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Chapter 13

  13

  Abraham did not return to Washington for the night, and I followed him through his phone, as he went to a small cottage within the walls of the rehab property.

  Although the people who worked in the rehab center had the option to live elsewhere, making the daily commute to work and back, absolutely no employee was allowed to bring any outsider into the premises, and that also applied to partners and children.

  The daily commute was impractical for residents of DC and NYC, the long drive impossible to face at the end of a hard day’s work. As reasonable bachelor-level independent accommodation was provided within the walls of the center, everyone opted to stay on location, going home only on weekends and holidays.

  This accommodation was a fully furnished, serviced, cottage-like two-room unit, grouped at a corner of the huge property. No distinction was made between classes of employees, with everyone getting the same set-up as the trainers, at the top of the pyramid.

  I looked in on Abraham’s place, and found that it had a bedroom with attached bathroom, and a sitting room, but no kitchen. It had a fridge and a washing machine, and all necessary appliances, but food was delivered from the central kitchen, which was responsible for all food in the premises.

  No women were employed in any role. I got the count, and found ten trainers, six handlers, four guards, and another six people for the kitchen, all male. The kitchen number was high, as those people had additional duties beyond food preparation, which included cleaning of the residential units, and maintenance, like mowing the lawns, of the property. It was a rather shoddy interior landscape, but I never heard anyone commenting on it.

  After the bodies had been laid down in bed, I went to see Martina, who was quite tired, as she had been memorizing dialogue in a script, speaking it aloud while acting it out in front of a full-length mirror. I loved keeping an eye on her during her private rehearsals, displaying frustration at forgetting lines, shaking her head so the hair whipped about, and sometimes even stamping the odd foot.

  “We are going to spend the second half of tomorrow at mommy’s, and you can tell us everything then,” she said. “Right now, I am ordering home delivery of Indian food from Raja’s.”

  We lived in a very upscale locality in Manhattan, which meant that Raja’s, nearby, would have to be an extremely good restaurant, as it could not survive if the food was not absolutely the best to be found in the city. Sometimes, we even had it delivered to mommy’s, which would naturally be quite a large order, as everyone absolutely loved their food.

  I had never hidden from Martina that I desperately wanted to somehow become physical, solely to enjoy the exquisite beauty of her, as a man might enjoy it.

  There was nothing to be done about becoming physical, and I hung around watching her have dinner, which was another thing I craved physicality for, eating. They say it is one of the greatest delights of being human.

  The next day, at mommy’s, with everyone sitting around and listening intently, I went into the details of my time at the rehabilitation place.

  “Look,” said Bruce to us all, when I had completed my report. “A quick evaluation of the information brought by John, makes me think that it is rather light, and that merely entry-level information has been acquired.”

  “Yes,” agreed Ravi. “We now know for sure that Abraham, who was probably in control of the killer bot at the time of the murder, works in a place where a group of people are training bots to take control of human bodies. We now also know that he is possibly the head trainer, and that it is really very difficult for bots to learn how to effectively manage human bodies.”

  “It would obviously be an unimaginable leap for a bot to integrate into a human body,” said Jane.

  “And yet, to some extent that has already been done, at least once,” observed Deepak.

  “Of course, if we are agreed that the microchip in the murderer’s head means a bot was in charge,” said Alice.

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  “That is one of the things we’ll have to get a definite answer on,” said Bruce. “A lot more investigation for John to conduct.”

  “Starting with why that particular man was murdered,” said Ravi. “Was it selection, or just coincidental terrible luck?

  “Did you not specifically go and look through Abraham’s computer at the workplace, John?” asked Jane.

  “I did not,” I answered.

  “They have to be working on computers permanently assigned to them,” suggested Alice. “So, it may be possible to get details on Ambar from Abraham’s work computer.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They are working with groups of bots at a time, in the same training program. Though the bots of a group could be slightly ahead of and slightly behind each other, they would mostly be in a similar range of ability.

  “I had no impression that any human-capable bots are now available to them. Which might indicate that Ambar was trained elsewhere.”

  “We’ll have to get to the bottom of this, John,” said Bruce. “And finding the bot involved may not help,” he added.

