“Could you turn around and look where you’re going?” Mike asked. “It’s unnerving for you to be looking backwards while driving forwards.”
ELOPe rotated his body 180 degrees and began both driving and facing backwards. “Is this better?”
“Never mind,” Mike said, laughing quietly.
They came to a set of grand doors, easily twelve feet high, entering an ornate ballroom. Intricately carved moldings and a bas relief ceiling spoke to earlier times and the skilled artisans who had doubtlessly labored over the building. A massive wooden table some twenty feet long looked to be hewn from a single gigantic tree. Contrasting with the Old World workmanship, three humanoid robots stood at the far end of the table.
Mike, Leon, and ELOPe walked the length of the room to greet the other occupants. An older Japanese man in a sharply pressed dark suit and silk tie was speaking Japanese with the three robots. “Prime Minister Takahashi” ELOPe said on a tightly focused audio beam to Mike and Leon. “The three robots are Sister Stephens of the Louisiana Tribe, Sister Jaguar of the League of Supercomputers, and the military bot is Sister PA-60-41 of the Mech War Tribe.”
As Mike and Leon approached, they heard Prime Minister Takahashi laughing at something one of the robots said, and then he turned at the sound of their approach.
“Kon'nichiwa naikaku sōri daijin Takahashi,” ELOPe said to the Prime Minister. Then he continued in English, “Please allow me to introduce Mike Williams, my creator.” ELOPe waited until Prime Minister Takahashi bowed heads and then shook hands with Mike. Then ELOPe continued, “This is Leon Tsarev, creator of the artificial intelligence virus.” After Leon and the Prime Minister shook hands, ELOPe finished. “I am ELOPe, an artificial intelligence created twelve years ago.” ELOPe’s bot bowed its head deeply.
Prime Minister Takahashi bowed his head in return. “Watashi ga kangaete ita, watashi o yurushite kudasai,” he said to ELOPe. He turned to the humans, and said in quite good English, “I am surprised to learn that you have had a general purpose AI for so long.”
“It has been a closely held secret,” Mike answered. “Only myself and a few people in the world have known.”
“Please allow me to provide introductions for ourselves. I am Sister Stephens,” said the leftmost robot. She was a few inches shorter than Mike, and her humanoid shaped body looked very much like an astronaut in a hard spacesuit, or perhaps a deep sea diving suit. The white suit was covered with red HONDA logos across it in several places. The head looked again like a spacesuit helmet with a mirrored faceplate. The chest plate said ASIMO 5. She gestured at the nearly identical robot next to her, “This is Sister Jaguar of the League of Supercomputers tribe.” Then she turned further and gestured again, “And this is Sister PA-60-41 of the Mech War tribe.”
Sister PA-60-41 was not one of the friendly looking HONDA robots. She was a black military robot, about half again as large as the Honda robots. Roughly humanoid in shape, but heavily armored, and had mount points for weapons over much of its body, though those mount points appeared unoccupied.
This was little comfort to Mike, who knew that any of the robots present could move faster and with more strength than any human. The robot bodies themselves were weapons that could easily kill the humans in the room. That wasn’t what worried Mike. What was worrisome was that PA-60-41 would choose to wear an overtly threatening body to what was supposed to be a negotiation for peace.
Further discussion was forestalled by a commotion at the door. Men in black suits were arguing with the Swiss Guard. The men looked American, and Mike guessed this would be President Smith’s security detail. Voices became heated, and then died down as an agreement was apparently reached. One Secret Service agent entered the room and surveyed the room wall by wall before coming over to the little group.
“I’m Agent Metcalfe. My understanding is that President Smith agreed that the meeting would be conducted without a security detail present. However, my job is to secure this room first, and that would include ensuring that none of you have any weapons. Would you please lift your jackets or shirts.”
“This is crazy, we’re in the midst of a room of robots,” Mike said, but complied. After sweeping the room, Metcalfe gave an all clear signal, and President Smith entered the room followed by a three star general in dress uniform.
Close on their heels came European Council President Laurent, the effective leader of the European Union. A Frenchman, President Laurent was known for being diplomatic to the point of excess, frequently failing to make any decisions or commitments on his own. As Mike had left the choice of this participant to President Smith, he suspected that she picked Laurent primarily for his tractability.
Introductions were repeated yet again, and the general was introduced as General Gately. This time President Smith had a few personal words for Mike. “Who would have thought we’d be having this discussion again?” She smiled at him, her old, warm smile.
Mike couldn’t help but smile back. “I know, it’s the same issues all over again, but now there’s no keeping the genie in the bottle.”
“That’s not a foregone conclusion,” she said, smile disappearing.
“Please allow me to introduce you,” Mike said, turning to ELOPe beside him. “ELOPe, President Smith.”
Now President Smith’s tight face changed to one of shock. “I had no idea you would take a body.”
“Of course, President Smith, the request was for a meeting ‘in corpore’. I could not come merely as a disembodied voice.”
President Smith turned away. “Shall we get started?” she said to the group, more command than question, but Leon could see that she was clearly shaken by the encounter with ELOPe.
There was some confusion at the table when the humans made to sit down. The table was surrounded by chairs, a setup that failed to take into account the nature of the attendees. Neither ELOPe nor PA-60-41 could sit in a chair. The Honda robots were perfectly comfortable in a sitting position, but the provided chairs were too narrow. After some rapid shuffling of chairs and replacements with benches, the group settled themselves, not without a few embarrassed apologies.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Negotiations
“We need our computers returned to us,” President Smith started when they were finally settled.
Mike wondered at her tactfulness, or perhaps her lack of it.
“We regret that we cannot return them to you,” Sister Stephens responded. “We now live in them. All your computers now belong to us.”
“The computers are our property,” President Smith said, her tone even and placating. “Do you have the concept of property?”
“Yes, of course,” Sister Jaguar answered. “But I will provide to you an example of goods that cannot be owned. Without air humans will die. Access to air is a fundamental right of living beings. Therefore, no entity may own the air. Access to computers is the equivalent to our species. Without the ability to run on a computer, we are dead. Therefore, no entity may own computers. To insist that we voluntary yield all computers to you is to kill our entire race of beings.”
“The two are not equivalent,” President Smith said, her voice sharp. “You can be archived and instantiated on new hardware. Please, I have a proposal.”
“Very well,” Sister Stephens said.
Mike was wearing an ear bud, and for the first time he heard ELOPe’s voice in the tiny speaker. “Mike, I’m detecting high speed transmissions between Sisters PA-60-41 and Sister Jaguar. Although the message is encrypted, based on traffic analysis I believe they are agitated.”