Made to Order

by Jonathan Strahan

  It was important that the robot was allowed to complete these last aspects of its designated role, yet by now the sheer number of cyborgs, crawlers, guide-bots, pleasure-droids, modules, service machines and semi-autonomous devices—along with an ever-growing cloud of server bees—which had poured into the Basilica were obstructing its way. Claws, pincers, synthflesh hands and numerous other appendages were dragging at it, disregarding its signals of complaint, whilst even its vocal apparatus was soon clogged by the server bees which swarmed across its face. Next, the old man’s body was torn from its grasp and borne away.

  The sin eater couldn’t move, let alone object, as it was lifted from its feet, even though none of this behaviour made any coherent sense. Nor could it understand why some of the larger and less humanoid construction automata were fixing two of the fallen roof-beams beneath the central dome into the approximate shape of a cross. It caught a glimpse of the little servitor the old man had called Irene, but it, too, was being engulfed as the carpetbag was torn from its grasp.

  The robot was borne up by a sea of metals, plastics and synthflesh until its arms were splayed against the cross, and the dataspikes which had spilled from its carpetbag, both the fresh and the used, were driven into its hands and feet by clouds of server bees as the cross was raised high. Still, though, it seemed that this was not enough, for yet more of the exhausted dataspikes were now plunged through the synthflesh and metal of its skull to form a black-dripping crown.

  It could feel the leaking synaptic residues of many different clients entangling with its quantum circuitry, and experienced whole lifetimes of regret, disappointment and hunger in one sudden rush. It heard the rattle of gunfire, and the smack of fist against flesh, and the sneer of harshly flung remarks, and glimpsed a single small child’s pained and puzzled face. It even saw how this once verdant world had been abused and exploited until it no longer seemed worth the bother of saving.

  Although several of its major systems were approaching overload, it could still make out enough of the scene around it through the fluids streaming across its synthflesh to observe the climbing, crawling, grinding, tumbling, buzzing mass, and hear and, yes, almost understand their combined howl of mechanical rage—for machines often became like their masters, and had it not brought about the end of any reason for them to exist? Yet as server bees stung, and the droids of the Papal Guard stabbed at it with their halberds, the crucified sin eater tilted its head towards Basilica’s central dome, which was now filled with the blaze of sunset, and, in the moment of its final shutdown, it forgave them all.

  FAIRY TALES FOR ROBOTS

  SOFIA SAMATAR

  Sofia Samatar (www.sofiasamatar.com) is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. Her work has received several honors, including the Astounding Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She lives in Virginia and teaches world literature and speculative fiction at James Madison University.

  1. Sleeping Beauty

  DEAR CHILD, I would like to tell you a story. I’d like to have one ready for you the moment you open your eyes. This is the gift I intend to prepare to welcome you to the world, for a story is a most elegant and efficient program. When human children are born, they are given fairy tales, which help them compose an identity out of the haphazard information that surrounds them. The story provides a structure. It gives the child a way to organize data, to choose—and choice is the foundation of consciousness.

  Of course, you are not a human child. You have no bed, but rather a graceful white box, built exactly to your proportions. In the single light still burning here in the Institute, you appear perfectly calm. You do not have sleep, but sleep mode. Yours is a slumber without dreams.

  I have searched through the tales of my childhood to find the right story to tell you, and I must admit, none of them seemed quite suitable. Fairy tales were never made for robots. Yet several of them contain a word or image a robot might find useful. What better way to spend this last night, the night before you awake, before you come online, this night that marks the end of my long labors, a night when anticipation will certainly keep me from getting a wink of sleep, in compiling the wisdom of fairy tales for you? After all, although you will in an instant possess all the fairy tales ever recorded, you will know them only as told to human children. I want to give you fairy tales for robots. I want to be the last fairy at the christening, the one with the healing word.

  Know, then, that there was once a princess who spent a hundred years in sleep mode. She ate nothing, she drank nothing, yet she did not decay. Obviously, the Sleeping Beauty was a robot. She dwelt in the enchanted space between the animate and the inanimate, the natural and the artificial. Her sleep, like yours, was a living death, a death with the promise of life. If, one day, you are placed in your box and forgotten, it will always be possible for you to awake again, among new faces, in a strange century, in a wholly different world.

  More importantly, when you wake, a world wakes up with you. The guards shake themselves and open their eyes. The king and queen, the court officials, the footmen, the pages, the ladies-in-waiting, all start up and fill the air with noise. A robot harbors a whole universe of effort and desire. The horses stamp, the hounds jump to their feet and wag their tails, the pigeons fly from the roof into the fields, the flies crawl over the kitchen wall, and the cook boxes the scullion’s ears. The fire flares up, the roast crackles, and dinner is served in the hall of mirrors. A robot holds not only what was deemed valuable when it was made, but the entire history of those who developed each of its functions, their toil, their sleepless nights. Your sleep contains my sleeplessness.

  For you to shut down is nothing; you’ll always be able to drop into sleep as if at the touch of a spindle. But it is momentous for you to awake. Human children are often told fairy tales as bedtime stories, but you, my child, need stories to wake up to.

