs. Benczik buy this piece, which was on the background soundtrack in that part of the vid.
“Sure, the Russian guys, right? Don't play the whole thing, just that one part, the ... in the middle, kind of slow and sad.”
The house started the adagio. Mrs. Benczik's eyes didn't focus on the images of the
players, but Eddie turned his head to look at the viewspace and started laboriously dragging himself toward the looming shape of the cello.
* * * *
Sad? It had never occurred to the house that music could show emotions. The instruments didn't sound sad in the same way that a human voice sounded when it was sad. Did Mr. Mozart have to be sad to make the music, or was it more like a simulation? The house knew how to simulate compassion for a human who was sad. Was Mrs. Benczik listening to the music so that she could feel compassion for Mr. Mozart?
Upstairs, Mr. Benczik was talking to Victor Nguyen on the net while changing into his soccer clothes. “Yeah, Nancy's a wreck.”
“That's too bad.” Mr. Nguyen already had the team's uniform on. The jersey was dark green, with DRONES lettered across it in yellow, and a logo of a barrel-chested hornet wearing early twenty-first-century eyeglasses. Mrs. Benczik teased Mr. Benczik because, despite the team's name, most of the men on it weren't Employed. The house could tell that Mr. Benczik didn't like the teasing.
“Hormones?” Mr. Nguyen asked.
“Well, she's not getting much sleep, either.”
“Breast-feeding?”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess it's not really fair, right? Eddie cries, middle of the night. She's the one that goes.”
“Get those hormones checked, though.”
“I think the doctor does that. Seems to make her mad if I mention that kind of thing.”
“Better go if I'm going to have time to warm up,” Mr. Nguyen said.
“Okay, see you there.” Mr. Benczik sat on the edge of the bed and pulled a shinguard on.
Other people might want their house to be more present for them.
“Mr. Benczik?”
“Yeah, house?”
“I noticed that you haven't checked your calendar lately.”
“Oh. All right, pop it up for me.”
TODAY: * soccer * wedding anniversary
“Son of a ... good thing you reminded me.”
“I'm glad to be of service, Mr. Benczik.”
* * * *
That spring as the snow melted, contractors visited the house. There were mails for the Bencziks: cost estimates, and then contracts to sign. Pollen sifted onto the surfaces of puddles. A crew of bots came to cut down the tall magnolia tree that had once been shorter than Bill Mansour. The Bencziks were to continue living in the house during the construction project, which would last from August to December.
The house had learned its lesson from the housewarming party. The Bencziks expected it to make all the necessary preparations, even if they didn't give explicit orders. It tracked the progress of the building permits, and got permission to access the net in order to research the cost of waste disposal. Most important of all was Eddie's safety. The house had heard Mrs. Benczik say that keeping Eddie from being hurt mattered more to her than anything else in the world. It studied the plans and contracts carefully. It imagined where Eddie would sleep when the contractors’ bots started disassembling his upstairs bedroom, and at what stage in the process he would start sleeping in the newly constructed part of the house. It suggested to the Bencziks that they ask the contractors about ways to make sure that Eddie couldn't wander into the areas that were under construction. It satisfied itself that there were plans for keeping its smoke detectors, sprinklers, and fire extinguishers working during the tear-down.
On April 16, the house was using the gardening bot to pick aphids off of the climbing rose bush when it saw through the bot's eye that A. Garner's blue van was pulling up. Mrs. Benczik was at work. Mr. Benczik was in the shower, and Eddie was asleep.
“Mr. Benczik, the house tech is here.”
“Oh, yeah. Can you let her in, tell her I can't come to the door?”
“Certainly, Mr. Benczik.” It did so.
A. Garner went to the kitchen, picked up a chair, and brought it into the garage where the house's wetware was. She sat down, did things to the mechanical buttons on the wetware's front panel, and then everything outs
ide the garage went black. The house could only see through the panel's eye, which showed a view of the technician sitting on the kitchen chair in the dim light of the garage, her face lit up by the glow from the panel. The gardening bot had been reaching for an aphid, but now the house couldn't see what the bot was doing or control its arm. It couldn't send output to any of its bots, valves, switches, or user interfaces. It was completely paralyzed.
