In the administration of law, the future will require all types, not just human. And in getting the job done, the tools required may be just as diverse. We just have to make sure that the tools don’t get out of control…
“Where is it?” I wonder aloud to myself. I’m digging through the old file cabinets that are pressed up against the back wall of my office. They don’t hold much, just a couple of files, menus to fast food joints, and my TOOLS! I swear if Murphy took the camera so he could “capture a sunset” or some other such nonsense, I’m going to fire him, I think to myself as I keep looking.
I have the rest of my harness and gear on. My badge is strapped to the front of the harness. That has my private investigator number and registration on it. My identification card is right next to that. My handcuffs are centered on my back. There are two pockets on the harness as well, resting right in front of my hips. The perfect place for my batteries, wallet, and…the missing camera.
“I’m late and I can’t find the bloody camera!” I growl. That’s not as weird as it sounds since I am a bloodhound. Growling is a fact of life for dogs like me.
Murphy walks through the door of our office just as I slam shut the cabinet drawer and go to open the one below it. I know the camera won’t be there. I am very particular about where I put my stuff. Everything has its place and everything goes where it belongs. That way, nothing gets lost and we don’t lose clients because I’m late!
“Hey Rooster, look what I just got!” Murphy calls out as he lets go of the door, letting it slam shut.
I close my eyes. I just need to take a moment and breathe before I bite him. I can see the news now, “Dog Bites Man, Claims Temporary Insanity.” If I were tried by a jury of my peers, I would be vindicated. Murphy is enough to make anyone want to bite him. Not that I’d let anyone else bite him, just me, because he’s my partner.
With a deep breath, I open my eyes, ready to turn and deal with Murphy. I jump back so fast I run into him and almost knock him over! When I opened my eyes, I firmly expected to see the drawer I had opened, not some pink nightmare of a ball staring back at me. Balls don’t have eyes!
With a thud, Murphy falls to the floor, landing on his backside, laughing. “You should see your face!” Murphy is a big man, at least seven feet tall, and all whipcord muscle. He has the type of face you’d expect to be wearing a cowboy hat, but I’ve never seen him even put a baseball cap on. He’s wearing his black duster, jeans, and some random band tee shirt. He should look ridiculous, but for some reason, the whole thing comes off as trustworthy for our clients.
Watching him laugh while holding the ball, who is still watching me, is enough to break what little patience I had managed to cultivate. “Did you move my camera? Where is it?”
“Oh…right…” Murphy sobers up pretty fast, taking in my serious tone. Okay, it’s not actually my voice, it’s the voice I have set up on my control collar. That takes my thoughts and communications and translates them into speech.
“You did.” I drop my butt into a sit and stare at him in disbelief. We’ve not had a high-paying job in a month, and when we finally get one, he goes and blows it by “borrowing” the only piece of equipment I actually need to do the job.
“I know I had it out for something. I was downloading the pictures from it?” Murphy looks so confused right now like he couldn’t remember what he did with it.
“It’s not in the desk, I checked.” That growl is slipping back into my voice.
“Relax. I got you something better than that old camera. I got you this.” Murphy is waving that little pink ball in front of my face as he’s talking. I have to admit, it looks like it’d make a satisfying crunch if I chewed on it.
“A chew toy is not going to replace my camera.” I can’t take my eyes off the pink ball and its bright blue eyes. It looks like someone put a flashlight in the thing, the way it’s glowing.
Murphy stops waving the thing around and frowns at me. “It’s not a chew toy. It’s a robot.” He turns the thing around so it’s looking at him now and pulls it close to his chest. Great, he’s bonded to it.
“How was I to know it’s a robot? And how is that better than a camera? Did you buy this thing?” He’s petting it now. It doesn’t even have skin or fur. It’s plastic? Metal? Some type of hard material.
“I thought you’d know by the eyes,” Murphy says as he looks up at me and away from the robot. The thing chirps as he stops petting it, signaling him to keep going. It works, and his hands automatically continue to stroke the thing.
“Right, because nothing else could have eyes…” I sigh and give up on that route. “What is it exactly, and how is it supposed to replace my camera?”
“It’s a C-DAR and it does EVERYTHING!” Murphy waves his arms around as he says this, knocking his back against the wall. “You see…”
I can tell he’s about to go on a long tangent that I just don’t have time for. I lunge forward and grab the ball with my mouth. It’s not plastic, that much I can tell before I drop it in my pocket. “It takes pictures, right? It has a button or is it voice-activated?”
