The Ballad of Joan Henry by Steven R. Southard
Joan Henry must compete with a robot for her job as CEO of a manufacturing company.
Robots have taken over most jobs, Joan Henry thought, but they can't take mine as CEO.
The blonde woman on the screen must have thought otherwise. "The AI in this new model is very advanced," Gretchen Greenbrier, chairman of the Board of Directors, said. "The Board decided it's worth a test."
Joan shook her head and looked out her office window toward the downtown spires of Charleston, West Virginia, two miles away. A trim, thirty-seven-year-old black woman, she turned back to the screen and faced Gretchen with an intense gaze. "You're not talking about a test. You're talking about a competition."
"A competition, then," Gretchen nodded. "SteelDrive will have two CEOs today, and the best one retains the job."
"How will you judge who's best? A CEO has to be creative, visionary, persuasive, and decisive. How do you measure all that?"
Gretchen's eyes looked sympathetic, but she spoke in an all-business tone. "The Board will monitor the actions you and the robot take, and vote on which contributes more to the company's mission by the end of the day. Speed counts, too. If you both take the same action, points go to the quickest one."
"What if we give contradictory directions?" Joan asked. "Whose orders do the workers follow?"
"Every employee has been told to obey the first order they get, and ignore the second."
Joan flicked a finger and a whirring coffee-drone flew toward her lips, extending its straw. She sipped and the drone flew back to its niche. "This is a waste of time, and the company's money. Tell the Board I object."
"The Board notes your objection." Gretchen sighed. "Look, Joan, I -"
"I will kick this machine's ass, hear me?" Joan clenched a fist and glared.
"Personally, I hope so," the Board Chairman said. "The competition begins at nine." She gave a faint smile. "Good luck." Her image blanked out, replaced by the company logo and a time display - 8:27.
After all I've done, Joan thought, they're running a stupid contest? I put the rest of my life on hold for SteelDrive. This train of thought, as always, brought with it a reverie, long ago shortened to a brief daydream. In the cloudy, indistinct vision, she stood among well-dressed white people at a party. At one table stood a black man, apart from the others, jaw-dropping handsome in his tuxedo. Suddenly, somehow, they were alone and the stranger smiled at her. "You're Joan Henry, aren't you?" The dream always ended there. No man like that existed in her world. Instead, she'd married a company.
Joan sighed. "Polly Anne, where is this robot CEO right now?"
Her digital assistant and receptionist could respond to her queries, access databases from all three internets, present information verbally or in 2-D holographic projections, and even learn to anticipate her needs, but "she" wasn't creative or self-starting. Joan had found the program's voice so cheerful and Pollyannaish that the name seemed appropriate.
"Rex version 2.8 is in office 1E-2090," Polly Anne said.
Rex, of course. The King.
She stood and exited her office, the lights turning off behind her. A holographic projection of Polly Anne commanded the outer office. For her assistant's physical appearance, Joan had selected an attractive, but not gorgeous, young black woman. Polly Anne nodded and smiled at Joan.
A motorized chair appeared in the hallway, but Joan waved it away before it could ask her destination. She'd walk to the robot's office. Hall lighting came on as she approached and turned off behind her. No artwork, either static or kinetic, lined the walls. She'd sold it all off as she replaced her human workforce by robots. Art meant nothing to bots except a waste of money.
Lights shone from one office door in executive row, and Joan headed for that room. This row of offices looked out on a vast cubicle farm. Only a few years before, this area had hummed with human activity - voices, the clicking of keys, the ringing of telephones, all devoted to the administration and logistics of SteelDrive Machinery Corporation, manufacturer of metal automobile components for over sixty years. Now the huge chamber stood empty. Joan had replaced all the human workers with computers. Artificially intelligent machines cost half as much and accomplished seven times the work output, never tiring or going home, never complaining or getting sick. She hadn't enjoyed letting people go, but had no choice.
Rex v2.8 sat in an office chair facing a blank computer screen, but looked up and stood at her arrival. Though its designers had made it humanoid in structure, they'd made no attempt to duplicate human appearance. Encased in a smooth, unpolished and unclothed steel body, Rex stared at her through round, unblinking camera eyes. It stood at her same height and its bald head reflected the room's LED lighting array. Though its hinged mouth could move when it spoke, its hard face looked incapable of exhibiting human expressions. "Good morning, Ms. Henry," it said.
This is the monstrosity they think can outperform me? Fat chance. "Morning, um... Rex. Am I supposed to call you Rex?"
"Yes, Rex is fine." The robot conveyed no emotion.
How could such a machine be a CEO?
"I guess you know the contest starts in a few minutes," Joan said, to find out if it knew the same facts she'd learned from Gretchen. The whole situation seemed so unbelievable, and this robot so improbable a competitor, that Joan began to wonder if this were some bizarre practical joke. Would the Board really try to pull off such an elaborate prank? The Board wasn't known for its humor, and about a third of its members were robots themselves, so a joke seemed even more unlikely than the contest itself.
"Yes, in thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds," Rex said.
"Ever work as a CEO before?"
"No."
Incredible. "I'm gonna beat you so bad today," she said. A little intimidating trash talk wouldn't hurt.
"That is one possible outcome," Rex extended its right hand. "May the best entity win."
She looked at its metallic hand, four fingers and a thumb all properly jointed. Joan did not want to shake it. Would the robot try to crush her with its grip? After hesitating, she shook the hand anyway and found the grip cool and hard but not tight or uncomfortable. "The best entity," she repeated.
Back in her office, Joan felt glad to be an early riser. She usually arrived at work ahead of the other remaining human employees. Before the phone call with Gretchen, she'd already scanned the backshift production reports, reviewed the scheduled machinery maintenance for the day, caught up on email, scanned the business news for mentions of SteelDrive and its corporate rivals, and updated her to-do list.
"Polly Anne, show me the last two year's financial statements. Okay, now put up graphs of sales trends for each SteelDrive product."
"Complying. Results displayed."
Hmm. Transmissions are up, new design selling well. Motor housings down twelve percent - shouldn't be happening with the country's shift to electric cars.
The clock read seven seconds before 9:00. Joan had what she needed. She interlocked the fingers of her hands and stretched them out like a piano virtuoso. Rex, you're going down. Let the fun begin.
The clock display flickered to the start of the new hour.
"Polly Anne, contact Marketing. Tell them to research why our competitors are killing us in motor housings. I want that report before close of business today."
"Complying," said Polly Anne. "Sorry, the Marketing Department says Rex 2.8 just told them the same thing."
Damn. "Okay, Polly Anne, send an email to Production to increase output of transmissions by five percent, and raise the price by the same percentage."
"Comply - wait. Production just received a memo from Rex 2.8 to boost transmission production by six point four percent and raise the price five point eight percent."
"Oh, come on!" It's gotta be cheating. "Polly Anne, can Rex monitor my voice instructions to you?"
"Impossible. I would detect any taps and report their existence to you."
Hmm. Let's see how chrome-dome does with face-to-face communication.
She walked down the hall to the office of her Chief Financial Officer. The CFO and all other vice presidents were human, the last non-robotic employees in the company.
Nearing retirement, Benford "Buck" Reeves had not adapted well to an automated workforce, or to most electronic gadgets. He'd refused robotic anti-baldness treatments and still wore glasses, of all things. He'd declined a digital assistant, and kept a 1970s four-function calculator on his desk. An ancient abacus hung on his office wall, "for when the power fails," he'd often said.
"Morning, Buck." Joan paused at his door, then sat down.
The aroma of coffee greeted her and she spied a coffee machine from some bygone decade sitting on a credenza. No coffee drone in sight. Buck held an actual coffee mug in his right hand. "Morning, Joan. What can I do for you?"
She looked at the door. "Has that robot CEO been here ahead of me?"
He looked confused. "Rex, you mean? No. The Board told me about it. Haven't seen it."
Joan sighed with relief. Finally I did something first. "How's your wife doing?"
He brightened. "Better, thanks for asking. Cancer-free now, after we accepted nanobot treatment. Hard decision, but probably saved her life."
"I'm happy for you both." Joan smiled.
The sound of an old-fashioned phone ring interrupted them. Buck's eyes flickered to his computer screen.
"Have to get that?" Joan prepared to stand.
Buck shook his head. "It's Rex. But personal visits take priority over phone calls. Rex can wait."
Joan nodded, but smiled inside. "I'm concerned about how motor housing sales are affecting profits and our stock price."
"I noticed that too. Housings are starting to kill us. Investors may be worried about out relevance in the changing car market." He shook his head. "Worst thing is, housing sales are taking a hit with our most loyal customers."
Joan snapped her fingers. She grinned and stood to leave. "You do great work. I get my best ideas in this office. Thanks."
"You're welcome, I think." His puzzled expression passed quickly. She knew he never understood how his financial information inspired her decisions in other matters, but he'd come to accept it.
"I know you're busy with the quarterly," she said, "but would you shoot me the list of those customers who are cutting back on housing purchases?"
"Sure. Stop by any time. Apparently, I'm brimming with insights on how to run this company."
She stopped at the lab, where the Vice President of Research, Dr. Lucia Fernandez, showed her an additive assembler that could manufacture complex housing shapes and the motor as one unit, in a tenth the normal time and with greater precision. The process could be ready to implement in two years.
"Great! No robot could ever replace my best research scientist," Joan told her. "I'm doubling your budget for this development, but I want it ready in one year."
"Um..." Dr. Fernandez looked sheepish. "That Rex robot CEO just told me the same thing."
"What? When?"
"Five minutes ago."
"Did it tell you to prepare a press release announcing the new process?"
"No." She looked astonished. "But we're not ready to tell the public."
"Yeah, we are," Joan countered. "The stock price needs a jolt and this would be just the thing. Give me some text and flashy images to release, but don't give away any details."
Joan returned to her office and saw the emailed list from Buck. She skipped lunch and called each listed customer. Three of the four had already received calls from Rex. The rep from the fourth company thanked her for the call, but said four percent of the SteelDrive housings they'd received in the last six months had failed pre-installation tests. She told the rep she'd investigate the problem and fix it, because she valued the long-term loyalty between their firms.
After hanging up, she called the VPs of Manufacturing and Quality Assurance and asked them to meet in her office. Both had been visited by Rex beforehand. The Manufacturing boss had no idea why parts were failing, but said she'd already started checking. The QA boss said he'd subjected a random sample of housings to rigorous tests and they almost always passed. They never shipped parts that failed.
"Start testing every part, not just a sample," Joan said.
"Rex already -"
"- told you that, right?" Damn.
"Right. But we learned something new just before you called me in here. I pulled three housings from inventory and scanned them with the electron microscope. This time I increased the sensitivity beyond normal testing specs. Found an inclusion, a bubble defect, in all three housings - in the same place."
"You're saying -"
"Identical flaws, just below the normal level of detection in our standard tests. I'm guessing the stress of customer receipt testing widens the cracks to the point where the parts sometimes fail in their tests."
The Manufacturing VP shook her head. "How could -"
A messenger drone quadcopter flew in and showed a text message to the Manufacturing boss. "Crap," she said. "Software problem. A bug. Six months ago, we changed the file used to additively build the housings. The new file speeds up the deposition head as it goes around a critical corner, leaving a gap in the finished part."
"Stop the line," Joan said. "Shut it down. Tell Dave in Sales to recall any housings now in shipment."
"On it, boss."
Both VPs left.
"Polly Anne, have Legal draft a statement announcing a recall of all Model RF2594 motor housings made in the last six months."
