FIVE

DAY 436

 

 

I know it will take a long, long time before I get accustomed to this new life. In the time since launch, I have been excited, scared, bored, happy, depressed and so on and so on. There has been enough time for every emotion. I’ve explored every place and done everything. It is a completely alien world. But that’s the whole point. If things were different at home, I would have stayed there. Of course I want some of the comforts of home. But different is why I began this project; to create something new and better where I can spend my remaining time without worry and fear. I’m so tired of running. And while I’m still running (this is the big run), I know no human can catch me now.
With putting the old world behind me, there was the expectation of perfection in the new one. But I find flaws built in to the design of the craft that can only be present because they were made by humans. Today I sat and watched the floor cleaners all day. Yes, I was bored, but good can come from boredom. Melencolia by Albrecht Durer came from the artist’s creative block and boredom, so it can be put to good use. Anyway, the floor cleaning robots have been designed with a sense of competition and codependency built in, and this surprised me since I designed them.

I sat on the floor in a corridor and watched their cleaning routine. First, I must say I am proud to finally create the most efficient vacuum shape ever: rectangular. Why on earth did anyone design a round vacuum when most rooms have 90 degree corners? Earth indeed! That was the first task in this project: getting the engineers to stop thinking in Earth terms for a craft that would never be on Earth. Logic says that corners and circles do not fit together, so I made a floor cleaner that fit all the way into a corner. My engineers did not know that vacuum cleaners were once all rectangular, and they had a long cord that had to be plugged into a wall receptacle. They couldn’t ever grasp the concept of hard-wired anything; they were born into a battery powered cordless world. So after I gave them an electrical history lesson, I asked them to make an old fashioned rectangular cleaning head because the person who made them round was an idiot.

The robots leave their charging stations and head down a corridor on their assigned route. Bot 1, or Harry, as I call it, takes the lead and sweeps the floor in a back and forth, left to right to left fashion, while moving forward. It gets to one wall and changes direction toward the other, all while maintaining the forward motion. This means that in every cycle, there is a narrow triangular area of floor that is missed. This is intentional, as the second bot, called Ollie, follows behind in the same motion, only Ollie moves left when Harry moves right and vice-versa. This pattern allows them to move onward without colliding into each other. Harry leads and leaves a bit of floor unclean, and Ollie comes from the other direction and covers it. They move onward like this down the gradually curving corridor, picking up bits of dirt from shoes that have been in the garden, dead human skin cells, and messes made by their human creator.

It was one such mess that made me notice the human flaw in the machines. Ollie and Harry were designed to work together. They are equipped with sensors that can not only detect dirt, spilled liquid, organic matter and whatnot, but they also see each other. As the lead robot, Harry sets the pace of the cleaning, which is infinitely adjustable due to the messes that lie ahead. Ollie keeps this pace by watching Harry and copying his pattern in reverse. If Harry detects rubbish that will require more work than simply vacuuming, he slows down and applies appropriate cleaning methods, such as a steamer to loosen stubborn dirt or scrubber brushes to remove stains. Ollie will follow, then wait for Harry to finish so they can move along together again.
It was a spilled gin and tonic that exposed the humanity of these otherwise naïve machines. I am mostly human, so I sometimes spill. Whatever. That’s why I have robots. This particular spill had been on the floor long enough to dry, so it must have been shortly after the bots passed by. If they were my mother, they would have yelled at me for messing up the floor they just cleaned. Since I have a habit of mashing the lime wedge in the glass with a straw, the spill had sticky bits of citrus dried to the floor. This is where the tricky bit of human programming comes in. Harry in his lead position came along, sensing all things in his way and went right past the spill without stopping. The small bit of dried sticky liquid happened to be in his narrow triangle of floor that gets left behind, so he moves on as if nothing was there. As per his programming, Ollie comes along and rolls right into the spill. Sensing material other than dust, the robot switches to the appropriate cleaning mode; in this case, a mist of hot water and a cleaning brush, followed by a more powerful vacuum to simultaneously dry the area and suck up any remaining particles of solid matter. It also goes into a circular motion to scrub at varying angles. It’s all quite efficient, and at this point I celebrated my superior design with another gin and tonic, which I spilled as well.
I will admit that I should have tested these bots for failure more thoroughly before launch, but they were really low on my list of priorities, giving way to things like fusion reactors and sustainable food supply. Now, the simplest way to get these robots to work together like humans don’t was to give them a sense of togetherness. If one had to clean a bit of lime rind, it would then speed up slightly to catch up to its partner that had continued on ahead. This exposed the first flaw. Ollie was kind enough to wait and follow patiently behind if Harry encountered a mess, but when it was Ollie that had a mess to clean, Harry continued on without looking back. I watched Ollie frantically clean the spill and then rush to catch up to Harry and get in synch with his lead pattern again. Right away I could sense Ollie’s sadness. He didn’t want to be left behind but he wanted to do a good job, as that was the only way he knew. As he tried to catch up with Harry, the corridor turned slightly. This changed the pattern of the cleaning. Rounding the corner at the same forward velocity meant the triangular area of uncleaned floor became wider. This meant nothing to Harry, as he was programmed to look ahead and Ollie would follow and complete the unfinished areas. If Ollie was right behind, a simple change in velocity would compensate for the larger uncleaned triangle, but due to my sloppy drinking habits, Ollie was yards behind and about to lose sight of Harry around the corner.