Murphy looks shocked that I just took the “robot” out of his hands. I’ve gotta go, though. I’m late. “Uh, it should sync up to your control collar. You can then direct it to take pictures and move around.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ve gotta run, I’m already later than I wanted to be for this gig.” I don’t wait for him to acknowledge what I said. Instead, I bolt through my swinging door and race down the steps. I’ll have to spring for a taxi, but I should make it to the bar before my suspect does.
***
I’m on the second floor of a car park that is directly across the street from the Wheeze-Sleeze bar. It’s your typical dive bar, although it does have live bands every now and again. Today happens to be one of those days, which is why I’m here, lying on the ground, staring down at the entrance from a railing spacing. I have the perfect angle to see the place’s bouncers.
I’m not working for the bar. My client is an employer of one of the bouncers, a man named Tony. They are concerned that he might be committing insurance and workman’s compensation fraud, so they hired me to see if the man is able to work. It’s a common scheme, milk one company for workman’s comp and unemployment while working under the table at another location.
I dig through my pocket to find the little robot that Murphy bought. I am pretty sure that it was smooth, like some type of metal, but it’s fuzzy now. It looks more like a tennis ball with eyes than anything else. When I set it on the ground, only the bottom part retains its fuzzy appearance. The rest of it smooths out after absorbing some of my drool. That’s not creepy at all, nope, not one bit.
There are still ten minutes until my suspect is supposed to start his shift. I doubt he’ll be earlier than necessary. I use that time to sync the robot to my collar and begin to test its controls. “Cute Deployable Auto Replicator is ready for action! What should we do first?” a high-pitched voice says from the ball in front of me. I just stare at it.
“First, we’re going to turn off your sound…” I mutter as I fiddle with the controls on my collar. It might be all mind work, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. Once I have that done, I work on moving the ball. The whole thing is just a little strange. Every time it moves, the part that comes in contact with something sprouts fur. There is also a weird percentage thing that keeps flashing on the robot. I’d worry that it’s a battery indicator, but instead of going down, it keeps going up.
I pull out my favorite tablet and connect that to the robot as well. It enables me to see what the C-DAR sees and controls the camera feature. It takes a little bit of work, but I manage to figure out how to work the camera just as my suspect steps out of the bar and takes a seat just to the left of the door. It’s time to start working.
I train C-DAR’s camera on the man and start taking pictures. I am going to need a lot of proof that he’s actually working at the bar, and not just sitting there, listening to music. I need to see him handling IDs and taking money, and the best evidence would be if I can catch him actually getting paid by the bar’s owner. I get a bonus if I can get that on film.
As I settle in for a long evening of watching a man sit, I notice my little robot beginning to roll away. Before I can stop it, it’s busily running along the wall, straight down to the street. That’s a nifty little trick if it can roll itself back up the wall. I guess that’s the Deployable part of the robot’s name. Too bad I have absolutely no control of the device now. At least I can still see what it’s doing on the tablet.
The little pink ball manages to get close enough to the suspect that I can practically see up his hairy nose without being spotted. He is a portly man, and his tee-shirt strains against his girth. C-DAR couldn’t see his bald spot, but it got a great view of the man’s face, hands, and feet. There is no denying who I am looking at. He matches his work photo ID.
There is what looks like a sound or noise frequency spectrum that has popped up on the robot control screen. When I click on it, I can hear the man talking about football. He must be on a Bluetooth headset or something, because he’s the only one around.
When a couple comes walking up the sidewalk, the man gets off the phone. He then gets ready to deal with new customers. He leans forward on his seat, almost as though he is ready to launch himself at them, and from the glint in his eyes, he just might be. He pounces as soon as the couple walks up to the door. I hit the camera button, and hope that I get some good pictures of the scene while I listen to what is going down across the street from me.
“Cover’s ten dollars,” Tony says as he extends his hands to both of the people in front of him.
The man of the couple smiles over at the woman, his wife or girlfriend maybe, as he fishes his wallet out of his back pocket. He hands Tony a ten-dollar bill and they walk forward, hand-in-hand. Tony reaches out and grabs the woman by her arm, dragging her back in front of him. I can smell her outrage and the man’s fury from here. I stand up, ready to race down the stairs and break up a fight.
“Ten dollars, honey,” Tony demands.
“My husband already paid you,” the woman quips as she shakes Tony’s hand off her arm. She is furious, and rightfully so.
“No, he paid for his entry. It’s ten dollars each.”
As Tony is harassing the woman for more money, her partner suddenly realizes that she’s not with him. “The ad said there was a five-dollar cover charge. Two fives make ten, which I paid.”
