Griffith watched Laura intently, as if waiting for her to absolve him of his guilt. She could say nothing, however. It was all merging into a single disgusting picture. The soldier, the animals led to slaughter what else in the name of progress? In the name of Gray.
Griffith threw the switch to extinguish the lights in the room.
They keep that room dark, Laura thought, seeing in the darkened glass the frozen look of revulsion on her face. They don't like to be reminded of what goes on down there.
Laura walked back to the window overlooking the first, brightly lit room. The Model Eight now played with a chrome faucet, and water shot up from the sink. The robot banged the metal sprayer against a man's suit that it had draped over the back of a chair. When the robot lost interest, the fixture fell to the floor.
He looked up with a start at the observation window — directly at where Laura now stood. When Griffith stepped up beside her, the robot flung its arm out violently, knocking the chair and the jacket across the room.
"He can see us," Laura said.
"Nonsense," Griffith replied. "It's one-way glass."
"He looked right at us, and then he lashed out."
"He looked up at what to him is a mirror. He can't see us."
"Don't they have thermal imagery? Maybe he detected our heat through the glass."
Griffith looked down at the robot, squinting, but then shook his head. "That's not it. They hate mirrors. Every last one of the Model Eights. Before they learn to control their behavior, they tend to lash out whenever they're the least bit irritated."
"And he became irritated just by looking at the mirrored glass?" She chuckled. "So you fill their world with mirrored observation windows even though it pisses them off?"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't being clear enough. It's not just mirrors that aggravate them. It's their image in those mirrors. They hate seeing themselves."
Laura tilted her head. "Why?" Griffith shrugged, but said nothing.
"You know they've been getting out of here," Laura said.
"Now that has been blown way out of proportion," he replied, bristling. "They're just isolated incidents."
Laura looked up at Griffith, and he turned away. "They're each different, remember. There are going to be some bad seeds."
"I'd like to see one of the 'bad seeds,'" Laura said. When Griffith started to object, she interrupted with "Then I'll get out of your hair. I'd just like to observe a Model Eight who's not a showpiece like Hightop for a few moments."
Griffith headed off to the work area with a frown on his face. Laura turned back to watch the young Model Eight below. It was sitting quietly and holding a colorful green-and-blue globe in both arms, staring at the details on the orb. She felt unsettled — on a wild ride she wanted to slow down but knew would only go faster. There was too much, too many new ideas. It was impossible to keep up.
There was one thing, however, that Laura knew with certainty. Soon, very soon, Gray's revolution would sweep across the green-and-blue orb the young robot held in his hands, and it would change everything… forever. It meant a spurt of growth — a period of unparalleled advancement for mankind. She already had enough truly novel, revolutionary ideas to write a dozen, two-dozen breakthrough papers. She could take her science to new heights, and then walk triumphantly down the halls of her department. In her mind she could hear the pleas for her time and her thoughts that would come from the very same people who had judged her unworthy of tenure.
Somehow, the thought seemed petty. Publishing papers? For whose benefit? Whose critique? As long as Joseph Gray lived, no one would equal his brilliance. He was a once-in-a-million-year phenomenon, and this was her chance to be a part of his world — the society of the mind.
"We call him 'Auguste,'" Griffith said, using the French pronunciation—"Owgoost."
The robot sat on the floor of his cell, and Laura and Griffith watched him on a computer screen from the underground monitoring station. "His formal name is 1.2.09R."
"Why the R at the end of his version number?"
Griffith gave her a significant look. "Reprogrammed," he said, almost whispering. "But look, I explained to Mr. Gray that these Eights are notoriously dirty creatures. They're into everything. And the same type of mud — volcanic mud — that you find down in the swamp is what you get right out in the yard."
"What are you talking about?"
"Mr. Gray asked this morning that I inspect the robots for any traces of mud. We found some on Auguste."
Laura turned to the computer monitor. "Why was Auguste reprogrammed?"
Griffith shook his head. "We couldn't coax him out of his shell. Behavior patterns never even began to approach normal. He was also way behind in motor skills. Two months into basic and he could barely walk across the room. I really thought… There were some tense times until we got those restraints on him, let me tell you. And he busted one of the chair's arms right before we got started. It's after the experience with Auguste that we went to titanium brackets."
Laura understood, now. The robots resisted reprogramming.
They fought when they were sent to the chair. But why? "How do they know they're going to be reprogrammed? How do they know it's not just another simulation?"
Griffith shrugged. "They just do. They sense something's wrong, I suppose. We have to get the juveniles — the Model Eights who're just out of the advanced course — to put them in the chair. Maybe they tell them, I don't know."
"Why do you call him 'Auguste'—and the French pronunciation? That seems a bit odd when the others are named Hightop and Bouncy and things like that."
"Auguste is an odd robot." He looked up at her. "But that doesn't mean out of control! The reprogramming took on him. We didn't have to decharge him — to 'start from scratch,' as you put it — like we did with one of the others."
"So Auguste was a slow learner, and Hightop got his foot caught in the rocks and lost power," Laura said. Griffith confirmed her summary with a nod. "And you reprogrammed them, but didn't have to start all over." Again he nodded. "What about the robot you did have to start from scratch?"
"Her behavior was… erratic. Totally erratic. One day, we let her out of the chair after some simulations and she came out swinging. Never did get her calmed down. We ultimately decharged her completely. She's one of the two infants currently."
"By decharging do you wipe out all traces of previous programming?"
Griffith nodded. "Almost all the connections in the robots' mini-nets are virtual — software instructions about how to route packets of data. They've got very few fiber-optic connections — only something like two to the twenty-second power of combination possibilities."
"And that hardwiring remains after decharging?" Griffith nodded.
Laura tried the math in her head, but gave up. "How much is two to the twenty-second power?"
"A little over four million," Griffith said.
Laura was stunned. "So four million connections remained in place when you decharged that robot?"
Another nod from Griffith. "So, you see, it's practically a clean slate. Hardwiring usually represents only the most unvarying of connections. Things like basic motor skills."
"Wait a minute! What about traumas? Didn't you say the trauma of the slaughter rooms gets seared into their memory? Isn't it possible traumatic experiences are also part of their unvarying, hardwired memories?" Griffith looked stricken and didn't respond.