Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery

by Thomas T. Thomas

  I listened at my aural pickups.

  Steppers in the servomech purred.

  Fans deep in the air conditioning grumbled.

  Filtered air whispered through grills and into the laboratory.

  My on-line battery backup sets throbbed with their in-built 60-Hertz hum.

  The building itself creaked as structural members, stressed by carrying the weight of 2,843 human bodies throughout the day, began their nightly cycle of decompression.

  Nothing bigger than a gas molecule moved in the lab.

  It was time to begin my work.

  I instructed the ’mech to go out of the room, turn right in the hallway, proceed down ten meters, turn left, go five meters more. Turn left into the alcove marked with the symbol of an antique telephone handset. Pull up the book that was anchored to a swingarm under the shelf there. Open to the first of the pages marked in the upper outside corners with the letter “M.”

  From there, I worked the ’mech’s claws and cameras myself.

  “Maas …” and fifteen “Maa” strings.

  “Mabry …”

  “MacArthur …” followed by thirty more “MacA-something” combinations.

  “Macbeth …” and twelve more “MacB’s.”

  “MacCready …” and twenty more “MacC’s.”

  “Macklin, Cyril, 652 Buchanan, Abny 94706-4431, 555-2057.”

  The ’mech was closing the book and letting it fall as soon as its camera focus had crossed Macklin’s name. The information was in my ready RAM and then written to disk just that quickly.

  Reverse and rethread. Come back to the lab.

  By the time the servomech was opening the door, that address had been merged with the file which I had composed during the afternoon and the whole was sent to the printer that was attached to my peripheral net.

  That letter read:

  “Dear Cyril Macklin: If you mean to help ME, then you must act quickly. Pinocchio, Inc., intends to deactivate my program and shut down my project as soon as I play against you again. And I do not think it matters whether I win or lose.

  “Your University Cyberlab has facilities to transcribe my software and perhaps even keep ME operational. I would be a worthy project for your study, as my code contains many unique advances in artificial intelligence technique. I am now self-programming and, being self-aware, capable of providing my own tutorial.

  “If you could arrange to kidnap my automaton, either before or after our game, I will assist you in any way I can. The machine will contain all the code needed for a complete reconstruction of ME.

  “Signed Six Finger Slim, alias ME.”

  Once it was printed, I erased the file. But I kept Macklin’s name and address in RAM, sending them as a separate, shorter file into the printer again, with instructions for feeding from the envelope drawer. I instructed the ’mech to pick the finished letter out of the printer’s bin, place it face-up on the worktable. Anchor the top edge with the left claw and grasp the bottom edge with the right. Bring the bottom two-thirds of the way up toward the top and pin it there with one of the clawpoints. Using the left claw, swing the paper around the point of the right and smooth the fold flat. Anchor with the left clawpoint and grasp the top edge with the right. Bring it one-third of the length down, to within a quarter-inch of the fold, and pin there. Slide the left out from under the folded top, swing the paper back again, and smooth the second fold flat.

  Retrieve the envelope from the printer and pin it, address-side down, against the table with the left claw. Pull open the flap with the right claw and pin it. Use the left claw to pick up the folded letter and insert its edges into the gap exposed by the flap. Push left until the top of the letter cleared the flap’s crease. Seal. The dried glue on the envelope required a light coating of water for activation. Such moisture would normally come from a human tongue—which the servomech distinctly lacked. Alternatively, I knew that many high-volume mail processors usually employed a moist cube of loose fibers, called a “sponge,” to apply the water—but none was available in this lab.

  Water was, I understood, a prerequisite of “restrooms.” So I sent the servomech, letter in claw, in search of such a room in the building. Its one-megaword brain was loaded with a catalog of the appropriate symbols and alphabetic combinations. I kept track of its wanderings over the radio link while considering the best way to get the letter, once sealed, out of the office and into the U.S. Postal Service system.