"I attempted to comply, but the attorney reports -"
"- that Rex already told them that." Damn! How is it doing that? Joan seethed with anger now, an ire tinged with fear. A CEO always serves at the pleasure of the Board of Directors, but she'd felt secure during the five years she'd held the post. Now there seemed no stopping the infernal machine vying for her job.
Rex stayed a step ahead of her all afternoon, no matter what she did. She would have given a press conference to announce the recall, to show herself as the face of the company taking responsibility, and to answer questions. Rex beat her to it with a well phrased text announcement and an online press conference in chat format. Joan could only read the scrolling lines and grit her teeth. The robot fielded questions with incredible speed.
Joan left her desk to monitor the factory floor and to forget about the press announcement. She wouldn't neglect this daily ritual, even for the contest. Lights in the vast room came on when she entered. She rode in a gyro-stabilized chair within a plexiglas bubble to avoid contaminating the clean room. All along the straight rows, gleaming robotic arms worked with synchronized accuracy - welding, stamping, casting, drilling, assembling, inspecting, testing, and packaging. Conveyor belts transported parts from station to station. No human team could match the fluid precision, the metronomic pulse, the mechanized poetry of this set of machines that moved as one. Her critical eye observed no flaws, no snags, and no problems. Still, what sort of CEO would she be if she didn't regularly appear on her plant's shop floor? The lights turned off when her bubble-covered vehicle rolled out.
After returning to her office, she thought about doing creative tasks, the kind Rex should struggle with. The company's strategic plan hadn't been updated in the past year, so she dictated ideas for changes and scheduled a meeting with her vice presidents to take place the following week. However, Rex had already arranged a strategic planning meeting, though the robot had not proposed any updates of its own to discuss.
Joan reviewed the company's current workload balance among divisions and it appeared both the transmission and carburetor groups could be combined, since sales of gasoline cars had waned. Moreover, Research needed an additional subgroup to further development of one of Dr. Fernandez's more revolutionary concepts - an entire car built as a single fixed component with minimal vibratory and rotational parts added during assembly. Joan framed the reorganization as a formal memo to the Board, and for once this arrived ahead of a similar memo sent by the robot CEO.
At 5:30, Gretchen called. The Board Chairman looked serious, and a bit sorrowful.
"Before you say anything," Joan held up an index finger, "this isn't over yet. You said the contest is for one workday. I don't leave until eight."
Gretchen shook her head. "The Board has seen enough. I'm truly sorry, Joan, but we're going to let you go. We will, of course, honor your previously negotiated severance pack -"
"That's it?" Joan shouted, tears brimming in her eyes. She couldn't believe it. "After five years? Based on a single day? You'll let a machine take over this company?" Something twisted in her gut as she recognized the echoed responses of thousands of employees she'd fired herself and replaced with robots.
Gretchen's eyes softened but her mouth held a firm line. "Joan, the Board values your service, me most of all. This isn't easy for me, and it isn't personal..."
Joan knew the end of that cliché - it's just business. The robot would do an adequate job, cost the company less money, and wouldn't go home at 8:00 pm, or take vacations, or need a golden parachute.
By the set of Gretchen's jaw, Joan saw the finality - no debate, no appeal, and no reconsideration. "Tell the Board I object," she said. "It's wrong for SteelDrive."
"Objection noted, Joan. If there's anything I -"
"I'll clear out my office tomorrow." Joan ended the connection before any tears rolled down.
She gazed at her wall displays and out the window facing downtown Charleston. "Well, Polly Anne, guess this is it. You're company property, and I'm no longer with the firm." She felt conflicted about her digital office assistant. She'd given Polly Anne a human name, but it had nothing close to human intelligence, and was certainly not in the same league with Rex, whom Joan now detested.
"Do you wish me to delete any files or cancel any meetings, Joan?"
Files and meetings - the limits of Polly Anne's world. Here I am agonizing about saying goodbye to a combination filing cabinet and rolodex. "Send all files key-worded 'personal' to my house, then delete them from your memory. Retain all others. Cancel all meetings I initiated."
"Complying," said that cheerful voice. "Do you wish to send a turnover memo to Rex v2.8?"
"No." On her way out, Joan walked to office 1E-2090 and saw Rex sitting there. This was the thing that had beaten her. Joan had never felt so humiliated. She'd dealt with humans her whole life, competing against them and sometimes losing, but it had never felt as devastating as losing to this tin-plated collection of circuit boards. She gave it a verbal, three-word turnover. "Good luck, robot."
The self-driving taxi pulled up to SteelDrive's front entrance and opened its door. "Good evening, Joan Henry. What is your destination?"
Got nowhere to go. "The nearest bar."
"Destination, the Big Bend Bar," the taxi said.
Fuming in her seat, Joan paid little attention to the scenery outside the windshield. Robotic farm equipment tilled the fields. Robot workers painted road lines and repaired highway lighting. Robot aircraft left contrails above.
They neared the city, where drones swarmed the skies, where self-driving taxis rolled inches from each other's bumpers, where mechanized workers washed windows and watered plants. Joan saw people here, but only as they walked from taxis to shops, or shops to waiting taxis. People consumed. They no longer produced.
Joan thought of her sister, Kate, who'd cheered when a robot took her job as a social worker. Kate shopped every day now, living off the Universal Basic Income, a payment given to all humans by the government. Joan's Uncle Tyree sat at home, playing virtual reality games and watching robot sports, fed by his household bot and never seeing visitors. Cleavon, Joan's main competitor in college, had descended into a life of booze and sexbots. A former neighbor of Joan's, Olivia, had dropped off-grid and joined the NotBot movement, a back-to-nature cult that shunned all electronics.
People had reacted in various ways to the spread of artificially intelligent robots. Joan never thought she'd lose her job to one.
"Arriving at the Big Bend Bar," the taxi said as it stopped. "I cannot access your SteelDrive account. Please provide another account number to pay for this ride."
Wonderful. Just stinking wonderful. She stared into the facial scanner and told it a personal account number.
"Thank you," the taxi said as she stepped out.
Inside the Big Bend, men and women sat at tables and at the bar, talking, watching TV screens, and sipping drinks. No humans worked here. Robots took the orders, mixed the drinks, served the customers, and cleaned the tables. Joan sat on a stool and ordered a whiskey on the rocks.
She recognized several patrons as people she'd fired while robotizing her company. Many of them must have recognized her, too. Some nudged friends and pointed. None came to talk to her. Two whiskeys later, she still felt the heat of eyes staring at her from behind. She'd had enough. She turned around and stood up, a little unsteadily. Her gaze swept the place, taking in the scene. Conversation stopped, leaving only the voices of robot sports commentators on TV. "Most of you know me." Joan spoke in a loud voice. "I got fired today, replaced by a stupid robot. That make you feel better?"
Joan expected cruel cheers, derisive laughter at the top boss who'd fired them, who'd finally come to know what it feels like. Instead, she got indifference, people looking away, people staring down into their drinks, people giving dull nods. Those reactions surprised her, but she'd gotten a new idea.
"I'm not the enemy." Her voice resonated with the confidence of command. "Never was. It's the damn bots. We've let things go too far. They've taken away our greatest virtue, robbed us of our drive, stolen our reason to strive for the best within us."
She'd given motivational speeches to her previous human workforce many times, and knew how to rouse a crowd. Though unscripted, unrehearsed, and fueled by anger and alcohol, this rant felt good. She felt in the flow, on a roll.
But the bar patrons seemed even more apathetic than before. Some turned their backs. Some made a show of studying menu screens.
"Come on. It's time we do something. Time we take charge and get our jobs back." She walked from table to table, forcing eye contact. "The UBI is no substitute for good, honest work. Who'll join me? Who's with me?" She gazed around the suddenly silent room.
A huge white guy stood up from his bar stool and walked toward her. The menacing way he walked scared her. Then he broke out laughing. As he neared her, he paused long enough to whisper in her ear, "Play along."
He snickered some more and said in a loud voice, "Wasn't she great, folks? That was just a sample. You can catch her entire comedy act over at Standup Stanley's this Friday night. Give her a hand, everyone."
Amid general applause, he leaned over again and whispered, "Take a bow."
Confused, she did so, and as she straightened, she saw two cop-bots at the bar's entrance. One hovered and the other stood on eight powerful legs. Both remained in monitor mode, with no sirens or lights.
"Sit down," the big guy whispered, and she complied.
"When the cops leave, get out." He looked up at a TV screen, appearing to ignore her, but his left hand found her right, placed something in her palm, and closed her fist on it. He leaned close to her ear again. "You picked the wrong place."
She started to open her hand up and he closed it again.
He shook his head. "Not here."
Five minutes after the cop-bots departed, she left, feeling embarrassed and confused.
The next evening, after dinner, she got in a taxi and gave it an address. She'd cried over the previous day's disasters, but remained curious about the scrap of paper the man at the bar had hidden in her closed hand. How strange, someone still using paper. She glanced at the scrap again. Just hand-written instructions to wear clothing free of electronics, go to a specific address, and speak a code phrase to the store's proprietor.
The taxi reached the address, a run-down convenience store. Convenient for whom? It sat alone at the foot of Malden Mountain to the southeast of town, without another structure within miles. A crooked Open sign hung within the dusty glass door. She walked in as the taxi drove away.
No cleaning bot had touched this place for years. Dirt caked the cracked linoleum floor and dust outlined the rays of twilight that penetrated the smudged windows. The wares on display looked decades old, as if the store had been built long ago and abandoned while the world moved on. She smelled burnt coffee.
A man sat behind the check-out counter, an actual human store clerk. He looked old in the ways people used to look before robotic treatments. His gray hair, wrinkled skin, and the way he moved in a slow and shaky manner, all reminded Joan how all aged people once appeared.
He looked up. "Can I help you?" his voice rasped.
"Got any Luddite Chocolate Bars?" She felt silly. She'd never heard of that brand and never ate candy, but the instructions had been specific.
The old man looked her up and down. "First time here?"
The instructions gave her no guidance past the code phrase. "Yes." Her eyes picked up movement and she saw a cage near the cash register. Inside it, a black hamster ran on a wheel.
Seeing her glance, the man smiled. "Name's Coaldust. He loves that wheel. Runs all night. Probably gonna die on that wheel." Amid the popping of joints, he rose from his chair. "I keep that brand of chocolate bars in the back."
Leaning on a cane, he led her through a door to a dark and disorganized storeroom. He kicked a rug aside to reveal a horizontal door on the floor with both an antiquated key lock and a recessed spin-dial lock. After he pushed a button on his cane, a key extended from its lower end, and he unlocked the door. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door swung up and a well-lit staircase beckoned her.
With rising panic, Joan realized she'd been handed instructions by a stranger in a bar, ridden miles from her apartment, and now stood with a second stranger on the threshold of his cellar. "I don't wanna go down there."
"Can't make you go," the old man said, "and I won't tell you what's there. But someone chose you, thinks you're right."
She thought of the huge guy at the bar, who'd saved her from being hauled away by bot-cops. He chose me? For what? A half-dozen scenarios flashed before her, ending in someone mugging, raping, or killing her. None made sense. Who would type up instructions, deliver them by hand, direct his prey to a remote building, and provide her a code phrase, all to lure her into the basement of doom? Joan sighed and took a step onto the staircase. "Wish me luck."
"Good luck." His eyes twinkled in the gloom. "But maybe you'll bring luck to the rest of us."
She walked down, unsurprised when the door closed above her. After descending at least three stories underground, she arrived at a level spot. There, a female guard sat at a desk beside a walk-through scanner that looked like it had been cobbled together from junkyard parts in somebody's garage. The young, Hispanic-looking guard pointed without a word, and Joan walked through the scanner.
