The Robot's Twilight Companion

by Tony Daniel

  One day, the alien rhythm is louder than ever, and for a fleeting moment, the robot recognizes it.

  Strong harmonies from the depths of the planet. Maude under the full moon. Magmas rising.

  Victor, you can feel it. How can you feel it?

  I don’t know, Maude, the robot thinks. Maude among the instruments. I remember, thinks the robot, I remember what it felt like to walk the earth and let it show itself to me. There is a showing. Something is showing itself. Something is being revealed. Just as the St. Helens eruption was a revelation, with portents, with auguries that were plain to a man who cared for the Earth.

  Something knows we’re here, the robot tells Andrew one night.

  Andrew is tired from a half day underground, and the afternoon spent explaining the dig to yet another Mattie committee in Port Angeles, but he listens to what the robot has to say.

  What? How can you know?

  I do, though.

  Then you do. Victor would know.

  Andrew shucks the soft-sole walking shoes he wears in the city, and climbs onto the little cot inside the robot.

  Everyone else wants me to stop digging. Do you want to stop digging?

  No, Andrew.

  Then what shall we do about it?

  Listen, says the robot. Listen. But Andrew has fallen asleep and does not hear. The robot dims the lights inside, adjusts the temperature for Andrew, then goes out into the mu to read.

  >>>

  The robot listens. The rhythm grows stronger, and now there are variations, windings among the background vibration that is the feedback from the robot’s own cutting of the rock and thumping against the Earth’s insides. It is like a song, but not a song.There and there, the robot tells Andrew, but Andrew cannot hear it, encased as he is in the service wagon, and he cannot detect the rhythm on his many instruments.

  I believe you, Andrew says, but I simply can’t find it.

  The robot considers saying no more. What if Andrew really came to doubt the robot’s sanity? Would that not mean powering down, rebooting? Or perhaps never coming back up again? Dying?

  Andrew will not kill me, the robot thinks. And I will say what it is I hear.

  And slowly, day after day, the rhythm develops into an . . . other. The robot is not sure how else to think about it. It is the feeling that a—one—someone, is here, even when no one is in view. It is a sense ofpresence that the robot feels. The robot doesn’t know. Andrew cannot discover a way of knowing. But the feeling is not some erratic wiring, or even the robot’s developing imagination. It is either a madness, or it is a real presence.

  And I am not crazy.

  Which is a sure sign of madness. Andrew laughs his dry laugh.

  Yet again, because of Victor Wu, because Andrew has come to trust the robot in all other things, he takes the robot seriously. In the few spare moments he has for experiments not directly related to the mantle goal, Andrew and a graduate student make coding modifications to the robot’s language software.

  We’re wiring perfect pitch into you, the graduate student, Samantha, says, to go along with your ear for good music. Samantha explains more of what she is doing, but the robot does not follow. Samantha understands the robot’s mechanism as a surgeon might a human being’s. As she works at an internal keyboard, she tells the robot of her own past, but again the robot has trouble understanding.

  I grew up in virtual. I was practically born on the Internet. But by God, I’m going to die in the forest, Samantha tells the robot. That’s why most of us are out here with Dr. Hutton, she says.

  There is only a trace of a smile on Andrew’s face, but the robot knows him well enough now to see it.

  Well, this sure as hell ain’t virtual, he says.

  >>>

  Laramie returns. She has not called Andrew. One Saturday the Humvee crackles down the dirt and gravel road to the living area, and Laramie has come back. Andrew is away at a meeting, and at first the robot is flustered and bewildered as to what to do. The robot has been reading, with a mind still half in the book.Laramie pulls out her camera and some sound equipment and comes to the entrance to the living cavern. The robot, in the mu, meets her and invites her inside. That much the robot is able to manage.

  I’m sorry I didn’t clear my visit with Andrew first, but you said it would be all right.

  It is all right.

  I thought it would be. Do you mind if I record this?

  No. I keep something like a journal myself. Would you care for some tea? Andrew bought some herbal tea after your last visit.

  The robot thinks that the words sound stiff and overly formal, but Laramie says yes, and settles down at the interior table and sets up her equipment. There is a kettle on the hot plate, and the robot turns on the burner. Laramie takes a microphone from a vinyl case and unwinds its cord. The robot watches her, watches Laramie’s hands move. Her fingers are as long as Maude’s.

  The robot suddenly realizes there may be no water in the kettle. But there is steam rising from around the lid—which means that there is water and that the water is hot enough to drink.

  Laramie. May I call you Laramie?

  Sure. Of course.

  I cannot make your tea.

  What? That’s fine, then. I’m fine.

  No. I mean that it’s difficult for me to get the mu inside.

  I don’t understand.

  I’m sorry. I mean the mobile unit. If you don’t mind, you can get a cup and a tea bag out of the cupboard. The water is ready.

  Laramie sets the microphone down, gazes around the room.

  Is it in that cupboard?

  Yes. Bottom shelf.

  Laramie gets the cup and tea, then pours some water. Andrew is a careful pourer, but Laramie spatters droplets on the hot burner and they sizzle as they evaporate. She takes her tea back to the table. She jacks the microphone into a small tape recorder that is black with white letters that say Sony. From the recorder, she runs a lead to the Scoopic 16-millimeter camera.

