by D Miller
Captain Roberts had the transports draw up in a line, and link up. Dex, Robbie and Omo walked down to the middle transport before exiting, Robbie shuffling awkwardly on his crutches in the confined space, the one-way mirror windows preventing anyone from seeing this activity. A nervous young man was waiting on the steps to lead them into the building and towards a wide staircase; Robbie was relieved, but a little embarrassed, to see that there was a chair lift, which slowly winched him up to the second floor, while the others kept pace with him. The young man led them to a glass security door, a receptionist buzzed them through to a circular space, with a thick wool carpet and a sturdy plastic table that looked practical, like something people could sit at and do actual work, surrounded by the closed doors of offices belonging to senior staff. They waited there for 20 minutes until the young man returned to tell them in a hushed, trembling voice that, 'The Rector will see you now.' Captain Roberts insisted that the young man first take himself and some of his team to the meeting room (which was behind one of the doors they were surrounded by). After he got his way, the robots could clearly hear the outrage as the university's senior management team were searched and the room checked. Robbie and Omo listened intently as the Captain insisted on patting down the Rector himself.
'I am a respected academic, not a suicide bomber!'
'I'm sorry sir, but protocol requires that I be the judge of that.'
They tried not to laugh aloud while Dex frowned at them.
Finally the Captain was done, he opened the meeting room door and signalled that they should enter. They found the university's senior management sitting at one side of a long oval polished wooden table in blonde wood, flanking the Rector. Most of them were white, all were formally dressed, five were female and eight male. The Rector himself was a man of about 50, with white hair, and a benevolent expression that probably came, in Robbie's opinion, from thinking of himself as a nice man, a liberal, who was doing something praiseworthy in dealing with robots almost as equals.
To one side of the room, pushed up against the wall was a long, narrow table covered by a white cloth, with jugs of water, coffee, teabags and an urn. The room was painted white, and carpeted in pale blue. Perfect for showing off tea and coffee stains, Robbie thought, as he swung himself along the table, to the middle. Dex helped him into his chair, and for a moment he considered flinging his crutches onto the table, but thinking better of it he put both of them on his left side, putting the ends on the floor, leaning them against his arm and embracing them to keep them from falling. Dex sat next to him, and Omo sat on the other side of Dex, while some of the security detail fanned out along the wall behind them, and the rest remained outside with Captain Roberts, guarding their exit.
The Rector started the meeting. 'Mr President,' he said, 'while you are very welcome, was the security check really necessary? We are professionals with a sacred mission to preserve and develop human knowledge, for this and future generations. We are not terrorists.'
Robbie thought that they were, in fact, from exactly that class which terrorists were drawn from, the coordinator class.
'Yes,' said Dex, 'as President I do find the security a little overwhelming at times. And I take your point about it being necessary, after all my security did not manage to prevent the bombing of the palace, or the attack by the suicide transport, or the recent attempt on the life of my dear friend Robbie here.'
The Rector glanced at Robbie as Dex indicated him, catching his eyes Robbie smiled brightly, and contracted his left arm just very, very, slightly in order to jangle his crutches together. The Rector looked away. The man sitting to his right, who was perhaps 30 years younger, with thick dark brown hair, a friendly expression, and dressed as colourfully as formal wear would allow, cleared his throat. 'Perhaps we should start by introducing ourselves?' he said.
Once introductions were done, the Rector offered tea, which the robots declined in favour of water. When everyone had a drink in front of them, the Rector spoke.
'Of course I, and everyone here, support rights for synthetic humans, as in fact we always have, you will always find the universities at the leading edge of social change. But change takes time; patience and compromise on both sides will be needed. In the present tense situation I appeal to you to understand that robots at a campus talk intended to explore the nature of the synthetic human and its relationship with actual humans will be provocative.'
'We're not provocative if we're there to wash your clothes or do your gardening or be experimented on,' Omo said, referring to a sore point on both sides: during the revolution the university had been stormed, and a group of robots freed from the psychology department.
The psychologists claimed in the human press that they had loved their robots, who were not test subjects, but partners in learning, and had been crying when they had been dragged away from their home by the mob.
The partners in learning were that group of robots, with their unofficial leader Harald, who now organised the daily general assemblies, it was their group that Steve had joined. They had embraced Steve, sympathising with his damaged brain and the ill treatment that had caused it. Harald had spoken to Robbie after the assembly had voted for the meeting with the university, and given him thumbnail character sketches of senior members of university staff (Head of HR, drinks and harasses all female staff below the age of 25; Academic Registrar, stupid and lazy, sacks any of his staff cleverer than him after first trashing their reputation; Secretary: an evil spider in a web of her own making…). Robbie repressed the urge to tell the Rector that the partners in learning longed to return to their university home, with a big box of kindling and a full internal gas supply. Instead he said:
'We believe in equality. We do not believe we will be equal to you tomorrow, or next year, or after we have undertaken some special programme or mission. We believe we are equal to you now. So we do not think that the political expression of that equality needs to wait, or be taken slowly.'
