The Fifth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer
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pheromones, body language and casual eye-contact, there is no reason for it to happen, save for the biological imperatives to procreate, maintain tribal associations, or remain close to one’s family. But love does nonetheless persist, and sometimes under the strangest of circumstances.
Were Samson and Delilah in love? Probably not; they were robots, machines with none of the beforementioned hangups. You could spend countless man-hours of R&D trying to resolve that question. Yet the only people who had the answer were their own creators…and they had a hard enough time researching and developing their own feelings toward each other.
When I arrived the trailer the following morning, the rest of Samson Team was already getting ready for the test. Phil, however, was nowhere to be found, and neither was Samson. I paged him but he didn’t return the call, and while Bob was setting up his camera and Keith was opening his first bag of Fritos for the day, Kathy Veder appeared in the atrium, walking Delilah ahead of her.
Delilah was dressed in the same ankle-length, high-collared gown she had worn the day before. Once again, I wondered what purpose it served to put clothes on a robot. It didn’t seem to impede her movements—indeed, the dress had been cut so that it allowed her double-jointed arms and legs to move more freely—yet it was unnecessary to assign a gender-role to a machine. On the other hand, perhaps Darth was attempting to humanize her creation; if that was the case, it might be a good marketing strategy, yet rather futile since Delilah’s spherical, nearly featureless head belied the femininity of her outfit.
Kathy stopped next to the bench, turning her back to us as she waited for Delilah catch up. Donna hadn’t switched on the shotgun mike, so we couldn’t hear the instructions Kathy gave the ’bot. She pointed to the bench, and Delilah walked over to it, her feet whisking beneath the hem of her dress, until she turned and daintily sat down, once again folding her silver hands in her lap. Kathy bent over Delilah and closely examined a panel in the side of her slender cylindrical neck. I glanced at the clock. We were already running fifteen minutes late…
The door behind me opened, and at first I thought it was Phil. “What took you so…?” I started to say until I glimpsed Keith hastily stashing his chips beneath the console. I turned around and saw Jim Lang entering the trailer.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked. As always, Jim was dressed in sandals, faded Levis and a Hawaiian shirt. In all the time I had worked for LEC, I had never seen him wear a coat and tie, not even for stockholder meetings.
“No, Jim, not at all.” I recovered fast enough to not show just how startled I was by his unexpected arrival. “We’re…ah, still setting up here. If you want to take a seat…?”
“Thanks, Jerry. Excuse me, Donna…it is Donna, isn’t it?” Ignoring her forced smile, Jim eased past her, then settled down in Phil’s empty chair. “Sorry to interrupt, but I was just curious to see how things were making out down here.”
Right. Slim Jim never showed up anywhere just out of curiosity. When he made an appearance outside the executive suite, it meant that he had become aware that a project was having problems. “We’re doing great, Jim,” Keith said, just a little too quickly. “Just…uh, working out a few bugs here and there.”
I looked away so that Jim wouldn’t see me wince. Brilliant, Einstein. Yet Slim Jim only nodded. He gazed through the window at Kathy Veder and Delilah. “I don’t see Phil,” he said. “Where’s…ah, yes, here he comes now.”
I followed his gaze, spotted Phil walking through the trees on the other side of the atrium. He saw Kathy, stopped a few yards away from the bench as she looked up at him. Their eyes locked for a few seconds, and for a moment or two I thought he was going to say something to her, or she something to him. But nothing happened; he lowered his head and strode quickly toward the trailer. Her gaze followed him, and in that instant when her face turned toward the trailer, I caught the briefest glimpse of an expression I couldn’t quite identify. Loathing? Longing? Hard to tell…
“We’re lucky to have them working for us, don’t you think?” Jim asked quietly.
I didn’t realize he was speaking to me until I glanced his way, saw that he was looking at me. “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “Very lucky. Two great scientists, uh-huh.” And perhaps it wasn’t too late to send my resumé to CybeServe…
Phil was startled to find Jim sitting in his chair when he entered the trailer. He murmured a hasty apology for being late, which Jim accepted with a perfunctory nod, then he squeezed past the CEO to stand behind Keith. “G-g-good m-m-m-morning,” he stammered as he leaned over Keith’s shoulder to check out the screen. “Are w-w-w-we re-re-re-ready?”
“I’m not sure.” Keith cast a wary sidelong glance in Jim’s direction. “When I ran a diagnostic a few minutes ago, I found a new protocol in the conditioning module. I checked it out, and it looks like it was written last night. Do you know anything about…?”
“Y-y-yes, i-i-it’s a n-n-new p-p-program.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his thin neck, and he seemed determined not to deliberately look at Jim Lang. “I t-t-t-think w-w-w-we’re ready to pr-pr-pro-proceed.”
Jim raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but said nothing as he propped his elbows on the console and clasped his hands together beneath his chin. Out in the atrium, Kathy Veder had just turned to walk away from Delilah. Phil caught Donna’s eye and quickly nodded his head, and she switched on her mike. “D-Team, we’re ready to roll.”
“R-r-roll now,” Phil said. Keith and I traded an uncertain glance. Dr. Veder was still in the atrium; she hadn’t yet returned to her trailer. Keith’s hands hesitated above his keyboard, and Phil tapped him on the shoulder. “Commence the t-t-t-test, p-p-p-please,” he said, and Keith shrugged as he typed in the command which would bring Samson online.
“Aren’t you going to wait?” Jim asked quietly.
Phil didn’t reply. Instead, he closed his eyes, and his lips moved as he subaudibly counted to ten.
Something weird was going on here, and it wasn’t the sort of weirdness I like. While Phil’s eyes were shut and Jim was looking the other direction, I opened a window from my menu bar and moused the emergency shut-down icon. When the Y/N prompt appeared onscreen, I moved the cursor above the Y. One tap of my index finger, and Samson would freeze like an popsicle.
Out in the atrium, Kathy Veder was almost at the edge of the clearing when Samson came marching through the trees. She stopped in mid-stride, confused and startled, judging from her expression, not just a little alarmed. My mind’s eye flashed upon a scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still—the robot Gort carrying the unconscious Patricia Neal in his arms—and my finger wavered above the Return key. Oh, no, Phil can’t be that crazy…
But then Samson stopped. He bowed from the waist, as if he was a gentleman who happened upon a lovely young woman while strolling through the woods. Kathy’s face changed from fear to amusement; she stepped aside, and Samson straightened up and walked past her.
“Oh, very good,” Jim murmured. “Good object recognition.”
I let out my breath and moved my hand away from the keyboard.
Samson continued walking toward Delilah. As he approached the bench where she sat, his right hand opened the cargo panel on his chest, and reached inside. At this point, he was supposed to pull out an apple and offer it to the other robot. He had gotten that part right yesterday, until he decided that slamming the apple against her head was an appropriate sign of affection. On either side of me, I could see Donna, Keith, and Bob stiffening ever so slightly.
But what Samson produced wasn’t an apple, but a heart.
Not the organic sort, but the St. Valentine’s Day variety: a red plastic toy of the sort you might place within a bouquet of roses you send to your true love.
From the edge of the clearing, Kathy Veder watched as Samson stepped around the bench and, with grace and tenderness, held it out to Delilah.
Delilah remained still, her hands still folded in her lap, her fishbowl