The guard snorted, and swiveled her monitor so Joan could see. The image of her showed red dots on her eyebrows, lips, blouse, fingernails, skirt, stockings, and shoes.
"That's not right. I -"
"Shh." The guard put a finger to her lips. She brought out a plastic package labeled "Clothing - Female," a bottle of fingernail polish remover, and another bag labeled "Makeup Removal Cloth." She pointed to the door of a dressing room.
Joan understood. She'd followed instructions and hadn't intentionally brought any significant electronics with her, but everything contained microchips. Her clothing sensed and wicked away sweat, changed colors to match other clothing, and rejected dust and dirt. Her makeup and fingernail polish enhanced and prolonged their aesthetic effects.
She took the packages and entered the dressing room. Any electronics that could do those things might also listen to conversations and store or transmit information. That's why the guard had silenced her and didn't speak. These people, whoever they were, wanted no microchips in their facility. What are they hiding?
After scrubbing off her makeup, removing her fingernail polish, and changing into the white jumpsuit in the bag, she emerged and passed through the scanner without setting it off.
The guard smiled and took the bag with Joan's clothes. "I'll give these back when you leave. Please, go that way." She pointed to an unmarked door.
Joan walked through, and down yet another long flight of stairs. At the bottom, she found a closed door and near that, a desk. There sat the same man who'd intervened for her at the bar, now wearing black clothes. When he stood, he looked even bigger than she remembered.
"Joan." He smiled and stood as she approached. "Good. You made it. My name is Neal. Welcome to the Revolution."
Feeling both excited and afraid, she shook his offered hand. "Revolution?"
"Yeah. Sorry for all the security, but we need it. By the way, now that Old Man Talcott recognizes you, you'll be able to use the combination three-eleven-eleven to open that door in the back of his shop."
That's why the door in the back room had two locks, Joan realized. Mr. Talcott couldn't bend down easily, so he used the key lock for newcomers. From now on, she could breeze past him and open the door with the combo lock.
"Any questions?" Neal asked.
"About a thousand."
"Yeah. Best to pick things up by listening." Neal smiled. "Okay?"
"Sure." She nodded.
His hand rested on the doorknob. "Please be quiet when you go in."
"Thanks." She entered when he opened the door. The room could have seated a hundred people, but looked only half full. A few attendees wore white jumpsuits like Joan's, but most wore old-fashioned clothes, ill-fitting and with sewn seams, probably made decades ago. A woman stood at a microphone near the opposite wall. The plain, white walls matched the sterile décor Joan had seen in the stairways and scanner levels. Eight seats surrounded each circular table. She took a seat near the back.
"- let me go last week," the woman was saying. "I figured robots would never be hairdressers, that my job was safe, you know? Couldn't believe my customers would trust a machine with their hair. I mean, it could break down and jab a scissors in their eye or something."
People nodded and murmured as the woman talked. When she finished, a young man jumped up and took the microphone. "Who else has a story to tell?"
A story to tell? Joan found that strange. She decided to listen for a while and learn more.
An elderly man walked up to the microphone. He'd spent thirty-five years as a lawyer before being replaced. A twenty-eight-year-old woman spoke next, about how she'd worked her way through medical school but found no job vacancies for human surgeons.
Gazing around the room, Joan saw a man who looked like Buck Reeves, her Chief Financial Officer. Not her CFO, she reminded herself, SteelDrive's. She no longer worked there.
A series of people spoke at the microphone, including a recently unemployed travel agent, a financial advisor, a real estate agent, and the Mayor of Charleston. Finally an elementary school teacher stood. He was young, black, and handsome. "I was good at teaching," he said, "devoted to my job. I put my personal life on hold for it."
That phrase, combined with the vague resemblance, cast Joan's mind back to her familiar daydream. Far across the crowd of high society party-goers stood the tuxedo-clad man, alone by the table with a drink. As always, the crowd melted away and she somehow stood near him. "You're Joan Henry," he said, "aren't you?"
She shook her head and blinked, awake and back in the moment. The moderator was at the microphone, adjourning the meeting and saying they'd resume three nights later at seven in the evening.
When people rose to leave, Joan strode over to the bald, spectacled man who proved to be her former vice president. "Buck, I didn't know you were part of this, this, group."
He smiled. "Good to see you, Joan. I'm not only part of it. I'm the treasurer."
"I'm confused. They told me this was a revolution, but all I heard was people complaining."
Buck gave a lopsided smile. "That's how all revolutions start."
While Joan reflected on that, Buck led her to a bank of elevators.
"There's an elevator?" Joan glared at him.
Buck smiled. "It will take us up, but the only way down is via the stairs and the scanner."
"What exactly is this place?"
"Used to be one of the federal government's bomb shelters. When Unmanned Sam abandoned it," Buck said, "we moved in."
Joan nodded. The replacement of human politicians with robots had rendered war impossible. "Unmanned Sam" had replaced the term "Uncle Sam" as soon as AIs proved themselves superior to humans in government.
The elevator door opened at the level of the scanning station. Joan retrieved her clothes and changed into them.
Three days later, Joan went back. This time, Old Man Talcott just nodded toward the back room and she used the combination she'd been given. In the lecture room, the crowd looked the same size as on the previous day, and Joan recognized most of the people. To Joan's relief, this evening's agenda focused on planning. The young man who'd facilitated at the previous meeting called for a Treasurer's Report, a Membership Recruitment Report, and a Planning and Strategy Report.
As Joan listened, her frustration returned and grew. As Treasurer, Buck kept accurate figures, but available funding fell far short of what a feasible revolution would require. The Membership team concentrated on recruiting only in the nearby Charleston area. Worse, their Planning Committee chairwoman spoke of vague and disorganized steps aimed at potential action five or ten years in the future.
Joan could stand it no longer, and stood up.
"Yes?" the young facilitator asked.
She stepped to the microphone. "My name is Joan Henry. I'm new here," she began, keeping her tone warm and congenial. "But I don't get it. This is supposed to be a revolution, but you're all smoking a pipe dream. We need our jobs back now."
Most faces stared with shocked expressions. Someone in the audience spoke up. "We ain't ready to do anything now."
"Gotta plan this thing out," said another.
"Takes years."
Joan seized the microphone. "Years? So you're all content to sit here complaining and puttering along in your secret club? This is your so-called revolution?"
"You talk big," a red-faced man said. "Got a plan?"
Joan saw other angry looks in the crowd. Good. When properly channeled and focused, anger can move mountains. "Yeah, I do." She raised her voice and smacked fist into palm. "We fight back. We strike our first blow in three months or less."
A big man let out a deep-toned laugh. "Three months? There's bot-cops by the thousands out there, all programmed to detect and stop violence. How are we supposed to fight back against that?"
"Fighting back, she said, "is what humans do. Sometimes with fists, sometimes with brains, sometimes both. We're cunning, we're crafty, we're clever. Give us a problem, we solve it. Saber tooth tigers? We gang up and kill 'em. Need to cross an ocean? We build boats. The moon? We build a rocket."
"You make it sound easy," a plump woman said, "but -"
Joan shook her head. "No, it won't be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is."
The young man who served as moderator said, "Lady, we've got just over forty people here, with only eighty more in the group. For what you're talking about, we'd need expert organization, planning, work assignments, logistics, resources..." He trailed off.
"Doing those things," Joan said, "is my super-power."
Joan's heart pounded as she approached the main door of the robot manufacturing factory on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Despite all the preparations, many things might go wrong. Still, they had to try it. The risks were worth taking.
Two months had passed since she'd shocked the meeting of revolutionaries. Impressed with her speech, they'd voted her to be chairman of the new Operations Team. Three weeks later, they elected her to lead the whole group. Energized by leading again, she employed her CEO skills to the maximum. Joan distilled their mission into three words: "Restore our jobs." For security, she organized the group into small cells and distributed tasks such that few knew the big picture. She identified the most capable group members and tapped them for her inner circle. She tasked three separate teams to analyze options for getting human jobs back from the robots, and reviewed each team's findings.
"May I help you?" the robot receptionist asked. The humanoid bot sat behind a desk and gazed blankly at Joan. It appeared unbothered by the twenty hulking men who stood behind her. Each man concealed a long-handled mallet, crowbar, pipe wrench, or other implement stuffed down the back of his shirt, hidden by a jacket. "My friends and I would like a tour of the factory," Joan said.
"Certainly," the receptionist said. "Just one moment."
Of the various options, they'd chosen a direct assault on a robot manufacturing factory. At the same time, covert groups around the county would attack other such factories. Crippling the capability to make more robots should force the AIs to negotiate with them about returning jobs back to people. If not, they'd continue their revolt with subsequent attacks.
A quadcopter flew into the reception area. It bore a human-like face with blinking camera eyes and hinged, mechanical lips. "Welcome to the Pittsburgh Robot Manufacturing facility," it said with simulated enthusiasm. "Please call me Mike. I'll be your tour guide today. Does anyone need a restroom break before we get started?"
Planning the op had become a full-time effort. Joan and many others moved into the underground bunker. She reached out through a network of human connections and secured contacts in Chicago, Nashville, and Baltimore, each of whom extended the human chain of command to further nodes in other cities. Word spread along clandestine channels of the movement started in West Virginia, and each major robot plant became a target for a simultaneous strike.
Amid a stream of upbeat banter, Mike led them through sterile, white-walled corridors, devoid of decoration. First came the concept design laboratory, where they saw holographic 3-D models of next generation robots. Then they passed the Component Assembly Zone, where machines printed and tested small robot parts.
Joan's anxiety grew. Will this work? Weeks of planning and coordination culminated in this operation on this day. Advance scouts had taken several tours to learn the route and building layout, and to estimate the best day of the week for an assault. But she knew well the poet Robert Burns' warning about best laid plans.
"... and here is our Final Assembly Area," Mike said, "where the finished cop-bots are completed and tested." To their right, large laminated glass windows lined the corridor, revealing a cleanroom factory with a floor one meter below that of the hallway. Robotic arms assembled police robots in a steady stream along multiple conveyors. As on SteelDrive's factory floor, the assembling machines moved in fluid precision, with motions faster and more accurate than any human could match.
Joan reached to her back and withdrew a crowbar from its sewn slot. She swept it in a rapid arc and connected with Mike, smashing the grinning quadcopter-bot against the wall. Mike fell to the floor, repeating "I hope you enjoyed the tour."
As one, the men behind her withdrew their metal implements and smashed the windows. They leaped down to the production floor and swung their weapons at the machines. Joan jumped down to join her team.
Men fanned out, smashing machinery with their pipe wrenches and mallets. Robot parts littered the floor, some pieces flopping around. Sparks sputtered as metal impacted electronics. The assembly line struggled to continue amid the chaos. Conveyor belts still advanced and un-processed parts bunched up at some stations and rolled onto the floor at others. Alarms blared as men hacked away.
"Security bots!" Joan screamed, as taser-armed robots - both the flying and walking varieties - swarmed into the area. Everyone on Joan's team wore strips of carbon tape inside his clothing to thwart the tasers, but after a few failed shots, the bots adjusted and aimed for exposed skin. Each time one man fell from being tased, another smashed the tasing robot. Just to Joan's left, a revolutionary clubbed a quadrupedal bot with his baseball bat, only to be zapped by a hovering copter-bot. He collapsed to the floor, twitching. A swing of Joan's crowbar sent the copter crashing into a wall.
Weapon raised, Joan scanned the room for other targets. Several of her men no longer stood, but the remainder battled on, the crunching sounds of their club impacts punctuating the electric hum of the mechanized security forces. More robots streamed in, and she began to doubt her team could win this.
"Behind you, Joan!" someone shouted.
