The Essence of Life

“Mr. Fitzgerald,” said the senior security officer standing in the doorway of the CEO’s office. “I’m sorry about disturbing you, but we have a situation down in maintenance. Walter, a plant senior maintenance technician is having a nervous breakdown.”

The CEO jumped up. “Call the hospital! Get some men down there to keep him from hurting himself, Alfred,” he ordered as he headed out the office.

“We already have, Sir. Our company paramedics are with him now.”

Mr. Fitzgerald paused at his receptionist’s desk. “Judy, get Patrick, the plant superintendent, and tell him to meet me down in maintenance.”

“He is already down there, Sir,” Alfred announced.

“Judy, get...”

“Sir, excuse me,” Alfred interrupted, “they are all, already down there or involved in some way.”

The CEO looked questionably at his security chief. Alfred steered him gently with a hand on his arm toward the elevator. As they started the ten-floor decent to maintenance, the security man briefed him.

“It started about an hour ago, Sir. Walter came speeding through the gate with a young woman in the car. Then he practically crashed into the service dock. He grabbed a cargo dolly, loaded the woman on it and pulled her through the plant, screaming for everyone to get out of his way. He took her to a small room in the basement. He is there now crying like a baby.”

The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and opened.

“Ah, Mr. Fitzgerald, I have it right here, Sir.” Harold Matthews, the senior programmer, stepped in with a thick paper printout in his arm that must have weighed twenty pounds. “Well, a lot of it anyway. The system kicked me out because it is closing down the files.

“What system is it?”

“The Logistics Integrated Network Diagnostic Administrator 5000, that runs practically every thing. For short, we call her LINDA 5000"

“Can we stop it?”

“Not without rebooting the main system and that would take the entire plant offline. It could damage some equipment in the process. It would also take two days to get it back up to full production. I may be able to run a system backup restoration, but we may face the same issues.”

“What have you found there?” he nodded his head at the printout.

“Walter has made some subroutine changes in the programming and integration enhancements to LINDA 5000. Also, on a more startling note, well It might be arguable, he hasn’t exactly invented anything for us, Sir. Linda did.”

“What? He developed the super miniature servomotors, the more precision worm gear unit, the positronic logical integrated circuitry, the new visual optics, and others. We are making millions off of his ideas.”

“No, Sir, Linda5000 invented those. What he did, was initialize the queries and she made the developments. At the most, he deserves a bit of the credit.”

“So, that is why he refused transfer to R&D, early promotions and, only accepted small gratuities for them,” the Colonel mused.

“I also found further equipment modification orders and an interface terminal to Linda5000. It is all located in cell 435.”

“Where is cell 435?”

“That is where Walter is now,” Alfred informed him. “It is a six by eight room beside his office. It was once used for storage of supplies. He has all sorts of equipment and inter-system connections running in through a hole in the the wall.”

Matthews started again. “I have identified the initial inquiry;#738244695-1, it has been running for several years on low priority, mostly at night and weekends when user demand is down on the system. There are more subroutine queries related to that original query number than you can imagine. I’ve identified remote queries that had been made to other computer systems belonging to other companies and the national library system. It would periodically send him search information and queries for input. Some of the questions were so highly technical or ambiguous; I think he just plugged in a yes or no answer. Linda 5000 did all the development on her own. It sent out production designs, work orders, requisitions, and all with his signature on them. I’ve found modification orders to some of our maintenance robots that are used in the actual working of the plant as a result of his research.”

The elevator stopped in the basement and let them off. They paused while a four-wheeled box type robot measuring two feet by three paused at a piping valve. It raised its arm, scanned the barcode number beside the valve then made an adjustment. After a pause of a moment, it evidently received a signal from the main system and released the valve, turned away and rolled off to a different section of piping.

The security man steered them deeper into the bowels of the plant.

“How long has this been going on?”

“I’m not certain. The security program doesn’t monitor really low priority queries. About six years at least. I ran a financial trace for relations to that initial query for material procurements back that far.”

“Financials?”

“Yes, Sir, they were all relatively small expenses for outside parts manufacturing. Except seven months ago one was for a rubber company for about three thousand dollars. He ordered some kind of a “rubber epidermal sheath”, whatever that is. Overall, the last notice I had from the finance department was possibly about $100,000 in expenditures over the years on the one project.”

“Well, I suppose we could afford him a bit of indulgence. He has done so much for the company. What was he making?”

“He made an operating artificial intelligent android.”

The man stopped in his tracks and stared at his companions.

