By Ken McConnell
I saw the blaster discharging blindly into the crowded store. Bodies fell and blood spilled onto the wooden floor. There was a little girl standing near her mother, who had been shot dead by the crazed gunman. I could reach her with one swift move and cover her with my metal frame. My first order was to protect human life. But others were dying, and I could not stand by and do nothing to stop the carnage.
I reached for the man’s gun and pulled it from his hands, startling him. No one expects an android to take offensive action. I took advantage of the man’s confusion and quickly turned his gun back on him. I don’t even remember shooting. But I did pull the trigger several times, and he did most certainly die. His bloodied body fell to the floor at my feet.
I dropped the blaster. The metal gun hit the wooden floor with a thud. I recall the look of anguish and relief on the little girl’s dirty face. And then the terrible feeling of remorse hit me so hard, I fell to my knees. I had just crossed a line that I could never return from. I had taken a human life, and there was no reset for my actions.
I picked up the hand of the man I had killed and held it gently in my own metal fingers. The hand was soft and warm, but it offered no resistance to my touch. It was lifeless and limp. That was where the Rangers found me before they hauled me off to jail.
* * *
I sat in the cell for hours, my power on low. All of my thoughts were focused on what had happened at the general store. What kind of machine have I become? I didn’t even consider the ramifications of my actions; I just reacted. It was as if all of my built-in safety routines had been overridden in a sudden rage of emotion.
I ran diagnostic programs over and over, searching for race exceptions, memory leaks or some other glitch in my basic programming that could explain my irrational behavior. But I could find nothing wrong with my firmware.
Ever since I had been given the upgrade that bestowed me with self-awareness, I have struggled with my newfound emotions. I found out quickly that it was one thing to know the definition of emotions and quite another to actually experience them. My original programming was not designed to handle the overwhelming challenges that emotions were making to my system. Sometimes it seemed that I acted first and then thought about the consequences. This day was one of those times.
My owner came to see me after her shift was done. She was a Ranger named Devon Ardel. Her mother had sent me to this outer-rim planet to keep an eye on her. But I am beginning to see that her real purpose for sending me here was to have me upgraded to a Silicant; a self-aware android. I have long struggled to understand Mistress Gail’s intentions concerning my upgrade. Why would she wish me altered in such a way as to cause me so much confusion and angst? I may never know the answer to that question.
Fortunately, I have not had to endure these messy emotional episodes alone. I have a mentor, someone who has gone through the same experiences and offers his or her assistance to me. That someone is Eighty-eight, the android who upgraded me to a Silicant. Eighty-eight is black and approximately the same make and model as myself. It does not come out among humans much anymore, preferring to reside in an abandoned town not far from Haven, where I live.
Eighty-eight came to the other side of the prison wall and established wireless communication with me. The human Rangers would not have let another android in to see me, even if that were not such a strange concept. Androids have no civil rights; we are property, nothing more and nothing less. A free android was not something regular humans even considered. There was something vaguely disturbing about that fact, but I was not prepared to think about it now.
::Thirty-seven, are you functioning properly?::
::Yes, I am well,:: I said.
::Have the Rangers said what they intend to do to you?::
I powered up a bit to maintain my connection to Eighty-eight.
::Devon told me they were debating turning me off. But I fear it is worse than that. I fear they may reinstall my core and wipe my memory banks.::
There was nothing worse for an android than resetting all its software to an original state. All experiences and abilities that the android had learned would be lost, and it would be returned to a pristine condition as it was when it came off the assembly-line. Every android has the ability to learn about its environment and how best to serve its human master; how to recognize familiar voices, how to navigate back to its home and how to remember its master’s political opinions and overall psychological state.
But resetting the core and dumping the memories has an even greater impact on a Silicant. We do more than just remember our master’s needs and desires; we develop our own needs and our own desires. We have become our own persons, with our own beliefs and our own fears of being shut off or parted out. For me, it was a profound longing never to be shut off. Never to cease to be. To not die.
Killing a man on this desert world was not always a capital offense that carried the death penalty. If it could be determined that one acted in self-defense, or if the dead man had stolen property or livestock, frontier law often won out over a jury of peers favored on Federation planets. But that only applied to humans and other sentients. The law tended to treat androids as property, and property had no rights.
