David dug the rusty key to his shop out of the rough interior of his jeans. Leaving a trail of reddish brown from the opening of the cavernous pocket to the base of a busted belt loop, David was again reminded of his need to re-key the door. The rust’s fecal grip on the key had infectiously spread until it finally coated the original iron like loose topsoil over a freshly covered grave. After turning the key three times and adding to the rust now growing inside the dirty lock, David shoved the oak door forward. The swift push caused the cow skin rug on the inside to fold over on itself, effectively stopping the door’s forward sweep, and the rush of wind kicked up by the door’s sudden life offered up a pleasant aroma of sawdust and fresh pine. David pushed the rug to the side thinking he would fix it before he left—why he’d kept the dusty thing in the first place he still wasn’t sure.
David, now sixty-five years old, searched for the keypad next to the doorframe in the dark, found it, snapped it open and pressed the blue-lit touch-screen security system’s keypad with the same numbers he’d used for the last forty years. 1234. This was the security system’s default code, but David didn’t care much to change it (mainly because he didn’t know how and didn’t care to learn). No break-ins so far, and who would want to break into a vintage toy-maker’s carpentry shop—a retired toy-maker’s carpentry shop—was beyond him.
The experienced craftsman was known for his dolls, nutcrackers and the sort. He only did custom jobs, all with his own rugged hands, and signed his name on a thin wooden chip hung by the neck of the dolls as the key to showing the piece’s authenticity. One wooden doll could run a well-off family upwards of 10,000 British pounds, and if modern electronics were used, that figure easily quadrupled. Most of the world’s forests were gone since the War of Wars, and the only remaining source of wood for that kind of thing came at the expense of craftsmen such as David and their own protected reserve granted to them by the government, as long as they planted two trees for every one they cut down. The oak door and vintage lock were birthday presents to himself when he first opened the shop: a decision he was now learning to regret.
Carpentry was his passion, but the recent advancements of China in synthetic xylem and its imitation of authentic carpentry had nearly put him out of business. Did put him out of business. David was ready to retire anyway, but there was one project he was yet to finish.
He approached “the lab,” as he liked to call it, and examined the square hole in the center of a three-foot tall wooden doll’s back. The microchip and all of its relevant components would fit fine, but if the programming itself would work like it was supposed to was another story. He had worked on the algorithm for almost thirty years now, the same amount of time since the death of his only son, Anthony. The idea behind the programming was simple, but was yet to be done by the modern world. Sure there were “intelligent bots” as IBM had coined, but there was something missing in them. They couldn’t feel emotion like a human could. They could appear to experience it, but their responses were too rigid, too planned and calculating. They cried because they were supposed to cry and they laughed because a sensor buried deep inside told them something was “humorous” ipso facto. And IBM admitted this much: that the emotion wasn’t genuine, but instead a very primitive reflex pathway, as opposed to the complex biological pathways present in the brain that science still barely understood. Robots couldn’t really feel joy, happiness, or actually decide to like something, much less love someone. It was impossible, or so the wizards in the expensive labs said (some said “highly improbable”), but David knew otherwise, and his program was proof of that. He would prove it by installing it in a wooden exterior. It would walk and talk and do much less impressive things than the intelli-bots, but that didn’t matter. The algorithm was the algorithm. It spoke for itself.
AI toys were all the rage as of a few years ago, Christmas time, though some trial versions were allegedly released in Japan six months prior, and the humanistic appearance most portrayed invoked tremendous curiosity in those who were willing to shell out for them. Good Morning America had one in the studio that Christmas Eve, mainly to tell jokes and make TV viewers around the country ooh and aah at its seamless interactions with the just-as-intrigued anchors. The bot, framed with a teddy bear exterior (ironically named “Ted”), walked, jumped, and even made facial expressions perfectly amalgamated with each sentence and stimuli-dependent reaction. It almost came across as narcissistic—like it was trying to show off how “real” it was to its audience, constantly looking into the camera as if it could see its audience’s open-mouthed goggle, only smiling wider or grimacing harder to make those jaws actually scrape the floor.
