TITLE: "Motion to Deactivate" Chapter Seven -- Star Witness for Defense
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please?
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "The Animatrix: Second Renaissence, Part I", its characters, concepts, imagery or other indicia which belong to the Wachowski Brothers, RedPill Productions, Warner Brothers, et al. Nor do I own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: Anothere unavoidable delay; Easter came up, and so did spring cleaning (I did try to bow out of it, but it's hard when you live at home...) ... But this chapter is well worth all the waiting, I assure you!
* * * * * * * *
Chapter Seven -- Star Witness for Defense
Saturday afternoon, Declan intended to spend that day raking leaves in the yard with Cecie, but around two o'clock, three TV news crews and several reporters from more than a few newspapers showed up. Before the crowd could start questioning them, and before Cecie started to get angry with them, Declan led his daughter inside.
Sunday morning it rained, so the three of them were able to head out to Mass without a yammering escort of journalists. But the rain stopped before the Martins arrived home: when they came back to the house, they found two of the TV news crews waiting for them. Declan avoided looking at them as lead Sabrina and Cecie inside. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cecie looking back and giving the reporters the Look of Death.
Once they got inside, Cecie turned to Declan, her fists doubled. "They're trespassing and they're being a public nuisence. Can't you get the cops after them?" she said.
"They'd argue that I was interfering with the free transmission of ideas and information, that the public has the right to know as much as they can about this case: I know how the First Amendment gets lobbed around these days," Declan replied. "Besides, they haven't really been that unruly."
"Yeah, but we have the right to be secure in our persons and on our own property," Cecie retorted.
"I'm trying not to be as upset by all this, but I can't help agreeing with Cecie: they're intruding on our property," Sabrina said.
The rain returned as a torrential downpour, forcing the camera crews to pack up their equipment and leave. But all through dinner and afterwards as the three of them sat in the living room watching one of Declan's homemade montages of movie clips (That evening's feature: Jackie Chan's greatest fight scenes) Declan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir, like small antennas trying to pick up something outside the living room window.
The neck-prickling sensation didn't go away through the rest of the evening, not even while he brushed his teeth before he went to bed. He turned the bathroom window from opaque to translucent, so that he could see out but no one could see in. He couldn't make out anything specific, but he thought he saw a shadow move across the backyard.
He turned the window back to opaque and shut the light out in the bathroom, then made the rounds of the house, arming the security system, putting the windows and doors on smart.
He looked into Cecie's room to find she fallen asleep, curled up with a copy of Orwell's 1984. He turned off the flashlight she'd been reading with, put the book on the bedside table and drew the covers up over her shoulders before kissing her on the top of her head and going out.
He heard the strains of a Chopin nocturne coming from downstairs; he followed the sound to the master bedroom where he found Sabrina waiting for him, curled up catlike on the bed, a mischevous little smile on her face.
"Heard something that you like?" she asked.
He smiled at this. "Well, it lead me to someone I'd like to see," he said.
It had been some time since the last time they were together as man and wife; he'd slowed up a little, since he slid down the other side of fifty-five, but the fire in his heart was only banked down. Usually an important case like this was enough to damper that fire even more, but this tender moment was enough to make some of the tension in his soul slip away...
Only some of that tension. The whole time, Declan still had that neck-prickling sensation that someone was watching them...
* * * * * * * *
The phone had been oddly quiet all through the weekend. Declan had half-expected another of those calls to add to the burden of annoyance, but when nothing came, he hoped that the phone-call hecklers had given up that tactic.
He thought nothing more of thistill he was shaving before the bathroom mirror Monday morning, watching the news headlines scrolling on the news ticker down the bottom. The upper corner of the mirror bore a small window containing information about his blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, a reminder to take his vitamins and herb supplements...
And then, right in front of him, right at eye-level, a small window popped up from out of nowhere. The pop-up guard on the house Internet connection must need an update, he thought, as he reached with his free hand to close the window. But words popped up inside the window:
Lisssen 2 mee, Mecha-fucker Drop that case and dont ever tak another droifd case U wil regrett ist!!!!!!!!!!!
Down silicon, UP FLESH!!!!
FleshWarrior
The window closed itself. Declan let out a harrassed sound, set aside his shaver and glanced up at the health monitor readout: his heart rate had jumped several beats per second, and his skin temperature jumped a couple tenths of a degree. The reminder box changed messages: Did something startle you, Declan? Take a few slow deep breaths.
* * * * * * * *
"Wilson, my house 'Net connection has a bug in it," Declan told Wilson when he met him at the office.
"Ooh boy, that doesn't sound good. Why, what happened?" Wilson asked.
Declan described the strange message that had shown up on the bathroom mirror.
"Hm. I'll have to take a look at your house server," Wilson said. "You mind if I come over tonight and take a look?"
"No, just give me a chance to call Sabrina and let her know you're coming," Declan said.
"Yeah, give her a chance to hide that Filipino lover-Mecha," Wilson teased. Declan knew he must have winced at this otherwise wisecrack: Wilson's grin became apologetic. "Whoops, that was a cheap shot. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," Declan said, with a shrug, no harm done.
* * * * * * * *
"How long have you lived in the house next to the Varritecks' home?" Ms. Te asked her next witness, Charlie Vale, an elderly man in his late eighties, who bore his years lightly, as evidenced by the keenness of his eyes.
"For as long as I can remember: I've lived in that house since my folks brought me home from the hospital when God made me new," Mr. Vale replied.
"So... you knew the Varriteck family very well?"
"Oh yes, we'd chit-chat over the fence between the yards, me and Mr. Henryk's father when we were young. Henryk came along when I was older, so he was just the neighbor's kid to me. Not that that lowered my estimation of him as a human."
"And what about my client, B1-66-ER, did you know him well?"
Vale smiled, almost nostalgically, but there was a hint of something else. "Oh yes, Sixer -- that was my name for him, he let me call him that, told me it was an interesting name, kinda like what Henryk's grandfather used to call him -- Sixer was one of the first robots I ever saw. Gave me the idea to go into robot maintenance, and I'm still at it. We'd talk every time we'd see each other, not that he was the most intellctual sort, but neither am I. We'd talk about everything, books we'd read, the weather, the Red Sox, the news of the neighborhood. I'd always ask him how he was doing. Usually he'd say he was doin' well... But once in a while he'd say he wasn't doin' quite so well. That didn't happen much when Henryk's grandfather was still alive, but once both the old men died and Henryk got the house, I couldn't help noticin' Sixer started... well, not complainin' like, but it seemed he had more and more bad days."
" 'Bad days'? How would you describe those?"
"Well, y' see, Sixer 'ud gotten along great with Karl, Henryk's grandfather, who'd bought Sixer, and Henryk's father was okay with him, just not as kindly as the old man had been. But Henryk... Henryk was a hard man, as Sixer told me."
"Did Sixer ever tell you what made Henryk like this?"
"Oh yes he did, told me in some detail. One of the first things after the old man passed away, Henryk wouldn't let Sixer read any of the books in the family library. I didn't like that, so I used to bring books to Sixer for him to borrow. Then Henryk wouldn't let Sixer come along on family outings to museums and such-like. Soon enough, the only times they let Sixer go out was to run errands and such. And on more 'n a few times, I saw Henryk pushin' Sixer around."
"Pushing Sixer around how?"
"Well, a couple winters back it was really cold, I mean so cold that the lubricant in Sixer's joints musta gotten sluggish while he was shovelling the driveway, so he didn't do as even a job as he usually does, got the edges crooked. So Henryk grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back out, made him straighten out the edges.
"Another time, last summer, an actuator in Sixer's shoulder stuttered, caused 'um to drop a tray of dishes while the family was havin' a cookout. Henryk had had a few, wound up gettin' mad at Sixer and hit him over the head and shoulders. Busted one of Sixer's visual receptor lenses.
"Oh, and then a few years back, when Henryk had the trouble with the gambling debts, he threatened to put up Sixer as collateral for a mortgage, but he couldn't on account of the MIT Bill of Rights. So Henryk got mad as hornets and pushed Sixer down some steps, the ones into the living room."
A disturbed rustle, like gasps of mild shock and disapproving clicks of the tongue rose from the press and the public galleries.
"That's cruel!" Frank Sweitz murmured.
Damon Varriteck, over in the public gallery, sat slouched in his chair, his whole being bore a look of annoyed boredom.
Declan turned to the defendant. The droid sat bolt upright as usual, but his stamped metal face was turned toward the witness, tilted up slightly, as if it hung on every word this old man said, trustingly...
"Do you think this might have influenced Sixer to choose such drastic means to defend himself?" Ms. Te asked.
Declan felt his lips parting to release the objection forming in his mind, but he let it pass unspoken.
Vale wagged his head. "It might have. Sixer's unusually curious for a droid of his make, and he's learned a lot of bad stuff about human behavior. I've never asked him point-blank about it, but I don't doubt bein' around humans so much has made him somewhat human. So yeah, he most likely learned some pretty bad behavior from the people he shoulda been able to trust."
"Nothing further," Ms. Te said. As she stepped down, she darted a glance to Declan and lifted one eyebrow as if to say, 'Need we say more?'
"Thank you, Ms. Te. Prosecution may now cross-examine the witness," Judge Wendell said.
"Prosecution rests," Declan replied.
* * * * * * * *
Delcna noticed the two young reporters talking with Ms. Te as he emerged from the court room during the break between witnesses. Sweitz glanced toward him and raised one hand as if to say, 'just a minute; we're just hearing her side'. McGeever hung back from Ms. Te, but Declan noticed the small man darting glances at her, below her shoulder.
At length, Ms. Te and her assistant moved on. Sweitz and McGeever then approached Declan.
"Don't tell us you're lettin' that little girl and that old man blunt yer teeth, Martin," McGeever said.
Declan ignored this remark.
"Don't mind Hal," Sweitz said, with an apologetic smile. "He just thinks every good person is too good to be true."
" 'Cause most of 'em are," McGeever sneered.
"It's all right: I just didn't see any point belaboring the witness. He was telling everything he knew that quite possibly led up to the murder. He might be the defendant's only real friend in the world, if a droid can be said to have a friend."
"I thought that myself," Sweitz said, jotting this all down, and ignoring McGeever's harrassed sigh of disapproval. "Would you mind if I quoted you on that? That Mr. Vale might be the defendant's only friend."
"Not at all, I think it's the best and truest way to describe him."
"And the truth is all I'm after," Sweitz said, jotting down the quote and underlining it, before they stepped away.
"Just don't let that girl muzzle you," McGeever called to Declan over his shoulder.
* * * * * * * *
Once the assembly returned to the courtroom, Declan sensed something not right in the air: the balliff was speaking to Ms. Te, who bore a look of deep concern on her face.
Once Judge Wendell emerged from her chambers, Ms. Te approached the bench and spoke with the judge in an undertone for a long moment. Judge Wendell frowned with concern, then turned to the assembly.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." her eye fell on Hammurabi's remote communication device. "Intelligent persons of the jury... prosecution, defense, members of the public and press, it has come to our attention that defense's next witness, Dr. Allen Hobby, is unable to be present to testify due to a domestic difficulty that needed his attention. This court is adjourned until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning."
