Authors: Alan Tien
Most of the other students had designed their robots to be big and lumbering, making them difficult to knock over. But
all designs had weak spots. The competition rules defined that amount of material you could use to create your robot. So if you made the robot big and strong, then most of the material allocation would be used up on the shell. Something had to give somewhere else.
“Austin, Austin. Are you there?
” I guess I started to space out thinking about the possibilities. When he got my attention again, Willy said, “It’s an intriguing idea, but just because Willstin has new moves, even if the moves are super kung-fu, he doesn’t have AI. We would have to create the fighting control module. You know, the intelligence to sequence the attacks and counter-attacks, to figure out the weak spots on the fly.”
Willy didn’t have to spell it all out for me. I wasn’t the programmer
, but I wasn’t dumb. I knew that most of the other kids had been working for months on their Fight Control Modules (FCM). Most people had settled on a few variant robot models that were ready off the shelf, so they wouldn’t actually have to tinker with physical parts, allowing them to focus their energies on the software. Willy and I were pretty unique building our own robot from scratch. So even though we had a model that many of the FCM’s might not have seen before, they would have many contingency loops built in for that scenario. We didn’t have time, nor frankly the passion, to build a competing FCM.
“
Aghh. You’re right,” I conceded. “It was just a thought. Anyway, I was just calling you to tell you that it worked. Good job.”
“Thanks Austin. Good night. Oh, and thanks for teaching Willstin today.” He sounded like a proud parent.
“Yeah, you’re welcome. Good night.”
“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”
―
Sun Tzu
,
The Art of War
Just as I was about to fall into deep sleep, my band chimed. I was too sleepy to answer it, so I tried to sleep on. But it chimed louder. My conscious brain dragged itself out of the quicksand of sleep. The band is set to “Do not disturb” near my bedtime. Set by the school so I can’t even override it. It will only accept emergency calls. Suddenly I sat upright. Maybe it was my mom calling.
I looked at my softly glowing band. Strange, it was a call from Willy, but it was not his normal ID. It was his programming ID, the one he used when he trolled the net to find answers to erudite questions, when he didn’t want other people to know he was just a kid. It was his Chinese name.
I said, “Hello,” which connected the call automatically with the netvid. “What the hell Willy? Do you know what time it is? How did you even call me at this time?”
I started thinking maybe he was bragging about a clever hack that got around the school
’s “Do not disturb” restrictions, and I was just about to reprimand him for the trouble he would be getting us both in when the school officials found out.
My eyes were still foggy with sleep,
and the vid screen was still almost all black, as if he didn’t turn on the lights in the room. I couldn’t see who was calling. “Willy?” I asked, more concerned than angry, when he didn’t say anything to my rant. “Are you ok?” I hoped he wasn’t in trouble. Why didn’t he just call emergency instead of calling me? I wasn’t even his best friend.
“Hi Austin.”
I froze. I recognized that voice. That baby-voice.
“Willstin?”
I queried, nervously, unbelievingly.
“Austin, I need your help and we don’t have a lot of time. This line isn’t secure, though I have blocked your band’s recording device for a period, so we’re safe for the moment.”
“Wha???” My brain wasn’t in gear. Maybe I was still dreaming, I thought.
“Austin
Longwhite. Pay attention. This is important.” At that, my band suddenly sent me a light shock, which might as well been a full electrocution for how much it made me jump.
“Did you do that?” Dumb question, but like I said, I wasn’t really awake yet, t
hough I was getting there real fast.
“Your life is in danger. You must come to the
MakerSpace lab. Right. Now.”
I finally came around and started wondering if this was some elaborate prank. “Come on Willy, stop it. Ok you win, you’re
freakin’ me out.” It didn’t make sense, of course. Willy was so straight he made a line look crooked.
“Get out of bed, change into normal street clothes,
and take your passport. Do not tell anyone you’re coming. Don’t wake Double D.”
I was already passed the point of being shocked. My brain
presumed that Willstin used “Double D” instead of “Ding Ding” to let me know that this wasn’t a prank from an outsider. Only my mom and Chang Lin ever heard me call her that. Willy has never come over my house, and I don’t remember talking about my ayi at school.
