couch without perceptible strain. The sandwich was soft, sure, but the plate upon which it rested was hard; even if I had known what was coming, it’s still likely that I would have been knocked out my chair.
I sprawled across the tile floor, more surprised than injured, with grape jelly drooling down into my right eye and peanut butter plastering my hair against my face, the plate rattling against the table. Towering above me was Samson, six feet of cobalt-blue robot, his right hand placidly returning to his side.
“Jerry!” Donna screamed. “Are you…?”
“Samson, shut down!” Keith bellowed. “Samson, code S…!”
“No, Samson!” I yelled. “Code B-for-Break!”
“Code B understood.” Samson double-beeped and became motionless, yet his chest diodes remained lit.
Good. He had obeyed the orders of the person closest to him. Had he shut down, as Keith’s Code S instruction would have made him do, there was a chance that the abrupt loss of electrical current might have erased the last few moments from his memory buffer. Code B, on the other hand, simply returned him to standby mode.
I sat up quickly, glanced toward the window. “It’s okay, I’m all right,” I said. “I’m unhurt. Just stay where you are.”
Even as I spoke, though, I heard the door open behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Keith just outside the room. The last thing I wanted was for him to barge in and start throwing questions at Samson, so I waved him off. He hesitated, then he reluctantly shut the door, leaving me alone with the robot.
I let out my breath, then I clambered to my feet, walked over to the sink, and wetted some paper towels. There was a small bruise on my cheek, but I didn’t find any blood mixed in with the peanut butter and jelly; the shirt, though, would need a trip to the dry cleaner. Cleaning up gave me a chance to calm down a little; when I returned to the table and picked up the chair, I was ready to talk to Samson once more.
“Samson, come back online, please,” I said as I sat down, and the ’bot gave me a single beep. “Do you remember what you were doing before…uh, just before I gave you the Code B?”
“Yes, I do, Jerry. I gave you the sandwich you asked me to fix for you.”
So far, so good. His new usage of the word “fix” indicated that his short-term memory wasn’t impaired. The rest, though… “Samson, you didn’t give me the sandwich. You hit me in the face with it. Do you remember doing that?”
“Yes, I do, David.”
“Why did you do that? Hit me in the face with the sandwich, I mean?”
“It seemed to be the right thing to do.”
I expected to hear something from the booth; when I didn’t, I touched my ear with my right hand, found my earpiece missing. Sometime during the last few minutes, it had become dislodged, probably while I was washing my face at the sink. But I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation to go searching for it, so I let it pass.
“That was the wrong thing to do, Samson,” I said. “You could have hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, Jerry. Please forgive me.”
Again, it may seem strange for a robot to ask a human for forgiveness, but this was another aspect of Samson’s conditioning. For him, begging forgiveness was an acknowledgement that he understood he had made an error and a tacit statement that he would never do it again. And indeed, he never would, not in a thousand reiterations of the same sequence. Unlike humans, robots don’t make the same mistake twice.
Yet getting nailed again with a PB&J was the least of my concerns. “I’ll forgive you if you tell me why it seemed like it seemed like the right thing to do.”
Silence. I had posed the question the wrong way. “Samson, why did you think hitting me in the face with the sandwich was the right thing to do?”
“Because you’re I want to do the right things for you, Jerry.”
Great. Now we were stuck in a logic loop. Yet this was the second time today he had struck someone else—either another robot or a human—with an object he was supposed to give to them. For such an occurrence to happen twice in such short succession couldn’t be a coincidence. Time to try a different tack… “If you want to do the right things for me, Samson, then how do you feel about me?”
“I love you, Jerry.”
Wha-a-a-t?
Even if he sounded like Elizabeth Taylor rather than Robert Redford, that response couldn’t have shocked me more. Samson was programmed to learn the identities of his human operators and accept them with platonic, selfless affection. Agape, if you want to use the seldom-used term for such a condition (and, no, it’s not pronounced ah-gape, like the way you may stare at something, but as ah-gaw-pey). Since Samson had become operational, I had spent well over a hundred hours with him in this room, patiently instructing him how to make the bed, wash dishes, vacuum the floor, program the TV, fetch me a soda, answer the front door and greet guests, play various board games, and feed the cat. If I were to ask Samson how he felt about me, he should have replied, “I like you, Jerry. You’re my friend.”
Love was not supposed to be in the algorithms. I was pretty damn sure he didn’t know what he was saying. But what was it that he meant to say…?
Once more, I heard the door open. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Donna urgently gesturing to me. I wanted to continue this train of thought, yet since I didn’t know exactly what to say next, perhaps now was a good time to grab a Coke. “I like you, too, Samson,” I said as I stood up. “Let’s take a break. Code B.”
“Code B understood,” Samson said, and there was another double-beep as he went off-line again. If I didn’t return in ten minutes to rescind the order, he would automatically come back online again, then seek out the nearest wall-socket and plug himself in for a recharge. Until then, he was an inert hunk of machinery.
Right. An inert hunk of machinery who had just proclaimed his love for me.
I found Phil in the observation booth, bent over one of the monitors as he studied the video replay of the session. He didn’t look at me as I came in, but moused the slidebar on the bottom of the screen to review my interview with Samson. Keith was seated in his chair on the other side of him; he glanced in my direction, then quickly looked away. I noticed the cordless phone near his left elbow; that explained how Phil had gotten down here so quickly. Keith, you prick; you’re always ready to crack jokes behind the boss’s back, but whenever you get a chance to suck up to him…
“Why didn’t you let Keith shut down Samson?” Phil asked quietly, still gazing at the screen. At least he wasn’t stammering this time.
“I wanted to make sure we didn’t lose anything from Samson’s memory.” I stepped aside to let Donna slide past me, but she remained behind me, standing in the open door of the darkened booth. “This was the second time today Samson has attacked someone, and I wanted to find out why.”
Phil shook his head. “Sorry, Jerry, but that’s an unacceptable risk. If there’s something critically wrong with his conditioning protocols, we can’t let him stay active after an accident.” He turned to Keith. “Download everything from his buffer and give them to me, then erase his memory of this test.”
