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“How can you do it? It doesn’t know man from woman, it doesn’t know honour nor shame. It’s insensitive to human feelings.”
“I can give human feelings to it.”
“Impossible. Only God can do it.”
“Man has made possible many impossible things.”
Doctor Vasigaran was pacing back and forth in his laboratory, marker in hand. The situation was rather dire, and he had decided to take on the impossible task: teaching a robot how to feel. Ten years of hard work were on the line; after the incident, the Defence Ministry put pressure on him to put an end to this project. Said project, baptized Chitti by his creator’s mother, sat on a stool, patiently listening to his lessons. A whiteboard was filled with words relating to emotions, branching off in several different directions. “It isn’t something that can be taught. It’s… it is innate to most human beings,” he said to the android.
“Then why are you trying to teach me? If you can’t teach it, you shouldn’t bother,” he replied. Vasi, under his frustration, tried to keep calm.
“Because you need to understand human emotions and values before being accepted by the board. Bohra won’t let us off the hook that easy, and you know this.”
“I don’t understand why Bohra is opposing you. Shouldn’t he want to support you? Professors should want the success of their students.” Chitti’s face remained ever so blank. Sensing a teaching opportunity, Vasi tried to approach this in the most delicate possible way.
“I know. It must seem incredibly illogical to you. But… humans are illogical, Chitti, you must understand this,” he said this while writing out the word “illogical” on the whiteboard.
“Like the girl who jumped in front of the truck even after I saved her life.” Chitti bowed his head almost imperceptibly. That incident still hasn’t left his memory. The incident that prompted Vasi to try teaching him human emotion. He shouldn’t be able to think, but it felt like it was all he could think about. Why did she do that? He saved her, but it felt like he ended up killing her instead. This was an indirect violation of Asimov’s first law: to do no harm to humans. Perhaps the violation of this law was why it weighed so heavily upon his circuits. “Chitti… I want to say that that action specifically was not illogical. That was an incredibly stressful and extreme situation. I should have… it shouldn’t be considered your fault. The responsibility falls on me, as your creator,” he said, mostly for himself. “She killed herself because she was under immense stress. She was thinking that she was about to burn up in flames, only to immediately have her naked body exposed to the entire country. She asked you not to look at her, Chitti.”
“But why run into oncoming traffic for it? Didn’t she know she could expect a good eighty more years of life?”
“Yes, of course she knew. But she wasn’t thinking about that during the moment. She felt something called ‘shame’ and ‘embarrassment’” he etched more words on the whiteboard. It didn’t have any space left. He crossed his arms and took on a contemplative look. “Those concepts might be too advanced for you at the moment.”
“About professor Bohra…” Chitti prompted him.
“Right. Bohra is an incredibly smart man. He’s contributed a lot to the field of robotics, and yet… he could never achieve his dream project. He never told me the details, but I know he wants to make an advanced android, like you. However… seeing me achieve this before him must’ve made him jealous.”
Vasi snuck a glance towards the whiteboard, then at the wall. What was the point of restraining himself to the board? Marker in hand, he briskly made his way towards a curved wall. Chitti followed with no question. The doctor wrote out “jealousy” and underlined it twice.
“Jealousy is an emotion humans feel when they see someone else have something they don’t. For example, a child might get jealous of their friend’s shiny new toy. Or, I suppose, a professor can get jealous of their student’s success. It must’ve stung especially hard since he was in the domain for longer than I,” he explained while writing some key words underneath. Chitti remained silent, only nodding to demonstrate that the information made it through. He couldn’t quite process it, since he had never experienced anything akin to jealousy. What was the point of feeling such an emotion, after all? He equally couldn’t understand what shame was. He felt none of it when his clothes and silicone skin melted off in the fire. He had been just as naked, if not more naked, than the girl in the bath. At that moment, he remembered her name for a reason he couldn’t quite understand. Selvi.
“Did Selvi feel like she couldn’t live normally again, after the incident? Was that why she took her own life?” Chitti suddenly asked.
“That’s a way to put it, sure. You could also say she would’ve permanently lost her honour, had she kept living,” replied Dr. Vasi. Of course, the android knew the textbook definition of honour. It still wasn’t something he could understand, at least not yet.
“Now, we should go over the emotions that her mother felt. We can start with the shock, trauma, and grief…”
Hours upon hours passed by, and Dr. Vasi still felt like he was making no progress. He hadn’t even noticed the sun rising by the time he was too tired to keep going. Shooting a glance at the result of his ten years of labour, he called it a day. One thing was absolutely certain in his mind– there was no way he could make Chitti understand human emotion just by repeatedly drilling the concept into his ears. No, he needed to tinker further upon his neural schema. Some outings wouldn’t hurt him, either.
And so he made a visit to the ladies’ hostel where Sana, Vasi’s girlfriend, lived. Of course, Vasi himself wasn’t allowed in, but Chitti was fine. He wasn’t really a “male”, after all. The doctor trusted him to be able to handle himself, even after the incident. Last time he’d been there, he had been able to take care of himself, and even the other ladies around him. If there were some initial apprehension about his presence, it was quickly dispelled after he beat the souls out of some violent noise-makers. Their sound had been disturbing studying college kids, not to mention the elderly women with frail hearts. He kept being a blessing to that hostel ever since. It was now their turn to help him out, to make sure he doesn’t get deemed a danger to society. All they mostly did was offer him a conversation. Amidst the many girls and women he spoke to, there was Lada. He had already met her before, but this time, she had the time to talk some more about her pregnancy and the baby she’s expecting. Chitti listened with great attention. He knew every little theoretical thing there was to know about pregnancy. He knew that every symptom she described made sense. He knew that she was bound for delivery in the next week. It took a little nudging from Sana to keep the discussion away from the medical theory, and more towards the implications of motherhood. “That’s right… It is scary to think about the fact that I’ll be a mother. I mean… goodness. I just- I just wish I still had my husband with me. This baby is going to grow up without a father,” she said, a bittersweet look on her face. She rubbed her belly over her saree.
“You won’t be alone, Lada. This kid will be raised by our little village, eh?” Sana winked at her, trying to cheer her up.
“You’re right… There are worse places to raise a baby. I’m just glad we’ll have Chitti around to protect them,” she had a big smile on her face as she looked towards him. Sana’s heart twisted, knowing that there was a very real possibility that he wouldn’t be, soon enough.
“I will do my best in protecting your future child,” Chitti said, and nothing else. He had registered every single thing she had said, about her expectations for the baby’s future, her fears and anxieties, her grief for her late husband. He understood, or at least he thought he did. There was still a certain… relatability he couldn’t quite get.
“Hah, I’ll bet he’s trying to understand the woes of motherhood way more than any human man has. That’s already an achievement, Chitti! Hah… the, um. the bar is low,” Sana coughed. Chitti took a moment before saying: “You mean to tell me that men don’t try to understand women?”
“Oh, god, jesus, okay, um… This is an entire conversation. We need to get some feminism books,” she said, ideas running through her mind already. “Heh. I wonder how Vasi will react when I tell him I’m teaching his son feminism.” For some reason, Chitti was hung up on the word she had used to describe him. Vasigaran’s “son”. Was this truly the right word? Why couldn’t he be his son, after all? Despite the biological difference, in every sense of the word, Vasi was his father. He created him. He taught him everything he knew, and he’s trying to teach him something impossible just to keep him from being scrapped.
This was the beginning of something never seen before.