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shenanigans!
Feb. 7th, 2013 04:57 pmHe has heard of these invitations, though he's never seen one: a physical letter, written in emerald ink on a cream-colored envelope, delivered by courier to the intended recipient personally. It is unique, not only because letters fell out of favor centuries ago, but also because they are usually delivered to lords and ladies, men and women of power and stature, and not to graduate students who have published poorly received papers.
And yet, it is clearly addressed to him, one Alfred Borden, for the invitation-only performance of 'Ehrich, the Prince of the Air', on Saturday night. Alfred — Al, to his friends — stares at it uncomprehendingly for a few seconds before setting it aside, carefully. He was so close to finishing this latest paper, after all, on the sentience and proposed rights of automata; he would think about the magician's show eventually.
One of the robots wheels up to him, clearing away the empty mug of coffee and setting down another in front of him. "Thanks," he says, and it wheels away with a smooth ‘welcome’. At the next table down, though, it passes by without stopping, missing the trash on the table, and that student is less kind, throwing his can directly at the robot, where it shatters.
"Clean that shit up, bolts," the student says, snorting as the automata apologizes repeatedly, dripping with soda.
Al almost says something, but he's learned by now not to, and simply returns to his work, looking up neurological papers and finding longitudinal studies on the automata's emotion and learning.
-
"Alfred, could you come into my office?" The neural message comes a few days later, Friday afternoon, just after he's submitted the latest draft of the paper. It does not contain some of the edits that have been suggested to him, because he thinks they soften the point of his thesis too much.
Suddenly, though, something clicks into place — Al starts to piece together the delays he's gotten on requests for other papers on this subject, the slight coldness that he's received from some of the faculty, the simple hostility that he's received, once or twice, from people that have read his drafts. And this — this must be the culmination of it, being called into the Dean's office with no forewarning.
"Alfred, we think you're a great student..."
He waits, tensely, for the other shoe to drop.
"...but the faculty has been discussing your paper and we don't believe that it's in line with the university's standards in granting degrees. At this point, we're not going to be able to offer you a degree with the thesis in its current form."
The Dean smiles, thinly, as if they were talking about the weather. And just like that, Alfred's world crashes down upon him.
"But Dean Eisenheim, it's been meticulously researched and this is a school of—"
"This is a school of science, Alfred, and this paper is not up to the standards, and you should not be challenging me on this. These robots do not have rights, they do not have feelings, and it is preposterous to write such drivel and expect this fine institution to support it in any way. You will edit this or you will fail, Mister Borden, and there will be no further discussion on this."
And with that, without a full sentence to defend himself, the meeting is over, and Al has two choices: capitulate to the school's demands — censorship — or go ahead with it, have it killed, and with it his future and eight years of work.
-
It's Saturday, and Alfred has no idea what to do. He's spent most of his time staring moodily at his paper, but can't bring himself to delete the sections that are most obviously critical of the conclusion that automata aren't sentient and deserve rights. If anything, he wants to add more language in that direction, though it would only make it more unacceptable to the committee. Eventually, the maidbot comes in, 'sees' that he's there, and makes to leave again, but Al stops it with a question.
"Maid, do you have a name?"
"My designation is a Cleaning Assistance Automation Robot, or CAAR, sir. I am model ED-34.1, and my serial is XK392u1J-"
"But do you have a name?" he interrupts.
"I answer to 'Maid', 'Maidbot', 'Cleaning bot', as well as other designations when I am conceivably being addressed."
"What other designations are there?" He wonders out loud, not expecting an answer, but the Maidbot speaks.
"Bolts. Tin can. Useless. Piece-of-shit."
Al blinks, caught off-guard by this. But the Maidbot doesn't move, apparently waiting for a command.
"How do you... feel about this?"
"Robots are not programmed to feel," the Maidbot responds, and then turns and wheels away.
