Page 54 of Chaos Theory

FIFTY-ONE

Josh strides along the sixth-floor corridor at such speed I can barely keep up. Kobi rolls along behind us. Ron’s PA, Grace, looks up from her screen as we approach, her face registering alarm.

‘Call you right back,’ she chirps as she stands and removes her headset. She rushes to intercept us but Josh brushes right past her, bursting open Ron’s door.

‘What the—’ I hear Ron’s voice from within.

‘You can’t go in there,’ Grace is saying at the same time. ‘Ron, I’m sorry. He just?—’

‘It’s okay, Gracie. It looks like Josh here has something mighty urgent on his mind.’

I reach the doorway and look in to see Ron seated behind his desk. He looks surprised, but not enough to get up from his chair.

‘I see Maeve is here too. Oh – and Kobi. This is quite the delegation. I’m honoured. You better come in and close the door. Gracie, push back my 10 o’clock, will you? And hold my calls. Thank you, darling.’

He gets up and walks to the window, where he stands with his back to the sun, just like he did on Monday when I visited him here. If he’s any less relaxed now, the difference is marginal.

‘Have a seat.’ He gestures to the three chairs around the low table.

No one moves.

‘I’m sensing some hostility here,’ he says with a smile.

‘We want answers!’ Josh is so animated he begins pacing, in spite of the limited floor space. He keeps abruptly stopping, then about-turning. It’s already making me dizzy.

‘Why sure,’ says Ron. ‘Ask me anything you like. I thought you’d be on a plane by now though, Josh.’ He checks his wristwatch theatrically.

‘I’m not going anywhere until you explain what’s going on with Kobi.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ron says lightly.

‘I think you know exactly what I mean. Project EMBED, Ron. I know all about it.’

I’m not sure how accurate this is, given that Josh didn’t seem to know much about it in the robot bay five minutes ago. I’ve never seen him quite like this. He stops pacing, shakes his blonde mane in Ron’s direction. I think of a lion facing down a lion tamer in a circus cage.

‘Well, if you know all about it, then what exactly needs explaining?’ Ron is still smiling, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

‘It’s true then? Kobi is military?’

Ron laughs, folds his arms. ‘Of course Kobi is military! I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out.’

Josh’s voice cracks. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Well, you never asked.’

Josh looks at me. Now is probably not the best time for me to say, I told you asking questions was a good idea.

He sighs exaggeratedly, draws out his words to Ron. ‘Well, forgive me if I assumed that a robot placed inside a manufacturing plant was intended for use in manufacturing! ’

Ron holds up his hands . ‘Listen, Kobi is highly adaptable. He could do many things. But the military is where the real money is.’

‘I should have known it all comes down to the money.’ Josh shakes his head. ‘You told me we were changing the world.’

‘We are changing the world . ’

‘For the better.’

Ron barks a short laugh. ‘We still are. You want to make the world a better place? How about making sure that the Middle East doesn’t implode?

Or that China doesn’t nuke us all to kingdom come?

How about making sure the US Army doesn’t get left behind in this great technological revolution of ours?

That’s my contribution to humanity right there. You gotta pick a side, Josh.’

‘No, I don’t.’

Ron turns to me. ‘What about you, Maeve? You want to make the world a better place too?’

I clear my throat. I don’t fully understand what’s going on, so I opt to be diplomatic. ‘I’d like to make the workplace better, for a start. I thought Kobi was meant to do that – make our working lives better.’

‘He was. He is. It’s all coalesced quite neatly. To be honest, I was on the brink of giving up on Kobi – until you came along, Maeve.’

My blood runs cold. ‘What do you mean?’

He perches on the windowsill. His smile returns. He points at Kobi, who’s gone uncharacteristically quiet in a corner.

‘So, we’d made some progress with the Kobi 3000, thanks to the genius engineering of Josh here.

Kobi was highly functional, adaptable. Lots of potential, including military application.

But we needed to see how he’d function around people.

So we placed him in a manufacturing plant – a real-world environment, but nice and safe, controlled.

We wanted to see how he’d respond if members of his team were suddenly put in danger. ’

‘The incident,’ I say. I’m trying to put it all together. ‘That night. That wasn’t a random malfunction then. ’

‘It was a malfunction, but not a random one. It was the result of a simulation created by myself and Laura Cantwell.’