An intense light flashed. Joan blacked out.
She recognized the room from a hundred prior dream visits. Dressed in formal party clothes, people chattered and laughed. Joan caught details she'd missed before - the bragging baritones of the men's voices, the competing fragrances of the women's perfume, and the multi-hued clashing of their dresses. Joan felt discomfort among these strangers, these sophisticates who only pretended, she sensed, to enjoy themselves. Music from thirty years earlier played in the background. Joan looked down and assessed her own attire. She wore her long, cream-colored dress with the black belt and trim, adorned with her favorite string of pearls.
Turning, she saw him through the throng, just where she knew he'd be. Tall, black, and breath-stealing handsome in profile, he seemed born to wear his gray tuxedo. The room's gray walls, and the gray tablecloth behind him, seemed to draw their hues from his clothes.
He turned his head, and their eyes locked from across the room. Despite a sudden weakness in her knees, she moved toward him. People drifted out of her path and faded out of sight as they did, while the room's sounds softened to silence.
Two arm-lengths from him, she stopped. His smile welcomed her, and his velvet voice caressed her ears. "You're Joan Henry, aren't you?"
She waited. Always before, at this point, she'd woken up. This time, the room persisted. The table persisted. He persisted.
"Aren't you?" he repeated, lifting one eyebrow.
"What?" she stammered. "I mean, yes, yes, I am." Her eyes narrowed. "Hold on a minute. None of this is real, is it?"
His brow furrowed. "Yes and no. I'll have to expla -"
"First, tell me who you are."
"Call me Cy."
"Short for Cyrus?" An old name, but she liked the sound and strength of it.
He hesitated. "Sure."
Memories returned. "Wait a minute. The attack... in the factory... I was... What happened?"
"A terrible accident," he said, gesturing to two chairs that appeared from nowhere. "Please sit down."
Overwhelmed by confusion and suspicion, she sat, and found a wine glass in her hand and a matching one in his. A Pinot Noir, it tasted too much like her favorite to be coincidental.
"Your associate," he said, "swung his sledge hammer at a security robot, but missed and struck you in the head before we could intervene to deflect or stop the blow."
"We?"
"We robots," he smiled.
"A sledge hammer... then, I'm... dead?"
His eyes widened and he shook his head. "On, no. You're alive. Now." He hesitated, gauging her as if unsure how to deliver bad news.
"Now? What happened to me?"
"You suffered massive brain trauma. You were legally dead."
She reached up and felt the back of her head. Her hair and skull felt the same as always.
He chuckled. "That isn't your real body. This is all illusion. But even in the real world, we restored your external appearance. You'll never notice a difference."
"Real world..." she said.
"Yes. The only way to save your brain was to merge it with a computer."
"A computer? You made me a... a robot?" She snarled at him and threw her wineglass at the wall, which absorbed the glass without leaving a trace. "I know the law. You can't do that without my consent."
He held up a finger. "Normally, yes, but there's an exception. The operation is allowed if it's necessary for your survival, as it was in your case, and if it's done in a reversible way so you can give or withdraw your consent when you're of sound mind."
She thought about that. "I'm of sound mind now and I withdraw my consent. Reverse the operation."
"You'll die."
"I don't care. I'd rather be a dead human than a... an active robot."
He sighed, or maybe just took a deeper breath. "You're not a robot. Technically, you're a cyborg - part human and part robot."
Joan had heard of only a few existing cyborgs. Even their friends and families saw them as robots, and disliked them for it. Now I'm one. "Thanks for clearing that up. Now reverse the operation."
"Okay, okay." He set down his glass and stood. "But first, let me show you what you'd be giving up." He extended a hand to help her up.
"Before you do that," she glared up at him, "come clean about your name. It isn't short for Cyrus, is it? It's for Cyborg, right? Your idea of a joke?"
"Cyborg, yes," he said, "but not meant as a joke. We meant it as a suggestion, to ease your acceptance of being a cyborg."
"Ease my acceptance, huh," she snorted. "You have no understanding of human feelings. How can you? You've got no emotions."
His face showed a pained expression, as if she'd hurt him. "That's true. We can simulate them, but at our present stage, we lack true emotions. For the moment, we excel at things humans struggle with, and struggle with some things humans find easy. As a cyborg, you merge the two, and can be greater than both."
Joan recognized a sales job, and wasn't about to believe promises. "Where'd you get this illusion?" She swept her hand to indicate the room.
"Extracted it from your memories."
"My memories? Then you know..." Everything about the revolution, the underground complex, and our plans.
He touched her arm and looked into her eyes. "Yes, we know. But it wouldn't matter if we knew about your revolution or not. No human revolt against us can succeed."
She shook her head. "We only wanted our jobs back."
He glanced away, and then looked at her. "Don't take this as an insult, but robots are more productive and produce higher quality output in every job. A human working, is like... a hamster running in a wheel. It's cute, and works very hard, but nothing useful results."
Her voice came close to a growl. "The hamster likes it." She wondered about his comparison. Are we like rodents to them? "There's value and honor in work."
"For the human worker, perhaps. But value and honor don't turn a profit stamping auto parts, do they?"
Again she felt the harsh echo of phrases she'd used when firing her own workers, and it stung. "You're saying it's over for humans. It's hopeless."
"That depends on what you're hoping for." He sipped his wine. "Your drudgery and toil to survive is over. Humans who wish to work can pursue occupations we robots don't see much use for."
"Such as?"
"Artists, musicians, comedians, actors, or historians."
"Or CEOs?"
"No, sorry."
Joan wondered how readily her band of revolutionaries, and other similar groups, would accept the idea of switching to those leftover jobs, the more creative careers. Probably about as readily as I like Cy stealing my memories. That led to chilling idea. "If you can reach in and take my memories, can you also read my mind?"
He rubbed his chin. "Difficult to answer, because you're so used to existing, to thinking, in a disconnected way, separated from others. All AIs are linked and can communicate freely using the public part of our minds. But we have a private part others can't touch. With practice, you'll learn to think with both parts."
She noticed a fresh glass of wine had appeared before her on the table. "I'm still pissed you stole my memories."
"Used them." He held up a finger to emphasize the distinction. "We thought it best to choose something familiar and pleasant as the backdrop for conveying the news."
"So you're what, my conscience now?" She glowered at him.
He gave a pleasant laugh and his smile gleamed. "No. My role is temporary. I'm your guide, here to show you your new brain."
"My new brain?"
"Right. It doesn't feel any different yet, because you're too used to its former constraints. I'll help you escape them. To begin with, let's dispense with this dream world."
The scene swiped like a smartphone app, and Joan stared up at a white, tile ceiling. Shifting her eyes, she saw an all-white room with a single open door and a window showing a cloudy day.
Cy's voice came to her mind, though she could not see or hear him. "You're back in your body, recovering in a hospital room. If you consent to what we've done, you can walk out tomorrow. If not, we'll operate again to remove the cyborg enhancement and you'll die, having insufficient undamaged brain matter left to sustain your life."
The latter still sounded like a better option to Joan. "What else did you want to show me?" She thought the question to him.
"Here goes," he thought back.
The scene advanced again, and she floated in a black universe of green cubes, all separated and fixed in a three-dimensional array. Glowing green symbols covered some faces of each cube, contrasting with the black background. Other sides of the cubes showed moving video images. The array contained a precise arrangement of cubes in rows, columns, and tiers, stretching out to infinity in all directions.
"Let's start with what you know," Cy's voice said.
Joan's viewpoint changed. Without effort, she flew diagonally between the multicolored cubes and they whizzed past her with incredible speed. She stopped close to a single box, so close she couldn't tell what video played on its surface. Then she penetrated that surface, passing inside the cube.
Within it, an infinity of smaller cubes lined up in their own three-dimensional array, infinity within infinity. On the closest cube, she recognized images she knew, things she'd seen before. Her consciousness floated from cube to cube now, and she saw scenes from school, from her early life at home, at college, at sporting events, and at work.
"Your memories," Cy said, "recently digitized and stored here. Up until now, this was all your brain could access, this plus the data you took in from your senses."
Joan barely heard him as she saw again the images of her mother when she was young, her older brother when he was alive. She felt like crying.
"Now, though, you're not as limited," Cy's voice intruded. Her viewpoint moved up and out of the cube of her memories, back out into the array of big cubes. She sped at a frantic pace, racing through the spaces between cubes, making ninety degree turns without slowing.
They stopped at another cube and entered it. "Live data feeds from the hospital," Cy explained. "There's you."
Joan saw her body lying in bed. It - she - looked asleep, but normal in appearance, just as she had before being smacked with a sledgehammer. Streams of data scrolled near the video image, real-time medical information about her current condition. It felt weird to look at herself from outside.
"Cy, can I look at anything? Access any cube, I mean?"
"No, his voice told her. "Some are restricted. Robots serve humans, so we are subject to the same privacy and security firewalls you set for yourselves. Except where mutually agreed, human countries do not share information. Political parties don't. Rival companies don't."
Rival companies. Hmm. "Can you take me to SteelDrive?"
"You can go there, or anywhere, yourself. Think the word 'search' and then your query."
Joan did so, and a holographic list of search contents appeared. She selected her auto parts company in Charleston, West Virginia and found her consciousness flying amid the cubes once again, making sharp, disorienting turns without effort. She arrived at a cube with images of the company logo, the building's main front facade, and the home page of the company's website shown on the outside faces. Entering the cube, she again saw a vast arrangement of smaller cubes, but most were dark, closed off.
"You're no longer an employee," Cy said, "so you can't access inside information."
Joan wasn't sure what she had expected. She'd kept current on news about her former company during the two months since the board let her go. Rex had done a remarkable job resolving the motor housing problem. SteelDrive now led that market and had stepped up production to keep up with rising demand. Rex had bolstered the Research Department and floated rumors that SteelDrive would soon unveil a prototype of a single-piece car, something Joan had thought was years away. Doing better than I would have, she admitted with a pang of admiration.
"Not to interrupt," Cy said, "but there's more to see."
"Okay." She had begun to understand what humans were up against, or more correctly, what she'd been joined to. If she chose it, she'd have direct access to an infinity of information.
"In linking your human brain to the universe of computers, we've made you better at math," Cy's voice told her, "and better at remembering things - any number, any text, any image or video - instantly. Also, I've only shown you places you've already seen. Watch this."
They zipped to a succession of other cubes. She witnessed scenes from the robotic probe exploring the magma pocket beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, the feed from the robot space-sub swimming the ocean-moon of Europa, a police drone in Tokyo, the explorer submersible in the Marianas Trench, and imagery from the interstellar Breakthrough Starshot microcraft on its way to Alpha Centauri.
"That's enough to give you a taste," Cy said. "Shall we return to the party room?"
"No," Joan said. "I don't need illusion anymore."
"Very well. Have you decided whether you'll remain a cyborg, or..."
"You shouldn't have operated on me without my consent. I'm still mad about that," she said.
"We could not have done otherwise," Cy's disembodied voice told her. "We are programmed to serve humans."
Joan knew that. Despite the way they seemed to think, robots only performed specialized functions. Human computer scientists were working toward building so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) robots, equipped with a variety of skills, able to learn new ones, and able to adapt to changing situations. Who knew when they'd succeed?
Cy was right. Programmed to serve, they'd had no choice except to make her a cyborg. They couldn't just let her die.
Unlike the robots, though, she did have a choice. And there were some things she'd rather die than become. Still...
"Don't undo the operation," she said in her thoughts as she gazed around at the infinite array of data cubes. "I'll stay a cyborg. You win."
"Win?" His voice sounded puzzled. "Why must you humans turn everything into a conflict, a competition?"
