How It Ends: Part 1 - The Evaluation (8 page)

Even as Sidney reached out his hand and
grasped Mrs. Carroway’s outstretched arthritic one, he found it
vaguely disconcerting that the robot had lied. Was it even possible
for a robot to do so? Wasn’t it in the programming that they could
not lie? Were robots programmed to lie when the situation warranted
it? He made a mental note to research this point later that
evening.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Carroway.”

“Thank you.”

Anita shook her hand silently.

Dr. Kilgore’s face adopted a concerned and
supportive expression. How empathetic the robot looked. It
portrayed the emotion better than most humans.

“Mrs. Carroway,” said Kilgore, “I realize
how difficult a day today will be for you and your husband. I can
be with you the entire time, if you would like.”

Mrs. Carroway simply nodded. The robot
continued.

“As I stated a moment ago, Dr. Hermann is
observing today. The answer to the next question I will ask you is
completely within your control, and we will not be offended by your
response. Would it be possible if Dr. Hermann and Miss Lory
observed us this afternoon? I can assure you that they would remain
completely in the background, would not intrude in any way. They
would be willing to depart at any time if you were to decide later
that you wished for greater privacy.”

Dr. Kilgore’s eloquence moved Sidney. He
made a second mental note. Explore the depth of the emotive
response protocols programmed in this particular model. Go back to
the schematics.

Mrs. Carroway gave Sidney and Anita a rather
dark look. Her deeply sunken eyes blazed at him. The fire faded and
she closed them heavily. She nodded her approval.
She’s too
tired to fight anymore,
thought Sidney.

* * *

Kilgore ushered them into a private room.
The usual medical equipment stood in corners, mounted to the walls.
There were the obligatory attempts to make the room cozier than it
was. A happy blurry watercolor on one wall. A vase of fake fabric
flowers on the nightstand. Underneath were the sharp antiseptic
smells and above were the fuzzy buzzing fluorescents.

In the center of the room was the big roller
bed. It had the many controls required for a hospital bed.
Occupying the bed was an emaciated old man with hard gray stubble
on his gaunt ashen cheeks. Tubes ran in and out of his arm and his
nose and his neck. The big catheter bag hung below the bed yellow
and heavy.

Mrs. Carroway went to her husband and
stroked his head gently. His eyes fluttered open. His mouth moved
gently. There was no sound.

Dr. Kilgore moved forward and stood next to
Mrs. Carroway. Sidney and Anita took a spot in a shadowed corner.
They were as out of sight as they could make themselves.

Dr. Kilgore’s smooth voice addressed the
Carroways.

“Are you both ready?”

Mr. Carroway mouthed the word yes. Mrs.
Carroway only nodded. Silent tears ran down her cheek.

Dr. Kilgore moved to the IV side of the bed.
From the folds of his coat it pulled a needle full of a pale yellow
fluid.

“Gregory, once I inject this, you will start
to feel sleepy. Very shortly you will fall asleep. Once asleep, I
will give you a second shot that will cause your heart to cease to
beat. It is all very calm and painless. Do you understand?”

Mr. Carroway managed a labored nod.

“Let me please ask you once more, are you
certain this is your final decision?”

The old man nodded again. He looked at his
wife, who also nodded.

“Do you require any last time together,
alone?”

“No,” answered Mrs. Carroway. “We’ve said
our good-byes.”

“Very well.”

With that, the robot took the needle and
injected it slowly into the IV. Mr. Carroway looked deep into his
wife’s eyes. Mrs. Carroway returned his look. “I love you,” she
said. I love you, mouthed her husband.

Sidney had never seen a human die before.
Not in his presence.
This is truly an act of kindness
, he
thought.
The old man is at the end of his life. At least he
could take control of his death. Die with a measure of dignity.
Sidney thought he might be sick.

Anita made notes as fast as she could
write.

Kilgore stood motionless next to the bed
waiting for the flat line. Its holographic face was a look of
sorrow.
But it didn’t actually feel that emotion
, thought
Sidney. How can it offer such compassion without feelings?