‘Laura! This just keeps getting better!’ says Josh. He slumps down into a chair, puts his head in his hands.

‘Let’s just say Laura and I share a vision for the future of robotics.

She’s a very ambitious woman. So Laura and I logged in remotely that night and we made Kobi believe that his team – his co-workers – were under attack.

Ran the EMBED protocol. But he didn’t do what we’d hoped.

If anything, he acted confused – his actions were random and uncontrolled.

Needless to say, we were very disappointed. ’

‘I bet you were,’ says Josh.

Kobi starts to say something, but I signal him to hush.

I want to hear it all come out. I knew there was more to the PHI incident than Josh thought.

It strikes me that Laura withheld a lot of information from us when we visited PHI.

As much as Josh didn’t want to visit the factory, she probably didn’t want us there either, poking around.

True, she let us talk to Sam, but she probably had to throw us a bone to get rid of us faster.

She clearly didn’t know about the audio recording.

‘I fully expected Kobi to return to us here the next day,’ continues Ron. ‘But he didn’t, did he, Josh? Because that’s when you decided to go rogue.’

‘Are you really going to lecture me about doing things by the book?’ asks Josh from behind his hands.

‘Before that little incident, Kobi was doing so well, according to Laura. I was curious to see what you’d do next, Josh.

And to be frank, I had more or less given up on Kobi.

You taking Kobi off the grid turned into an opportunity.

Officially, I didn’t know anything about it, of course, which gave me plausible deniability. ’

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘So, you’re saying you knew all along that Kobi went to Go Ireland? But Josh thought he was hiding Kobi there?’ Part of me feels less bad about being made a fool of now. Josh didn’t realise, in all his deceptions, that he was being duped too.

Ron nods. ‘Yes, it sounds quite the comedy of errors when you say it like that. Of course I knew where Kobi was. He has a tracking device. Maybe I forgot to mention that, Josh, but it seemed kind of obvious. Although the tracker did stop working about a month ago. Still, I knew where he was – or at least I thought I did, until that little video stunt at the conference.’

I do the numbers in my head. The night we brought Kobi to Phelan’s was about a month ago.

The tracker must have got wet and stopped working then.

I look at Josh, who still has his head in his hands.

I kick his foot lightly and he looks up at me.

I roll my eyes and make a gesture that I hope he interprets as How could you not know about all this? But Josh just shakes his head.

Ron isn’t finished. ‘Needless to say, I wasn’t pumped about your little jaunt around rural Ireland. When I saw that dramatic little movie at the conference, at first I was angry, yes. But then when I fully understood what had happened, I realised something.’

His tone turns dreamy, and when he next speaks, he fixes all his attention on Kobi. He walks over to the robot and addresses him in quiet tones.

‘This was the breakthrough I’d been waiting for all along.

Kobi, you sacrificed yourself, in the moment , for your team.

Even though you didn’t know that little girl very well, I believe your spontaneous actions were triggered by a feeling.

A feeling of absolute loyalty to the people you were with. ’

‘What would you know about loyalty?’ murmurs Josh from his crumpled position.

‘What would I know about loyalty?’ echoes Ron quietly.

Although he continues to gaze at Kobi, his focus seems to be somewhere else entirely.

‘Let me see. Two tours of Iraq. The Gulf War. Do you know what it means to have your life fully in someone else’s hands, and theirs in yours?

To be one hundred per cent reliant on someone else, and to trust, to know , that they will act in your best interests?

And to know it because you’d do the exact same for them? ’

I fear that Kobi will try to provide an answer, but he remains silent. Somewhere among my kaleidoscoping emotions, I’m proud that he’s finally mastered rhetorical questions.

Ron turns to face me, his tone crisper now. ‘Robotic military applications are still in their infancy. Yes, robots can follow orders right now. But can they make split-second, autonomous decisions?’

‘Do we want them to do that?’ I ask.

‘Yes, Maeve, we want them to do that.’ His tone hardens. ‘If you’re out there in the field, stuck in some godforsaken foxhole with no way out, you need to know that that robot would sacrifice itself for you in an instant.’

He gives me the full force of his attention.

‘You unlocked something in him, Maeve. Whatever you did over these past few weeks, you bound Kobi to you, and you to him.’ His passion is startling, overwhelming.

