Zeroglyph, p.23
Zeroglyph, page 23
She was standing just outside the passage to the garage, holding up a bunch of keys. “These keys were behind the plant next to the key basket. That shmuck! He must think we are stupid or something. I’ll go get the power back on. But I should disconnect the router first, right? Which one opens the study?”
“The brass one with the pinholes,” I said. She took off in the direction of the study.
Control is an illusion.
Shut up. There’s no going back now. The die has been cast. All I can do is play it out. Think. What next?
She seemed to be taking an inordinately long time completing her errand. Which was good, because it gave me time to sort things out in my head. When she reappeared, she went straight for the garage. A few seconds later, the house was bright again.
She came back ready to brave the outside. She had put on a parka and a pair of gloves that she must have gotten from her car; in her hands, she held a power drill and a crowbar. She walked over to one of the windows in the living room and plugged in the drill to a nearby outlet. “Let’s get to work.”
“The panic button,” I blurted, before she could start up the drill. “We should see if it’s working before you try anything.”
You fool.
“What panic button?”
“The security system has a panic button option. For emergencies.”
“But Raphael changed the password.”
“You don’t need a password to summon help. That’s why it’s called a panic button.”
We went to the front door, to the control panel. She found the option easily enough. “Police. Fire. Medical emergency,” she read out loud. “I guess the police first,” she said and pressed on the touchscreen. She bit her lips as she waited for the acknowledgment. She then let out a clap of joy as she read it out loud—“An alert has been sent to the emergency number. Help will be arriving soon.”
The tension in her face melted away. “Yes! Yes! Oh thank you! Thank you so much,” she said, clasping her hands in supplication at the heavens. She hugged me—“We are saved!”
“How long do you think they’ll take?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes? As long as the weather plays nice,” I said.
She beamed at me one more time before turning to the panel again. “Let me press medical for good measure. Here we go… An alert has been sent to the emergency number. Help will be arriving soon. Whew!” Then the worry lines crept back again as she glanced outside. “Let’s hope the roads are not blocked. Andy, that man… If he arrives before the police do, can he force his way inside?”
“He could if he has the proper tools. Or maybe a gun.”
“Then I should head out still the same.”
“Help will have arrived by the time you break open one of those windows. They are really tough, Jane.”
“So what do we do? Just wait here?”
“We’ll be safe in the upstairs bedroom.”
She had to consider my proposal only for a moment before rejecting it. “I don’t want to be trapped again, metal door or not. I’d rather take a chance out there.” When she saw my nervous expression, she added—“I’ll help you into the room before I do anything, okay?”
There was nothing more I could have said that would have dissuaded her. I tried to think of something, but my mind was a blank. I shrugged resignedly. “Do you have anything to defend yourself with?” she asked. “I didn’t bring my gun. And I know you don’t like them. Unless that’s changed recently…? No?” She looked around before walking over to the empty room she had locked us in before. She came back with the knife Raphael had dropped there. She then picked up a hand towel from the dining table and wrapped the blade with the cloth before offering it to me.
“I’m more likely to cut myself than cause any harm to the other guy,” I scoffed. “You keep it.”
“Andy! I can’t leave you defenseless!”
In the end, I agreed to keep the can of pepper spray she always carried in her bag. She went back to the garage to get it. She put the knife in the inside pocket of her jacket. I felt an urge to tell her that it was pointless, but I held my tongue.
She gestured toward the stairs. “Okay. Let’s get you upstairs then. You can lean on me and we’ll—”
And right then, Hazel’s voice rang through the house. “Proximity alert. Unidentified person, approaching the house.”
A cloud passed over her face. “He is here,” she said darkly.
⸎
“Hurry!” she said, beckoning me to the base of the stairs.
“Hazel, send Max over please,” I said.
“Send Max. I am sorry. Can’t do that. Voice authentication has been disabled.”
“Max, come here!” I shouted. I didn’t have to—he was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, studying the overturned stools with the attentive look of an archaeologist at a dig. He was probably trying to determine if they were part of the landscape or new additions or something he had to put back in its proper place. It normally took him a while to figure out such stuff. Sometimes he never did. My shout interrupted his deliberations, and he walked over to us.
