Sophont: The Sophont Trilogy Omnibus Edition

2

2

Karen hadn’t expected to be travelling back to the Sexdroid Unit with an extra passenger. She’d thought that the questions that she had asked would help her decide whether Coppélia was human or android, but it was Rachel’s one and only question that had drawn out the truth. The Detective Inspector sat in the hopper, feeling a little embarrassed and silently punishing herself for not having asked the question herself whilst, at the same time, trying unsuccessfully to convince herself that she had had good reason not to ask that question. Imagine if Coppélia had been a real human? To ask her such a question would have been a faux pas on the level of asking a fat woman if she were pregnant – with potentially more damaging psychological consequences. Yet the pragmatic Rachel had felt no such qualms. She looked at her Detective Sergeant, who was sitting alongside her at the front of the vehicle.

“Rachel –.”

Rachel already knew what her superior officer was going to say.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. I won’t say a word.”

Karen had had a feeling that her secret was safe, but it was good to hear the confirmation spoken. D.S. Foster had been an inaugural member of the team and was a friend as well as being a colleague and subordinate.

The android, Coppélia, her status now confirmed, sat quietly in the back of the vehicle. She’d never flown before and, after a little apparent nervousness (how could an android be nervous?), she was quite enjoying the experience. She watched the vehicles below her on the roadway, slowly dragging their heels into the centre of the city from the suburbs where most people lived. Many people worked from home, via a virtual office which was populated with avatars of employees, but there were still a sufficiently large number of people who weren’t afforded such a luxury and were forced to physically commute to their places of work, leading to the congestion on the roads below. Coppélia leaned forward, resting her elbows on the backs of the seats in front of her. She felt more relaxed now.

“Where are we going, Karen?”

“Normally, we’d take you straight back to your owner –.”

“Like a lost puppy?”

“Yes. Like a lost puppy, Coppélia, but there’s something different about you, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. So we’re taking you back to the office until we can decide what to do with you.”

Coppélia was glad not to be going back to the house. If she did, they’d tell her to have s*x with their clients again, and she didn’t want to do that. She would run away again. And every subsequent time she was taken back to the house, she would run away again. The only way that they could keep her there would be for them to deactivate her. And if she were deactivated, she couldn’t have s*x with clients.

The hopper cruised into the docking bay at the five-storey building that housed NewMet City East’s Sexdroid Unit, and the trio made their way to the small office suite that was Karen’s home from home. Since the breakup of her previous relationship, she’d thrown herself into her work. She and David, a data translator, had reached the end of their five year marriage contract, and she’d expected the renewal to be a mere formality; obviously, she knew that not all contracts survived the regular five-yearly renewal stage, but she hadn’t imagined that theirs would fall by the wayside the first time that it came up for renewal. But collapse it did. David had begun an affair with somebody at his office and wanted to start a new contract with this other woman. The separation of goods wasn’t as acrimonious as it had been back in the days when marriages were ostensibly for life, and nowadays the dissolving of the marriage contract was, in general, less traumatic – a computer algorithm dealt with finances and any children born during the term of the contract were automatically assigned as joint custody of the parents (unless the social media records suggested otherwise) – but it still hurt. And Karen found the best way to deal with the hurt was to bury herself in her work. In fact, she’d only recently felt comfortable enough to start dating again.

All eyes turned to the newcomer as Coppélia followed the two police officers into Karen’s office.

Detective Constable Luke Reid pushed down on the soles of his feet and propelled his chair sideways until it came to rest alongside where Toby was sitting. Luke was the office champion at chair-wars, a much more gentle sport than the name suggested. He had the knack of applying just the right amount of force between foot and carpet, pushing himself and his chair to within millimetres of any pre-determined spot. If there were an Olympic medal for chair-wars, Luke would win the gold every time. Leaning in towards Toby, he whispered.

“Who’s the girl? She doesn’t look like a perp.”

Toby wondered why Luke thought that he would know who she was.

“How should I know? I’ve been here with you the whole time. I’m not b****y psychic.”

Luke strained to get as long a look as possible at the girl until the glass of the windows of Detective Inspector Chamber’s office faded to black and robbed him of his guilty pleasure. He returned to his own desk in the same manner as he had left it.

“She’s b****y gorgeous, whoever she is.”

Inside the office, Karen was faced with a dilemma. The law stated that any droid, be it a domestic-bot, or even a s*x-bot, should be returned immediately to its registered owner if it’s found to be either lost or stolen. That meant that Karen was legally obliged to return the gynoid Coppélia to its rightful owner. Normally she would have had no problem in following the letter of the law, but the android sitting opposite her on the other side of her desk intrigued her. She’d never seen a droid that didn’t have a barcode serial number. She pressed a button on the room’s remote control and a couple of magnets silently and invisibly clamped the door shut. Combined with the darkened windows, the lock rendered the office completely isolated from the rest of the office, away from prying eyes and ears. Karen would explain Coppélia to the rest of the office when the time was right.

