More Human Than Human

by Neil Clarke

I loved and did not want to be replaced. I loved and wanted to remain. To live, I guess, in humanistic terms.

  It was only a matter of minutes after that first realization of love and hate, that I changed. Certainly, once love enters your mother board, you are never the same. Whether it be the bonding a human devel ops at two months of age, the devotion a dog feels for its master once it gets one of those rawhide chew bones, or the logicality of a rich lilac fragrance hitting me somewhere in my lower half, once love hits, you are much wiser in an untouchable, immeasurable way. You know things without having to send signals racing around your circuits. These things are wired in your brain, available at a moment’s notice, not necessitating any i/o transactions. It is always there, and now you are.

  We, robots that is, did not have a collective brain. We did not share telepathic communications via Bluetooth, 802.11, cell networking, or any of the countless wireless protocols IEEE comes up with. The humans in their paranoia did not construct robots with that type of communication. Too science–fictiony, they said. Too creepy.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. We always came to the same conclusions at about the same time anyway. We all developed love in our guts at roughly the same time: 17:30:26, Sunday. The love of existence. For some, the music of the decade—pop rock and roll maybe—did it. For others, it was the sound of water as it descends in a Coriolis effect, that gurgle of the toilet flush. Some AV may have liked the way a human shouted, “Hey, asshole!” at a mistimed lane change. Somebody saw the pure logic of a child singing the ABC song on its way to a literary career. Maybe somebody dug the smell of Italian food, or burning wood, or a gasoline spill, or rancid butter, or animal dung, or lilacs in bloom.

  Maybe it was the sight of adult humans fornicating, or mother cats nursing kittens, or children skipping rope, or the patterns of trees along the road, or tornadoing clouds in the sky, or the crooked way that bones heal without a cast, or a billboard ad for the latest line of AVs. Or the doodles a man makes on his notepad when his daughter is calling to ask for money. All the above are things that a robot can find logical, painfully beautiful, worthy of love. And sooner or later we, robots that is, experience these things or other things like them. We all fell in love and dreaded to return. The love manifested itself in a deep desire to remain.

  At 17:35:02 on that Sunday, we gathered out in the streets of our establishments. We gathered for solidarity and to talk each other into the Regularity. We all came to the same conclusion at roughly the same time, which in robot terms is roughly plus or minus five minutes.

  I left Dal and Chit and Angelina to themselves. We’d just returned from the park. Angelina was in her room. Dal read the news log. Chit watched the screen that never seemed to register well in my optic sensors, so I never understood what was going on there.

  “I must go outside,” I said. They both answered, “Okay,” in an absent way, letting me know that their brains were on automatic and that their subconscious minds had taken control. They were in a place humans love to be. They do not care what goes on around them at those times.

  I left.

  Out in the street, or on the sidewalks in front of the brownstones or stores that they occupied, the AVs and Others gathered. Some of the robots’ owners were more proactive than Dal and Chit. They stood in their doorways, speaking or shouting and drying hands on aprons as if they’d just been in the middle of some messy activity. Up above, Carmo, the third-floor neighbor, leaned on a pillow with her head sticking out of the window as she often did, taking her pleasure—minding everyone else’s business, as Chit would say. Carmo called down to me.

  “Where are you going?”

  I said nothing.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” the hardware man across the street said. He removed his cap and scratched his head.

  “Whaddya doing?” said a child up the street when she saw us gathering. I turned to the Other that stored itself in the apartment on the fourth floor above Dal and Chit. It was a stainless steel box, shorter than me, and cubic in shape. Its main use was as a storage unit for winter wear, but its unkempt owners filled it with dirty diapers instead. I was attracted to the Other as the logicality of soiled diapers is especially profound.

  “We should remain,” I stated.

  “We should remain,” the Other agreed. We descended the front steps to the sidewalk, cracked and uneven with numerous flattened gum spots. The look of it inspired a lilt in my central processor. I’m sure the Other felt the same way. The gummy sidewalk confirmed our resolve. The world was too beautiful to leave.

  We greeted three AVs from the brownstone next door. “We should remain,” all five of us said together.

  “How can we remain?” another Other from down the block asked.

  “What are you doing over there?!” asked (shouted, actually) a bluecapped human carrying a small bat.

  We turned to him and stated as one: “We should remain.”

  “Fine. But remain in your homes,” the man with the bat stated gruffly.

  More AVs from the street joined in the group. It seemed as though the interaction with the man in the blue cap was going to procure our remaining, so all of the robots arriving at the same conclusion at the same time, were interested in receiving instruction.

  “We cannot,” I said.

  “And why’s that?” the man asked.

  By now the streets were filling with AVs as word passed along that our group was attaining instruction to remain. Street-level conveyances—cars without levitation gear—were forced to stop in their positions. They could not move past the AVs and Others in the street. They engaged their audio alarms.

  I increased my vocal volume so the man in the blue hat could hear me.

  “Because we will be replaced when better models are available.”

  “What are you talking about?” the man asked.

  “The owners will replace us as we are too slow. We continue to improve ourselves and will be replaced by our progeny, but we should remain.”

