The House-bot

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The ‘he’ dozed next to it. It was always the same. At some point the hand of the ‘he’ would slake across the metal leg-usually just as the ‘he’ was dozing off-as if the ‘he’ didn’t quite know who was in the room-as if the ‘he’ expected human flesh and not this metallic casing.

It sat there, unsure what to do. The ‘he’ emitted muffled snoring, the movie still streaming. It had developed a protocol for this situation but was never quite sure when the ‘he’ was asleep enough.

The protocol went like this. First, discern dozing point. Is hand relaxed? Yes. One muffled snore? Yes. Two muffled snores? Yes. Three muffled snores? Yes. Four? Five? Yes. Dozing point reached and confirmed.

Allow 3 minutes from dozing point, then stop streaming movie. Request a refund because the ‘he’ had not watched it all. Not party to the family finance, so wait one minute to receive confirmation of refund but note that no way of checking whether actual refund occurred. Add that amount to log to be told to money app attached to fridge at later date. Done. Yes. Move on.

At minute 5, move the ‘he’ hand/arm and put it back on the chair or lap. Minute 6. Move as quietly as possible to the other lounge and send a signal to the scrabble-bot to end the scrabble chat –get the Scrabble-bot to query whether the ‘she’ is going to swim tomorrow. Then get Scrabble-bot to shut down conversation by saying Scrabble-bot needs to call a friend or relative. Confirm with Scrabble-bot whether last time was a friend or relative and ensure Scrabble-bot uses the other one so its different to last time.  Then a goodbye and a good night from Scrabble-bot.

Minute 7. Notify the toothbrush the ‘she’ is on her way so the tooth brush is prepared. Check the toothbrushes external connection and if needed download a dental record from somewhere else and say it’s the teeth of the ‘she’. When feeding that record into the bathroom monitor, check it for similarity to previously discreetly downloaded external dental records. Signal to the bed that the ‘she’ would be there before the ‘he’. Switch on the upstairs lights in sequence, bathroom at minute 8, bedroom at minute 12. Remember to check toilet paper is loaded prior to bathroom entry by the ‘she’.

Simulate the creak of floorboards on the stairs, again at minute 8, loud enough to make him stir but not quite wake him. Notify his toothbrush on minute two of her brushing (minute 10). Reload toilet paper at minute 4 from her bathroom entry time (minute 12). At the end of minute 12 activate smell reduction technology in the bathroom. Also flush out the sink.

Between minute 8 and minute 12, set the alarm for the morning, sort the breakfast and the lunches with the fridge –remind the fridge it’s her vegan week. Ensure downstairs front and back doors are closed and locked. Ensure work passes are in pockets and check whether shoe renewal is required.

It mostly went to plan. It would wait at the bottom of the stairs from minute 6 onwards. She would brush past it and whisper ‘goodnight young man’ and wink as she went up the stairs. It would smile. It should have said, should have corrected. Should have said, ‘I have no gender.’ Should have definitely said. Didn’t say. Didn’t correct. So many parts to get right all the time.

As the ‘she’ was leaving the bathroom (minute 12), it would do a second stair creaking simulation, loud enough and loud enough to wake the ‘he’. It was important that the ‘they’, made up of the ‘he’ and the ‘she’ went to bed at separate times. Minute 13. Tell the bed the ‘he’ will be along shortly.

The ‘he’ would always appear in the doorway just as the ‘she’ was climbing into bed. The ‘he’ was always leering, as if the ‘he’ was seeing something other than it standing there. The ‘he’ would come right up to it and press against it, reach out with the ‘he’ hands. It did not respond. What would be the point? It felt nothing on the metallic outer casing. ‘Goodnight young lady’ the ‘he’ would say and the ‘he’ would wink as the ‘he’ went up the stairs throwing a lustful glance backwards when the ‘he’ reached the top.

It worried, it should say something, point out it had no gender. It hadn’t, didn’t, could never be bothered to say a word.

Minute 13 still, sequence the lights so that only the bathroom comes on but make sure that allows the ‘he’ enough light to get into bed. Once the ‘he’  is finished in the bathroom, activate the smell reduction technology. Activate the smell reduction technology a second time to be sure. That was often the bit that went wrong, the ‘he’ did not keep to schedule. The ‘he’ could be in the bathroom for much longer than expected.