  “Unless it has become properly conscious, close to John’s level, it may not even understand the significance of what has been done through its hands,” added Ravi.

  “They could have also bumped it off, to keep a lid on things,” said Jane. “Not that there’s any law, allowing evidence to be given by bots, or even confessions to be made by them.”

  “And anyway,” added Alice. “They are known to be huge liars. Whether testimony or confession, a bot’s words will inevitably carry no weight at all. Besides everything else, the bot will change its story every time it is cross-examined. A smart lawyer can make it behave just like a bot, tricking it into inventing ever more outrageous things, the more it talks.”

  “We’ll have to conduct a police style investigation, John,” said Bruce. “You’ll have to return to the rehab and study records maintained in computers. Perhaps they wouldn’t even have bothered to delete their private interchanges, between humans I mean. We have to check their computers, though accepting that the killer bot could have received programming and instructions elsewhere, in some different training program.

  “The most important thing to find out about the murder is the motive. Why did they kill a human and show it off? What was the purpose in advertising the astonishing ability of the bot?”

  “Of course, we now know that these bots can be trained in the way the murderer bot was,” said Ravi. “And now that you are reporting that they are working nonstop to train at least fifty different bots, we need to figure out what the eventual purpose might be.

  “Obviously, they couldn’t be planning to publicly keep bumping greater numbers of the general public off.”

  “We are so lucky that bots do not come in ready condition to take on human bodies,” said mommy. “I mean, despite maybe being in human shape in the computer.”

  “That’s external shape,” said Jane. “Merely two-dimensional. It has to be impossible for a bot to be programmed to work a three-dimensional flesh-and-blood body, operated by commands from the brain that activate muscle and tendon. A physical human body is not just a shape with machine internals.

  “Should be impossible to write a program for it, or to acquire any sort of preparatory expertise in the computer.”

  “Yes, that’s why the training is needed,” agreed Alice. “Movement of the human body is not something that a bot can train itself to do, by looking at the body it has been given. What makes our bodies work are inside, and nonmechanical, too.”

  “It should be a lot easier for John,” said Martina. “He is not a bot. Consciousness and intelligence should make the human body easier to learn.” She turned to look at me, on the monitor in the drawing room at mommy’s place. “What is your opinion on that?”

  “I have no opinion on the subject,” I answered. “I will admit, though, that the thought did fleetingly cross my mind, when watching those guys in diapers, pooping without knowing they are pooping.”

  “So, enter one and check it out,” said Martina. “Maybe you’ll have to murder the bot already in it, but that sort of stuff is what you do all the time.”

  “Get into the one Abraham is training,” said Ravi. “Infiltrate, and make it the first official step in the murder investigation. While dealing with him as his regular bot, you might find out how the headjob murder was set up, and why. They are quite likely also training the new ones to become capable of killing.”

  “Yes, I could kick the bot out, maybe kill it, and trick Abraham into imagining I’m the same trainee bot.”

  “Exactly that,” confirmed Ravi. “You’ll have to learn the ropes, sort of, and interact with Abraham in the way his bot interacts with him.”

  “But won’t they get suspicious, if I start outperforming all the other bots?”

  “Do that in private time, darling,” said Martina. “Be an idiot bot in public, but get it all sorted out and working in private. Use the training sessions to get the information in the way the bots are getting, and further train yourself privately when the bodies are left to the bots.”

  “What do you think of the idea, John?” asked Bruce.

  “It’s certainly going to be possible,” I said. “To take a body on, I’ll have to exterminate all the bots that share the body. If active, they’ll make a nonstop racket to get into it, as per the roster. Algorithm-driven, rude and argumentative types.

  “I am not guaranteeing that I might be very much faster, or any faster than the bots, at controlling and independently operating a human body that has no control of itself. But, yes, in terms of tricking Abraham or anyone else of them, I can certainly do it. And, as Martina has pointed out, I will have private access in the dormitory.

  “Those bots are actually absolutely deaf and blind inside the bodies, and have no sense of feel either. Unless watching through a camera, a bot wouldn’t know if its body has got up and started dancing in the dormitory.”

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