In a sense, Declan felt relieved, but being reminded of just who the next witness would be squelched the soundless sigh of relief rising in his chest.
At least this announcement drew the attention of the media away from him and onto Ms. Te, thus he and Glynnis were able to emerge from the courthouse largely unmolested by members of the press, most of whom were pestering Ms. Te.
But as they descended the steps to the street below, something else came to his attention:
He found himself looking down on a double crowd of people behind a thick metal barrier: to the right, a crowd bearing posters each decked with anti-Mecha slogans and the flame-surmounted fist of the ARM, the Anti-Robot Militia, to the left, another crowd bearing posters and picket signs each with pro-Mecha slogans and the stylized white-on-black flower of the CRF, the Coalition for Robotic Freedom. A few people in the crowd to the right brandished what looked like severed metal limbs, while in the crowd to the left, Declan noticed several droids and Mechas quietly holding up signs. But from the blankly puzzled looks on the faces of the Mechas, he wondered if they really understood what was going on. The crowd on the left chanted slogans, but angered distorted their words so much he hardly understood them. The crowd on the right also chanted, less angrily, but no less vehemently.
"Vindicate the Varritecks!" "Defend the Defenseless Droids!"
"Justice for Man!" "Justice for Mechas!"
"Blood Cries out on Metal Hands!" "Ownership Does Not Mean Tyranny!"
"Back door?" Glynnis asked.
"No, they'd just call me a coward," Declan said, leading the way.
A couple police officers and two courthouse security Mechas approached and escorted Declan and Glynnis down to the sidewalk. The ARM nuts screamed curses at the Mecha, and a few tried to climb over the barrier, but more police approached to hold them back.
"We tried to send them across the street, but they insisted on gathering here," one of the police told Declan, though he hardly made out the rest of what the man said.
Declan made no reply. There was nothing to be said, and he might not be heard anyway...
* * * * * * * *
On the drive home, Declan switched on the radio, tuning it to the local PRI station. Just in time for the news:
"In national news, the B1-66-ER trial in Massachusetts is about to heat up more than it is: Dr. Allen Hobby, one of America's foremost roboticists is about to take the stand to testify in defense of the serving-robot on trial..."
Declan switched off the radio. National news, eh? he thought with a sour smile. The way the reporters have been all over this story, it stands to reason. Wait till Hobby actually *does* take the stand...
He said as much to Sabrina when he got home.
"It gets better," she said. "Take a look at the tabloids in the supermarket check out line."
"Is that supposed to be a subtle way of telling me we need a few things at the store?" Declan asked.
"I was gonna bake that honey-glazed chicken you like, but we're out of honey and I need a bottle of vitamin C."
"Okay, I'm on it," he said.
Once he arrived in the market, Declan noticed a few people were staring at him, at least when they clearly thought he couldn't see them staring.
As he waited in line while a myopic old woman three heads ahead of him fumbled with the self-serve check-out his eye turned to the magazine rack to his right.
On the National Enquirer: Declan Martin: His Own Shadowed World, complete with a picture of him and Glynnis that had clearly been taken while they were trying to slip out of the courthouse.
On the World Weekly News: B1-66-ER's Lawyer in Love With Her Client???
He picked the Enquirer up and paged through it till he found the article... The criminal record was simply an exaggerated version of the mild traffic violations he'd made when he was still in college, although they tried to make him seem at fault for the time he'd been trying to paralell park on a one-way street and he got rammed by a drunk driver who was going the wrong way. His left hip twinged with phantom pain at the memory.
They blew Cecie's difficulties at school completely out of proportion: To hear them say it, she was the class delinquent. He was tempted to send them a letter of complaint, but he knew that would only turn into more grist for the rumor mill.
But the last item had him seeing red for a split second:
"SABRINA MARTIN: IS SHE FOR REAL???"
"Few people have seen Martin's wife Sabrina around their home town of West Hillston, Mass. The few that have report that she hardly says much at all and that she seems preternaturally content with staying home making silk flowers and tending to the housework.
"Sound like a Stepford wife to you? there's more...
"Four years ago, Sabrina Martin underwent massive treatment for ovarian cancer at New Boston's Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Before that she had been an active, even slightly wild gal who enjoyed going biking on weekends with her girlfriends. After that, her behavior changed to its present mousiness. Inside sources tell us that evidence suggests that something dire happened to Sabrina Martin and that, in his distress, Mr. Martin had her resurrected in Mecha form.
"Given Declan Martin's overtones of Mecha hatred, we can only hope that the Mecha form of Sabrina Martin does not endure the brunt of it."
Granted, Sabrina used to go biking with him when they were younger, and he'd bought the sidecar for the motorcycle when she'd had a rather nasty spill falling off the back once, but the reason they'd hit the road less in recent years had more to do with his accident than with her illness, though that had been part of it. She'd never been very outgoing, but she went for a long walk around town every morning, and everyone in town knew her. But saying she was a Mecha?!
Then a side-bar like column caught his eye:
"Glenn or Glynnis?: Behind Closed Doors at the DA's Office"
"Visible throughout the B1-66-ER trial has been a tall, slender red-headed young person known as Glynnis Miesel, EADA Declan Martin's legal aide... and much more.
" 'Ms.' Miesel's employment records show that 'she' was born Glenn Markhalt, an obvious male who played several intermural sports while growing up in an affluent neighborhood in Stowe, Vermont.
"But after graduating from Harvard Law School and being employed by the Springfield District Attorney's office, Markhalt became enamored of the Executive Assistant District Attorney. But finding that Declan Martin was attracted only to the fair sex, Markhalt went under the knife and emerged as Glynnis Miesel."
He'd been there when Glynnis was hired to the office, five years earlier. She'd been female then as far as he could tell, and he certainly did not recall her taking the kind of sick leave that kind of procedure would require.
Just for a chuckle, albeit a wry one, he read the item about Jen Te:
"Defense attorney and CRF activist Jen Te has passionately devoted much of her budding career to helping the Mecha rights movement, but her love for her metal and silicon brothers has risen to a new level of intensity. She has been spotted in the courtroom with her delicate lotus-blossom hand resting on the articulate metal hand of her client, B1-66-ER. A guard at the Springfield County House of Corrections, Kevin Johnson, has reported that the conversations between Ms. Te and her client have lasted, "longer than is appropriate."
"A lawyer representing the family of the murder victims, Henrick and Barbara Varriteck, has also reported that Ms. Te has sought to buy her client's contract, apparently with the intention of giving the robot a taste of freedom. And over the weekend, Ms. Te was seen going into a bridal shop in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Although Mecha/Orga marriages are not allowed, is Ms. Te going to pop the question to the droid following the not-guilty verdict she has been fighting for?"
He caught himself chuckling out loud at the utter absurdity of the item, which elicited a harsh stare from the frazzled-looking career woman behind him. True, he thought, as he replaced the magazine in the rack, Ms. Te was passionate about the case, but it certainly wasn't that kind of passion.
* * * * * * * *
Wilson showed up after dinner: Declan led him upstairs to the climate-controlled closet where the house server unit was kept. Wilson connected his laptop to the house network and set to work running a scan on the server's firewall. Sabrina and Cecie came up to watch. Wilson glanced up at Cecie. "Hey, shouldn't you be doing homework?" he asked, teasing.
"I did it already," Cecie replied. "It was all homework."
"We had to take Cecie out of school and have her switched into the school's home program, because of the trouble she had at school," Declan said.
"Nothing wrong there: Dr. Allen Hobby was taught at home, and look where he is now!" Wilson said.
"Really?" Cecie asked. She turned to Declan. "Isn't that the guy who was supposed to take the witness stand today?"
"He was, but he couldn't make it: he had some kind of trouble at home," Declan said.
"So I heard: I bet it's trouble with his kid, David," Wilson said. "The family's in the limelight so much, the poor kid can't have a normal life, so he kinda flips out. What price glory? That's why I'm just a sys-op for the Springfield County DA's office."
"Or a bug-killer for your friends," Cecie said.
Sabrina watched the screen of Wilson's laptop, but Declan knew from the pucker in her brow that she hardly understood a word of the filenames flickering by.
The system pinged and a window with a red border popped up. "Oops, we got the bug," Wilson said. He set to work typing something, his thin fingers flying over the keyboard. "I'm extracting it... and updating your firewall. You really should update that at least once a year, same time as you update the security system."
"I'll add it to the semi-annual to-do list, not that I'm the most technologically adept person in the world," Declan said. "Any idea who could have done this?"
"The message was probably the same goon who's been sending you all the other love-notes, but the hack looked like the work of the Mad Frenchman, this uber-hacker out there. Firewalls practically melt at his touch, but no one has any idea who the cat is. But... I've got some code of my own to counteract any other attacks, something I cooked up myself, hard to break through."
"I certainly hope so," Declan said.
* * * * * * * *
He managed to forget about the tabloid items till the next morning, when he arrived at the office to find Glynnis opening her snail mail, her movements very brusque, very unlike her. He could see the tendons tighten on the backs of her hands.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
She flung down the envelope she had just torn open. "Those damn tabloids," she said. She yanked a small sheaf of paper from under her mail and shoved the papers to Declan. He took it, finding someone had faxed her a copy of that tabloid item.
"Yeah, I read that last night when I was waiting in line at the store. That was so ridiculous," he said.
"Well... you know how the saying goes, gossip lies nine times out of ten, and one time out ten tells a half-truth? Let me give you the real truth." She paused, drawing in a long breath, as if she weren't sure how to put this into words, whatever it was.
"You don't have to tell me if you aren't ready to," Declan said, not quite sure he really wanted to hear it. "I can respect your privacy."
"No, it's not that; it's better if you hear it from me anyway... When my parents got their license to have a family, they wanted a son. They didn't believe in using the services of a fertility clinic, so they made me the old-fashioned way. But then they had an amniocentesis done when I was still in the embryonic stage, and they found out I was a girl. So, they had surgery done on me in utero when I was a little more developed and had me implanted with male organs that some lab had grown in a vat.
"And then, when I was born, they expected me to be all boy as I grew up: had me playing several different sports, put me in karate, when I really wanted to stay home and paint pictures or read mystery novels. But the whole time, even when I was really small, I had this wierd feeling that something wasn't right. I never really hit puberty either, not the way the other boys did: I didn't shoot up like a weed and my voice stayed the same.
"Finally, when I was in high school, and this girl wanted me to marry her, we started going through the licensing process, having physical examinations, getting a genetic profile of each other... and it came out that I had two X chromosomes and no sign of any Y chromosomes. Thety told me that genetically I was female and that there were signs I'd undergone some kind of genital manipulation. That's when my parents finally broke down and told me the truth.
"I went a little crazy then: took some of the money I'd saved for college and had the surgery reversed. It's not right to make a kid be something that they aren't just because it's what you the parent want. I'm a free-thinker, you know that, but I didn't think it was right for my software not to match my hardware, especially since my parents ordered the mis-match."
"It's like trying to make Windows 2100 run on a Mac," Declan said, with a smile of quiet humor just touching the corners of his mouth.
