that it was minutely imaged under a set of gridlines. “Show me specifically how his mouth should be positioned.”
“There’s no one way it should be positioned, Kelly. Human behaviors aren’t that precise.”
Kelly shook her head, clicking into a folder on her own computer to display tile after tile of saved files compiled from her own research and the focus groups and surveys that AHI’s marketing team had done. “This is my research so far on microexpressions alone. Human behaviors are totally precise.” She knew that her own instinct to apply a mathematical, logical viewpoint to everything in life was one of the things that made her so good at this job. It was essential to the physical building of a robot, to giving it hard skills, like teaching Zed how to walk, and it was why she had always chosen to stay more in the mechanical and electrical engineering lane at work, focusing on building the “body” of the robot, so to speak. Confibot was the first project she had led—the first time she was also in charge of the “brain.” Her concrete, analytical way of thinking had always worked before. Just because she was grappling with something far more conceptual didn’t mean she was about to change her methods now.
Confibot was also the highest-stakes project in her career thus far. Anita Riveras, AHI’s CEO, had tasked each of the engineers in her Consumer Products division with inventing a caregiver or assistant robot—one of the market’s hottest niches. In three months, their inventions would all be pitted against each other for investor funding. Kelly had decided to create the most believably humanoid robot of the bunch, capable of the most nuanced social interactions, based on the astounding body of research she had uncovered about the health and lifestyle benefits of companionship. If she could get Confibot just right, she knew she stood a real chance at winning this.
“There are very specific, scientific ways that people react to different gestures, expressions, tones of voice,” Kelly continued now.
“Well, how would you respond?” the doctor asked. “Think about what you would want in a robot who’s taking care of you and living with you. You shouldn’t discount your own instincts here.”
“Instincts may be your business,” she insisted. “Data is mine. The science has to be there to back up every choice I make.”
“Then I’m providing you my insights as data. I’m a trained psychologist,” Dr. Masden pressed. “I’m here to give professional guidance.”
“But that’s not good enough! I mean, not that your insights aren’t good,” she said quickly, turning to the doctor, hating the way she could feel her cheeks instinctively flush as she did. Frankly, the fact that AHI had brought in the hottest psychologist in Santa Clara County to assist her on the project was just rude. She had enough on her plate between working on Confibot and worrying about having to admit to her mom how the date with Martin had gone. Not to mention now needing to find another date on her own. For Kelly, social interactions with any element of uncertainty were a source of stress more than excitement. She was a woman who wondered what she had done wrong when the cashier didn’t wish her a good day.
She needed to get started on building Confibot’s physical model, but first she had to get past this task of designing his face and voice and mannerisms so she would know what to build. She needed to focus on facts, not Dr. Masden’s “insights.”
“The way that Confibot interacts with users has to be perfect,” she asserted. “There are already other caregiver and companion robots out there on the market. If we’re not the best, we might as well not be out there at all! And the only way Confibot’s going to be the best is if he’s the most realistically human.”
“Kelly, to replicate a human, you have to understand humans.”
“I do! Why do you think I took six semesters of biology in college? I understand how the human body works, how animal bodies work. I know how to translate those structures into mechanical form.”
“I’m not talking about the body.” The psychologist looked away for a second, pursing his lips as if searching for his next words. “Designing a personality is a nebulous thing, Kelly. You’re never going to get anywhere if you’re so tied down to the data. I’m only trying to say that you might want to approach this in a different way.” He put a palliating hand on Kelly’s arm. Instinctively, she jerked away and crossed her arms. Dr. Masden looked taken aback as he abruptly withdrew his hand. It seemed he hadn’t even realized he had put it there in the first place. “Sorry, I—”
“I won’t be approaching it that way!” Kelly declared. As soon as she heard how weird that sounded, she tried to laugh, but the sound came out as more of a tubercular bleat. Dr. Masden’s eyes were increasingly confused and also very deep and black and olive-shaped—
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable just now, I wasn’t even thinking. I never want our work environment to be less than professional,” he said.
Kelly stiffly crossed her legs below her crossed arms, walling herself behind a defensive pretzel of limbs. Great, she thought, let’s do the one thing that will make the situation more awkward and talk about it. It would be so much simpler if everyone could just do what she did and suppress their emotions, stuffing them in the back of the closet, right next to the childhood traumas and the performing-in-your-third-grade-play-naked-and-then-all-your-teeth-fall-out dreams.
“I’m not comfortable. I mean uncomfortable.”
“It’s just that you seemed a little uncomfortable when I put my hand on your arm, just now,” he continued. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just express myself physically. I’m a very expressive person, but I realize it’s unfair to make assumptions about your communication style since we’ve only been working on this simulation together for a week.”
“Well, I’ve been working on it for months before you got here!” Kelly exclaimed. The anxieties simmering in her had been lit to a boil. She felt the tug of that same old instinct to flee the scene, yet this was her project—she couldn’t. She was trapped. But maybe it was time she blew up the room instead of trying to tunnel out. After all, she reminded herself, she’d been quite content back when she began developing the Confibot simulation all on her own. Then this guy had to come and get his big—not big, average, definitely average—hands all over her. That is, all over the project. Insinuating that she didn’t understand people. So much of why she had gone into engineering in the first place was because it didn’t ask her to try to make sense of people, who, let’s face it, were often nonsensical anyway. This was her safe space, and he had breached it. But it didn’t matter; she didn’t need him. Sure, he was responsible for providing all the psychological bases for the interactions they were architecting, but that was soft science. Kelly, red cheeks and all, stared the doctor down.
Dr. Masden scraped back in his own chair. “I wasn’t aware that you felt that way.”
“I guess you weren’t paying attention,” she replied.
But now Dr. Masden didn’t look confused. He looked insulted. “I’m a psychologist. Not to flatter myself, but I pay pretty close attention to people’s behavior.”
“Then stop! You’re here to help develop the simulation, not analyze me. Which you’re doing a pretty poor job of anyway.”
“You think so? All right, then, here you go. Normally I charge hundreds an hour for this, but you’re about to get it for free.” Kelly tried to hold her crimson face high as the doctor leveled his searching gaze on her.
“You’re a control freak.”
“Is
