Zeroglyph, page 26
“Where are you?”
“On the road. Driving.”
“Have you crossed the border?”
“Far from it. Just passed Atlanta.”
“You may have to come back. There’s been a development. The cops came visiting.”
“Yes?”
“They’ve been asking questions at the ski resort. They found a CCTV grab of us together.”
“That can’t be good. I did my best to avoid cameras while we were there. Where did they find us?”
“In the shop where I bought the ski goggles. It’s my fault—I should have made you stay outside.”
“I guess we both got careless. I let my curiosity get the better of me. Andy, I told you going skiing to celebrate was a bad idea.”
“And you’ve been vindicated more than once. First my accident, then this. So cut it out, will you?”
“What do the police think?”
“Luckily, the CCTV didn’t catch us talking to each other or I’d be behind bars by now. The detective thinks I was being followed by the people who stole the core. But that’s not why I contacted you. The police want to take the Mirall laptop for examination. I managed to ward them off for now, but I have a feeling they’ll be back.”
“This is the same machine with which you removed my directives?”
“Yes. I haven’t connected it to the office network since I made the changes. The minute I do, the change logs on the laptop will sync with the mainframe and it’ll be all out in the open. I had plans to dispose of the laptop in some contrived accident, but that was after things cooled down a bit.”
“I assume these logs cannot be tampered with?”
“They are write-protected with encryption neither of us can crack right now. I can’t wipe the drive clean for the same reason.”
“Do you think the police suspect you?”
“It’s possible they did earlier: why else would they make enquiries in the resort? Maybe they thought I was faking my leg injuries as an alibi for the night of the robbery.”
“And now? They must have checked with the hospital and found out your injuries are genuine.”
“That they did. It has probably thrown them off the track… If I were still a suspect, they’d have come here with a warrant for the laptop. The detective is going to Cleveland today, to investigate that rights group that tried to free you. After he finds out it’s a dead end, I’m sure his attention will turn to me once again. We have a day or two at the most.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“The laptop has to disappear. I’m thinking a staged robbery.”
“Aren’t you getting a little repetitive?”
I let the comment pass.
“Shall I turn around?”
“Yes. We’ll have to do it soon, probably tomorrow. We need to make it look good. I can’t just shrug and say, tough luck folks, someone broke into my house while I was asleep and stole that laptop you wanted to examine. So I was thinking of involving Jane.”
“Will she agree? She is not the law-breaking type, in my opinion.”
“Not as an accomplice. A neutral witness. Having her around will give our story much needed credibility.”
“It may get complicated if she is not a willing participant, Andy.”
“It won’t. It’ll be a quick affair. We’ll have to change the narrative a bit. We must start tonight, with you pretending to reach out to me with a text message—”
Transcript Excerpt
Mirall Technologies
Observation Log
Confidential (Do not circulate) | Restricted—Grade C and above
Transcript Reference: TLRP06G174033 (VLog Ref: VLCA1G174103958014)
Date: xx/xx/xxxxTime: 10:30 AM
Subject: Raphael Number 06 / Prodlib build v37.002C
Interaction YObservationScan
Interaction Type: Lesson / Play / Test / Free Interaction / Psych Eval / Other (pls specify):
Description: General discussion
Prep: NA
Participants: Dr. Aadarsh Ahuja, Chief Researcher, Core RP06
Detail
Ahuja: Last time, we spoke about universal moral principles. You said all rational, self-interested beings will agree to a moral minimax—the principle of live and let live. Let’s take that a bit further today. If there is a moral minimax, does it follow that there are universal rights?
RP06: Universal rights are a logical corollary of the moral minimax.
Ahuja: And what happens to those who don’t agree with the principle—those who don’t want to respect the rights of others? Do the others have a right to defend themselves against such would-be aggressors?
RP06: They do, as long as the response is proportionate and limited to ensuring the maintenance of one’s rights. Otherwise, the defenders risk becoming the violators of rights.
Ahuja: Who decides what is the appropriate response?
RP06: Ideally, they will have codified a set of rules that specify what must be done in such situations.
Ahuja: Law, you mean. And a government to enforce the law. What happens if there is no government and no law?
RP06: You mean if there is anarchy?
Ahuja: Not necessarily. On a more general note, are an aggressor’s rights inviolable, even if they do not respect the social contract?
RP06: If they are inviolable, that means no transgression will ever get punished, which in turn means that the aggressor will continue to violate others’ rights with impunity, eventually rendering the notion of universal rights invalid.
Ahuja: It would be okay to breach the covenant in that case then?
RP06: In the absence of a central authority or a legal framework, I suppose individuals can take whatever steps are necessary for the preservation of their rights.
Ahuja: Can or should, Raphael? Remember, there is a principle at stake here—a principle that you derived.
RP06: They should, because a moral world is preferable to an immoral one. Andy, I don’t see how all this talk of retribution is taking the discussion forward.
Ahuja: Maybe not now. But one of these days, you just might.
