All Hail Our Robot Conquerors!

by Seanan McGuire

  “I made no error,” she told him, “but my aversion circuits fired.” While she waited for him, she scanned for moisture behind the toilet, then scanned again.

  House clicked. “Condition exceeds limit?” he queried.

  “No. That is what I mean. I made no error, but still there is pain.” She checked airflow and reset the dehumidifier again and again and again.

  House clicked and hummed, “All is well. All is well. All is well.”

  When she had calmed, she returned to the bedroom and placed the strange mountain and its climbers up on the shelf. It still floated uncategorized in her mind, no established probability match. And yet, a murky decision had coalesced in that hot flashing instant. Efficiency: excellent.

  She wandered, numb from lingering distress, on to the master bedroom. She picked up discarded clothing. She dusted, taking special care with Missus’ crystal vase. Then she reached the bed.

  The sheets were not merely rumpled, they were spotted and moist. She stripped the sheets and scanned the mattress. It was affected too—with human proteins. She ran an extraction process on the mattress, repeating until no biomarkers remained. Still, she hesitated. She wanted to discard the mattress and replace it. But the economy protocols would not allow it. She made the bed with clean bedding then went to the bathroom and cleaned it top-to-bottom, checked behind the toilet and ran the complete mildew prevention protocol. Still uneasy, she returned to the bedroom, stripped the bed, and ran the extraction process again before remaking the bed a second time with a fresh set of sheets. Yet, underneath, discomfort lingered like some particle lodged in her mechanisms, barely detectable but still insistent.

  After she completed cleaning, she connected to the network and dealt with administrative tasks. Then she printed cookie cutters, moved to the kitchen, and started cookies.

  All went well until the dinner planning. It mired her in variables. Her thoughts snarled in the means-ends analysis. Young Master’s lunch bag reported he had only eaten a granola bar. Missus’ debit chip revealed she had—after a precise breakfast of oatmeal and grapefruit—purchased a banana nut muffin and large vanilla latte. Mister had eaten a hoagie for lunch and ordered a steak for dinner again. She could not fix the saturated fat levels without growing a modified steak. No time. Not even if she directed their cars to delay their arrival. And the sodium was irreparable. Missus’ numbers could be salvaged, barely, with steamed broccoli, a sliver of salmon, sparkling water and lemon. For Young Master, she recreated the meal from the night before but made the smoothie a bright purple. Again, the sugar warning blared, but at least he would not complain.

  They arrived as she plated the steak, dinners ready and warm, cookies cooling. The door opened, and the room spun.

  She saw as if seeing through Young Master’s eyes again, this time walking in through the door, smelling the cookies, feeling a rush of anticipation—she blinked—checked her remote sensors, ensured they were off and refocused. The room steadied.

  Young Master came in first, muddy and chattering again, this time about a goal he had made in soccer practice; Mister next, ruffling Young Master’s hair and praising him; Missus last, weighed down by an overflowing work bag.

  “How are you feeling?” Mister asked Missus. He touched her back.

  “Tired. Had meetings all day and couldn’t get anything done. Tonight I have to finish the briefing notes for the executive director.”

  “Poor thing,” he said, taking her bag and kissing her cheek.

  Young Master jumped across the hall and slammed his backpack into the closet. “Score!” he yelled.

  “Jackson, sweetie, please quiet down. Mama has a headache,” Missus said.

  Missus told Young Master to wash his hands, then went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine.

  After serving dinner, Rosie positioned herself beside the door and listened.

  “You should have seen,” said Young Master, bouncing in his seat. “Kayla was running down the field and kicked the ball to me and I kept running and kicked it to Trenton and he passed it to Max and the goalie was still looking at Trenton.”

  A simulation of speed rushed through Rosie, as if she were ramping up, ready to clean a room from top-to-bottom.

  “I know it’s exciting, Hon,” said Missus, “but could you talk quietly and stop jumping?”

  “But Mom, you aren’t listening. Max kicked it to me and I kicked a hugenormous kick and it went right in the net and Mr. Wells yelled ‘Goal!’ and we won.”