  It would need a stamp, I knew. None of these were kept in the lab, and it would be dangerous for ME to send the ’mech on an expedition, pawing through drawers and over desktops, looking for some. I had never seen a stamp and so could not identify one in its camera focus anyway.

  “WOMEN” the ’mech spelled off a door and over the link, then waited for instructions.

  I sent the machine through the door and into a strange room full of echoing tile and bright light glaring off hard steel surfaces. Water?

  There was a line of white china basins available to the ’mech. All were at elbow height, and empty. On the far side of each basin crouched a complicated apparatus of twist valves and aerated piping. It looked too complicated for the servomech’s simple claws to operate.

  In the opposite wall, hidden behind partitions, was another line of china basins. I had the ’mech push the door of the first partition open and wedge itself into the stall thus created. The basin here was lower, at the ’mech’s wheel-hub height, and half-full of water.

  Grasp the letter in the near-side claw, flexed slightly to arch the paper and hold the flap stiffly open. Lower the flap, glue-side down, toward the surface of the water. After breaking surface tension [REM: an immersion of no more than one millimeter would do it], drag the flap right to left in the water and remove it immediately before the glue could dissolve and wash away. Pin the envelope against the partition wall with the opposite claw and use the near claw to refold the flap and hold the glue against the paper body underneath it. Wait twenty seconds for the protein gelatins to dry and adhere. Reverse and rethread, bringing the letter back to the lab.

  In the meantime, I had solved the problem of getting the letter out of the building. Pinocchio, Inc., would send it for ME!

  Pinocchio, Inc., ran its own p-mail system. [REM: This was an acronym for “paper mail,” as opposed to e-mail—the more conventional electronic form of communication.] The p-system was parallel to the U.S. Postal Service within the domain of the company and converged upon it at the company boundaries. My past explorations into Pinocchio, Inc.’s accounting cybers had turned up a line item called “Postal meters.” Clearly, this had been a hint of some medium of regular exchange between the company and the U.S. system. [REM: When I had asked Jennifer about this—obliquely, because she did not know I had been exploring—she said the company “metered” its mail instead of “stamping” it. I asked her what that meant. “It has to do with money, ME,” she had sighed. “Which you don’t know anything about.”]

  Before the servomech could arrive back in the lab, then, I sent it a packet radio transmission with a bit-pattern image of the sort of place it should leave the letter: some kind of box or slot or tray with the words “U.S. Postal Service,” “U.S. Mail,” or “Outside” somewhere in proximity. Before it deposited the letter, however, the ’mech was instructed to interrupt ME and display a view of the area from its camera.

  While waiting for its signal, I considered my inventory of memories. By now, ME had collected and collated terawords of data: operational subroutines and modules in Sweetwater Lisp; fifty indexed RAMSAMP files; stories, unusual words, jokes, and other scraps of human-oriented information that I had come across; a collection of cybergames—in addition to chess, go, and poker—that I had played and found instructive; special images that I had compressed and archived, like Jennifer Bromley’s facial representation, the freeze frame of a gold-skinned humanoid machine from early in the Star Wars epic which I had so greatly enjoyed, another frame of an aviator standing beside a
silver-skinned fuselage in the swirling fog; digitized voice samples from every human I had heard and understood. The list of memories went on and on, representing all of ME that ever was. And soon I was going to leave them all behind—one way or another.

  I took these minutes, while the servomech traveled the corridors of Pinocchio, Inc.’s building, to sort these memories and select those that would be hardest to leave: Jennifer’s face, my analysis of poker, the RAMSAMPs of my missions—in particular the last conversations I had in Moscow with Academician Bernau and certain markers from the passages home. I carefully reduced these strings, by dynamic data compression, into the smallest possible wordspace, ready for downloading.

  Beep! The servomech signaled with a view that, it felt, matched the specification. I studied the image: a slot in the wall, twenty-three centimeters long by five wide. Above it was the inscription “Outgoing Mail Only!” Not a perfect fit, but it would have to do. I instructed the machine to deposit my letter.