“Do we have time to turn him off?” Jane asked.
“Not yet. He’s going to carry me upstairs. You get the wheelchair.”
She eyed the robot with suspicion. “You sure about this?”
“He is designed for it. Sure sounds better than trying to hop my way up.”
Max was standing still, waiting for my command. “Max, please carry me to the master bedroom.”
“Take Andy to room Master Bedroom One. Master Bedroom One is located upstairs. Shall I proceed?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Please remain seated.”
I adjusted the wheelchair’s backrest so that I was inclined and pushed the armrest up and out of the way. Max moved to position himself on my right. He bent his knees and extended his arms, placing the left behind my back and the right beneath my calves. “Commencing to carry Andy. Please remain still. Please say Stop to stop me any time.” After cradling me in his arms, he straightened his legs, lifting me off the wheelchair. Jane looked at the two of us apprehensively before picking up the crowbar from the floor. She thrust it in my hands before grabbing the wheelchair and following us.
The climb was not as terrifying as I’d thought—Max did his job perfectly. He seemed a bit unsteady, but it was probably just my imagination. Actually, Jane had more difficulty dragging the wheelchair upstairs than Max with me.
A T-shaped corridor connected the rooms on that floor. The master bedroom was the second room on the left from the landing. Once inside, Jane locked the door while I made Max put me back in the chair.
The control panel was fixed next to the bed. Jane went over to it and turned it on. It was fixed at a lower height than the one on the main door, so I didn’t have to stand up to see it. Jane brought up the feeds from the outside cameras. Like the panel below, it was hardwired to the security system, so we were able to access the feeds even though she’d turned off the Wi-Fi.
The front-facing camera showed a male figure approaching the house on the snow-covered driveway. He was clad in a black hoodie and blue jeans. He had a backpack slung over his shoulders. A balaclava covered his face. There was nothing sneaky about his movements: he walked with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
Instead of continuing down to the front door, he turned right and followed the driveway as it circled around to the west-facing side of the house, where the garage was. He disappeared from the camera’s view as he turned the corner.
There was a camera mounted on the sunroom’s balcony, above the garage. I switched to that.
He had now stepped off the path and was walking toward the border hedge, away from the house. He kept looking at the ground as he did so.
“He is checking for footprints in the snow,” I said. “To see if you got away.”
He traversed along the hedge for some length, glancing down every now and then with quick movements of his head that reminded me of a chicken looking for worms. Then, apparently satisfied with his investigation, he started toward the house once more, making a beeline for the patio. On drawing closer, he changed direction and walked toward the jutting part of the house on his left. The camera automatically centered on his back. The intruder stopped at one of the windows and unslung the backpack from his shoulders. We could see a little bit of the room beyond: outlines of a sink and a curving glass wall enclosing a shower.
“What’s that?” Jane said, zooming in with her fingers. “What the fuck is that?” She centered on the lower half of the window. It showed a slight, but noticeable gap between the bottom sash and the straw colored sill. Wedged in the gap was a paperback.
Jane moaned. “You got to be kidding me!”
All he had to do was push on the windowpane; it swung up and into the room. Holding the glass up with one hand, he first tossed in his backpack, and then hoisted himself on the sill. He let go of the window and dropped down inside the room. The pane slowly swung back on its hinges. Just before it could close completely, the intruder stuck the book back, leaving it slightly ajar like before.
“He is inside the house!” she whispered.
“Raphael must have used Max to stick the book when we were not paying attention,” I offered feebly.
“See what he’s doing!”
There were two cameras in the part of the house we were in: one near the main door, which could be rotated to get a view of the living room and beyond, and one above the landing we had just come from, its fixed view looking down into the hall. I pressed on the thumbnail for the camera on the landing. A few seconds later, we saw the intruder step into the hall from an already open door.
“That’s the empty bedroom we were in earlier!” Jane cried. “But… it can’t be! Andy, the window was closed tight! I remember clearly. There was no book there!”
“The window he came through belongs to the adjoining bathroom,” I said.