Glynnis managed a smile of her own. "Or like having an intelligent machine be a non-sentient can-opener and nothing more."
"You think I should inform that paper that they may be facing libel charges, unless they retract these articles?" Declan asked.
She shook her head. "Not unless this hits the mainstream news. But if that should happen, I want to deal with it myself."
"Wise choice," Declan replied. "If I helped you out, it might lead the people who started the rumor to think there was something real to their fables. You want me to have that fax number traced?"
"That's my job also: you got enough on your mind right now, since you're cross-examining Allen Hobby today."
"You know, those stupid tabloids made me almost forget that... or at least forget how much it's bothering me," he said.
"I guess in that case, those dumb articles proved somewhat useful," Glynnis noted.
* * * * * * * *
"Defense requests the testimony of Dr. Allen Hobby, roboticist," Ms. Te announced.
A rustle of excitement flickered through the press gallery as the balliff entered, leading in a tall, sturdy-built manwith a high intelligent forehead and medium-blonde hair, starting to recede only a little.
"Is this *THE* Allen Hobby?" Sweitz asked McGeever, with excited awe.
"Yep, that's him, that's touchy-feely-Mechas-with-self-motivated-reasoning-parameters guy," McGeever replied, with a hint of irritated irony.
Declan had seen Ms. Te's list of witnesses, and he'd heard of Dr. Hobby's work in designing and creating Mechas, the more human-looking species of robots, but seeing the name was one thing: seeing the man behind that eminent name was another matter entirely
The baliff had Hobby place his hand on a copy of the World Bible, a book containing the first few pages of every religious text of every belief system
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so may the Higher Power help you?" the balliff said.
"I swear," Dr. Hobby replied.
Ms. Te approached the stand, her face calm, but her hands clasping and unclasping with nervousness. "You are Dr. Allen Hobby, principal roboticist and one of the board members of the Cybertronics Corporation of New York, am I correct?"
"Yes, I am," the witness replied.
"And your company manufactured the model B1 series, of which my client is unit number 66-ER?"
"That is correct: the B1 series was the best selling line of our company's early designs, before production switched to more precisely human-looking replicas."
"And you played a role in the programming of this model?"
"Not specifically since that was well before I first joined Cybertronics. But in producing the B1 series, the company sought to make a robot which could serve the general public as an all-purpose serving unit: as anything from working in hotels and store back rooms to serving as house-help. Because we were expecting it would interact with humans more than most service droids at that time, it was necessary to give this model more complex personality programming and more human-like speech. And, as has been brought to my attention by more than a few repair technicians, over time these robots became more human-like in their behavior."
"Would you say they developed something like self-consciousness?" Ms. Te darted an eye toward Declan as if she expected him to object to this. Declan ignored the bait.
Dr. Hobby furrowed his brow slightly at this non-verbal exchange, but proceeded to answer the question. "Some did, including, as I deduced from the maintenance logs of B1-66-ER, and more importantly, from interviewing the unit myself, the present defendant."
"Did you ever speak with my client personally at any great length?"
"I did, partly for the preliminary preparation for the present trial, partly for the research I have been conducting toward creating self-motivated reasoning parameters in future Mecha designs. With the help of my colleague Jeanine Salla, a computational psychologist also at Cybertronics, I eaxamined B1-66-ER and found its logic parameters unusually flawless for a robot of its age, one might even say they had defied entropy and developed. In terms of behavior, his mannerisms and voice are stilly very, one might say, 'robotic', but its vocabulary and speech patterns are highly developed, even animated without giving way to flights of emotion."
"You mentioned emotion... is my client capable of feeling genuine emotion?"
"Robots of this design are not gifted with the ability to emulate emotion, unlike more recent designs, known as Mecha. But 66-ER has somehow developed a kind of proto-emotional ability. In a test I conducted, I swung a long metal rod at the defendant's head, as if I would strike him without warning. An ordinary robot of any design, would step out of the path of the rod. But... and this is worthy of note... 66-ER not only stepped out of the path of the rod entering the space around its body, but also raised both hands as if to push away the rod or take it from my hands."
"Does any other droid do this?"
"No, not in my experience, not in Dr. Salla's, and I have not heard any other robopsychologist report this."
"What about a proximate threat? Say if someone threatened to destroy or dismantle the defendant, what would *he* do?"
Declan noticed the emphasis Ms. Te put on the personal pronoun she used to refer to her client.
"That question brings to my mind a conversation I deliberately initiated with 66-ER. I asked it directly what it would do if someone said to it, 'B1-66-ER, I am going to destroy you,' or some variation on that. The unit replied that it would take the means necessary to prevent that from happening to it."
"Did he say anything about the Varritecks?"
"The unit simply told me it did not wish to die."
Ms. Te stepped down. "Nothing further."
Declan had a dozen questions come to mind, but as soon as Ms. Te seated herself beside the defendant, they all went out of his head. He touched the St. Thomas More medal in his pocket as he rose and approached the witness stand.
"Are you familiar at all with the history of the defendant's employment by the Varriteck family?" he asked.
"I must admit that I am not familiar with the day-to-day particulars of 66-ER's employment, but in coversation, the unit revealed to me some of the change in attitude the ascending generations of the family had toward the unit and its performance. It even asked me why they grew, and I quote, 'so cold' toward it."
"Cold, how?"
"It particularly noted that Henryk Varriteck never once praised the work the unit accomplished for the family, or for that matter, even took note of it except to find fault with it. In fact, as time went by, Mr. Varriteck's attitude became increasingly hostile."
"Hostile in what manner?"
"He would often push the droid out of his way if it did not move quickly enough. He even grew angry enough with it that he struck it on several occasions, damaging it and even nearly knocking it down. And he did nothing to correct his son for teasing it."
"Teasing it? How did that happen?" This was new to him.
"The droid described to me several instances, when Damon, the Varriteck's son, was still quite young, that the young man deliberately tripped it with a broom handle hooked around the inside of its ankle, or stretching a thin rope across a walkway when the droid was approaching, carrying a pile of things, or, most often, throwing things at it."
"What? Come on, I was just *kid* then! I did dumb things like every kid does," Damon cried out, jumping to his feet.
Judge Wendell silenced Damon with a cold glare. "Mr. Varriteck, you have had your chance to testify, if prosecution chooses to call you a second time as a rebuttal witness, you may speak then. However, now is decidedly not the time for it. Proceed, Mr. Martin."
Declan collected his scattered thoughts. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Damon sit down in silence, but he could feel the anger that darkened the young man's brow.
"Do you think this could have inspired the defandant to have acted in a violent manner towards his owners?" Declan said, proceeding with the cross-examination.
"Objection, speculatory," Ms. Te said.
"Witheld," Judge Wendell said. "Rephrase the question, Mr. Martin."
"Is it possible for a droid's behavior to be conditioned by example or by the way the owner treated it?" Declan asked.
"It is possible, you cannot have true artificial intelligence without a machine's being able to learn from its owners or other persons it interacts with, and in many instances, this has extended to behavioral patterns."
"In that case, is it possible that a droid, such as the defendant, exposed to violent behavior or which was subject to abuse, might learn to use violence as a means to an end?"
Hobby paused, thinking, then at length he spoke. "There are few reported instances of something like this happening, but usually a violent artilect already has some internal malfunction that contributed to its outburst."
"But is it possible for a droid that has known abuse to choose violence to solve a problem?"
"Objection, pure speculation!" Ms. Te cried.
"Sustained, " Judge Wendell said. "As interesing as this theory is, Mr. Martin, there is no place for it here."
"Excuse me, your honor, but this is more than a mere theory: some of my recent research has turned up evidence that supports this theory," Dr. Hobby put in. "May I answer that question?"
"You may," Judge Wendell said, but she seemed unconvinced.
"It is possible, and based on my conversation with the defendant, it has happened to him," Dr. Hobby said.
"Nothing further," Declan said, stepping down.
* * * * * * * *
The media spotlight -- even the protestors' attention -- shifted away from him and onto Hobby, which bought Declan some time to slip into the pub down the street from the courthouse. He seated himself in a booth where he could be inconspicuous, but a few moments later, Dr. Hobby came in and approached him, accompanied by a small, slender woman with light brown hair and steady greenish-blue eyes. Declan caught himself staring just a little when he realized the woman's skin had an odd sheen to it, very unlike a human's skin.
"Mr. Martin, would you mind if I joined you?" Dr. Hobby asked.
"I wouldn't advise it, since we're still in the middle of the trial, and I might be accused of trying to influence you," Declan replied.
"Not to brag, but I doubt anything you say to me could influence my opinion of this case. I've approached it with a certain detached interest: interest only because it relates to my field of expertise and because it relates to one aspect of it I have been studying for quite some time," Hobby replied.
Declan shrugged and held out his hand, palm up toward the other seat in the booth. "Be my guest."
Hobby sat down, his young companion seating herself beside him, her back still perfectly poised.
"Are you stressed, Mr. Martin? Perhaps you should consider drinking some chammomile tea," the young woman said.
"Thanks, but I'm afraid I'm allergic to it; the pollen bothers me" Declan replied, trying not to sound puzzled.
"I am very sorry to hear that," the woman replied.
"Please don't mind Sheila, she can be at times... not nosy but a little heavy-handed in offering comfort. She's a new secretary-companion model we've been beta-testing," Hobby said.
"I couldn't help wondering... if she was Mecha or not. I'm sorry if I was staring," Declan said.
"It's quite all right," Hobby said.
The door opened admitting the two reporters from the 'Independant', who came in and sat down in the booth behind where Declan and Hobby sat. Sweitz was chattering about something Declan didn't catch, but McGeever turned and peerred over the back of his seat with narrowed eyes.
"Hey, that the modified S2 model?" McGeever asked.
Hobby looked up. "Yes... do you follow the new models being introduced?"
"Well, let's say if this were an alternate universe, I'd be sittin' where you are, Doc," McGeever said, condescention quirking his tone.
"Hey, Hal, let 'em alone," Sweitz said, rising and approaching Declan. "I'm sorry: Hal's just been a little... outspoken in his opinion of Dr. Hobby's work, I mean, your work, sir..." Sweitz dropped his gaze, embarrassed as his young face turned bright pink.
"It's all right, I should be accustomed to the critics in the media," Hobby replied.
"You mind if we let you fellas talk alone?" Sweitz asked.
"Not to sound like I'm throwing you youngsters out, but I'd prefer that you did," Declan said.
"No problem here," Sweitz said, nudging McGeever to rise and join him at another table.
"I heard your family's had trouble with the media bothering you," Hobby said. "My wife Caroline and our son David have had our share of that species of trouble, so I have a complete understanding of what you must be going through."
"We've had a few incidents in the past, but nothing like this: they just won't let up," Declan said.