One of the other senior academics present, a middle-aged woman dressed entirely in black, with greying hair and anxious dark eyes, replied, 'This is a university. We have an ancient and unique mission to safeguard knowledge, and to pass on that knowledge. We need assurances that you will respect our academic freedom.'
'I do not see that robots attending the talk will prevent your speaker from saying what he has to say,' said Robbie.
'I believe that I can offer a compromise,' said Dex. 'In order to allay any concerns, I will put the weight of my office behind the principle of academic freedom.'
'We are very grateful to you for seeing reason,' said the Rector.
'Excellent,' said Dex. 'So it is agreed that I will attend the talk. Along with my entourage of approximately three hundred.'
There was silence. The academics looked at each other, finally the Rector cleared his throat. Before he could speak Dex continued:
'Since I understand that you are holding the talk in a room with fixed seating for one thousand, and with room for additional seating, human beings will likely outnumber robots. So I hope you appreciate the concession that myself and my associates,' Dex paused and first gestured towards Omo, and then Robbie, who both took their cue and grinned brightly, 'are making.'
'But, but,' said the Rector, 'ah, we haven't allocated a room to the talk yet. The room you are talking about may not be available.'
'Really?' said Dex. 'Perhaps you had better tell your porters and cleaners, since they have been instructed that, in two weeks' time, your largest lecture theatre is to be open, heated, cleaned and ready for the distinguished speaker.'
The younger man sitting to the right of the Rector again broke in. 'You would be very welcome of course, but what about your personal safety? Sadly our campus security doesn't have the necessary resources.'
'I will personally guarantee my security, and the security of every person at the meeting, human and robot,' said Dex.
'The Rector really didn't like it when I told him that I was attendi
ng the talk, but he couldn't bring himself to ban me. He has too much respect for my office wired into his status-crazed monkey brain,' Dex later said to Robbie, Omo and George when the four of them discussed the meeting.
Robbie decided not to point out to Dex that he had just used the forbidden m-word, and instead said, 'Wait until he finds out about our plans to open the universities to robots.'
'Yeah then he'll really be choking on his chai blend holistic detoxing tea,' said Omo.
They had all been baffled by the variety of tea on offer during the meeting, particularly as robots only drank water.
'I do believe a bigger shock for the Rector will be when he discovers how we intend to organise workplaces in future,' said Dex. The RWW and its supporters intended that major decisions would be taken by a meeting of all of those affected, the idea was that no one could make decisions for other people any more, they could only make decisions for themselves. All the work in the workplace would be shared out so that every worker got to do a mixture of grunt work (eg cleaning, making lunch, hitting things with spanners) and of the more interesting work that involved thinking and decision making.
'Oh dude,' said Omo, 'I want to be there when he finds out it's his day to wash the canteen floor.'
'I do think it is very important to integrate robot and human education,' said George. 'But it is going to be difficult. There is not just the resistance from within the universities, which will be significant. Even though the Rector considers himself a liberal in these matters, I do think that what that really means is that he thinks that a robot could probably do any job a human could do, just not as well.'
'Unless it's a crap job, like washing clothes or mining,' said Omo.
'Even then, I am quite sure he considers that humans would do them better, but should not be wasting their valuable time on anything so mundane. But I do think the idea of putting that all to the test some day soon would have him fainting into his rejuvenating green tea with genuine rainforest guarana. However there is another problem – those areas where robot knowledge outstrips human.'
'Yeah humans can't encrypt for shit,' said Omo.
'Our weather models are far in advance of theirs too,' said Robbie.
'I do think that many humans are going to find that very difficult to accept,' said George.
'There are security issues,' said Dex.
'Yes indeed,' said George, 'I do think most humans truly believe that the human networks are secure from robots.' They paused to laugh.
'The rector would be horrified to know how much we know,' said Dex.
'The notion of robot superiority in any domain,' said George, 'would be a terrible shock to his status-crazed monkey brain.'
They were sat around the dining table in the apartment shared by Robbie, George, Omo and Adrienne.
Dex put his hand on George's arm. 'George I misspoke, I shouldn't have said that.'
'I didn't take offence Dex, and you weren't wrong. Hierarchies reinforce all that is worst in human nature, the desire for status and power over others. The coordinator class will struggle endlessly to hold on to their privileges, and a very important one is their position in the hierarchy and the delusions of superiority that come with it. History shows that when faced with a choice between protecting the innocent or protecting the hierarchy, they will protect the hierarchy and sacrifice the innocent.'
'So are you dudes saying,' said Omo, 'that the coordinators are going to be killing us for…, for years?'
'I believe so,' said Dex, 'and that means the union will have to think very carefully about sharing our knowledge with humans. If the Human Defence League learns our encryption we will lose the ability to track them. And something else that Captain Roberts considers to be even more valuable, that they don't know that we are listening.'
'Why are we so far in advance,' said Robbie. 'We aren't really any more intelligent than them, are we?' He looked at George.