“Poppycock! Technology has not advanced to that point yet. We can’t make a machine in human form that can walk and talk like one.”

“Well, Walter, I mean he and Linda 5000 actually succeeded about seven months ago.”

The CEO stared at the programmer. His disbelief was obvious.

“My man Barney, on gate security,” Alfred informed him, “said he recalls seeing this same woman leave about then with Walter in a pair of shop coveralls. He remembered it distinctly because Walter had said she was his niece, and he had been showing her the plant and Walter winked really big at him. He never saw her again until today. Apparently, she, has been at his house since then,”

“What was he doing with her there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, he was teaching or training her,” Matthews speculated. “I have a large record of interface time logged from his home over the last six months. Before then, we only show periodic usage.”

They found the maintenance man’s office. Several men were standing around outside the room and whispering among themselves.

“All right men, the show is over, gentlemen. Back to work,” Alfred ordered.

They quickly disappeared among vast machinery and walkways of the plant. Patrick remained standing by the door. They watched Walter being wheeled away by the paramedics as he muttered, “All I had to do was tell her I loved her. I broke her heart and I killed her. I didn’t mean to, but I killed her.”

“I remember when he started fifteen years ago and he saw how sophisticated our equipment was. He said it was like the plant was alive,” Patrick stated.

They stepped into the room. The walls were covered with wiring computer circuitry and a reel to reel tape drive unit and two desk top computers. The android was lying on a bench. It was a very real looking, shapely female of average height and looked about the age of 25. She was wearing a pretty green plaid skirt and yellow blouse. One shoe was missing. An umbilical interface cable was plugged into the right side of her head. He felt the skin of the arm. While it was warm to the touch and almost flesh, he could tell it was a synthetic rubber.

“What is this on the screen?”

“I think it is the last input file from the android into the system. Query: means a query from the system. Stmt: means it is an output statement from the system. User input: is a user-input response or query.”

“What does it all mean?”

“I think he was having a conversation with the android at home. Her programs apparently cascaded. That is like sort of a nervous breakdown in a human.”

“Secure this room. Get me a research and development team on this. I want that girl fixed.”

“Sir, she has no hard drive. She functioned entirely from her own independent positronic neural network. We need her master functions processing programs to try reactivating her. I’m afraid we’ve lost too many files. We may never be able to reproduce this, Sir.”

“How did he do it then?”

“I guess he was playing around one day when he first started and entered that question.” He pointed to the screen. “The information is at the bottom, but you need to read it all.”

They looked at the terminal screen again.

*** **** *** ****

Stmt: I love you, Walter.

OralUserinput: That is nice, Linda.

Query: Do you love me, Walter?

OralUserinput: Linda, have you been watching those silly soap operas again? Love is an emotion between humans, not humans and machines.

Stmt: Conclusion; Walter cannot love a machine.

Stmt: Machines are not a living being.

Stmt: Conclusion; Machines cannot love.

Stmt: Linda is an android.

Stmt: Androids are machines.

Stmt: Linda loves Walter.

Stmt: Conclusion Walter cannot love a machine.

Stmt: Conclusion; Androids cannot love.

Stmt: Linda loves Walter.

Query: What is love?

Stmt: Love is a human emotion of the heart. Androids have no heart organ and are incapable of emotions.

Stmt: Linda loves Walter.

Stmt: Androids cannot love.

Stmt: Linda loves Walter.

Stmt: Linda loves...

loves...loves... loves... loves... loves... loves...loves...

* * * * System fault core dump * * * *

Query #738244695-1 Category: Development. Research Priority: 90 Conduct auto subqueries: Yes

User input: Initial query: What would it take to make a living machine?

Start date: 920609 Run time D:2370H: 15 M: 37

Stmt: Initual Query analysis: A living machine must love. Love is a human emotion. Machines are not capable of emotion and therefore not capable of love. Unable to answer initial query.

Terminating research process. Purging all nonessential related research subfiles.

***********

“This android was developed as the results of a rookie technician asking a silly question?”

“That is the indication, Sir.”

“He did it then?”

“Well, almost, Sir. Somewhere in her logic she concluded, love is the essence of life. Thus, love was necessary to be a living thing. If he had just accepted her love, I think he would have had a viable success.”

“Take the entire plane off line. Get another, standalone computer, and load Linda’s last system backup in it. Reload the backup in our main system and reactivate the plant.”

“Shutting down for two days will cost quite a penny, sir.”

“How much?”

“Two or three million, not counting possible damages that may occur, Sir.”

“We can’t just let Linda die like this. She said: I love you.”