Ball Machine

Chapter Four - Inner Sanctum

In the inner sanctum of the programer’s den, Rosa shifted uncomfortably on the simple wooden seat. Tony and Dany both had thousand dollar chairs, with body curves and aerodynamic back supports, cushioned and adjustable arm rests, bulging neck braces and a sophisticated tilt-back action. These were chairs for men who spent twelves hours a day staring at computer screens. Each chair had an owner, their presence still penetrating the tough wool cushioning even when their bodies had stumbled forth in search of sleep or pizza. The chairs held an aura, a force field which kept strangers and interlopers at bay. Tony slid over on his own luxury chair, gliding like an ice skater across the wooden floor. He pointed to a corner where Rosa could fetch a wooden seat, like a set of stocks, designed to be uncomfortable. 

Here, in this place, she was low status, not a programmer, not one of the elite. 

The room was dingy. Wisps of daylight filtered around the dark blinds over the windows, but barely enough to disturb the ghostly glow of LCD screens. 

Rosa took in the scene, the detritus of poor nutrition scattered across desks and bulging from waste paper baskets, and felt immense relief that she had pursued a career in medicine. 

Tony was the man in charge, the man with his fingers on the keyboard. Dany was supervising the programming, while Rosa was there, in theory at least, to make the decisions. In practice, she was the client, there to create a wish list, while the boys found ways around the problems she threw at them.

She had the programming notes from Joe in front of her. They didn’t make much sense. She looked through page after page, but she barely had the patience to read the introduction. She handed it to Dany instead. He glanced at it and threw it over his shoulder. “Robotics,” he said. “Not enough. We make android learn. That more important. What you want it to learn?” 

“Tennis,” she said. 

“That’s done,” Tony said. “What else? 

“How to win. Why to win. Make it want to win,” Rosa said. 

“We need an order of priorities,” Tony said. “We’re giving rules here. This is important.” 

Rules, rules, Rosa thought. “Okay, it has to obey me, before anyone else.” 

Tony squinted at her, as though he suspected her of cheating on the tennis match. 

“He’s my android,” she said. “Next, he must never reveal his true identity as an artificial life-form without my permission.” She pursed her lips and stared at the blinds on a window on the far side of the room. “He must never harm a human being, he must never lie.”

“You have to be careful of contradictions,” Tony said. 

“It’s okay, okay,” Dany said. “Put it in.” 

They were working against the clock. It was lunchtime, and the supervisor was in the canteen. They might have an hour on the outside, probably less. Rosa suspected a procedure like this ought to takes months, if not years, but they were throwing this stuff together and hoping it would work. 

“What else? Okay, it must be nice to people.” 

“What you mean nice?” Tony asked. 

“Generous, and kind. It must do what they want.” 

“Contradictions,” Tony wailed. “What if they want it to do something bad?” His fingers were flying on the keyboard, creating the core program for the ‘droid, the mind and soul of the machine that would determine how it saw the world, how it behaved. Could it behave? Would it be able to make choices, she wondered.