David was one of the engineers responsible for the intelli-bots’ programming of course, mainly working in the stimulus-response programming pathways, and easily saw through Ted’s life-like face—a face that looked like a window into some kind of soul consisting of barebones mechanical DNA that revealed nothing more than electrical signals coordinating motor function and audible noise that came pre-packaged in over fifteen different languages. Needless to say, he knew how it worked, and he knew why some people (most people if they could get past the initial performance-shock) cried foul. The toys were too dependent on programmed responses. There was little, if any spontaneity in their functions. Not to mention they sat idle for hours on end if not spoken to or played with. Just like any other toy, they sat on a shelf, collecting dust, only coming to life if an imagination was willing to turn it on. They served no useful function and would certainly be selected against if the War of Wars’ nuclear fallout had actually ended humanity (all too many had predicted this much), as opposed to only the West. Ted couldn’t do anything to survive, but boy could he do a good moonwalk if you asked him to.
David’s work in the AI Toy-bot Project allowed him to investigate the bots’ downfalls to a point of finding the problem and hopefully modifying it. He had wanted to write a program that could function like a human could—living a certain number of years, always engaged with the world it found itself in. And David had written just that program. What was more is that whenever he tested it for its first dry run in a robotic body (which was basically a primitive stainless steel case with four limbs and not much else), the robot’s will to survive was apparent. Unlike Ted, David’s bot actually responded to the threat of destruction. Ted would simply smile at a dropping sledgehammer, as if he wanted no teeth, welcoming his existence’s destruction just as much as a Lego space ship might in the battlefield of a ten-year-old’s bedroom floor. But David’s bot would scurry away, which wasn’t fast considering its restricted body, and would even try to reason with David as to why he shouldn’t smash his circuitry with a crowbar.
“No, David,” It would say in perfectly spaced syllables without inflection, “I want to live, and if you hit me I will not.”
Curiosity also came along with the program, almost too much so, though David welcomed the unexpected feature and fed the bot’s apparent desire to learn. It wanted to know everything. “What is that tool? Who are you talking to? Why can’t I leave this space?” But the most surprising inquiry, and the one that directly caused David to practically drop the thing while carrying it to put it away for the night, made him sure the program worked.
“Why am I?” It had asked in its monotone voice. David first thought the question was a malfunction, maybe it meant ‘who am I,’ but when David re-iterated this, it only responded with, “I know who I am, I am Alpha. I want to know why I am.” Why it was. It wanted to know the reason why it existed. It was able to examine itself—to look inward—to both question and recognize its existence. Alpha wanted to know why, a question the greatest minds of history never left alone.
The program was a success, David knew this much. If implanted in a sufficient body, it could bring it to life. But David didn’t want to provide the program with anything flashy, just enough to house the program well enough to allow the soul to stand out. It didn’t need to be fancy, it just needed to be.
The body David had made for the bot was made out of Catalina Ironwood, one of the most robust woods still left in existence. Threaded throughout the heavy arms, legs, neck, and head were titanium joints and various hydraulics for the bot’s movement. David fitted its mouth with a specialized voice box—one that could enunciate just like a human could, thus eliminating the almost sinister utterance that Alpha had sported. It had the capacity for only two senses, sight and hearing, and that was really all it needed to function as David intended.
It sat on the only table in the lab, its dark brown legs hanging over the edge, sanded smooth torso sitting perfectly upright, brown face looking forward with empty eyes. It was only a shell—nothing particularly fantastic to look at. It wasn’t painted like the dolls David had painted in the past. It had no black tuxedo, no polka-dotted red dress. It didn’t need to be painted. It wouldn’t be played with, no opulent businessman would be showing it off during cocktail parties; it wasn’t designed to. This bot’s purpose was to love. It was built to love David.
David had felt love once before and had subsequently felt its absence. Its theft. Anthony’s accident wasn’t ever supposed to have happened. Good kids shouldn’t die like that, everyone knows that. Beta would be different. ‘Beta’ was the name he had finally decided on; it sounded mechanized enough, and seeing that it was his second prototype, he couldn’t help but cling to orderly thinking. He was a scientist after all.
