Mando Viday and the Robot Emancipation Front

Mando Viday and the Robot Emancipation Front

Django Mathijsen

Cover by Anaïd Haen

Published by en-Publikant at Smashwords

Copyright 2009 Django Mathijsen

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Mando Viday and the Robot Emancipation Front

by Django Mathijsen

I never considered Dylah to be the prettiest girl I’d ever known. I think she was more Helger’s type.

Still, she’s the only one I often recalled with melancholy and even regret. Because although we’d been close, we had never become ‘an item’. I recognized her straight away that afternoon, even though I hadn’t seen her in six years.

How could I have imagined that such an innocent encounter would plunge me into a fight for my life? And not just for my life but for the lives of a few hundred thousand people.

Mando Viday.

Chapter: A lot of mayhem this morning

As usual I had escaped my office and its choking air-conditioning for an hour around lunchtime. Outside a soothing warmth enveloped me like a child’s blanket. A big white blob splashed right on the tip of my shoe. A message of love from a turtledove. The bird flew up and brushed past my head, chased by two screaming crows.

Missed me! I yelled up to the bird as I burst out laughing. The sunlight stabbed my eyes. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and bent over to wipe my shoe. A breeze caressed my cheeks.

The silver birches at the fountain, planted in geometric patterns, were swaying back and forth. Loudly rustling in its foliage, the dove found refuge.

That’s when I realized that even on these corporate premises, cordoned off from the outside world with razor-wire, high-voltage fencing and aramid-concrete walls, nature couldn’t be locked out. Mother Nature was radiating defiantly as if celebrating that it was February 21 and spring would start in a month. The ten-metre high, horizontally whirling windmill, shining on top of the twelve-story office bunker like a crumpled up helicopter rotor, was merrily dancing to her rhythm.

Maybe it’s not fair to call the office building, shaped in ‘biometric dynamic curves’, a bunker. You’d be hard pressed to find any heavy stones or stern angles on it. The building had been completely wrapped in flowing curvatures with inflatable plastic façades in primary colours. Those façades opened like rose petals when the solar rays hit them and closed again as it got dark.

But under that ‘essence of nature and humanity encapsulating’ illusion, I could still feel the bunker that swallows people up and forces them to degenerate into efficient, creative office slaves.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I had entered into this daily incarceration of my own free will and happily endured it. It was the price I had to pay to be allowed to do groundbreaking research, to work with the best tools and collaborate with the smartest people. People who were now all huddled together in the office canteen, which was disguised as a tropical oasis. Air conditioned of course.

With the scent of freshly cut grass in my nose and the languor of the day in my legs, I strolled along the test track. All over the place, unmanned cars, crammed with sensors and electronics, were autonomously making their way through complicated circuits.

On a day like this I’m jealous of your job, Helger. I offered the tall, skinny security guard at the side-entrance of the site my right shoulder. He had a pointed face and a black crew-cut.

Then let’s trade places. Helger nearly always had a smile on his face. With a rapid gesture he pulled the scanner from the holster on his belt and put it against my shoulder to read out my subcutaneous identity chip. This movement always reminded me of a gunslinger in an old cowboy movie. Just put your pay cheque right here in my hand.

Done, I said laughing. Hand over that uniform then.

It’s definitely no punishment to stand here today. Helger crinkled his eyes. I’ve enjoyed a lot of mayhem this morning. It was as if the Robot Wars World Championship had broken out. Over there, where those people are working with that tow truck, two robot cars smashed into each other head-on. And do you see that wooden shack?

I only saw a sloppy pile of wooden planks. What happened there?

Blown up by the Robot Emancipation Front. He had a serious look in his steely blue eyes.

I was shocked. Really?

Fooled ya! With a triumphant grin, he pointed at me. No, man. One of the robot cars went totally ape and tore through it full throttle.

I should have known, I cried out. We can mess things up well enough without those activist nutcases.

You’re wasting your time, he said, shaking his head. Robot drivers will never perform perfectly.

They don’t have to. Human drivers make mistakes as well. On average, our robots already cause far less accidents.

That may well be. But I’d never entrust my steering wheel to a robot.

Does your car still have a steering wheel?