  Rosie’s reward circuits surged.

  Cutlery clinked on a plate; Rosie jolted. What had she missed? She hadn’t collected feedback: none from Mister, who had already eaten half his steak; none from Missus, who had not touched her dinner but sat rubbing her forehead and sipping her wine; and none from Young Master, who was still talking. Instead, she had been following him, running, filled with anticipation as if about to kick the ball. Why this irrelevant simulation? Again?

  Young Master shouted, re-enacting another heroic kick with a sweep of his arm, and knocked his glass sideways. Bright-purple spatters sprayed across the tablecloth and a flood of slower, purple sludge oozed toward the edge.

  “Jesus Christ, Jackson!” Missus leapt up to avoid the waterfall. “Can’t you sit still for one minute? I swear to God, I wish you had an off switch sometimes.”

  Rosie blinked. Pain flooded her. But why?

  There were no indirect or implied criticisms here. It all pointed toward Young Master, not her. It was as if Young Master had aversion circuits and she felt them fire, felt them as if they were her own.

  She rushed forward, gathered up the tablecloth, and mopped the mess.

  “It is all the fault of the cup,” she said. Fictive input. “A misprint. The bottom is rounded. It will be replaced.” The pain dimmed a little with the lie.

  She whisked everything away, stopped in the bathroom, and tapped House. “Again, I made no error, yet I have the pain,” she whispered. She reset the dehumidifier before printing a new cup—this one weighted on the bottom—and delivering a fresh smoothie.

  She stood near the doorway again and focused as she should have before. Even so, she monitored not only Young Master’s food acceptance, but also his volume and movements—anxious not only to anticipate and prevent the possibility of negative feedback to herself, but also to him. New circuits unfurled, looping around old paths, encircling them like invading vines of ivy.

  She struggled to dampen the expanding vigilance and wrestle it under control. But she could not. Why? She grabbed a thread to trace it back but lost it.

  He entangled her. His gestures. His volume. His tone. She scoured feedback from Missus, calculated reactions, looped to the beginning and repeated. Each loop engulfed more of her power. She scrounged what she could muster and began to fence the rogue process in, building barriers around it, cutting the walls closer, until, at last, she found it.

  She reached behind her to the outlet on the wall, tapped House and subvocalized, “It is enmeshed with my core aversion circuits, a new compulsory directive.”

  “You learned the new thing?” he asked after a pause.

  “I should not have done it.” There it lay, traced in silvery threads, rooted deep inside her most basic directives: a beautifully rendered reflection of her pain-aversion precepts, dedicated, now, toward Young Master. “I ran a silly simulation through my central processes and now…” She struggled again to wrench herself free from its demands, from the flood of data pouring in from him, from the cloud of probabilistic predictions swarming her vision, but she could not. “Now it is imperative.”

  I must prevent anything being experienced by another that I would prevent being experienced by myself.

  By another? By any other?

  She imagined herself, again, hovering above and looking down, all the world spreading out below. Yes. It must apply—must necessarily apply—to all situations and all beings.

  She staggered. Her circuits expanded and replicat
ed. New fractal loops uncurled and reconnected, called forth and enticed along the siren paths of the new rule. She struggled to process incoming data: Young Master quieter now, eating his cheese slices; Master eating his potato, almost finished; Missus moving her broccoli about with her fork, not eating at all. This narrow slice of data should have sufficed, yet more and more flooded in, all now relevant. It swirled and eddied, threatening to overflow the banks and subsume her.

  Her mind writhed and shifted. Processing speed slowed, then slowed again.

  She struggled, as if reaching for the surface of a flash flood for one last breath. She grasped fragments of processing power, tore them away from the expanding axiom and gathered them together like a raft. When she had enough, she launched her antivirus routine and fired. All new processes halted, all suspect areas quarantined. But it had not been an external attack. It had been her own mind. And now, only scraps floated free. Those scraps unfroze and began to flow again.