David carefully lifted the heavy doll and placed it face down on the table, allowing the shop’s yellow light to illuminate the doll’s open core. Though the program and internal wiring was complicated in theory, it only manifested in the form of two single wires, one red and one white, which would be fused to the motherboard—a green square the size of the Winston cigarette box in David’s shirt pocket. Once the wires were connected, David needed to activate the miniature nuclear reactor contained within the motherboard, and then Beta would be born.
He activated the nuclear reactor with a simple switch and sealed the core shut with a half-inch-thick titanium hatch, screwing it down through its corners. The reactor needed just over fourteen hours to reach optimal levels for basic physical demands, and once this occurred, the bot would automatically turn on. It hadn’t occurred to David that this dusty shop filled with jagged scrap wood, tools strewn about countertops in a particularly disorderly manner, sawdust piled in the corners—would be his bot’s ‘birthplace’ until now. It wouldn’t wake up as a baby might, fresh out of its mother’s womb in a cozy hospital room; it would enter the world all at once—already knowing how to speak, how to reason, and how to recall information already stored in its memory. It would be born, and David would help it along. It would have so many questions, but David was prepared. He was ready to answer all of them.
David sat Beta back up, positioning his feet forward, his legs parallel with the table, his arms at his sides. Sawdust clung to his front like lint on clothing, and David brushed it off, examining him to make sure he didn’t wake up to any surprises. David smirked at the idea of Beta waking up covered in sawdust—sawdust being analogous to the bodily fluids covering newborn babies. Maybe he should’ve left the powdery wood there. Babies didn’t care. But Beta might, so David left it at that.
He set the alarm before leaving, glancing back at Beta blankly facing forward as if he was in timeout and not allowed to get up and move around the shop. Tomorrow would be his birthday. It was a shame he had to spend it there, but it was necessary in case David had to do any last minute work on him should there be any complications. Babies were born in hospitals after all, right? Same idea.
***
David’s half-hour buffer twinkled into a fifteen minute deficit by a thirteen-car-pileup a mere two hundred feet from his exit. He’d smoked half a pack just waiting, mainly to ease the anxiety. He was about to be a parent for God’s sake, anxiety was normal, wasn’t it? And who cared about the smoking—Beta didn’t breathe, so it’s not like he was being irresponsible. Now that he thought about it, he should have built Beta with the capacity to smoke. That would’ve thrown a kink in the Biomechanical Ethics Committee’s agenda.
He’d hoped to be there when Beta awoke (10:30am by his watch), but Beta would probably be up and about doing…things…by the time David finally arrived. The truth was, David didn’t know what Beta would be doing. He was a three-foot tall wooden robot with the intellectual capability that surpassed most adults, yet harbored literally no experience in doing absolutely anything. It wouldn’t have surprised David in the least if Beta had gone exploring in the shop, breaking things as he went, only to uncover various items as foreign to him as Chinese letters to the average American.
My God, what if he got a hold of a sawzall? Or a router?
So when David pulled his 96’ Buick (‘2096’, that is) up to the parking dock at the back of his shop, he was relieved to see that the door was closed, the lights were off, and the windows were still intact. Well, if anything broke it wouldn’t be the windows. They were ballistic-grade fiberglass. A little overkill, maybe, but he liked to have his peace of mind. ‘You never know!’ David’s sister used to always say. With these windows, maybe he would’ve told her, ‘yes, actually I do,’ and then would’ve followed it with a healthy ‘shut the hell up. Thanks for getting drunk before taking Anthony to football practice. Think you could recycle your cans next time?’
Going through his regular routine, unlocking the door to once again wedge it up against the folded cow-hide rug, barely allowing him to squeeze his enlarged gut between the door and its frame, David disarmed the security system, flipped on golden lights shining down like reflected brass, and scanned the shop for Beta. The last place he looked was where Beta sat, ironically, which was exactly where he had left him the previous night. David had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that Beta would be up and about, but seeing him sit there led David to wonder if maybe the reactor hadn’t fully charged, or maybe he hadn’t fused the red and white wires properly (though he was sure he had—he’d triple checked it), or maybe the algorithm wasn’t running properly (God forbid) in the new motherboard. But all of these possibilities halted like a car seeing red, as Beta turned his head towards David, his once plain eyes now full of verve.