Al sighs, lifting his hands in a gesture of futility and letting them fall again, and as he does, catches the edge of the invitation and sends it fluttering to the floor. He peers over at it, and then shrugs - why the hell not - and sits up, deciding to go.
-
The show takes place at an amphitheatre of sorts, and Alfred notes with some unease that everyone else there was far, far more well off than him, including some personalities that he could name off of the newscasts. Some are even there with their personal automata, sitting docilely at their master's feet, and he suspects that more than one is being used for pleasure instead of servitude. All his observations are cut short, though, when the lights dim and Ehrich comes to the stage to a round of applause. The magician starts the show with small, fast crowd pleasers that everyone expects. Some of them are new, some of them are not — the doves that vanish in a flash of light and puff of smoke, the cards that appear to levitate themselves.
As the show goes on, though, the tricks become more involved and more distinct — the ‘Prince of the Air’ escapes from chains and bonds and a cabinet that lasers are slowly cutting into, with only a few singed hairs. He takes a laserpistol and fires a few shots into a metal plate, leaving scorch marks, and then proceeds to catch the laser beam, something that should clearly be impossible, and yet, the magician stands there, his hands trapping the beam in place until he lets it go, at which point it continues down its original path and creates a neat hole in a wooden beam.
The magician starts a patter, too, talking about his experiences with dangerous elements, and Al is following along happily until after a daring last-second escape from a closing dodecahedron made of lasers, the magician asks a question.
“You guys want to see something really interesting?”
Of course, the response is immediate and approving.
“Anyone have an ‘bot with them? Yeah, I thought I saw a few in the crowd. Did anyone pay for the emotional sensitivity module — you know the one that allows them pleasure and pain?”
All the hands go down, now, but after a bit, one or two raise themselves again. It is, after all, an invitation-only event. Ehrich smiles.
“Does anyone want a good reason to trade in their bot for the newest models?” Most of the hands, surprisingly, stay up, though Alfred realizes that the rich and powerful were most likely always in the market for something new. “Alright, then — you, sir, can you have your ‘bot come down here?”
The owner shrugs and kicks the bot — a female one, it looks like — towards the stage, in lieu of asking. She cowers away from the kick and then slowly makes her way to Ehrich; when she arrives under the lights, it’s pretty clear that she is a pleasure bot, and was probably quite expensive, given the realistic nature — except, of course, for the stamp on her wrist, designating her as a ‘human analogue robot’.
Ehrich smiles, wider, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“What’s your name, honey?” he asks her, and she murmurs something in return. He covers his mic and says a few more words to her, and then turns back to the crowd.
“We have Felicity, here, ladies and gentlemen, and we’re going to see how good she is at escaping one of my tests, just to demonstrate that I am, indeed, not faking it!” A box the size of a coffin is raised onto the stage, and the magician leads the robot to it. And from a distance, it looks like she’s...shivering.
She protests, a bit, but Ehrich pushes her in, locking the handcuffs and ankle manacles. He forgets to cover his mic this time, and his voice is low but the words clear: “No, ‘bot, you have to do this. You’re not worth as much as a human, anyway; they’re going to replace you.”
Al almost surges to his feet in anger, but freezes as his fellow attendees simply laugh. Ehrich looks up and shrugs apologetically.
“Oops! Though I’m not saying anything that no one else believes, am I?” He winks, and then points back to Felicity, now chained inside the box with only her hands and feet sticking out and then closes the lid. “Your bot, sir, has sixty seconds with which to escape from this rather simple contraption. There are locks keeping her wrists together and feet where they are, and another lock that keeps the box closed. In sixty seconds, the fuse will get to the box and set it on fire. All set?”
The crowd roars its agreement, and Ehrich sets the fuse alight, watching as it slowly burns a concentric circle towards the center of the raised box. Felicity starts trying to make her way out, and everyone watches as her fingers twist and turn, as the box shakes from her trying to wiggle out of her restraints. But as the fuse grows closer, all she accomplishes his bringing her wrists back into the box — they reappear a few seconds later, with the handcuffs on. She does seem to manage to get her feet away, though, as they retreat into the box, though the fuse is close enough now that everyone is leaning forward in their seats — including Alfred.