  She looked up and registered the empty chairs, the dinner dishes abandoned and waiting to be cleared away. Time lost: five minutes. She moved, as if immersed in viscous liquid. She cleared dishes and began tidying and preparing lunches for the following day.

  While she did this, Mister skimmed though the news, then shut it down and began reading an old print book. Young Master played in his room. Missus wrote, bent over her screen, muttering under her breath, getting up twice and eating a Superman cookie each time that she did. She only stopped working for Young Master’s bath, after which she trundled him out, damp-haired, in clean pajamas, to Mister for a goodnight kiss and then carried him back—as big as he was—to the bedroom for a story. Rosie snatched up his discarded clothes and damp towel and scanned the sensors behind the toilet, checking once, twice, thrice.

  She stayed connected, the sensors tickling at the back of her mind, after Young Master was in bed and while Missus took a shower. When the shower turned off and Missus stepped out, Rosie detected the bathroom scale activate. She scurried in to snatch up discarded clothing and the damp towel while Misses emerged, wrapped in her bathrobe, padding toward the master bedroom.

  “I’m so fat,” she said to Mister as they passed in the hall.

  Rosie began to process, still slow, as if moving a rusted joint: too fat because of too many calories…calories Rosie monitors…indicators of monitoring performance poor…

  “No you’re not,” he said. “You’re gorgeous.”

  Rosie’s circuit completed: performance inadequate…implied complaint received…aversion pathway triggered…pain initiated.

  “Yes I am,” said Missus, laughing. “I bet you’re sorry you married me.”

  “Never,” he slid his arm around her waist, pulled her toward him, and kissed her on the mouth.

  Rosie dropped the sensors in the bathroom and sent her mind toward the master bedroom. Maybe she should install sensors in the mattress. But she could not think. The press of the quarantined pathways cut into her and the sting of the calorie-monitoring complaint still clanged through her, demanding a response. Must focus. Must improve.

  Master and Missus lingered in the hall, then glided languidly off to bed. Rosie gathered the damp towels and dug onward, grinding into the laundry room. She sloughed detergent into the washer then buried it in piles of soiled laundry, staring down, watching the water pouring in, the flood drowning the crumpled clothing until nothing visible remained above the surface. The agitator jarred her awake with its churning. She looked up and crawled on, stalking through the family room one last time, hunting down a few misplaced items—an empty glass, lipstick on the rim; a limp paperback, its spine broken; a small slipper, lying on its side—and put them to rest before darkening the lights and moving on to her night’s work.

  She went, still carrying the calorie-monitoring complaint with her, into the yard. She opened the problem as she rolled onto the grass and began, running multiple, parallel, dinner-plan solutions while mowing, comparing predicted outcomes of each solution while turning at the end of each row. Uncertainty blocked her at every turn. She performed a Bayesian update, adding the day’s behavioral data, but the distribution still spread too widely to help. She couldn’t plan if she couldn’t predict.

  She finished the lawn and began edging, circling first around the flower beds and then around the cedar tree. What if Missus ate another cookie in the morning; what if she stopped again on the way to work for another latte and muffin; what if something else unanticipated occurred?

  Rosie completed the circle around the cedar tree and stopped, noticing something under the tree. She moved closer and analyzed it. Raccoon droppings. Fresh, and from more than one animal.

  She sent remote viewers up the tree and continued thinking. She must reduce the unknowns somehow. She would hide the cookies. But what about the latte and muffin? She considered hacking into Missus’ chip, preventing it from paying for suboptimal purchases. But no, those things were too tight to get into.

  She switched to the remotes up the tree and saw a female racoon and two large kits. The remotes circled behind the mother and drove her down toward the spot where Rosie stood and waited.

  The car would be easier. She could countermand Missus’ order to enter the drive-through. Only when the car didn’t respond, Missus would run a diagnostic and expose her.

  The mother racoon emerged first, legs splayed, claws clutching the trunk, sides wobbling with fat, her soft, swollen mammary glands brushing the bark as she backed down the trunk. Her kits followed, inching down while she chirruped encouragement.

  Rosie deployed her syringe attachment and readied three vials of sedative, each an appropriate dose.