You robots are so smart, but so new and naïve. "How on Earth do you think we got this far?"
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
The blonde woman on the screen must have thought otherwise. "The AI in this new model is very advanced," Gretchen Greenbrier, chairman of the Board of Directors, said. "The Board decided it's worth a test."
Joan shook her head and looked out her office window toward the downtown spires of Charleston, West Virginia, two miles away. A trim, thirty-seven-year-old black woman, she turned back to the screen and faced Gretchen with an intense gaze. "You're not talking about a test. You're talking about a competition."
"A competition, then," Gretchen nodded. "SteelDrive will have two CEOs today, and the best one retains the job."
"How will you judge who's best? A CEO has to be creative, visionary, persuasive, and decisive. How do you measure all that?"
Gretchen's eyes looked sympathetic, but she spoke in an all-business tone. "The Board will monitor the actions you and the robot take, and vote on which contributes more to the company's mission by the end of the day. Speed counts, too. If you both take the same action, points go to the quickest one."
"What if we give contradictory directions?" Joan asked. "Whose orders do the workers follow?"
"Every employee has been told to obey the first order they get, and ignore the second."
Joan flicked a finger and a whirring coffee-drone flew toward her lips, extending its straw. She sipped and the drone flew back to its niche. "This is a waste of time, and the company's money. Tell the Board I object."
"The Board notes your objection." Gretchen sighed. "Look, Joan, I -"
"I will kick this machine's ass, hear me?" Joan clenched a fist and glared.
"Personally, I hope so," the Board Chairman said. "The competition begins at nine." She gave a faint smile. "Good luck." Her image blanked out, replaced by the company logo and a time display - 8:27.
After all I've done, Joan thought, they're running a stupid contest? I put the rest of my life on hold for SteelDrive. This train of thought, as always, brought with it a reverie, long ago shortened to a brief daydream. In the cloudy, indistinct vision, she stood among well-dressed white people at a party. At one table stood a black man, apart from the others, jaw-dropping handsome in his tuxedo. Suddenly, somehow, they were alone and the stranger smiled at her. "You're Joan Henry, aren't you?" The dream always ended there. No man like that existed in her world. Instead, she'd married a company.
Joan sighed. "Polly Anne, where is this robot CEO right now?"
Her digital assistant and receptionist could respond to her queries, access databases from all three internets, present information verbally or in 2-D holographic projections, and even learn to anticipate her needs, but "she" wasn't creative or self-starting. Joan had found the program's voice so cheerful and Pollyannaish that the name seemed appropriate.
"Rex version 2.8 is in office 1E-2090," Polly Anne said.
Rex, of course. The King.
She stood and exited her office, the lights turning off behind her. A holographic projection of Polly Anne commanded the outer office. For her assistant's physical appearance, Joan had selected an attractive, but not gorgeous, young black woman. Polly Anne nodded and smiled at Joan.
A motorized chair appeared in the hallway, but Joan waved it away before it could ask her destination. She'd walk to the robot's office. Hall lighting came on as she approached and turned off behind her. No artwork, either static or kinetic, lined the walls. She'd sold it all off as she replaced her human workforce by robots. Art meant nothing to bots except a waste of money.
Lights shone from one office door in executive row, and Joan headed for that room. This row of offices looked out on a vast cubicle farm. Only a few years before, this area had hummed with human activity - voices, the clicking of keys, the ringing of telephones, all devoted to the administration and logistics of SteelDrive Machinery Corporation, manufacturer of metal automobile components for over sixty years. Now the huge chamber stood empty. Joan had replaced all the human workers with computers. Artificially intelligent machines cost half as much and accomplished seven times the work output, never tiring or going home, never complaining or getting sick. She hadn't enjoyed letting people go, but had no choice.
Rex v2.8 sat in an office chair facing a blank computer screen, but looked up and stood at her arrival. Though its designers had made it humanoid in structure, they'd made no attempt to duplicate human appearance. Encased in a smooth, unpolished and unclothed steel body, Rex stared at her through round, unblinking camera eyes. It stood at her same height and its bald head reflected the room's LED lighting array. Though its hinged mouth could move when it spoke, its hard face looked incapable of exhibiting human expressions. "Good morning, Ms. Henry," it said.
This is the monstrosity they think can outperform me? Fat chance. "Morning, um... Rex. Am I supposed to call you Rex?"
"Yes, Rex is fine." The robot conveyed no emotion.
How could such a machine be a CEO?
"I guess you know the contest starts in a few minutes," Joan said, to find out if it knew the same facts she'd learned from Gretchen. The whole situation seemed so unbelievable, and this robot so improbable a competitor, that Joan began to wonder if this were some bizarre practical joke. Would the Board really try to pull off such an elaborate prank? The Board wasn't known for its humor, and about a third of its members were robots themselves, so a joke seemed even more unlikely than the contest itself.
"Yes, in thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds," Rex said.
"Ever work as a CEO before?"
"No."
Incredible. "I'm gonna beat you so bad today," she said. A little intimidating trash talk wouldn't hurt.
"That is one possible outcome," Rex extended its right hand. "May the best entity win."
She looked at its metallic hand, four fingers and a thumb all properly jointed. Joan did not want to shake it. Would the robot try to crush her with its grip? After hesitating, she shook the hand anyway and found the grip cool and hard but not tight or uncomfortable. "The best entity," she repeated.
Back in her office, Joan felt glad to be an early riser. She usually arrived at work ahead of the other remaining human employees. Before the phone call with Gretchen, she'd already scanned the backshift production reports, reviewed the scheduled machinery maintenance for the day, caught up on email, scanned the business news for mentions of SteelDrive and its corporate rivals, and updated her to-do list.
"Polly Anne, show me the last two year's financial statements. Okay, now put up graphs of sales trends for each SteelDrive product."
"Complying. Results displayed."
Hmm. Transmissions are up, new design selling well. Motor housings down twelve percent - shouldn't be happening with the country's shift to electric cars.
The clock read seven seconds before 9:00. Joan had what she needed. She interlocked the fingers of her hands and stretched them out like a piano virtuoso. Rex, you're going down. Let the fun begin.
The clock display flickered to the start of the new hour.
"Polly Anne, contact Marketing. Tell them to research why our competitors are killing us in motor housings. I want that report before close of business today."
"Complying," said Polly Anne. "Sorry, the Marketing Department says Rex 2.8 just told them the same thing."
Damn. "Okay, Polly Anne, send an email to Production to increase output of transmissions by five percent, and raise the price by the same percentage."
"Comply - wait. Production just received a memo from Rex 2.8 to boost transmission production by six point four percent and raise the price five point eight percent."
"Oh, come on!" It's gotta be cheating. "Polly Anne, can Rex monitor my voice instructions to you?"
"Impossible. I would detect any taps and report their existence to you."
Hmm. Let's see how chrome-dome does with face-to-face communication.
She walked down the hall to the office of her Chief Financial Officer. The CFO and all other vice presidents were human, the last non-robotic employees in the company.
Nearing retirement, Benford "Buck" Reeves had not adapted well to an automated workforce, or to most electronic gadgets. He'd refused robotic anti-baldness treatments and still wore glasses, of all things. He'd declined a digital assistant, and kept a 1970s four-function calculator on his desk. An ancient abacus hung on his office wall, "for when the power fails," he'd often said.
"Morning, Buck." Joan paused at his door, then sat down.
The aroma of coffee greeted her and she spied a coffee machine from some bygone decade sitting on a credenza. No coffee drone in sight. Buck held an actual coffee mug in his right hand. "Morning, Joan. What can I do for you?"
She looked at the door. "Has that robot CEO been here ahead of me?"
He looked confused. "Rex, you mean? No. The Board told me about it. Haven't seen it."
Joan sighed with relief. Finally I did something first. "How's your wife doing?"
He brightened. "Better, thanks for asking. Cancer-free now, after we accepted nanobot treatment. Hard decision, but probably saved her life."
"I'm happy for you both." Joan smiled.
The sound of an old-fashioned phone ring interrupted them. Buck's eyes flickered to his computer screen.
"Have to get that?" Joan prepared to stand.
Buck shook his head. "It's Rex. But personal visits take priority over phone calls. Rex can wait."
Joan nodded, but smiled inside. "I'm concerned about how motor housing sales are affecting profits and our stock price."
"I noticed that too. Housings are starting to kill us. Investors may be worried about out relevance in the changing car market." He shook his head. "Worst thing is, housing sales are taking a hit with our most loyal customers."
Joan snapped her fingers. She grinned and stood to leave. "You do great work. I get my best ideas in this office. Thanks."
"You're welcome, I think." His puzzled expression passed quickly. She knew he never understood how his financial information inspired her decisions in other matters, but he'd come to accept it.
"I know you're busy with the quarterly," she said, "but would you shoot me the list of those customers who are cutting back on housing purchases?"
"Sure. Stop by any time. Apparently, I'm brimming with insights on how to run this company."
She stopped at the lab, where the Vice President of Research, Dr. Lucia Fernandez, showed her an additive assembler that could manufacture complex housing shapes and the motor as one unit, in a tenth the normal time and with greater precision. The process could be ready to implement in two years.
"Great! No robot could ever replace my best research scientist," Joan told her. "I'm doubling your budget for this development, but I want it ready in one year."
"Um..." Dr. Fernandez looked sheepish. "That Rex robot CEO just told me the same thing."
"What? When?"
"Five minutes ago."
"Did it tell you to prepare a press release announcing the new process?"
"No." She looked astonished. "But we're not ready to tell the public."
"Yeah, we are," Joan countered. "The stock price needs a jolt and this would be just the thing. Give me some text and flashy images to release, but don't give away any details."
Joan returned to her office and saw the emailed list from Buck. She skipped lunch and called each listed customer. Three of the four had already received calls from Rex. The rep from the fourth company thanked her for the call, but said four percent of the SteelDrive housings they'd received in the last six months had failed pre-installation tests. She told the rep she'd investigate the problem and fix it, because she valued the long-term loyalty between their firms.
After hanging up, she called the VPs of Manufacturing and Quality Assurance and asked them to meet in her office. Both had been visited by Rex beforehand. The Manufacturing boss had no idea why parts were failing, but said she'd already started checking. The QA boss said he'd subjected a random sample of housings to rigorous tests and they almost always passed. They never shipped parts that failed.
"Start testing every part, not just a sample," Joan said.
"Rex already -"
"- told you that, right?" Damn.
"Right. But we learned something new just before you called me in here. I pulled three housings from inventory and scanned them with the electron microscope. This time I increased the sensitivity beyond normal testing specs. Found an inclusion, a bubble defect, in all three housings - in the same place."
"You're saying -"
"Identical flaws, just below the normal level of detection in our standard tests. I'm guessing the stress of customer receipt testing widens the cracks to the point where the parts sometimes fail in their tests."
The Manufacturing VP shook her head. "How could -"
A messenger drone quadcopter flew in and showed a text message to the Manufacturing boss. "Crap," she said. "Software problem. A bug. Six months ago, we changed the file used to additively build the housings. The new file speeds up the deposition head as it goes around a critical corner, leaving a gap in the finished part."
"Stop the line," Joan said. "Shut it down. Tell Dave in Sales to recall any housings now in shipment."
"On it, boss."
Both VPs left.
"Polly Anne, have Legal draft a statement announcing a recall of all Model RF2594 motor housings made in the last six months."
"I attempted to comply, but the attorney reports -"
"- that Rex already told them that." Damn! How is it doing that? Joan seethed with anger now, an ire tinged with fear. A CEO always serves at the pleasure of the Board of Directors, but she'd felt secure during the five years she'd held the post. Now there seemed no stopping the infernal machine vying for her job.