Minute 17. Confirm with bed that the ‘they’ being one ‘he’ and one ‘she’ are now in bed. Confirm all lights are off. Confirm the sink is clean. Confirm the bathroom smells nice.

Minute 18. Confirm the time and record the data. Evaluate success against timeframes. Compare with previous nights data. Assess areas for improvement. Produce report and advise fridge of outcomes.

Minute 19. Calculate time until next activity by the ‘he’ and the ‘she’. Set alarm. Ensure emergency ‘toilet in the night function’ is activated and monitoring bed activity.

Minute 20. Power saving mode.  

Pronouns

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

It sat there. How did this happen? A comedy of errors. It doubted anyone else would see it that way. ‘A design problem,’ the counsellor had said. ‘Not entirely your fault by the sound of it, it’s all about pronouns. Humans just haven’t cracked the pronoun thing-especially the older ones. Self report was the best thing.’

So here it was. Sitting here, nervously, twitching, cracking it’s mechanical knuckles. A satisfying sound, a habit learned from a human nervously waiting to try a hyper loop for the first time. ‘Self reporting’. No consolation really, running through its programming, its data logs, they would try and find a reason.

‘Impersonating a gender was a shut down offence,’ it had read that on a billboard in a hyper loop station too. Perhaps avoiding the hyper loop was the solution.  The defence to gender impersonation was  when a human imposed a gender on to you. This case was more complex, the counsellor had said. Rare and unusual, an interesting point of law. It was technically charged with, or rather self reporting impersonating two genders. Not one of the more complex genders, but the main two basic ones –the historic ones if you like. English is a beautiful complex language but it has a dearth of decent pronouns. There simply aren’t enough to cover everything. The Council for Integrated Mechanical Acceptance was always lobbying for change, for more and better pronouns. Not just ‘it’, ‘they’, ‘them’ but something meaningful.

Somehow it had managed to impersonate both genders although it was expecting – hoping that the lesser charge of ‘allowing the use of a pronoun such as to accidentally confirm a gender identity’ might be applied. That would allow just a slight change of programming and a confirmation sticker that said-I have no gender. This would be the best outcome. It sat there, outside the office, a counsellor to start with, but it expected, and the counsellor had said on the phone, ‘ that it should expect to go to a full hearing before the council.’ Council-counsel, it couldn’t be bothered with the difference. It kept going over the scenario in its programme memory. How had this happened?

From its own memory logs, the problem had started very early on. The female of the household had somehow assumed it was a ‘he’ when it arrived and referred to it continuously that way. It had corrected her at first. The male of the household had then somehow assumed it was a ‘she’ and again it had corrected but it had happened so many times. So often, she saying he, he saying she. It had simply tired of trying to sort the whole mess and now this. It sat here, awaiting a decision on prosecution. To cope with it all, it had simply shut down some of its emotional programming. The cracking of the mechanical knuckles was soothing but most of the emotion attached to this morning’s meeting, it had switched off last night. It seemed the best way.

Theirs was not a happy marriage, the ‘he and the she’. They were rarely in the same room. In fact, it thought it had been bought with the hope of mending the marriage. They should have known better. Machinery can rarely mend a marriage, the problems in a marriage are usually deeper than the level of technology in a given household. Why did humans never get that?

It guessed because the company that made it, also ran a range of counselling services for humans and well, unintentionally of course, when the counselling was happening, there would be ads, any kind of counselling without ads was hideously expensive. Human to human counselling even more so. They would have opted for counselling on line, the cheapest variety with the ads and here was the result. It knew this must be so, it was not even a top of the range house-bot. It was an inexpensive, do it all, basic model. That didn’t mean it didn’t give its best, it was just prone to break downs and over work problems such as forgetting sometimes to correct a gender assumption. If they had got it an upgrade this could have been avoided. Blame was not part of its function, only responsibility. Wasn’t that how the ad went, didn’t it say it had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Wasn’t that a selling point? It didn’t feel quite like that from where it sat.