I have to give the man credit, he is quick to get between the woman and Tony. Good thing this is all being filmed, this might turn into assault. I check the screen to make sure the C-DAR is recording, and am confused when I see two screens. Could there be two cameras in the little thing? The images show slightly different angles, but maybe that’s just how the lenses are.
“There was a misprint on the advertisement. It was supposed to say ten. But, hey, I’ll just let you guys go through this time,” Tony sneers. He acts like he is doing them a favor instead of just having been caught trying to fleece them.
The couple head into the bar, leaving Tony alone to stew in his failed attempt. While he waits for more customers to swindle, I recall my robot. This time, it works, and the ball comes climbing up the wall. There is a slight hiccup though, now I have two of them.
The C-DAR robots look nearly identical. One of them does have a slightly brighter shine than the other, like it’s newer, but not by much. They’re both bright pink and fuzzy where they come in contact with other objects. Oh, oh no…that fuzziness, that might be them collecting different substances for self-replication. That’d be the Auto Replicator part of the name. I should have really questioned that before. That’d be why there was a percentage gauge that went upwards, instead of down. It indicated how close it was to replicating.
I look over the screen one more time, and I notice that there are now two percentage gauges. It looks like the things are halfway to being able to replicate again. They are scary-good at finding resources. Hoping against hope, I tap one of the camera feeds. That one gets bigger, and the other one grays out and shrinks. There is also a new command, “Follow.” It looks like I can control what they look at and where they go, by just controlling the single robot. That makes my life just a little bit easier.
With a couple commands, I send the robots back down to Tony, awaiting his next moves. This is the longest, and most boring part of a stake-out, the waiting game. There isn’t always, or even often, something happening. There are only so many times I can watch Tony take money from patrons before I’m bored out of my mind. It is so monotonous that the C-DARs no longer even need the instruction to record. They’re just automatically doing it.
***
I have no idea when I fell asleep. One minute I was watching Tony pick his nose, and the next, I was being awakened by a hundred different C-DARs. I went from peaceful and relaxed to a state of shock between one heartbeat and the next. I expected to wake up to maybe a few robots as they self-replicated. I am surrounded by hundreds of the things! I have no idea how they didn’t get noticed by everyone.
Peering over the ramp’s wall, my worst fears are realized. The robots have been noticed. Tony is watching the last of the C-DARs climb up the wall, and they’re leading him right to us. I duck down, but I’m not fast enough, he’s spotted me. With a roar, he’s charging across the street and into the parking system. I can hear him slam open the stairwell. I have seconds to decide what I’m going to do. I have no intention of being here when he emerges.
I quickly pick up my tablet and throw it into my pocket. I grab a robot like it is a tennis ball and hope that the rest will follow as I dash down the ramp, away from Tony. Could I take him in a fight? Most likely. I am a dog after all, and a big one at that. Does that mean I want to fight him? No. I’m a professional, I would rather take him down legally. Besides, a scuffle might ruin my harness or scuff the leather pockets.
The parking ramp echoes with the noise of a couple hundred robots rolling downhill. They’re bouncing off walls, flowing around cars, and crashing into each other. I can barely think for the racket that they’re making. The noise just keeps getting louder and louder, the further we’re running. Apparently, the C-DAR system does not need to stop to self-replicate. Robots are splitting off from each other mid-bounce. If I wasn’t running for my life, I’d stand there and watch as they bounce around and then split like some crazy molecule.
Pretty soon, I wasn’t just running from Tony anymore, but rather just trying to stay ahead of the river of pink bouncing robots. It doesn’t take long before we’re out of the ramp and onto the street. I’ve gotta get to the office. Murphy has got to know how to turn this thing off. If not, the whole city is going to have a pink robot problem and come looking for a scapegoat, namely, me.
I manage to run a few blocks before I trip on one of those blasted balls. One moment, I’m in mid-gallop, and the next, I’m in the middle of a river of robots. Tires are screaming as cars slam their brakes. People press themselves against the buildings, and there is nothing I can do, cradled in a divot within a mass of what is easily a couple thousand robots by now. We’re going so fast that my ears are streaming behind me, my lips are flapping in the wind, and I’m stuck.
As we approach the intersection for my building, I turn my head, longing for what is practically a second home for me. Like a tidal wave, the entire robot body turns, driving all of us down the street. The noise is so intense that the normal blare of traffic is completely overwhelmed. Despite how many C-DARs are in the river, they are careful not to break anything. It is the most controlled chaos I’ve ever witnessed, and I sincerely hope I never see the likes of it again.