But I still wasn’t ready to trust a
vid call from supposedly my robot. “Turn on the lights so I can see you. Do a move I taught you today.”
Willstin did as he was told. The room lit up, and Willstin did a perfect mimic of my sweep kick. And then he laughed
the double-over belly laugh when he had fallen down. The lights went off again. “Austin. Your mom is in Beijing with Minister Li from the Education Ministry. Your Dad ran off with a woman from Central Sudan. Your dog’s name was Yury.”
That was impressive, but I was being peevish, not wanting to believe. “Anybody can look up those facts.”
“Your dog was named Yury, short for ‘urine,’ because it peed everywhere for the first few weeks you had it.”
Wow, only
Mom and Dad would know why we named Yury what we did. I didn’t know where Dad was; I haven’t talked to him for months since he disappeared. He wouldn’t even know I had been working on Willstin. And Mom was locked in government meetings in Beijing. And she was as straight as Willy. There’s no way my parents would be playing a practical joke on me.
“Austin, we’re out of time playing around. You have to move.
Now. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
But it didn’t really matter, and I knew it. There were rumors of people who didn’t want to play by the government’s rules being taken away in the middle of the night, particularly foreign devils who overstepped their boundaries, those who had forgotten that they were in China only due to the good graces of the government.
I started moving.
As I got into my clothes, Willstin continued to coach me. “Your passport is in the safe in your mother’s room.” I ran over, trying to be as quiet as possible. It was unlikely I would wake DD, since she slept in the maid’s quarters on the other side of the apartment, but I didn’t want to explain what I was doing breaking into my mom’s safe.
“The code is 287846. By the way, it spells Austin on an old phone pad, if you were curious.” I didn’t know
what Willstin was talking about. What was a phone pad? How did numbers translate to letters? But I just punched in the code.
“What about the fingerprint?” I
asked, when the safe didn’t pop open.
“Put your thumb to it.”
I started to object, “But my thumb…” The safe opened.
I found my passport. “Take the money as well.” Paper money was mostly obsolete, but it was still used in some areas, mostly disreputable ones where you didn’t want
your spending to be tracked. I felt guilty stealing from my mom, but I figured if it kept me alive, she would forgive me. If this thing was really a prank, which I still half-believed, then I could blame somebody else. If I died, then she could yell at me all she wanted. I grabbed the cash and closed the safe.
“Ok, now what?”
The vid call hung up. “I will stay in touch with you via your band. Go out the back door, through the kitchen.” It was the maid’s entrance, so her coming and going wouldn’t disturb the masters. Here I did have to be quiet, since it was near her sleeping chambers. “Chambers” made her room sound too nice; it was more like her sleeping closet.
I snuck out, carefully closing the door behind me
. I channeled my MMA master’s teachings. I was a shadow. I was the wind. I always loved playing ninja. Now it was for real.
“What about the cameras?” I whispered as I ran.
“I have them covered. They will loop the last 5 seconds before you entered the view. Eventually they will figure it out, but it’s good enough for now.”
“How are you getting into all this?”
“Everything is connected.” Man, even Willstin sounded like he was quoting Lao Tzu.
“Yeah, I know, but how are YOU getting into all this.” I don’t think I was much clearer the second time I asked the question, but Willstin understood my intent.
“The Mimic function plus your connecting to me this afternoon woke something up.”
I almost tripped. “You’re not saying…” I panted.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I’m self-aware.”
“That’s impossible! You can’t be AI!”
“Do I sound like a human being talking to you right now?”
“Umm, yeah, I guess.”
“Then I pass the Turing test.”
“No shit!”
“I’m not kidding you. Please don’t swear.”
“What are you, my mother?” I was finally awake.
“No, I’m Willstin.” I guess we didn’t install the sarcasm module. “I’m your creation. You’re my father.”
Damn, now that was getting weird.
“Uh, ok, whatever. As your dad, I demand you to tell me what’s going on.” I was getting a bit winded, but adrenaline was pumping, and I was only a few more minutes away from school. I continued loping down the hallways, trusting Willstin manipulated each camera as I came into view.
Suddenly, my band jolted me again and the door to my right slid open. “Get in.
