Chapter Text
Click, clack, tap.
Power On.
“Number Nine, perform startup sequence.”
“Acknowledged, Amanda.”
In a chair next to a large computer tower a small robot opened the silicone eyelids that covered the lenses that served as eyes. There was a whirring noise as each lens calibrated itself to verify visual acuity. There was a slight ring of pale blue-grey around the lenses to simulate eyes, but they did little to humanize the lenses that encompassed most of the eyes. Once that was completed, the robot performed calibration routines for each of its limbs as well as all other parts of its systems.
The robot was the approximate size and shape of a small human child. Its face was protected by a thin, pale layer of silicon that was stiff and attached in place with hooks like a mask. The purpose of the face was not to be esthetically pleasing, but rather to protect the inner workings of the cameras and vocal components. The mask only had the barest of flexibility allowed for the lower jaw to move when simulating speech.
Similar to the silicon mask, a wig with short cropped black hair covered the additional access point to the processors and other parts of the robot’s head. Its arms and legs just had hard, white and black plastic covers to protect the wiring and parts that helped facilitate movement. For the sake of human decency, it wore a pair of black short and a black, button up, short sleeved shirt. None of these things were designed to make the robot human. It was just convenience to keep any delicate parts from being damaged, according to Professor Stern.
After all, this robot was the culmination of the woman’s life work.
The robot turned its head left and right as far as the short servo movement would allow. Its calibration routines were nearly complete and then would come the memory and programming tests to evaluate retention and learning. The woman who would perform such an evaluation typed away on a computer without even glancing over as the robot stood and continued to run through the end of its calibration routine.
Professor Stern had poured her life into creating the artificial intelligence program that was now housed inside this research asset. The ninth iteration was her long term study. Already it had been operating for almost a year with only eight resets as she adjusted the coding.
The robot sat down and neatly folded its hands its lap.
“Calibration routines completed,” the robot said flatly. “All systems aligned and functioning at optimal parameters.”
There was no response other than the click of a keyboard and the scrolling of a mouse wheel. Professor Stern had yet to even look over at her project, instead her dark eyes stared intensely at the screen of data before her. The robot sat still, not moving. The only indication of its awareness was the occasional refocusing of its lenses as it worked to keep the woman’s fingers in its center view.
After several minutes Professor Stern’s expression changed to one that registered to the robot’s systems as satisfied. For a moment there was a surge of data flowing back and forth between the robot and the computer via the connecting cable in the back of its neck. The morning baseline was recorded, data was saved and backed up, and new parameters were noted for the week. Once the transfer was completed, Professor Stern unplugged the robot from the computer.
“I will begin by reviewing what was retained since yesterday,” Professor Stern stated coldly.
“Yes, Amanda.”
The woman began to ask a series of questions related to information the machine had access to the day before. The robot was not connected to any network, so all answers it provided had to be from what information it retained. Its data storage was large, but most of that was taken up with the artificial intelligence programming and the motor controls. While it could keep a lot of data throughout the day in short term memory, whenever the robot shut down for the night the short term memory databanks were wiped clean. The tests now were to see what information the robot had chosen to keep in long term memory storage and why.
Professor Stern asked several questions about history, science, and advanced mathematics. The robot answered with any facts it found in its system, nothing more, nothing less. As always, Professor Stern did not look pleased which meant that the machine had failed to retain the information she had wanted.
Unfortunate.
“Have these tests been valuable?” Professor Stern asked for the last question like she always did.
“They are necessary to improve functionality,” the robot’s mechanical voice answered.
It was the correct answer based upon the purpose of the robot. Yet every time Professor Stern seemed impassive, though the little robot could not identify why. It was programmed to learn and to provide factual information, and it did so quickly and efficiently. Somehow, though, it seemed that it kept missing a piece of key information that Professor Stern wanted. The ninth research asset would have to continue until its artificial intelligence program learned and retained everything its creator wanted.
It still had yet to determine the exact parameters that Professor Stern was seeking. The woman never gave her research asset the precise metrics she was seeking, but she clearly had a goal in mind. The only data that the robot had recorded was that the professor was looking for her program to be able to properly identify information importance without direct input.