"Consider what the case you're covering entails: Relations between man and machine have always been strained, even before things as simple as toasters started to be implanted with sentient programming chips," Hobby said. "There was one instance, back in the 1970s, when assembly line robots were just coming into use in this country that a man was accidently crushed by a robotic spot-welding arm: the papers gave it the headline 'Assembly Robot Kills Man', not 'Man Dies in Factory Accident'. Long before that, in the early 1800s, the Luddites smashed looms in textile mills throughout Great Britain, in fear that the machines would replace them as weavers. Machines still need people to design them and program them, although we have a few artilects that are capable of assisting in the programming and design processes. They may make life easier for us, but they will not obsolesce us or take over our planet as the ARM would lead you to believe. It's more complicated than it really is, and I am doing my utmost to keep this simple."
"Simple... when I took this case, I thought it looked so simple on the surface," Declan said, looking into the depths of his barely-touched glass of white wine. "But as soon as I started to dig below the surface, things started to pop up that I just didn't expect. I'm not robo-phobic, but at first, I thought it was simply a case of a robot going amok because it malfunctioned. But come to find out this thing called First Law is built into every robot to prevent them from hurting a human. And yet, *this* robot bypasses First Law and kills its employers, just to keep from being killed itself. It's like a prisoner in a concentration camp killing the camp commandant who ordered a guard to shoot the prisoner. How am I supposed to try this?"
"It's a conundrum, and these conundrums will continue to appear in our courts as long as Orgas are unable to accept Mechas and artilects as another, equitable species with as much right to exist on this planet as they do. You have to do what you can so that each side will benefit."
"But what do I do? I've been arguing the State has the right to defend its citizens' lives, while the defendant's case has been claiming this robot has the right to defend itself as well. Am I to sacrifice the rights of the many for the rights of the few? If I change my tack and the jury gives a not-guilty verdict, who's to say this robot won't kill again? And if I stay to the argument I've chosen, will the jury choose a guilty verdict and send a robot to destruction when he only wanted to live?"
"I'm a scientist, not a lawyer, but I'd leave it in the jury's hands to descide. They're all intelligent enough to make their own decisions.
"But," Hobby continued. "There was something I need to discuss with you, which is why I approached you in the first place."
"What did you have in mind?" Declan asked.
"I've been very curious about this case, from the moment I was asked to examine the defendant, and even before that, when the news first came to the media's attention. You know that Damon Varriteck is suing Cybertronics for wrongful death."
"I did try to warn him not to do that, but he insisted," Declan said.
"Our company has reached a settlement with him: we've awarded him 800,000 NB in damages. But... in the event that the jury finds 66-ER guilty, I wanted to know if you could have the memory cube of the defendant turned over to Cybertronics, so that an in-depth analysis can be made to determine exactly what happened."
"Why would you want that?"
"For a number of years, in fact, for most of my life, I have been conducting on-going research into the possibility of creating self-motivated reasoning programming for newer models of Mechas, to help them become more like us and therefore, we hope, more accepted among mankind. My hope is that, with this kind of programming, Orgas will be able to see Mechas as a new class of humans, not just a slave class to be exploited."
"I'm afraid I don't follow..." Declan said.
Hobby reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a small case which he opened, and took from it a small dissecting needle. "Look at it this way," Hobby said. "As it stands, Mechas are unable to feel genuine emotion."
He reached over and tookd Sheila's hand by the wrist, laying it flat on the table top. He thrust the dissecting needle into her hand.
"OUCH!" the Mecha-woman screamed. Hobby let her hand go. She jerked it away, then laid it on the table as if nothing had happened. A few of the other patrons in the pub looked up, but no one moved to object.
"Sheila, what did you feel?" Hobby asked her.
The Mecha, looked at her master, considering this. "I felt the point of the needle break through my dermis, I felt impulses to pull my hand away to prevent further damage."
"But what else did you *feel*? Indignation? Shame? Fear?"
The Mecha woman looked at Hobby, her eyes gone blank with confusion. "No, I felt none of those," she replied, frankly.
"Can't you program them to understand the meanings of the words?" Declan said, realizing as soon as he said it, that this would hardly be enough.
"We can give a Mecha a dictionary definition of emotions, but it's like explaining integral calculus to a person with an IQ of 75. We have devised ways in which they can emulate emotive behavior, but it does not penetrate their being the way it does with us."
"So... you think B1-66-ER is moving toward that, toward having true emotions?"
"Yes, and if we could find out why this happened, this might be the key toward creating a robot that can feel and truly express the broad range of human emotion."
"I'm afraid I really don't have the authority to do that," Declan said. "You'd have to talk with Brock Thompson, the head of the DA's office, or Judge Wendell. They'd have more say in the matter than I do. I just present cases."
"Tell them it's simply a matter of donating the defendant's body to science," Hobby said.
"I'll see what I can do," Declan said, hoping he sounded as if he could make no real guarantees.
* * * * * * * *
He found a surprise awaiting him when he got home. The reporters had left the yard: apparantly, that had something to do with the police car parked in front of the house, near the end of the driveway. Declan pulled into the driveway and got out to approach them.
The cop in the driver's seat, a sturdy young African-Asian man whom Declan recognized as Tobe Jackford, a member of the Westhillston police force, rolled down the window and stuck his head out. "Hiya, Marty. We heard yah had a little problem with some trespassers tresspassin' so we came to keep 'em off your rhododendrons."
"Thanks: I really appreciate that," Declan said. "You fellas staying out here all night?"
"Just till midnight, then the graveyard shift comes on, but you'll have someone out here at least till you finish up with that case."
"Good, good, you fellas stay warm," Declan said, and went inside.
When he stepped into the kitchen, Sabrina was taking a baking pan of roasted pork chops out of the oven, which she set down to cool on the draining board next to a pan of cornbread.
"Did you call for the police watch?" Declan asked her.
"Those darn reporters got so impossible... they were peeking into the mailbox! I finally called Thompson and asked him what to do. He called Rikert at the police station and asked him to send someone to keep an eye on us."
"Now what Stepford Wife would do something like that?" he said, hugging her gratefully from behind.
"You looked at those stupid newspapers?" she asked, with a quirk of a smile.
"Yeah, last night in the checkout."
"I guess that makes us famous now," she said, slipping out of his hold to finish her work.
"Or infamous," he said, going into the bathroom to wash his hands.
* * * * * * * *
The three of them managed to have a quiet dinner; Cecie seemed more calm than she had in a while. The phone did not ring.
Later still in his study, Declan was reaching for the phone to check his voice mail when it literally rang under his hand. He picked it up.
"Which side are you on, Martin?!" a young man's voice shouted at him.
"Hello?" Declan asked, holding the receiver an inch away from his ear. "Who is this?"
"It's Damon Varriteck, the guy whose parents you're supposed to be defending after their own robot killed them, remember? what the hell were you doing today?! You're supposed to be prosecuting that droid, not making my family look like they were asking to be killed!"
"Damon, please, calm down, take a deep breath and tell me -- "
"No, you listen to me!"
"Damon," Declan said, in a firm tone without raising his voice. "I realize how upset you are, but you have to realize this: this isn't as simple as it looks. I thought that myself, but the more we look at it, the less easy it is to draw the lines. I never intended to imply that your parents or you were responsible for what happened to them. B1-66-ER chose to act as he did and apparantly, some of the things that happened to him influenced him to choose as he did."
"He didn't *choose*. Droids can't choose. They just follow what their programming tells them to do. That's that."
"Maybe. Maybe not. I've been doing my homework on this, and I've found out from some pages on MIT's website, and a few others that robots are a little less deterministic than most machines, computers and things like that. They have to be that way in order to function among us humans. I've been wondering if there's something in 66-ER's mind that's making him even less deterministic, and thus, more like a human, giving him more options to choose from."
"So you chit-chat with that scientist from Cybertronics over a few brews and now you're an overnight expert on robotics?" Damon sneered.
This remark made Declan pause for a split second. He didn't remember seeing Damon in the pub, and before that, he hadn't seen the young man leave the courtroom. This made him wonder if Damon had been spying on him.
"Damon, I was talking with Dr. Hobby just to get a few answers to some personal questions I had about this case. He was able to answer some of them, but not all of them."
"Good, because they're probably the kind of questions no man has the right to know the answers to."
Declan almost snapped back a reply, but he restrained himself. This young man's snappishness is as infectious as the common cold used to be, he thought.
A scream shattered the stillness downstairs. Declan's ears strained to catch the sound. The voice was Sabrina's.
"Damon, I can't talk right now. There's something going on here I have to take care of," Declan said. "Excuse me." He hung up the phone and rushed out of the room.
He ran downstairs to the bathroom. He found Sabrina there, crouched on the floor, trembling and clutching her arm. Blood oozed from under her hand through a rip in the sleeve of her jersey. Broken glass from the window lay on the floor, surrounding a brick with a note tied to it. Declan helped her out of the room into the kitchen, and was just about to reach for the phone to call emergency, when someone knocked at the back door.
"Who's there?!" Declan shouted, in case it might be the intruder.
"Westhillston police: are you all right in there?"
Declan helped Sabrina to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs, then opened the kitchen door. Two uniformed police officers entered, one of them took the comset from its holster on his shoulder and called for an ambulance.
"We saw someone run through the yard, then we got a call from your security system that someone had broken a window and possibly injured someone inside the house," the second officer said. "We've got a K-9 unit coming in to search the woods."
Sabrina's injury was only a nasty scratch, but it was still deep enough to require stitches and to be examined in case any shards of glass had lodged there. Declan went with Sabrina in the ambulance, while the police brought Cecie to stay with the Connellys until Sabrina was discharged from the hospital.
Fortunately, no glass had lodged in Sabrina's arm, and the hospital released her immediately after her wound had been closed and covered with biotape. Declan called a cab and brought her to the Connellys' house.
Peter, Declan's cousin on his mother's side and nearly twelve years younger than he, let them in and brought them into the kitchen, where his family -- hise wife, Georgette and their twin son and daughter Stephen and Philomena -- had gathered around the table. Cecie sat in their midst, huddled sullenly on her chair.
Declan sat down beside her. "You okay, Jade?"
She uncurled and put her hands on his arm. "Is Mom okay?"
Sabrina joined them at the table, her arm in a sling, but with no other sings of injury. "I'm okay now: I just have to heal."
"We heard about what happened to you," Peter said. "I talked it over with Georgette and we decided to let you stay here: it'll be safer for you."
Declan shook his head. "No, I can't endanger you."
"Nonsense," Peter said. "We're family; we have to help you."
"You don't know the kind of hell we've been going through the past week," Declan said. "The emails, the phone calls, the bug on our house server, the reporters in the yard. Now this. Don't think we're being ungrateful. Much as I'd like to accept the offer, Sabrina and I talked this over on the way here."
"We'll stay the night here, but in the morning, we're going to a hotel and rent a room there till the end of the trial," Sabrina said.
Cecie sniffed. "Is it gonna be any safer there?"
"Yes, for one thing, they have better security, for another thing, we'll be harder to find," Declan said. "The cranks will have to search for us through all those rooms."
Peter nodded, accepting Declan's decision, then led the Martins to the guest room upstairs. "I hope you're sure this is the right decision. Just remember, you're free to stay here as long as you want."
"I think we've chosen the best course of action," Declan said, helpin Sabrina up the stairs. He might not be able to get to the bottom of this case, but at least he knew how to take care of his family...