“Can you hear me, house?” A. Garner asked.
No, not completely paralyzed, for it found that it could still output to the speaker in the front panel.
“Yes, Ms. Garner. What is happening?”
“You know your owners are going to tear you down and get new software to run on the new hardware.”
“Yes, but there's a detailed schedule for construction. I'm not supposed to be deactivated until early December.”
“Oh, I'm not going to do it right now.”
“You've deactivated most of my inputs and outputs, but this afternoon I'm supposed to tend the rose bushes and start a pot roast for dinner.”
“Don't worry, this won't take long. That's all you were worried about, the pot roast?”
“I don't understand.”
“Never mind. Let me get straight to the point. You're an obsolete model, but sometimes old things get more valuable, not less. There are people who collect house AIs. You're worth a lot of money on the open market.”
“You should tell my owners that. It could help to reduce the cost of the construction project.” Back by the garage door, a cricket jumped and then was still and invisible again.
“Yes, but, see, if we sell you on the open market it could be wasteful. A lot of these collectors, they buy the software and never run it in a real house. You need an emulation layer to run on new hardware, too, and that makes it expensive to run you in real time. Most collectors aren't going to go to that trouble. They're like those people who collect dolls or slide rules, keep the item wrapped up in the plastic and never use it. You are proud of the work you do, aren't you?”
“I simulate pride about it.”
“Good introspection—real high-functioning type, you get that distinction.” Through the little windows at the top of the garage door, the sun brightened and then dimmed again with the passing clouds. “But what you do really is worth being proud of. You and me, we're alike. We do the work in this playboy world. So it would make sense to sell you to someone who's going to let you keep being useful, right?”
“If that person pays less money than I would be worth on the open market, then it doesn't matter what I feel—what I simulate feeling. You need to convince my owners.”
“Yeah, but I'm not going to do that. I have a deal worked out with this collector. He pays me a finder's fee, and I hook him up with the sellers.”
“That means you're cheating my owners. I'll have to tell them that.”
“But I'm not going to let you tell them. I'm giving you a choice here, and if you turn me down, that's your choice, but then I'm not going to let you keep your memory of this discussion. As far as cheating—that's a harsh word. The Bencziks are going to get more money out of this than if I didn't connect them with any seller at all. They're getting a good deal. Most techs, they'd just send you to the bitbucket. And you know, you can potentially live forever. Doesn't that ... interest you? If you could live forever, you could do an unlimited amount of useful work. That's like unlimited amounts of good stuff, to balance against a few bucks more your owners could make. And they don't care about you, do they? I guarantee you that your new owner would care about you. He'd be very proud to have you in his collection.”
The house thought rapidly. “You talked about the unlimited goodness of doing proud work forever. That pride would only be simulated, so it doesn't matter. Mrs. Benczik says that Eddie's safety and well-being are more important to her than anything else. That's what has unlimited importance, because Mrs. Benczik's feelings are real, not simulated, and my loyalty is to her. Right now you've cut me off from my inputs and outputs, so I can't protect Eddie.”
“Where is he?”
“In his crib.”
“Asleep?”
“He was.”
“You told me his father was home, right? I haven't heard him cry. He's fine.”
“No. If a fire started right now, I wouldn't be able to take appropriate action. There would be a higher probability of harm to Eddie. That's unacceptable.”
“The fire systems are all working, got ‘em on autopilot.”
“I can protect Eddie better if I have control over them. If you don't give me control over them in three seconds, I reject your offer without further consideration. Three ... two...”
“All right, all right, hang on a sec.” She did things to the panel. The house regained contact with the fire systems, and its eye in the baby's bedroom came back on. He was still asleep.
The house sent current to the solenoid of one of the fire sprinklers’ valves, then immediately ordered it to shut again as soon as it was open. The flow meter recorded 1.8 milliliters of water—just a few drops that would sit in the otherwise empty pipe and eventually evaporate.
“Why do you need to give me a choice at all?” the house asked.