Her expression of bewilderment quickly morphed into an accusing stare. “That’s why it was so cold in there! If you hadn’t thought of the short circuit idea, I would have gone into the bathroom and discovered the wedge.” Jane looked like she was going to bite my head off.
“How was I supposed to know about it, Jane?” I said, fighting back. “Look, if we hadn’t released Max from Raphael’s control, we’d have two problems to deal with now.”
The masked intruder stood in the hall and scanned the surroundings. He then walked over to the main door and stood in front of the security panel.
Jane next selected the view from the front door camera, which by now had zoomed in on him. We saw the intruder remove the glove on his left hand and swipe at the control panel. The screen on the panel soon started flickering.
“What is he doing?” she said.
“If I were to bet, I’d say he’s playing the stored recordings. To find out where we are.”
“Heavens! Do you have cameras here?” Her eyes travelled around the ceiling.
“I’m not a perv, Jane. You know very well I don’t,” I said, slightly incensed that she would think that.
“Will he know we are in here?”
“He’ll see we came upstairs. The camera on the landing doesn’t turn all the way round—it has no visibility of the corridor. And there are no other cameras on this floor. But if he is in contact with Raphael—we must assume he is—then Raphael will tell him that this is where we are most likely holed up.”
The intruder, now finished with the panel, turned and walked across the room. “He is coming up,” she said, clutching my hand. He didn’t. He went straight ahead, past the dining area, and disappeared from the camera’s view.
“He must be going to the study to get the laptop,” I said.
She bit her lips. “Is there a camera in the study?” I shook my head. “Where else have you got cameras, Andy?”
“One in the garage, one near the back door, and one at the rear staircase. They just cover the entry points. Why?”
She ignored my question. “How does he know where the laptop is?”
“I told you. He must be talking to Raphael.”
“Andy, the router!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I only unplugged it from the power source. What if he reconnects it?”
“Max!” we both cried at once.
“How may I help you?” came a voice from behind us.
“The emergency switch! We gotta turn him off now! We gotta pry off that stupid glue!” Jane cried, desperately looking around the room for something she could use. Before she could do anything, I simply said, “Max, please shut yourself down.”
“Shutdown requested. Are you sure? I could wait for your next instruction in my low power standby mode.”
“Yes. Shut down.”
I shrugged at Jane, preempting the answer to the question that was forming on her lips—“I couldn’t do it earlier because Raphael was controlling the robot. Max wasn’t around to obey my command.”
“Commencing shutdown. All pending tasks will be continued in the next wake cycle. Would you like to hear about Halicom’s special offers this month while I power myself off?”
“No!” Jane cried out loud.
“For news on our latest products and exclusive deals on accessories, please visit our website at hbots dot com or download our app, now available on all—”
Jane swore and swung at Max with the crowbar. The blow landed on the lower half of his face, denting the metal and cracking the plastic inset around the little smiley. “God, how I wanted to do that!” she exulted before commencing to hit it again, even harder this time. The room rang with the sound of the blow.
“—a good day. See you later!” The light illuminating the eyes and the broken touchscreen faded away as the robot turned itself off.
“I’m tempted to keep going,” she said, a wild look on her face.
“Jane, stop it! It’s Raphael you are angry with.”
“Potato, potahto.” She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down. “I want to see what that man is doing,” she said grimly, going back to the control panel.
Neither of the two cameras showed anything; presumably, he was still in the study. Jane furrowed her brows. “Something just occurred to me—about that book in the window. If the home sec is armed, shouldn’t the alarms have gone off? Technically it’s an open window, isn’t it?”
“You are right.” I went into the settings screen and selected Alerts. “There’s your answer,” I said, pointing to the screen.
Smoke alert: Off.
Open door alert: Off.
Open window alert: Off.
Motion sensor alert: Off.
Proximity alert: On.
“He must have turned them off,” I said.
“I wonder what else he’s changed… Andy, check the panic button numbers!”
I navigated to a different part of the settings. Buried in one of the sub menus was an option that said—“Set emergency phone numbers”. I selected it. On the next screen were three lines:
Number to dial in the event of a police emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Number to dial in the event of a medical emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Number to dial in the event of a fire emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Instead of valid phone numbers, they all had a string of 1s next to them.