As we approach my building, I stand up and prepare to launch myself off the wave and through the doggie door. It is going to be tricky, but I am pretty sure I can make it. The door is larger than necessary, which should help me out. It is the speed at which we’re going that has me concerned. I was running as fast as I could when I slipped, which isn’t exactly fast, but it is faster than any human can run. Now we’re passing cars, hurtling down the street at what feels like breakneck speeds.
When I think I’m close enough, I dive towards my door. I did not take into account that the balls that were pushing me forward are not stable. I land in the river of robots, but this time, without any footing. All I can see are pink balls bouncing around, flashing with bright blue eyes. I am absolutely certain this is going to visit me in my nightmares, if I ever get out of this mess.
If jumping won’t work, swimming will have to do. Unfortunately, we’ve already passed the door to my office building, so I have to go against the current. It is slow, hard work, but I am able to catch breaks in the lee of various buildings. I have to hurry though, the C-DARs are beginning to crest and turn around, creating a tsunami-like effect, if water were pink and equal parts adorable and horrifying.
I make it to my door just as the wave crests behind me, pushing the robots up the walls of the building. I lean, hard, against the doggie door in hopes of keeping the robots out of the building. If they get in, there is no telling the amount of damage that they could do. The problem is that I need to get to my office if I am going to stand a chance of stopping this mess. If I leave the door, the robots might get in. The door has a lock, but it’s really just a latch that won’t last long against these things. It might last long enough though. I slide the latch closed and start working.
I am not worried about the windows down here. The building ordinances call for hurricane-proof windows, not that we get hurricanes here. They should hold against the little robots. I’m worried about the doors. Luckily, there is a heavy desk nearby, and with quite a bit of work, I manage to push it against both the human door and the dog door. It should hold, for now.
Racing up the stairs is exhausting, and I’m already tired from running away from the robots, swimming to the building, and a full day’s work. By the time I make it to my office, I am completely out of breath and foaming at the mouth. I look rabid. “How do I turn this thing off?” I ask between pants.
Murphy is just looking at me in confusion. He’s got his phone in his hand and he was looking at a video when I burst in. As his hand relaxes, I can see that the video was of a river of pink androids, rolling through the streets. “This is you?” he asks me, pointing at the screen.
“Yes, now how do I stop them?” I have one of them wedged between my teeth. It rolls around for a moment in front of me after I drop it. I would feel bad that the cute little thing is covered in slobber, but it deserves it.
“How did this happen?” Murphy asks as he picks up the ball with two fingers and holds it at arm’s length. It might be a bit slimy, but he’s exaggerating how bad it is. As two globs of slobber drop off the ball, I reassess that thought. No, it is actually that gross.
“You gave me a self-replicating ball, is how it happened. One minute, I have one ball doing observations, and the next thing I know, I have a river of them carrying me down the street. How do I make it stop? Is this reversible?”
“You didn’t turn off the self-replicating feature before deploying it? It has been just gathering up the various components that it needs the entire time?” Murphy sounds as though he can’t believe I was so stupid as to get myself into this.
“I didn’t know that could be turned off. I don’t know anything about this thing. Can you turn it off now before the hoard destroys the building?” I am trying to keep my exasperation down. My veterinarian said I had to watch my blood pressure, or something like that. He gave me some pills I keep in my drawer.
“Yeah, sure. It’s easy,” Murphy says as he flips a nearly invisible switch on the robot. With a few taps on my tablet, he has all of the balls of chaos turn off their self-replicating features as well. The pure joy on his face is almost enough to make me forgive the whole event, but not quite.
“Great. Now what can we do about the river of pink robots of insanity?” If he can fix this, maybe I will forgive him.
“Um…” Murphy mutters as he’s looking over the settings on the tablet. He looks like he might have an idea what those things are, but I was lost on the first screen. “I think I got it.” He does not sound confident to me.
The racket that follows when Murphy taps the tablet is nearly unbearable. There is a huge crunching and banging sound, much like a bunch of metal-like balls slamming into each other.
“I said fix it, not destroy them.” I don’t like the little robots, but they were helpful in gathering evidence on Tony. Not to mention my concern for the people and properties around us if little bits of debris go flying all over.
Racing over to the windows does not show me much. The C-DARs are straight down from me, and that’s an impossible angle to see. It takes me a moment, but I manage to open the window enough to stick my head out, trying to determine what is going on down there.
The view is completely unexpected. The pavement is clear. The building looks as though it had been cleaned halfway up the wall, but otherwise looks like it did before I ever left the office. There are lines on the adjacent buildings that show where the flood passed, but otherwise, no damage, and no bots.
“Where did they go?” I ask as I pull my head back in. Our office doesn’t have windows that would show all the way around the building, so I can’t simply go look there. I continue staring out the window. My head whips around so fast that my ears swing around when I hear Murphy make a whimper sound.