This is what happens to Ollie when he loses sight of Harry: he stops. His only point of reference in his cleaning task is his partner leading the way. Ollie and I watched as Harry moved out of sight and I heard Ollie’s motors go quiet. By now, I was three gin and tonics in, sprawled out on my belly on the floor nudging Ollie to go find Harry, but he wouldn’t budge. He just sat there quietly, waiting. No! No! Damn you Harry! You heartless machine! Can’t you see he needs you! I wiped the gin dripping down my chin and sat up. I knew Harry would come back and then we would set this straight. Ollie would have a chance to be heard. I knew Harry would come back because of the PNR. The Point of No Return is the point when a robot has just enough battery life to make it back to its charging station before dying. The PNR is completely variable, since the further a bot is away from its charger, the more battery it will take to return, so the bots are constantly running an algorithm to calculate when to return. Harry would be back; it was inevitable.

I sat in the corridor drinking and consoling Ollie for what seemed like hours. Actually, it was hours; these robots are powered by some very efficient batteries. I was on my side, my head propped up on my hand, telling Ollie he was better off without Harry, and that I never really trusted Harry’s sincerity in the first place. He was probably chosen as lead robot because he knew one of the engineers. I had almost convinced Ollie to forget about it and take the rest of the day off, when we heard Harry come around the bend, zipping down the center of the floor instead of the usual serpentine fashion. Ok Ollie, be strong now, here he comes. Remember what we talked…Oh, I see. You see him rushing back and none of that matters now.

Ollie had taken off toward Harry, continuing the back and forth cleaning motion while Harry made a straight line down the center of the hallway. I could see what was coming long before it happened. Ollie was in a rush to get back into the follow the leader cleaning cycle, and as Harry maintained his beeline for the charger, the two bots collided, knocking them each to a side of the corridor. Harry continued forward without looking back. He obviously had only one thing on his mind. Ollie spun around in the excitement and jumped right back into the back and forth pattern, but this time in the opposite direction. He was following Harry again. His programming told him to follow Harry and continue cleaning until he reached the PNR. Unfortunately he reached my spilled drink first. Yes, I spilled again, but the glasses get more and more slippery with each drink. Ollie seemed to take a deep breath and then he switched into liquid cleaning mode, mopping and scrubbing. And while he was cleaning, he had his eye on Harry, who was quickly fading into the distance, so, sure enough, Ollie shut down again when he lost sight.

I sat with Ollie that night. I felt like he needed the comforting. Somewhere in the middle of the night or possibly the next day, I recall asking Joy what day it was. She reminded me that I told her to never answer that question. Oh yeah, I did. Calendars and timepieces are things I left behind on Earth. Why would I need them here? The only reason I know this is day 436 when I’m writing this is because my journal automatically dates everything. I had quite a few watches back in the day. I left some to my family, when I still had family who knew me. I sold the rest. At one time, an automatic Swiss watch was a classy accessory I wore with pride. No use for it here. Hats off to the Swiss, they never forgot about craftsmanship, even when the bombs dropped. I woke up on the cold floor on who knows what day. A row of seven empty glasses sat along the wall. Ollie was still there, staring down the hallway, waiting for Harry. He had sad eyes with lifted eyebrows made of paper stuck on him with adhesive tape. Clearly I did this, I mean, who else would? I could hear his servos twitching as he gazed in the distance with his crude marker-on-paper eyes. The servos whined; a perfect sound for a melancholy robot. He waited because he had no other choices in his brain. I told him he could leave and go back to the charging station; that he was being immature about the whole thing, but still he waited. I asked Joy to help me talk sense into him; to empower him with the emotional support. She called me a drunk and told me to go to bed. I knew she wouldn’t understand so I continued waiting with Ollie. The robots were on a three day cleaning cycle for this section of the ship, so it was a very long wait. The next morning I had my coffee with him before getting on with my day. I really wish now I had not instilled so much blind logic in him. Just the decision to get over Harry would have spared me so much emotional investment. Interesting, I wanted to be removed from humanity, yet I also want to program humanity in a vacuum cleaner. What is wrong with me? The next day I saw them both again, cleaning away happily as if nothing had happened. Harry did not make it easy for me to tape on the evil eyes I made for him. As I ran alongside while he cleaned, I had to bend down and tape the eyes in place without falling on my head. Got to clean the floor! Can’t pause for just a moment for the silly human! I’m sure Joy was recording video of my bumbling antics. Whatever, try to blackmail me later but first you have to find someone to show the video to.

I had told Ollie the previous night that he needed to do a bit of soul searching and decide if he always wanted to be in Harry’s shadow. Apparently he does. It turns out that these robots were more like humans than I had originally thought. One lives to follow the other, loyal to a fault. One carries on without even noticing the amount of stress it causes in its own kind. Dependent and oblivious. Needy and narcissistic. This was my design flaw. I try to use logic to make them more efficient, but it just ends up in rejection, dirty floors and a hangover. All the things I thought I left behind on Earth.