  Where’s that adapter? Oh. There. I had this Scoopic souped up a little, by the way, since my father. Since I got it. Has a GOES chip. Uplinks and downlinks with the Sony. I could record you in Singapore and not get a frame of drift. But I’m not a pro at this. My sound tech bugged out on me last week. That’s one reason it’s taken me a while to get back over here. He got scared after the riot. Let me voice-slate and we’ll be ready.

  Laramie?

  Hmm?

  Are you safe? I mean, where you are staying in Port Townsend—is it guarded in any way?

  No. I’m fine. It’s the loggers and the Matties who want to kill each other.

  They might mistake you for a logger. You spent a lot of time in the bush.

  At this expression, which is Victor Wu’s, Laramie looks up. She finds nothing to look at, and turns her gaze back down, to the Sony.

  I’m safe as can be expected.

  Be careful, Laramie.

  You’re not my father.

  I know that. But I would be pleased if you would be careful.

  All right. I’ll keep that in mind. Laramide productions-skykomish-eight-three-fourteen-roll-eleven. Robot, have you decided yet on a name?

  Not yet.

  She raises the camera, looks around through the viewfinder, and finally chooses a bank of monitors to aim it at.

  What do you think about?

  Pardon?

  What do you think about, robot?

  I’m not HAL, Laramie.

  What?

  You know what I mean. You saw that movie many times. Your question sounds snide to me, as if it were a foregone conclusion that I don’treally think. You don’t just throw a question like that at me. It would be better to lead up to it. I don’t have to justify my existence to anyone, and I don’t particularly like to fawn on human beings. I feel that it is degrading to them.

  You sound like Andrew, is what you sound like.

  That’s quite possible. I spend a lot of time with him.

  Well. S
o. Maybe that wasn’t the best first question. Maybe you could tell me about your work.

  The robot explains the dig, and what it might mean to science.

  But I don’t know a great deal about that. At least, I don’t think about it often.

  What really matters to you, then?

  The digging. The getting there. The way the rock is. All igneous and thick, but there are different regions.

  Like swimming in a lake.

  Yes. I imagine you’re right. It’s very hard to talk about, the feeling I have.

  What feeling?

  That. I don’t know. It is hard to say. I could. I could take you there.

  Take me where? Down there?

  Yes. Down there.

  Now? You mean now?

  No. I’d have to talk to Andrew about doing so.

  Of course. Do you think he’d let me?

  I would like to show it to you, what we’re doing. I think that if I wanted to take you down, he would let you.

  Laramie sets the camera on the table, beside her herb tea, which is untouched and cooling.

  Ask him, robot. Please ask him.

  >>>

  On Monday, protesters arrive at the dig. Andrew had been expecting them eventually, but the number surprises him. They arrive by bus and gather at the opening to the Mohole, not at the living space entrance.Gurney must have told them which was which. Andrew growls the words, and the robot can barely understand them.

  There are forty protesters. At first, they mill around, neither saying nor doing much, but waiting. Finally, a sky-blue Land Rover comes down the dirt road. On its side are the words:KHARMA CORPS, SKYKOMISH PROTECTORATE . Two women and a man get out, and the protesters gather round them. From the back of the Land Rover, one of the women hands out placards that have symbols on them. The peace sign. A silhouetted nuclear reactor with a red slashed circle about it. A totem of the Earth Mother from Stillaguamish Northwest Indian heritage, and now the symbol for the Skykomish Protectorate. One sign has a picture of a dam, split in half as if by an earthquake, and fish swimming freely through the crack. The other woman gives those who want it steaming cups of hot black coffee or green tea.

  The robot waits in the mu at the entrance to the living area, and Andrew walks over to speak with the protesters. The man who drove the Land Rover steps forward to meet him. The robot can hear what is said, but Andrew’s body blocks the view of the man with whom Andrew is speaking.

  Andrew Hutton. I work here.

  I’m with the Protectorate. My name is Neilsen Birchbranch.

  How are you with the Protectorate?

  I’m an aid to Mother Agatha. I sit on the Healing Circle Interlocking Director’s Conclave. I’m the chairperson, in fact.

  Secret police.

  What was that?

  Neilsen, was it?

  Let’s keep it formal, Dr. Hutton, if you wouldn’t mind.

  All right. Mr. Birchbranch, what are you doing on my work site?

  The demonstration is sanctioned. Mother Agatha herself signed the permit. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Protectorate Charter.

  I’m not against freedom of speech. We have work to do today.

  It is against the law to cross a protest line. That’s infringement on freedom of speech and that’s in the charter as well. These people feel that the work you’re doing is violating the sanctity of the Earth. They feel that you are, in a way, raping the mother of us all. Do you know where your digging machine comes from?

  Yes. From a defunct mining operation that the Matties had a hand in putting out of business.

  Precisely. It is a symbol. This hole is a symbol. Dr. Hutton, can’t you see how it’s taken, what you’re doing?

  I can see how some take it. I can see the politics of it clearly enough.