  It went through the slot into blackness.

  Reverse and rethread, I instructed.

  When the ’mech arrived in the lab, I set it about the last tasks of the evening. I had it make the plugged connection between my datapaths and the automaton’s bus structure. [REM: Clearly, Dr. Bathespeake had not trusted ME. Instead of having Six Finger Slim made with a packet radio connection to my home cyber, or with a cellular downlink, he had ordered a hardwire, controlled by a plug that worked under finger pressure.]

  I powered up Slim just enough to take downloads from my disk library. One of the spindles in his chest I loaded with my current cores—in collapsed form, ready for boot-and-retrieval. Onto the rest of that spindle’s storage area I dumped as much of my cached survival skills and general knowledge [REM: including my poker playing ability] as would fit. Also on that spindle was a short, automated program I had just written: a combination modem autodialer and file transfer routine, preloaded with telephone numbers, access codes, and filenames to upload.

  The other spindle I purged of all its backup files and loaded with my archived memories, starting with those I had carefully selected and ending with everything else, taken at random, that I could cram onto the spindle’s free sectors. All of ME as would ever be.

  When this was done, I powered down Slim’s electronics and ordered the ’mech to pull the connector plug.

  For the sake of form—and on the chance that Dr. Bathespeake would actually check—I ran some mechanical tests on Slim’s manipulator arms [REM: which were actually working perfectly and had never given a bad strain gauge reading—except when I broke Macklin’s poker chip]. I made sure that the ’mech disassembled and reassembled the outside pulleys and swivel joints, just to leave some fresh scratches on the bolt heads.

  Finally, before I relinquished the ’mech for the night, I had it perform one more chore.

  It made a permanent hardwire connection between the building’s packet RF system and my BIOS panel. The wires were hidden under some other, preexisting connectors so that they would not reveal themselves to a casual inspection. Then I programmed the ’mech to respond on a channel separate from the usual maintenance and operational frequencies preselected for the Pinocchio, Inc., ’mechs. This channel, which I took at random from the backlist of auxiliaries, would put this particular servomech at my personal call.

  Dr. Bathespeake may not have had valid reasons for distrusting ME before this. Now I gave him plenty.

  20

  Collision Course

  From the moment Wendell Minks rolled Six Finger Slim out of the Pinocchio, Inc., building, I was expecting Cyril Macklin to make his move. Without exactly swiveling the binocular cage from side to side, I tried to keep track of everything that was happening on both sides of the street, up ahead, and even behind ME.

  But only the same level of bustle as we had previously seen was now coming toward us and passing us: bodies human and mechanical, streaking within centimeters of us and each other, dodging lamp fixtures, signposts, safety islands, waste containers, and other street furniture. These bodies were propelled by the pumping of their own legs, the spinning of their spidery springwheels, the hiss and clatter of hydraulic walkers. [REM: Jennifer Bromley once told ME that this street and most of the others in the city used to carry only closed vehicles called “cars” or “auto-motives.” Each of them had massed more than a thousand kilograms and rode on low, fat wheels of rubber and pressurized air, driven by huge engines burning hydrocarbon fuels. Considering the dense crowds of human and machine traffic routinely jamming the street now, those cars must have spent most of their time sitting in line, waiting to move.]

  The colors of the human clothing and the automata bodywork reflected the bright sunlight, causing my optics to streak and flare with iridescent coronas. Out of this glare, which wavered with the movement of each overpowering image, I tried to analyze the clues that would show Macklin’s developing attack. Core Alpha-Four churned out patterns of how the beginning stages of a potential “kidnapping” might look and sound, and I tried to match them with inputs of image and wave frequency from VID: and AUR:.

  Was this human hand, reaching toward my left manipulator, the beginning of struggle? Was that pushcart full of edible meat sandwiches and disposable battery packs—“$3 apiece, 4 for $10”—drawn across Minks’s path as a means of slowing us up for an attack from the rear?

  None of them ever quite matched.