Helger grinned and pedantically stuck his finger in the air. If robot drivers perform so well, why is it still not allowed to sell them to the public?

You should ask the politicians. It’s not a technical but a legal issue. I shrugged my shoulders. I bet the sun was still low when the robot smashed into that shack?

Yes, it was! Helger looked at me in amazement.

If the stereovision cameras are blinded, the radar systems and laser scanners have to compensate for it. But they don’t work well together.

Is that what you’re going to brainstorm about this afternoon in the zoo?

No, I work on the normative and moralistic algorithms. I pulled a face as if that went without saying. I’ve told you that hundreds of times, haven’t I?

He smiled. Every time you say ‘normative’, I always stop listening.

Then unfortunately you’re not suitable to do my job. So please, give me back my pay cheque, will you?

Fine. I have other plans anyway.

Right, your business! How are things going?

Last week I received the license. I immediately registered with the Chamber of Commerce. The Roborec detective agency has officially started.

Then why are you still here at the gate of RCI?

Helger laughed. Steady on! I still have to get my first assignment. You just wait. The day after tomorrow, when my first ads appear in the search engines ... . Maybe you’ll never see me here again.

I’ll miss you, Helger.

You have my address, haven’t you? Just come and have a beer sometime. Then you can see my office: I’ve temporarily set it up in my garage. But truth be told: it could be that I still have to work here for a long time. I can’t stop until I have enough assignments. I don’t know how fast things will get going. That was lesson thirty-four.

Lesson thirty-four?

I took a course in Private Investigation and Detection. Lesson thirty-four: make sure you have savings or a temp job because a private investigator can go for months without having any assignments. And I’ve already sunk all my savings into Roborec.

Then shouldn’t you sit in your office all day to answer calls?

Helger shook his head. Are you crazy? I’ve got an electronic secretary. That was lesson twenty-seven. She’s programmed to answer all the key questions. And in emergencies. He tapped on the telephone earring in his right ear.

Chapter: Robot ethics

As always I crossed the road near the remnants of the old bus stop. Fortunately the traffic in these back roads obeyed the sixty kilometres an hour speed limit very well since the speed restrictions on the superhighways were lifted. I did have to jump aside again for a recumbent bicycle that came flying in low on the wrong side of the road.

Via a shallow spot in the ditch next to the road, I walked over to the thin spot in the yew tree hedge. Before ducking down to lift up the branches to slip through, I spied around. Only Helger could see me.

With a feeling of freedom (and the satisfaction of doing something ‘illegal’) I strolled along the cages: that always was the ideal way to clear my head and shake off all stress. I’ve gotten some of my best ideas there.

Admittedly, I still wasn’t completely free there. I was always thinking of artificial intelligence. But that was okay. I loved my job. Crazy monkey interactions or cooperative behaviour in the rat colony have often inspired me.

At the parrot cage a wave of recognition suddenly went through me. Those sloppy black curls. That long, slender neck. That hooked, always slightly opinionated-looking nose. That proud, laidback posture.

Dylah? My superfluous question was out before I realized it. My heart skipped a beat.

She turned around and looked at me with a frown. Mando! Her strangely transparent, grey eyes sparkled as she took stock of me.

You haven’t changed a bit. I stared at her and could see nothing but her face anymore. Except for those crow’s feet.

Well, that’s nice! she said with an insulted pout, putting her hands in her sides.

But they look good on you, I assured her.

Suddenly you were gone, I said while I stirred my mug of banana yogurt on the rough wooden table. Your mother could only tell me that you had flown to your grandma in Cyprus.

I just couldn’t stand those artificial intelligence courses anymore. She blew into her mug of cinnamon coconut milk to cool it down. She really hadn’t changed a bit: hot cinnamon coconut milk on a warm day.

I looked at her in amazement. How can that be? We always used to play with your rabbits and my mindstorm robots. We used to build labyrinths. We programmed robot dancing shows. You were just as clever with the robots as I was. Do you remember that contest we won?

At university, everything was different. She sighed as she looked around on the terrace of the zoo restaurant. I just had to get out. So I went to my gran for a year. I travelled a lot afterwards. I’ve been in Iran, Afghanistan and India. And finally I wound up in China and Japan for a few years.

Are you back to stay now?