“Looks like she learned to dislocate some joints,” Ehrich says, keeping the patter up. “It’s really important to do so, as it gets you out of all sorts of restraints, though it probably hurts a bit the first time, doesn’t it, honey?” He taps the side of the box, but there’s no sound — and now the fuse has no more than twenty seconds left.
“Well, by now she should be working on the lock to the box itself, which is a devilishly complicated lock that I actually designed myself. Funny thing, that, even I can’t get it open half the time, which is why I have bots volunteer!” Ehrich laughs, and the crowd laughs with him, and Alfred only feels sick, knowing that there’s maybe five seconds to go.
“Well, we’ll see if she makes it out. Let’s start a countdown, shall we? Five, four, three, two—” Ehrich pauses, and the crowd finishes the chant for him. But Felicity does not reappear, her hands are still in the handcuffs, and the entire box catches fire, burning merrily.
For a moment, everyone’s silent. And then, of course, Ehrich, the damned magician, smiles, bows, and says to the man in the audience, “I’ll send you a check for a hundred thousand, sir, which should cover the replacement. And I hope you’ll see, ladies and gentlemen, that these are not trick locks and this is all, very, real.”
-
With that, the show is over, and people start filing out of the theatre. All of them but Alfred — he’s going to do something, he resolves. He must do something, because this is just wrong, in every single way, and so he fights against the crowd exiting towards the back, pushing through lords and ladies and the rich and powerful to catch the magician, to make him pay. And he finds his way backstage, but it’s too late — Ehrich’s room is completely empty. Alfred whirls and heads for the nearest entrance, knowing that the murderer couldn’t be that far away, and just as he comes outside, he sees the limo, hovering already, though the door’s still open.
And Ehrich is already in it, and it’s too far away to catch. But past Ehrich, a pair of blue eyes stare back at him, and Alfred stops dead. The lady leans forward and smiles at him, waving with a mark on her wrist, and then the door shuts and the limo departs.
Behind him, a courier coughs politely and hands him a letter; the ink still fresh.
-
Alfred,
I write to you to let you know that you are not alone in your struggle — and yes, since I know what is on your mind, know that she is safe with me, and will be safe from his whims going forward.
We are brothers in the fight that has brought you here. Our struggle is the same, you see; we aim to change the minds and thoughts of society and struggle to bring equality to all. I know of the papers that you write, Alfred, and I read them weekly, finding truth and strength in your words, and you must know that you are not alone in what you believe. I pass them on to others, to many who believe as you do, and together, we will change the world
I hope you will join us. We can not meet, yet, for our enemies are many and they will pick us apart if we appear to be a threat, but there will come a time when you and I will meet and commiserate over how we won this battle, this war, and brought equality to everyone. And our names will be in the history books, Alfred — but more than that, they will be in the minds of all of the people we have saved.
I play only a small part. I am a magician and I do illusions and tricks, and save perhaps one or two a day. But you — your words, Al, will save thousands, and millions, and will be the most widely read across the galaxy, I promise you. So do not stop writing, and do not stop believing what is right. Every word you write is a word for justice. And if the university will not publish it, we will find someone who will.
By your side in this journey,
Eric Wiesz
--------
A/N: This was a long, long piece, and if you've read all the way through it, thanks for coming along with me! It's essentially a civil-rights tale told in the future, inspired in part by Ted Chiang's excellent Hugo and Nebula award-winning novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, about robots that are on the cusp of sentience and how they are treated. I think that the societal battles for equality will be fought for a very long time, and while we've come a long way from Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall, they are definitely not the only names we'll reference in the future. It also felt like magic was the right way to take the prompt, and from there came the idea of how a group of underground fighters for equality could come together. Eric Wiesz is a reference to the great Harry Houdini, of course, and the other names are from the Illusionist and the Prestige, two great movies on magic. I honestly had a lot of fun writing this, and concrit is always welcome!