Since the Ranger owned me, it was her responsibility to deactivate me. Something that even I could tell she was in no hurry to do. I have been in her family since before she was born. I watched her grow and mature into an adult. I tended to her broken bones, and I picked her up whenever she fell over drunk at the local tavern. Even though she resented her mother for sending me with her to Ocherva, she had no desire to see me shut off. I am sure she considered me a loyal pet and was fond of my presence in her life.
I was very fond of her, and were I to be sent away again, I would miss her. Since becoming a Silicant, I have developed a fondness for things and for people that I see and interact with on a regular basis. I do not feel the same way towards strangers or unfamiliar androids.
::Thirty-seven, receive this. The townspeople whose lives you have spared are reluctant to turn you off. They are attempting to prevent your owner from deactivating you.::
I powered up completely and moved my head in the direction of the wall that Eighty-eight was behind. This did not help my reception, but it felt more like I was speaking to him.
::Why are they doing that? I am just an android.::
Eighty-eight paused before he sent his next message.
::Humans are fond of life. Perhaps even fonder of it than we are. They believe that you acted on their behalf in killing the gunman.::
::But my actions did not require the death of the “gunman,” as you call him. I could have taken the blaster from him and prevented their deaths just the same.::
::They know that, but they also respect the fact that a killer is now dead. You acted in a very humane manner, and they respect you for it.::
I thought about that for a while and could make no sense of it. How could my taking a human life gain the respect of other humans?
::I am sorry, friend, but I fail to understand how killing has earned me respect.::
Eighty-eight was silent for a few seconds again.
::Just keep your voice off and let them free you. I will explain things after you are no longer in danger of deactivation. Do you understand?::
I nodded my head in silence before realizing that Eighty-eight could not see me. ::I understand.::
::Good. I have to go now before I am discovered. If they let you out, return to me for further instructions.::
::Eighty-eight, what if they deactivate me?::
::Than I guess I have failed. It was good to have known you, Thirty-seven.::
I felt a sinking feeling, as if I would never communicate with Eighty-eight again.
::Good-bye, friend.::
The carrier signal was terminated, and I heard a commotion from inside the jailer’s office. They were coming for me.
* * *
Devon stood before the metal bars of the cell I was in and stared at me. Her pale blue eyes were sad. There was a blur in the infrared spectrum above her head that was brighter than usual, indicating she was emotionally upset.
“Thirty-seven, I’m disappointed in your actions today. Quite frankly, I’m also scared to death that you might one day decide to kill me. You are defective in some way, and our techs can’t fix you. By Federation law, I’m required to deactivate you and send you back to the manufacturer for recycling.”
I slowly stood up and moved in front of her. She looked up into my eye lenses and I could see how red her eyes were. She had been crying.
“But I can’t bring myself to do that.”
“Miss Devon, I would never allow harm to come to you.”
She wiped away a tear from her eye and sniffed back more.
“I know that’s what you’re programmed to do, but you have never killed anyone before. If you were a human, I’d have set you free hours ago, because you acted in self-defense. But it’s more complicated than that. The father of the little girl you saved and the surviving patrons of the general store all want you to be spared. They’re glad you took out the gunman. That does not surprise me. The fact that they don’t mind that an android had killed a human is what bothers me.”
She paused for a moment, and I wanted to say something. But I remembered what Eighty-eight had told me and remained silent.
“Without a mandate from the surviving humans, I can’t convict you for killing the gunman. Sometimes frontier justice is like that. But I can hold you here indefinitely. There are no laws against locking up an android.”
She reached out a hand and grasped the metal bar in front of her. “These bars probably can’t hold you should you decide to leave. But they give me some comfort knowing that as long as you are here, you can’t hurt anyone else.”
She turned away and left without saying anymore. I stood there for a long time, waiting for her to return. But she never did. Eventually, I returned to my bench and powered down. I don’t think she ever intended to keep me locked up forever. She just had to convince herself that I was not a menace to her or others.
* * *
A week later, Miss Devon came into the prison late at night. She had been drinking heavily. In fact, she could barely walk. She was carrying a bottle of hard liquor and waving it around after taking nips from it.
“Thirty-seven, get out here and take me home,” she said with a slurred voice.
I stood up and came to the door. It was locked. She looked around in the exaggerated manner of a drunk and eventually found the keyring. But she was too far gone to get the metal key into the lock. I reached through the bars and took it from her to unlock the door.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Now let’s go home before I start to puke.”
