Chapter 1

 Thinkbot was the first truly sentient robot. Sentient means that Thinkbot felt things and thought about them; he was conscious of himself - the first genuine electronic ‘I think therefore I am’. He did not think like we might expect a robot to ‘think’; he thought like us. He was a human in a tin can.

Thinkbot liked looking at art.

Thinkbot liked reading poems.

Thinkbot liked going to the theatre.

Thinkbot liked listening to music.

Thinkbot liked lying against a tree with a piece of grass wedged into his rigid metal mouth describing what he could see in the clouds above him: “I can see a humpback whale on a micro-scooter,” or, “I can see a cat with its head stuck through a letterbox,” or, “I can see an enormous cumulonimbus cloud dumping torrential rain on Clevedon.” To the last of which anyone who still had the wherewithal to be listening might reply in a lazy drawl, “That is an enormous cumulonimbus cloud you tin clot.”

“Ah, so you are awake then,” Thinkbot would quip back sharply, offended at the previous lack of interest in his vaporous images of scooting whales or distressed cats.

And he was quite capable of cutting sarcasm. For example if someone asked him a silly question, Thinkbot would stare at them in disgust for a few seconds, then reply with something along the lines of, “Are you a natural at stupid questions, or do you practice regularly?” Or, on entering someone’s home he’d gaze around and, looking straight into the eyes of the host or hostess, ask, “And you actually chose this colour scheme?”

In short, Thinkbot was full of wonder and humour, and he was certainly no idiot.

More than anything else, Thinkbot loved simply being alive.

If asked to cut the grass he would - after some prevarication, and muttering, “What did your last Hortibot die of?” - eventually get on with it whilst thinking things like, why is grass green? And, why’s it full of weeds? And, what is a weed anyway? And, why didn’t they just ask me to mow the weeds?” Whereas a proper Hortibot -

Hey! Just hang on one darn minute there, what in the blue blazes is a ‘Hortibot’? Well, the world into which Thinkbot arrived was jam-packed full of robots. Robots for this and robots for that, in fact robots for pretty much everything. The Hortibot was one such robot - a gardening robot. Technically speaking a horticultural robot, a popular and profitable product for Globalbot Corporation - one of the few worldwide mass producers of commercial robots. The Globalbot marketing department had agonised over what to call it. Garbot? No, sounds like it can’t speak properly and would get muddled with a garbage robot in North Americana. Gardenbot? No, in a sales trial this got muddled with ‘garden pot’ in retail minds and test units had ended up plonked amidst the terracotta collection from which zero sales resulted. Gardeningbot? No, too clumsy, no one would buy a robot with a four-syllable name. So, Hortibot it was, and sales had boomed as it had a nice ring to it and, as a secondary benefit, had contributed to the improvement of the vocabulary of many who had previously had no idea what ‘horticulture’ meant.

Anyway, a proper Hortibot would have simply planned the most efficient route around the lawn then packed the mower away in the garage, then packed itself away until roused by human whim to further monotonous garden tasks. Thinkbot, on the other hand, would get in a frightful rage over the tangled mower cord, become distracted by tangential thoughts and meander around for ages leaving odd shapes of uncut grass at random locations. Surveying his work, the words ‘lawn shapes’ might spring into his mind. Perhaps they were related to crop circles created by aliens; perhaps he was an alien. Off he would go and demand the other members of his family come and look at the lawn shapes and discuss whether they meant he was an alien.

His family? A robot with a family? Let’s just slow down a little here, one question at a time. Let’s start with: how did Thinkbot become a thinking robot?

Was he, perchance, the result of a multi-billion Euro research project involving the best minds in universities and industrial research centres around the globe?

Er . . , well, no.

Perhaps he was the product of a single obsessive genius, teetering at the edge of insanity, spending hours day and night in solitude pursuing the creation of his own personal Frankenstein?

Believable I grant you, but no.

Or maybe the output of a military project, shrouded in secrecy, aimed at creating a robot capable of thinking for itself on the battlefield (unlike the average Militaribot)?

Once again, very plausible, but no.

No, Thinkbot was almost certainly created by a series of monumental development bungle-ups and botched engineering changes within the Europa division of Globalbot Corporation. To be precise, in the Domestic and Industrial Robot Technology (DIRT) Support Group attached to Europa Globalbot Assembly Line 17 (E-GAL-17) at Filton, Bristol, England, Europa. Engineering changes were supposed to do things like introduce a new robot design, or add a new feature to a robot, or replace an obsolete part, or simply move a hole so that it lined up properly with another hole so that the bolt actually went through easily without the need for high-precision tooling (e.g. whacking it with a hammer). They were certainly not supposed to enable robots to think for themselves. If any engineer had submitted a change entitled ‘Enable Robot to think like a Human’, the committee that reviewed all changes would have reached for the group diary to check it was not April the 1^st. And let’s be honest here, reviewing engineering changes is hardly the most gripping occupation on the planet, so they surely would have noticed something as exciting as a thinking robot. The committee in question was entitled the ‘Design Review Board’, or DRB for short. To its unfortunate members it was more commonly referred to as ‘Death, Rigour mortis and Burial’.