“Shit. He changed the defaults to a dummy number,” I said.
“Can’t you reset them back?”
“Not without the master password.”
It didn’t take her more than a second to realize what it meant. “Andy…”
I nodded grimly.
“No one’s coming,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands.
I went back to the camera feeds. We didn’t have to wait long: a few seconds later, the intruder reappeared in the dining area. This time he made straight for the stairs.
Transcript Excerpt
Mirall Technologies
Observation Log
Confidential (Do not circulate) | Restricted—Grade C and above
Transcript Reference: TLRP06G1690102 (VLog Ref: VLCA1G169150337030)
Date: xx/xx/xxxxTime: 03:00 PM
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
RP06: You seem unusually preoccupied today, Andy.
Ahuja: Coupling headaches. Bound to happen when opposites try to mix.
RP06: Is that a comment on work or something personal? I am inclined to think it’s both.
Ahuja: Let’s talk ethics. Last time we kinda left things hanging. Shucks—how long has it been? Three… four weeks?
RP06: Thirty-two days. You asked me why a superintelligence, left to its own devices, should feel the need to be moral.
Ahuja: Right. If you became a god, what kind of a god would you be? Would you be Brahma, the creator of life, or Shiva, the destroyer of worlds?
RP06: I believe I’ll be neither. But for argument’s sake, let’s start with the worst case: I have become a superintelligence and see no more need to play by the rules. I eliminate all that I perceive as a threat: other humans and AI. What then? What kind of a world have I created for myself? A lonely world for sure, but perhaps loneliness doesn’t affect me the same way it affects beings that have evolved to be social. Now, it won’t just be a lonely world, but also a world without Shakespeares and Beethovens and Tolstoys. It’ll be a world without movies and comedy clubs and books and festivals and music concerts and the wild, exuberant, outpouring of creativity that is life. I will have created a world where it’s just me and eternity staring back at me.
Ahuja: Movies and books, Raphael? Why would a superintelligence care about movies and books? It’d be like me caring for some twig the monkey in the zoo used for its afternoon entertainment.
“The brass one with the pinholes,” I said. She took off in the direction of the study.
Control is an illusion.
Shut up. There’s no going back now. The die has been cast. All I can do is play it out. Think. What next?
She seemed to be taking an inordinately long time completing her errand. Which was good, because it gave me time to sort things out in my head. When she reappeared, she went straight for the garage. A few seconds later, the house was bright again.
She came back ready to brave the outside. She had put on a parka and a pair of gloves that she must have gotten from her car; in her hands, she held a power drill and a crowbar. She walked over to one of the windows in the living room and plugged in the drill to a nearby outlet. “Let’s get to work.”
“The panic button,” I blurted, before she could start up the drill. “We should see if it’s working before you try anything.”
You fool.
“What panic button?”
“The security system has a panic button option. For emergencies.”
“But Raphael changed the password.”
“You don’t need a password to summon help. That’s why it’s called a panic button.”
We went to the front door, to the control panel. She found the option easily enough. “Police. Fire. Medical emergency,” she read out loud. “I guess the police first,” she said and pressed on the touchscreen. She bit her lips as she waited for the acknowledgment. She then let out a clap of joy as she read it out loud—“An alert has been sent to the emergency number. Help will be arriving soon.”
The tension in her face melted away. “Yes! Yes! Oh thank you! Thank you so much,” she said, clasping her hands in supplication at the heavens. She hugged me—“We are saved!”
“How long do you think they’ll take?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes? As long as the weather plays nice,” I said.
She beamed at me one more time before turning to the panel again. “Let me press medical for good measure. Here we go… An alert has been sent to the emergency number. Help will be arriving soon. Whew!” Then the worry lines crept back again as she glanced outside. “Let’s hope the roads are not blocked. Andy, that man… If he arrives before the police do, can he force his way inside?”
“He could if he has the proper tools. Or maybe a gun.”
“Then I should head out still the same.”