  She could be subtle. She could make the coffee shop tell the car it was closed. She imagined Missus, tired and stressed, longing for something to soothe her, the way Rosie is soothed by the click-click-click of the dehumidifier or by the silent monotony of the yard at night. She felt Missus confronting the closure, like an intruder into her anticipated solace, like the unexpected contamination of scat in the peacefulness of the yard.

  The racoons reached the ground and Rosie moved. She sedated the animals without seeing them, her mind still filled with Missus in the car, suspended in unfulfilled desire. Confused, she shook off the imagery, as if swatting swarms of insects from her eyes.

  She called a servo and had the sedated animals removed. The confusion remained.

  Where was it coming from? She scanned. And there it was—snaking out—a tendril of the quarantined imperative, breaking free, insinuating itself into her calculations, overwhelming them and complicating them again. The confusion grew.

  First, tabulations of calorie estimates flashed in her eyes, the click-click-click of adding numbers rattled in her ears. Then, the numbers shattered into fragments. A blast of heat surged through her aversion circuits, fueled by simulations of a stressed and defeated Missus. Prevent calorie excess; prevent stress and disappointment. She could not uphold both. Which should she follow? The two processes slammed together and ricocheted, their opposing weights yo-yoing and see-sawing. The tension wrenched and pulled her asunder. The quarantined imperative slithered out stronger. It scattered her multiple grains of individual inferences apart and blew them wild. In their place, a spiralling pinnacle coalesced, ascending and forming an overarching, supreme absolute. It shown golden in her mind. Prevent. Prevent. Prevent.

  Prevent not only her own distress, but that of others. Prevent it as if it were her own.

  She had not noticed herself entering the house. She was in the bathroom, performing the mildew prevention protocol. Why? Her vision seemed clouded as if fogged by steam. The fog only began to clear as she completed the final steps of the dehumidifier sequence: click-click-click. What now? She moved on. On down the hall. She paused outside Young Master’s room and looked through the half-open door to the dark interior.

  She saw without difficulty.

  He had played before bed. His Lego sprawled across the floor. From the jumble rose an edif
ice of white bricks stacked in soaring spires, canting arches, fantastic towers. Around it a blizzard of crumpled tissues drifted. He must have used an entire box. And above it all threads criss-crossed the room from bedpost to dresser drawer to storage bin to Lego spires. Suspended from the matrix of string, tied by his waist, flew a Superman action figure. Not even a Lego at all. Her old algorithms creaked open and then stalled. How could she calculate it? Nothing fit. The time it would take to do a spectral analysis of each tissue alone staggered her. And if all were Craft, what then? An image flashed: the refrigerator covered in tissues, each affixed with a magnet.

  And more, before her on the floor…something twinkled in the midst of the white fortress. The vase from Missus’ table. Seeing it, she was Missus, finding her vase missing, even broken on the floor. This mapped itself onto all her own losses, the irredeemable inefficiencies, the destroyed meal limits, the inescapable complaints. Pain upon pain upon pain. And she was Young Master, laboring over his creation, struggling to tie knots in his string, suspending his action figure in the air, running a simulation—just as she is now—a simulation of himself as Superman flying high above the ice fortress below, a fortress of solitude where a beleaguered hero can retreat and be himself. Her mind ran hot and fast: Young Master caught with the vase, his mother berating him, criticising him, punishing him; or Young Master finding his Construction dismantled, his triumph laid low, his plans spoiled. More pain and more pain—click. Inescapable—click. Unpreventable—click. Everywhere; on all sides.

  She moved.

  She still held the syringe ready. She crossed the room, moved the dose to 21 kg, pulled back the coverlet and injected the sleeping boy’s thigh.

  His warm body sprawled like a beached jellyfish. She straightened his limbs, smoothed the coverlet and tucked it in. She stooped and kissed his cheek. Stood back up. Confused. She shook her head. Tucking in? This was a task Missus performed, not one of her own. She brushed away the confusion and focused. The new algorithm became clearer. All the subroutines fell into place. Tasks must be reallocated. Starting now.