Wunderkind

1.15-Magnifying Glass

PHOENIX FOUNDATION LABS

GROUND ZERO FOR THE ROBOT APOCALYPSE

Jack can't help but feel a little unnerved at the sight of a metal skeleton with wires and hydraulics sprawling all over in a macabre imitation of muscles and nerves. "I thought you were building an AI. Not a freakin' terminator in our basement!"

"It's a think tank. Every once in a while we have to do something smart," Mac says, but Jack's not really satisfied because the kid's bent over in the guts of that thing tightening screws. One wrong move and that faceless monstrosity could snap his neck...

"Come on, man, why can't you do something like, you know, end world hunger? Or save the bees? Not start the end of the world?" Not that he really believes some of the more wacked out theories about the rise of the machines, but some of the stuff Riley's told him about computer capabilities is a little terrifying.

But he'll admit, it's not so much the rise of the sentient robots that scares him, it's who's in charge of these projects. We were working for a despicable monster for years. God only knows what he used the things the Phoenix invented to do. And now that the CIA's in charge of them, he's still not altogether comfortable. They've done some messed up things in the past.

"How come Riley's not part of this project?" Jack asks.

"Oh, she is. She's coding the AI. We're building the body," Bozer says. "She just got tired of hanging out listening to Mac rattle off engineering principles and mechanical jargon."

"More like she's smart enough to get the hell outta Dodge before this thing goes haywire." Jack risks another glance at the freaky creation. "What's even the point of making this thing, besides being able to say you did it?"

Mac's voice is a little softer, a little less gleeful. "It's going to be a super-intelligent bomb disposal unit." Oh man. This was probably Mac's idea, he went to see Annabelle and her mom last weekend. He probably thinks if something like this had been around a few years ago, Pena not have been blown up that night.

"Don't they have those already?" Jack saw Charlie operate a couple different models in the sandbox. They're clunky, but effective.

"Yes, but this model mimics human movements. Making it controllable by specialized gloves to train it on models. It will be able to mimic the kind of precision of actual hands, rather than working with a more rudimentary build."

Jack glares at the tangles of metal on the table. "All great. But that doesn't explain why it needs its own brain. Why not just have an EOD tech controlling it long-distance with the training glovey things?"

Mac looks up from his work. "Because in bomb disposal, split seconds count. Signals traveling at different paces, speed of light, speed of the transmissions controlling the robot...everything has to happen right on location or the risk is exponentially increased," Mac says with confidence, and Jack blinks, because it sounds so like when Charlie tried to explain all that stuff. He's so damn smart.

Bozer speaks up. "It also learns and adapts in field. Even if it's blown up, its processor core is shielded to survive, retain data, and learn from the experience."

"What kills you makes you stronger, huh?"

"Exactly."

"But what if it learns that we keep sending it to get blown to bits, and it decides it doesn't really like that anymore?"

"Jack, you've heard of Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics, right?" Bozer asks.

"Dude, that is not reassuring. Haven't you ever seen I, Robot ?" Jack asks. "When it comes to robots, the only person I trust is my man Schwarzenegger. Ol' Arnie showed us the future, and believe me, it ain't pretty."