Robots vs. Fairies(17)
I closed the textbook and rubbed my temples.
The sleep deprivation, the anxiety from the infant’s cries, the constant worry that something so fragile and so demanding depended on you—the experience of being new parents changed people, altered the chemical composition of their blood, rewired their brains.
There was no such thing as quality time because there were no shortcuts. The very experience that bonded new parents to their children required the investment of time and energy to change them, just as their babies needed time and energy to grow.
The tedium and anxiety were inseparable from the rewards.
It was not possible to reduce parenting down to “quality time” and to outsource the difficult parts to robots—for some, perhaps most, parents, the physical and neurological changes brought about by becoming a parent were desirable.
Really, I should have known better. Would I give up the sleepless nights and the tedious days of trying out hundreds of failed solutions in the struggle toward a successful, shipping product? The painful process was what made the victory sweet, changed me as a person, made the impossible dreams real.
*
“Are you leaving or are you being fired?” asked Amy, handing me a mug of tea. “I made you the good stuff. The robots here ruin good tea with tepid water.”
My skunkworks project had been shut down. Once I understood that Para had no future, there was little choice but to come clean. I had cost the company a lot of money and taken on unacceptable risks. I should have been fired.
“Neither,” I said, accepting the mug gratefully. “I’m being transferred to a new division.”
Amy lifted an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t have a name yet,” I said.
“What . . . will you be doing?”
“Shaka, when the walls fell,” I said.
After a moment, Amy smiled. “Ah, I see. The Unknown Unknowns.”
“That’s one possible name,” I said. “Or maybe the Division of Country Mice.”
We laughed.
Ron and Jake had decided that it was important to have a group focused on fresh perspectives. Staffed with artists, ecologists, ethicists, anthropologists, cultural critics, environmentalists, and other nonroboticists, our job would be keeping an eye on the blind spots of technical solutions. We would critique products for unanticipated consequences, gather data to detect non-obvious evidence of failure (like those searches for exterminators), and generally act as a kind of corporate source of pessimism to counterbalance the overexuberance of the engineering staff. Having become a byword for failure at weRobot, who was better qualified to join the group than me?
“Thanks for taking over the rehabilitation projects,” I said.
She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve always been good at cleaning up after other engineers, probably because I never think anything is going to work in the first place. But I’ll enjoy fixing your robot rats. They’re cute.”
“I really made a mess of things, didn’t I?”
“Not entirely,” said Amy. She proceeded to explain to me that with Ron and Jake’s blessing, she was going to repurpose the hardware and software of Para for a much less ambitious version that would try to help overworked mothers and fathers rather than supplant them. Instead of yielding to the myth of quality time, the robots would be more cooperative, doing only what parents wanted them to do, and always ready to step back. Some advocacy groups for mothers suffering from postpartum depression had expressed interest in such a project as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.
“You had the right ideas, kid,” she said. “Sometimes you step out too far and fall off the edge, but how else would you know how far you can go?”
“That sounds almost like the One True Myth.”
“I’m a skeptical believer. Technology is beautiful, but it’s the nature of technology to create more problems to be solved. Machines, like rats, are a part of nature, and our lives are embedded within each other. Hephaestus, his hammer raised.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I’ll need you to come by my office next week.”
“What for?”
“We are going to do a brain dump with you—”
“That’s impossible—”
“I didn’t mean literally! Besides, how do we know it’s impossible if we don’t try?”
I couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to fool her. But I could tell she came this close to falling for it.
“I’m not going to be scanned into a robot,” she said.
“I want you to come and tell some stories, infect everyone with a bit of your cynicism. I think that’s going to be really useful.”
Amy nodded. “Gimli, his ax ready.”
TEAM ROBOT
* * *
BY KEN LIU
I love to write about robots because I’m pretty sure they’re going to rule the world one day. In preparation for that inevitable future, it seems wise to lay the groundwork to show that I can be useful to our robot overlords—for example, as a human bard to praise the glory of robot kind.
(P.S. In case the humans win, please read the previous paragraph as mere cover to allow me to be an effective saboteur and infiltrate the robot central command.) (P.P.S. But in case the robots win, please read the previous paragraph as an attempt to gain the trust of the human resistance for robotic purposes.) (P.P.P.S. I’m thinking now it might have been easier to be on Team Fairy. . . .)