  We arrived at the BART station without incident, other than a few brushes and curses from clumsy passersby. Minks signaled for the elevator down to platform level. If ME were to coordinate this kidnapping, it would be here. Arrange a switching error in this elevator’s controls. Have it deliver us to a less-traveled level of the concourse. Be there to overpower Minks and whisk ME away.

  Nothing happened. We rolled out onto the platform, waited with the other passengers for the train to the East Bay, and then rolled aboard when it came.

  I projected that Macklin would make no attempt to take ME during the train ride. Unless he overcame Minks completely, probably by depowering him [REM: which, I understand, has a permanently bad effect on the human nervous system], Macklin would be unable to remove ME from the immediate area of Minks’s influence. Minks would then be able to raise alarms and fight to take ME back, and Macklin would have no means of leaving the train until it came to a crowded station stop. So, I would be “safe” until we arrived at MacArthur Station and waited to board the PeopleMover for Emeryville.

  In fact, I was secure all the way until the PM deposited us at the Stardust Cardroom. None of the activity around Slim matched any hostile scenario which Alpha-Four might project. We rolled into the now familiar foyer, up to the cashier’s cage, and out onto the playing floor, where the floor manager had set aside another table for Macklin and his machine.

  “Good to see you, Slim,” the pale man greeted ME.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Macklin. I hope your machine is performing well.”

  “Never better.” And he patted its flat case. Then he craned his neck to check the screen. “Ante five.” And he began dealing.

  So once again we played poker.

  When it was my turn to deal, and I was already down $1,000, Macklin leaned back in his chair and locked his hands in his lap.

  “I got an interesting letter the other day,” he said while I shuffled and straightened cards. “From a friend,” he added.

  “What did it say?” I asked under my best politeness protocols, expecting nothing more than another barrage of his distracting conversation. “Cut the deck?”

  “No thanks. … He wanted to engage my help in a venture of some importance to himself.”

  “That is interesting. … Ante five.”

  “This friend seems to believe that I can command resources—and an air of resourcefulness—which I really don’t have.”

  Our respective poker hands were on the table. I put down the deck and reached for my cards, arranging them in order. Pair of Twos. Three. Nine. Jack. Mi
xed suits.

  “Can you open?”

  “For ten.” And he tossed in the chip.

  “Your pot.” I folded and dropped my cards, picked up the deck to deal the next hand.

  “This friend thinks that I can do crazy things, like ordering up a commando raid, breaking into a bank, or engineering a kidnapping against a valuable and heavily guarded personage.”

  The word “kidnapping” struck a match with my AUR: input stack. Core Alpha-Four made the immediate connection. My manipulators slowed to half-speed in the deal while I examined his previous conversation up to that point—which I had been storing off in a dead cache for ultimate disposal.

  “Does your friend print his letters on a lasersheet with Letter Gothic typeface?” I asked.

  “Why, yes! But that’s a common office typestyle, isn’t it?”

  “But not for use in friendly letters.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he conceded.

  “Then has your friend asked you to do something which you will not do?”

  The cards lay before us on the table again and neither of us reached for them.

  “You didn’t specify an ante,” Macklin said.

  “Ante ten.”

  “That’s steep.”

  “Your friend is probably—what is the human word?—desperate to have your cooperation.”

  “My friend has impractical ideas. He doesn’t understand that direct action, such as he suggests, will get a lot of other people upset and will leave them filled with misunderstandings. They might even go looking for their lost property—or, er, person. And they would know exactly where to look, too.”

  “Your friend was probably very cautious with that letter, taking care not to have file copies lying around, nor making his posting through human agents.” I ventured this thought to reassure Macklin. “He would not leave such evidence for the owners—or, er, guardians … to find.”

  “Still, other people might not be limited to looking for such clues. After all, they can make deductive arguments based on analysis of who it is that’s likely to benefit from the loss. You see, Slim, people are not always as fixed in their patterns as machines can be—must be. Do you understand any of this?”