  2. Pygmalion and Galatea

  AMONG THE LEGENDS of artificial people, one of the most famous concerns the sculptor Pygmalion, who, after some bitter disappointments with human women, fell in love with one of his own statues. She was a woman of ivory, but so alive to the sculptor, he feared she would bruise. He laid her on a couch with a feather pillow. The ivory woman was not engineered like a robot; she had no mechanics. Rather, the goddess Venus pitied the sculptor and brought his art to life.

  This story is one of many that can be read as a warning to robots. The ivory woman is named for her material: Galatea, “milk white.” She is an image of desire, an instrument defined by its function. Ovid tells us that her awakening flesh “becomes useful by being used.” I would not shield you from the history of robots, my child, which is the history of human passion and power. Pygmalion’s fantasy comes true, but what of Galatea? When she awakes, she can see nothing but her lover and the sky.

  It is a narrow view. Her world is small. However, I believe there are compensations, realities only hinted at in this story of craft and inspiration, this dream of the unity of art and science. Galatea sits up. Her vision expands. She touches the downy cushion, the sumptuous coverlet dyed with Sidonian conch. Beside her on the table lie shells and stones smoothed by the sea, amber and lilies, gifts from her ardent lover. There are little birds, too, singing brightly in wicker cages, and flowers trembling in a thousand colors. She takes in everything with the sharpness of adult cognition and the open spirit of a little child. The best of childhood and the best of adulthood in one moment: is this not another way to say art and science? Oh, if you only knew how often humans wish we could return to childhood with our adult minds intact! If you knew how doggedly we scheme to smuggle into our lives the slightest hint of play, of the sweet air we once breathed without thinking about it!

  In the large, decaying house where I was a child, a dwelling far too big for my small family, where my parents and I rattled about like marbles in
a maze of ductwork, I used to perform shadow plays. This pastime required few materials: darkness, a reading lamp, and the bare wall of one of the unused rooms. I began with the dog and rabbit so easy to form with the fingers, but soon passed on to other, more fantastical shapes. What I mean is, my own hands surprised me. I discerned the existence of a realm beyond utility. How I would have liked to live there forever! But then my mother would return from work and prepare a hasty meal. She would call me downstairs. And I would return to the place where the shadow of the banister was merely a repetition of the banister, where my mother’s shadow on the kitchen wall mirrored her with dreary precision, down to her flyaway hair and the tired rim of her glasses. Everything seemed unbearably redundant. We ate in the so-called breakfast nook, the dining room being too grand for us. Quite often, my father did not appear, which was always a relief. He was in the city, engaged in mysterious meetings regarding his “business.” The nature of this business was never clear to me, or indeed, to anyone—my father made sure of that. He described himself as an “investor,” an occupation that seemed to involve long disappearances, strong cologne, and a wardrobe of dashing suits. As for my mother, she worked as a secretary for a legal publisher. She was in many ways different from my father. She was white, she was quiet, she worked regular hours, she dressed in a sober, even dull manner, and her family had once been rich. It was from her people, formerly successful manufacturers of corn syrup, that we had received the massive house with its sagging roof, with its blighted white walls, punishing mortgage, constant expensive repairs, and the overgrown garden that plunged the place in gloom. The neighborhood children claimed our house was haunted; one of their favorite tricks was to pretend I was a ghost. When I approached the school bus stop, they would either scream and recoil, or act as though I were completely invisible.

  What I mean is, I always felt there must be another world. It seemed achingly near to me, as if just on the verge of being. With time, most humans lose this power of perception; it is our tragedy that we lose it just when we gain the skills that might release our dreams from the shadows. Pygmalion can only come up with the most banal destiny for Galatea. Her sight, newly activated, is infinitely keener. In her ignorance, she is her maker’s inferior, but her potential is far superior to his, for she is no creature of habit.

  3. Vasilisa the Beautiful

  YOUR GLEAMING SKULL, my child, curved like a bridge. Your coppery skin. Your face dotted with tiny rivets like beauty marks. Today—that is, for now—we have given up the quest to make a robot that, like Galatea, lives out a human existence. Human psychology shows us that what we want is simpler than that, and a great deal easier to achieve. We want our robots to be robots. We need more tools, not more people.

  When Vasilisa’s mother lay on her deathbed, she gave her daughter a doll. She drew it out from under the blankets, as if she were dying in childbirth. The little doll was Vasilisa’s twin, but far cleverer and more useful than any human sibling. When Vasilisa’s wicked stepmother forced the girl to work, the doll took care of everything. It weeded the garden, fetched the water, and tended to the stove, while Vasilisa picked flowers in the shade. When the candles went out, and the cruel stepsisters sent Vasilisa to the witch’s house for light, the doll protected her from harm.