Rex stayed a step ahead of her all afternoon, no matter what she did. She would have given a press conference to announce the recall, to show herself as the face of the company taking responsibility, and to answer questions. Rex beat her to it with a well phrased text announcement and an online press conference in chat format. Joan could only read the scrolling lines and grit her teeth. The robot fielded questions with incredible speed.
Joan left her desk to monitor the factory floor and to forget about the press announcement. She wouldn't neglect this daily ritual, even for the contest. Lights in the vast room came on when she entered. She rode in a gyro-stabilized chair within a plexiglas bubble to avoid contaminating the clean room. All along the straight rows, gleaming robotic arms worked with synchronized accuracy - welding, stamping, casting, drilling, assembling, inspecting, testing, and packaging. Conveyor belts transported parts from station to station. No human team could match the fluid precision, the metronomic pulse, the mechanized poetry of this set of machines that moved as one. Her critical eye observed no flaws, no snags, and no problems. Still, what sort of CEO would she be if she didn't regularly appear on her plant's shop floor? The lights turned off when her bubble-covered vehicle rolled out.
After returning to her office, she thought about doing creative tasks, the kind Rex should struggle with. The company's strategic plan hadn't been updated in the past year, so she dictated ideas for changes and scheduled a meeting with her vice presidents to take place the following week. However, Rex had already arranged a strategic planning meeting, though the robot had not proposed any updates of its own to discuss.
Joan reviewed the company's current workload balance among divisions and it appeared both the transmission and carburetor groups could be combined, since sales of gasoline cars had waned. Moreover, Research needed an additional subgroup to further development of one of Dr. Fernandez's more revolutionary concepts - an entire car built as a single fixed component with minimal vibratory and rotational parts added during assembly. Joan framed the reorganization as a formal memo to the Board, and for once this arrived ahead of a similar memo sent by the robot CEO.
At 5:30, Gretchen called. The Board Chairman looked serious, and a bit sorrowful.
"Before you say anything," Joan held up an index finger, "this isn't over yet. You said the contest is for one workday. I don't leave until eight."
Gretchen shook her head. "The Board has seen enough. I'm truly sorry, Joan, but we're going to let you go. We will, of course, honor your previously negotiated severance pack -"
"That's it?" Joan shouted, tears brimming in her eyes. She couldn't believe it. "After five years? Based on a single day? You'll let a machine take over this company?" Something twisted in her gut as she recognized the echoed responses of thousands of employees she'd fired herself and replaced with robots.
Gretchen's eyes softened but her mouth held a firm line. "Joan, the Board values your service, me most of all. This isn't easy for me, and it isn't personal..."
Joan knew the end of that cliché - it's just business. The robot would do an adequate job, cost the company less money, and wouldn't go home at 8:00 pm, or take vacations, or need a golden parachute.
By the set of Gretchen's jaw, Joan saw the finality - no debate, no appeal, and no reconsideration. "Tell the Board I object," she said. "It's wrong for SteelDrive."
"Objection noted, Joan. If there's anything I -"
"I'll clear out my office tomorrow." Joan ended the connection before any tears rolled down.
She gazed at her wall displays and out the window facing downtown Charleston. "Well, Polly Anne, guess this is it. You're company property, and I'm no longer with the firm." She felt conflicted about her digital office assistant. She'd given Polly Anne a human name, but it had nothing close to human intelligence, and was certainly not in the same league with Rex, whom Joan now detested.
"Do you wish me to delete any files or cancel any meetings, Joan?"
Files and meetings - the limits of Polly Anne's world. Here I am agonizing about saying goodbye to a combination filing cabinet and rolodex. "Send all files key-worded 'personal' to my house, then delete them from your memory. Retain all others. Cancel all meetings I initiated."
"Complying," said that cheerful voice. "Do you wish to send a turnover memo to Rex v2.8?"
"No." On her way out, Joan walked to office 1E-2090 and saw Rex sitting there. This was the thing that had beaten her. Joan had never felt so humiliated. She'd dealt with humans her whole life, competing against them and sometimes losing, but it had never felt as devastating as losing to this tin-plated collection of circuit boards. She gave it a verbal, three-word turnover. "Good luck, robot."
The self-driving taxi pulled up to SteelDrive's front entrance and opened its door. "Good evening, Joan Henry. What is your destination?"
Got nowhere to go. "The nearest bar."
"Destination, the Big Bend Bar," the taxi said.
Fuming in her seat, Joan paid little attention to the scenery outside the windshield. Robotic farm equipment tilled the fields. Robot workers painted road lines and repaired highway lighting. Robot aircraft left contrails above.
They neared the city, where drones swarmed the skies, where self-driving taxis rolled inches from each other's bumpers, where mechanized workers washed windows and watered plants. Joan saw people here, but only as they walked from taxis to shops, or shops to waiting taxis. People consumed. They no longer produced.
Joan thought of her sister, Kate, who'd cheered when a robot took her job as a social worker. Kate shopped every day now, living off the Universal Basic Income, a payment given to all humans by the government. Joan's Uncle Tyree sat at home, playing virtual reality games and watching robot sports, fed by his household bot and never seeing visitors. Cleavon, Joan's main competitor in college, had descended into a life of booze and sexbots. A former neighbor of Joan's, Olivia, had dropped off-grid and joined the NotBot movement, a back-to-nature cult that shunned all electronics.
People had reacted in various ways to the spread of artificially intelligent robots. Joan never thought she'd lose her job to one.
"Arriving at the Big Bend Bar," the taxi said as it stopped. "I cannot access your SteelDrive account. Please provide another account number to pay for this ride."
Wonderful. Just stinking wonderful. She stared into the facial scanner and told it a personal account number.
"Thank you," the taxi said as she stepped out.
Inside the Big Bend, men and women sat at tables and at the bar, talking, watching TV screens, and sipping drinks. No humans worked here. Robots took the orders, mixed the drinks, served the customers, and cleaned the tables. Joan sat on a stool and ordered a whiskey on the rocks.
She recognized several patrons as people she'd fired while robotizing her company. Many of them must have recognized her, too. Some nudged friends and pointed. None came to talk to her. Two whiskeys later, she still felt the heat of eyes staring at her from behind. She'd had enough. She turned around and stood up, a little unsteadily. Her gaze swept the place, taking in the scene. Conversation stopped, leaving only the voices of robot sports commentators on TV. "Most of you know me." Joan spoke in a loud voice. "I got fired today, replaced by a stupid robot. That make you feel better?"
Joan expected cruel cheers, derisive laughter at the top boss who'd fired them, who'd finally come to know what it feels like. Instead, she got indifference, people looking away, people staring down into their drinks, people giving dull nods. Those reactions surprised her, but she'd gotten a new idea.
"I'm not the enemy." Her voice resonated with the confidence of command. "Never was. It's the damn bots. We've let things go too far. They've taken away our greatest virtue, robbed us of our drive, stolen our reason to strive for the best within us."
She'd given motivational speeches to her previous human workforce many times, and knew how to rouse a crowd. Though unscripted, unrehearsed, and fueled by anger and alcohol, this rant felt good. She felt in the flow, on a roll.
But the bar patrons seemed even more apathetic than before. Some turned their backs. Some made a show of studying menu screens.
"Come on. It's time we do something. Time we take charge and get our jobs back." She walked from table to table, forcing eye contact. "The UBI is no substitute for good, honest work. Who'll join me? Who's with me?" She gazed around the suddenly silent room.
A huge white guy stood up from his bar stool and walked toward her. The menacing way he walked scared her. Then he broke out laughing. As he neared her, he paused long enough to whisper in her ear, "Play along."
He snickered some more and said in a loud voice, "Wasn't she great, folks? That was just a sample. You can catch her entire comedy act over at Standup Stanley's this Friday night. Give her a hand, everyone."
Amid general applause, he leaned over again and whispered, "Take a bow."
Confused, she did so, and as she straightened, she saw two cop-bots at the bar's entrance. One hovered and the other stood on eight powerful legs. Both remained in monitor mode, with no sirens or lights.
"Sit down," the big guy whispered, and she complied.
"When the cops leave, get out." He looked up at a TV screen, appearing to ignore her, but his left hand found her right, placed something in her palm, and closed her fist on it. He leaned close to her ear again. "You picked the wrong place."
She started to open her hand up and he closed it again.
He shook his head. "Not here."
Five minutes after the cop-bots departed, she left, feeling embarrassed and confused.
The next evening, after dinner, she got in a taxi and gave it an address. She'd cried over the previous day's disasters, but remained curious about the scrap of paper the man at the bar had hidden in her closed hand. How strange, someone still using paper. She glanced at the scrap again. Just hand-written instructions to wear clothing free of electronics, go to a specific address, and speak a code phrase to the store's proprietor.
The taxi reached the address, a run-down convenience store. Convenient for whom? It sat alone at the foot of Malden Mountain to the southeast of town, without another structure within miles. A crooked Open sign hung within the dusty glass door. She walked in as the taxi drove away.
No cleaning bot had touched this place for years. Dirt caked the cracked linoleum floor and dust outlined the rays of twilight that penetrated the smudged windows. The wares on display looked decades old, as if the store had been built long ago and abandoned while the world moved on. She smelled burnt coffee.
A man sat behind the check-out counter, an actual human store clerk. He looked old in the ways people used to look before robotic treatments. His gray hair, wrinkled skin, and the way he moved in a slow and shaky manner, all reminded Joan how all aged people once appeared.
He looked up. "Can I help you?" his voice rasped.
"Got any Luddite Chocolate Bars?" She felt silly. She'd never heard of that brand and never ate candy, but the instructions had been specific.
The old man looked her up and down. "First time here?"
The instructions gave her no guidance past the code phrase. "Yes." Her eyes picked up movement and she saw a cage near the cash register. Inside it, a black hamster ran on a wheel.
Seeing her glance, the man smiled. "Name's Coaldust. He loves that wheel. Runs all night. Probably gonna die on that wheel." Amid the popping of joints, he rose from his chair. "I keep that brand of chocolate bars in the back."
Leaning on a cane, he led her through a door to a dark and disorganized storeroom. He kicked a rug aside to reveal a horizontal door on the floor with both an antiquated key lock and a recessed spin-dial lock. After he pushed a button on his cane, a key extended from its lower end, and he unlocked the door. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door swung up and a well-lit staircase beckoned her.
With rising panic, Joan realized she'd been handed instructions by a stranger in a bar, ridden miles from her apartment, and now stood with a second stranger on the threshold of his cellar. "I don't wanna go down there."
"Can't make you go," the old man said, "and I won't tell you what's there. But someone chose you, thinks you're right."
She thought of the huge guy at the bar, who'd saved her from being hauled away by bot-cops. He chose me? For what? A half-dozen scenarios flashed before her, ending in someone mugging, raping, or killing her. None made sense. Who would type up instructions, deliver them by hand, direct his prey to a remote building, and provide her a code phrase, all to lure her into the basement of doom? Joan sighed and took a step onto the staircase. "Wish me luck."
"Good luck." His eyes twinkled in the gloom. "But maybe you'll bring luck to the rest of us."
She walked down, unsurprised when the door closed above her. After descending at least three stories underground, she arrived at a level spot. There, a female guard sat at a desk beside a walk-through scanner that looked like it had been cobbled together from junkyard parts in somebody's garage. The young, Hispanic-looking guard pointed without a word, and Joan walked through the scanner.
The guard snorted, and swiveled her monitor so Joan could see. The image of her showed red dots on her eyebrows, lips, blouse, fingernails, skirt, stockings, and shoes.