* * * * * * * *
To be continued...
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please?
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "The Animatrix: Second Renaissence, Part I", its characters, concepts, imagery or other indicia which belong to the Wachowski Brothers, RedPill Productions, Warner Brothers, et al. Nor do I own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: Anothere unavoidable delay; Easter came up, and so did spring cleaning (I did try to bow out of it, but it's hard when you live at home...) ... But this chapter is well worth all the waiting, I assure you!
* * * * * * * *
Chapter Seven -- Star Witness for Defense
Saturday afternoon, Declan intended to spend that day raking leaves in the yard with Cecie, but around two o'clock, three TV news crews and several reporters from more than a few newspapers showed up. Before the crowd could start questioning them, and before Cecie started to get angry with them, Declan led his daughter inside.
Sunday morning it rained, so the three of them were able to head out to Mass without a yammering escort of journalists. But the rain stopped before the Martins arrived home: when they came back to the house, they found two of the TV news crews waiting for them. Declan avoided looking at them as lead Sabrina and Cecie inside. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cecie looking back and giving the reporters the Look of Death.
Once they got inside, Cecie turned to Declan, her fists doubled. "They're trespassing and they're being a public nuisence. Can't you get the cops after them?" she said.
"They'd argue that I was interfering with the free transmission of ideas and information, that the public has the right to know as much as they can about this case: I know how the First Amendment gets lobbed around these days," Declan replied. "Besides, they haven't really been that unruly."
"Yeah, but we have the right to be secure in our persons and on our own property," Cecie retorted.
"I'm trying not to be as upset by all this, but I can't help agreeing with Cecie: they're intruding on our property," Sabrina said.
The rain returned as a torrential downpour, forcing the camera crews to pack up their equipment and leave. But all through dinner and afterwards as the three of them sat in the living room watching one of Declan's homemade montages of movie clips (That evening's feature: Jackie Chan's greatest fight scenes) Declan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir, like small antennas trying to pick up something outside the living room window.
The neck-prickling sensation didn't go away through the rest of the evening, not even while he brushed his teeth before he went to bed. He turned the bathroom window from opaque to translucent, so that he could see out but no one could see in. He couldn't make out anything specific, but he thought he saw a shadow move across the backyard.
He turned the window back to opaque and shut the light out in the bathroom, then made the rounds of the house, arming the security system, putting the windows and doors on smart.
He looked into Cecie's room to find she fallen asleep, curled up with a copy of Orwell's 1984. He turned off the flashlight she'd been reading with, put the book on the bedside table and drew the covers up over her shoulders before kissing her on the top of her head and going out.
He heard the strains of a Chopin nocturne coming from downstairs; he followed the sound to the master bedroom where he found Sabrina waiting for him, curled up catlike on the bed, a mischevous little smile on her face.
"Heard something that you like?" she asked.
He smiled at this. "Well, it lead me to someone I'd like to see," he said.
It had been some time since the last time they were together as man and wife; he'd slowed up a little, since he slid down the other side of fifty-five, but the fire in his heart was only banked down. Usually an important case like this was enough to damper that fire even more, but this tender moment was enough to make some of the tension in his soul slip away...
Only some of that tension. The whole time, Declan still had that neck-prickling sensation that someone was watching them...
* * * * * * * *
The phone had been oddly quiet all through the weekend. Declan had half-expected another of those calls to add to the burden of annoyance, but when nothing came, he hoped that the phone-call hecklers had given up that tactic.
He thought nothing more of thistill he was shaving before the bathroom mirror Monday morning, watching the news headlines scrolling on the news ticker down the bottom. The upper corner of the mirror bore a small window containing information about his blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, a reminder to take his vitamins and herb supplements...
And then, right in front of him, right at eye-level, a small window popped up from out of nowhere. The pop-up guard on the house Internet connection must need an update, he thought, as he reached with his free hand to close the window. But words popped up inside the window:
Lisssen 2 mee, Mecha-fucker Drop that case and dont ever tak another droifd case U wil regrett ist!!!!!!!!!!!
Down silicon, UP FLESH!!!!
FleshWarrior
The window closed itself. Declan let out a harrassed sound, set aside his shaver and glanced up at the health monitor readout: his heart rate had jumped several beats per second, and his skin temperature jumped a couple tenths of a degree. The reminder box changed messages: Did something startle you, Declan? Take a few slow deep breaths.
* * * * * * * *
"Wilson, my house 'Net connection has a bug in it," Declan told Wilson when he met him at the office.
"Ooh boy, that doesn't sound good. Why, what happened?" Wilson asked.
Declan described the strange message that had shown up on the bathroom mirror.
"Hm. I'll have to take a look at your house server," Wilson said. "You mind if I come over tonight and take a look?"
"No, just give me a chance to call Sabrina and let her know you're coming," Declan said.
"Yeah, give her a chance to hide that Filipino lover-Mecha," Wilson teased. Declan knew he must have winced at this otherwise wisecrack: Wilson's grin became apologetic. "Whoops, that was a cheap shot. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," Declan said, with a shrug, no harm done.
* * * * * * * *
"How long have you lived in the house next to the Varritecks' home?" Ms. Te asked her next witness, Charlie Vale, an elderly man in his late eighties, who bore his years lightly, as evidenced by the keenness of his eyes.
"For as long as I can remember: I've lived in that house since my folks brought me home from the hospital when God made me new," Mr. Vale replied.
"So... you knew the Varriteck family very well?"
"Oh yes, we'd chit-chat over the fence between the yards, me and Mr. Henryk's father when we were young. Henryk came along when I was older, so he was just the neighbor's kid to me. Not that that lowered my estimation of him as a human."
"And what about my client, B1-66-ER, did you know him well?"
Vale smiled, almost nostalgically, but there was a hint of something else. "Oh yes, Sixer -- that was my name for him, he let me call him that, told me it was an interesting name, kinda like what Henryk's grandfather used to call him -- Sixer was one of the first robots I ever saw. Gave me the idea to go into robot maintenance, and I'm still at it. We'd talk every time we'd see each other, not that he was the most intellctual sort, but neither am I. We'd talk about everything, books we'd read, the weather, the Red Sox, the news of the neighborhood. I'd always ask him how he was doing. Usually he'd say he was doin' well... But once in a while he'd say he wasn't doin' quite so well. That didn't happen much when Henryk's grandfather was still alive, but once both the old men died and Henryk got the house, I couldn't help noticin' Sixer started... well, not complainin' like, but it seemed he had more and more bad days."
" 'Bad days'? How would you describe those?"
"Well, y' see, Sixer 'ud gotten along great with Karl, Henryk's grandfather, who'd bought Sixer, and Henryk's father was okay with him, just not as kindly as the old man had been. But Henryk... Henryk was a hard man, as Sixer told me."
"Did Sixer ever tell you what made Henryk like this?"
"Oh yes he did, told me in some detail. One of the first things after the old man passed away, Henryk wouldn't let Sixer read any of the books in the family library. I didn't like that, so I used to bring books to Sixer for him to borrow. Then Henryk wouldn't let Sixer come along on family outings to museums and such-like. Soon enough, the only times they let Sixer go out was to run errands and such. And on more 'n a few times, I saw Henryk pushin' Sixer around."
"Pushing Sixer around how?"
"Well, a couple winters back it was really cold, I mean so cold that the lubricant in Sixer's joints musta gotten sluggish while he was shovelling the driveway, so he didn't do as even a job as he usually does, got the edges crooked. So Henryk grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back out, made him straighten out the edges.
"Another time, last summer, an actuator in Sixer's shoulder stuttered, caused 'um to drop a tray of dishes while the family was havin' a cookout. Henryk had had a few, wound up gettin' mad at Sixer and hit him over the head and shoulders. Busted one of Sixer's visual receptor lenses.
"Oh, and then a few years back, when Henryk had the trouble with the gambling debts, he threatened to put up Sixer as collateral for a mortgage, but he couldn't on account of the MIT Bill of Rights. So Henryk got mad as hornets and pushed Sixer down some steps, the ones into the living room."
A disturbed rustle, like gasps of mild shock and disapproving clicks of the tongue rose from the press and the public galleries.
"That's cruel!" Frank Sweitz murmured.
Damon Varriteck, over in the public gallery, sat slouched in his chair, his whole being bore a look of annoyed boredom.
Declan turned to the defendant. The droid sat bolt upright as usual, but his stamped metal face was turned toward the witness, tilted up slightly, as if it hung on every word this old man said, trustingly...
"Do you think this might have influenced Sixer to choose such drastic means to defend himself?" Ms. Te asked.
Declan felt his lips parting to release the objection forming in his mind, but he let it pass unspoken.
Vale wagged his head. "It might have. Sixer's unusually curious for a droid of his make, and he's learned a lot of bad stuff about human behavior. I've never asked him point-blank about it, but I don't doubt bein' around humans so much has made him somewhat human. So yeah, he most likely learned some pretty bad behavior from the people he shoulda been able to trust."
"Nothing further," Ms. Te said. As she stepped down, she darted a glance to Declan and lifted one eyebrow as if to say, 'Need we say more?'
"Thank you, Ms. Te. Prosecution may now cross-examine the witness," Judge Wendell said.
"Prosecution rests," Declan replied.
* * * * * * * *
Delcna noticed the two young reporters talking with Ms. Te as he emerged from the court room during the break between witnesses. Sweitz glanced toward him and raised one hand as if to say, 'just a minute; we're just hearing her side'. McGeever hung back from Ms. Te, but Declan noticed the small man darting glances at her, below her shoulder.
At length, Ms. Te and her assistant moved on. Sweitz and McGeever then approached Declan.
"Don't tell us you're lettin' that little girl and that old man blunt yer teeth, Martin," McGeever said.
Declan ignored this remark.
"Don't mind Hal," Sweitz said, with an apologetic smile. "He just thinks every good person is too good to be true."
" 'Cause most of 'em are," McGeever sneered.
"It's all right: I just didn't see any point belaboring the witness. He was telling everything he knew that quite possibly led up to the murder. He might be the defendant's only real friend in the world, if a droid can be said to have a friend."
"I thought that myself," Sweitz said, jotting this all down, and ignoring McGeever's harrassed sigh of disapproval. "Would you mind if I quoted you on that? That Mr. Vale might be the defendant's only friend."
"Not at all, I think it's the best and truest way to describe him."
"And the truth is all I'm after," Sweitz said, jotting down the quote and underlining it, before they stepped away.
"Just don't let that girl muzzle you," McGeever called to Declan over his shoulder.
* * * * * * * *
Once the assembly returned to the courtroom, Declan sensed something not right in the air: the balliff was speaking to Ms. Te, who bore a look of deep concern on her face.
Once Judge Wendell emerged from her chambers, Ms. Te approached the bench and spoke with the judge in an undertone for a long moment. Judge Wendell frowned with concern, then turned to the assembly.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." her eye fell on Hammurabi's remote communication device. "Intelligent persons of the jury... prosecution, defense, members of the public and press, it has come to our attention that defense's next witness, Dr. Allen Hobby, is unable to be present to testify due to a domestic difficulty that needed his attention. This court is adjourned until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning."