And yet, it is clearly addressed to him, one Alfred Borden, for the invitation-only performance of 'Ehrich, the Prince of the Air', on Saturday night. Alfred — Al, to his friends — stares at it uncomprehendingly for a few seconds before setting it aside, carefully. He was so close to finishing this latest paper, after all, on the sentience and proposed rights of automata; he would think about the magician's show eventually.
One of the robots wheels up to him, clearing away the empty mug of coffee and setting down another in front of him. "Thanks," he says, and it wheels away with a smooth ‘welcome’. At the next table down, though, it passes by without stopping, missing the trash on the table, and that student is less kind, throwing his can directly at the robot, where it shatters.
"Clean that shit up, bolts," the student says, snorting as the automata apologizes repeatedly, dripping with soda.
Al almost says something, but he's learned by now not to, and simply returns to his work, looking up neurological papers and finding longitudinal studies on the automata's emotion and learning.
-
"Alfred, could you come into my office?" The neural message comes a few days later, Friday afternoon, just after he's submitted the latest draft of the paper. It does not contain some of the edits that have been suggested to him, because he thinks they soften the point of his thesis too much.
Suddenly, though, something clicks into place — Al starts to piece together the delays he's gotten on requests for other papers on this subject, the slight coldness that he's received from some of the faculty, the simple hostility that he's received, once or twice, from people that have read his drafts. And this — this must be the culmination of it, being called into the Dean's office with no forewarning.
"Alfred, we think you're a great student..."
He waits, tensely, for the other shoe to drop.
"...but the faculty has been discussing your paper and we don't believe that it's in line with the university's standards in granting degrees. At this point, we're not going to be able to offer you a degree with the thesis in its current form."
The Dean smiles, thinly, as if they were talking about the weather. And just like that, Alfred's world crashes down upon him.
"But Dean Eisenheim, it's been meticulously researched and this is a school of—"
"This is a school of science, Alfred, and this paper is not up to the standards, and you should not be challenging me on this. These robots do not have rights, they do not have feelings, and it is preposterous to write such drivel and expect this fine institution to support it in any way. You will edit this or you will fail, Mister Borden, and there will be no further discussion on this."
And with that, without a full sentence to defend himself, the meeting is over, and Al has two choices: capitulate to the school's demands — censorship — or go ahead with it, have it killed, and with it his future and eight years of work.
-
It's Saturday, and Alfred has no idea what to do. He's spent most of his time staring moodily at his paper, but can't bring himself to delete the sections that are most obviously critical of the conclusion that automata aren't sentient and deserve rights. If anything, he wants to add more language in that direction, though it would only make it more unacceptable to the committee. Eventually, the maidbot comes in, 'sees' that he's there, and makes to leave again, but Al stops it with a question.
"Maid, do you have a name?"
"My designation is a Cleaning Assistance Automation Robot, or CAAR, sir. I am model ED-34.1, and my serial is XK392u1J-"
"But do you have a name?" he interrupts.
"I answer to 'Maid', 'Maidbot', 'Cleaning bot', as well as other designations when I am conceivably being addressed."
"What other designations are there?" He wonders out loud, not expecting an answer, but the Maidbot speaks.
"Bolts. Tin can. Useless. Piece-of-shit."
Al blinks, caught off-guard by this. But the Maidbot doesn't move, apparently waiting for a command.
"How do you... feel about this?"
"Robots are not programmed to feel," the Maidbot responds, and then turns and wheels away.
Al sighs, lifting his hands in a gesture of futility and letting them fall again, and as he does, catches the edge of the invitation and sends it fluttering to the floor. He peers over at it, and then shrugs - why the hell not - and sits up, deciding to go.
