12 MARCH 2009 – MAGNUS LABORATORIES, SANDS POINT, NEW YORK
Somewhere under his surface concerns, Michael Holt felt uneasy. The plastic and chrome environment of a laboratory was the wrong place to be discussing a matter this serious. But the people – and as far as he was concerned, they were people – being affected couldn't properly be accommodated anywhere else; and this was the place that they had known as home for most of their unusual lives.
As he took his seat at the table, he commanded the nanite particles that formed "Mr Terrific's" mask to withdraw. Today he was Michael Holt, CEO of Terrifictech Inc., not the self-styled "guardian of fair play". "Thank you for meeting with us," he said. "I know that this is a difficult time for all of you, and I'd like you to know that I want to help you in any way that I can.
Holt's guests nodded, shrugged, made muted sounds. Although he may have been – as the tabloids liked to call him – the third smartest man in the world, he was still mildly envious of how Magnus' skills in robotics had given the Metal Men the ability to not only emote, but display those emotions on mobile faces, not the bland expressionless features of a machine-being. The only flaw was that, even if Platinum's body was wracked by sobs, her metal frame could not cry real tears.
"Thank you, Michael. That means a lot to us." Gold answered. It would be Gold, Holt thought. Perhaps even robots feel the need to form hierarchies; Gold has led them for so long that they subconsciously defer to him. If Magnus' responsometers are advanced enough to really give his robots subconsciouses…
Holt mentally slapped himself. This wasn't the time for theoretical spit-balling. "I don't know how much Doctor Magnus told you about any preparations that he may have made for his death," he said.
"He only s-said that we'd be ta-taken care of." Tin's voice was actually trembling, and his intermittent stammer – something that Holt had always seen as a minor affectation – was back.
"Yeah, and who knows what that means, guys? Doc's been a flake for so long that that could just mean us being melted down for scrap!" And Mercury was being the self-centred dick which seemed to be the default mode for him.
"Hey, Doc wouldn't do that! We were…" Lead paused, trying to find the right words. "We were kind of like the kids he couldn't have." Platinum sniffed. What she felt for Magnus hadn't been a child's love in any way.
The only other human being in the room spoke up. "Then perhaps we should tell you what that means in practice."
"We'd be delighted to hear that, miss…?" Gold was generally too polite for what others might take as a note of sarcasm in his intonation.
"My name is Cynthia Tran. I head the legal division of Terrifictech, and… strange as it may seem to you, I am acting as the executor of the last will and testament of William Maxwell Magnus." Tran calmly looked around the table. Six pairs of metallic eyes were sharply focused on her.
"I don't believe that I should go into detail over Dr Magnus' unfortunate decline in recent years," Tran said. "When he was at his most functional, he feared its consequences himself – especially for the six of you. He was very conscious that, by your very nature, you would outlive him – and, perhaps, outlive all of us. He spoke to Terrifictech four years ago with the idea of seeking our assistance in a form of living will – one unique with regard to its protection of yourselves as non-humans with a reasonable simulation of human will."
"Simulation, my liquid-metal arse," snapped Mercury. It was a sore point for them – and indeed, for other autonomous robots like the Red Tornado. Did entities which were not Homo sapiens have "human rights"? And at what point was a simulation of human responses actually human? Holt did not acknowledge the God whose "plan" had taken his wife from him, but he remembered the Bible's question, what is a man, that thou art mindful of him? (The eighth Psalm, he remembered without conscious effort.)
Tran ignored Mercury with a professional ease. "Doctor Magnus had no human kindred to whom any estate could be left. Whatever your opinions on the law's failings here – with which I entirely sympathise – he could not make a bequest to you, since the law does not recognise you as human. He feared the possibility of the technology that created and supports you falling into unfriendly hands, or even those of our own government."
Platinum looked disgusted. "Not like they haven't tried before."
Tran nodded. "Instead, he left all funds, real property, patents, licences – the whole substance of Magnus Laboratories – to Terrifictech, to be held in inalienable trust."
"So does that mean that you own us?" asked Iron, always the practical one. "We're machines under the law, that means we're property."