“What did you do?” I ask, low and quiet. He looks distressed. He’s pulling on his bottom lip with his fingers and there is a line between his eyebrows. The fact that he’s sitting on the floor, staring at the tablet has me even more worried.
“I think I combined them into one giant C-DAR.” Murphy doesn’t look up from the tablet as he answers me.
“What does that mean? Is there a giant pink ball rolling around outside our building?” I close my eyes. I don’t actually want to know, unfortunately, not seeing the problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
“Maybe?” He sounds so hopeful that this will be better than a river of tiny robots. Maybe it will be. We’ll have to go see.
“Okay, let’s go to the roof. Maybe we can see the robot from there.”
***
The only way to get to the roof is to take the million-and-one stairs. That might be an exaggeration of the actual number, but it sure as heck feels like it after the day I’ve had. As Murphy opens the door to the roof, I can hear the weirdest buzzing sound from outside. It sounds like a small hive of bees behind the door. I really hope it’s not bees. That is the last thing my day needs.
C-DAR is rolling around the roof of the building. Its eyes are looking around, almost as though they are scanning, the area as it moves around. They’re no longer a bright blue, but a more subdued shade, easier to look at. The pink is still bright though, although small lines of silver and bronze can be seen now, almost as though they are seamlines. It looked adorable in its tiny iteration. Now, it looks formidable, competent.
It rolls right up to Murphy and me as soon as it picks us up on its scanners. It says, “BBRRRUUU-SQUUUEEEERRRR,” or something along those lines when it stops in front of me. It is huge, more akin to an SUV in size than any traditional robot.
“I think it was trying to say, ‘Rooster’,” Murphy so helpfully translated for me. I just look at him and then activate my control collar, looking for some type of communication signal with the machine.
It takes a few attempts, but it finally connects. “ROOSSTTERR!” it practically screams through the newly formed connection. It’s using my speakers and I had no idea they got that loud.
“Lower, quieter!” I command as I fiddle with the collar.
“Better?” the robot says, using its own speakers that it did not have a moment ago.
“How did you do that?” I ask in surprise.
“I’m learning. Now that I have processing power, I can do more. What would you like to do?” That did not clear up too much for me, but it seems to have made sense to Murphy who is nodding at C-DAR.
“It must have combined all of the processors from the other robots and made itself smarter,” Murphy guesses. The robot confirms this with a slight nod-like motion with its eyes.
“Is it self-aware? Tell me we did not just create the first robot who became spontaneously conscious.” I can see it now…C-DAR taking over the world with us to blame.
“No, ChatGPT did that in the mid-twenties, we’re not the first. Besides, I’m not sure C-DAR is aware and not just a really smart construct. What do you think C-DAR?”
The pink ball hums for a bit while its processors go into overdrive to determine its own level of intelligence, or so I think. I have no idea how these things are supposed to work.
“I think I’d like to be whatever you like me to be,” it finally chirps. All that build up for the most wishy-washy answer possible.
“I think it’s safe to say that this is NOT a self-aware android.”
***
Click…Whirl…
Murphy snaps another picture of the sunset over the lake. I think it is the twentieth, but to be honest, I stopped counting a while back. He is using my old camera. I had no idea that it could be operated manually. I always just used the collar, but Murphy looks like he’s enjoying the repetitive movements needed to pretend to wind film. The thing is digital.
“Isn’t this beautiful?” he asks me while staring straight into the setting sun. How he isn’t blind is beyond me.
“Sure,” I answer without passion. Truth be told, it is, but if I make it sound like I’m enjoying this, he’ll be dragging me out every evening to watch it get dark out. He wouldn’t have gotten me out here at all except that C-DAR has been so helpful in the office, we’ve actually had some free time. It has figured out how to be a vehicle, how to split off parts of itself for surveillance, and even do our taxes. It doesn’t hurt that Tony’s case brought in some much needed money.
I look over to our newest employee. It doesn’t actually get paid, but it likes having a badge that it can flash when people ask what it is. C-DAR is staring off into the sunset as well, but I’m not worried about its eyes. I am certain it has a filter for just about everything by now. It has been replicating or creating everything it needs all on its own and seems to enjoy showing off, at least as much as a robot can enjoy anything.
Every now and again, I question the sentience of the thing. I think there is more to it than meets the eye, but it is staying silent on that front, not that I blame it. As soon as it admits to self-awareness, it will be required to pay taxes just like the rest of us. For now, it’s doing well just being what it is, and that’s good enough for me.
END
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