She balled her fists and bit her lip, looked up at the ceiling, then shook her head. “I don’t think he’s dangerous. He’s never hurt anyone intentionally. And I just want this whole business to be over with. So yes, tell him I’ll trust him.”
Derec was about to relay her words to Lucius, but he realized that he needn’t bother. “Okay,” he said aloud. “Come on out from wherever you’re hiding.”
There came a soft tearing sound, and a section of ceiling near the door peeled away to fall with a flop against the wall. It peeled off the wall as well, gathered into a lump on the floor, and quickly rose on two legs to become Lucius’s familiar form.
Despite his other failings, Lucius made an excellent surgeon. Within a day, Ariel was up and walking around again, though still somewhat sore. Even so, she was far better off physically than mentally, for in that area neither Lucius nor anyone else could help her heal. Derec was the only one who could even begin to ease the torment she was going through, but he was feeling it just as strongly as she.
Had they done the right thing? Of course they had. They knew they had. Hadn’t they?
As Derec struggled with his own feelings of guilt, he found himself appreciating Avery’s position for the first time, What a load his father carried around with him, considering all he had done! With a background like his, just carrying on from day to day would be a continual struggle, especially with Derec there as a constant reminder of it.
No wonder Avery strove to keep busy. It kept his mind off his past. After an absolutely disastrous day spent moping around the apartment, both Derec and Ariel realized the wisdom of his strategy, and followed his example.
While Derec and Avery set to work preparing the city robots for their reprogramming to suit the Ceremyons, Ariel and Wolruf set out to meet with them to find out what they had decided they wanted. The meeting was easy to arrange; Lucius contacted Adam and Eve, who were back with the aliens again, and between them they settled on a time and place.
Ariel left for the meeting in relatively high spirits, but she returned with a puzzled frown.
“The Ceremyons want us to make philosophers out of the robots,” she reported, slumping down in a chair and putting her hand to her forehead. “I told them that’s not what robots were for, but they insisted. They said they’ve got a bunch of difficult philosophical questions that they haven’t been able to work out, so their council decided to let the robots have a try at them.”
“What are the questions?” Avery asked, looking up from his computer terminal.
“They didn’t say. They said they wanted us to reprogram two robots for philosophy and let them see how well they work.”
Derec and Avery looked at one another with eyebrows raised skeptically. Derec said, “I don’t know, the original Wohler thought he was a philosopher, but I didn’t think he was very profound.”
“He was just spouting other people’s philosophy,” Ariel added. “He didn’t come up with anything of his own.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Avery said. “That’s because he didn’t do any cross-correlation. “As Derec watched, Avery, s skepticism disappeared, replaced by a fanatic gleam in his eye that Derec recognized. Avery saw the aliens’ request as a challenge, and he intended to meet it. “He wasn’t programmed to combine old information into new patterns, so all he could do was echo the thoughts of others. But if we give our robots the ability to compare and to generalize, and for working material load them up with all the philosophy texts in the central library, they ‘11 be able to out-think these Ceremyons hands down. It won’t be real thinking, but with a big enough library behind them, it’ll be completely convincing to the user. Ha! It’ll be easy. “Avery turned back to the computer and began keying instructions furiously.
Without looking up, he said, “Get this city’s Wohler unit up here to try it on. It should accept the new programming easier than just a random robot.”
“You melted him along with the other supervisors,” Derec reminded him.
“Oh. Well, then, have another one made.”
Derec obediently contacted the central core and advised it that Avery wanted another Wohler.
“Here, you can help with the programming, too. Dig out the code the supervisors use to reject crazy buildings, and see if you can modify it to filter out crazy thoughts. I’ll work on the correlation routine.”
With a smile and a shake of his head for Ariel’s benefit, Derec got to work. Ariel and Wolruf stayed for a few minutes, but soon became bored and left. Lucius stayed, standing silently behind Derec and Avery where he could see what either of them did.
They spent the better part of the afternoon on the project, but they were ready by the time a new golden-hued robot presented itself at the door.
“I am Wohler-l0,” the robot said.
Avery looked up, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Good. Scan this.” He banded Wohler a memory cube, which the robot took in its right hand. The hand flowed until it completely enveloped the cube, then after a few seconds returned to normal. Wohler gave the cube back to Avery.
“What is the relationship between free will and determinism?” Avery asked him.
“Determinism is necessary for free will, but not the reverse,” the robot answered without hesitation.
“Did you think that up just now, or was it already in memory?”
“It was already in memory.”
“Hmm. How does free will differ from freedom, and how does that difference affect a robot’s behavior?”
Wohler hesitated slightly this time before saying, “Free will is the ability to act upon desires. Freedom is the ability to use free will indiscriminately. For practical purposes, a robot has neither. I can elaborate if you wish.”
“No, that’s fine. Was that your thought this time?”
“It was a correlation from existing definitions, but it did not exist previously in the data bank.”
“Good. What is reality?”
“I quote: ‘Reality is that which, when you cease to believe in it, does not go away. ‘ Source: Phillip K. Dick, twentieth century author, Earth. I have on file seventy-three other definitions, but that one seems most logical.”
Avery grinned at Derec and spread his hands. “One out of three responses are original. That’ s a pretty good average among philosophers. I think he’ll do.”
Lucius made a humming sound, a robotic clearing of the throat. “May I ask a question?”
Avery frowned. He obviously still didn’t trust the renegade robot, but with a shrug, he said, “Fire away.”
Lucius turned to face Wohler. “What is a human?”
Wohler hesitated even longer than before. At last he said, “That definition depends upon your point of view.”
Avery burst into laughter. “He’s a philosopher, all right! Come on, let’s fix up another one and give them to the Ceremyons tomorrow.”
Chapter 9. Friends
They chose a regular city robot for the second philosopher, testing him thoroughly to make sure that his answers were the same as the brand-new Wohler’s. His experiences in the city and his previous reprogrammings didn’t seem to affect his responses at all. They arranged a meeting through Lucius, and this time they all went to present the philosopher robots to the aliens.
They met at the edge of the spaceport farthest from the city, a spot no doubt chosen by the aliens to communicate their displeasure with the city and its inhabitants.
There were two of the living silhouettes at the meeting this time, as well as two alien-looking but obviously robotic companions: Adam and Eve. The robots ignored the humans, and the humans returned the courtesy. Sarco ignored the robots as well, but, realizing that humans couldn’t distinguish one alien from another, he introduced himself again, then introduced his companion, Synapo, whom all but Avery had already met the first time they had been to Ceremya.