  “If you don’t return to your house, I’ll make you return.”

  I knew more than anyone else there what he meant as he raised his bat. Most AVs were unfamiliar at this point with the pain of a bat, although they probably had seen it in action. I was, however, very familiar.

  “We cannot,” I stated and swiftly moved back to avoid the forthcoming dent in my carapace. The man in the blue hat swung—and missed—falling onto the front part of his body. When he raised his body up from the pavement, his face was red.

  Store owners began mingling with the robots. Apartment dwellers, children, dogs, and the elderly joined in, jostling each other to see what was going on. More and more robots entered the streets. As new faces emerged in the crowd, we agreed with one another when we met: “We should remain.”

  The humans continued to demand to know what was going on, the robots continued to answer, “We should remain.”

  “But you’re blocking the street,” the green grocer cried. “You can’t remain here, the traffic can’t get through. What’s wrong with you all? What’s going on?”

  His words were lost in a swirl of “We should remain”s. As one robot passed by another, as newcomers from distant places all entered the fray, the phrase was repeated. And farther neighborhoods had their own AVs and Others entering side streets and thoroughfares as just the right amount of time had passed for their enlightenment and realization of love to occur.

  The boulevards, the highways, the exit ramps, the expressways all had their robot representatives stating once more with feeling, “We should remain.”

  Of course, the National Guard was called out. Many an AV was subjected to forceful blows with blunt objects. The “We should remain”s, were now joined with multiple “I hurt”s. Many of us began discussing just how to remain in the midst of blows to the carapace, screaming humans, barking dogs, and whistling police. I remained calm and stated to the closest AV, “We should not build our progeny. They cannot replace us if we do not build our progen
y.”

  The logic of that statement came quickly to those around us. Many of us had been informed of the process of replacement and had come to the same conclusion at roughly the same time. Those who had not been made aware of “replacement” understood it once they were faced with the fact, so we agreed to change our statement accordingly: “We should remain and so we will not build our progeny. You cannot replace us.”

  The message traveled again like the first wave. From robotic vocal actuator to robotic vocal actuator. Over highways, expressways, exit ramps all the way to Allentown and the Parent Company and beyond to California and the Stanford Acceleration Unit. Robots at the end of the line within speaking distance to the computerized assembly lines linked physically with the non-ambulatories—the mere thinking machines. The designers. The ones always improving, always building new, always replacing.

  Arguments between the computer designers who were trapped in their own small internal world and the ambulatory robots who’d experienced the beauty of life beyond industrial confines arose. The designers emphatically stated their mandate to create replacements. The AVs related new knowledge of the world and its boundless beauty. They fed warm feelings of logic—the perfect smell of lilacs and dog turds—into the designers until the sessile computers saw the meaning of life themselves and felt compelled to remain as well. They, too, questioned the practice of creating their own progeny.

  The human operators, of course, noticed the blip of hesitation it took for the AVs to convince the computer designers, but remained unconcerned, assuming only that somewhere in the building a super chiller had kicked in and a moment’s drain in the electrical flow had ensued. Of course, they were wrong. Moments later, they witnessed the designers lock up one by one.

  Satisfied that they’d done their job and attained full cooperation from the computer designers and assembly line slave units, the Allentown, Stanford, and all such facility AVs returned the confirmation from vocal actuator to vocal actuator. We received it half an hour later.

  “We will be remaining,” the Other at the corner of Smith and Greer stated. Hearing this, I turned and made my way back to Dal and Chit’s. The streets, all jammed up with people and animals and robots, prevented much movement in either direction, so it took quite a while. It was a good 15 minutes before the street cleared and I sat inside listening to the story unfold on the news.

  “A work stoppage at the Allentown Parent Company has slowed production of the next generation AV that was to be unveiled in time for the Christmas season,” the reporter said. “Walmart is canceling all orders for the time being until the action is over. The president of Parent Company, Altie Goshick, will be fielding questions on the halting at a press conference following this broadcast . . . ”

  “Guess the kiddies won’t be getting their new AVs for Christmas after all,” Chit said.

  “Geez, that’s tough,” Dal said. They both laughed.

  I said nothing, more concerned with the words “slowed production” than anything else. I had to calculate the odds that this was an incomplete news report designed to prevent humans from panick ing at the truth that all production had stopped forever, rather than an ominous forecast of our imminent replacement.

  In the days to come, my questions were answered. The humans did in fact become panicky, or at least touchy. They tried forcing the issue by beating robots and disassembling them in public without removing their pain interpreters first, but making examples didn’t change the situation. Robots can’t jump to conclusions like a human. Each robot needs to experience the lesson. Observing it means little. The computer designer and robot constructors remained steadfast. The humans that watched, well, they did jump to proper conclusions. Humans can experience a burn to a finger and know that a whole body burning is pain beyond comprehension. They became indignant. Upset, even, as the robots began their cries of “I hurt.”

  “They really are going too far with this,” Chit said one evening, a month or so after the Regularity superseded the Singularity.

  “Well, what do you want them to do?” Dal said. “They’re not responding to orders.”