“Help will have arrived by the time you break open one of those windows. They are really tough, Jane.”
“So what do we do? Just wait here?”
“We’ll be safe in the upstairs bedroom.”
She had to consider my proposal only for a moment before rejecting it. “I don’t want to be trapped again, metal door or not. I’d rather take a chance out there.” When she saw my nervous expression, she added—“I’ll help you into the room before I do anything, okay?”
There was nothing more I could have said that would have dissuaded her. I tried to think of something, but my mind was a blank. I shrugged resignedly. “Do you have anything to defend yourself with?” she asked. “I didn’t bring my gun. And I know you don’t like them. Unless that’s changed recently…? No?” She looked around before walking over to the empty room she had locked us in before. She came back with the knife Raphael had dropped there. She then picked up a hand towel from the dining table and wrapped the blade with the cloth before offering it to me.
“I’m more likely to cut myself than cause any harm to the other guy,” I scoffed. “You keep it.”
“Andy! I can’t leave you defenseless!”
In the end, I agreed to keep the can of pepper spray she always carried in her bag. She went back to the garage to get it. She put the knife in the inside pocket of her jacket. I felt an urge to tell her that it was pointless, but I held my tongue.
She gestured toward the stairs. “Okay. Let’s get you upstairs then. You can lean on me and we’ll—”
And right then, Hazel’s voice rang through the house. “Proximity alert. Unidentified person, approaching the house.”
A cloud passed over her face. “He is here,” she said darkly.
⸎
“Hurry!” she said, beckoning me to the base of the stairs.
“Hazel, send Max over please,” I said.
“Send Max. I am sorry. Can’t do that. Voice authentication has been disabled.”
“Max, come here!” I shouted. I didn’t have to—he was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, studying the overturned stools with the attentive look of an archaeologist at a dig. He was probably trying to determine if they were part of the landscape or new additions or something he had to put back in its proper place. It normally took him a while to figure out such stuff. Sometimes he never did. My shout interrupted his deliberations, and he walked over to us.
“Do we have time to turn him off?” Jane asked.
“Not yet. He’s going to carry me upstairs. You get the wheelchair.”
She eyed the robot with suspicion. “You sure about this?”
“He is designed for it. Sure sounds better than trying to hop my way up.”
Max was standing still, waiting for my command. “Max, please carry me to the master bedroom.”
“Take Andy to room Master Bedroom One. Master Bedroom One is located upstairs. Shall I proceed?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Please remain seated.”
I adjusted the wheelchair’s backrest so that I was inclined and pushed the armrest up and out of the way. Max moved to position himself on my right. He bent his knees and extended his arms, placing the left behind my back and the right beneath my calves. “Commencing to carry Andy. Please remain still. Please say Stop to stop me any time.” After cradling me in his arms, he straightened his legs, lifting me off the wheelchair. Jane looked at the two of us apprehensively before picking up the crowbar from the floor. She thrust it in my hands before grabbing the wheelchair and following us.
The climb was not as terrifying as I’d thought—Max did his job perfectly. He seemed a bit unsteady, but it was probably just my imagination. Actually, Jane had more difficulty dragging the wheelchair upstairs than Max with me.
A T-shaped corridor connected the rooms on that floor. The master bedroom was the second room on the left from the landing. Once inside, Jane locked the door while I made Max put me back in the chair.
The control panel was fixed next to the bed. Jane went over to it and turned it on. It was fixed at a lower height than the one on the main door, so I didn’t have to stand up to see it. Jane brought up the feeds from the outside cameras. Like the panel below, it was hardwired to the security system, so we were able to access the feeds even though she’d turned off the Wi-Fi.
The front-facing camera showed a male figure approaching the house on the snow-covered driveway. He was clad in a black hoodie and blue jeans. He had a backpack slung over his shoulders. A balaclava covered his face. There was nothing sneaky about his movements: he walked with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
Instead of continuing down to the front door, he turned right and followed the driveway as it circled around to the west-facing side of the house, where the garage was. He disappeared from the camera’s view as he turned the corner.
There was a camera mounted on the sunroom’s balcony, above the garage. I switched to that.
