Fiction
Science Fiction
The Colossea Mining Co.’s space station hadn’t changed much since I’d left, twenty years before. A little more worn, but serviceable—miners generally knew how to keep their equipment running. I half-jogged, backpack over one shoulder, portfolio cube in the other hand, down the busy corridors, mentally redesigning the interior. The hallway ceilings should be lower to make the open areas feel more expansive. Entryways should line up to draw people farther into the offices and shops.
Two levels down and halfway around the main ring, I took a deep breath and walked through the doors to the headquarters of Under and Young, Ltd., the sector’s premier orbital station construction firm. After grad school, I’d spent years taking work where I could find it—mostly designing renovation proposals for luxury yacht owners, most of whom never followed through. Finally I had the chance to do what I was trained to do. I might be young to handle an entire station design, but I was very determined, and if I could just get their attention, I was sure they could find a job for me.
A real wood-veneer desk curved against the wall facing the door. A receptionist-bot, configured as an attractive brunette, greeted me with an appropriately blank smile.
“Welcome to Under and Young,” it said. “How may I serve you today?”
It was just a standard service droid. So why was I already sweating?
“I have an appointment with Mr. Young.”
“Name, please?”
“Uh, Maria Anton.”
The droid frowned at mid-space for a little longer than normally required to wirelessly validate a meeting. Finally it returned to a preprogrammed expression.
“I’m sorry to say that Mr. Young has had to cancel your appointment. His staff sent you notice three standard days ago.”
The sweat instantly chilled on my skin. The scent of rotten lemons emanated from my jump suit. “I was in FTL three days ago,” I said. “When I came into the system, I had no message from him.”
Great. Now I sounded like I was accusing the president of the sector’s largest contracting firm of lying. Or worse—inefficiency.
The blank stare cleared more quickly this time. “I’m sorry to say the message was sent package-courier directly to your residence. If you would be so kind as to wait in the lobby, I will schedule you a meeting with one of our partners.”
I took a seat as far from the overloud vid screen as the small reception area would allow. The minutes crawled by while my imagination ran unchecked. Perhaps they’d already chosen my plan and meant to send me directly to the construction site. Or, more likely, some local politician had tied up the permits, and they needed the board’s approval before the build. Then again, they could be waiting to compare it with different submissions. Acceptance of government funding would require a full competition. I wracked my head for ways to cut costs, methods to make the station more modular so it could be built in stages. I could adapt. No problem.
By the time the far-too-young-to-be-a-partner rushed into the room, mispronouncing my name, I had just about redrawn the plans in my mind. He hustled me into a small, windowless office and closed the door.
“Uh, Miss Anton?” He walked around to sit at the modest desk. He didn’t ask me to sit. Or show the plans. “It looks like our communications got crossed. We sent notification three days ago that the meeting would be canceled. I’m afraid Mr. Young will not be able to see you.”
I swallowed hard. For some reason, I wasn’t nervous anymore.
“Mr—uh?”
“Just call me Phillip.”
“Phillip. Yes, your receptionist did mention the communication. I understand it was sent package-courier to my residence?”
“I’m not privy to that information—”
“What I’m wondering is how, exactly, I am supposed to receive communication of a meeting that has been canceled when the message was sent to my planet of residence, and I am on a spaceship in FTL?” I took a long blink. No need to kill the messenger. And I did hope to work with the firm. “Never mind. I was commissioned directly by Mr. Young to submit a proposal for the station at Kyoto Seven. He asked me to come here.”
“That is unfortunate,” Phillip said in a way that made me think he didn’t know anything about it and didn’t care. “The contract for Kyoto Seven has already been awarded. Construction began a week ago.”
My diaphragm convulsed. My breaths came out shallow and choppy. “Already awarded?”
“Yes, to an up-and-coming architect, Bernard Croix. We’re really quite excited to work with him. He has some innovative ideas that should revolutionize space construction.” He stood and guided me by my elbow to the door. “So sorry for the inconvenience. If you ask at reception, we’ll be more than happy to give you a package of future developments. Perhaps you could submit a design for another project.”
The door closed behind me, Phillip safely on the other side.
I numbly took the package from the receptionist-bot and turned to go. Then realized I didn’t have any place to go.
The receptionist-bot greeted me as pleasantly as if I hadn’t approached her an hour before.