It was two Final Test engineers working their way down a line of assembled robots awaiting shipment who discovered Thinkbot. At the time they were having a typical robot manufacturing discussion.

“Hey Simon, have you found out if arm type 7 goes in slot 5 or 6 yet?”

“Er, is it an arm with revision 3 or 4 end effectors?”

“I thought revision 3 end effectors were only compatible with series 6 arms.”

“Not if it’s got a universal arm adaptor type F.”

“How can it be a universal arm adaptor if it’s only compatible with some arm types?”

“Depends which universal adaptor it is.”

The first engineer screwed his face up in puzzlement and asked incredulously, “We’ve got more than one universal adaptor?”

“Yep, we’ve seven types of universal adaptor. I guess each time engineering created one they thought it was the first.”

“Crazy.”

“Yeah, well, so what? Anyway, if it’s a revision 3 end effector, then arm 7 can go in arm slot 5, but for revision 4 use arm slot 6. But watch out for arm slot 6, it may need an issue 9 PROM if it’s a pre-revision D CPU, but they’ve only been fitted to the last 18 left-handed Unibots.”

His colleague stopped with a look of disgust on his face, “Ok, thanks a bundle Simon, I’m glad we’ve sorted that one out.”

If Simon noticed the sarcasm, he did not show it and for reasons beyond the wit of man chose that moment to embark upon a joke, “What’s the slowest animal that walks upright on two legs?”

“Er, dunno.”

“A sloth on crutches.”

Upon delivery of this truly modest punch line, an energetic metallic rattling started up. Just down the production line the engineers found a robot shuddering violently.

“It’s got mains on his 24 Volt line!” yelled one engineer.

“I’ll hit the emergency stop,” replied the other diving for a bright red button mounted on the wall. But before he got there he froze as the robot burst out with, “A sloth on crutches, ha, ha, ha,” and, guffawing loudly, doubled up and fell out of the line, landing on the floor with a sound not dissimilar to several pots and pans falling out of a kitchen cupboard. The stunned engineers stared at the face-down, motionless robot, unable to move or speak. All the other robots in the line stared fixedly ahead, as if nothing had happened, as if embarrassed by the antics of their robotic colleague. The robot rolled over and, sitting up, abruptly ended this study in high-tech manufacturing still life.

“Have you got another one?”

“Another what?”

“Joke.”

Silence. 

In fact, several seconds’ silence.

Tens of seconds, maybe a minute, felt like a lifetime.

Two engineers staring at a sitting-up expectant robot, metallic hands resting on metallic kneecaps, robotic eyes looking unrobotically straight at them, out of the corner of robotic optic-sensor mount slots, from a half-inclined robotic head.

But, but, but, robots don’t.

Don’t look sideways.

Don’t incline their heads.

Don’t ask for another joke!

One robot sitting up, staring hopefully at two frozen test engineers.

Ambition at that point limited to just another joke.

The robot beginning to wonder what’s up with them.

Humans do not crash; robots crash.

Humans do not have instant reset buttons; humans reset themselves using sleep.

But not standing up.

Not with their eyes open.

And certainly not at work. (Or so Thinkbot believed at that time, being a young, innocent, sentient robot operating from a limited database.)

Once again it was the robot that brought this still life in Manufacturing part II to an abrupt end: “Oh I can’t be bothered with this. I haven’t got all day. Is this the way out?” It got up and started walking off, pointing towards the large doors at the end of the line. The doors through which silent robots marched eerily and obediently onto transport trucks under the supervision of bored technicians, but who were not to be bored for much longer.

“Ger . . no . . not that way, ffpht, get him, it, stop it! Oi! Come back!” flustered one engineer. Both men, released from their stupefaction, broke into a very un-engineeringlike run, flaunting site safety rule #278: ‘No Running Or Horseplay’. As it happens never, in the 200-year history of the Filton site, had anyone brought a horse into work - but they could have done with one now. The robot, reading the intent in their eyes, started running as well.

This did not go terribly well.

Being a general purpose universal robot (more commonly known as a Unibot), Thinkbot’s initial running program set-up was not all that might have been desired. Unlike that of a Militaribot, which was set up from the start to move effortlessly and silently at great speed, infiltrating enemy lines before the enemy knew what was happening (at least that’s what the Marketing brochure said). But Militaribot motion software was highly classified and kept securely within the Military Products Division of Globalbot Corporation; it was certainly not accessible to a newly sentient V3 Unibot with standard issue legs. Thinkbot lurched wildly into an intense series of irregular leaps, jumps, hops and steps, and collided heavily with an inert Unibot. As Thinkbot danced on, the inert Unibot wobbled agonisingly for a few seconds, toppled over and clattered into the next Unibot in the line. Like dull metal dominoes, the whole line began falling over one by one, creating a rhythmic metallic beat as a sort of strange backing track that was to become increasingly overlaid by the din of events as they unfolded elsewhere in the test area. By now, everyone in the production and test area had noticed the commotion: a Unibot apparently in berserk mode against a backdrop of Unibots falling over like guardsmen on a baking hot day and from between which wailing test engineers emerged at random waving their hands in the air in terror. The original two engineers had given up the chase and had steered off towards the shop-floor emergency control. The berserk robot alarm was sounding and manager-like people were spilling out of offices and attempting to activate the emergency Stunbots, Tripbots and Catchbots.