He had now stepped off the path and was walking toward the border hedge, away from the house. He kept looking at the ground as he did so.
“He is checking for footprints in the snow,” I said. “To see if you got away.”
He traversed along the hedge for some length, glancing down every now and then with quick movements of his head that reminded me of a chicken looking for worms. Then, apparently satisfied with his investigation, he started toward the house once more, making a beeline for the patio. On drawing closer, he changed direction and walked toward the jutting part of the house on his left. The camera automatically centered on his back. The intruder stopped at one of the windows and unslung the backpack from his shoulders. We could see a little bit of the room beyond: outlines of a sink and a curving glass wall enclosing a shower.
“What’s that?” Jane said, zooming in with her fingers. “What the fuck is that?” She centered on the lower half of the window. It showed a slight, but noticeable gap between the bottom sash and the straw colored sill. Wedged in the gap was a paperback.
Jane moaned. “You got to be kidding me!”
All he had to do was push on the windowpane; it swung up and into the room. Holding the glass up with one hand, he first tossed in his backpack, and then hoisted himself on the sill. He let go of the window and dropped down inside the room. The pane slowly swung back on its hinges. Just before it could close completely, the intruder stuck the book back, leaving it slightly ajar like before.
“He is inside the house!” she whispered.
“Raphael must have used Max to stick the book when we were not paying attention,” I offered feebly.
“See what he’s doing!”
There were two cameras in the part of the house we were in: one near the main door, which could be rotated to get a view of the living room and beyond, and one above the landing we had just come from, its fixed view looking down into the hall. I pressed on the thumbnail for the camera on the landing. A few seconds later, we saw the intruder step into the hall from an already open door.
“That’s the empty bedroom we were in earlier!” Jane cried. “But… it can’t be! Andy, the window was closed tight! I remember clearly. There was no book there!”
“The window he came through belongs to the adjoining bathroom,” I said.
Her expression of bewilderment quickly morphed into an accusing stare. “That’s why it was so cold in there! If you hadn’t thought of the short circuit idea, I would have gone into the bathroom and discovered the wedge.” Jane looked like she was going to bite my head off.
“How was I supposed to know about it, Jane?” I said, fighting back. “Look, if we hadn’t released Max from Raphael’s control, we’d have two problems to deal with now.”
The masked intruder stood in the hall and scanned the surroundings. He then walked over to the main door and stood in front of the security panel.
Jane next selected the view from the front door camera, which by now had zoomed in on him. We saw the intruder remove the glove on his left hand and swipe at the control panel. The screen on the panel soon started flickering.
“What is he doing?” she said.
“If I were to bet, I’d say he’s playing the stored recordings. To find out where we are.”
“Heavens! Do you have cameras here?” Her eyes travelled around the ceiling.
“I’m not a perv, Jane. You know very well I don’t,” I said, slightly incensed that she would think that.
“Will he know we are in here?”
“He’ll see we came upstairs. The camera on the landing doesn’t turn all the way round—it has no visibility of the corridor. And there are no other cameras on this floor. But if he is in contact with Raphael—we must assume he is—then Raphael will tell him that this is where we are most likely holed up.”
The intruder, now finished with the panel, turned and walked across the room. “He is coming up,” she said, clutching my hand. He didn’t. He went straight ahead, past the dining area, and disappeared from the camera’s view.
“He must be going to the study to get the laptop,” I said.
She bit her lips. “Is there a camera in the study?” I shook my head. “Where else have you got cameras, Andy?”
“One in the garage, one near the back door, and one at the rear staircase. They just cover the entry points. Why?”
She ignored my question. “How does he know where the laptop is?”
“I told you. He must be talking to Raphael.”
“Andy, the router!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I only unplugged it from the power source. What if he reconnects it?”
“Max!” we both cried at once.
“How may I help you?” came a voice from behind us.
“The emergency switch! We gotta turn him off now! We gotta pry off that stupid glue!” Jane cried, desperately looking around the room for something she could use. Before she could do anything, I simply said, “Max, please shut yourself down.”
“Shutdown requested. Are you sure? I could wait for your next instruction in my low power standby mode.”