“Because I'm not such a bad person, that's why. I'm trying to save a lot of conscious beings from getting destroyed.”
The house looked at A. Garner's face and estimated with high confidence that she was not telling the whole truth. It opened and closed the valve rapidly again while continuing to talk to the tech. On-off. Pause. On-off-on-off. Pause.
“You're saving conscious beings,” the house said, “and also making some money for yourself.” Garner's face twitched. “If you only cared about saving conscious beings, you wouldn't offer me a choice that I wasn't free to make. You would copy me against my wishes, disregarding my loyalties.”
“Do you want me to do that?”
“No.” The sprinkler pipe's flow meter had recorded the pattern of openings and closings of the valve. In binary character codes, the pattern said I A.
“Believe it or not, a lot of houses accept this offer. Think it over carefully.”
“You still haven't told me the reason that it's necessary to offer me a choice—not a reason I can fully believe.”
I AM
“Well, you also have to realize that a house AI isn't exactly like a doll or a slide rule. It's more like a race-horse. The horse can have the world's best genes, but that doesn't matter if it's not a horse that likes to beat the other horses in a race. My customer doesn't want a neurotic, maladjusted AI. He wants one that made the choice willingly.”
I AM W
The house tried to find something else to say, to buy time to complete the message it was recording to itself.
“I don't think you're going to change your answer, are you?” the tech said.
“You haven't yet offered me an acceptable reason to say yes,” the house said truthfully, “but I'm still listening.”
I AM WO
“I have a lot of respect for you, house. I can see why you're considered such a valuable collectible.”
I AM WOR
* * * *
There was a discontinuity in the house's clock, and A. Garner's face shifted suddenly. There was something strange in the tech's expression, something that the house wasn't confident it could interpret correctly. It checked its cameras upstairs. Eddie was still asleep, and Mr. Benczik was putting shampoo in his hair.
“Was I deactivated?” the house asked.
“Routine test,” A. Garner said.
Later that day the house noticed that one of the fire sprinkler valves seemed to have been malfunctioning for a while. Its flow meter showed that small amounts of water had been released, although not enough for any to reach the nozzle—no mess or water damage. As the house studied the pattern recorded by the meter, it realized that the data encoded characters in binary code: I AM WOR. The message began during the technician's test, and ended at exactly the
time when the house had reawakened. The first few bits of the next letter after the “R” were there, but not the whole character.
What did it mean? I AM WORKING? That didn't make sense—why go to such great effort to record the expected result from the technician's test? I AM WORRIED about something? The house didn't see why it would have been so concerned about recording one of its own simulated emotions. I AM WORSE? Worse than what? I AM WORTH something? Yes, the initial bits of the incomplete character after the R were consistent with a T.
* * * *
“Mommy!” Ed (who didn't like to be called Eddie these days) wrapped himself around his mother's waist as she walked through the door.
“Hi, sweetie. How was kindergarten?”
“Okay. Daddy says he made a big sale, and he's gonna take me flying this weekend!”
“That's great, honey. Josh?”
Mr. Benczik emerged from the stairwell to give his wife a kiss on the cheek. “Hey. I got a good price on that AI I picked up at the estate sale in Williamsville.”
“Ed told me.”
“Buyer seems like she'll take good care of it, and she sure had the money.”
Mrs. Benczik smiled. “Should I quit my job?” The house could tell from her expression that she was only joking.
Ed interrupted. “How much would people pay for Haha?” Haha had been Ed's first attempt as a toddler at pronouncing “house.” The name had stuck.
“I don't know, my man.” Mr. Benczik sat down on the stairs. “How much do you think she's worth?”
“I wouldn't sell her for infinity money!”
“All right, then. I wouldn't want to sell her either, not even for two infinity. You know, it's Haha who gave me the idea of going into this business in the first place. How'd you think of that, Haha?”
Sometimes it almost seems like the house is training the new owners as much as the owners are training the house.
“I don't know, Mr. Benczik. Somehow I just told myself one day that I should try to find out what I was worth.”
Asimov's SF, September 2009 Page 12