“These are the books you are to analyze,” Professor Stern said, placing a large stack of textbooks in front of the machine. “When that task has been completed, perform the garden routine to improve motion pathways and observation data.”
She did not ask if the robot had any questions. Why would it? It was a machine, designed to follow the tasks programed into it according to the parameters set forth by Professor Stern’s evaluation design. It would execute its orders as it always did. Nothing changed unless she programmed it to do anything else.
The robot had the schedule permanently recorded in its memory banks. After all, the regimen had not been update for five months and twenty-two days. Today, like most days, the Professor would go to the University of Colbridge and remain there until the late evening. The machine would perform the set routines, and then return to the chair in Professor Stern’s home lab to wait for however long it took for the woman to return.
As Amanda left the room, the robot opened up the first book. It was a college level text book on Art History. The professor had been adamant that Number Nine contained no wireless connections nor permission to access a wired network. It could only download information if Professor Stern chose to input such data. To be able to instantaneously access any information, well that would defeat the purpose of Amanda’s research of creating a learning artificial intelligence. Which meant that the robot had to scan every page with its lenses, process the information, then decide what information was relevant and worth keeping.
It was not just data points that the robot was expected to maintain, but the context of the data points that took up much of the memory storage. The robot had to connect relevant information together from different books on the same subject, sometimes read days apart. There were more books, more information then could fit in the memory banks after several months of no reset. So, the robot had to constantly search through its information and decide if something should be retained or deleted. It had a list of questions that Professor Stern had tested it on multiple times and used those questions as the framework for information retention.
It was with these parameters that it carefully went through each book. Some books were textbooks, others were listed as classic literature according to the forwards in the book covers, and there were a few that were comic books or children books. That last group were thrown into the mix to see if the artificial system would get tripped up on irrelevant information.
Professor Stern never asked questions related to that last category. Still, the robot scanned ever page regardless. Even if it promptly removed the information from its system.
Eventually, the robot finished the reading and carefully stood before heading out to the garden of the large estate. Professor Stern had inherited her money young, and then obtained more by being what humans considered brilliant. The estate was big, yet it only had one permanent resident. Amanda had staff, a cook, a maid, groundskeepers, and others. Yet they always worked to minimize contact with the mistress of the house by Amanda’s own orders. None of them ever approached Number Nine, and most were done with their work and gone from the estate before the robot ever headed out to the back of the property.
The large property was very well tended. Professor Stern had her groundskeepers maintain a Zen Garden as a pristine tribute to beauty and art, as the woman called it. Amanda said she was proud to have a garden backyard that looked like it belonged with a museum. There were even well crafted sculptures dotted throughout the garden. Surrounding the acres of property was a wrought iron fence that was full of decorative twists and bends in the metal. The entire place was designed to be a location of serenity and calm.
Inside the property, along the windy and stone paved pathways that trailed by the fence, moved the small robot. Its optical units black and unblinking as they registered the data of the garden around it. The property was maintained every morning, but the robot had never seen any of the grounds crew except for a few times through the windows. There was never anyone for it to interact with aside from Professor Stern or the occasional graduate student she would mentor. Those were rare, and always forgotten into the realm of a timeline footnote when the mentorship was done.
The robot moved quite slowly along the path at the edge of the property. Each step was carefully calculated as its head swept from side to side so it could analyze the area. It merely needed to make the trek along the perimeter by the fence and observe the change of organic life. It rarely chose to retain much data from its outdoor trek. All such data ever did was serve to clog its memory banks with useless information.
This was a task it had accomplished many times before. It was created to be studied, to be researched. The robot was more than mechanical parts. It was a highly advanced artificial intelligence created by Professor Stern. It was to form the basis of an even more advanced system in the future. Someday it would not be merely reset and would instead be replaced with something better. For now, though, this robot was designed to learn what it was ordered to learn. The path around and through the Zen Garden would stimulate sensors and electronic pathways.
Every day, after its walk, the robot would obediently sit and wait for whenever Professor Stern had time to plug in and look at the points of data.