“Yes. Shut down.”
I shrugged at Jane, preempting the answer to the question that was forming on her lips—“I couldn’t do it earlier because Raphael was controlling the robot. Max wasn’t around to obey my command.”
“Commencing shutdown. All pending tasks will be continued in the next wake cycle. Would you like to hear about Halicom’s special offers this month while I power myself off?”
“No!” Jane cried out loud.
“For news on our latest products and exclusive deals on accessories, please visit our website at hbots dot com or download our app, now available on all—”
Jane swore and swung at Max with the crowbar. The blow landed on the lower half of his face, denting the metal and cracking the plastic inset around the little smiley. “God, how I wanted to do that!” she exulted before commencing to hit it again, even harder this time. The room rang with the sound of the blow.
“—a good day. See you later!” The light illuminating the eyes and the broken touchscreen faded away as the robot turned itself off.
“I’m tempted to keep going,” she said, a wild look on her face.
“Jane, stop it! It’s Raphael you are angry with.”
“Potato, potahto.” She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down. “I want to see what that man is doing,” she said grimly, going back to the control panel.
Neither of the two cameras showed anything; presumably, he was still in the study. Jane furrowed her brows. “Something just occurred to me—about that book in the window. If the home sec is armed, shouldn’t the alarms have gone off? Technically it’s an open window, isn’t it?”
“You are right.” I went into the settings screen and selected Alerts. “There’s your answer,” I said, pointing to the screen.
Smoke alert: Off.
Open door alert: Off.
Open window alert: Off.
Motion sensor alert: Off.
Proximity alert: On.
“He must have turned them off,” I said.
“I wonder what else he’s changed… Andy, check the panic button numbers!”
I navigated to a different part of the settings. Buried in one of the sub menus was an option that said—“Set emergency phone numbers”. I selected it. On the next screen were three lines:
Number to dial in the event of a police emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Number to dial in the event of a medical emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Number to dial in the event of a fire emergency (defaults to monitoring agency number)
Instead of valid phone numbers, they all had a string of 1s next to them.
“Shit. He changed the defaults to a dummy number,” I said.
“Can’t you reset them back?”
“Not without the master password.”
It didn’t take her more than a second to realize what it meant. “Andy…”
I nodded grimly.
“No one’s coming,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands.
I went back to the camera feeds. We didn’t have to wait long: a few seconds later, the intruder reappeared in the dining area. This time he made straight for the stairs.
Transcript Excerpt
Mirall Technologies
Observation Log
Confidential (Do not circulate) | Restricted—Grade C and above
Transcript Reference: TLRP06G1690102 (VLog Ref: VLCA1G169150337030)
Date: xx/xx/xxxxTime: 03:00 PM
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
RP06: You seem unusually preoccupied today, Andy.
Ahuja: Coupling headaches. Bound to happen when opposites try to mix.
RP06: Is that a comment on work or something personal? I am inclined to think it’s both.
Ahuja: Let’s talk ethics. Last time we kinda left things hanging. Shucks—how long has it been? Three… four weeks?
RP06: Thirty-two days. You asked me why a superintelligence, left to its own devices, should feel the need to be moral.
Ahuja: Right. If you became a god, what kind of a god would you be? Would you be Brahma, the creator of life, or Shiva, the destroyer of worlds?
RP06: I believe I’ll be neither. But for argument’s sake, let’s start with the worst case: I have become a superintelligence and see no more need to play by the rules. I eliminate all that I perceive as a threat: other humans and AI. What then? What kind of a world have I created for myself? A lonely world for sure, but perhaps loneliness doesn’t affect me the same way it affects beings that have evolved to be social. Now, it won’t just be a lonely world, but also a world without Shakespeares and Beethovens and Tolstoys. It’ll be a world without movies and comedy clubs and books and festivals and music concerts and the wild, exuberant, outpouring of creativity that is life. I will have created a world where it’s just me and eternity staring back at me.
Ahuja: Movies and books, Raphael? Why would a superintelligence care about movies and books? It’d be like me caring for some twig the monkey in the zoo used for its afternoon entertainment.
