“Looks like we can patch you up now, buddy,” Eliasz said, touching Paladin’s detached arm softly. “Let’s try to move out in twenty-four hours, OK?”
“I am going to find my botadmin.” Paladin had already located Lee in one of the labs below them, and exchanged messages. Lee was available any time in the next two hours.
“I should come with you.”
“I will go with him, Eliasz,” vocalized Fang, rejoining them as the delegate left. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You’re going to need it.”
Eliasz remained at the table studying his mobile as the two bots filled the doorway, then disappeared into Camp Tunisia’s maze of hallways lit by ubiquitous, low-power LEDs.
Paladin turned his main sensor array toward the bot. Fang’s morphology was insectile: He looked like a two-meter-tall mantis. His torso, balanced on six highly articulated legs attached to his chassis, was a block of circuitry and actuators, which themselves supported two massive arms fit for missile launch, industrial operations, and nanoscale machine repair. Right now, the arms were folded in half at his sides, and he regarded Paladin with dozens of sensors mounted in two fat, sinuous, segmented antennas curving from the top of his torso. Beside him, Paladin’s bipedal bulk looked almost human.
I read your mission report. Impressive work so far. Covert ops are always tough on a first assignment.
Well, I did manage to lose my arm again. :)
Fang echoed Paladin’s rueful humor emoji back to him. It was a relief to be communicating with someone who didn’t require any form of subterfuge. Paladin wondered what Fang would think about Eliasz’ use of the term “faggot.”
I’m worried about human intelligence gathering. I know how to respond to many forms of human behavior, but I have almost no information about how to react to sexual arousal.
:P :)
I don’t mean to be funny. Did you ever have sex with Eliasz when you worked with him?
No. Did you?
I’m not sure.
Impulsively, Paladin sent Fang a compressed burst of video files and signal data from Eliasz’ body that day at the shooting range. He appended his still-growing taxonomy of uses of the word “faggot.”
Fang expanded the data, emitting no signal for several seconds as the two bots rounded a corner and arrived at Lee’s lab. Then he replied. I think I understand.
Lee waved at them from his bench, and Fang vocalized politely for the human’s benefit. “Paladin, why don’t you join me later?” As the bot backed out of Lee’s lab, he beamed an extremely long number, which allowed Paladin to decrypt a space on his internal map. Now he perceived a massive warehouse, the shape of a flattened bubble, beneath Camp Tunisia. Until this second, he hadn’t known it was there.
“How the hell are you, Paladin? You look like shit.” Lee cheerfully turned to his bank of neurosoldering tools.
Paladin realized that the last time the two of them had met, he had known less about his own mind than Lee did. Now he knew a lot more, which Lee could discover easily enough. Until he was autonomous, the Federation would always hold a key to the memories he’d encrypted in the Federation cloud. Lee or any other botadmin could pore over everything he’d learned and thought, editing or changing it if they chose.
Knowing this didn’t bother Paladin. He trusted Lee, the same way he trusted Eliasz—and for the same reason. These feelings came from programs that ran in a part of his mind that he couldn’t access. He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges. As a result, Paladin felt many things without knowing why.
After enduring two hours of tinkering, Paladin stepped out of an elevator into the base map’s decrypted room, which was bathed in ultraviolet light. Obviously not a human space. It was crawling with bots from many different Federation camps. Lightweight spiders, chameleons, and sleek drones gathered around the high, curved ceiling, while the floor was vast enough to accommodate even the biggest tanks. Charge pads were everywhere. Paladin tried to locate Fang on the base network, but only found something called RECnet. They were in a faraday cage that blocked signals from entering and leaving the room. There were no motes in the air. The RECnet was their only server.
But it was a good server, and it offered Paladin a highly granular map of every bot’s position in the room, along with a menu of open wares and pay-as-you-go apps.
Nobody really buys anything from the menu. Fang transmitted from a corner where the floor met the ceiling in a textured, parabolic curve. You can get everything you need in the open wares.
Paladin sat down on a battered bench next to Fang, who rested on his six actuators.
Nice arm upgrade.
Yeah, I even got new piezosystem drivers, and Lee upped the resolution on my neurochemical sensors.
Paladin ran his newly customized hand over the rough surface of the wall, reading its molecular composition and registering minute cracks. He sent a small burst of output from the experience to Fang, who laughed. It had taken Paladin no time to convince Lee to do the upgrades, but several minutes to vocalize his reasons for keeping the dents and scorch marks on his carapace. If they were going to Casablanca, it wasn’t a good idea to look like a brand-new military biobot.
You were right—we are shipping out to Casablanca in 22 hours.
Paladin was about to send more data when Fang interrupted him. I’ve been thinking about your experiences with Eliasz. Fang’s antennas slowly swept the room, drifting lazily in a default algorithm that scanned for security vulnerabilities. I think he’s anthropomorphizing you.
What do you mean by that? Treating me like a human?
Yes and no. He could treat you like a human by giving your survival the same priority he gives to the survival of a man. I’ve been in the field with Eliasz, and I know he would lay down his life for me. He’s a good soldier. But anthropomorphizing is something different. It’s when a human behaves as if you have a human physiology, with the same chemical and emotional signaling mechanisms. It can lead to misunderstandings in a best-case scenario, and death in the worst.
But we do have chemical and emotional signaling mechanisms. I can smile. :) I can analyze and transmit molecules better than a human can.
True. But sometimes humans transmit physiochemical signals unintentionally. He may not even realize that he wants to have sex with you.
Paladin quit their trusted connection for a second, and tuned the soothing hum of RECnet’s real-time location map. Hundreds of bots crisscrossed the room, floating or rolling or walking or lolling in a stupor after crashing on really good worms downloaded from the free wares menu. He understood what Fang was getting at—after all, he had done his own experiments that relied on Eliasz’ self-deception—but at some fundamental level he couldn’t believe that Eliasz was anthropomorphizing. Something else was going on. He wished he could signal the base network and check again for a response from Kagu Robotics Foundry about his brain. Maybe if he understood more about his one human part, his interaction with Eliasz would make more sense.