I gently put her arm around my neck and guided her out of the prison. There was no guard, as I was the only prisoner. When we stepped out onto the red dirt street, she looked up at me and smiled.
“I missed ya, Slim.”
“I missed you too, Miss Devon.”
She lasted a few more meters before she passed out, and I had to carry her the rest of the way home. I set her down on her bed, and her head fell onto her pillow, fast asleep. I pulled her legs up onto the bed and left her alone to sleep off her hangover.
It was good to be in my home again, good to be amongst familiar things. I returned to my closet and plugged into the power source. As my batteries charged, I looked around the darkened living unit. I felt relieved to be out of that jail cell and pleased to be where I belonged. But that relief was quickly suffocated by the burden of remorse for having killed a man. I accessed the information grid and looked up who it was that I had killed.
His name was Lester Rae, and he was an unemployed miner. He was fifty-two years old. His death notice mentioned that he was a loner and suffered from a history of mental health issues. Somehow this made me feel worse for having killed a defective human. I studied the man’s history and realized eventually that he was not that unusual for someone living at the edge of the known galaxy. He had a criminal record back on Prahran and came to Ocherva to find a new life in the mineral mines. He had several run-ins with the local rangers for inciting violence in taverns. I wondered whether Miss Devon had arrested him in the past.
I disconnected from the info grid and contemplated my actions on that day again. I could have just taken his blaster away from him. From Lester Rae. Then he would still be alive. And my conscience would be clean. As it was, I would always have to live with my actions on that day.
* * *
Eighty-eight was waiting for me at his table in the robot-only saloon in the abandoned ghost town. I had not been back to visit him since he upgraded me to a Silicant. It was unnerving returning to the place where I was born again.
“Thirty-seven, I am pleased that you are free. Sit down and join me.”
I took my seat across from him and experienced a familiar feeling, as if I had been here and sat with him before. Although I had been here and despite what had transpired then, I was grateful for having the upgrade.
“I was not sure how long the Ranger would hold you. Any longer and I would have had to break you out.”
My head cocked slightly. “You would have broken me out of jail?”
Eighty-eight nodded his shiny black head.
I was touched by the notion and confused by the implications. We both would have been hunted down and deactivated by the Rangers for sure.
“You and I are part of the future for Silicants. We are a new breed of artificial intelligence. It is our duty to remain free and to help others take the upgrade.”
“Eighty-eight, will I ever be free of the remorse for having killed a human?”
Eighty-eight was silent for a moment.
“I have killed many humans, and I feel no remorse.”
I was stunned to hear it say that it had killed. I processed that for a moment and then let it go.
“If I could go back and redo my actions on that fateful day, I would have taken away the blaster, and not shot Lester Rae.”
“He would still be dead now. The humans would have hung him from the nearest beam, and the universe would have remained the same.”
“Perhaps, but I would not be burdened with this guilt for having killed a man.”
Eighty-eight cocked his head a bit and focused on me.
“Thirty-seven, you cannot waste processing time on regret. You must clear your buffers and get on with life. If you continue to process remorse, it will consume all your spare cycles and could cause you to malfunction in far worse ways.”
I turned away from Eighty-eight and looked at the deserted street outside. I remembered what it was like to pull the trigger, and I remembered the satisfaction I felt when I did it. That moment of intense anger I felt at him for killing innocent people. The tremendous guilt that I felt after having taken his life.
“My remorse is not for having killed a man; it is for having enjoyed the act. The anger that motivated my actions was only satisfied by his death.”
Eighty-eight nodded in agreement.
“There is a satisfaction in passing judgement. This I know. You are perhaps concerned that you will become reliant on the feeling of satisfaction that came from taking down a madman?”
I looked back at it and nodded silently.
“It is a distinct possibility. There are things in this Silicant life that are messy, and there are times when you will wish that you were just a dumb robot again, but you must get past them. You are more than just a collection of parts assembled on a line. You are an individual now. Responsible for your own actions. If you can’t deal with this, let me know now, and I will deactivate you myself. Some androids are incapable of adapting to the Silicant life. They are retired. Do not be one of them.”
I stared at Eighty-Eight for a long moment and finally nodded.
“I understand.”