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Authors: Lydia Netzer
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The more they evolve, the more successful they become. Maxon had once thought that at this moment, when he was ready to land on the moon, his list of things that robots couldn’t do would have had every entry crossed out in a dark line. He had planned that the phrase “quintessentially human” would have been obviated by now. Indifferent to all protest, he had relentlessly made dreaming, faceless, laughing robots that were inexorably closing in on humanity.
The AI was startling. People had to admit. Maxon’s robots did what other robots could not do, thought what other robots could not think. That was the reason he held so many patents, and had such an astonishing bank account at such a young age. But the most important thing, the reason he was employed by NASA and on his way to the moon: Maxon’s robots could make other robots. Not just construct them, but actually conceive of them, and make them.
To create a moon colony, a lot of robots are needed. Robots to build the station, robots to run it, robots who don’t mind breathing moon atmosphere, who don’t mind moon temperatures, robots to take care of human visitors. The moon colony proposed would belong to the robots for many years to come; this was understood. Humans would be their guests. The problem was that no one could shoot a robot big enough to construct a moon colony up to the moon. There just wasn’t enough room in a rocket for diggers, cranes, stamping presses.
So the answer was to shoot up a robot that could make another robot big enough. Juno and Hera were the robot mothers: steely, gangly, whirring, spinning mothers, built to mine the materials and fabricate the real robots, the real builders, who would re-create the world on the moon. Only a laughing, crying, dreaming robot could be a mother. An awful thought, for some. A perversity—but this was the reason for everyone else’s failure. All this business of a human purview. As if it weren’t all electricity, in the end. Maxon couldn’t remember ever thinking that something a robot did was awful.
Maxon watched the simulated docking procedure, watched the holographic cargo module getting closer, the engineer and pilot arguing over angles and coefficients. He uncapped his pen and wrote in his notebook: “You are a weak, sick man, and your frailty in the darkness of space is a vile embarrassment to your species.” Remember this, he thought. But did he really believe it? He tried to stretch his long legs into the cramped tube between the sleeping quarters and the command space, but his knees brushed the wall. He couldn’t get symmetrical, one angular shoulder jutting out into the back of Phillips’s seat. Inside his white jumpsuit, his bones were a cage for his live beating heart.
He looked at the men and the way they talked to each other, the way Gompers preferred Tom Conrad, the pilot, over Phillips, the engineer. He saw the way they papered their personal areas with photographs, the way they listened to podcasts from their wives on their laptops, the way they prayed.
You are a man just like them, he thought. You love, you regret, you forgive. Your eyesight blurs. You even forget things, sometimes. Love, regret, forgive. They were three bloody, muddy stains left on the snowy white tablecloth of his research. Three items left to be dealt with: love, regret, forgive.
* * *
“G ENIUS, WE JUST LOVE your robots so much. When are you going to make us a robot that will love us back, you know what I mean?” Phillips had said to him once, teasing him during training, while they sat waiting for the pod to start spinning them again, testing their reactions to g-forces. In a round room, the pod sat on the end of one arm of two on a central axle. Like a giant spinner in a game of Twister.
“It’s not impossible, Phillips,” Maxon answered. “The world is only electrical and magnetic.”
“Okay,” said Phillips. “So why not?”
“You don’t understand,” said Maxon. “It is
The AI was startling. People had to admit. Maxon’s robots did what other robots could not do, thought what other robots could not think. That was the reason he held so many patents, and had such an astonishing bank account at such a young age. But the most important thing, the reason he was employed by NASA and on his way to the moon: Maxon’s robots could make other robots. Not just construct them, but actually conceive of them, and make them.
To create a moon colony, a lot of robots are needed. Robots to build the station, robots to run it, robots who don’t mind breathing moon atmosphere, who don’t mind moon temperatures, robots to take care of human visitors. The moon colony proposed would belong to the robots for many years to come; this was understood. Humans would be their guests. The problem was that no one could shoot a robot big enough to construct a moon colony up to the moon. There just wasn’t enough room in a rocket for diggers, cranes, stamping presses.
So the answer was to shoot up a robot that could make another robot big enough. Juno and Hera were the robot mothers: steely, gangly, whirring, spinning mothers, built to mine the materials and fabricate the real robots, the real builders, who would re-create the world on the moon. Only a laughing, crying, dreaming robot could be a mother. An awful thought, for some. A perversity—but this was the reason for everyone else’s failure. All this business of a human purview. As if it weren’t all electricity, in the end. Maxon couldn’t remember ever thinking that something a robot did was awful.
Maxon watched the simulated docking procedure, watched the holographic cargo module getting closer, the engineer and pilot arguing over angles and coefficients. He uncapped his pen and wrote in his notebook: “You are a weak, sick man, and your frailty in the darkness of space is a vile embarrassment to your species.” Remember this, he thought. But did he really believe it? He tried to stretch his long legs into the cramped tube between the sleeping quarters and the command space, but his knees brushed the wall. He couldn’t get symmetrical, one angular shoulder jutting out into the back of Phillips’s seat. Inside his white jumpsuit, his bones were a cage for his live beating heart.
He looked at the men and the way they talked to each other, the way Gompers preferred Tom Conrad, the pilot, over Phillips, the engineer. He saw the way they papered their personal areas with photographs, the way they listened to podcasts from their wives on their laptops, the way they prayed.
You are a man just like them, he thought. You love, you regret, you forgive. Your eyesight blurs. You even forget things, sometimes. Love, regret, forgive. They were three bloody, muddy stains left on the snowy white tablecloth of his research. Three items left to be dealt with: love, regret, forgive.
* * *
“G ENIUS, WE JUST LOVE your robots so much. When are you going to make us a robot that will love us back, you know what I mean?” Phillips had said to him once, teasing him during training, while they sat waiting for the pod to start spinning them again, testing their reactions to g-forces. In a round room, the pod sat on the end of one arm of two on a central axle. Like a giant spinner in a game of Twister.
“It’s not impossible, Phillips,” Maxon answered. “The world is only electrical and magnetic.”
“Okay,” said Phillips. “So why not?”
“You don’t understand,” said Maxon. “It is
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