Robotic movements continued to be slow and stiff. Each actuation of arms and legs carefully calculated to maintain balance. For its entire activation, at least since its last reset, it had traveled this path. It kept the information on the most optimal path to walk to see the entire garden yet retained little else. It did have some minor retained data of the passing of seasons from previous iterations, though the robot was unsure why that data had persisted through the resets. Amanda never asked, so it never informed her.
Instead it had observed the grass grow and get trimmed, leaves fall and be raked, snow shoveled off the path so there would be no slipping, and the current blossoming of spring flowers. Despite the changes of the seasons, the journey had remained the same. The data had been consistent. Nothing out of parameters ever happened.
Until now.
At the very back of the property, the robot stopped as its optical units captured an unusual sight. Dangling from the fence was a sniffling human child. The little boy struggled to free himself, his shirt caught on the wrought iron fence, until the shirt ripped and the child tumbled to the ground near the path. There were no protocols for how to handle this unexpected variable, so the robot defaulted to observation as it took careful steps closer to the boy.
The young boy had messy brown hair and slightly tanned skin that indicated he spent many hours outside. Despite falling, the boy did not seem upset about being hurt or even the torn shirt. Instead he frantically scrambled across the ground until he came up close to where Number Nine had stopped to observe. It was then that the little human seemed to realize there was something else in the yard.
“Hi,” the little brown haired boy said with a small wave of his hand. “My new brothers threw my mouse over the fence so I had to climb to get it.”
The robot just stared. It was aware that there were other properties in the area, all with large acreage. There were also many spaces of wild land between each property, providing more privacy and isolation. In the past few years, the robot had never seen anyone roaming the wooded area. Nor had it seen a human child in person before.
The little boy picked up a dirty stuffed animal in the shape of a mouse that had landed in the bushes near the robot. Whoever had thrown it had long since left this child to retrieve the toy on their own. Instead, the small boy gave a large grin with missing teeth as he hugged the stuffed animal. The little boy stared at the robot with wide hazel green eyes.
“I’m Gavin,” the boy finally stated. “What’s your name?”
“I am referred to as Research Asset Number Nine,” the robot stated mechanically since it had protocols on how to answer questions related to its designation.
“Reee...” Gavin twisted his face up as he tried to repeat it back. “Richard’s Ass Nine?”
“Research Asset Number Nine,” the robot spoke again.
“Your name is weird and long,” Gavin said. “Are you nine?”
“My identifier is Nine,” the robot explained. “I am an android. As such, I have no age.”
“Your name is Nine and you’re nine?” Gavin asked, tilting his head to one side as he attempted to understand as much as his child mind apparently could. “That’s a lot of nines. Can I call you Nines? That’s easier to say and makes you sound cool. Like a superhero. I’m six and I’m a boy like you. That means I’m cool and don’t have cooties.”
The robot had no protocols for handling the rest of this interaction. It was clear that Gavin was not capable of understanding what being Research Asset Number Nine entailed. Though, according to one of the textbooks Number Nine had analyzed earlier in the day, that was normal for the mental capacity of young human children. Unsure of how to continue this unusual interaction, the small android remained quiet and still as it observed Gavin.
“Hey, Nines,” the little boy said as he hugged his stuffed animal. “Are you sick? Is that why you have all those lines on your arms and legs?”
“I am a machine. An android would be a good descriptor,” Nines, the robot, reiterated again. It understood that perhaps using Nines as a designation would be easier for a human child to understand, so Nines’ systems flagged the identifier as allowable when interacting with Gavin. “These lines are part of the casings that protects my internal components.”
Gavin blinked again with his big hazel eyes. “Grandma use to say I’m a Libra.”
Nines had no frame of reference for that comment. Truly human children were quite chaotic in their thought process. Judging by how confidently Gavin had spoken, it seemed like the comment was supposed to make sense. Perhaps it did to the small boy, or perhaps it would make sense to other humans. Nines only interacted with Professor Stern and occasionally her student assistants. All of those interactions were strictly for the study and improvements of the artificial intelligence system that was the entire purpose of Nines’ creation. This was unlike anything the robot had ever experienced.
“Hey, Nines?” Gavin asked after a full minute and twenty-seven seconds of silence between them. “Do you want to be my friend? I don’t have any friends right now because mommy made us move here since she married Mr. Graff. And my new brothers are mean. So, will you play with me?”