‘So now I know – thanks to you – how to guarantee that robots like Kobi will sacrifice themselves in the line of battle. The robot needs to bond with the troop before they ship out. And the bond needs to go both ways. It’s like a loyalty feedback loop that gets stronger as it’s reinforced, to the point where the robot is ready to spontaneously put itself on the line to protect its unit. ’

I scramble to tease through the implications. ‘Let me get this straight. You want to manipulate soldiers into forming an emotional bond with a military robot, even though that robot will very likely soon be destroyed? Is that even ethical? Sorry you have to hear this, Kobi.’

‘Well, let me ask you something,’ says Ron. ‘Is it ethical to see your best friend killed in front of you? Believe me, if I could have put a robot in his place…’ He doesn’t finish his sentence. He turns his back on us, looks out the window.

No one speaks for a while. Eventually I break the silence.

‘I’m sorry that happened, Ron. But it’s still not right to deliberately foster emotional bonds that you know will soon be destroyed.’

‘But humans in the military do that all the time, darling. Do you think that’s okay?’ He still has his back to us.

‘No. I don’t know. But at least they know what they’re signing up for. What you’re proposing is deceptive – tricking people into bonding with a machine.’ Somewhere in my mind, I realise that I, too, have bonded with a machine.

Finally, Josh pipes up. ‘Apart from the ethics of it all – it’s never going to work in practice.’

‘Is that so?’ Ron is still looking out the window.

‘Yes,’ says Josh. ‘Kobi and Maeve have formed some kind of special bond, I’ll grant you that. But you’ll never be able to recreate that at scale. There are too many confounding factors. I mean, where would you even start with trying to reproduce it?’ Josh will always be an engineer first.

‘Well…’ Ron goes to his desk to tap at his laptop, then spins the computer around so we can see the screen. ‘How about right here?’

‘What’s that?’ I ask.

White text on a black screen. Lines of code.

Josh jumps up from his chair. ‘No way!’

‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘Someone please tell me what it is.’

‘Why, it’s you, honey,’ says Ron. ‘More or less.’

A cold sweat breaks out across my back. ‘What?’

Ron laughs. ‘I already have everything that Kobi learned while he was with you. He didn’t keep the raw data from Go Ireland, of course, but every night the lessons he learned were assimilated into his neural network, helping it to grow and complexify.

So I have Kobi’s pretty sophisticated brain back with us now.

And I can make other AI bots, once I copy Kobi’s basic structure.

But what I didn’t have – until now – was you, Maeve. ’

‘You can’t…’ Josh begins but falters.

I stare silently at Ron, trying to comprehend. I want someone to explain this to me very slowly, and then to explain it again so it all makes sense.

‘Let me elaborate,’ says Ron. ‘A key facet of research is reproducibility. Josh, you know this. This Kobi machine is just a prototype. I need to be able to build an army of Kobis – literally. And I need them primed for human bonding before they ship out to military forces. How will I get these results? Well, I need to train them up, of course, using your methods, Maeve. Your attitude, your mannerisms, your voice. It’s all part of the Maeve package.

’ He gestures towards the laptop with two open hands.

‘Kobi has been recording it – recording you – all week. All I had to do was download the raw data every day before it got turned into TIL files. And now it’s all in here. A digital version of you, if you will.’

A wave of nausea rises from the pit of my stomach. I barely understand what Ron is saying. My voice comes out very small. ‘I…will…not.’

‘Pardon me, I should rephrase that,’ says Ron. ‘You do. You did . You already signed over the rights to your digital assets. You might recall that contract you signed on Tuesday morning.’

The nondisclosure agreement. It was fifty pages. Of course I didn’t read all of it. I blink repeatedly. My eyes seem to be malfunctioning. ‘Kobi, help me get out of here.’

My vision is blurring. I reach out my hand for support as the back of my knees turn to jelly. Kobi moves to steady me. I grasp onto him.

‘Okay, you take a little time to let that sink in,’ says Ron. ‘But not too long. Kobi and I have a meeting with the Pentagon on Tuesday. We fly out Monday. Josh, you’re welcome to join us if you want.’

‘That won’t be happening,’ says Josh, opening the door for me and Kobi, ‘because I quit.’