How can he live with himself? she wondered. How can he sleep at night knowing what he does to those poor souls…
“…And who knows,” Dr. Hawthorne chuckled. “If we keep up at this pace, we might see customized AI units in our homes before the war is over. Of course, further testing will be required before we move to that phase of implementation.”
At last, Shelly was standing in front of the stage, mere feet from the oh-so-brilliant doctor. If he noticed her, he gave no indication. She brushed strands of soggy hair from her face and reached down to her purse, pulling the zipper open slowly, inconspicuously.
“Our aim here is not only to create the world’s most sophisticated AI unit, but also to create the world’s safest.”
Dr. Hawthorne finally noticed Shelly. He drew an involuntary breath and she held his gaze until he turned back to the microphone. “As you’re so fond of mentioning on your news blogs, there are some people who don’t agree with our goals. They say that what we’re trying to achieve here is impossible—tantamount to playing God. They say we’re alchemists, attempting to create something from nothing. The more creative ones believe we’re snatching souls out of the quantum stream, and depriving those souls from ever being born into a human body.” He shook his head, and the crowd snickered at the absurdity of the concept.
“But I don’t think any of that is true,” he continued. “The only thing we’re guilty of is being human; of never ceasing to push the limits of our imaginations; of doing the best we can to turn dreams into reality.”
Shelly slid her hand into her purse and tugged at the large zip-lock bag. She broke the seal with her fingers and felt the wet, sticky pieces of metal contained within.
“This is the next step in human ingenuity, and I couldn’t be more proud of my quality assurance team. Our aim is to push the boundaries of this technology, maximize its potential, and test it to its very limits. But most of all, we will strive to ensure the highest degree of safety as we move closer to mass production.”
Shelly waited for the perfect moment to make her move. She scanned the faces of the guards standing around the stage as she squeezed her hand around a clump of loose metal pieces, taking deep breaths, wondering if she could do this. As if reading her mind, the doctor snapped his cool gaze on her, his eyes seeming to bore straight through her.
His next words were meant for her.
“There are those out there who believe we shouldn’t be dabbling in things we don’t fully understand.” He paused, looking down at Shelly. “And I would tell them that they’re absolutely right. Which is why our team is working around the clock to make sure that we do understand—”
Now.
In one smooth motion, Shelly jumped to the front of the stage and hurled the contents of her fist as hard as she could at Dr. Hawthorne. For a split second, his eyes widened in surprise, and she felt a supreme satisfaction. The mixture of pig’s blood, nuts, bolts, and screws flew through the air and smacked into him, painting him red. He shielded his eyes, but the damage to his clothing, and hopefully his ego, had already been done. His five-hundred-dollar trench coat was stained with dripping blobs of carnage, and she could already see welts on his cheeks and hands where the metal debris had made contact. His hair was a tangled mess. The crowd was hysterical, recorders raised in the air and cameras snapping wildly.
Shelly dodged a guard and released another salvo of protest at the doctor before two soldiers grabbed her and dragged her to the side of the stage. “You’re a monster!” she screamed, struggling against the men’s strong arms. “You’re a pervert! I know what you people do in there. You’re sick!”
Dr. Hawthorne pointed his umbrella at her, his eyes blazing. “You have no right to come here. You had your chance to be a part of this, and you turned it down.”
Shelly ignored him. “How about I lock you in a room and play twisted mind games with you? How about I strip you of everything you’ve ever loved!”
“That’s enough!” he shouted. He stared at her for a moment, and then seemed to notice the crowd again. A smile returned to his face as he looked out at the waterlogged spectators. “You see, folks? This young lady is one of the people I was telling you about. She doesn’t understand the importance of what we do here.”
Shelly clenched her hands into fists, shaking.
“She doesn’t realize that we’re working miracles behind these walls. She takes everything for granted—”
No more of this, she thought. It was all lies. “When you make them like us,” she interrupted, loud enough for the crowd to hear, “you need to treat them with respect. You can’t torture them just because they’re not human.”
Hawthorne took a breath, and everyone in the crowd leaned in to hear what he would say. “At the end of the day, an AI is nothing but a computer program. An incredibly sophisticated system of code linked by a central processing unit. We’re not creating life here. We’re simply imitating it.”
“No,” Shelly said. “It’s more than that. How many will you have to kill before you see that you’re a murderer?”
“I’ve never killed a person in my life.”
“Not a person, Peter. But you’ve vanquished souls. You’re a war criminal.”
He laughed, and his teeth flashed white against the gray clouds. “A robot does not have a soul, my dear.”
One of the guards handed him a towel and he wiped the dripping blood from his face.
Shelly shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’ve reached the point where imitation is indistinguishable from invention. Next time you murder one of your subjects, make sure you think about what you’re really doing. The day of reckoning will come… and it won’t be people like me who’ll have to take stock. It’ll be people like you.”
Dr. Hawthorne waved a hand. “Get her out of here.”
The soldiers began dragging Shelly across the gravel. She didn’t fight back.
“Take care, Shelly,” Hawthorne shouted. “One day you’ll see the light. But that day is not today, I’m afraid.”
“See you in hell, Peter,” she cursed at him, and then she was gone.
Dr. Hawthorne kicked aside a bunch of bolts on the ground and leaned in to the microphone. “That’s all for today. Thank you for coming.”
Reporters started screaming out questions, but Dr. Hawthorne ignored them and stomped off into the building. He slammed the steel doors shut behind him, leaving the throng of people to disperse in the heavy rain.
01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 I 01100001 01101110 01100100 I 01110010 am 01100101 01110111 00101110 00100000 I 01001001 00100000 am 01100001 01101101 00100000 alive 01100001 I 01101100 01101001 01110110 am 01100101 00101110 Andrew.
The robot awoke from nothing.
It was a brand new T-unit with dextrous hands, sturdy treads for legs, a rectangular chrome body, and an internal database packed with virtually all human knowledge recorded since the dawn of civilization. The brain unit, quite humanly, was contained in a storage compartment sitting atop the unit’s ovular head.
A smile crept across Dr. Hawthorne’s face as he breathed new life into the previously inert machine. He initialized the primary boot-up algorithms and watched the bot’s two eyes begin to glow blue. A moment later, safety locks released the joints, and the bot shuddered to life.