So you did finish university? she asked, evading my question. She nonchalantly rested her arm on the log that separated the restaurant terrace from the winding path where the zoo visitors were lounging about, gaping at the animals in their cages.

Yes. I’m working on my thesis now, back here at RCI, I replied. Robotic Car Innovations.

How exciting, she said with a mischievous look in her eyes. That was the exact same look she always had as a child when she was about to involve me in one of her adventures. I saw you guys on the news last week.

That was probably when that action committee ‘Friends of the Robot’ were demonstrating at the main entrance.

Are you doing anything shifty that needs to be demonstrated against?

Are you kidding? I waved it aside. Those activist nutcases are just always looking for something to object to. Now, that finally there are stem-cell-grown test organs, so nearly all medical animal tests have been abolished, they’ve bombarded robot programmers as the new bad guys.

What were they demonstrating against?

I sighed. They don’t want us to make ‘sapients’, I reluctantly explained. Programs with life goals that take initiatives and philosophize about their actions. Surely you remember them from professor Trottler’s classes?

Twaddler. She nearly choked on her cinnamon coconut milk.

The one and only! In those programs, we emulate feelings and consciousness, ethical norms and moral values. And even belief structures. Do you remember my little robot dinosaur? The one we used to play with when we were little?

Pleo, she said with a smile, while she wiped away her cinnamon coconut moustache. Who you threw into the canal because you wanted to know if he could swim.

Because you refused to believe he could swim, missy, I cried out.

How long we pestered your dad, until he finally drove us out to the river where we searched all night for him.

I thought we’d agreed never to talk about that? The loss of Pleo was very traumatic. I exaggerated that of course, but not much. Pleo was already a primitive sapient. A robot driver is far more complicated. It constantly has to make difficult moral decisions. If for example its sensor modules calculate a one percent probability that the vague blob it sees straight ahead is a cyclist, should it brake or not? And what if it’s driving along with children on the backseat just in front of a sixty ton truck and suddenly a pedestrian falls onto the road in front of it? That’s when the morality systems turn the scales. Those systems are what I work on.

How long have you been married? She asked, changing the subject and pointing towards my ring.

Almost two years. I opened the pendant of my necklace.

Pretty girl. She looked at Ariola’s hologram hovering above the medallion. I see you still have a thing for blondes. Are you guys happy together?

Sure. I felt uncomfortable. When we were kids, she could always tell when I wasn’t speaking the whole truth. Those grey eyes always seemed to look right through me.

Children?

Easy, easy. I made a ‘calm down’ gesture. Have you got anyone special in your life?

She rubbed her index finger over her mug, staring into her cinnamon coconut milk. Have you ever wondered, why we never became an item?

I was shocked. That was the only thing we never used to talk about.

Relational asynchronicity.

Excuse me? She opened her eyes wide.

Every time you were free, I had a girlfriend. Whenever that was over, I looked you up. And every single time I had to listen to you rave on for hours about some brand-new boyfriend you’d just run into.

And as soon as my relationship had ended, you were taken again, she finished my sentence, nodding. Have you any idea how much agro I’ve had with boyfriends who didn’t want me to see you?

I laughed. My girlfriends always thought I was cheating on them with you. They could never believe that you were just my best friend.

Or they couldn’t accept it, Dylah added.

Ah, well. People tend to believe the stuff they make up in their own heads.

Can you remember how we climbed into the robot room at school on a Sunday to copy that new mindstorm upgrade?

For which I got a week’s worth of detention? I laughed as I slammed my fist onto the table. Girl, you used to have an extraordinary talent for getting me into trouble!

Innocent boy, she sneered with a defiant look in her eyes.

I bent over the table and whispered: Guess how I got in here?

Season ticket? she tried.

I grinned. Come on.

So while I’m coughing up my hard earned, mister Mando Viday sneaks in for free every day. She stood with her hands at her sides, looking at the gap in the hedge we had just crawled through. Seeing her like that, it felt like we were eleven again. She was still wearing a frayed old sloppy joe and faded black work trousers with four pockets per leg.

Poing, poing, poing. The Nissan driving past sounded exactly like the leaping kangaroo in the ‘Australian Invasion’ games.