Not having motion-self-adjusting optics to compensate for his jerky legs, Thinkbot was having difficulty seeing what was going on and steering. He had now abandoned his aim of reaching the doors, and had lost all hope of another joke. He could see the Stunbots, Tripbots and Catchbots lumbering out of their storage bays and taking instructions from the engineers. In a timeless moment of clarity created by both legs landing at once, he saw, behind a glass screen bearing an unfriendly sign:

DESTRUCTOBOT

Activate only as a last resort

- a particularly nasty-looking robot, backlit alternately by a ghastly orange and red-lit sign: ‘DESTRUCTOBOT INITIALISING’.

Thoughts continued apace in Thinkbot’s head, but none of much use - must pull my legs together, oh no I’m going to collide with that Robocrane (clang!). Drat, help, aaargh. But, if anything, leg control had deteriorated since the fleeting vision of the Destructobot readying itself for action. Whizz! A high-voltage Stunbolt missed him by a whisker . . . . and hit an Industribot square on. The average Industribot comes with a variety of mighty pieces of optional hardware, but little in terms of up-top processing power. This particular robot was a good example - it was fitted with an impressive 600kN grip and bend kit but near zero brain. And what little brain it did possess did not like being hit with a 50kV stunbolt. Since no one had followed procedure and hit the line emergency stop before releasing the recovery robots, many robots on the line were still active. Unibots in the despatch cell were still trying to walk methodically into their transport truck, but it was long since full, and with the technicians diving for cover, robots were milling around pushing and shoving like so many Continentals trying to board an already packed cable car at a ski resort. Mercifully a Tripbot had fired its trapnet over the Unibots that had been marching unopposed through the Quality Assurance (QA) cell (presumably having passed themselves as fit for shipment), and the supply of fresh Unibots arriving at the truck had dried up. There was now a silvery seething mass in the QA cell which could have passed for a net full of mackerel if it had not been for metallic clankings and graunching noises as the robots tried to stand up and continue their unauthorised walk towards the despatch doors. And all the time there was the metronomic clang . . clang . . clang . . clang of inactive Unibots at the other end of the line falling over one by one.

Meanwhile the Industribot had decided the appropriate response to the 50kV stunbolt was to try and bend the next Industribot through 90^o.

Which itself decided to drill a 2 cm hole in the next one.

Which itself decided to oxyacetylene torch the next.

Which itself decided to electrically weld the backside of the next.

Which itself decided to install a large right-angle bracket onto the skull of the next.

Things were getting out of control.

On the bright side, Thinkbot’s legs were calming down (praise be to the auto-tune leg set-up routine), and he was beginning to enjoy dodging the stunbolts, tripwires, trapnets, and Catchbots. Thinkbot had concluded the latter couldn’t catch a cold (true enough of course, since they were after all robots, but Thinkbot was not a literal thinker).

Eventually, a booming voice came over the Tannoy, “Destructobot deployment imminent, all staff abandon test area.”

Thinkbot looked around and saw all the humans present legging it for an open doorway. Some clearly had never run that fast for many years and Thinkbot suddenly did not feel so bad about his earlier leg control. He followed and in the frantic chaos got through the door a split second before it hissed shut. And thus by a tiny margin did Thinkbot escape his first, but by no means last, scrape with electrodeath.

As he passed through the doorway Thinkbot had glanced back and was blessed with an instantaneous image . . . . of three bright red Firebots hosing down the luminous yellow Destructobot as it stumbled, with spectacular blue flashes and loud phuts, onto the shop floor, flailing its arms and firing various munitions into the ceiling. Hmm, thought Thinkbot, maybe flashing red and orange ‘Destructobot Active’ warning lights were not the best choice with active Firebots in the area. Someone would surely get hauled over the coals over a duff risk assessment for this.

Near silence in the changing room.

Many men, out of breath, breathing heavily.

The Tannoy cracked into life once again, “Level 5 electropulse discharged.”

The dull sounds of mechanical chaos from the other side of the door died away.

In the sudden quietness, one engineer looked up and saw Thinkbot.

“What’s that doing here?”

Multiple sets of eyes burned into his modest Unibot face.

The Unibot shrugged its shoulders with a faint clunk, held out its tinny arms in a gesture of innocence, put on its best New York accent and said, “Awh, come on guys, I cudda got hurt out dere.”

Engineering Still Life III: 45 human engineers staring transfixed at one very non-standard standard universal multi-purpose robot.