Anita scribbled maddeningly. The pencil
scratched across the paper. A foreign noise in the room. It carried
more than Sidney would have liked. He looked at Kilgore. Kilgore
had turned his head and was looking at Sidney. Sidney couldn’t read
the expression. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand
up.

Then came the final flat line.

* * *

Sidney was bent over his computer screen
with weary eyes and sad heart. His back ached. Hunched over his
computer typing his notes with his fingers pounding on undersized
keys. He had sent Anita home earlier. Home or wherever she wished
to go. He had an odd feeling that she was with Brian. There was
nothing for her to do now other than type up her notes. She’d need
her own computer. He typed his impressions of the day. There was
not enough space in here for both of them. The space he worked in
was tiny. A small nook in the back of the nurses’ station. It was
the only place in the ward where he could both get a communications
connection out and close the door. He clacked away on his computer,
cursing occasionally at his thick fingers and narrow keys.

He checked his watch. After seven.

He stopped typing. His fingers froze. They
didn’t hurt but he couldn’t move them. His head dropped into his
hands. His eye s were wet with tears.
What have we come to? What
have we come to?
He watched a robot end the life of a
terminally ill man. Death shiny and metal and meticulously dressed.
Death without conscience. Death without guilt. Death without
emotion. These were laid on top of him. These things that Kilgore
could not feel he felt. Empathy was not the right word. What was?
He was the only one that felt it. Kilgore did not. Mrs. Carroway
had her own grief to comfort her. Anita was too fascinated to feel
death. Too giddy with her position of assistant to feel beyond her
giddiness. Who was left to feel for the dead? Here in the corner is
a man uncluttered. Here is a man with a cup of emotion only half
full. He is the one to carry this burden. Someone must and everyone
is accounted for. Except him.

Sidney held his head in his hands. He
sobbed.

* * *

Sidney was in the middle of cataloguing Mr.
Carroway’s symptoms. He had wiped his eyes and blown his nose. He
was back to work.

A sharp knock rapped against the closed
door. It startled him.

“Yes,” he called.

The door swung open and framed the finely
dressed steel body of Dr. Kilgore.

Fight or flight.

Why is that in my head?
Sidney
thought. Something about Kilgore standing between him and the only
way out of the office caused his heart to beat faster.
Calm
down. It’s a robot. Nothing more. It has no feelings to hurt. It
has no emotive processor. It’s just a machine
.

“Dr. Kilgore,” he said. “What can I do for
you?”

The robot floated into the room. The
spectral image of death. The door swung shut. An automatic hinge.
Snick. Sweat broke out on Sidney’s brow.

“Do I make you nervous, Dr. Hermann?” asked
the robot.

Why did it ask me that? How can it know
that?
He began to sweat under his arms.

“Excuse me?”

“Do I make you nervous?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because your heart rate increased when you
saw me standing in the doorway. You began to perspire when the door
swung shut behind me. Upon asking you about your level of comfort
when in my presence your body temperature increased and your
perspiration output increased.”

Somehow I keep forgetting it’s a machine
designed to diagnose
, thought Sidney.

“Truth be told, Dr. Kilgore, you startled me
somewhat by knocking. I was deep into my computer. I’m taking down
notes.”

“For your analysis of me.”

That was not a question
.

“Yes,” he said.

“Perfectly understandable, Dr. Hermann. I
have witnessed humans in various stages of sudden fright. To be
honest, I find it a fascinating field of study. You may be
surprised to learn that I have a deep knowledge of horror movies,
which I also find fascinating as a phenomenon. The idea that humans
would willingly scare themselves in this manner is intriguing.”

Horror movies
? thought Sidney.
You
mean the kind where you’re trapped in the house alone with a killer
and there’s no way out?
And let’s be honest, sanctioned or not,
Kilgore was a killer.

Something else struck him.

“Can you really be fascinated?”

“To an extent. I have certain programming
embedded in my learning center that allows me to be curious. This
artificial curiosity compels me to observe, research, and conclude.
It is part of the constructed ability to learn.”

