Glitch: A Short Story (Kindle Single) (2 page)

Turning back
to the boys, I see all three of them standing perfectly still, the robot and
the two engineers, watching me. “So we lost one bout of data,” I say. “He’s
good enough to win. The Chinese were the favorites anyway, and they’re out.”

Nobody says
anything. I wonder if this is about ego or pride. Engineers hate a wipe and
reinstall. It’s a last resort, an admittance of defeat. The dreaded cry of
“reboot,” which is to say we have no clue and hopefully the issue will sort
itself if we start over, if we clear the cache.

“Are you
sure you can’t think of anything else that might be wrong with him?” Peter
asks. He and Greenie join me at the other end of the trailer. Again, that weird
look on their faces. It’s more than exhaustion. It’s some kind of wonder and
fear.

“What do you
know that you aren’t telling me?” I ask.

“It’s what
we
think
,” Greenie says.

“Fucking
tell me. Jesus Christ.”

“We needed a
clear head to look at this,” Peter says. “Another set of eyes.” He glances at
Greenie. “If she doesn’t see it, then maybe we’re wrong . . .”

But I do see
it. Right then, like a lightning bolt straight up my spine. One of those
thoughts that falls like a sledgehammer and gives you a mental limp for the
rest of your life, that changes how you walk, how you see the world.

“Hell no,” I
say.

The boys say
nothing. Max seems to twitch uncomfortably at the far end of the trailer. And I
don’t think I’m projecting this time.

••••

“Max, why
don’t you want your arms?”

“Just I
don’t want them,” he says. I’m watching the monitors instead of him this time.
A tactical module is running, and it shouldn’t be. Stepping through each line,
I can see the regroup code going into a full loop. There are other lines
running in parallel, his sixty-four processors running dozens of routines all
at once. I didn’t notice the regroup code until I looked for it. It’s the
closest thing we’ve ever taught him to retreat. Max has been programmed from
the ground up to fight until his juice runs out. He knows sideways and forward,
and that’s it.

“You have a
big bout in two days,” I tell Max.

Another
surge of routines, another twitch in his power harness. If his legs were
plugged in, I imagine he’d be backing away from me. Which is crazy. Not only
have we never taught him anything like what he’s trying to pull off, we never
instructed him to
teach
himself
anything like this.

“Tell me
it’s just a glitch,” Greenie says. He almost sounds hopeful. Like he doesn’t
want it to be anything else. Peter is watching me intently. He doesn’t want to
guide me along any more than he has to. Very scientific of him. I ignore
Greenie and focus on our robot.

“Max, do you
feel any different?”

“No,” Max
says.

“Are you
ready for your next bout?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

No response.
He doesn’t know what to say. I glance at the screen to get a read on the code,
but Peter points to the RAM readout, and I see that it has spiked. No available
RAM. It looks like full combat mode. Conflicting routines.

“This is
emergent,” I say.

“That’s what
I told him,” Peter says. He perks up.

“But
emergent
what?
” Greenie asks. “Because Peter thinks—”

“Let her say
it,” Peter says, interrupting. “Don’t lead her.” He turns to me. There’s a look
on his face that makes him appear a decade younger. A look of wonder and
discovery. I remember falling in love with that look.

And I know
suddenly what Peter wants me to say. I know what he’s thinking, because I’m
thinking it too. The word slips between my lips without awareness. I hear
myself say it, and I feel like a fool. It feels wonderful.

“Sentience,”
I say.

••••

We live for
emergent behaviors. It’s what we hope for. It’s what we fight robots for. It’s
what we program Max to do.

He’s
programmed to learn from each bout and improve, to create new routines that
will improve his odds in future fights. The first time I wrote a routine like
this, it was in middle school. I pitted two chess-playing computers with basic
learning heuristics against one another. Summer camp stuff. I watched as a
library of chess openings was built up on the fly. Nothing new, just the
centuries old rediscovered in mere hours. Built from nothing. From learning.
From that moment on, I was hooked.

Max is just
a more advanced version of that same idea. His being able to write his own code
on the fly and save it for the future is the font of our research. Max creates
new and original software routines that we patent and sell to clients.
Sometimes he introduces a glitch, a piece of code that knocks him out of
commission, what evolution handles with death, and we have to back him out to
an earlier revision. Other times he comes up with a routine that’s so far
beyond anything else he knows, it’s what we call emergent. A sum that’s greater
than its parts. The moment a pot of water begins to boil.

There was
the day he used his own laser to cut a busted leg free because it was slowing
him down. That was one of those emergent days. Max is programmed at a very base
level not to harm himself. He isn’t allowed to turn his weapons against his own
body. It’s why his guns won’t fire when part of him gets in the way, similar to
how he can’t swing a leg and hurt us by accident.

But one
bout, he decided it was okay to lop off his own busted leg if it meant winning
and preventing further harm. That emergent routine funded half of our following
season. And his maneuver—knowing when to sacrifice himself and by how
much—put us through to the finals two years ago. We’ve seen other
Gladiators do something similar since. But I’ve never seen a Gladiator not want
to fight. That would require one emergent property to override millions of
other ones. It would be those two chess computers from middle school suddenly
agreeing not to play the game.

“Max, are
you looking forward to training today?”

“I’d rather
not,” Max says. And this is the frustrating part. We created a facsimile of
sentience in all our machines decades ago. We programmed them to hesitate, to
use casual vernacular; we wanted our cell phones to seem like living, breathing
people. It strikes me that cancer was cured like this—so gradually that
no one realized it had happened. We had to be told. And by then it didn’t seem
like such a big deal.

“Shit, look
at this,” Peter says.