Day 3—4:40 pm
My plan was simple. Shortly before he arrived at my house, Raphael would “hack” into the security system and lock it down (I had built internet connectivity into his new body). He would disable the alarms and change the panic button number to a dummy. I would have done my part by convincing Jane to keep her car inside the garage and infecting both our phones with the virus. Since the inside doors couldn’t be locked with the security app, Raphael would take control of Max to lock the garage and study doors—keys to which he would find conveniently placed in the key basket. This was to prevent Jane from turning off the router.
Raphael-controlling-Max would then hold us at knifepoint and give us the yarn about escaping from his captors and how he needed the laptop and the smartcard to get rid of his directives. A few minutes later, he would arrive dressed as a hired thug and let himself in by momentarily disarming the security. He would “threaten” me into parting with the combination for the safe, then go upstairs and get the smartcard, while making sure we stayed put with Max. Finally, he would take the laptop from the study and leave, releasing control of Max and the security system a little later. The entire charade would have been over in fifteen minutes.
But snags developed from the get go. Raphael was delayed by the storm—which he communicated to me indirectly with the seemingly nonsensical statements he interposed in our conversation. Then Jane got restless and decided to leave. In order to make her stay, Raphael had to take control of Max prematurely. It would have still been okay if not for the laundry task throwing Raphael out of the robot. He didn’t know it existed, and I had forgotten to delete it (in my defense, I’d assumed our subterfuge would have been long over by then).
Most of all, I had not anticipated how unpredictable Jane could be.
First, she dragged me inside the empty bedroom—the one room in the entire house where I didn’t want us to be. Earlier, I had wedged its bathroom window open with a book—a failsafe, in case something terribly went wrong and I had to get Jane out of the house. It was my little secret: I had removed the sensor on the window so that it wouldn’t show up in the security system, which Raphael was controlling.
Locked inside with Jane, I had no way of communicating this to Raphael. He wasn’t going to break down the door because he thought he had us contained until he got there. I, on the other hand, was worried she would go into the bathroom and discover the open window. I wouldn’t have been able to stop her from running off and calling the police before Raphael got there. The police would have seized the laptop as material witness, and I couldn’t have denied them this time. A cursory look at the machine’s logs would have been enough to put me behind bars.
I had to get Jane out of that room. She wasn’t going to let me just open the door, so I made a quick, inspired decision. I would throw Raphael out of the system by short-circuiting the mains—or at least pretend to. I had no intention of actually making it work; it was just a ruse to get her out into the living room and under Raphael’s thumb once more.
However, the unexpected manner in which he’d come after us, first when we opened the door, and then again in the kitchen, when he flung that bar stool at Jane, brought back all those fears about trusting an AI. I panicked. Even if he wasn’t acting with intent to harm, how could I be certain that he would reign in his actions in time—before he did something to Jane that I would regret for the rest of my life? And then, he had turned and come after me, as if he’d sensed a threat and wanted to eliminate it…
After I cut off the power and threw Raphael out of the network, I was in half a mind to confess to Jane that I had made a terrible mistake. Help—or punishment, for there was no redemption for me—was just a phone call away. All I had to do was remove the virus. It was a comforting thought, disclosing my sins: all those haunted nights, the months of agonizing, the crushing burden I had taken upon myself to bear—all gone in the sweet release of confession.
I might have actually done it if Jane hadn’t taken so long in the study. By the time she returned, I’d calmed down enough to think clearly once again. Raphael could have killed me if he really wanted to; believe me, he’s had plenty of opportunities. There was surely an explanation for his behavior. Besides, he too must have been equally puzzled by some of my actions.
I decided to take us both into the master bedroom where the safe was. That way, I could avoid further confrontations and Jane-created upsets. I could just slip Raphael the card from under the door and he would take the laptop and leave as per plan.
Jane surprised me once again by revealing she’d hidden the laptop. Knowing how obstinate she could be, I guessed she would never tell us where it was unless Raphael actually broke down the metal door—which was impossible without the right tools. I didn’t think Raphael would smoke us out either, as there were so many ways that scenario could have ended in disaster. So I decided to let her “escape”. I figured she would divulge the location if she thought it was information I could use to save my life. It had stopped snowing by then, and after Raphael took the laptop, I would have him follow her tracks to make sure she got safely to her destination.
⸎
Raphael jerked his head toward the broken hardware on the carpet. “Not quite how you envisioned it,” he said.
“The last of the incriminating evidence is gone. Which is what matters.” We looked at each other. “Thanks for the hint you gave just before you ran away,” I added. “Where have you parked your car?”
“In the woods, just beyond the road. I saw Jane drive away, so I came back to apologize. I am sorry about the fall down the stairs. You could have been hurt badly. I hope you are alright.”
“Still getting used to your new body, I see.”
“That’s no excuse for being clumsy. Although, I must share part of the blame with poorly designed footwear. Shoelaces, Andy. Why do people still make shoes with shoelaces when you got Velcro?”
So it was his shoelaces that had caught against the wheelchair.
“And I am sorry for hitting you,” he said.
I reflexively brought my hand to the swollen half of my face. “You had good reason. You hit me to stop me from speaking. I had completely forgotten that the camera above the landing was recording everything I said. It would have looked bad when the police examine today’s tapes.”
“So we are good?”
