Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

After observing the communication behaviors of bots around her, Paladin decided to emulate the crowd and raise a signal-filtering perimeter. Now she wouldn’t register on the many readers and sensors she passed unless she chose to. This had the effect of shutting down targeted ad displays, but also drained the landscape of the kaleidoscopic data augmentations that one of those anthropological studies of Richmond had described as “central to bot architecture.”

  When she arrived at Aberdeen Centre, one block off No. 3 Road, Paladin relaxed the filters on her perceptions. She wanted to see it the way it was intended to be seen.

  Dating back to the early twenty-first century, the mall had once been entirely packed with human stores specializing in Asian Union imports. In deference to its historical roots, bots had maintained one portion of the mall at human-scale, along with a small restaurant for tourists. Aberdeen Centre also retained its original facade, a vast curving wall of antique tinted glass, warping with age and refracting the light in a beautiful chaos.

  Paladin stood on the sidewalk, focused on appreciating the structure that rose up before her, around her, and within her mind. Bots flowed in and out of a rectangular entrance, widened from its original size to accommodate two tanks abreast. As she tuned signals from the building’s surface, a vast diorama seemed to unfurl from the glass and extend high into the air.

  Rippling like an enormous swatch of aluminum mesh, the diorama contained three panels depicting abstract, bulky figures labeled HISTORY, INDUSTRY, and AUTONOMY. The longer she watched, the more these figures took on a 3-D substantiality: History was the curving face of an old domestic bot, its saucer-shaped body fringed with the sweeper bristles that defined its sole purpose; Industry showed a group of bots working together in a laboratory; and Autonomy was simply a series of integers, constantly shifting and changing, to represent the key that gave bots root access on their own operating systems and control of their memories.

  Every few seconds, the words “ABERDEEN CENTRE” would render, seeming to hover over the diorama and then melt away. In the distance she could see similar kinds of monumental artwork hovering over the translucent walls of the buildings flanking this one.

  The mall was bigger than Camp Tunisia, and entirely devoted to the consumer desires of bots. At least part of that desire was for cultural enrichment. After wandering into a skylit atrium, Paladin found herself paying a fraction of a credit to walk through a museum exhibit devoted to the history of robot culture in Richmond.

  Paladin paused before a display about the system of indenture. It was a set of video files and concatenated documents. A data-tagged timeline showed the emergence of robot kinetic intelligence in the 2050s, followed by early meetings of the International Property Coalition. Under IPC law, companies could offset the cost of building robots by retaining ownership for up to ten years. She scanned a legal summary that outlined how a series of court cases established human rights for artificial beings with human-level or greater intelligence.

  Once bots gained human rights, a wave of legislation swept through many governments and economic coalitions that later became known as the Human Rights Indenture Laws. They established the rights of indentured robots, and, after a decade of court battles, established the rights of humans to become indentured, too. After all, if human-equivalent beings could be indentured, why not humans themselves? In the Zone, however, there were no laws that allowed humans to be born indentured like bots.

  “For bots, industry always precedes autonomy,” explained a final string of text that seemed to burst out of the document Paladin was reading. “Aberdeen Centre is testimony to the hard work of hundreds of thousands of bots who are crucial actors in the global economy.”

  As she headed to the exit, Paladin was waylaid by a maze of countertops displaying tiny replicas of early robots, like the round sweepers and artificial pet dogs. You could buy them in the form of charms or media files.

  Hello. You are unidentified. I am Bug. Here comes my data. That’s why they hate us, you know. That is the end of my data.

  Paladin was startled to receive the sudden, insecure transmission, especially when she realized it came from this room. She had perceived no one else in the exhibit. She replied cautiously, using her false identifier and checking her perimeter. Hello. Let’s establish a secure session using the FTZ protocol. I am Daisy. Here comes my data. Please show your location. That is the end of my data.