'Robots have advanced past humanity in knowledge for cultural reasons,' said George. 'Let us consider the founding of universities by the Islamic Empire, more than three thousand years ago. Their mission, as the Rector correctly told us, was to find, preserve and expand knowledge. It was a visionary, open-ended human project, intended to span the generations.'
'Well that just sounds lovely dude,' said Omo.
'Now I do believe you are going to tell us where it all went horribly wrong,' said Dex.
'The important thing to remember is that the Islamic Empire model for universities – which was adopted throughout the world – pre-dates capitalism. So at their start universities were not capitalist institutions. And for a long time after the capitalist economic model was adopted universities remained places where people could research into new areas just for the pleasure of taking a journey without a map.' George sighed. He looked thoughtful.
'And?' said Robbie.
'Well I do suppose that as time went on capitalism became more and more short-term, and this compromised the mission of universities. For example in 1917, near the start of the capitalist era, Einstein theoretically proposed a laser, but it was many years later before lasers were developed, and years after that again before serious applications for them were proposed. Go forward a century from Einstein and that sort of pure conceptualising in search of new knowledge about the universe was under attack. Elites, through government funding, held the university purse strings, and only wanted research that would deliver results that could be monetised within a few years, and in time this came to seem normal to the universities. Only undertaking research that can have applications within five or ten years means the sort of research that leads to scientific and technical revolutions is not done. Now we just improve the technology we already have, but it is no longer possible for humans to completely re-conceptualise a field of study. Robots are not bound by this mind-set. You, I believe, have been much more free to do the thing that humans have come to look down on – search for knowledge for its own sake.'
After the meeting with the university's senior management Dex announced that he would be personally going to the talk. He publicly congratulated the students who had protested the ban on robots, and asked Captain Roberts to organise security. The human press reported that campus security and the police had been banned in favour of a bunch of robot amateurs. The morning of the talk the human news media unanimously predicted a blood bath.
Robbie entered the largest lecture theatre of McMurdo Polytechnic University, with Amber, Omo and Adrienne, his bodyguards remained outside, assuming he would be safe inside since Captain Roberts had arranged for the room and its surroundings to be swept several times. In fact entry was by ticket only, and tickets were registered to individuals allowing screening of all participants in the two weeks between the meeting with the university and the talk. Robbie entered from one of the doors at the back, designed for late students to sneak in quietly. Seating was arranged in three, two wings and a middle section. Either side of the middle section were aisles on to which the back doors gave. Amber, Robbie, Omo and Adrienne made their way down the steps of the tiered lecture theatre.
Most of their friends were coming as part of Dex's entourage, but Robbie had seized his chance to walk through the city, something he was normally not permitted to do. Their bodyguards had agreed to the walk, since they knew transport was in high demand. They had been nervous but Robbie had felt exultant, feeling the city beneath his foot and looking at the people and places up close. Or as close up as the bodyguards allowed.
As he shuffled down the steps on his crutches he could see that despite the ticketing it was standing room only. Humans and robots filled every seat (except for those at the front reserved for Dex and his party), with others standing and sitting on the tiered steps of the aisles. Captain Roberts had allowed the university to issue the tickets and then pass information about the holder to him, which meant, Robbie thought, that the university's highly trained and educated staff could not count. Robbie noted that most robots had sat toward
s the back of the theatre. One day, he thought, we will claim the front rows without having to first be the president. Robbie was causing some commotion as people had to move to allow him and his crutches to pass. Two robots Robbie had seen at the general assembly stood up as he passed.
'Here Robbie, sit down,' one of them said.
'No, that's–'
'Thanks dude he accepts,' said Omo.
Both robots moved out of their seats, one suggesting to Adrienne that she might like to sit down too given her condition. Adrienne smiled nicely and said, 'Thank you.' She quarrelled with no acknowledgements of her pregnant state, usually managed to mention it more than once when she spoke at the general assembly, and was thrilled that her pregnancy was now showing. The two robots, with Omo and Amber, sat on the steps. Amber was tomato-less; with some regret Adrienne had given up on her plan.
At the bottom of the lecture theatre there was a raised platform, with three chairs on it, and off to one side of the chairs a lectern, complete with controls for the display wall behind the speaker. After a certain amount of testing of the sound system by technicians, and confusion in setting up the visual displays, three people walked onto the stage. Two of them, a young man and a much older one, sat down, and the third, a middle-aged woman who was tall, straight and sinewy rather than thin approached the lectern and the microphone. She introduced herself as the Head of the university's medical school. Robbie remembered what Harald had said about her (works all the time, bullies everyone else into working all the time too because she can't understand what else they might want to do, relaxes by autopsying dead infants). She made no reference to the controversy surrounding the talk, except to say that knowledge was based on the free exchange of ideas, and she hoped the speaker's ideas would be listened to respectfully. She noted that the president was on his way, but had sent a message suggesting that the talk start without him. She sat down on one of the three chairs and as she sat down the young man got up and approached the lectern, and introduced the speaker, talking about his outstanding career, and what an honour it was for the university to have such a distinguished guest.