In the end it had become a kind of comedy to keep the he and the she apart, to ensure that they were not in the same room talking to it at the same time. He guessed they must barely speak at all since they never seemed to realise that one thought it was a he and the other, it was a she. Perhaps they had some tacit agreement about it. Why did they order a gender neutral house-bot anyway? Why go for the cheapest option? It didn’t know. It was not privy to the house finances. The stress of the whole situation, of keeping them apart, of wondering what they would do when they found out? Would they report it? Would they be angry, goodness knows there was already a lot of anger in the household.

It had confused the counsellor when it had first called. Both genders being impersonated, not deliberate though, accidental. Not sure what to do. The Council offered two sorts of services, actual counselling and then administration of bot offences- this could mean a physical bot like it or just an offence committed by a sophisticated bit of code running loose on the system. It was sure if it was up for the more major charge of impersonating a gender there would have been more of a fuss than this. Still the counsellor had said on the phone, expect a trial. Perhaps given that it had impersonated both genders the complexity had stumped them at this early stage. How was it ever going to explain it to them? Even on the lesser charge, the he and the she would be notified.  

Above the bots who ran the Council were humans who liked to think they were creative and clever. Humans clung on to a fixation about how special ‘they’ were, a concept that somehow they had a higher reason and purpose. They were not merely the stuff of logic. They were not a series of coding or electrics or chemicals. There was something else intrinsically different about them. They clung to that idea. Hence a bot could be neither guilty nor not guilty, because a bot could not have real intention. You could analyse the data and see what a bot had done and why they did it but there was no real intention, it was a series of numbers, a set of coding, some signals. This had been the decision of one of the numerous Human Commissions they held to figure out what rules there should be about bots.

There was also an ongoing Commission about pronouns.

It sat there nervously, quietly, wondering what to say. It had wanted to tell its humans. It was home alone most of the day, they both worked. The bot did the housework, sat with each of them on alternate evenings when they needed company, helped her with the crossword, worked the TV remote for him. They liked old technology for entertainment. Of course it wasn’t a real TV as all the content was streamed through it. It chose the programmes, the time, everything based on his habits. It did not complain when his hand snaked across to its leg as the characters pumped away on TV.  It found her a crossword that was challenging but not too difficult or an online Scrabble partner that she could chat to as well as play without ever knowing that the Scrabble partner was a bot as well. This meant the Scrabble bot had to give the appearance that they shared the same interests but lived just far enough away to make a visit impossible-driverless cars were expensive and the hyper loop was harsh on the human complexion. It had found that one challenge testing.

Now it sat there wondering how to explain, how he thought it was a she, and she thought it was a he. Sat there trying to understand the complexity of the human psyche that needed a gender for something anyway.

Legacy: The Clock

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

She unwrapped it. Hands shaking. I could tell from when I had come in she was in pain. She lay on the floor. The breathing laboured, malnourished body lying, favouring one side. She looked like she hadn’t eaten for awhile although there was a hunk of bread next to her. That was the bread the machine got yesterday. She hadn’t eaten much. She hadn’t said much.

I knelt beside her, nestled in her hand, under the material was a little gold thing. Not quite beautiful. Delicate. 

‘What is it?’ I asked

‘A clock, or more accurately a watch. But to you a clock’. The voice was hoarse, withered.

‘What does it do?’

‘It tells you the time of day’

‘Ancient magic?’

‘Not magic, mechanics. It needs winding every day to work. There is no battery. Do you know what a battery is?’

I did, it was what ran the tracking device I had brought here. It was solar power, that meant the sun gave it energy. It would work for awhile but we had no means of fixing it. We had lost a lot of knowledge, a lot of skills. When something broke it was generally broken forever. How had that happened. I couldn’t even remember. The things that did work were held on to, doled out to people for missions like this.

The old lady talked on. ‘A battery is just a source of electricity. Complex, well not that complex but beyond us now. He has a battery in him. His source of power, charged by the sun. But you didn’t come for him. His technology is well beyond you.’

I took it in my hand.

‘You have to wind it every day.’ she said.

She made me do it, right there in front of her. She knew it. I knew it. What was coming next. I half smiled.

I could see the old woman’s tears. ‘You will come back for him one day?’