-
The show takes place at an amphitheatre of sorts, and Alfred notes with some unease that everyone else there was far, far more well off than him, including some personalities that he could name off of the newscasts. Some are even there with their personal automata, sitting docilely at their master's feet, and he suspects that more than one is being used for pleasure instead of servitude. All his observations are cut short, though, when the lights dim and Ehrich comes to the stage to a round of applause. The magician starts the show with small, fast crowd pleasers that everyone expects. Some of them are new, some of them are not — the doves that vanish in a flash of light and puff of smoke, the cards that appear to levitate themselves.
As the show goes on, though, the tricks become more involved and more distinct — the ‘Prince of the Air’ escapes from chains and bonds and a cabinet that lasers are slowly cutting into, with only a few singed hairs. He takes a laserpistol and fires a few shots into a metal plate, leaving scorch marks, and then proceeds to catch the laser beam, something that should clearly be impossible, and yet, the magician stands there, his hands trapping the beam in place until he lets it go, at which point it continues down its original path and creates a neat hole in a wooden beam.
The magician starts a patter, too, talking about his experiences with dangerous elements, and Al is following along happily until after a daring last-second escape from a closing dodecahedron made of lasers, the magician asks a question.
“You guys want to see something really interesting?”
Of course, the response is immediate and approving.
“Anyone have an ‘bot with them? Yeah, I thought I saw a few in the crowd. Did anyone pay for the emotional sensitivity module — you know the one that allows them pleasure and pain?”
All the hands go down, now, but after a bit, one or two raise themselves again. It is, after all, an invitation-only event. Ehrich smiles.
“Does anyone want a good reason to trade in their bot for the newest models?” Most of the hands, surprisingly, stay up, though Alfred realizes that the rich and powerful were most likely always in the market for something new. “Alright, then — you, sir, can you have your ‘bot come down here?”
The owner shrugs and kicks the bot — a female one, it looks like — towards the stage, in lieu of asking. She cowers away from the kick and then slowly makes her way to Ehrich; when she arrives under the lights, it’s pretty clear that she is a pleasure bot, and was probably quite expensive, given the realistic nature — except, of course, for the stamp on her wrist, designating her as a ‘human analogue robot’.
Ehrich smiles, wider, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“What’s your name, honey?” he asks her, and she murmurs something in return. He covers his mic and says a few more words to her, and then turns back to the crowd.
“We have Felicity, here, ladies and gentlemen, and we’re going to see how good she is at escaping one of my tests, just to demonstrate that I am, indeed, not faking it!” A box the size of a coffin is raised onto the stage, and the magician leads the robot to it. And from a distance, it looks like she’s...shivering.
She protests, a bit, but Ehrich pushes her in, locking the handcuffs and ankle manacles. He forgets to cover his mic this time, and his voice is low but the words clear: “No, ‘bot, you have to do this. You’re not worth as much as a human, anyway; they’re going to replace you.”
Al almost surges to his feet in anger, but freezes as his fellow attendees simply laugh. Ehrich looks up and shrugs apologetically.
“Oops! Though I’m not saying anything that no one else believes, am I?” He winks, and then points back to Felicity, now chained inside the box with only her hands and feet sticking out and then closes the lid. “Your bot, sir, has sixty seconds with which to escape from this rather simple contraption. There are locks keeping her wrists together and feet where they are, and another lock that keeps the box closed. In sixty seconds, the fuse will get to the box and set it on fire. All set?”
The crowd roars its agreement, and Ehrich sets the fuse alight, watching as it slowly burns a concentric circle towards the center of the raised box. Felicity starts trying to make her way out, and everyone watches as her fingers twist and turn, as the box shakes from her trying to wiggle out of her restraints. But as the fuse grows closer, all she accomplishes his bringing her wrists back into the box — they reappear a few seconds later, with the handcuffs on. She does seem to manage to get her feet away, though, as they retreat into the box, though the fuse is close enough now that everyone is leaning forward in their seats — including Alfred.