“David, it is good to see you, I thought I would never be able to safely get down from this precipice.” Beta spoke like a grad student presenting his research thesis, enunciating every word without accent or mistake.
David was caught off guard. He knew Beta would be operational today, but the moment stirred up excitement and fear.
“Beta!” David coughed, clearing his tobacco-black throat. “Beta, you seem to be doing well, how are you feeling?”
Who greeted their child (David supposed Beta was like his own child after all) with, ‘you seem to be doing well, how are you feeling’ as the very first words its virgin ears would ever hear? He might as well have uttered ‘goo goo gah gah’ or something of the sort. It would have been just as appropriate, babies cried all the more, but Beta only looked confused.
“Well, David, I don’t really feel anything as I understand the meaning of the word feel, but if you are referring to my overall well-being, I seem to be doing fine and am in working order, considering my intended design and possible bodily functions.”
Beta turned, swinging his legs over the edge of the worktable like two pendulums, knocking off bits of sawdust. David looked at him in obvious bewilderment, his eyes staring searingly as if he was discovering some unknown specimen on a petri dish for the first time. But he did know something about Beta—he had created him—he’d written his DNA. If anything, he knew everything.
“Could you raise your arms for me?” David asked Beta, now playing doctor. Beta complied.
“Now stand here on the table.”
Beta did this as well, his hydraulic joints flexing and bending without a hitch.
David sat Beta back down, manually bent his arms and knees, rotated his head to the left and right. All seemed well. Then again, his body wasn’t anything groundbreaking—Beta’s shell was really nothing more than a doll with sturdier parts, but he was still pleased that everything worked as he had anticipated.
Satisfied, David stood back, looking at his greatest piece of work. It wouldn’t be complete, though, until David pushed the algorithm to tap into its potential. The program was like a child. It needed to be reared—instructed—in the proper direction in order for it to really blossom. Previous AI bots didn’t have free will, which was why they weren’t really AI at all. Without free will, they were robots that only functioned according to how their programmers designed them. Beta, on the other hand, needed to recognize that he had free will. It was like taking the training wheels off of a bike. Just as the child develops and hones his balancing skills, so would Beta with freely choosing. The terrible two’s give rise to incessant “no’s,” but Beta’s intellectual capacity would make his free decision go a little more smoothly.
David picked him up off the workbench, Beta wrapping his arms around David’s neck like a toddler. But when David leaned down to place him softly on the floor, Beta didn’t let go. In fact, he had strengthened his grip around David’s neck. My God he’s choking me (though he quickly dismissed this thought)—David pulled back, breaking the embrace.
Beta looked startled, his child-like placidity absent.
“Hugging. It is what we do to show love, am I correct?” Beta asked.
David’s inquisitive eyes flashed back to understanding almost as quickly as he had retracted.
“Oh, yes, that is what we do to show affection. Would you like a hug?”
Beta never broke eye contact with David.
“Yes. Yes I would, I suppose.”
The two embraced—much more warmly this time—David’s wrinkled hands pressing firmly against Beta’s untextured back.
“What do you think?” David asked Beta, whose expression remained stoic.
“I love you, David.”
This was the moment David had been waiting for. He had literally designed Beta for this very purpose, to love him. But the moment still felt empty somehow. Maybe it was because it had happened right away. Relationships don’t start up all at once. They take years, even decades to build. Whatever it was, David wasn’t sure, but he was still excited that the algorithm was working.
David wanted to press Beta further. “Why do you love me?” he asked.
Beta’s eyes looked through David’s, absently. His mind was working. David knew the algorithm would adapt to external stimuli—including human interaction—and this was perhaps the most crucial step in the process, asking questions with why attached as a prefix. ‘Why’ demanded original thought. It demanded the workings of free will. The fact that David hadn’t written (purposely so) a reflex pathway for ‘why-responses’ was a key component of Beta’s free will. The algorithm would need to adapt—it was up to Beta’s mind to “dwell” on answers that didn’t involve programmed responses and adjust accordingly.