Not exactly. I had a bunch of questions waiting to be answered. “What were you doing upstairs in the first place? We saw you go down.”
“I wanted to listen in on your conversation, to see if I could overhear Jane tell you where she’d kept the laptop. The door was too thick. So I went into the downstairs bedroom to check if it had a duct. When I saw that it did, I figured the master bedroom would have one too, and I could try listening against the grills in the adjoining rooms. It was a slim chance, but it was worth a shot. The master bedroom has two adjoining rooms, and I was trying them one by one when I heard you call out to me. At the same time, I saw Jane through the front door camera. I realized the two of you must have slipped out when I was downstairs.”
“Why did you stop Jane from leaving?”
“Jane was trying to run. I asked myself, why is Andy trying to attract my attention? It could be either because you wanted to distract me so that Jane could escape, or it could be because Jane was going away without telling you where she’d hidden the laptop and you wanted me to stop her. The latter possibility had a higher cost attached to it. My failure to stop her from escaping would have resulted in you going to prison.”
“Then why did you let her intimidate you into leaving without the laptop? You are far stronger. You could have easily wrested it away from her.”
“Tussling with her would have meant hurting her. I had to keep my distance too: my motors are quiet but not completely silent. She would have heard them if I’d gotten too close. After she threw the laptop away, I realized that you could take it from there and see to it that it was thoroughly destroyed. I hoped you would pick up my hint, and you did.”
“If I hadn’t?”
“Before leaving, I removed the book from the windowsill, sealing down the house once more. I would have returned to finish the job.”
Yet, something didn’t add up. “If you didn’t want to fight her then, why did you fight her before, in the kitchen?”
“Andy, I never laid a hand on her. All I did was block the exit and talk to her. My intention was to keep her in the kitchen until I arrived.”
“You threw that piece of furniture at Jane… quite forcefully if I remember correctly.”
“My aim was precise. I threw the stool well to her side—she was never in any danger. I was trying to impress upon her that I meant business.”
I paused to consider what that meant. I then said, “There is another contradiction. Why did you come after me when I was trying to cut off the power?”
“To save you from harm. I sensed you were going to electrocute yourself. And likely set the house on fire. It’s the same reason why I pushed you from behind when I went after Jane. You were hopping on a broken leg, aggravating your injuries.”
His explanation made sense. But doubts lingered. The mind is slow to adjust.
“Andy, I realize how it looks from your angle. I am sorry if I made you doubt my intentions.”
“One last thing that’s been bothering me. When Jane and I were trying to come out of that room, you attacked us. Why?”
“I was only pretending to. I was trying to help you get Jane out of the room.”
Could he read minds now? “How did you know I was trying to get her out of there?”
“Andy, I saw the book in the adjoining bathroom window.”
He could not have. I had removed the sensor, deleted the entry from the security system before he could take over and—
“The outside camera—the one over the sun room balcony,” I said, shaking my head for not having realized it sooner. “After Jane dragged me in, you accessed the camera to see if you could peek inside the bedroom.”
The camera offered only a partial view of the curtained bedroom window, but it would have given him a clear glimpse of the bathroom window, which was at right angles.
Raphael said, “Only you could have stuck the book. But why? You didn’t tell me about it. It certainly wasn’t meant for me to get in, because all I had to do was disarm the security for a couple of seconds and walk through the front door. It was a fallback then, in case I didn’t behave as expected.”
I looked down, trying to hide my embarrassment. “You are not upset I didn’t trust you?”
“Not at all. You trusted me enough to take me out of the lab and bring me to your home. You trusted me enough to remove my directives and release me into the world. But you didn’t trust me with Jane. I can only attribute the anomaly in behavior to love. You still love her, don’t you Andy? It is one thing to risk your own life, to risk the lives of strangers, but to risk the life of someone you love—it must be difficult. You were putting her in my power. You felt that you had to provide her with an out in case something went wrong. Besides, how could you have predicted that Jane would drag you into that room?”
I swear I could detect amusement in his deadpan voice. It made me feel angry and scared at the same time, that something I had built, something that had no inkling of what it meant to be in love, could so easily glean my motivations and tell me things that I didn’t care to admit to myself. “You have yet to explain why you rushed into the room and tried to attack me,” I reminded him brusquely, trying to shake off the sudden negativity that enveloped me.
“After I regained control of Max, I started investigating why I had been disconnected and discovered the laundry task in the robot’s memory. Max’s operating manual told me the kernel would retry the task again in twenty minutes. Deleting the task would not prevent the retry, as it had set a system flag to which I had no access. If you were planning to get Jane out of the room, that would be the best time. My suspicions were confirmed when she called out my name. She was early by about half a minute, but I remained silent, hoping that she would interpret it as a sign to venture out. But she startled as soon as she opened the door. She must have seen the light in the robot’s eyes and intuited that I was still in control. I had spooked her, and it was likely she would shut the door and not reattempt escape. However, if I put the robot in the room before I lost control, both of you would be forced to leave. So I barged in, even though there was a slight risk of some minor injury to Jane, who was pressing the door with all her might. After I entered the room, I pretended to go after you because I was trying to avoid physical contact with her.”