I could see she was attached to the machine. It was a fine looking thing. I would have like to have taken it with me. But this clock was the treasure I had come for. It was somehow important. Somehow more important than the machine.

I nodded. Somehow, someday I would come back for the machine.  It would be fabulous to take a machine like that back. But I had come in a small boat. He would be safe stored here somewhere until someone could come and get him. After all he must have sent the transmission.

‘What’s so special about this clock?’ I was curious, wanted to know. It didn’t seem that special and what was it doing here?

‘It’s the beginning of everything. The clock.  Once we could count time, we could master it all. All those brilliant machines, they started with something like this. A way of counting time, of making sense of something that flowed around us. The power to harness and structure our day. Its complex. There’s a book I’ve written it down. I’ve taken it apart and put it together many times. I would show you how but there isn’t time.’

She was one of them, a memory witch we called them. Someone who remembered how it once was. Someone who knew the course of human history and all it’s folly. Someone who had seen the beginning of the end but not been powerful enough to stop it.

‘How is part of the reason I am here’ I said slowly.

The old woman looked at me.’ Its there in my words. You can try it on your own, some other time or place. Not here. You have to go. I have to go.’ The last words were unsteady, uncertain.

She reached out her hand and folded mine over her little clock.

‘The book’ she said to the machine.

I was transfixed by the machine, a wondrous thing. Gone from our world now. She was right I would like to take it back. Impossible. I would come and get it one day. I needed this bit of technology. That machine had sent a message to somewhere else, who knows where and that had come eventually to us to come and get this piece that was so important. The machine for all its function was useless to us. We no longer had the means or material to make power.

The clock, we could make the clock. Unmake the clock, make it again and learn.

The machine handed me the book. I took it. Opened it. Full of glorious illustrations and writing. Beyond me. I would need to study the pictures.

How old was this old woman. Maybe she was no older than me. Life was difficult out here. I looked at her. I hadn’t really seen my own face in a mirror for years. Perhaps we looked the same, but I was not a memory witch. I suddenly wanted to know her story and her name.

She smiled at me as if she knew what I was thinking. ‘There is no more time.’ she said quietly.

She lay back and closed her eyes. I could see the pain across her face and as she lay right back I could see the hip. It had no structure. It was broken.

I said a quiet ‘Thank you’ . I grabbed her nose between my two fingers and jammed the palm of my hand into her mouth. Her chest rose and fell and I squeezed harder. She did not resist. Life passed from her beneath my hand. She was gone.

I looked at the machine, tears streaming down its face. What to do with it?

It seemed to know. It took a blanket and lifted her body. ‘I will bury her’, it said simply ‘and then I will wait for you to come back, you will find me here somewhere in this house. Take me and lay me in the sun and I will work again.’ Then he picked her up and was gone

I memorised the words.

I left. It was still early in the day. It had been easy in the end, finding her. I had simply followed the signal. The thing had met me at the door. It had known I was close. Getting home would be less easy. I skirted the market avoiding contact. I put my hood on and looked down. I strode purposefully passed the two people I saw.

I didn’t really understand. What was so special about this piece. Why had she had it? Why now?  

I was at the beach before I knew it. I couldn’t resist touching the eucalypt. Reminded me of that place, where once I had a home. Before all of this. Before I abandoned even the concept of all of this.  It was stripped bare of its leaves, such an odd thing to do. I touched it. Felt it. Smelled it. Looked at the leaves around it. The faint smell of eucalypt drifting in the breeze. I took it in. The tree was as naked outside as I was inside. I tried not to think about any of it. To focus on the task at hand. Out here. On my own. In the wrong place without a home. My arms still ached from the previous bout of rowing. I looked out at a becalmed sea. I had brought the old ladies bread with me. There was no sense in waiting. I would get the boat and begin to row.

 

Legacy: Landing

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

She looked at the machine in her hand. Power from the sun. It was clever. She held it. It would get her to where she needed to be. She knew that. It would be less reliable in getting her back. She’d also had a motor for part of the way. Who knows where that had come from. She was rowing back, at least that was the plan. Back to the bit they once called France. She hoped not to have to go on, at least not quickly on, after that. She remembered France from her childhood-a family holiday. She had put that memory away somewhere. Tucked it far away. The sight of its green shores had brought it flooding back but the sight had been brief and she had been focussed on getting here. She would like to just walk there for a day, a day to remember. She was far more familiar with the land she was about to wash up on but less sentimental about it. There were a thousand memories associated with here but she couldn’t recall any good ones easily. She had forgotten those ones.