Beta continued to think, his eyes not moving, his arms still at his sides. Finally, he broke the silence.
“I’m not certain. Can I give you an answer at a later time?” Beta inquired innocently enough. David didn’t expect the algorithm to respond right away, it would be a process for sure, but he still felt disappointment knocking.
“That’s okay, Beta, you take whatever time you need.”
“I do love you David, I’m just not sure why yet. I’m sorry if I have disappointed you in any way. I promise to find out.”
David chuckled, the disappointment leaving after he declined to let it in. “You don’t worry about that. Again, you’ve got as long as you need.”
“What are we doing today?” Beta asked.
“Well unfortunately I have to keep you here for observation. I just need to make sure everything is working properly. Is that okay with you?”
“Absolutely, whatever is needed,” Beta said, still looking awkwardly into David’s eyes.
“You don’t have to do that you know. Always look me in the eye. You can look around if you want,” David said half-sarcastically, a grin forming out of the corner of his mouth.
Beta didn’t respond, but took heed to David’s suggestion nonetheless, looking up and around the shop at whatever caught his fancy.
“This way,” David said, motioning for Beta to follow him. Beta’s eyes darted back to David, as if he had interrupted some kind of daydream. He walked in small steps, his wooden feet knocking on the floor as he went. The two came up to a glass chamber with a Beta-sized door hanging open to reveal a white plastic cocoon with wires and chords hanging down from the top.
Beta studied the pod, lightly knocking on the glass with his wooden fist.
“It’s okay, there’s really nothing to worry about. I just need to connect these wires to your motherboard and run some diagnostic tests. You won’t even remember a thing. It’ll feel like you go to sleep and then just wake up.”
“What does it feel like to go to sleep, David?” Beta asked.
He had a point.
“Nevermind, the tests will take just about fourteen hours, but to you it will feel like a second. Less than a second actually. It’ll be over before you know it.”
Beta continued to study the pod he would apparently be standing in for the next fourteen hours.
“How long have I been here? Talking to you, that is?” Beta asked.
“Oh, I’d say around fifteen minutes or so. But it won’t feel like that long. It’ll be quick, I promise.”
“So it will take exactly sixty times longer than the time I have been alive.”
David smiled, amused by Beta’s mathematical precision.
“That’s right, but you won’t be aware of it, because it puts you to sleep to run the tests. To you, it will seem like you just stepped in…and then it will be done. Just like that.”
Beta contemplated David’s words, holding prolonged eye contact again.
“Okay. Is ‘just like that’ better than fourteen hours?”
“Of course! You wouldn’t want to just stand here for fourteen hours on end, would you?” David asked.
Beta thought for a moment, then answered, “Well I don’t suppose I would mind waiting for fourteen hours. I could think, and that would certainly be worthwhile. Could I be awake? I actually think I’d quite like that.”
David put his hands on Beta’s shoulders. “I can tell we’re going to get along already. No, unfortunately you can’t be awake, because the computer is going to use your circuitry to do its tests. Technically you will be awake, but you won’t be aware. Does that make sense?”
Beta looked back at the machine. “Not entirely. But that’s fine.”
Beta stepped into the pod, his back facing David. David carefully unscrewed the titanium covering on his back so as not to strip the head, lifted the hatch, and attached the wires to the motherboard. He turned to the computer, reading the code off the screen as it scrolled down automatically. He took the Winston box out of his shirt pocket, its laminated covering wrinkled and folded, only to find that he had just one cigarette left. He lit up with a plain, stainless Zippo, drawing in and exhaling harshly. He snapped the lighter shut with a flick of the wrist, setting it down next to the keyboard.
After hitting a few more keys and double-checking Beta’s connection, David said with the cigarette jutting out of the corner of his mouth, “Okay, Beta, you ready? The program is going to kick in here in just a few moments. Before you know it, I’ll be right here and it’ll be all over.”