“Excuse me, I know this sounds odd. I was requested to be here by Mr. Young. I paid my fare with my life savings. The next shuttle leaves…” I dug out the form my backpack. “The next shuttle leaves in three days. I do have a return ticket, but I was under the impression that Under and Young provided lodging for their employees and contractors.”
“That is correct, miss,” the droid cheerfully answered.
“So…” This droid must not have been programmed with any kind of anticipation algorithm. Although the ability to play dumb was equally useful in a human receptionist. “I have nowhere to stay for the next three days. Would it be possible for me to stay in a company studio? Just until my flight?”
The ’bot needed no time to find the answer. “I’m sorry. Company rooms are available only to the employees and contractors of Under and Young.”
“Yes, I realize that. What I’m saying is that I came here under the assurance that I would be a contractor for Under and Young.”
“But you are not, miss.”
“No…but Mr. Young told me I would be.” Only a little stretch of the truth.
“I have no record of Mr. Young contracting the services of a Miss Anton.”
Somehow that sounded skankier than it should.
“Could you please call the young man who recently interviewed me?”
“What is his name or employee identification code, miss?”
“Uh, his name is Phillip.”
“Surname?”
My stomach hardened. “I don’t know.”
“Employee identification code?”
“I don’t know. He was just here ten minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry, miss. I need a full name or employee identification code to page an employee.”
“How many Phillips do you have working here? On station? Today?”
“I’m sorry, miss. That information is restricted for security reasons.”
“Okay. Just let me go get him. I know where his office is. Let me just run, really quick, and talk to him.”
“Do you have an appointment, miss?” it asked, all artificial smiles.
I felt my shoulders droop, my lungs deflate. “May I please have the location of the station hostel?”
The droid sat straighter, if it was possible. “Information kiosks are located on levels six and fifty-seven near the elevator banks. Have a nice day.”
The station hostel booked first-come, first-serve, eight-hour maximum. I was too wired to sleep, and I didn’t want to waste my bunk time tossing and turning, so I wandered aimlessly around the station, trying to make sense of it all.
I’d met Mr. Young at the Inter-Stellar, Quadrant Eight Technical Symposium. He’d been a judge for Construction/Micro-Grav Division. I was a finalist for the Young Architect of the Year—in which I placed third—and the Interior Renovation, Class Y7 Transport—which I won. Why had the old man (despite his name, Mr. Young was well into his twelfth decade) called me out here? Why encourage me to take months away from paying work to develop a plan he didn’t even want to see? I’d known chances were slim I’d win the contract, or, if selected, the final station would even vaguely resemble my initial proposal. But my design was good. I’d fully expected to be hired on as an in-house architect. And he’d seemed so sincere.
I was standing at an exterior window, staring at the gas giant below, when I heard the cackle. Brash, harsh, out of place, and strangely familiar. I turned toward it to see a woman, my age, pink hair brushed up into a bee hive, sucking on a smokeless cigarette.
“Mattie?” I asked before I could think better.
She dropped her hand, stared at me with wide brown eyes crowned in blue eye shadow, and let loose a string of expletives ending in, “Maria, what are you doing here?”
Between her running account of the impossibility of meeting me and the periodic, bone-crushing hugs, I never managed to answer her question. By the time she’d left to go back to work ten minutes later, I’d caught an invitation to meet her at the Rock Hound Pub in four hours and very little else.
Mattie Rafter. I hadn’t seen her in two decades, at least. Not since my family moved from the Colossea mining colony shortly before I entered high school. I continued wandering the corridors, but with a lighter step. Maybe the trip wouldn’t be such a waste after all. And maybe Mattie had a spare couch I could crash on. The next three days started to look more like vacation than disaster.
A sequence of random turns brought me to a wide hallway, reconfigured as an art gallery. Neo-stellar photos lined the wall. Three-dimensional representations of nebulae and solar systems floated above the floor at eye level. In the center, a hologram of a space station cycled through construction stages. First the frame grew, strut by strut, like time-elapsed video of an expanding sponge. Then the power plant. The shell started in several different points, as if the frame had developed a skin disease that spread all together. It remained translucent so the interior construction showed through. Ice covered the hull and the image cleared to start again.
While the marketer in me appreciated the graphics, the architect scoffed at the design. Rigid scaffolding hadn’t been used in ten years. Nano-molec supports gave facility managers infinitely more flexibility when reconfiguring space. And, while war ships still used ice-covered hulls to protect against laser weaponry, the shear mass of the stuff would make the station unmaneuverable. The whole thing looked like a historical hobbyist had designed it.
So, you can imagine my utter delight when I looked down at the plaque to read “Future Design for Kyoto Seven, Bernard Croix, Under and Young, Ltd.”
Somehow, I managed to be half a station away when it was time to meet Mattie. I took an express to the Rock Hound and rushed in, ready to apologize.
Not that I needed to. She held court in a reserved nook, half-filled with people. She waved from across the room and continued her conversation with a man I didn’t know. But, as I looked around, I recognized many of the other faces. Gwen, whom I’d known since we were four, was talking to Zach, giggling violently every time he said anything. Griff stood guard over the beer pitchers. Yasmin, daughter of an old, former family friend, sat at a table with a young boy.
I took advantage of the noise and chaos to collect myself. I’d seen Griff shortly after college, but the others had been lost to me with the move when I was fourteen. Waves of memories flooded through the room. Cutting class with Gwen. Late nights singing to the pod-players with Yasmin while our mothers drank cocktails downstairs. My first kiss with Griff.
Yasmin introduced me to her son. Zach continued his strange habit of never actually looking at anyone while making sarcastic remarks that sent Gwen into hysterics. Griff gave me condolences for my grandmother’s death four years before. Mattie stayed at the back of the room, always keeping a table between her and the rest of the crowd. Her sharp cackle punctuated the loud din as she made counter-remarks to Zach or reminded Gwen about someone who wasn’t there.
After about two hours, the conversations around me dissolved into unintelligible chatter. The people in the room drew into tighter focus. Griff’s morose depression. Zach’s desperate need for validation. Mattie’s grasping at attention. It occurred to me that the entire time I’d been there, no one had asked me anything beyond where I was currently living.
I excused myself, claiming fatigue. Mattie thanked me for coming and told me to keep in touch. She sounded more worried that her party was shrinking than anything else. Gwen’s goodbyes seemed more heartfelt, if equally vague.
I found a dark corner at the bar and asked the bar-bot for a coffee. It returned with a thermal mug and an array of flavorings.
“Reunion?” it asked.
“Impromptu,” I said.
“What brings you to the station?”
I looked at it for the first time. Its vaguely humanoid shell combined a hodge-podge of components from the last hundred years. Crassion-era optic sensors mixed with what appeared to be an authentic Iridium chestplate. The epaulets on its shoulders could barely hold the number of algor-patches it’d accumulated. In the center of the left one was the ribbon for counseling—practical skill for a bar keeper.
Still, I didn’t think I was so far gone as to have to confide in a robot.
“Business,” I said, squirting a shot of cinnamon into my coffee.
“What do you do?”
Nosy little bugger.
“I’m an architect.”
I could have sworn I saw it roll its optic sensors.
“Oh. You should have designed the new Kyoto Seven. The plan they chose is…unfortunate.”
I honestly didn’t know whether to be puzzled that it “cared,” gratified that it expected my work to be better, or puzzled that I felt gratified.
It picked up a glass and wiped it with a cloth. “What have you designed?”
What would a mech droid on the far end of nowhere have heard of? “I redesigned the interior of the Marshal of Ceti Upton’s personal shuttle. That’s probably the biggest thing.”
His eyes whirled. “That won an award. Well-deserved. Your friends must be impressed.”
I smiled grimly. “Honestly, they don’t know. They didn’t ask. Not what I’m doing, not what I did for the last twenty years, not what I’m doing here.”
He set down the glass and polished the bar top. “Perhaps they do not wish to know.”
“There’s a cheerful thought.”
“I have seen these people before. Most are asteroid miners. They come from the outposts to meet here for a holiday.”
I looked around the dark, dingy bar. “This station is a vacation spot?”
“Perhaps they do not wish to know everything you have seen and accomplished beyond this small system.”
“I was born here. I mean, I left when I was a kid, but I always think of myself as a rock-hound’s daughter.”
His amber eyes caught mine. “But you are now a FTL-traveling architect. And they are rock-hounds.”
“How do you know so much about humans?” I asked.
“I have been around them for a very long time. Have I helped in any way?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
It rolled down the bar to fill another order, leaving me with my thoughts.
Mattie’s party broke up and made its way out the exits. A couple of the nearer tables flinched at the noise. No one noticed me, sitting alone, on the other side of the dark room. Griff brought the pitchers back to the bar.
“I thought you left,” he said.
“Too noisy.”
He smirked. “Mattie hasn’t changed much.”
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m alright. Zach and I are going in on a project. There’s a well full of methane in the southern hemisphere that hasn’t been touched.”
The droid wheeled over to us. “Would you like something, sir?”
I squeezed Griff’s arm. “Wanna get some coffee? Catch up?”
He backed up, rubbing his hands on his coveralls. “I gotta go. Reservations at the hostel. I’ll see you around.”
He followed the crowd out into the corridor. Mattie’s shrill cackle scolded him for keeping her waiting.
To get reservations at the hostel, they all must be staying there. Maybe I could crash in a back booth in the pub. I sure didn’t want to follow a bunch of people who apparently had no use for me. I asked for my tab, and the bar-bot took the payment.
He handed me a receipt. “Can I serve you in any other way?”
“Yeah.” I snorted. “Got a spare bed?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I lease standard crew quarters and have no need for the furnishings there. Would it assist you to make use of my accommodations?”
I waved him off. “I was kidding. I’m not going to take your bed. I’ll just go…somewhere.”
His shoulders dropped a micrometer. “If my furnishings would be of use to you, it would distress me if you did not make use of them.”
With no idea why I was afraid of hurting the feelings of a droid, I followed him to his quarters. The dark room appeared neat and small. A never-used single bed hugged one wall. Shelves lined the other three, jutting out into a tabletop across from the bed.
“The plumbing facilities are down the hall,” he said. “Most of the inhabitants in this wing are droid. You should be able to bathe undisturbed.”
He turned on the light, and I gasped.
It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why a droid would fill his room with bookcases. Or what he would fill them with. I guess I figured they’d just been standard furnishings. But each shelf held a tastefully arranged display of clockwork miniatures. I stared at the figures, my nose inches from the tiny gears, and my hands clasped behind my back. A rosebud, petals made of what looked like burnished titanium. A tiny spaceship on a circular wire looped around a model of the station. A puppy, his gears and linkages proudly displayed, looking for all the world as if he were about to run around the shelf.
“These are exquisite,” I said, moving on to a robot, sitting on a log, holding a fishing pole.
“My hobby pleases you?” he asked.
My face heated as I realized I’d never asked his name.
“Forgive me, I should have asked this earlier. What are you called?”
“Charles-Edouard.”
I shook his metal hand. “These sculptures are beautiful.” Sensing I hadn’t exactly answered his question, I added, “They please me very much.”
His eyes seemed to glow brighter. “Would you like to see them work?”
He touched the rose with his finger. The bloom closed into a perfect bud, then opened again. If not for the color, I would have expected a petal to fall off. The spaceship orbited the station, which rotated in the opposite direction. The puppy crouched his front quarters while wagging his hind end, chased his tail for three turns, and repeated.
“I guess even robots need a break every now and then,” I mused, noting that while the tip of the fishing pole gently dipped up and down, the robot holding it never moved.
We talked for the next several hours, he explaining each figure, me absorbing his craftsmanship. The more delight I expressed, the more he talked. Almost as if he fed off of my approval.
I slept well to the hum of Charles-Edouard’s cooling fan. Occasionally, I heard little scrapes or pings, but they soon retreated into the background noise of my dreams. When I awoke, he was nowhere to be seen. But on the table sat a new creation.
From across the room, through sleepy eyes, it looked like a warped version of the Eiffel Tower—all A-frame and little spire. Upon closer inspection, the tower focused into drafting dividers balanced on two pin-point feet. I turned it over in my hands, searching for the mechanism’s key. The knob on top moved. I twisted it and set it back on its feet.
A pin lifted. The spindle turned, drawing the arm in. And the dividers began to dance. It spun on one point, then the other, continually drawing the arms in and out. I laughed as I realized it looked somewhat like disembodied ballerina legs, but the beautiful balance of the thing overwhelmed any macabre similarities.
“Does it please you?” Charles-Edouard asked as he came in through the door.
“It’s wonderful,” I said.
“I made it for you.”
Something in his voice made the gift impossible to refuse, even if I’d wanted to.
“Thank you, Charles-Edouard. It’s just amazing.”
He set down a tray filled with eggs, bacon, a bagel, an apple, two pancakes, and a bowl of oatmeal. “I didn’t know what you liked,” he said.
“Well, considering I haven’t eaten in about eighteen hours, it all looks good.” I saved the bagel and apple for later, and didn’t get through the oatmeal, but made good work of the rest.
“What would you like to do today?” he asked as I wiped the last of the syrup off my chin.
“You don’t have to babysit me,” I said. “I appreciate all you’ve done. Don’t you have to go to work?”
“No,” he said. “I am not obligated to be anywhere. Your interests are in architecture? We could discuss architecture.”
I laughed. “Seriously? You really want to talk about structural stresses and lines of sight?”
“What are lines of sight in relation to architecture?” he asked.
That was all it took to get me going. We started with Jacobson, Silverstein, and Windlow’s ten essentials, went on to Alexander, et al’s, pattern language, and threw in Susanka’s “Not So Big Spaceship” for emphasis.
Lunchtime had come and gone unnoticed. I munched on my bagel and let Charles-Edouard get a word in edgewise.
“This is very educational,” he said. “I have knowledge of Le Corbusier’s Le Modulor. I can use it to scale a space to make a normal-sized human comfortable. But while I can design an object to be useful, I cannot make it beautiful.”
I swallowed too early, choking in my eagerness to refute him. “But I’ve seen it. The rose is a perfect representation of the Fibonacci sequence. Even the dividers follow the Golden Ratio.”
He shook his head. “That is math. These patterns will help me please people with my design work.”
I caught at his words. “Do you practice architecture?”
“I am an amateur,” he said. “I submitted a design for the Kyoto Seven.”
“You’re not…”
“I am not Bernard Croix. Mr. Croix is Mr. Under’s nephew.”
“Ohhh,” I said. “I see.”
With that revelation, we spent the afternoon comparing each other’s plans. When we called it a night, he had suggested several efficiency improvements to my design and accumulated a list of aesthetic modifications for his own.
I couldn’t help but wonder how my life had come to this. Somewhere in the station a group of childhood friends gathered together, reminiscing, talking, laughing. I left messages, letting them know I was still on-station. You’d think they’d at least be glad I was here after twenty years. But the day ended, and I heard no reply.
I slipped into bed. Charles plugged himself into the socket by the desk and turned off the lights.
Lucky that droids didn’t have to worry about the dynamics of human interaction. Although the way he always asked if I was pleased was a little odd. Droids were programmed to be efficient, hard-working, and obedient. Inviting a stranger into their personal space and bowing to their every whim was a bit over the top.
At least, it had been for the last eighty years.
“Charles?” I asked the soft glow on the other side of the room.
“Yes, Miss Anton?”
“How old are you?”
He took a moment to answer. “My parts range in age from four-hundred-sixty years to one month old.”
I could well believe it, considering the artfully eclectic look of him. But that didn’t answer my real question.
“When was your processor manufactured?”
“Ninety-six years ago.”
I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the next question.
“Where was it manufactured?”
His fan whirred.
“Ceti Eleven.”
“Charles, are you an emotibot?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“I’m so sorry.”
“This displeases you?” he asked.
I sat up in bed, realizing what I’d done. “Oh, no! Of course not. Actually, I’m delighted to meet you. I didn’t realize there were any emotibots left. I just feel bad for you.”
“Emotibots displease you for their own sake?” He sounded more puzzled than sad.
“Well, I mean, it must be very difficult. I mean, isn’t your entire operating system based on the verbal affirmation of your action by humans?”
“Yes, that is accurate.”
“How did you get here?” I asked, more to myself.
“When I was newly released,” he said, “I stood with my brothers in a great warehouse. Buyers divided us up into lots and distributed us to different systems. I arrived at Schell and Son’s Droid Emporium. I was purchased by the Gravy Train Mining Company as a supply specialist. I retrieved orders and stocked shelves. I had human contact once every three years during maintenance. I accumulated enough credits to buy my freedom and left in search of humans that I could serve. An elderly human woman hired me, but provided no approval except when I gave her my money. She left me at her farm when she took a ship out of the system.”
My thoughts went back to the last couple of days. “Humans can be kind of random with their approval.” I slid back into bed.
The hum of his cooling fan accelerated a notch.
“Through a series of contacts, I found my way to the Station, intending to earn enough credits to go somewhere else, find someone who needed me. I work odd jobs. Sometimes I am paid, but people tend to be most pleased when they don’t have to recompense me.”
“You’re programmed to be used,” I said quietly.
“It is my nature.”
I drifted off to sleep, wondering what it was like to live for others’ approval.
I woke up with a plan and instantly put it to work. A few minutes at a comm-café revealed the name I needed. A dozen messages back and forth, and almost all my spare credits later, I discovered the unbelievable news that he was actually just two stations away. The next step was the diciest, morally. But it was for a good cause. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I had Charles-Edouard meet me at the shuttle ticket counter. He rolled in, a varied array of panels and protuberances perched on a rubber-coated track. I already had my bag packed with all my belongings and the clockwork dividers he’d given me. I looked him in his amber eyes and said the cringe-inducing magic words.
“Charles-Edouard, it would please me if you would buy two tickets and come with me to Henderson Platform.”
His eyes glowed. I tried to keep a neutral face.
“Yes, Miss Anton. It would be my pleasure.”
I clamped down on my disgust and followed him onto the shuttle. Three hours later, we landed on the gas-mining platform.
“What would you like to do next?” he asked.
I pulled up the station directory. “We need to go to Section 3, Ring J, Suite Gamma.”
He paid for the tram ride. Before I had formulated any kind of a plan, we were standing before a shut door.
“Would you like to enter?” Charles-Edouard asked.
“Yes—”
I raised my hand to knock. He broke the door in.
“Well, that’s one way,” I said, stepping over the mess and entering the luxurious hotel suite.
“What have you done?” An elderly, rather large man burst in from another room. His face was so red that I checked his ears for steam. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
Charles-Edouard picked up the door. “Please forgive me. Have my actions displeased you?” He propped it against the opening. It slid down again. He picked it up and leaned it against the door jam. The leaf flipped around and landed with a crash on the hallway floor.
“Stop, stop,” the old man said, rushing to Charles-Edouard’s side and putting his hand on the droid’s arm. “It’s fine. Just leave it. There’s a good man.”
“I am sorry—”
“No need, no need.” The man stepped back. “Let me take a look at you. You are magnificent.”
While that particular word hadn’t come to my mind in relation to Charles-Edouard, I could see how he would think so. Still…
Time to make introductions and reveal my plan. “Charles, this is Dr. Muriel. He designed your operating system.”
The droid seemed dumbfounded. The doctor took him in.
“Oh, look at you. I don’t suppose your cowling could have survived all those years. You have done admirably in repairing yourself. Do I recognize a touch of the Fibonacci in your design?”
I looked closer at Charles’s panels and additions. He had followed the Golden Ratio, even in his own repairs.
“These proportions seem to please humans,” Charles said.
“And so, of course, you adopted them for yourself. How clever you are.”
Charles straightened his shoulders.
It made me sick.
“Flattery’s all well and good, doctor,” I said, marching up to the pair. “But what about Charles? He can’t make any decision for himself. He’s programmed to let people use him. He grovels for the few scraps of approval thrown his way. Meanwhile, he designs these beautiful creations, but never has the opportunity to show them off.”
I took the dividers out of my bag, wound them up, and set them on the bar. The little A-frame legs danced across the marble top.
The doctor put his chin just over the bar and watched intently. “You made this?”
“Does it please you?” Charles asked. A panel opened under his right arm. He reached into his chest, pulled out a four-inch long spiky rod, and set it on the bar. He touched it with his finger, and the rod inch-wormed across the surface.
The doctor had tears in his eyes. “Marvelous. Just marvelous.”
“Kind of like meeting your grandchild for the first time?” I asked.
He wiped his eyes and nodded. “Indeed.”
“What about Charles?” The edge in my voice surprised me.
“Of course,” he said. He took Charles by the arm and led him to the seating area. He pressed down on his shoulders until the droid squatted low over his tracks.
“Do you know who I am?” the doctor asked.
“You are the programmer,” Charles said.
“Yes. I am the programmer. Now listen very closely. Good job. You have done a very good job. I am very pleased with you, Charles. I am delighted with everything you are.”
The hum of the ventilation fan increased threefold. Charles’s eyes shone so brightly the yellow looked white. But he made no move otherwise.