"What it means, as far as I am concerned," said Holt, "is that nothing changes. Magnus Laboratories will be ring-fenced from the rest of Terrifictech. For legal purposes, Cynthia and I will be the managers and directors, but in all day-to-day aspects the six of you will have full charge – and will have entire autonomy over your own affairs. The law does not regard you as human. For this one thing, I say that the law is an ass."
"Yes, Pinocchio, you are a real boy." Mercury was still being snarky, but he was realising what Holt had implied. Even Lead and Tin, who were a bit slower on the uptake, caught on quickly enough.
Gold rose to his feet. "I hardly know what to say," he began. "Like Lead said, to Doctor Magnus we were his children. He loved us – but he did not really allow us to grow up. You are giving us ownership of our own lives, for the first time in almost fifty years of – yes, artificial sapience, but sapience even so. Now we aren't just the Metal Men, but the Bicentennial Men."
"You know that book?" Holt asked.
"We're robots, Michael." Gold even sounded slightly smug. "We're embodiments of Asimov's Three Laws. Of course, we know his work."
"And that does raise a question which you may all need to think about and answer separately." The smiles across the room hadn't reached Cynthia Tran. "I don't have to remind you of how often you have been almost destroyed across the course of your lives. How often Doctor Magnus pulled together your responsometers and brought you back from what may have been real death as we humans know it. That was part of his unique genius as a roboticist."
"I think you're leading up to something we won't like here," said Iron.
"No shit, Sherlock," Mercury snapped back.
Tran frowned. "Probably not – because it may mean that, to fully enjoy what it means to be human as the Bicentennial Man did, you may have to sublimate your noble impulses to heroism."
"What do you mean?" Platinum actually sounded a little fearful.
Holt shook his head slowly. "We don't have Magnus' skills or – dare I say it – his unique touch with technology which he built and understood inside and out. If you were to be so badly damaged in the field that we would need to reassemble your responsometers – well, I don't think that we could do it. And that would mean your deaths."
And if they had read The Bicentennial Man, Holt realized, they would know that in order to become legally recognized as a human being, the robot of the title had deliberately allowed its body to be changed so that its positronic brain would die, just as that of a human would.
"Gold pointed out that you've lived what I'd call the super-heroic life for almost fifty years, longer than any human could. You have more than earned the right to retire. We can help you to do that. I have contacts in our community who could create false identities for you, which would be robust enough for you to disappear into any human community seamlessly."
Gold, who could not breathe, seemed to exhale hard enough that his chest shook; it was a good illusion. "That's – a lot to think about, Michael. I don't think any of us expected all of this. And what you're suggesting isn't something that any of us should make snap decisions on."
"You have all the time that you need. Nobody's going to force you to do something you don't want."
Tin looked afraid now. "But we – well, sure, we d-don't get sick, but – well, we're ma-machines, like Iron said. We can wear out. We can b-break down."
"And we will be your doctors as Will Magnus was," said Holt. "We will never abandon you."
"We've tried to pass as human before, remember?" said Platinum. "I still have some pictures from when I was Tina Platt, and a fashion model."
"I remember Lead and me being singers," said Tin.
"You called that singing?" The crack might have sounded unpleasant from anyone but the slow and steady Lead.
"I've seen information from that time," said Tran. "We couldn't do anything that high-profile. But you could live quietly."
"And we'd have to relocate every so often, because we wouldn't age," Gold pointed out. "People would suspect. Old fables make that point."
"Or – and here's something that might be a bit controversial – we could just do what we've always done!" Hearing enthusiasm in Mercury's voice almost made Holt feel uneasy. "We live fast, die young and make handsome corpses. Maybe you can't put us back together now, but maybe we can wait it out and come back a hundred, maybe even a thousand years from now, when responsometer tech is something you study in university courses, and we can be the Legion of Super-Robots or something!"
Gold shrugged. "Merc, I understand how you feel, but we need to talk about this. As a group. Like we always do."
"Wouldn't have it any other way, boss man." Mercury's salute was woefully over the top, but it did at least puncture the gloom.
"I think it better that we leave matters there," Tran offered. "Gentlemen and lady, you have a home here for as long as you wish. Decide what you will do, and we will make it happen. You deserve such. Doctor Magnus would have us do no less for you."
And as the Metal Men rose from the table and walked into their independence, Holt recalled how the eighth Psalm continued: What is a man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.