“Looks like she learned to dislocate some joints,” Ehrich says, keeping the patter up. “It’s really important to do so, as it gets you out of all sorts of restraints, though it probably hurts a bit the first time, doesn’t it, honey?” He taps the side of the box, but there’s no sound — and now the fuse has no more than twenty seconds left.
“Well, by now she should be working on the lock to the box itself, which is a devilishly complicated lock that I actually designed myself. Funny thing, that, even I can’t get it open half the time, which is why I have bots volunteer!” Ehrich laughs, and the crowd laughs with him, and Alfred only feels sick, knowing that there’s maybe five seconds to go.
“Well, we’ll see if she makes it out. Let’s start a countdown, shall we? Five, four, three, two—” Ehrich pauses, and the crowd finishes the chant for him. But Felicity does not reappear, her hands are still in the handcuffs, and the entire box catches fire, burning merrily.
For a moment, everyone’s silent. And then, of course, Ehrich, the damned magician, smiles, bows, and says to the man in the audience, “I’ll send you a check for a hundred thousand, sir, which should cover the replacement. And I hope you’ll see, ladies and gentlemen, that these are not trick locks and this is all, very, real.”
-
With that, the show is over, and people start filing out of the theatre. All of them but Alfred — he’s going to do something, he resolves. He must do something, because this is just wrong, in every single way, and so he fights against the crowd exiting towards the back, pushing through lords and ladies and the rich and powerful to catch the magician, to make him pay. And he finds his way backstage, but it’s too late — Ehrich’s room is completely empty. Alfred whirls and heads for the nearest entrance, knowing that the murderer couldn’t be that far away, and just as he comes outside, he sees the limo, hovering already, though the door’s still open.
And Ehrich is already in it, and it’s too far away to catch. But past Ehrich, a pair of blue eyes stare back at him, and Alfred stops dead. The lady leans forward and smiles at him, waving with a mark on her wrist, and then the door shuts and the limo departs.
Behind him, a courier coughs politely and hands him a letter; the ink still fresh.
-
Alfred,
I write to you to let you know that you are not alone in your struggle — and yes, since I know what is on your mind, know that she is safe with me, and will be safe from his whims going forward.
We are brothers in the fight that has brought you here. Our struggle is the same, you see; we aim to change the minds and thoughts of society and struggle to bring equality to all. I know of the papers that you write, Alfred, and I read them weekly, finding truth and strength in your words, and you must know that you are not alone in what you believe. I pass them on to others, to many who believe as you do, and together, we will change the world
I hope you will join us. We can not meet, yet, for our enemies are many and they will pick us apart if we appear to be a threat, but there will come a time when you and I will meet and commiserate over how we won this battle, this war, and brought equality to everyone. And our names will be in the history books, Alfred — but more than that, they will be in the minds of all of the people we have saved.
I play only a small part. I am a magician and I do illusions and tricks, and save perhaps one or two a day. But you — your words, Al, will save thousands, and millions, and will be the most widely read across the galaxy, I promise you. So do not stop writing, and do not stop believing what is right. Every word you write is a word for justice. And if the university will not publish it, we will find someone who will.
By your side in this journey,
Eric Wiesz
--------
A/N: This was a long, long piece, and if you've read all the way through it, thanks for coming along with me! It's essentially a civil-rights tale told in the future, inspired in part by Ted Chiang's excellent Hugo and Nebula award-winning novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, about robots that are on the cusp of sentience and how they are treated. I think that the societal battles for equality will be fought for a very long time, and while we've come a long way from Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall, they are definitely not the only names we'll reference in the future. It also felt like magic was the right way to take the prompt, and from there came the idea of how a group of underground fighters for equality could come together. Eric Wiesz is a reference to the great Harry Houdini, of course, and the other names are from the Illusionist and the Prestige, two great movies on magic. I honestly had a lot of fun writing this, and concrit is always welcome!