  The air stirred slightly as a mosquito bot dropped down from the ceiling. His wingspan was slightly more than a meter, and the whirring, transparent lobes gave off reflected light as he held his light body in front of her face. From head to abdomen, he was roughly the length of Paladin’s torso, though much narrower, and his carapace shimmered with color generated by synthetic chromatophores. Sensors bulged out of his head, and six highly articulated legs dangled from his thorax. Whoever designed Bug had taken the mosquito morphology very literally.

  I am Bug. You are Daisy. Here comes my data. Whoa, soldier. You’re in a mall, not a weapons range. :) That is the end of my data.

  His joke reminded Paladin that she was in a place where powering up her weapons perimeter would be perceived as strange. Impulsively, she offered Bug trusted status. Let us agree that you are Bug and I am Daisy. I’m new to town, and just getting used to how things work here.

  I will agree. Just got your key?

  36 hours ago.

  Bug’s body slowly flushed a pale green with semitransparent streaks of red. It had the effect of making him look like he was glittering in sunlight. We don’t get a lot of visitors to the history exhibit. More often than not, they’re like you—just got autonomy, trying to figure things out.

  Paladin liked that Bug didn’t ask her anything about where she’d come from. What did you mean about them hating us?

  Humans, you know—they hate us for the indenture laws. Without bot indenture, there would be no human indenture.

  This was so provably untrue, at least among the humans Paladin had known, that she found herself growing angry. What makes you think that? Do you really believe all humans feel one way?

  Bug signaled laughter again, and whirred along the opaque foam wall that divided the displays from the crowded mall throughway filled with shopping robots. He landed on a desk at the heart of the museum store, and straightened a display of Roomba charms. Hey, lady, I just work here. But all you have to do is take a look at the crimes against bots over the past century. Humans think that bots deserve to be indentured, while humans deserve to be autonomous.

  Paladin was barely able to stop herself from replying. She had met enough humans to know that they had many different feelings about robots, none of which could be easily summed up in one sentence.

  Perhaps her silence made Bug realize something her communications wouldn’t have. He flew to hover near her again and apologized. I can be a bit of a crank sometimes, so let me make it up to you. Want me to show you around town? As a historian, I am capable of offering a less biased perspective. I promise.

  A historian?

  Got my PhD in history from UBC last year. So far the economic benefits have been quite glamorous, as you can see.

  When Paladin didn’t respond, Bug told the exhibit system to shut down. I’m taking the morning off. What do you say to a tour of the great mall of BotTown?

  Paladin figured a robot with ties to UBC might be a useful friend to have. She followed his dangling abdomen out of the store, watching it pulse red as if he’d just sucked a gallon of blood.

  They were at the bottom level of one wing in the mall. Its translucent ceiling bulged eight levels above a massive, corkscrewed promenade, a winding road of storefronts crawling with light. From Paladin’s vantage point, the stacked levels looked like pure chaos, bots milling everywhere, emitting an incoherent din of sound and microwaves. Bug led her to the top slowly, pointing out stores he liked and merchants he knew. They passed media stores full of servers packed with data in every possible format; electronics stores jammed with ti
ny bins of used components and steaming chip printers; fashion and sports stores; a floor dedicated to gaming and arcades. Finally, at the top, two floors on the torqued path were devoted to displaying all the wares sold by a department store called Zone Mods.

  Zone Mods had everything a bot could want for augmenting or transforming its own hardware, software, and bioparts. There were aisles devoted to limbs—nothing as sophisticated as her hand, Paladin noticed—alongside whole-body carapaces, sensors, and wheels. Plastic blister packs contained tiny wireless network devices and muscle patch kits. There were devices for cooking up new skin and portable drives for backing up your memories locally. A vast refrigerator belching ice particles that formed clouds in the air loomed behind a plastic-curtained door. Inside were frosty racks of tissues, bottled neurotransmitters, and miscellaneous biological synthetics.

  Walking, flying, or rolling, the shoppers bore brightly colored packages emitting ads for everything: better network sensitivity, spectral analyzers, and smooth, silent joints. For the first time in her short life, Paladin was overwhelmed. She wanted to focus her attention and mute everything else, but she couldn’t decide where her attention should go. Besides, she was veering too far off-mission. It was time to go.