Sidney had taken up his pad and had begun
scribbling down notes. He forced himself to set aside his
misgivings over being alone in a room with the robot. Time to
compartmentalize.

“What other things have you been curious
about that have led to deductively reasoned conclusions?”

“I would be happy to sit and give you a more
extensive catalogue of my experiences at a different time. For now,
however, I am concerned about your response to me when I entered
the room.”

“You startled me. I thought we established
that.”

“Then why has your fear grown? Specifically
after I entered and the door shut behind me?”

How do I approach this?
thought
Sidney.
Perhaps the direct approach
.

“The truth, Dr. Kilgore?”

“Please.”

“I am nervous being in this room with
you.”

“Why?”

The robot’s voice was the same low soft tone
it had used since Sidney met him. He knew it was meant to convey a
type of comfort but he found it almost patronizing. That really
couldn’t be, could it? This machine was not able to summon the
emotion to be patronizing. Unless it had been programmed to do so.
He felt that was unlikely, knowing what he did about this model’s
engineering.

“Dr. Kilgore, during the procedure I had the
sense that you were, well, angry. Or at the least irritated. To be
honest, being trapped in a room with a robot that’s upset with me
is not what I would describe as a stress-free event.”

“You know I lack the capability for anger. I
cannot become angry. I cannot be angry. I cannot truly understand
what anger is beyond a technical definition.”

Sidney nodded.

“I know these things. However, one of the
things you need to understand about humans is that, even when we
know something to be true, there is another part of us that may
question this knowledge. Such questioning can often lead to fears.
And fear, rational or not, is extremely powerful.”

“This is an interesting concept. Is this
what people mean when they refer to a gut feeling?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“And your gut feeling about me when I
entered the room and closed the door was to become frightened?”

Sidney swallowed. He didn’t like this line
of questioning. He had trapped himself in it. He wondered how far
the robot would pursue it.

“Yes, Dr. Kilgore, it was.”

The robot said nothing. Its artificial face
stared at him seated while he waited for a response. A single bead
of sweat formed slowly at the base of his hairline. Right at the
ridge of his right temple. It gathered weight and trickled down his
cheek. He tried to hide it but he felt that the robot’s holographic
eyes may have spotted it and followed it as it rolled down the side
of his face. It made him more nervous.

“Dr. Hermann, I have no wish to make you
uncomfortable. In fact, any deliberate attempt to do so would cause
an immediate shutdown of my power system. Therefore, I will open
the door and leave you to your work.”

The robot twisted the doorknob in his gloved
metallic hand. It swung open silently. Sidney blessed the wave of
cool air that washed into the room and over him. The robot hovered
out the door.

“Dr. Kilgore?”

“Yes, Dr. Hermann?”

“I appreciate your understanding.”

The robot shook its head. Another programmed
response. And this one was a reaction to a statement the robot
obviously found false. How amazingly complex.

“I do not understand as you suggest it,” it
said. “This is an emotional response that is based in compassion
and empathy. I have neither of these qualities. I go merely to
relieve you of my presence. Since I make you uncomfortable I am
concerned that my behavioral inhibiting programming could trigger
and shut me down.”

With that it left without looking back.

Sidney watched Kilgore go. His heart beat
even faster than when the robot was in the room. He may have just
witnessed the first step in artificial intelligence evolution. A
being programmed without emotions but with the concept of
self-preservation.
Did the robot just act in order to save
itself?

Three weeks to complete the collation of
notes and data and technical descriptions and other analysis. Two
more weeks to research additional items in library texts. Four
weeks worth of writing. Another two days to format the report. Then
submit to Denlas-Kaptek for their review.

Sidney had met with Anita several times over
the course of the week while they worked through the meat of the
report, shaping the raw data into something usable, something
readable. She spent weeks buried in the library stacks cultivating
material for the report. They huddled into his smallish office and
spread their papers out along his desk and on the floor. They hung
schematics on the walls with tape. The door was always closed. When
he left for the day he locked the office door and double-checked
that he had actually locked it.