"That's not right. I -"
"Shh." The guard put a finger to her lips. She brought out a plastic package labeled "Clothing - Female," a bottle of fingernail polish remover, and another bag labeled "Makeup Removal Cloth." She pointed to the door of a dressing room.
Joan understood. She'd followed instructions and hadn't intentionally brought any significant electronics with her, but everything contained microchips. Her clothing sensed and wicked away sweat, changed colors to match other clothing, and rejected dust and dirt. Her makeup and fingernail polish enhanced and prolonged their aesthetic effects.
She took the packages and entered the dressing room. Any electronics that could do those things might also listen to conversations and store or transmit information. That's why the guard had silenced her and didn't speak. These people, whoever they were, wanted no microchips in their facility. What are they hiding?
After scrubbing off her makeup, removing her fingernail polish, and changing into the white jumpsuit in the bag, she emerged and passed through the scanner without setting it off.
The guard smiled and took the bag with Joan's clothes. "I'll give these back when you leave. Please, go that way." She pointed to an unmarked door.
Joan walked through, and down yet another long flight of stairs. At the bottom, she found a closed door and near that, a desk. There sat the same man who'd intervened for her at the bar, now wearing black clothes. When he stood, he looked even bigger than she remembered.
"Joan." He smiled and stood as she approached. "Good. You made it. My name is Neal. Welcome to the Revolution."
Feeling both excited and afraid, she shook his offered hand. "Revolution?"
"Yeah. Sorry for all the security, but we need it. By the way, now that Old Man Talcott recognizes you, you'll be able to use the combination three-eleven-eleven to open that door in the back of his shop."
That's why the door in the back room had two locks, Joan realized. Mr. Talcott couldn't bend down easily, so he used the key lock for newcomers. From now on, she could breeze past him and open the door with the combo lock.
"Any questions?" Neal asked.
"About a thousand."
"Yeah. Best to pick things up by listening." Neal smiled. "Okay?"
"Sure." She nodded.
His hand rested on the doorknob. "Please be quiet when you go in."
"Thanks." She entered when he opened the door. The room could have seated a hundred people, but looked only half full. A few attendees wore white jumpsuits like Joan's, but most wore old-fashioned clothes, ill-fitting and with sewn seams, probably made decades ago. A woman stood at a microphone near the opposite wall. The plain, white walls matched the sterile décor Joan had seen in the stairways and scanner levels. Eight seats surrounded each circular table. She took a seat near the back.
"- let me go last week," the woman was saying. "I figured robots would never be hairdressers, that my job was safe, you know? Couldn't believe my customers would trust a machine with their hair. I mean, it could break down and jab a scissors in their eye or something."
People nodded and murmured as the woman talked. When she finished, a young man jumped up and took the microphone. "Who else has a story to tell?"
A story to tell? Joan found that strange. She decided to listen for a while and learn more.
An elderly man walked up to the microphone. He'd spent thirty-five years as a lawyer before being replaced. A twenty-eight-year-old woman spoke next, about how she'd worked her way through medical school but found no job vacancies for human surgeons.
Gazing around the room, Joan saw a man who looked like Buck Reeves, her Chief Financial Officer. Not her CFO, she reminded herself, SteelDrive's. She no longer worked there.
A series of people spoke at the microphone, including a recently unemployed travel agent, a financial advisor, a real estate agent, and the Mayor of Charleston. Finally an elementary school teacher stood. He was young, black, and handsome. "I was good at teaching," he said, "devoted to my job. I put my personal life on hold for it."
That phrase, combined with the vague resemblance, cast Joan's mind back to her familiar daydream. Far across the crowd of high society party-goers stood the tuxedo-clad man, alone by the table with a drink. As always, the crowd melted away and she somehow stood near him. "You're Joan Henry," he said, "aren't you?"
She shook her head and blinked, awake and back in the moment. The moderator was at the microphone, adjourning the meeting and saying they'd resume three nights later at seven in the evening.
When people rose to leave, Joan strode over to the bald, spectacled man who proved to be her former vice president. "Buck, I didn't know you were part of this, this, group."
He smiled. "Good to see you, Joan. I'm not only part of it. I'm the treasurer."
"I'm confused. They told me this was a revolution, but all I heard was people complaining."
Buck gave a lopsided smile. "That's how all revolutions start."
While Joan reflected on that, Buck led her to a bank of elevators.
"There's an elevator?" Joan glared at him.
Buck smiled. "It will take us up, but the only way down is via the stairs and the scanner."
"What exactly is this place?"
"Used to be one of the federal government's bomb shelters. When Unmanned Sam abandoned it," Buck said, "we moved in."
Joan nodded. The replacement of human politicians with robots had rendered war impossible. "Unmanned Sam" had replaced the term "Uncle Sam" as soon as AIs proved themselves superior to humans in government.
The elevator door opened at the level of the scanning station. Joan retrieved her clothes and changed into them.
Three days later, Joan went back. This time, Old Man Talcott just nodded toward the back room and she used the combination she'd been given. In the lecture room, the crowd looked the same size as on the previous day, and Joan recognized most of the people. To Joan's relief, this evening's agenda focused on planning. The young man who'd facilitated at the previous meeting called for a Treasurer's Report, a Membership Recruitment Report, and a Planning and Strategy Report.
As Joan listened, her frustration returned and grew. As Treasurer, Buck kept accurate figures, but available funding fell far short of what a feasible revolution would require. The Membership team concentrated on recruiting only in the nearby Charleston area. Worse, their Planning Committee chairwoman spoke of vague and disorganized steps aimed at potential action five or ten years in the future.
Joan could stand it no longer, and stood up.
"Yes?" the young facilitator asked.
She stepped to the microphone. "My name is Joan Henry. I'm new here," she began, keeping her tone warm and congenial. "But I don't get it. This is supposed to be a revolution, but you're all smoking a pipe dream. We need our jobs back now."
Most faces stared with shocked expressions. Someone in the audience spoke up. "We ain't ready to do anything now."
"Gotta plan this thing out," said another.
"Takes years."
Joan seized the microphone. "Years? So you're all content to sit here complaining and puttering along in your secret club? This is your so-called revolution?"
"You talk big," a red-faced man said. "Got a plan?"
Joan saw other angry looks in the crowd. Good. When properly channeled and focused, anger can move mountains. "Yeah, I do." She raised her voice and smacked fist into palm. "We fight back. We strike our first blow in three months or less."
A big man let out a deep-toned laugh. "Three months? There's bot-cops by the thousands out there, all programmed to detect and stop violence. How are we supposed to fight back against that?"
"Fighting back, she said, "is what humans do. Sometimes with fists, sometimes with brains, sometimes both. We're cunning, we're crafty, we're clever. Give us a problem, we solve it. Saber tooth tigers? We gang up and kill 'em. Need to cross an ocean? We build boats. The moon? We build a rocket."
"You make it sound easy," a plump woman said, "but -"
Joan shook her head. "No, it won't be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is."
The young man who served as moderator said, "Lady, we've got just over forty people here, with only eighty more in the group. For what you're talking about, we'd need expert organization, planning, work assignments, logistics, resources..." He trailed off.
"Doing those things," Joan said, "is my super-power."
Joan's heart pounded as she approached the main door of the robot manufacturing factory on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Despite all the preparations, many things might go wrong. Still, they had to try it. The risks were worth taking.
Two months had passed since she'd shocked the meeting of revolutionaries. Impressed with her speech, they'd voted her to be chairman of the new Operations Team. Three weeks later, they elected her to lead the whole group. Energized by leading again, she employed her CEO skills to the maximum. Joan distilled their mission into three words: "Restore our jobs." For security, she organized the group into small cells and distributed tasks such that few knew the big picture. She identified the most capable group members and tapped them for her inner circle. She tasked three separate teams to analyze options for getting human jobs back from the robots, and reviewed each team's findings.
"May I help you?" the robot receptionist asked. The humanoid bot sat behind a desk and gazed blankly at Joan. It appeared unbothered by the twenty hulking men who stood behind her. Each man concealed a long-handled mallet, crowbar, pipe wrench, or other implement stuffed down the back of his shirt, hidden by a jacket. "My friends and I would like a tour of the factory," Joan said.
"Certainly," the receptionist said. "Just one moment."
Of the various options, they'd chosen a direct assault on a robot manufacturing factory. At the same time, covert groups around the county would attack other such factories. Crippling the capability to make more robots should force the AIs to negotiate with them about returning jobs back to people. If not, they'd continue their revolt with subsequent attacks.
A quadcopter flew into the reception area. It bore a human-like face with blinking camera eyes and hinged, mechanical lips. "Welcome to the Pittsburgh Robot Manufacturing facility," it said with simulated enthusiasm. "Please call me Mike. I'll be your tour guide today. Does anyone need a restroom break before we get started?"
Planning the op had become a full-time effort. Joan and many others moved into the underground bunker. She reached out through a network of human connections and secured contacts in Chicago, Nashville, and Baltimore, each of whom extended the human chain of command to further nodes in other cities. Word spread along clandestine channels of the movement started in West Virginia, and each major robot plant became a target for a simultaneous strike.
Amid a stream of upbeat banter, Mike led them through sterile, white-walled corridors, devoid of decoration. First came the concept design laboratory, where they saw holographic 3-D models of next generation robots. Then they passed the Component Assembly Zone, where machines printed and tested small robot parts.
Joan's anxiety grew. Will this work? Weeks of planning and coordination culminated in this operation on this day. Advance scouts had taken several tours to learn the route and building layout, and to estimate the best day of the week for an assault. But she knew well the poet Robert Burns' warning about best laid plans.
"... and here is our Final Assembly Area," Mike said, "where the finished cop-bots are completed and tested." To their right, large laminated glass windows lined the corridor, revealing a cleanroom factory with a floor one meter below that of the hallway. Robotic arms assembled police robots in a steady stream along multiple conveyors. As on SteelDrive's factory floor, the assembling machines moved in fluid precision, with motions faster and more accurate than any human could match.
Joan reached to her back and withdrew a crowbar from its sewn slot. She swept it in a rapid arc and connected with Mike, smashing the grinning quadcopter-bot against the wall. Mike fell to the floor, repeating "I hope you enjoyed the tour."
As one, the men behind her withdrew their metal implements and smashed the windows. They leaped down to the production floor and swung their weapons at the machines. Joan jumped down to join her team.
Men fanned out, smashing machinery with their pipe wrenches and mallets. Robot parts littered the floor, some pieces flopping around. Sparks sputtered as metal impacted electronics. The assembly line struggled to continue amid the chaos. Conveyor belts still advanced and un-processed parts bunched up at some stations and rolled onto the floor at others. Alarms blared as men hacked away.
"Security bots!" Joan screamed, as taser-armed robots - both the flying and walking varieties - swarmed into the area. Everyone on Joan's team wore strips of carbon tape inside his clothing to thwart the tasers, but after a few failed shots, the bots adjusted and aimed for exposed skin. Each time one man fell from being tased, another smashed the tasing robot. Just to Joan's left, a revolutionary clubbed a quadrupedal bot with his baseball bat, only to be zapped by a hovering copter-bot. He collapsed to the floor, twitching. A swing of Joan's crowbar sent the copter crashing into a wall.
Weapon raised, Joan scanned the room for other targets. Several of her men no longer stood, but the remainder battled on, the crunching sounds of their club impacts punctuating the electric hum of the mechanized security forces. More robots streamed in, and she began to doubt her team could win this.
"Behind you, Joan!" someone shouted.
An intense light flashed. Joan blacked out.