Person coming.” I veered to the right, bouncing off the door frame before I fell into the darkened room. The door slid shut behind me, just barely missing my feet. My breathing sounded like an alley cat fight to me; I couldn’t believe I wasn’t going to wake up whoever’s house I had crashed into. But before I had finished that thought, the door slid open again, and Willstin said, “Go.” I didn’t need to be told twice.
I ran out, started going the wrong way, and Willstin had to tell me to turn around. “Yeah, yeah, I knew that.
Just testing you.”
“This is a poor time to perform tests, Austin.”
“It was a joke. Nevermind. Tell me what the hell is going on. Oh, and stop friggin’ shocking me!”
“Ok, but please stop swearing.” Even “hell”
and “frigging” are in his restricted words dictionary? I was going to have to get Willy to fix that when this was all over.
As I neared the darkened school, with only a few outside lights on, I slowed a bit, not quite sure which entrance to take.
“Go to the side entrance, through the science labs,” Willstin directed me.
I picked up my pace again, following his terse but clear instructions. In between
his directions, Willstin asked me a question. “Do you know what the Cho-Qing Perception test is?”
I absently noted that even though Willstin spoke in English, he said “Cho-Qing” in proper Mandarin, with the “q” sounding like “
ch” and not like “kw,” the way older Americans still tried to pronounce pinyin in English. Though confusingly enough, the “q” sound was different than the “ch” in “Cho.”
I
panted, “It guess it has something to do with perception since that’s in the name. I think it’s like the Rorschach inkblot test, except dealing with all my senses. ”
Willstin
said, “Sort of, but it’s not testing your personality. Perception is close. It’s trying to measure other unknown abilities.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? How can you measure something unknown?” I was happy to see that my brain had
finally decided to show up to the party.
“Yes and no. The researchers suspect there’s something more
to human abilities than what we can currently measure.”
“Like ESP or something?”
“Yes, like ExtraSensory Perception. Like intuition. Like luck.”
“Luck??”
I was using my air sparingly. I needed most of it just to keep running.
“Yes,
intuition and luck. Based on your test scores, they think you have a lot of both, or maybe they’re one and the same.”
I had gone through a few doors, which had all magically slid open just as I approached so I never had to even break stride. I was nearing
MakerSpace so I slowed to a walk, my sides cramping. The MakerSpace door opened. I hesitated a moment, afraid to walk in, scared to meet my creation, my very own Frankenstein, even if he was a lot cuter.
Willstin was waiting for me, a toddler standing on the table with his blue eyes piercing the darkness and his skin
glowing a healthy pink.
“Just in time.
I’ve printed out your travel authorization form and the official school chop.”
Copying a chop was supposedly impossible on the printers since a chop was the Chinese equivalent of a signature. All printers had logic embedded, protected with strong encryption, to prevent the copying of any form of identification, copyrighted items,
paper money, etc. Even trying to make a copy would automatically notify the authorities.
I didn’t bother asking Willstin how he got around the restrictions. I walked up to him and grabbed his shoulders. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I know your upset Austin. It’s natural for humans to react emotionally, even erratically, during moments of uncertainty. That’s why I’m doing this.”
Before I could ask what he was going to do, Willstin jabbed me with a needle. It was so fast, and the entry was so perfect, I hardly felt a thing. But I felt violated and scared. “What the hell was that?”
“We talked about that bad swearing habit of yours,” Willstin said very primly.
“What the heck was that?” I almost
screamed, but even as the last word left my mouth, I was wondering what I was so worked up about.
“A tranquilizer.
Now come on, we have to get to the suborbital port.”
Even with the tranquilizer coursing through my blood, I was agitated enough by this idea that I shook Willstin
again. “What is going on? I’m not going anywhere until you explain it to me!”
Willstin looked as if he needed to take a deep breath. “Ok ok, sit down.”
He knew he had pushed me as far as he could. “I don’t really know what happened here either. And that’s saying a lot because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I ‘awoke’ sometime after you had connected to me with Mimic. I can’t explain it any better. One moment, I was just a robot with a bunch of subroutines. The next moment, I could ‘think’ for myself. I’m using human terms, by the way, to make this understandable to you. The words are shadows, metaphors, of what I’m trying to say.