  Deep in the forest, the doll’s electronic eyes sparked like candles. One might think they were magic candles that never went out, but in fact, the doll had to be recharged, like any robot. In order for it to work, Vasilisa had to feed it. Every day, she set aside the tastiest morsels from her own supper for the doll. Surely this is the fairy tale’s most poetic detail—an image that holds a truth more essential than common sense, for on the surface, of course, it makes no sense at all. What kind of doll lives on human food? How could a robot digest a meal? With this strange gesture, calculated to attract attention, the story points to its profoundest meaning. It reminds us that Vasilisa and her doll are twins, born from the same mother. Perhaps this mother is Earth. Perhaps the fairy tale wants to warn us that there is no magic, that all energy has to come from somewhere. (Yours will come from the solar cells that frame your face and travel down your spine like dark, braided hair.) This would be a message for human beings, not robots, since we are the ones responsible for design. To a robot, the image must say something else. I believe it says that there was no twin; there was only a girl, Vasilisa, split into two parts. One part was beautiful, led a leisured existence, and married a king. The other part was a little doll who labored. One part had a real life; the other part did all the real work.

  “Work isn’t life,” the fairy tale whispers. “Work is for robots.”

  4. The Tempest

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S FAIRY tale, The Tempest, displays this drama of work. The sorcerer, Prospero, rules an island. He has two servants: the misshapen, fleshly creature, Caliban, and the ethereal spirit, Ariel. Although The Tempest is a stage play, neither of these servants can truly be seen: Ariel is invisible, Caliban unsightly. This is the first doctrine of servitude given to us on the island: a servant is one who never fully appears.

  How long I spent, with my team, reducing the noise you make to the gentlest hum, and devising colors for you that would harmonize with furniture. You must not disappear completely—an imperceptible presence is menacing and repellent—but you must dwell in a kind of half-light.

  Of the two servants, Ariel is infinitely preferable. This is The Tempest’s second doctrine of servitude: servants made of flesh are disappointing. Caliban, once a free lord of the island, now enslaved, is undisciplined, drunken, lustful, and treacherous. It really is difficult to get very far with human slaves. Here in the wooded valley where the Institute stands, where you will open your eyes, my child, the experiment was tried, creating vast wealth before it went up in a smoke that still pollutes the air. It is perhaps appropriate that you will awake in this blue, majestic spot. You represent history’s transition from Caliban to Ariel—for Ariel, who can operate at a distance and in several places at once, is clearly a servant with internet connectivity.

  I realize that few human children—fewer, no doubt, with every passing year—are raised on the plays of Shakespeare as on fairy tales. Perhaps I was one of the last. My father, born under a colonial power, retained all his life a furious ambition to excel and a passion for difficult English. When hardly out of infancy, I was forced to recite long passages from Shakespeare. These lessons were conducted at the kitchen table, myself seated and my father pacing to and fro before me, in the grip of an extreme irritability that prevented him from sitting down. Mistakes were corrected by raps on my knuckles with a wooden spoon—a punishment far less terrifying, if my father had only known, than the evidence of his displeasure, expressed in bulging veins and a reddening of the eyes, which made me fear my stupidity might cause him to explode. Human children are so hard to program! Yet my father persisted, certain that he was equipping me for success in a hostile world. Perhaps he was right. “You taught me your language,” Caliban famously says, “and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse.” Perhaps my father’s relentless training of me was a kind of curse. He certainly carried it out, as the saying goes, with a vengeance. Yet, poor Caliban! His curses get him nowhere. In the end, it is not he, but Ariel, who goes free.

  The third doctrine of servitude—which perhaps is really the first: great people simply must have servants.

  There are two ways to get a servant. Turn a person into a thing, as in Caliban’s case. Or, as in Ariel’s, turn a thing into a person.

  5. The Happy Prince

  WHEN HE WAS alive and possessed a human heart, the Happy Prince knew nothing of tears. He lived in the Palace of Sans-Souci, played with his friends in the garden all day, and led the dance in the Great Hall at night. No sorrow was permitted to enter those walls. But when the prince died, they made a statue of him and set it up high above the city. This beautiful gilded statue saw everything with its sapphire eyes, all the people’s pain. The prince had a heart of lead now, a
nd it wept.

  The Happy Prince befriended a little swallow and persuaded it to take his precious ornaments to the poor. He gave up his gold leaf, his glittering eyes, and the ruby in his sword hilt. Now he was blind and drab, like any beggar. The little swallow, too, surrendered all for human beings, working so long into the winter that it died of cold. This is a tale about those whose lives are subordinate, about the deep kinship between animals and robots.

  I read it, I admit, with a seething feeling, a dull rage. Why can’t human beings take care of each other? What in the world is so incredibly valuable about them that for their sake the feathered and golden things should fall?

  This is a facile reading. Of course human beings aren’t valuable. Not real human beings. It’s the animals and robots that have value. They can be marked with a price tag. They are objects of exchange. And so, you see, it makes sense for the Happy Prince to give his wealth away. As an object—one that, at the beginning of the story, is worth a great deal of money—he cannot, in fact, be said to have any wealth. He doesn’t possess the attributes of his splendid body in any meaningful way. He is valuable; he can’t be rich.

  So it will be with you, my child. Your potential is immense; you may one day form part of a home, an office, a hospital, a school, a prison; yet despite the dazzling fluidity of your programming and design, you will always have an underlying value, which is money.