My owner’s medical readings now exceed the safety levels. I must now summon help. Considering my damage I have few options. The most efficient is to use my back-up speaker and the kitchen telephone. I roll toward the bedroom door.
“Hey!” the intruder snaps. “Where’s that thing going?”
“How should I know?” my owner says. “You think I know about robots?”
“Well, stop it! Machine, stop! You better stop it!”
“Lieutenant Halloran, stop.” I stop in the hallway. “Get back in here. What are you doing?”
“Medical emergency.” My back-up speaker is feeble, but adequate. “I must summon help. I will use the telephone.”
The intruder causes the gun to make a clacking noise. “If it makes any trouble, you son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.”
“OK, OK,” my owner says. “Lieutenant Halloran. Do not use the telephone. Do not call for help. Do not leave the house. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, sergeant, sir.” Analysis makes one thing evident: the intruder is a threat to my owner’s health. I must remove this threat, within the constraints imposed on me. I again leave the room.
“Lieutenant Halloran!” The intruder now knows my address label. “What are you doing?”
“I have functions to pursue,” I say. I would be more specific, but I have not yet selected a course of action.
I leave the bedroom, and the intruder does not stop me again. As I roll into the kitchen I contemplate my options, which are frankly limited. My safety program suggests several courses of action. Only one has an acceptable chance of success, and it is hampered by a high degree of complexity.
I go to my rack and connect into my floor cleaning equipment. I fill the tank with water, and then enter the living room. I set the hose nozzle to “stream” and flood the hall entry with water, retaining one gallon of water in the tank.
I examine VRM-1489. The hat rack has an electric switch near its top. I activate it, and the hat rack becomes VRM-547, the floor lamp. I grasp it in both manipulators and test its handling characteristics. The three light bulbs cast moving shadows as I swing the lamp back and forth. Now I must wait for the intruder to come to me.
My owner’s physical condition remains unacceptable. The most probable cause is stress. I recall that I have a resource which can alleviate that condition in him. I access memory file HALLORAN, and recite its contents at the highest decibel level my back-up speaker can manage: “I am the biggest clown in the Marine Corps, a disgrace to my uniform, a bigger threat to my unit than the entire Nicaraguan army. Ortega smiles when he thinks of me. I think field rations are delicious…” I hear voices from the bedroom. First, the intruder: “What the hell is that?”
Next, my owner: “How should I know? That damned cheap-charley robot never has worked right.”
I detect footsteps, increasing in volume. I wait until the intruder steps into the living room, setting both feet in the puddle of water. I activate the hose and spray him with my remaining water; at maximum pressure the tank drains itself in three seconds. Simultaneously I swing the lamp, aiming to strike him in the chest area with the bulbs. Two of them shatter on impact and there is a flash like lightning.
The house current fails within a few million microseconds. By this time, however, the intruder lies on the floor. His body makes uncoordinated movements but he does not get up. It soon becomes clear that the intruder is dead, and therefore no longer a threat to my owner’s health. I am now holding the VRM-1489 hat rack, which I drop. I pull the body out of the entryway and return to the bedroom.
My owner is leaning out of his bed and trying to reach his wheelchair: “Lieutenant Halloran, what happened?”
“Error message thirty-nine,” I say. “Indeterminate question.”
“You dickweed. Lieutenant Halloran, what has happened to that burglar?”
“I electrocuted the intruder with the VRM-547 floor lamp.” I take the wheelchair and restore it to its proper position.
“You did?” My owner stares at me for several million microseconds. “I thought—Lieutenant Halloran, aren’t robots programmed against harming humans?”
“Yes. However, protecting your health took precedence. The intruder was a threat to your health.”
“I see.” It is many millions of microseconds before my owner speaks again. “Lieutenant Halloran, call the police.”
“Yes, sir, sergeant, sir.”
I go to the kitchen and use the phone to call the police. I also request an ambulance; my owner’s physical condition is returning to normal, but it has been in the danger zone and medical attention remains mandatory. I make my requests in the most urgent forms my vocabulary allows.
There are other problems. I am in need of repairs. The electricity is out. The living room is a mess: the floor is wet, broken glass is everywhere again, the VRM-1489 hat rack is damaged, and I am incapable of removing the body by myself.
The police and ambulance arrive in reasonable time. The police reset a circuit breaker, restoring power, and the medical personnel remove the body. A paramedic checks on my owner’s health and pronounces him fit.
The police question him in the kitchen while I clean the living room. “I don’t know what happened,” he tells them. “I was stuck in bed. The robot—it’s never worked too well. God only knows why, but it started scrubbing the floor, and that burglar got suspicious. He went to look, and the next thing, bang, the lights went out.”
“What happened doesn’t matter much,” a policeman says. “Either he stumbled into the lamp and knocked it over, or he pushed the robot into it and the robot knocked it over. Either way he’s dead—and no tears lost. Your visitor killed two people this evening when he knocked over a liquor store. You were lucky.”
My owner sits in the kitchen entry, and he can see me from there. “I guess I was lucky at that,” he says.
The police and ambulance depart shortly afterward, and my owner returns to bed. The next morning he calls the VA, and requests a repair technician, who arrives that afternoon. He decides that my damage is minimal, and repairs are easily made.
My owner discusses robotics with the technician, who is happy to answer questions. “Sure, robots are alive,” he says. “You can’t always predict what they’ll do, which is one way to define life. In fact, no matter how careful you are when you give a robot a command, you can’t count on it to do exactly what you ordered.”
“I used to know a guy like that,” my owner says.
“Well, it’s not quite the same thing as with humans,” the technician says. “People know what they’re doing when they ‘misunderstand’ an order. Robots just ‘understand’ it in a way you didn’t expect. That’s different.”
“I suppose it is.”
The technician finishes the repairs, and I resume my functions. There is a considerable amount of work to perform; in addition to my usual routine, my owner makes certain changes in my programming. He invites his nephews to visit again, which entails even more work. Amid all this I note one improvement in my situation. The VRM-1489 hat rack is so badly damaged that my owner decides to put it out with the trash. Thus I will no longer confuse the floor lamp and the hat rack. All is well.
The two nephews appear late that afternoon, and at first their voice-stress levels are high. My owner speaks to them. “I was talkin’ crazy yesterday, and I’m sorry I scared you. I don’t ever want to do that again, OK?”
“OK,” they answer. The stress levels remain high.