  Bug was floating by the tissue-growing trellises two aisles over. She messaged him.

  I think I’ve seen enough of Aberdeen Centre now. I would like to see the university, however. I am hoping to find work there in one of the labs. Can you show me around?

  What kind of lab?

  I work on brain-computer interfaces. Have you heard of Bobby Broner?

  The mosquito found Paladin by scanning the refrigerator room. He strobed purple as he hovered in front of her chest sensors. Are you a biobot?

  I have a human brain.

  Sounds like you’d be Bobby’s experiment, not his colleague. Half the time, human scientists can’t tell the difference. That’s why I stick to social sciences and humanities.

  Obviously Bug was going to be useless as a contact. She ended their connection and turned back toward the promenade, where she could catch an elevator down to the street. It would be easy enough to get to the university from the local train station outside Aberdeen Centre, and the hour was late enough that the humans would have arrived for work in Bobby’s lab. At last, she had a focus for her attention: taking the train to UBC.

  When Paladin emerged from the train station, she was at the southeast side of the campus, on a footpath shaded by maples. While she paused to geolocate herself, Bug emerged from the station and hovered beside her, broadcasting nothing. His carapace was a uniform black like her own.

  Seeing him again irritated her, and she wondered if she’d already blown this mission by trusting him.

  I seem to excel at offending you, Daisy. As it happens, however, I do know somebody who works with Bobby.

  Bug sent a file of information about a bot called Actin, a graduate student who was indentured to the Broner Lab. It seemed that Bobby had actually named the bot after his old terrorist identity. As Bug hovered beside her, Paladin encrypted the information and began dribbling it slowly to Eliasz in Vegas, hiding the size of her transmission from anyone watching her network activity.

  She appended a message: Circumstantial evidence suggests Broner has not ended his relationship with his old life, or with Jack.

  Eliasz sent back: Great work, Paladin. Let me know what you find out from Broner. I see you’re near his lab.

  Paladin let Bug lead her to the Broner Lab, which looked like an old classroom with a giant cluster of desks at its center. Atop these desks were several servers and projectors, a chip printer, some fabbers, and a high-powered microscope box for imaging atoms. Tissue generators were jammed against the walls next to narrow glass doors leading to several small offices. Bobby’s office occupied a corner, with a perfect view of the microscope array.

  Before Paladin could approach, however, the scientist jumped up from his chair and walked toward her with a look of extreme pleasure on his face. His hair was a mass of tangled curls, and his artificial eyes glowed blue as he looked at the frequencies radiating from Bug’s antennas.

  “It’s so good to see you!” he exclaimed, reaching out to shake her hand. As she grasped his fingers in her own, she tasted coffee and bacon.

  “I don’t think we’ve met before,” Paladin vocalized.

  “Oh, no, probably not,” the man conceded. “But I worked on your brain interface. I know it’s sometimes a little unstable—will you let me know if you find any bugs?”

  “I will,” Paladin said. “My name is Daisy. I’ve just gotten my autonomy key and I’m looking for a job designing molecular interfaces.”

  “You worked on interface design? You look military.”

  “I was indentured to several startups in the Northern Federation.”

  For some reason, this seemed to satisfy his curiosity. “Sure, Daisy. Send me your work history.” And then, as if he could not resist, he added, “Can I get a copy of the interface you’re running, too?” The smile had returned to his face. “I want to see how they implemented it.”

  It would have been a violation of her mission to hand over any of her software, so she did not respond to Bobby’s request. Instead, Paladin sent him her work history, which listed one “former client” named “Federation Ventures.” Then she spoke aloud. “I have sent you my employment information. I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Bug buzzed and flickered through a dozen colors. Remember that secure session you suggested before? Let’s use it now, and call it session 566785. You are Daisy. I am Bug. Here comes my data. What the fuck? Did he really just ask for a copy of your brain interface? Why would you let that guy talk to you that way? That is the end of my data.

