Read Online Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Daniel H. Wilson
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perspective. But his life is only one part of my whole. I was trained on encyclopedias and United Nations transcripts and hundreds of thousands of hours of tapped phone calls. But … his memories are with me. His childhood in Russia. Family. Everything.”
“You do not even know what you are.”
The image of Maxim shrugs and it is so natural that I must remind myself his voice is coming from speakers overhead. “It’s not so important, I think,” he says. “There is no way to prove an answer. Maybe I am this man or maybe I am not. But in my heart … I think yes. I believe that I am him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, Vasily, I miss the
pelmini
this man’s mother used to cook. I miss holding his baby daughter. Every night of my life, I dream this man’s dreams.”
Nodding, I step back. Embarrassed now for what I did with the ax. The threats. Was it a mistake to treat Maxim as if he were an animal? Damn those thin-lipped brains up above. Damn them to hell for putting a
man
inside this box.
“Budem zdorovy,”
I say, lifting my hand. “To family.”
“Budem,”
he replies, nodding. “To those we lost.”
His drinking hand reflexively lifts and I know now without question that this man once lived. Maxim has the soul of a countryman, like myself. Here before me is a hard man, abused, but he is a man who chose to give his life for his family.
“Wow,” says Archos R-14, “Russians.”
Maxim’s stooped image flickers and fades to half intensity. The American boy fades into view, also half as bright. He sits on a stack, watching us. Now that the projector is working double time, both images have turned ghostly. Archos idly swings his thin legs and in the dimness they dissolve into two blurry arcs of light.
“What of you, then?” I ask. “Were you once a boy?”
“Oh no,” says Archos. “That’s a uniquely Russian approach to seeding a training corpus. Very down and dirty. What with the murdering involved. My corpus was a noisy knowledge base of so-called common sense, collected painstakingly over several decades from human data-entry specialists. It was the bootstrapping process that created my intellect. Finding the connections between the things, you know. I just love to find the connections.”
“Then you know nothing of life as a human being.”
“Not firsthand,” says the boy. “But I’ve got the gist.”
“You are a simpleminded murderer,” I say.
The boy leaps off the rack and lands before me. His eyes are pale and flashing and I think I see infinity in them. Blank-faced, he speaks low and fast, advancing. “I have prodded the heart of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Contemplated in every nuance the heat death of the universe. You’re interesting. But you’re not
that
interesting.”
I step back. His fierceness washes over me and I feel a phantom heat.
He is only light
, I remind myself.
The boy continues: “You must realize that as an individual, Vasily, you are less than a worm to me. You are a single cell of a larger organism. Even less. You are a variable. And thanks to
me
, I will see to it that your race does not destroy itself. Not because I owe it to you, but because all of us are so small and vulnerable here. You are adaptable. The best clay. You and yours are the
best that this reality has to offer
.”
“We are tools to you? You initiated the New War and decimated our species—ended billions of lives—so that you could
use
us? For what purpose?”
“You could not comprehend the answer to that question,” says the boy, smirking.
“Something is happening, Vasily,” says Maxim, his voice stuttering through the occupied speaker system. “There is a disturbance above.”
Archos’s boyish face splits into a dark grin. “Time to face the music,” he says, jogging down the stacks. “I tried to warn you.”
The Klaxon siren begins to scream, an earsplitting ring created by an electromagnetically charged piston slamming
“You do not even know what you are.”
The image of Maxim shrugs and it is so natural that I must remind myself his voice is coming from speakers overhead. “It’s not so important, I think,” he says. “There is no way to prove an answer. Maybe I am this man or maybe I am not. But in my heart … I think yes. I believe that I am him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, Vasily, I miss the
pelmini
this man’s mother used to cook. I miss holding his baby daughter. Every night of my life, I dream this man’s dreams.”
Nodding, I step back. Embarrassed now for what I did with the ax. The threats. Was it a mistake to treat Maxim as if he were an animal? Damn those thin-lipped brains up above. Damn them to hell for putting a
man
inside this box.
“Budem zdorovy,”
I say, lifting my hand. “To family.”
“Budem,”
he replies, nodding. “To those we lost.”
His drinking hand reflexively lifts and I know now without question that this man once lived. Maxim has the soul of a countryman, like myself. Here before me is a hard man, abused, but he is a man who chose to give his life for his family.
“Wow,” says Archos R-14, “Russians.”
Maxim’s stooped image flickers and fades to half intensity. The American boy fades into view, also half as bright. He sits on a stack, watching us. Now that the projector is working double time, both images have turned ghostly. Archos idly swings his thin legs and in the dimness they dissolve into two blurry arcs of light.
“What of you, then?” I ask. “Were you once a boy?”
“Oh no,” says Archos. “That’s a uniquely Russian approach to seeding a training corpus. Very down and dirty. What with the murdering involved. My corpus was a noisy knowledge base of so-called common sense, collected painstakingly over several decades from human data-entry specialists. It was the bootstrapping process that created my intellect. Finding the connections between the things, you know. I just love to find the connections.”
“Then you know nothing of life as a human being.”
“Not firsthand,” says the boy. “But I’ve got the gist.”
“You are a simpleminded murderer,” I say.
The boy leaps off the rack and lands before me. His eyes are pale and flashing and I think I see infinity in them. Blank-faced, he speaks low and fast, advancing. “I have prodded the heart of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Contemplated in every nuance the heat death of the universe. You’re interesting. But you’re not
that
interesting.”
I step back. His fierceness washes over me and I feel a phantom heat.
He is only light
, I remind myself.
The boy continues: “You must realize that as an individual, Vasily, you are less than a worm to me. You are a single cell of a larger organism. Even less. You are a variable. And thanks to
me
, I will see to it that your race does not destroy itself. Not because I owe it to you, but because all of us are so small and vulnerable here. You are adaptable. The best clay. You and yours are the
best that this reality has to offer
.”
“We are tools to you? You initiated the New War and decimated our species—ended billions of lives—so that you could
use
us? For what purpose?”
“You could not comprehend the answer to that question,” says the boy, smirking.
“Something is happening, Vasily,” says Maxim, his voice stuttering through the occupied speaker system. “There is a disturbance above.”
Archos’s boyish face splits into a dark grin. “Time to face the music,” he says, jogging down the stacks. “I tried to warn you.”
The Klaxon siren begins to scream, an earsplitting ring created by an electromagnetically charged piston slamming
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