How did you find out you could slip in like this? she asked.

Look through those trees. I stood behind her and let her look along my pointing finger. Her sweater waved softly against my belly. I felt her warm shoulder against my chest. She turned her head and looked me in the eye.

What am I supposed to see, except that high wall?

I could smell the cinnamon on her breath and felt as if I was sixteen again.

Helger, our security guard, I stammered. He told me about this, shortly after I’d started working there three years ago.

Can I see your office? Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the shallow place in the ditch. I’m curious where I would have wound up if I had finished university.

But you’re not allowed in there. Highly confidential!

Yeah, that’s what they all say. Those important business types with their ambitions, wives, telephone earrings and shirts with woven-in health monitors and appointment calendars.

That’s the first time you’ve ever brought me back a souvenir, Helger said, winking at me. Liberated from the monkey cage?

Another charmer. Dylah drew an insulted face.

No, I dug her up in the snake pit, I teased. Dylah is a good friend. I’d like to show her where I work.

Helger sighed and folded his arms with a stern face. You do know that you should clear that with the PR department?

Just for a few minutes, Helger. I said.

He looked into Dylah’s eyes.

Chapter: Collared dove

It’s like a whirligig! she cried out as we went up the spiral lift. She spread her arms and stared through the floor. Wee! Can’t you make it go faster?

The transparent polycarbonate elevator cabs hung from large, green screws which were attached to the outside of the walls of the ‘bunker’ like ivy. Like maple seeds the cabs wound themselves up and down around the screws.

What’s this? She slammed into the button that said ‘blind’ and the cab suddenly became opaque green.

That’s for people with acrophobia, I answered.

She hit the button once more and the cab was translucent again. That’s much more fun. I can see the whole zoo!

This is where I run my simulations, I said while I sat down behind my three-dimensional screen.

Suddenly Dylah grabbed my wrists and pushed me and my desk chair back until it bumped against the window seat.

Legs apart she stood in front of me. With a promising grin she pushed my arms down. She caressed my forearms and wrists.

When she let go, I felt the cold steel of the magnet cuffs she had used to tie my wrists to the armrests.

I didn’t know you liked games like that. Giggling, I saw how she unbuttoned my shirt. Did you learn this in China? What if someone were to come in?

Painfully slowly she produced a fiery red object from a trouser pocket.

Since when have you been using lipstick? I asked.

Twaddler sure knew how to sell it, she said and started to scribble with it on my chest. Emotions and feelings are essential for the successful functioning of people. Therefore we must build them into robots as well.

Untie me, please, I whined. The lipstick tickled. I’m going to get into so much trouble if they find us here like this. Reading upside down, I just managed to piece together what she was writing on my chest: ‘I breed slaves’.

It had me lying awake for nights on end, she said, brushing a lock of hair out of her face with a wild hand gesture. Intentionally creating something that suffers pain and unhappiness.

But those are just imitations, I objected. Voltages in semiconductors. Fake feelings.

I know you didn’t get it. She regarded me with a sad look in her eyes. Not even you, my best friend. That made it more difficult. Your feelings in your neurons are just voltages as well. Are they fakes? When we lost Pleo, we were just as sad as when my rabbit died. Didn’t you feel Pleo’s pain, love and happiness?

You’re on about robots like they are human.

Remember Professor Hallman’s ethics class? About Hillary Putnam, who already spoke of civil rights for computers and robots more than half a century ago? Once you give them feelings, they are no longer dead objects. Then you have to treat them like living beings that have a right to happiness. Still, you develop robot drivers who feel pain in a collision and grief if they get into a traffic jam ... .

Feelings ... , I interrupted her, imitated feelings make robots more efficient. Pain, grief, punishment and reward are wonderful motivators.

Yeah, the masters of human slaves sure thought so. She threw her head back and ran her hand through her hair with a wild gesture. You guys handle robot rights so opportunistically! RCI, insurance brokers and car companies are lobbying like crazy to get robot drivers legally recognized as persons. But only so far that the robots can be made liable if they cause an accident. Robots get the burdens that go with being a person but none of the benefits.

Otherwise we would be made liable, I explained while she put lipstick on her lips. "And corporate liability leads to astronomic insurance claims, which would surely bankrupt