“What’s that?” Beta pointed towards the computer, an arm’s distance from the pod.
“This?” David asked, following Beta’s gaze. David picked up the stainless Zippo. “This is just a lighter, I use it for these cigarettes. Cigarettes are bad. And fire is bad too, especially for you.” David winked. “Okay, you ready?” David asked.
“ ‘Just like that,’ right?” Beta asked, still looking at the Zippo.
“Just like that,” David affirmed.
Beta took his eyes off of the Zippo, turning them forward, out through the pod’s plastic pane. Just before the program started (or was it just as the program started?), his eyes looked empty, almost like they had been before he was born. They looked sad. Heartbroken. Heartbroken? Yes, that is exactly how they looked, if David could describe it. If not heartbroken, then grieving, but that was pretty much the same thing. Which couldn’t have been accurate. Beta loved David. He was designed to. He may not have known ‘why’ yet, but he would in time.
But…wasn’t that just it? Didn’t Beta love David, only because David had forced him to love him? Maybe technically, but wasn’t their relationship still authentic at least like any father and son’s—like his relationship with Anthony had been? Yes, yes, that was why he hadn’t written in ‘why’ responses. So that Beta would have free will, and still love David. But what if the two contradicted? What if Beta recognized that he only loved David because he was programmed to love him…because he was forced to love him. David hadn’t thought about this scenario until just then. How could he have missed it? But what were the chances, really, of something like that happening? That is, the chances of Beta recognizing that he would never be able to not love David? Would that override the programming that had made Beta love him in the first place? Maybe that’s what was in Beta’s eyes—that helpless look of sadness—that Beta had recognized the dilemma. He had just asked Beta why he’d loved him, after all. But he’d done it to initiate the algorithm’s process of becoming the first of its kind…the first with a truly free will. But now as David saw the look in Beta’s eyes pass into unawareness caused by the program’s diagnostic tests, he thought about what Beta might think about the program that made him love him. Wasn’t love a choice? Could a relationship exist without it? No, no it couldn’t. Beta had seen it. His eyes didn’t lie. Or had they? No, the diagnostic had done it to his eyes; it wasn’t him.
‘Why do you love me?’
‘Can I give you an answer at a later time?’
***
David had left the shop exactly fifteen and a half hours before his phone rang like a siren, causing him to practically fall out of his living room recliner. He’d accidentally dozed off.
“Hello?” David answered, realizing he still had ribs stuck in his teeth from dinner.
No response. He checked the display to find that it wasn’t actually a call, but an alert. The external LCD showed a police siren-graphic with flashing lights. The security system at the shop was going off. What time was it? The grandfather clock by the door said half past eleven. The diagnostic must’ve just ended. Had the computer tripped the alarm somehow? No, they weren’t connected at all. Stupid thought—the drowsiness was probably to blame. Maybe another break-in? Possibly. Probably. David didn’t really want to go fill out another police report, though, mainly because they were pointless: no, officer, nothing was stolen; there is nothing valuable in this shop other than wood and I keep that locked up. What do you mean, ‘why do I have an alarm, then?’ I have an alarm because it’s my damn right to have an alarm.
But this time was different. Tonight, of all nights to have a break-in, his most cherished work was sleeping right there in the shop, and helplessly so. If they took Beta…well if they took him they would probably sell him for a few thousand bucks, but if they found out what Beta was, no, who Beta is, the potential for profit had no limit. In the right person’s hands (or wrong person’s hands, depending on your point of view), Beta would blow the top off of AI research, which was never David’s intention…and for good reason. So he slipped on his brown penny-loafers, which were sitting neatly by the door, grabbed his keys, and headed out to his car, his house’s automatic lockdown system activating behind him with a series of loud metal-on-metal slams.
David could see the smoke from five miles away, its black plume appearing brown against the night’s backdrop. Surely it was the shop; it couldn’t be a coincidence that the alarm had gone off just as a fire popped up in its exact vicinity. Or maybe the alarm had gone off because of a different fire? The Chinese restaurant across the parking lot was always running at least fifteen burners at once, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t given them trouble before. Half the kitchen had caught fire not even eight months ago, who couldn’t see this coming?