In a sense, Declan felt relieved, but being reminded of just who the next witness would be squelched the soundless sigh of relief rising in his chest.
At least this announcement drew the attention of the media away from him and onto Ms. Te, thus he and Glynnis were able to emerge from the courthouse largely unmolested by members of the press, most of whom were pestering Ms. Te.
But as they descended the steps to the street below, something else came to his attention:
He found himself looking down on a double crowd of people behind a thick metal barrier: to the right, a crowd bearing posters each decked with anti-Mecha slogans and the flame-surmounted fist of the ARM, the Anti-Robot Militia, to the left, another crowd bearing posters and picket signs each with pro-Mecha slogans and the stylized white-on-black flower of the CRF, the Coalition for Robotic Freedom. A few people in the crowd to the right brandished what looked like severed metal limbs, while in the crowd to the left, Declan noticed several droids and Mechas quietly holding up signs. But from the blankly puzzled looks on the faces of the Mechas, he wondered if they really understood what was going on. The crowd on the left chanted slogans, but angered distorted their words so much he hardly understood them. The crowd on the right also chanted, less angrily, but no less vehemently.
"Vindicate the Varritecks!" "Defend the Defenseless Droids!"
"Justice for Man!" "Justice for Mechas!"
"Blood Cries out on Metal Hands!" "Ownership Does Not Mean Tyranny!"
"Back door?" Glynnis asked.
"No, they'd just call me a coward," Declan said, leading the way.
A couple police officers and two courthouse security Mechas approached and escorted Declan and Glynnis down to the sidewalk. The ARM nuts screamed curses at the Mecha, and a few tried to climb over the barrier, but more police approached to hold them back.
"We tried to send them across the street, but they insisted on gathering here," one of the police told Declan, though he hardly made out the rest of what the man said.
Declan made no reply. There was nothing to be said, and he might not be heard anyway...
* * * * * * * *
On the drive home, Declan switched on the radio, tuning it to the local PRI station. Just in time for the news:
"In national news, the B1-66-ER trial in Massachusetts is about to heat up more than it is: Dr. Allen Hobby, one of America's foremost roboticists is about to take the stand to testify in defense of the serving-robot on trial..."
Declan switched off the radio. National news, eh? he thought with a sour smile. The way the reporters have been all over this story, it stands to reason. Wait till Hobby actually *does* take the stand...
He said as much to Sabrina when he got home.
"It gets better," she said. "Take a look at the tabloids in the supermarket check out line."
"Is that supposed to be a subtle way of telling me we need a few things at the store?" Declan asked.
"I was gonna bake that honey-glazed chicken you like, but we're out of honey and I need a bottle of vitamin C."
"Okay, I'm on it," he said.
Once he arrived in the market, Declan noticed a few people were staring at him, at least when they clearly thought he couldn't see them staring.
As he waited in line while a myopic old woman three heads ahead of him fumbled with the self-serve check-out his eye turned to the magazine rack to his right.
On the National Enquirer: Declan Martin: His Own Shadowed World, complete with a picture of him and Glynnis that had clearly been taken while they were trying to slip out of the courthouse.
On the World Weekly News: B1-66-ER's Lawyer in Love With Her Client???
He picked the Enquirer up and paged through it till he found the article... The criminal record was simply an exaggerated version of the mild traffic violations he'd made when he was still in college, although they tried to make him seem at fault for the time he'd been trying to paralell park on a one-way street and he got rammed by a drunk driver who was going the wrong way. His left hip twinged with phantom pain at the memory.
They blew Cecie's difficulties at school completely out of proportion: To hear them say it, she was the class delinquent. He was tempted to send them a letter of complaint, but he knew that would only turn into more grist for the rumor mill.
But the last item had him seeing red for a split second:
"SABRINA MARTIN: IS SHE FOR REAL???"
"Few people have seen Martin's wife Sabrina around their home town of West Hillston, Mass. The few that have report that she hardly says much at all and that she seems preternaturally content with staying home making silk flowers and tending to the housework.
"Sound like a Stepford wife to you? there's more...
"Four years ago, Sabrina Martin underwent massive treatment for ovarian cancer at New Boston's Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Before that she had been an active, even slightly wild gal who enjoyed going biking on weekends with her girlfriends. After that, her behavior changed to its present mousiness. Inside sources tell us that evidence suggests that something dire happened to Sabrina Martin and that, in his distress, Mr. Martin had her resurrected in Mecha form.
"Given Declan Martin's overtones of Mecha hatred, we can only hope that the Mecha form of Sabrina Martin does not endure the brunt of it."
Granted, Sabrina used to go biking with him when they were younger, and he'd bought the sidecar for the motorcycle when she'd had a rather nasty spill falling off the back once, but the reason they'd hit the road less in recent years had more to do with his accident than with her illness, though that had been part of it. She'd never been very outgoing, but she went for a long walk around town every morning, and everyone in town knew her. But saying she was a Mecha?!
Then a side-bar like column caught his eye:
"Glenn or Glynnis?: Behind Closed Doors at the DA's Office"
"Visible throughout the B1-66-ER trial has been a tall, slender red-headed young person known as Glynnis Miesel, EADA Declan Martin's legal aide... and much more.
" 'Ms.' Miesel's employment records show that 'she' was born Glenn Markhalt, an obvious male who played several intermural sports while growing up in an affluent neighborhood in Stowe, Vermont.
"But after graduating from Harvard Law School and being employed by the Springfield District Attorney's office, Markhalt became enamored of the Executive Assistant District Attorney. But finding that Declan Martin was attracted only to the fair sex, Markhalt went under the knife and emerged as Glynnis Miesel."
He'd been there when Glynnis was hired to the office, five years earlier. She'd been female then as far as he could tell, and he certainly did not recall her taking the kind of sick leave that kind of procedure would require.
Just for a chuckle, albeit a wry one, he read the item about Jen Te:
"Defense attorney and CRF activist Jen Te has passionately devoted much of her budding career to helping the Mecha rights movement, but her love for her metal and silicon brothers has risen to a new level of intensity. She has been spotted in the courtroom with her delicate lotus-blossom hand resting on the articulate metal hand of her client, B1-66-ER. A guard at the Springfield County House of Corrections, Kevin Johnson, has reported that the conversations between Ms. Te and her client have lasted, "longer than is appropriate."
"A lawyer representing the family of the murder victims, Henrick and Barbara Varriteck, has also reported that Ms. Te has sought to buy her client's contract, apparently with the intention of giving the robot a taste of freedom. And over the weekend, Ms. Te was seen going into a bridal shop in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Although Mecha/Orga marriages are not allowed, is Ms. Te going to pop the question to the droid following the not-guilty verdict she has been fighting for?"
He caught himself chuckling out loud at the utter absurdity of the item, which elicited a harsh stare from the frazzled-looking career woman behind him. True, he thought, as he replaced the magazine in the rack, Ms. Te was passionate about the case, but it certainly wasn't that kind of passion.
* * * * * * * *
Wilson showed up after dinner: Declan led him upstairs to the climate-controlled closet where the house server unit was kept. Wilson connected his laptop to the house network and set to work running a scan on the server's firewall. Sabrina and Cecie came up to watch. Wilson glanced up at Cecie. "Hey, shouldn't you be doing homework?" he asked, teasing.
"I did it already," Cecie replied. "It was all homework."
"We had to take Cecie out of school and have her switched into the school's home program, because of the trouble she had at school," Declan said.
"Nothing wrong there: Dr. Allen Hobby was taught at home, and look where he is now!" Wilson said.
"Really?" Cecie asked. She turned to Declan. "Isn't that the guy who was supposed to take the witness stand today?"
"He was, but he couldn't make it: he had some kind of trouble at home," Declan said.
"So I heard: I bet it's trouble with his kid, David," Wilson said. "The family's in the limelight so much, the poor kid can't have a normal life, so he kinda flips out. What price glory? That's why I'm just a sys-op for the Springfield County DA's office."
"Or a bug-killer for your friends," Cecie said.
Sabrina watched the screen of Wilson's laptop, but Declan knew from the pucker in her brow that she hardly understood a word of the filenames flickering by.
The system pinged and a window with a red border popped up. "Oops, we got the bug," Wilson said. He set to work typing something, his thin fingers flying over the keyboard. "I'm extracting it... and updating your firewall. You really should update that at least once a year, same time as you update the security system."
"I'll add it to the semi-annual to-do list, not that I'm the most technologically adept person in the world," Declan said. "Any idea who could have done this?"
"The message was probably the same goon who's been sending you all the other love-notes, but the hack looked like the work of the Mad Frenchman, this uber-hacker out there. Firewalls practically melt at his touch, but no one has any idea who the cat is. But... I've got some code of my own to counteract any other attacks, something I cooked up myself, hard to break through."
"I certainly hope so," Declan said.
* * * * * * * *
He managed to forget about the tabloid items till the next morning, when he arrived at the office to find Glynnis opening her snail mail, her movements very brusque, very unlike her. He could see the tendons tighten on the backs of her hands.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
She flung down the envelope she had just torn open. "Those damn tabloids," she said. She yanked a small sheaf of paper from under her mail and shoved the papers to Declan. He took it, finding someone had faxed her a copy of that tabloid item.
"Yeah, I read that last night when I was waiting in line at the store. That was so ridiculous," he said.
"Well... you know how the saying goes, gossip lies nine times out of ten, and one time out ten tells a half-truth? Let me give you the real truth." She paused, drawing in a long breath, as if she weren't sure how to put this into words, whatever it was.
"You don't have to tell me if you aren't ready to," Declan said, not quite sure he really wanted to hear it. "I can respect your privacy."
"No, it's not that; it's better if you hear it from me anyway... When my parents got their license to have a family, they wanted a son. They didn't believe in using the services of a fertility clinic, so they made me the old-fashioned way. But then they had an amniocentesis done when I was still in the embryonic stage, and they found out I was a girl. So, they had surgery done on me in utero when I was a little more developed and had me implanted with male organs that some lab had grown in a vat.
"And then, when I was born, they expected me to be all boy as I grew up: had me playing several different sports, put me in karate, when I really wanted to stay home and paint pictures or read mystery novels. But the whole time, even when I was really small, I had this wierd feeling that something wasn't right. I never really hit puberty either, not the way the other boys did: I didn't shoot up like a weed and my voice stayed the same.
"Finally, when I was in high school, and this girl wanted me to marry her, we started going through the licensing process, having physical examinations, getting a genetic profile of each other... and it came out that I had two X chromosomes and no sign of any Y chromosomes. Thety told me that genetically I was female and that there were signs I'd undergone some kind of genital manipulation. That's when my parents finally broke down and told me the truth.
"I went a little crazy then: took some of the money I'd saved for college and had the surgery reversed. It's not right to make a kid be something that they aren't just because it's what you the parent want. I'm a free-thinker, you know that, but I didn't think it was right for my software not to match my hardware, especially since my parents ordered the mis-match."
"It's like trying to make Windows 2100 run on a Mac," Declan said, with a smile of quiet humor just touching the corners of his mouth.