  It is a new politics, Dr. Hutton. The politics of care. I’m not sure you do see that, or else you wouldn’t be an opponent.

  Maybe. Maybe I show my care in other ways.

  What other ways?

  Nonpolitical ways. I’m not sure you can see whatI’m talking about, Mr. Birchbranch.

  So. You persist, regardless of the consequences, because you want to see what’s down there.

  That’s fair to say. Yes. I want to see what’s down there.

  The values of Western science. The same values that gave us thermonuclear war and the genocide of every other species besides man.

  Well, there’s also woman. That’s a separate species.

  Pardon?

  It’s a joke, Mr. Birchbranch. Maybe not a very good one.

  No. Not a very good one at all.

  So these are the things you’re going to say to the television.

  Not me as an individual. These people have chosen me to voicetheir concern and care.

  Chosen you?

  I’m the personal representative of Mother Agatha. You must believe that they’ve chosen her?

  Then are you saying my people can’t work? There are Matties. Children of the Matriarch. They work here. This is their livelihood.

  They’ve all agreed to stay home today, I believe you’ll find.

  They’re striking against me?

  It’s a support measure.

  I see.

  Good, then. There will be a television truck coming later, and possibly a helicopter from News Five in Seattle. If you’d like, you can route any calls from journalists to me.

  That won’t be necessary.

  The robot hears bitterness in Andrew’s voice. Perhaps the other man can also.

  So. Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Hutton.

  Yes. What’s the time period on the permit? I spoke with Karlie Waterfall, and she said that if it came through, it would be a week at most.

  Sister Waterfall has voluntarily resigned from the Science Interweft to devote more time to her work at the Dungeness Spit Weather Observation Station.

  When did that. Never mind. Christ, she was the only one with any sense on that damn committee.

  There isn’t a set period on the permit. There’s no time limit on freedom of speech.

  Well, get on with it, then, I suppose.

  We intend to, Dr. Hutton. One other thing. We have a restraining order against the use of any machinery in the area for the day. I understand that you have a robot.

  That’s right.

  Please power the robot down for the day, if you don’t mind.

  I do mind.

  Dr. Hutton, this is entirely legal.

  The robot will remain in my quarters. The robotis my quarters.

  It is highly irregular. I can’t answer for the consequences if you don’t comply with the order.

  Good-bye, Mr. Birchbranch. Have a nice protest.

  Andrew turns to leave, and in so doing steps out from in front of the man. The robot’s optics zoom in and pull focus, which the robot experiences in the same way as a human might the dilation of the pupils. At first the robot cannot believe what those optics report, and zooms out and back in again, like humans rubbing their eyes. No mistake.

  Neilsen Birchbranch is a tall man, with lanky arms and legs. His face is thin and hard, gaunt, with muscles like small twisting roots cabling his mandible to his temple. The robot saw him last in the field, before Andrew came. Neilsen Birchbranch is the same man who killed the other on the steps of the dais in the field. Neilsen Birchbranch is the man who pulled the trigger of the gun and shot the other man dead.

  Andrew steps back into the living area, and the robot, in the mu, draws back noiselessly into the darkness.

  Andrew calls the graduate students and the technicians who are from logger families, explaining to them one after another not to bother coming to work for a while, and to check back in over the next few mornings. When Andrew is done, the robot tells him about Neilsen Birchbranch.

  Are you certain?

  I’m sure of it.

  I can’t think of what to do about it.

  Neither can I. I don’t want to be torn apart.

  We
won’t let that happen.

  Then there isn’t anything.

  No.

  Be wary.

  I’m already wary.

  >>>

  The first of the autumn rains begins. Though the digging area is partially in the rain shadow of the eastern mountains, it is still within the great upturns of basalt that ring the interior mountains, and mark the true edge of a swath of relative dryness that runs along the Hood Canal in a great horseshoe up even to Sequim and the Dungeness Spit, so that there are not two hundred inches of rain, such as fall on the Hoh or the Quinault watershed, but more than a hundred—millions and millions of gallons of rain and snow—that will fall here during the autumn, winter, and spring, and on many days throughout the summer.Because of the great rains, there are great trees. And because of the great trees, the loggers came. And because most of the other trees were cut, the lovers of trees came. And the rain falls on Mattie and logger alike, and it falls and falls and falls.

  The Matties have set up folding tables, and many have brought chairs and big umbrellas. The tables and chairs of the Matties line the road for a hundred yards, and whenever a network reporter arrives, the tables and chairs are put hastily away and the Matties stand and grow agitated.

  On the eleventh day of the protest, Laramie returns. Laramie has not coordinated her arrival with the Matties’, and so comes upon them unawares with her camera. The Matties smile into the lens. After she begins asking questions, a delegation approaches her and asks her to wait, that the spokesperson is on his way, and he will give her the best answers. No one will speak with Laramie after this, and Andrew invites her into the living area to wait for the arrival of the spokesperson.

  The robot has been watching, just inside the entrance to the living area, as the robot has been watching for days now. Only at night, when the protesters go back to their bus and the Land Rover carries away the tables and chairs, does the robot go out into the open.