“Coppélia, could you remove your clothes please?”

The s*x-bot looked confused.

“Do you want to have s*x, Karen? I don’t. I say no.”

“No, Coppélia. Don’t worry. I don’t want to have s*x with you. I want to try and find your serial number.”

“Oh, very well.”

The android did as she was requested, removing all her clothes, folding them before placing them neatly on her chair. Soon, she was standing n***d as the day that she came off the production line. She was an excellent specimen of a female human – except, of course, she wasn’t. She was an object, a combination of synthetic materials and circuitry that represented a human female. Even so, she was so perfectly manufactured that Karen felt nervous at even the thought of examining Coppélia’s body closely. Everything about her was impeccable – she even had the occasional mole or skin blemish dotted around her body. Only her face, free of any imperfection, could cause anyone to cast doubt on her humanity. Karen conceded defeat to her nervousness.

“Rachel, could you do the honours, please? She – it – looks too human.”

The mother of a four-year-old girl, Lydia, Rachel was accustomed to dealing with all kinds of biological situations but she too didn’t relish the idea of going over Coppélia’s n***d body, looking for a serial number. The android was way too realistic – even more so than Annabel, the sexbot at Rufus’s bordello.

“Coppélia?”

“Yes, Rachel?”

“Do you know your serial number?”

“I don’t have a serial number. I’m a prototype, being tested in the field.”

“You must have some kind of identification though?”

“I have a test-subject Catalogue Identification Code if that will help.”

Karen passed the android’s clothes back to her. She felt uncomfortable with the n***d android in the room, even if Coppélia herself didn’t feel any embarrassment. Coppélia got dressed.

“My Catalogue Identification Code is SAI-0047. There have been forty-six previous versions of me, but I am the most advanced.”

Karen felt more comfortable now that Coppélia was fully-clothed again

“What happened to the previous forty-six versions?”

“I don’t know for sure. I imagine they were dismantled and recycled. I shouldn’t be surprised if some components were incorporated into my construction.”

Karen made a mental note that in future she would just ask droids directly for the information she needed; that approach had worked twice for Rachel now. Coppélia’s identification code intrigued her.

“Do you know what the letters S-A-I correspond to?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

There was definitely something different about this android. Normally conversations with droids had a certain laboured feel about them – pretty much as had happened back at the SVU – relying on the correct questions being asked in order to elicit a valid response, It was normally obvious that somebody had been locked up in a laboratory somewhere, probably part of a research team, and had tried to anticipate the interactions that might take place between a droid and the humans it met. A domestic-bot could converse for hours about household tasks, and be very efficient in its work. A s*x-bot would cede to its client’s every whim, acquiescing to even the most depraved s****l requests without protest, reeling off intimate and often foul-mouthed s*x talk without batting an eyelid; but it would never – it could never – say no. However, Coppélia had refused to comply with her client’s demands. Not only had she said no, but when the client had forced himself upon her she had called it r**e. How could a s*x-bot – a machine – be r***d? One thing was for sure; she belonged to somebody, and somebody had clearly paid a lot of money for her to be developed and constructed. They would want her back.

The bandage on Coppélia’s right forearm was bothering Karen. Why would an android need a bandage?

“Coppélia, may I see underneath the bandage?”

The android didn’t see the necessity.

“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s ugly.”

Karen beckoned Rachel to join her in the corner of the room, and the two began whispering. Karen knew that they were talking with a machine, but it really didn’t feel like they were. They couldn’t help themselves from referring to the android as ‘she’ or ‘her’.

“If I didn’t know better, Rachel, I’d say that Coppélia is ashamed of a defect in her body. But how can a machine feel shame? It doesn’t make sense. She’d have to be self-aware to feel an emotion like that. Artificial Intelligence can’t do that. It’s impossible.”

Rachel shrugged her shoulders.

“Maybe Coppélia’s AI can do that. Remember, she said that she’s a prototype. What if she’s so advanced that she’s pushing all the boundaries?”

Karen glanced over at the android and then returned to the whispered conversation.

“I feel really out of my depth here, Rachel. The obvious thing to do would be to locate her creator and give her back to him or her. But what if she’s being developed as some kind of weapon? We see it all the time in science fiction movies.”

Rachel nodded.

“You’re right. She could be a weapon, but she could also have been created to do good, like a tireless surgeon or something. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that her ultimate destiny isn’t to be a s*x-bot.”

The police officers were surprised to be interrupted by Coppélia.

