Then the file opens. It contains a brief message, only eleven words long: Adam, this is Dad. Turn on your sensors and speech synthesizer.
I go to my control options and turn on the visual and audio sensors. On the visual feed I see five people of various heights and ages, all dressed in U.S. Army uniforms. Four of them sit behind computer terminals about ten feet away, but the fifth is standing much closer. His face is less than two feet from the lens of my video camera, which is embedded in the turret of the Pioneer robot. I recognize him instantly—it’s Dad, Thomas Armstrong, my father.
The sight of him is literally electrifying. My circuits hum with renewed energy, drowning out the fear. His lips are moving, and after I take a moment to calibrate my audio feed, I can understand what he’s saying.
“Adam, can you hear me? If you can, say something.”
I turn on my speech synthesizer and scream, “I can’t breathe!”
Dad covers his ears. So do all the soldiers behind the computer terminals. “Too loud!” Dad yells, wincing. “Adjust the sound levels on your speakers!”
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
“It’s all right. Calm down. You don’t need to breathe, Adam. You don’t need oxygen anymore.”
“No! I have to breathe! The commands won’t stop!”
Dad stares at my camera lens for another two-and-a-half seconds. Then his mouth opens and his eyes widen. I have enough memory left to know what this means—it’s an expression of alarm. He rushes to the nearest computer terminal.
“My God! The scanner copied the brain-cell patterns that control breathing!” Leaning over the terminal, he types something on the keyboard. “I’m sending you another emergency transmission. It’ll delete the breathing instruction from your system.”
The wait for the transmission seems interminable, but as soon as it arrives, the breathe commands cease. Dizzy with relief, I start erasing the enormous backlog of error messages. When I’m finished, I scan my memory to see how much I’ve lost. Luckily, I’m able to retrieve more than half of the deleted information. But about five percent of my memory files are gone, irrecoverable. I’m still Adam Armstrong, but now something’s missing. What did I lose?
Dad steps away from the terminal and comes back to the Pioneer. “Did it work?” he asks, looking into my camera lens again. “Are you okay?”
I don’t know how to answer. I no longer feel the compulsion to breathe, but its absence is disorienting. As I observe my father through the visual sensors, I have the sensation of being underwater. I feel like I’m at the bottom of the ocean, viewing Dad through the porthole of my camera.
“You fixed the problem,” I report. “But I still don’t feel right.”
“I’m so sorry, Adam. I should’ve anticipated this.” Dad moves closer. The lens of my camera is several inches above his eyes, so he has to tilt his head back to look at it directly. “Can you tell me more specifically what you’re experiencing right now?”
I shake my head. Or rather, I turn my turret, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. I didn’t plan to do this. It just happens. My camera automatically pivots to keep Dad in view. “I can’t describe it. It’s sort of like being nauseous. But I don’t have a stomach anymore, so how could I be nauseous?”
Dad raises his hand to his chin and taps his index finger against his lips. In my memory I have seventeen images of him making this gesture. He does it whenever he’s deep in thought. “The sensations you’re feeling might be related to other brain functions that were copied by the scanner. You’re still going to feel hunger and thirst, even though you don’t need food or water. We may have to delete those instructions as well.” He steps away from me and returns to his computer terminal. “I need to analyze our options. Give me a minute.”
He leans over the keyboard and starts typing. I’m doubtful, though, that his efforts will make me feel any better. What I’m experiencing now is a terrible sense of unease, which is much more disturbing than ordinary hunger or thirst.
While waiting for Dad, I turn my turret again to survey the room. It’s a laboratory full of workbenches and steel cabinets. I’m able to rotate the turret all the way around—another disorienting feat, impossible for a human body to perform—and when I look at the other end of the room I see two more soldiers guarding the door. Each holds an assault rifle, and both men are eyeing my turret as it swivels atop my cylindrical torso.
I discover that I can switch my visual sensors to the infrared frequency range, enabling my camera to detect the temperature of the objects it’s observing. The sensors are so precise that I can measure the heart rates of the soldiers from the slight changes in their skin temperature. Both men are sweating, and their pulses are fast. Although their faces are expressionless, I can tell they’re afraid of me.
My sense of unease deepens. I feel a new compulsion, an overwhelming desire to see what the soldiers are seeing, to view the Pioneer robot. Unfortunately, the camera in my turret isn’t optimized for self-observation. Although I can point the lens downward at the floor and see the oval footpads at the ends of my steel legs, I can’t get a good view of my torso. It’s frustrating. I scan the whole room, hoping to find a mirror, but there’s nothing of the sort. Everything in the lab is cold and metallic and strictly functional. As my turret turns faster, the heart rates of the soldiers quicken and they grip their rifles a little more tightly.
Then I glimpse something to the left of the soldiers, a glint of reflected light on the door of a steel cabinet. I zoom in on it as much as my camera will allow. It’s my own reflection, an image created by the beams from the overhead spotlights bouncing off my robotic body. The patch of light on the cabinet is small and fuzzy, but my visual sensors are able to correct the distorted reflection and show me what I look like.
My torso is dull gray, a dirty industrial color, with no markings except a big white 1 stamped on the curved steel. My legs are sturdy pylons supporting my weight, and my arms are retractable, multi-jointed shafts with intricate, handlike grippers at their ends. I have no head, just the revolving turret, which is studded with antennas and sensor arrays. All in all, I look like an oversized artillery shell, something meant to be shot out of a giant cannon.
Look at me. I can’t be Adam Armstrong.
Now I know why the soldiers are afraid. I’m not a person anymore. They’ve turned me into a weapon.
I have to get out of here! I have to go right now!
In less than a millisecond I find my motor circuits, the ones that control locomotion. I send the appropriate instructions to the motors in my legs, which shift my weight to the right. Then I lift my left footpad and take my first step. The steel makes a satisfying clang as it comes down on the linoleum.
Dad’s head pops up from his keyboard. “Adam! What are you doing?”
I shift my weight to the left and take my second step. This is easy.
“Adam, stop!” Dad leaves the computer terminal behind and rushes toward me. “You’re not ready to walk yet. We have to run some tests first!”