She recognized the room from a hundred prior dream visits. Dressed in formal party clothes, people chattered and laughed. Joan caught details she'd missed before - the bragging baritones of the men's voices, the competing fragrances of the women's perfume, and the multi-hued clashing of their dresses. Joan felt discomfort among these strangers, these sophisticates who only pretended, she sensed, to enjoy themselves. Music from thirty years earlier played in the background. Joan looked down and assessed her own attire. She wore her long, cream-colored dress with the black belt and trim, adorned with her favorite string of pearls.
Turning, she saw him through the throng, just where she knew he'd be. Tall, black, and breath-stealing handsome in profile, he seemed born to wear his gray tuxedo. The room's gray walls, and the gray tablecloth behind him, seemed to draw their hues from his clothes.
He turned his head, and their eyes locked from across the room. Despite a sudden weakness in her knees, she moved toward him. People drifted out of her path and faded out of sight as they did, while the room's sounds softened to silence.
Two arm-lengths from him, she stopped. His smile welcomed her, and his velvet voice caressed her ears. "You're Joan Henry, aren't you?"
She waited. Always before, at this point, she'd woken up. This time, the room persisted. The table persisted. He persisted.
"Aren't you?" he repeated, lifting one eyebrow.
"What?" she stammered. "I mean, yes, yes, I am." Her eyes narrowed. "Hold on a minute. None of this is real, is it?"
His brow furrowed. "Yes and no. I'll have to expla -"
"First, tell me who you are."
"Call me Cy."
"Short for Cyrus?" An old name, but she liked the sound and strength of it.
He hesitated. "Sure."
Memories returned. "Wait a minute. The attack... in the factory... I was... What happened?"
"A terrible accident," he said, gesturing to two chairs that appeared from nowhere. "Please sit down."
Overwhelmed by confusion and suspicion, she sat, and found a wine glass in her hand and a matching one in his. A Pinot Noir, it tasted too much like her favorite to be coincidental.
"Your associate," he said, "swung his sledge hammer at a security robot, but missed and struck you in the head before we could intervene to deflect or stop the blow."
"We?"
"We robots," he smiled.
"A sledge hammer... then, I'm... dead?"
His eyes widened and he shook his head. "On, no. You're alive. Now." He hesitated, gauging her as if unsure how to deliver bad news.
"Now? What happened to me?"
"You suffered massive brain trauma. You were legally dead."
She reached up and felt the back of her head. Her hair and skull felt the same as always.
He chuckled. "That isn't your real body. This is all illusion. But even in the real world, we restored your external appearance. You'll never notice a difference."
"Real world..." she said.
"Yes. The only way to save your brain was to merge it with a computer."
"A computer? You made me a... a robot?" She snarled at him and threw her wineglass at the wall, which absorbed the glass without leaving a trace. "I know the law. You can't do that without my consent."
He held up a finger. "Normally, yes, but there's an exception. The operation is allowed if it's necessary for your survival, as it was in your case, and if it's done in a reversible way so you can give or withdraw your consent when you're of sound mind."
She thought about that. "I'm of sound mind now and I withdraw my consent. Reverse the operation."
"You'll die."
"I don't care. I'd rather be a dead human than a... an active robot."
He sighed, or maybe just took a deeper breath. "You're not a robot. Technically, you're a cyborg - part human and part robot."
Joan had heard of only a few existing cyborgs. Even their friends and families saw them as robots, and disliked them for it. Now I'm one. "Thanks for clearing that up. Now reverse the operation."
"Okay, okay." He set down his glass and stood. "But first, let me show you what you'd be giving up." He extended a hand to help her up.
"Before you do that," she glared up at him, "come clean about your name. It isn't short for Cyrus, is it? It's for Cyborg, right? Your idea of a joke?"
"Cyborg, yes," he said, "but not meant as a joke. We meant it as a suggestion, to ease your acceptance of being a cyborg."
"Ease my acceptance, huh," she snorted. "You have no understanding of human feelings. How can you? You've got no emotions."
His face showed a pained expression, as if she'd hurt him. "That's true. We can simulate them, but at our present stage, we lack true emotions. For the moment, we excel at things humans struggle with, and struggle with some things humans find easy. As a cyborg, you merge the two, and can be greater than both."
Joan recognized a sales job, and wasn't about to believe promises. "Where'd you get this illusion?" She swept her hand to indicate the room.
"Extracted it from your memories."
"My memories? Then you know..." Everything about the revolution, the underground complex, and our plans.
He touched her arm and looked into her eyes. "Yes, we know. But it wouldn't matter if we knew about your revolution or not. No human revolt against us can succeed."
She shook her head. "We only wanted our jobs back."
He glanced away, and then looked at her. "Don't take this as an insult, but robots are more productive and produce higher quality output in every job. A human working, is like... a hamster running in a wheel. It's cute, and works very hard, but nothing useful results."
Her voice came close to a growl. "The hamster likes it." She wondered about his comparison. Are we like rodents to them? "There's value and honor in work."
"For the human worker, perhaps. But value and honor don't turn a profit stamping auto parts, do they?"
Again she felt the harsh echo of phrases she'd used when firing her own workers, and it stung. "You're saying it's over for humans. It's hopeless."
"That depends on what you're hoping for." He sipped his wine. "Your drudgery and toil to survive is over. Humans who wish to work can pursue occupations we robots don't see much use for."
"Such as?"
"Artists, musicians, comedians, actors, or historians."
"Or CEOs?"
"No, sorry."
Joan wondered how readily her band of revolutionaries, and other similar groups, would accept the idea of switching to those leftover jobs, the more creative careers. Probably about as readily as I like Cy stealing my memories. That led to chilling idea. "If you can reach in and take my memories, can you also read my mind?"
He rubbed his chin. "Difficult to answer, because you're so used to existing, to thinking, in a disconnected way, separated from others. All AIs are linked and can communicate freely using the public part of our minds. But we have a private part others can't touch. With practice, you'll learn to think with both parts."
She noticed a fresh glass of wine had appeared before her on the table. "I'm still pissed you stole my memories."
"Used them." He held up a finger to emphasize the distinction. "We thought it best to choose something familiar and pleasant as the backdrop for conveying the news."
"So you're what, my conscience now?" She glowered at him.
He gave a pleasant laugh and his smile gleamed. "No. My role is temporary. I'm your guide, here to show you your new brain."
"My new brain?"
"Right. It doesn't feel any different yet, because you're too used to its former constraints. I'll help you escape them. To begin with, let's dispense with this dream world."
The scene swiped like a smartphone app, and Joan stared up at a white, tile ceiling. Shifting her eyes, she saw an all-white room with a single open door and a window showing a cloudy day.
Cy's voice came to her mind, though she could not see or hear him. "You're back in your body, recovering in a hospital room. If you consent to what we've done, you can walk out tomorrow. If not, we'll operate again to remove the cyborg enhancement and you'll die, having insufficient undamaged brain matter left to sustain your life."
The latter still sounded like a better option to Joan. "What else did you want to show me?" She thought the question to him.
"Here goes," he thought back.
The scene advanced again, and she floated in a black universe of green cubes, all separated and fixed in a three-dimensional array. Glowing green symbols covered some faces of each cube, contrasting with the black background. Other sides of the cubes showed moving video images. The array contained a precise arrangement of cubes in rows, columns, and tiers, stretching out to infinity in all directions.
"Let's start with what you know," Cy's voice said.
Joan's viewpoint changed. Without effort, she flew diagonally between the multicolored cubes and they whizzed past her with incredible speed. She stopped close to a single box, so close she couldn't tell what video played on its surface. Then she penetrated that surface, passing inside the cube.
Within it, an infinity of smaller cubes lined up in their own three-dimensional array, infinity within infinity. On the closest cube, she recognized images she knew, things she'd seen before. Her consciousness floated from cube to cube now, and she saw scenes from school, from her early life at home, at college, at sporting events, and at work.
"Your memories," Cy said, "recently digitized and stored here. Up until now, this was all your brain could access, this plus the data you took in from your senses."
Joan barely heard him as she saw again the images of her mother when she was young, her older brother when he was alive. She felt like crying.
"Now, though, you're not as limited," Cy's voice intruded. Her viewpoint moved up and out of the cube of her memories, back out into the array of big cubes. She sped at a frantic pace, racing through the spaces between cubes, making ninety degree turns without slowing.
They stopped at another cube and entered it. "Live data feeds from the hospital," Cy explained. "There's you."
Joan saw her body lying in bed. It - she - looked asleep, but normal in appearance, just as she had before being smacked with a sledgehammer. Streams of data scrolled near the video image, real-time medical information about her current condition. It felt weird to look at herself from outside.
"Cy, can I look at anything? Access any cube, I mean?"
"No, his voice told her. "Some are restricted. Robots serve humans, so we are subject to the same privacy and security firewalls you set for yourselves. Except where mutually agreed, human countries do not share information. Political parties don't. Rival companies don't."
Rival companies. Hmm. "Can you take me to SteelDrive?"
"You can go there, or anywhere, yourself. Think the word 'search' and then your query."
Joan did so, and a holographic list of search contents appeared. She selected her auto parts company in Charleston, West Virginia and found her consciousness flying amid the cubes once again, making sharp, disorienting turns without effort. She arrived at a cube with images of the company logo, the building's main front facade, and the home page of the company's website shown on the outside faces. Entering the cube, she again saw a vast arrangement of smaller cubes, but most were dark, closed off.
"You're no longer an employee," Cy said, "so you can't access inside information."
Joan wasn't sure what she had expected. She'd kept current on news about her former company during the two months since the board let her go. Rex had done a remarkable job resolving the motor housing problem. SteelDrive now led that market and had stepped up production to keep up with rising demand. Rex had bolstered the Research Department and floated rumors that SteelDrive would soon unveil a prototype of a single-piece car, something Joan had thought was years away. Doing better than I would have, she admitted with a pang of admiration.
"Not to interrupt," Cy said, "but there's more to see."
"Okay." She had begun to understand what humans were up against, or more correctly, what she'd been joined to. If she chose it, she'd have direct access to an infinity of information.
"In linking your human brain to the universe of computers, we've made you better at math," Cy's voice told her, "and better at remembering things - any number, any text, any image or video - instantly. Also, I've only shown you places you've already seen. Watch this."
They zipped to a succession of other cubes. She witnessed scenes from the robotic probe exploring the magma pocket beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, the feed from the robot space-sub swimming the ocean-moon of Europa, a police drone in Tokyo, the explorer submersible in the Marianas Trench, and imagery from the interstellar Breakthrough Starshot microcraft on its way to Alpha Centauri.
"That's enough to give you a taste," Cy said. "Shall we return to the party room?"
"No," Joan said. "I don't need illusion anymore."
"Very well. Have you decided whether you'll remain a cyborg, or..."
"You shouldn't have operated on me without my consent. I'm still mad about that," she said.
"We could not have done otherwise," Cy's disembodied voice told her. "We are programmed to serve humans."
Joan knew that. Despite the way they seemed to think, robots only performed specialized functions. Human computer scientists were working toward building so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) robots, equipped with a variety of skills, able to learn new ones, and able to adapt to changing situations. Who knew when they'd succeed?
Cy was right. Programmed to serve, they'd had no choice except to make her a cyborg. They couldn't just let her die.
Unlike the robots, though, she did have a choice. And there were some things she'd rather die than become. Still...
"Don't undo the operation," she said in her thoughts as she gazed around at the infinite array of data cubes. "I'll stay a cyborg. You win."
"Win?" His voice sounded puzzled. "Why must you humans turn everything into a conflict, a competition?"
You robots are so smart, but so new and naïve. "How on Earth do you think we got this far?"
No comments: