The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer
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and fifty pounds. Still, we couldn’t have a robot who shook the floor every time he walked by.
Samson stopped in front of the kitchen counter. In earlier tests of his cooking repertoire, we had laid everything out he needed in plain sight. This time, though, the counter was clean. Two days earlier, we had stocked the kitchen, then spent the better part of the afternoon showing him what everything was and where it was stored. If his conditioning module had properly tutored him, he should figure it out with no problem.
And sure enough, Samson reached up to the cupboard above the counter and, ever so gently, pulled out a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. He carefully placed them on the counter, then turned to the refrigerator, opened it, and accurately selected the grape jelly from the nearly identical jars of mayo and mustard placed next to them. Sometime later we’d put two different flavors of jelly in the fridge, but right now his artificial vision was doing well to recognize and read printed labels.
Samson located a butter-knife in the utensil drawer, laid it on the counter next to the jars of jelly and peanut butter. He had no problem opening the bread loaf—although it had taken him several hours to learn the trick of loosening twist-ties without ripping open the wrapper—but I held my breath as he picked up the peanut butter. Before I led Samson into the room, Keith had deliberately tightened its lid as firmly as possible, then bet me ten bucks that Samson couldn’t open it without breaking the jar. But this time Samson clasped the rubberized fingertips of his left hand around the lid and, while holding the jar steady in his right hand, gradually exerted pressure until he unscrewed the lid.
“Very good, Samson,” I said. “You’re doing well.” I glanced at the window and rubbed my thumb and fingers together. Donna chuckled as Keith muttered an obscenity, and now I had beer money for tonight.
“Thank you, Jerry.” Although the cyclopean red eye in the center of Samson’s forehead didn’t turn my way, I knew that he could see me nonetheless. Although the eye contained two parallax lenses, Samson’s bullet-shaped head contained a variety of motion and heat detectors which continually updated my location in the room. We had already tested their capability by putting a cat in the room; although the cat, frightened out of her feline wits by this lumbering man-thing, had constantly raced around the apartment, growling and spitting and raising her fur whenever Samson came near, the robot had deftly avoided trampling her underfoot. The SPCA probably would have objected, but it was better to have our ’bot get acquainted with house pets during the teaching phase than receive lawsuits later.
Samson spread peanut butter across one slice of bread, then grape jelly across another—“A little more jelly, please, Samson,” I asked, and he complied—then he successfully closed the two halves together without making a mess. He located a small plate in another cupboard and placed the sandwich upon it, then picked up the knife again and cut it cleanly in half.
So far, so good. Then he began to take the sandwich apart, carefully pulling apart the two halves of each section and laying them on the counter, much as if he was…
Oh, no. I shut my eyes, shook my head. “Samson, what are you doing?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Jerry, I’m fixing the peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” he replied. “Please tell me what is wrong with it.”
From the observation booth, I could hear Keith and Donna whooping it up. I scowled at the window—Keith better not try using this as an excuse to welsh on his bet—then I looked back at Samson. “Samson, there is nothing wrong with the sandwich,” I replied, speaking as I would to a small child who had erred. “My previous instruction was a verbal colloquialism. In this context, to ‘fix’ any form of food means ‘to prepare,’ not ‘to repair.’ Please remember that.”
“I’ll remember, Jerry.” Samson stopped what he was doing, began putting the sandwich back together again. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. Are we still friends?”
The last might seem odd, but it was part of the approval-disapproval protocol programmed into Samson’s conditioning module. Although Samson couldn’t know the meaning of friendship—or at least, technically speaking, not as a human emotion—it was part of his repertoire to ask for forgiveness when he made an error. That had been Phil’s idea; not only would it give third-generation robots a closer resemblance to humanity, but it would also give their owners a more user-friendly means of checking their onboard systems. Casual queries like “are we still friends?” or “am I bothering you?” sound more benign than “error code 310-A, resetting conditioning module, yes/no?”
“Yes, Samson, we’re still friends,” I replied. “Please bring me the sandwich now.”
I turned back to the dinner table, picked up my lukewarm coffee and took a sip, then clicked my pen and started to make a few notes. Behind me, I heard Samson was walking over to the table, bearing my lunch. Through my earpiece, Keith asking Donna if she wanted to go to Boston for dinner tomorrow night, and Donna saying—as usual—that she was busy. I’d heard this before. Donna had recently divorced her second husband and Keith had never married; the two were friends and colleagues, but their attraction was anything but mutual. Donna was understandably reluctant to strike up a workplace romance, and particularly not with the likes of Keith, who thought fart jokes were the height of…
“Jerry, look out!”
Donna’s warning reached me just an instant too late. I looked up just as Samson slammed a peanut butter and extra-jelly sandwich into the side of my face.
Maybe that sounds funny, in a Three Stooges kind of way, but mind you this came from a robot capable of picking up one end of a six-foot 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