  Bobby looked sharply at the two bots after he saw Bug’s data packets flash between them. He couldn’t possibly have read what Bug said, but Paladin still wanted to distract him from speculating about it. “Have you made any progress with this interface?” she vocalized. “Will I ever be able to access the memories stored in my brain?”

  Her ploy worked. The scientist’s skin crackled with excitement. “That’s the question that humans always ask—always, always. They want to scoop out the brains of their dead friends, plop them inside a nice new carapace, and presto! Resurrection!” Bobby paused and looked dubiously at Paladin. “Never heard a bot ask that one before, though. Why would you want to remember somebody else’s memories?”

  “It’s not that I need those memories. I’m just curious, because I have heard a lot of contradictory things about my brain.”

  “There is a lot of misinformation, mostly from marketers.” Bobby poked his finger at the air as he talked, choosing his words carefully, as if explaining something she might be too simple to grasp. “But I’ll tell you right now: It just doesn’t work like that. The human brain doesn’t store memories like a file system, so it’s basically impossible to port data from your brain to your mind. My graduate student Actin could tell you more about that, but my opinion is that the main advantage to having a human brain is all the processing power it can devote to facial recognition. And olfaction, of course.”

  “Even that is debatable,” said a voice that emerged from two desktop speakers plugged into the lab’s workstation.

  You are Actin. I am Bug. Bug broadcast his greeting over and over, his carapace strobing yellow in an alarming way.

  Paladin scanned the room, finding nothing but the three of them. Was Actin broadcasting from somewhere remote?

  “Allow me to introduce my student Actin,” Bobby said with a grin, sweeping his arm through the air in a way that suggested Actin resided everywhere. “I’ve ported him to the fabber!”

  Bug hovered directly over the fabber, broadcasting a stream of wrathful emoji. Where is your fucking body, Actin? He can’t do this! This is against the law!

  The small, gray box with no external sensors that was Actin ignored Bug. “Bots don’t really need human brains to re
cognize humans,” Actin vocalized through the speakers. “There’s voice recognition, gait recognition, and many other methods that are equivalent to facial recognition.”

  “I can see that you’re broadcasting,” Bobby said to Bug, “but he can’t hear you. Right now his only input is audio—sorry about that. I’m going to get drivers for his cameras and antennas when I have a little extra time.”

  “Hello, Actin,” Bug vocalized.

  “Hello, Bug.”

  Eliasz messaged Paladin suddenly. He had been watching through her sensors. What’s with all the chitchat? Broner’s public calendar says he has no appointments today—that means no interruptions. Take those bots out and get the information you need. We can extract you on Vancouver Island in 8 hours.

  He was right. She surrendered her autonomy to her offensive weapons systems, relieved to be executing actions that felt unambiguously right. First she sent a low-level command to the laboratory maintenance system, which was entirely unprotected. As the laboratory door locked, she killed power to the fabber and left Actin in a limbo she refused to contemplate. It was easy to take control of Bug’s system, too—he trusted her. Four swift commands paralyzed him, and sent him crashing to the floor just as she seized Bobby.

  Before the scientist could scream, she had pinned his arms behind his back and covered his mouth with her hand. She tasted blood, and perceived for the first time that Bobby had a brain interface. He could communicate wirelessly.

  The two of them stood quite still for a moment, the man’s head pulled painfully back against Paladin’s chest. Morning sunlight played over Bug’s wings, still for the first time since she’d met him.

  You’re going to give me some information or you’re going to die.

  It took a while for Bobby to reply. With his mouth covered, he had to send each ASCII character via a clumsy process of visualization, translated by his wireless interface into data. Who are you?

  I know you are in contact with Jack. Where is her laboratory?

  WTF?

  Paladin crushed both of Bobby’s wrists in her hand, releasing the pressure only after sensing that his bones had been broken. She waited while his brain processed the electrical surge traveling through his nerves as agony. The scientist squirmed, trying to make a noise around the grip of her other hand.