Glynnis managed a smile of her own. "Or like having an intelligent machine be a non-sentient can-opener and nothing more."
"You think I should inform that paper that they may be facing libel charges, unless they retract these articles?" Declan asked.
She shook her head. "Not unless this hits the mainstream news. But if that should happen, I want to deal with it myself."
"Wise choice," Declan replied. "If I helped you out, it might lead the people who started the rumor to think there was something real to their fables. You want me to have that fax number traced?"
"That's my job also: you got enough on your mind right now, since you're cross-examining Allen Hobby today."
"You know, those stupid tabloids made me almost forget that... or at least forget how much it's bothering me," he said.
"I guess in that case, those dumb articles proved somewhat useful," Glynnis noted.
* * * * * * * *
"Defense requests the testimony of Dr. Allen Hobby, roboticist," Ms. Te announced.
A rustle of excitement flickered through the press gallery as the balliff entered, leading in a tall, sturdy-built manwith a high intelligent forehead and medium-blonde hair, starting to recede only a little.
"Is this *THE* Allen Hobby?" Sweitz asked McGeever, with excited awe.
"Yep, that's him, that's touchy-feely-Mechas-with-self-motivated-reasoning-parameters guy," McGeever replied, with a hint of irritated irony.
Declan had seen Ms. Te's list of witnesses, and he'd heard of Dr. Hobby's work in designing and creating Mechas, the more human-looking species of robots, but seeing the name was one thing: seeing the man behind that eminent name was another matter entirely
The baliff had Hobby place his hand on a copy of the World Bible, a book containing the first few pages of every religious text of every belief system
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so may the Higher Power help you?" the balliff said.
"I swear," Dr. Hobby replied.
Ms. Te approached the stand, her face calm, but her hands clasping and unclasping with nervousness. "You are Dr. Allen Hobby, principal roboticist and one of the board members of the Cybertronics Corporation of New York, am I correct?"
"Yes, I am," the witness replied.
"And your company manufactured the model B1 series, of which my client is unit number 66-ER?"
"That is correct: the B1 series was the best selling line of our company's early designs, before production switched to more precisely human-looking replicas."
"And you played a role in the programming of this model?"
"Not specifically since that was well before I first joined Cybertronics. But in producing the B1 series, the company sought to make a robot which could serve the general public as an all-purpose serving unit: as anything from working in hotels and store back rooms to serving as house-help. Because we were expecting it would interact with humans more than most service droids at that time, it was necessary to give this model more complex personality programming and more human-like speech. And, as has been brought to my attention by more than a few repair technicians, over time these robots became more human-like in their behavior."
"Would you say they developed something like self-consciousness?" Ms. Te darted an eye toward Declan as if she expected him to object to this. Declan ignored the bait.
Dr. Hobby furrowed his brow slightly at this non-verbal exchange, but proceeded to answer the question. "Some did, including, as I deduced from the maintenance logs of B1-66-ER, and more importantly, from interviewing the unit myself, the present defendant."
"Did you ever speak with my client personally at any great length?"
"I did, partly for the preliminary preparation for the present trial, partly for the research I have been conducting toward creating self-motivated reasoning parameters in future Mecha designs. With the help of my colleague Jeanine Salla, a computational psychologist also at Cybertronics, I eaxamined B1-66-ER and found its logic parameters unusually flawless for a robot of its age, one might even say they had defied entropy and developed. In terms of behavior, his mannerisms and voice are stilly very, one might say, 'robotic', but its vocabulary and speech patterns are highly developed, even animated without giving way to flights of emotion."
"You mentioned emotion... is my client capable of feeling genuine emotion?"
"Robots of this design are not gifted with the ability to emulate emotion, unlike more recent designs, known as Mecha. But 66-ER has somehow developed a kind of proto-emotional ability. In a test I conducted, I swung a long metal rod at the defendant's head, as if I would strike him without warning. An ordinary robot of any design, would step out of the path of the rod. But... and this is worthy of note... 66-ER not only stepped out of the path of the rod entering the space around its body, but also raised both hands as if to push away the rod or take it from my hands."
"Does any other droid do this?"
"No, not in my experience, not in Dr. Salla's, and I have not heard any other robopsychologist report this."
"What about a proximate threat? Say if someone threatened to destroy or dismantle the defendant, what would *he* do?"
Declan noticed the emphasis Ms. Te put on the personal pronoun she used to refer to her client.
"That question brings to my mind a conversation I deliberately initiated with 66-ER. I asked it directly what it would do if someone said to it, 'B1-66-ER, I am going to destroy you,' or some variation on that. The unit replied that it would take the means necessary to prevent that from happening to it."
"Did he say anything about the Varritecks?"
"The unit simply told me it did not wish to die."
Ms. Te stepped down. "Nothing further."
Declan had a dozen questions come to mind, but as soon as Ms. Te seated herself beside the defendant, they all went out of his head. He touched the St. Thomas More medal in his pocket as he rose and approached the witness stand.
"Are you familiar at all with the history of the defendant's employment by the Varriteck family?" he asked.
"I must admit that I am not familiar with the day-to-day particulars of 66-ER's employment, but in coversation, the unit revealed to me some of the change in attitude the ascending generations of the family had toward the unit and its performance. It even asked me why they grew, and I quote, 'so cold' toward it."
"Cold, how?"
"It particularly noted that Henryk Varriteck never once praised the work the unit accomplished for the family, or for that matter, even took note of it except to find fault with it. In fact, as time went by, Mr. Varriteck's attitude became increasingly hostile."
"Hostile in what manner?"
"He would often push the droid out of his way if it did not move quickly enough. He even grew angry enough with it that he struck it on several occasions, damaging it and even nearly knocking it down. And he did nothing to correct his son for teasing it."
"Teasing it? How did that happen?" This was new to him.
"The droid described to me several instances, when Damon, the Varriteck's son, was still quite young, that the young man deliberately tripped it with a broom handle hooked around the inside of its ankle, or stretching a thin rope across a walkway when the droid was approaching, carrying a pile of things, or, most often, throwing things at it."
"What? Come on, I was just *kid* then! I did dumb things like every kid does," Damon cried out, jumping to his feet.
Judge Wendell silenced Damon with a cold glare. "Mr. Varriteck, you have had your chance to testify, if prosecution chooses to call you a second time as a rebuttal witness, you may speak then. However, now is decidedly not the time for it. Proceed, Mr. Martin."
Declan collected his scattered thoughts. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Damon sit down in silence, but he could feel the anger that darkened the young man's brow.
"Do you think this could have inspired the defandant to have acted in a violent manner towards his owners?" Declan said, proceeding with the cross-examination.
"Objection, speculatory," Ms. Te said.
"Witheld," Judge Wendell said. "Rephrase the question, Mr. Martin."
"Is it possible for a droid's behavior to be conditioned by example or by the way the owner treated it?" Declan asked.
"It is possible, you cannot have true artificial intelligence without a machine's being able to learn from its owners or other persons it interacts with, and in many instances, this has extended to behavioral patterns."
"In that case, is it possible that a droid, such as the defendant, exposed to violent behavior or which was subject to abuse, might learn to use violence as a means to an end?"
Hobby paused, thinking, then at length he spoke. "There are few reported instances of something like this happening, but usually a violent artilect already has some internal malfunction that contributed to its outburst."
"But is it possible for a droid that has known abuse to choose violence to solve a problem?"
"Objection, pure speculation!" Ms. Te cried.
"Sustained, " Judge Wendell said. "As interesing as this theory is, Mr. Martin, there is no place for it here."
"Excuse me, your honor, but this is more than a mere theory: some of my recent research has turned up evidence that supports this theory," Dr. Hobby put in. "May I answer that question?"
"You may," Judge Wendell said, but she seemed unconvinced.
"It is possible, and based on my conversation with the defendant, it has happened to him," Dr. Hobby said.
"Nothing further," Declan said, stepping down.
* * * * * * * *
The media spotlight -- even the protestors' attention -- shifted away from him and onto Hobby, which bought Declan some time to slip into the pub down the street from the courthouse. He seated himself in a booth where he could be inconspicuous, but a few moments later, Dr. Hobby came in and approached him, accompanied by a small, slender woman with light brown hair and steady greenish-blue eyes. Declan caught himself staring just a little when he realized the woman's skin had an odd sheen to it, very unlike a human's skin.
"Mr. Martin, would you mind if I joined you?" Dr. Hobby asked.
"I wouldn't advise it, since we're still in the middle of the trial, and I might be accused of trying to influence you," Declan replied.
"Not to brag, but I doubt anything you say to me could influence my opinion of this case. I've approached it with a certain detached interest: interest only because it relates to my field of expertise and because it relates to one aspect of it I have been studying for quite some time," Hobby replied.
Declan shrugged and held out his hand, palm up toward the other seat in the booth. "Be my guest."
Hobby sat down, his young companion seating herself beside him, her back still perfectly poised.
"Are you stressed, Mr. Martin? Perhaps you should consider drinking some chammomile tea," the young woman said.
"Thanks, but I'm afraid I'm allergic to it; the pollen bothers me" Declan replied, trying not to sound puzzled.
"I am very sorry to hear that," the woman replied.
"Please don't mind Sheila, she can be at times... not nosy but a little heavy-handed in offering comfort. She's a new secretary-companion model we've been beta-testing," Hobby said.
"I couldn't help wondering... if she was Mecha or not. I'm sorry if I was staring," Declan said.
"It's quite all right," Hobby said.
The door opened admitting the two reporters from the 'Independant', who came in and sat down in the booth behind where Declan and Hobby sat. Sweitz was chattering about something Declan didn't catch, but McGeever turned and peerred over the back of his seat with narrowed eyes.
"Hey, that the modified S2 model?" McGeever asked.
Hobby looked up. "Yes... do you follow the new models being introduced?"
"Well, let's say if this were an alternate universe, I'd be sittin' where you are, Doc," McGeever said, condescention quirking his tone.
"Hey, Hal, let 'em alone," Sweitz said, rising and approaching Declan. "I'm sorry: Hal's just been a little... outspoken in his opinion of Dr. Hobby's work, I mean, your work, sir..." Sweitz dropped his gaze, embarrassed as his young face turned bright pink.
"It's all right, I should be accustomed to the critics in the media," Hobby replied.
"You mind if we let you fellas talk alone?" Sweitz asked.
"Not to sound like I'm throwing you youngsters out, but I'd prefer that you did," Declan said.
"No problem here," Sweitz said, nudging McGeever to rise and join him at another table.
"I heard your family's had trouble with the media bothering you," Hobby said. "My wife Caroline and our son David have had our share of that species of trouble, so I have a complete understanding of what you must be going through."
"We've had a few incidents in the past, but nothing like this: they just won't let up," Declan said.