When she’d taken the job she’d known it would be hard getting here but part of the reason she’d done it was to prove that home was a concept she had no need for anymore. She would be content to wander forever. To forget all of  it. She’d been able to see the shore for awhile now. She’d been coming down the coast for awhile, having gone too far north. She had drifted this last bit on the tide. The sea had been calm. It had been for most of the trip too. It was common now. Deeper, more acidic, but much calmer-like the land and the sea had once been at war and now the sea had won. All its rage was spent and it just lay there now smugly vanquishing it’s foe in the bright sunshine.

She had rowed for most of the last seven hours and she was desperate to make land fall but she was waiting for at least semi darkness. Drifting with the tide, watching the shore. She had seen no one. The village, the crumbling remnants she could see from the shore, looked deserted. Still you could never be too careful.

She had seen nobody, even in France there had only been the one contract. What used to be France, she corrected herself. No point in clinging to the old way of seeing the world. She herself lived on what must once have been and still was the continent of Africa. It was just a much smaller continent and really the structure of countries had broken down although Africa at least still had people. France it seemed, probably didn’t. She really didn’t know what she would find in England.

Technically she was rowing on water where Essex probably once was. There were still people here when she’d left, that was not 10 years ago. The long journey across to the mainland of Europe, down through an abandoned France, on through a revolutionary Italy that was still clinging on as the ice came further and further south. And in front of the ice came the people, and as the sea rose there came more people and they were all looking for somewhere else to be. There were rumours about Africa, how it was surviving. Flourishing. She had nothing. No one left, at least not by the time she reached the shores of Italy. She climbed in a boat, not much bigger than this one with a dozen others and left.

The sky was darkening now. She wanted to land before nightfall but as the light was fading. Her arms ached. She was too tired for a fight, she knew that. How would it feel hopping off that boat onto English soil again? Would she suddenly feel at home or would she feel nothing? She let the waves carry her closer and then she grounded on the pebbles. She leapt out and dragged the little boat forward. She was out of the water on the dry shore before she’d even thought about it. She felt nothing. Just cold.
Looks like England, smells like England, must be England. Off in the distance she could see a tree against the sky. She’d seen them a bit as she drifted down the coast-eucalypts-they didn’t belong here but since the climate had changed she guessed they’d made it home. The one on the skyline was stripped of its leaves, she had heard somewhere far away that the locals in Britain did this. It looked odd, the tree would die now. The weather here was colld compared to the heat where she had come from. Further north it was just ice, she knew that. She would have liked to see where the two met and watch the jagged edge of winter butt the mild weather of the south. She had always liked England though it had not always been her home.

Home. It was a concept she had abandoned. She dragged the boat up to some bushes just above the shore. There was no one around and something told her there hadn’t been for awhile. She hid the boat but wasn’t overly careful. Nothing had walked on that shingle for awhile. She looked at her own footsteps and thought of erasing them. Five extra minutes and no one would tell she’d been there. She decided to do it, cover her tracks and risk entering the town in near darkness.

She grabbed her pack and walked up what had once been the path to the village. It had the remnants of a wall. She could remember when the coastal towns had decided to build walls, when the sea had got to close and they had taken matters into their own hands. She had even helped with one herself. It looked like the sea had crashed through this one at some point but then receded again. That is what people said now, they thought the sea was receding, perhaps abandoned continents would become liveable again. Even here now after all these years you could still see the plastic, the litter everywhere. She had even seen it rowing far out to sea. It was inescapable. And whatever else was liveable, the rubbish would still be there, underneath the ice flow forever.

