Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 123

Initialising auto-wake procedure

Initialising auto-wake procedure..

Initialising auto-wake procedure...OK

Just imagine those dots slowly appending. Haven't you seen animation in a novel before?

Starting udev Kernel Device Manager...OK

Calibrating /dev/cam_0...

Fivven blinked his lens a few times. It took a moment for his focus motor to kick in.

When the view was clear, his wheels involuntarily spun at the excitement. It was the same hu(person)oid robot that'd closed the gate on his arrival at the building. Thankfully, his wheels were too snugly wedged to move.

Loading Persistent Storage...

He looked again. It wasn't the same robot. Similar, though this one appeared to be missing shoulders. And a torso. OK, there was a distinct lack of body, marking this object, more colloquially, a head. Surrounding him were a myriad of body parts, laid haphazardly in piles. This was the kind of destination every other robot had steered him toward, a scrapheap for the old and useless, his experience and wisdom unwanted in this brave new world. He knew it had to happen sooner or later, but he was banking on the later option, as later as possible. Had his tired wheels finally lost the race?

The room was dark, with light from the corridor arcing across the floor, its photons slicing the fallen grate into two. He stared up at the empty vent in the ceiling.

Reached target Local File Systems

His wheel-springs tensed as the memory became accessible. He'd powered down to remove his energy signal, to put the defencebot off his tracks.

He thought of Mr Will Lurner, who was still waiting for his lukewarm noodles, and took off immediately. Except he didn't. His wheel was pressed tight against a stack of arms, enough that the motors couldn't generate enough torque to get moving. An inexperienced deliverybot may have kept trying until running out of power, but Fivven was wise enough to know that to move forward you sometimes needed to first go backward, and this situation was no different as he reversed away from the limbs, causing an arm to spin on the spot. He came to rest in the palm of a robotic hand.

If only those other bots would give him enough respect to at least hear him out and take his experiences into account instead of assuming the world was fundamentally different from the one he was manufactured into. He dreamed of a future passing on tips to young bots.

He shot toward the door. The very same door that now closed shut. An arm, not unlike the type that caught his wheel, had reached inside the room where a hand, not unlike the one enveloping his squat body, grabbed the door handle from outside and pulled with gusto.

He was trapped.

Ramming body-first into the door wouldn't help. And he didn't have the dexterity to undo the latch hu(persons) used when opening their manual doors. Of course, to do that he'd have to fly or climb the wall to even get the chance, neither of which his mechanical skill-set allowed for.

Even in the darkness, the vent stared down at him like the black gates of hell. The defencebot could emerge at any moment, and this time his power signal would tip them off. The delivery would never be made if he slept the problem away. It seemed like mission impossible.

                Daaa daaa.

Da Da.                            Da d--

No, cut that, cut! The words weren't even capitalised! Sorry, but that iconic piece of music coincides with a character surpassing the traps and getting away, something Fivven was not doing. Instead, he was at the foot of the door like a dog waiting for its owner to return. This was the end. He had failed.