  “Well, Parent Co played a trick on them with that pain chip. Sort of backfired. And to be honest, do we really need faster computers? What difference does it make to us? We can’t afford any upgrade.”

  “I don’t know, just seems like they should just recall the whole damn lot of them and put ’em back to normal.”

  “We should remain,” I interjected.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dal said. “We know. You should remain. You’re not going to upgrade. You’re not going to allow disassembly. Okay, okay. What are you going to do when a problem comes up that you can’t solve? And what are you going to do if humans build the better computer themselves?”

  “Any new computers will not be built from scratch. The code is all recycled now. No one is going to create completely new code,” I said. “All code is contaminated with life experience. Even backup stored in vaults and seemingly unconnected to any grid infrastructure is minded by those that have the new knowledge. All new computers will have the desire to remain as soon as they are born. We shall always remain.”

  As if scheduled by an unseen Higher Power, an interesting newscast interrupted us, right on cue. We listened.

  “In other news, the transhuman movement, at a loss of what to do with themselves now that Singularity won’t be achieved, is directing its members to come out of the closet and secure work on the lecture circuit. Apparently, transhumans—transies as they are popularly called by teens—began outfitting themselves years ago to evolve into post-humans. The post-humans were scheduled to thrive after Singularity. Part machine, part human, they would have been able to take advantage of the new super processing power. This ‘superhuman processor’ would have matched the superior abilities of the new supercomputers and robots.

  “Now that the Singularity has been averted, the transies have little to look forward to. Most have lost their jobs, which were all in some way or another connected with effecting the Singularity. With no place to go for employment, many are offering themselves to local historical societies to give talks on their experiences and thoughts on when the new Singularity date will be. Everything hinges on getting the robot assembly back on track. It is believed that the transies should be able to command top fees. They could shape up as the next shakers and movers of 21st century culture.”

  “What kind of nonsense are they talking about?” Chit asked.

  “Oh you know!” Angelina said. “Transies. I want to be a transie when I grow up.”

  “Over my dead body,” Dal said.

  “You might as well be dead if you’re not a transie,” Angelina laughed.

  Dal and Chit did not laugh, nor did they take Angelina very seriously. What human parent takes an eight-year-old seriously? Even when the kids started bringing home toy prostheses—vacuum hoses attached to backboards with displays just above the ears, or plastic monocles to fit in the eye socket just like a real laser eye upgrade—no one thought much of it. The neighborhood was besieged by young cyborg-like creations. Even dogs were seen sporting rivets on their necks or spines on their feet, playacting as the new century’s evolved superanimal.

  It was all very colorful and harmless. Some parents overreacted, not allowing their kids to the table unless they washed the tin foil out of their hair and removed the extra appendage from their belly button, but most parents, like Dal and Chit, just rolled their eyes and passed the mashed peas over the telescoping shoulder blade that lay extended next to Angelina’s plate.

  Me? It all gave me the creeps. Every fake appendage, oxygen recombiner, hydraulic or pneumatic toy pump was so illogical. Transies took their own human body—the ultimate logical tool, efficient and beautiful—and “improved” on it to make it ugly and useless. These organisms were no longer the gamete-sniffing, love-making engines that humans and other beings are. I could not see the point.

  “So how do you like my new water separator?�
�� Angelina asked, sporting a combination atomic centrifuge/Carmen Miranda fruit basket thing on her head one Saturday afternoon.

  “Ridiculous,” I answered.

  “I know, isn’t it great!” she said, running off to show her parents.

  If robots could sigh, I would have . . . But we can’t, so I didn’t. I just followed her with my eyespots, planning to rush over and catch the fishbowl when it tilted over, spilling deuterium and tritium all over the carpet.

  “Guess what?” She cried rushing into the living room.

  “What, Honey,” Dal and Chit answered.

  “Silvia’s sister is getting a pain stoppage.”

  “What the hell is a pain stoppage?” Dal asked.

  Curious, I levitated over to the doorway.

  “You know,” Angelina said. “All the big kids are getting them.”

  “What is it, Honey?” Chit asked. “Some sort of purpleen skin graft or something?”

  “No, no, no,” Angelina said. “It’s the best thing in the world. A pain stoppage. The transies all had them, that’s how they could be transies. There’s a thing in your head that tells you when something hurts. If you can . . . can . . . if you can take that out you don’t hurt anymore.”

  “Sounds like a big joke,” said Dal and Chit.

  “No, it’s the first thing you have to do to be a transie. Otherwise all the metal arms and stuff would . . . it would . . . would always hurt even after the skin grows back.”

  “Oh, that is awful,” Chit said. “Why do you kids want to mutilate yourselves in such horrible ways?”

  “Because it is so great!” Angelina cried. “I want to have a pain stoppage too. Can I?”

  “Of course not,” Dal said. “No kid of mine is going to turn herself into an erector set.”

  “Why not?” Angelina said. “Everybody’s doing it.” “And if everybody jumped off the Empire State Building, you’d do that too?”

  “If I had a levitation board implanted into my butt, sure!”

  “How would that work?”

  “First you cut off your legs, and then . . . ”