Dr. Muriel patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll just let him mull that over for a bit. Would you like something to drink?”
Over surprisingly good, handmade lattés, I finally had the chance to ask what was going on.
“Why did you bring him here?” Dr. Muriel leaned back on the couch, a whipped-cream mustache covering his lip.
“You made him. I didn’t like how he was programmed to let everyone use him. I figured you could reprogram him.”
“In a way, I suppose I did.”
I put my cup on the table. “But why did you make him like that in the first place?”
He waved his hand. “Hubris? Ignorance? The operating systems for previous generations of service droids were simply logic and obedience. They took in all the data from the universe and all the commands around them and promptly froze with indecision. When faced with too many variables, they reached a kind of mental dead point. My algorithm brought into consideration what people really wanted and needed. And used programmed ‘desire to please’ as a way of pushing through that dead point.”
He cradled his mug in his hands. “My native culture highly values words of encouragement, whether a child wins an award or a robot brings your slippers. I was young. I didn’t realize others could…”
“Be self-absorbed?” I offered. “Ungrateful? Rude?”
He shrugged. “Take such things for granted.”
“What happened with the other emotibots?”
“Most just wore out over the years. A few froze with lack of input. I haven’t seen a working specimen in, oh, thirty-five years now. How did this marvelous fellow survive?”
“By giving away his money,” I said. “What did you do to him? Will he be alright? Did you shut him down?”
“Oh, nothing like that. I simply gave him what he needed—the approval of his maker. The validation, not of his work, but of himself. His soul, if you like. Inadvertent glitch in the programming. Something we figured out long after the units had shipped.”
He shook his head, smiling tight-lipped. “Poor chap. An existential Schrodinger’s Cat. Never knowing if he is worthy or not, viable or not, until he can be observed and declared so by an outside observer.”
Dr. Muriel rose from the couch to study the inchworm and the dividers, which had skittered off the bar top and now danced and crawled across the floor. “Just delightful,” he murmured.
I stared at Charles-Edouard. Would the approval of his maker be enough? Did the declaration of his worthiness make it so to him? Did the old man’s observations of the droid give him worth? Or did the creator really recognize some internal, intrinsic spark?
He’d seemed very sincere in his approval of Charles-Edouard. Pride of creation aside, he really valued Charles as an entity.
And if the manufactured thing had intrinsic value, how much more the human maker? Poor Mattie and Zach, loud and obnoxious, trying to get attention. Had I really made them doubt themselves just by the virtue of having to move away? Getting a different chance in life? As rock-hounds, they felt they had nothing to give to a space-traveling architect. They didn’t realize I needed approval just for me.
But we must, all of us, have that spark inside. A kind of holy Schrodinger’s Cat. And, if we have it, it must have been placed there intentionally, delighted in. And no self-conscious group of friends or self-absorbed industry giant could take it away. From any of us.
Charles’s fan quieted. He rose to his full height.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He tilted his head. “Content.”
I rubbed my sweating palms together. “I was wondering, if you wanted to—I could sure use your mechanical skills when it comes to efficiency. I think with your head for numbers and my emphasis on design, we could create a successful architecture firm.”
“Would that please you, Miss Anton?”
My stomach dropped. “Well, sure, but not unless it pleased you, as well.”
He took a moment, then nodded his head. “Yes. I think that would please me.”
For a moment, I imagined his fan sounded like a purring cat.
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Copyright 2010, Kersley Fitzgerald. All rights reserved. Kersley Fitzgerald has an unused degree in mechanical engineering and a four-year stint writing performance reports and awards packages in the U.S. Air Force--which covers both science and fiction. She lives in Colorado Springs with her husband, 8-year old son, and The World's Most Neurotic Dog (TM). She was co-featured in the November 2009 edition of Digital Dragon (http://www.digitaldragonmagazine.net/fitzgeraldshowingofsustenance.php) and the January 2010 edition of The Cross and the Cosmos (http://www.crossandcosmos.com/issue.pdf). She also contributes to the writing blog, The Friday Challenge (http://thefridaychallenge.blogspot.com/)--a semi-regular column called Critical Thinking and a cartoon for writers on Saturdays called Fitz of Distraction. For more information, see her site (http://sites.google.com/site/kersleyfitzgerald/) or email her at kersley.fitz at yahoo dot com.
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