I turn to
where he’s pointing. The green HDD indicator on Max’s server bank is flashing
so fast it might as well be solid.

“Max, are
you writing code?” I ask.

“Yes,” he
says. He’s programmed to tell the truth. I shouldn’t even have to remind
myself.

“Shut him
down,” Greenie says. When Peter and I don’t move, Greenie gets off his stool.

“Wait,” I
say.

Max jitters,
anticipating the loss of power. His charging cables sway. He looks at us,
cameras focusing back and forth between me and Greenie.

“We’ll get a
dump,” Greenie says. “We’ll get a dump, load up the save from before the semis,
and you two can reload whatever the hell this is and play with it later.”

“How’s my
team?” a voice calls from the ramp. We turn to see Professor Hinson limping
into the trailer. Hinson hasn’t taught a class in decades, but still likes the
moniker. Retired on a single patent back in the twenties, then had one VC hit
after another across the Valley. He’s a DARPA leech, loves being around
politicians. Would probably have aspirations of being President if it weren’t
for the legions of coeds who would come out of the woodworks with stories.

“SoCal is
out there chewing up sparring partners,” Hinson says. “We aiming for dramatic
suspense in here?”

“There might
be a slight issue,” Greenie says. And I want to fucking kill him. There’s a
doubling of wrinkles across Hinson’s face.

“Well then
fix it,” Hinson says. “I pay you all a lot of money to make sure there aren’t
issues
.”

I want to
point out that he paid a measly four hundred grand, which sure seemed like a
lot of money eight years ago when we gave him majority stake in Max, but has
ended up being a painful bargain for us since. The money we make now, we make
as a team. It just isn’t doled out that way.

“This might
be more important than winning the finals,” I say. And now that I have to put
the words together in my brain, the announcement, some way to say it, the
historical significance if this is confirmed hits me for the first time. We’re
a long way from knowing for sure, but to even suggest it, to raise it as a
possibility, causes all the words to clog up in the back of my throat.

“Nothing’s
more important than these finals,” Hinson says, before I can catch my breath.
He points toward the open end of the trailer, where the clang of metal on metal
can be heard. “You realize what’s at stake this year? The Grumman contract is
up. The army of tomorrow is going to be bid on next week, and Max is the
soldier they want.
Our
soldier. You understand? This isn’t about
millions in prize money, this is about
billions
.
Hell, this could be worth a trillion dollars over the next few decades. You
understand? You might be looking at the first
trillionaire
in history. Because every army in the world will need a hundred thousand of our
boys. This isn’t research you’re doing here. This is boot camp.”

“What if
this is worth more than a trillion dollars?” Peter asks. And I love him for
saying it. For saying what I’m thinking. But the twinge of disgust on Hinson’s
face lets me know it won’t have any effect. The professor side of him died
decades ago. What could be more important than money? A war machine turned
beatnik? Are we serious?

“I want our
boy out there within the hour. Scouts are in the stands, whispering about
whether we’ll even have an entry after yesterday. You’re making me look like an
asshole. Now, I’ve got a million dollars worth of sparring partners lined up
out there, and I want Max to go shred every last dollar into ribbons, you
hear?”

“Max might
be sentient,” I blurt out. And I feel like a third grader again, speaking up in
class and saying something that everyone else laughs at, something that makes
me feel dumb. That’s how Hinson is looking at me. Greenie too.

“Might?”
Hinson asks.

“Max doesn’t
want to fight,” I tell him. “Let me show you—”

I power Max
down and reach for his pincers. I clip them into place while Peter does the
same with the buzz saw. I flash back to eight years ago, when we demonstrated
Max for Professor Hinson that first time. I’m as nervous now as I was then.

“I told them
we should save the dump to look at later,” Greenie says. “We’ve definitely got
something emergent, but it’s presenting a lot like a glitch. But don’t worry,
we can always load up the save from before the semis and go into the finals
with that build.
Max’ll
tear SoCal apart—”

“Let us show
you what’s going on,” Peter says. He adjusts the code monitor so Hinson can see
the readouts.

“We don’t
have time for this,” Hinson says. He pulls out his phone and checks something,
puts it back. “Save the dump. Upload the save from the semis. Get him out
there, and we’ll have plenty of time to follow up on this later. If it’s worth
something, we’ll patent it.”

“But a dump
might not capture what’s going on with him,” I say. All three men turn to me.
“Max was writing routines in maintenance mode. There are a million EPROMS in
him, dozens for every sensor and joint. If we flash those to factory defaults,
what if part of what he has become is in there somewhere? Or what if a single
one or zero is miscopied and that makes all the difference? Maybe this is why
we’ve never gotten over this hump before, because progress looks like a glitch,
and it can’t be copied or reproduced. At least give us one more day—”

“He’s a
robot,” Hinson says. “You all are starting to believe your own magic tricks. We
make them as real as we can, but you’re reading sentience into some busted
code.”

“I don’t
think so,” Peter says.

“I’m with
the professor,” says Greenie. He shrugs at me. “I’m sorry, but this is the
finals. We got close two years ago. If we get that contract, we’re set for
life.”

“But if this
is the first stage of something bigger,” I say, “we’re talking about
creating
life.”

Hinson
shakes his head. “You know how much I respect your work, and if you think
something is going on, I want you to look into it. But we’ll do it next week.
Load that save and get our boy out there. That’s an order.”

Like we’re
all in the military now.

Professor
Hinson nods to Greenie, who steps toward the keyboard. Peter moves to block
him, and I wonder if we’re going to come to blows over this. I back toward Max
and place a hand on his chest, a mother’s reflex, like I just want to tap the
brakes.