"Consider what the case you're covering entails: Relations between man and machine have always been strained, even before things as simple as toasters started to be implanted with sentient programming chips," Hobby said. "There was one instance, back in the 1970s, when assembly line robots were just coming into use in this country that a man was accidently crushed by a robotic spot-welding arm: the papers gave it the headline 'Assembly Robot Kills Man', not 'Man Dies in Factory Accident'. Long before that, in the early 1800s, the Luddites smashed looms in textile mills throughout Great Britain, in fear that the machines would replace them as weavers. Machines still need people to design them and program them, although we have a few artilects that are capable of assisting in the programming and design processes. They may make life easier for us, but they will not obsolesce us or take over our planet as the ARM would lead you to believe. It's more complicated than it really is, and I am doing my utmost to keep this simple."
"Simple... when I took this case, I thought it looked so simple on the surface," Declan said, looking into the depths of his barely-touched glass of white wine. "But as soon as I started to dig below the surface, things started to pop up that I just didn't expect. I'm not robo-phobic, but at first, I thought it was simply a case of a robot going amok because it malfunctioned. But come to find out this thing called First Law is built into every robot to prevent them from hurting a human. And yet, *this* robot bypasses First Law and kills its employers, just to keep from being killed itself. It's like a prisoner in a concentration camp killing the camp commandant who ordered a guard to shoot the prisoner. How am I supposed to try this?"
"It's a conundrum, and these conundrums will continue to appear in our courts as long as Orgas are unable to accept Mechas and artilects as another, equitable species with as much right to exist on this planet as they do. You have to do what you can so that each side will benefit."
"But what do I do? I've been arguing the State has the right to defend its citizens' lives, while the defendant's case has been claiming this robot has the right to defend itself as well. Am I to sacrifice the rights of the many for the rights of the few? If I change my tack and the jury gives a not-guilty verdict, who's to say this robot won't kill again? And if I stay to the argument I've chosen, will the jury choose a guilty verdict and send a robot to destruction when he only wanted to live?"
"I'm a scientist, not a lawyer, but I'd leave it in the jury's hands to descide. They're all intelligent enough to make their own decisions.
"But," Hobby continued. "There was something I need to discuss with you, which is why I approached you in the first place."
"What did you have in mind?" Declan asked.
"I've been very curious about this case, from the moment I was asked to examine the defendant, and even before that, when the news first came to the media's attention. You know that Damon Varriteck is suing Cybertronics for wrongful death."
"I did try to warn him not to do that, but he insisted," Declan said.
"Our company has reached a settlement with him: we've awarded him 800,000 NB in damages. But... in the event that the jury finds 66-ER guilty, I wanted to know if you could have the memory cube of the defendant turned over to Cybertronics, so that an in-depth analysis can be made to determine exactly what happened."
"Why would you want that?"
"For a number of years, in fact, for most of my life, I have been conducting on-going research into the possibility of creating self-motivated reasoning programming for newer models of Mechas, to help them become more like us and therefore, we hope, more accepted among mankind. My hope is that, with this kind of programming, Orgas will be able to see Mechas as a new class of humans, not just a slave class to be exploited."
"I'm afraid I don't follow..." Declan said.
Hobby reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a small case which he opened, and took from it a small dissecting needle. "Look at it this way," Hobby said. "As it stands, Mechas are unable to feel genuine emotion."
He reached over and tookd Sheila's hand by the wrist, laying it flat on the table top. He thrust the dissecting needle into her hand.
"OUCH!" the Mecha-woman screamed. Hobby let her hand go. She jerked it away, then laid it on the table as if nothing had happened. A few of the other patrons in the pub looked up, but no one moved to object.
"Sheila, what did you feel?" Hobby asked her.
The Mecha, looked at her master, considering this. "I felt the point of the needle break through my dermis, I felt impulses to pull my hand away to prevent further damage."
"But what else did you *feel*? Indignation? Shame? Fear?"
The Mecha woman looked at Hobby, her eyes gone blank with confusion. "No, I felt none of those," she replied, frankly.
"Can't you program them to understand the meanings of the words?" Declan said, realizing as soon as he said it, that this would hardly be enough.
"We can give a Mecha a dictionary definition of emotions, but it's like explaining integral calculus to a person with an IQ of 75. We have devised ways in which they can emulate emotive behavior, but it does not penetrate their being the way it does with us."
"So... you think B1-66-ER is moving toward that, toward having true emotions?"
"Yes, and if we could find out why this happened, this might be the key toward creating a robot that can feel and truly express the broad range of human emotion."
"I'm afraid I really don't have the authority to do that," Declan said. "You'd have to talk with Brock Thompson, the head of the DA's office, or Judge Wendell. They'd have more say in the matter than I do. I just present cases."
"Tell them it's simply a matter of donating the defendant's body to science," Hobby said.
"I'll see what I can do," Declan said, hoping he sounded as if he could make no real guarantees.
* * * * * * * *
He found a surprise awaiting him when he got home. The reporters had left the yard: apparantly, that had something to do with the police car parked in front of the house, near the end of the driveway. Declan pulled into the driveway and got out to approach them.
The cop in the driver's seat, a sturdy young African-Asian man whom Declan recognized as Tobe Jackford, a member of the Westhillston police force, rolled down the window and stuck his head out. "Hiya, Marty. We heard yah had a little problem with some trespassers tresspassin' so we came to keep 'em off your rhododendrons."
"Thanks: I really appreciate that," Declan said. "You fellas staying out here all night?"
"Just till midnight, then the graveyard shift comes on, but you'll have someone out here at least till you finish up with that case."
"Good, good, you fellas stay warm," Declan said, and went inside.
When he stepped into the kitchen, Sabrina was taking a baking pan of roasted pork chops out of the oven, which she set down to cool on the draining board next to a pan of cornbread.
"Did you call for the police watch?" Declan asked her.
"Those darn reporters got so impossible... they were peeking into the mailbox! I finally called Thompson and asked him what to do. He called Rikert at the police station and asked him to send someone to keep an eye on us."
"Now what Stepford Wife would do something like that?" he said, hugging her gratefully from behind.
"You looked at those stupid newspapers?" she asked, with a quirk of a smile.
"Yeah, last night in the checkout."
"I guess that makes us famous now," she said, slipping out of his hold to finish her work.
"Or infamous," he said, going into the bathroom to wash his hands.
* * * * * * * *
The three of them managed to have a quiet dinner; Cecie seemed more calm than she had in a while. The phone did not ring.
Later still in his study, Declan was reaching for the phone to check his voice mail when it literally rang under his hand. He picked it up.
"Which side are you on, Martin?!" a young man's voice shouted at him.
"Hello?" Declan asked, holding the receiver an inch away from his ear. "Who is this?"
"It's Damon Varriteck, the guy whose parents you're supposed to be defending after their own robot killed them, remember? what the hell were you doing today?! You're supposed to be prosecuting that droid, not making my family look like they were asking to be killed!"
"Damon, please, calm down, take a deep breath and tell me -- "
"No, you listen to me!"
"Damon," Declan said, in a firm tone without raising his voice. "I realize how upset you are, but you have to realize this: this isn't as simple as it looks. I thought that myself, but the more we look at it, the less easy it is to draw the lines. I never intended to imply that your parents or you were responsible for what happened to them. B1-66-ER chose to act as he did and apparantly, some of the things that happened to him influenced him to choose as he did."
"He didn't *choose*. Droids can't choose. They just follow what their programming tells them to do. That's that."
"Maybe. Maybe not. I've been doing my homework on this, and I've found out from some pages on MIT's website, and a few others that robots are a little less deterministic than most machines, computers and things like that. They have to be that way in order to function among us humans. I've been wondering if there's something in 66-ER's mind that's making him even less deterministic, and thus, more like a human, giving him more options to choose from."
"So you chit-chat with that scientist from Cybertronics over a few brews and now you're an overnight expert on robotics?" Damon sneered.
This remark made Declan pause for a split second. He didn't remember seeing Damon in the pub, and before that, he hadn't seen the young man leave the courtroom. This made him wonder if Damon had been spying on him.
"Damon, I was talking with Dr. Hobby just to get a few answers to some personal questions I had about this case. He was able to answer some of them, but not all of them."
"Good, because they're probably the kind of questions no man has the right to know the answers to."
Declan almost snapped back a reply, but he restrained himself. This young man's snappishness is as infectious as the common cold used to be, he thought.
A scream shattered the stillness downstairs. Declan's ears strained to catch the sound. The voice was Sabrina's.
"Damon, I can't talk right now. There's something going on here I have to take care of," Declan said. "Excuse me." He hung up the phone and rushed out of the room.
He ran downstairs to the bathroom. He found Sabrina there, crouched on the floor, trembling and clutching her arm. Blood oozed from under her hand through a rip in the sleeve of her jersey. Broken glass from the window lay on the floor, surrounding a brick with a note tied to it. Declan helped her out of the room into the kitchen, and was just about to reach for the phone to call emergency, when someone knocked at the back door.
"Who's there?!" Declan shouted, in case it might be the intruder.
"Westhillston police: are you all right in there?"
Declan helped Sabrina to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs, then opened the kitchen door. Two uniformed police officers entered, one of them took the comset from its holster on his shoulder and called for an ambulance.
"We saw someone run through the yard, then we got a call from your security system that someone had broken a window and possibly injured someone inside the house," the second officer said. "We've got a K-9 unit coming in to search the woods."
Sabrina's injury was only a nasty scratch, but it was still deep enough to require stitches and to be examined in case any shards of glass had lodged there. Declan went with Sabrina in the ambulance, while the police brought Cecie to stay with the Connellys until Sabrina was discharged from the hospital.
Fortunately, no glass had lodged in Sabrina's arm, and the hospital released her immediately after her wound had been closed and covered with biotape. Declan called a cab and brought her to the Connellys' house.
Peter, Declan's cousin on his mother's side and nearly twelve years younger than he, let them in and brought them into the kitchen, where his family -- hise wife, Georgette and their twin son and daughter Stephen and Philomena -- had gathered around the table. Cecie sat in their midst, huddled sullenly on her chair.
Declan sat down beside her. "You okay, Jade?"
She uncurled and put her hands on his arm. "Is Mom okay?"
Sabrina joined them at the table, her arm in a sling, but with no other sings of injury. "I'm okay now: I just have to heal."
"We heard about what happened to you," Peter said. "I talked it over with Georgette and we decided to let you stay here: it'll be safer for you."
Declan shook his head. "No, I can't endanger you."
"Nonsense," Peter said. "We're family; we have to help you."
"You don't know the kind of hell we've been going through the past week," Declan said. "The emails, the phone calls, the bug on our house server, the reporters in the yard. Now this. Don't think we're being ungrateful. Much as I'd like to accept the offer, Sabrina and I talked this over on the way here."
"We'll stay the night here, but in the morning, we're going to a hotel and rent a room there till the end of the trial," Sabrina said.
Cecie sniffed. "Is it gonna be any safer there?"
"Yes, for one thing, they have better security, for another thing, we'll be harder to find," Declan said. "The cranks will have to search for us through all those rooms."
Peter nodded, accepting Declan's decision, then led the Martins to the guest room upstairs. "I hope you're sure this is the right decision. Just remember, you're free to stay here as long as you want."
"I think we've chosen the best course of action," Declan said, helpin Sabrina up the stairs. He might not be able to get to the bottom of this case, but at least he knew how to take care of his family...
* * * * * * * *
To be continued...