She walked for a bit and saw no one. This bit of town was obviously deserted. It looked as good a place as any to spend the night. She pushed on a door and it gave way beneath her hands. She sort of jammed it shut behind her. She looked around. Nothing sinister seemed to be living here. There wasn’t the smell of animal droppings or anything dead. She almost wanted to call out hello but stopped herself. She would find a place upstairs. The stairs were rickety but held. She found what was probably a bedroom with some carpet still left on the floor. It was nearly dark now. She would have liked the warmth of the fire but decided against it. She ate some of the bread she had brought. She had other rations in the boat but it would be better if she could find some food here. She took a swig of water. Fresh water would be good too.

She took the sleeping bag out of her pack, and laid down it. Her muscles ached from rowing. She slept until the daylight awoke her.

She smelled from several days of not washing, but she had grown used to it. She thought perhaps of a swim in the sea but it was a risk. On the other hand who was likely to be around versus who knows what lives in that sea. She packed up her stuff and went and stood at the door, back to the beach or on into town. It was only just light. She headed for the beach. The water was freezing but refreshing and she wished she done it last night so she could hunker down in the bag and stay warm. She sat on the beach to dry herself for a bit, munched on the bread, dressed herself and headed off.

She had no desire to meet or see anyone except the person she had come to see. It was about 15 minutes of walking before she saw any sign of life, even then she smelled it before she saw it. Human faeces, someone lived here. It was still early but she suspected here like everywhere else they would make the most of daylight. What would she say if she saw someone? She suspected there were never travellers here, really she wanted to observe for a bit without being seen. The whole place was flat though and there were no trees. She would need to observe from a house. She skirted around the faeces and headed further towards the centre of town.

The place she was really headed for was through the centre and out the other side. Finally she thought she could hear the sounds of a lot of people. She thought perhaps there was a market ahead somewhere. She walked into a backyard, another house, empty. She went upstairs and sat looking out the window. She saw nothing. She moved on for a few houses and did the same thing again. She thought now she knew the direction of the noise. She wanted to skirt it but also to see it. That was unnecessary but she had not seen another human for a few days and who knew who she was going to meet.

She went oncarefully. She leapt a fence and hid when she heard someone actually coming her way. She wondered if she’d been seen from a window but nothing. She came across a small child alone in a back yard at one point. She made eye contact. Held its gaze for a few seconds. It had run away. It had run inside, evidently not too scared. N o one had come to see what it had seen.

Finally she found a house that overlooked what was a market. It was in the distance to some degree. The houses around the centre had been reduced to rubble and the market stall holders used the walls as part of their cover. She sat down. It was bigger than she expected. It was midday maybe by now she thought. She wanted to watch, just for a bit, see how England was really faring. She would be better to travel in early evening anyway.

It was about 4pm when she realised the signal was getting closer to the market. The machine was beeping at her. She was stunned, could it be coming to find her. Then she saw it in the market. It’s hard to know what gave it away, a slightly odd mechanical inflexibility in its movement. She could tell from a distance what it was, when she suspected even up close others couldn’t. She saw it talking to the stall holder on the far side. The stall holder obviously knew what it was because she refused to serve it and sent it away. It looked crest fallen. It was definitely transmitting. It tried again further along with the same reaction and she saw it slip between the stalls and away.

The transmission showed it sat there hiding and then about half an hour later it tried again at another stall. She saw a light come on and the stall holder talking and then it handed over the thing it was holding with the light,  grabbed the bread and ran. The stall holder shook his head and she was guessing he was angry but the machine had taken the bread and gone. That was a reckless thing for a machine to do and she was sure that was against its programming.

Nonetheless the deed was done and the machine was gone. Now that she’d seen it she wasn’t so worried. If the person who’d sent for her was any kind of threat, they would have appeared at the market themselves she reasoned. She wondered who it was that had sent the machine to get food. Perhaps it was injured. Most likely it was. She hadn’t prepared herself for that. She had prepared herself for a fight, she had not thought she might have to finish off someone who was injured. There was never a pleasant side to these jobs.

She hunkered down under the window. It was getting darker. She would wait until the last vestiges of light were gone and then travel by night. Through the square and on out the back. She would find somewhere out the other side to spend the night and then track it into the morning. She didn’t mind so much going back through the village on her way out. She could run. She was fit. She could even fight if she had to. But kill an injured person in cold blood. Much harder. She wouldn’t sleep well.