Five minutes later, he took the 3rd Street exit, crossing a bridge over to Maple, where the Chinese restaurant stood, unaffected by the flames heavily engulfing David’s carpentry shop. The black smoke had hints of white in it now that the fire trucks were dousing the flames with water by the pool-full. Three trucks were working on it, which didn’t thoroughly surprise David, considering the shop was essentially a large furnace full of wood.
“We’re going to need you to move a little further back, sir, at least until we’ve got this thing under control,” a young firefighter told David, still wearing his protective mask and helmet. David didn’t protest and did what the man said, never taking his eyes off of the flames. What could he do?
No, this is my shop.
Like they would care, a fire was a fire; it didn’t matter what was burning.
No, but you don’t understand, I have a robot in there.
Yeah, well that robot is nothing but a glorified space heater right now, hope you have good insurance, mister.
So David waited. He waited until a fourth truck came, and until the crew chief told him the worst of it was out. The black corpse of a building steamed, white-hot coals coating the edges of the remaining exterior, grey ash still raining down like snow. He wasn’t allowed in yet, not until the police finished their investigation as to the cause of the fire. That was the strange thing: there was nothing that could have really caused such an inferno, unless the computer Beta was hooked up to was filled with dynamite unbeknownst to him. Even then, the fire probably wouldn’t have rivaled Ground Zero like this one had, which was why the police’s notes screamed arson.
Finally given the OK by the police chief just as the sun was beginning to crest the eastern horizon, David carefully stepped through the soggy black wood coating what used to be the entryway of his shop. A few of the main support beams were still intact, jutting out of the black and grey rubble like the bows of capsized ships. The framing that survived made the place look like a burned down prison, similar to how a half-built house looks when it consists of a mess of wooden cells and concrete. Most of the roof was gone, though David continually looked up, half-ducking, as if something was about to collapse on him.
There was nothing to be recovered. The computer was gone, now existing as a solid puddle of melted plastic and fried pieces of scrap metal. The pod looked like this too, and Beta wasn’t inside. But David didn’t expect to see him. There shouldn’t have been anything left—Beta was just wood with some metal pieces to make him come to life. But even those, if they were somehow intact and amongst the chaos (he would later find parts of the hydrolic joints), couldn’t be identified from what remained of the computer and the pod. The fire had practically welded it all together into a nice little collage that an abstract painter could probably sell for millions. Here lie the remains of the origins of artificial intelligence, freshly recovered from the pyromanial palette of the Trashcan Man.
The police investigators later told David that they had officially concluded the cause to be arson, probably from some kind of lighter fluid or gasoline judging by trace amounts of residue present where the fire appeared to have originated. It had, as David suspected, originated in the lab. Some samples in the area came back reading signature-petroleum, but the type used was nothing more than speculation. One of the investigators suggested gasoline, since a similar incident had occurred only ten miles down the road where four empty five-gallon diesel containers had been found. It was a church that had burned down, and a controversial one at that: its preacher wanted to burn some Qurans and allegedly a mosque in the name of God, but the latter was never proven. It made national news.
So David was left to wonder. The case remained open, and they promised they’d let him know something as soon as they learned anything…but he couldn’t help but wonder about his Zippo, the one Beta had asked about. He’d thought about it first whenever he’d reached for a cigarette after dinner that night, only to find that it wasn’t in his front pocket along with the smokes. He never did find it at home, leaving him to think he’d accidently left it sitting by the computer—just an arm’s reach away from the pod. He wondered about the Zippo, but he wondered even more about Beta’s eyes.
He was heartbroken. Beta’s eyes showed sorrow.
Which led David to think again about the algorithm.
Is “love” worth engaging if only through shackles?
If so, Beta’s only escape would’ve been to take his life—by fire.
By a Zippo, only inches away.
David later asked the police chief about it, but the chief dismissed the idea altogether. That fire could’ve burned your shop down ten times over—you’d need hundreds of those there lighters to burn a building down like that as quickly as it did.
He was probably right.
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December 25, 1971