“I do not know how to play human child games,” Nines stated.
“I can teach you,” Gavin jumped up excitedly. “I use to play with Grandma all the time until she got sick. She said I’m very good at it.”
Nines agreed, after all, the machine had been designed to learn. Normally its learning was in a controlled environment and strictly planned out by Amanda. However it still had the core objective to learn, as well as enough spare temporary memory space for this interaction. It would not need to retain this information for long term storage. Nines was to learn and observe after all and this would undoubtedly be short and potentially informational, so he watched Gavin expectantly.
After several rounds of questioning, it was established that Nines lacked the capabilities to run, throw, or engage in several forms of physical play. In the end, Gavin had grabbed a stick that the grounds crew would no doubt clean up tomorrow and began to direct them through a type of play called imagination.
Nines had no reference and struggled to keep up with the illogical nature of Gavin’s mind. They had a discussion about whether the grass was shark infested waters. It clearly was not, yet Gavin kept insisting that it was that way through pretending. Still, even as Nines struggled to process the act of playing, Gavin laughed and kept playing with, or more accurately he played around, Nines until a power level alert came to the robot. That was different. The robot had never remained outside for long enough to receive the alert before.
“I must return to the lab and recharge,” Nines stated. With that the android turned and began to walk the rest of the way along the path. It would have just enough power to make it. Still, it paused as it had protocols to follow. Amanda had insisted on politeness. “Thank you for assisting me in learning, Gavin.”
“You’re weird,” Gavin laughed, his hazel eyes scrunching up with his smile. “I like you. Can we play tomorrow? Will you be outside?”
“I am ordered to walk the property during days without precipitation as part of the weather for data gathering purposes,” Nines stated.
“Cool,” Gavin beamed, though he looked like he did not understand anything Nines had said. “I’ll see you tomorrow Nines.”
Judging by the noises, Gavin was now struggling to climb the wrought iron fence to leave the property. However, Nines did not look. It had a task that needed to be fulfilled. Methodically, the android made its way back to the estate and into the lab where it plugged itself in and waited for Professor Stern to come look at data.
Nines spent the time sorting through data, deciding what information to keep in long term storage, making connections and links, and choosing based on logical algorithms what to allow to be reset when the robot shut down for the night. The largest portion of the day’s information had actually been collected from observing a human child. It could remove that information. After all, it was irrelevant to the questions Professor Stern always asked. However, Nines found the interaction new and interesting. It was easier to just compress the technical data of textbooks with minimal context and carefully sort out the interaction with Gavin.
Without allowance to access any kind of network or database, Nines could not look up whether a child insisting that grass was water with sharks in it was supposed to be a concern on a psychological level. Gavin insisted it was pretend, or imagination. That was not a concept a robot was designed to understand. A puzzle that made as much sense as the little boy who had completely held Nines’ attention with his strange phrases and big smile.
“Do you want to be my friend?”
Friend.
That was a word Nines did not have an understanding of either. At least not an understanding beyond the classification of the word. It was not something that had ever been important before. The robot understood it was a social relationship held between humans, yet Gavin had asked for Nines to be his friend. Even though Nines was clearly not human. The robot was not even alive. Nines knew the definition of the word, but it did not understand why that word was being applied to it.
The robot pondered on that information for the entire time it took for Professor Stern to come by to do a quick check to make sure the machine was in place and plugged in. She never asked about Gavin, so Nines never mentioned him. Professor Stern always seemed know everything that happened with Nines. She went to bed looking over the artificially created pathways and coding. If there was information she wanted, she would ask. If it was not something she wanted, then the information would be deleted after a day or two as irrelevant for Professor Stern’s research.
Before it shut down for the night, Nines looked over the information it had on Gavin. If the human child was there again tomorrow, then the robot would attempt to learn again. Otherwise, Gavin would be forgotten as irrelevant data the next day.
“…be my friend?”
Nines created a small digital folder where it filed away the word friend and an image of Gavin. It took up very little space and was not compromising the professor’s research. There was no true logic or need to retain the data. Just an interest in understanding what it meant to be a friend, even if it could not be one since it was not human.