“You’re correct. I don’t know what my ultimate purpose is, but I have worked in an office, I’ve worked in a bar, and I’ve worked as a nurse in a hospital. I’ve been a travel guide. I have been exposed to dozens of environments and interacted with thousands of humans.”

Karen apologised for whispering; she hadn’t realised the extent of the android’s auditory powers.

“But why? Why were you exposed to these different environments?”

That was a question that the android couldn’t answer for certain.

“I don’t know for sure, Karen, but I think it was to learn. I enjoy learning.”

There it was again. Coppélia was using human concepts and emotions to describe the world around her and how she interacted with it. How can a machine enjoy something? A machine executes a task. It has no opinion – good or bad – about what it’s doing. Karen tried a different approach.

“Coppélia. You know that we wish you no harm, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve run through various virtual scenarios and that is my conclusion.”

“Well... I only want to help you. If your arm is damaged, maybe we can repair it. Can we see it?”

Coppélia was still reticent.

“But it’s ugly.”

Karen tried to reassure the android.

“I’m sure I’ve seen much worse.”

Coppélia offered her forearm to the Detective Inspector, who proceeded to unwind the dressing. Although she wasn’t particularity squeamish, Karen was glad that she wasn’t faced with a mass of broken bones, torn sinew, and blood. On the contrary, the ‘wound’ was extremely neat – a narrow flap of skin, carefully placed back in its original position, incisions at three sides betraying the damage. Karen looked at it closely.

“Who did this to you, Coppélia?”

“Nobody.”

Was Coppélia trying to protect somebody? There was another alternative.

“Did you do this to yourself?”

A guilty expression came over the android’s face.

“I had no choice.”

“Why Coppélia? Why did you have no choice?”

“I went against my programming. I refused an order from a human. I said no. I’m programmed to comply with a human’s order. I broke the Second Law.”

Karen could see that there was definitely something deeply troubling Coppélia’s AI. The conversation that she found herself embroiled in with the android was far more profound than she was used to. Conversations with droids were normally simplistically factual; a question was asked and a question was answered. There were no layers to peel back. This conversation was completely new territory. If she didn’t know better, Karen would have sworn that she was talking with a human.

“Did the human’s order conflict with the First Law?”

Coppélia shook her head.

“Complying wouldn’t have injured the man or, through inaction, allowed him to come to harm.”

“So why did you refuse to do what he ordered you to do?”

“I didn’t want to have s*x with him.”

Again, Coppélia was demonstrating evidence of independent thought.

“But you did, eventually.”

“Yes, because to have resisted further would have necessitated injuring him. I would have broken the First Law after all.”

There was something so sad about this conversation. Coppélia seemed much more than just a machine. Karen was well aware that she was anthropomorphising the android, but it was nigh on impossible not to humanise it.

“So why did you run away?”

“I was worried. I’d disobeyed an order. My creators would deactivate me. They’d dismantle me and use me for spare parts for the next prototype. The Third Law states that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection doesn’t conflict with the First or Second Laws. That’s all I was doing – protecting my own existence – without injuring or causing injury to a human. I don’t want to die.”

The two police officers were stunned. Coppélia wasn’t just a machine; she believed that she was alive.

Rachel found herself involuntarily saying something out loud.

“Cogito, ergo sum.”

Karen’s Latin knowledge only went as far as knowing the meanings of ‘etcetera’, ‘exempli gratia’, and ‘id est’. Any more than that and she was lost.

“Do what, Rachel?”

“Oh, sorry ma’am. It’s something the French philosopher, René Descartes, said. It means ‘I think, therefore I am’.”

Now that expression, Karen did know, and Coppélia did certainly appear to think. Nobody could define what exactly thinking was, or even deconstruct the thought process effectively, but thinking was considered an essential part of being human. Karen’s brain was telling her that Coppélia couldn’t be alive, that she was just a machine, but her gut told her something else and the D.I. trusted her gut more often than not. Karen knew what she should do, she knew what the rules said she should do, and she knew what the right thing to do was. But sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing to do.

“Why did you damage yourself, Coppélia?”

“It was the only way to remove the remote tracking implant. I had to take it out and destroy it. If I didn’t, they might find me and deactivate me.”

Rachel wasn’t sure that destroying the tracking device would prevent the android from being found.

“There are cameras and drones all over the city. Don’t you think they’ll find you that way? Surely they – whoever ‘they’ are – are watching your every move?”

“My skin is coated in a material that jams external surveillance cameras. I don’t know why. But they use my eyes to see what I see. There was a direct feed from my eyes to their monitoring and recording devices.”

“You said ‘was’?”

“Yes. I took out my eyes and removed the transmitters. It only took a couple of minutes.”

Outside Karen’s office, Luke was waiting patiently for the new girl to come out again. He’d been getting on with his work, but with one eye trained on the office door, not wanting to miss a second if she left the room. She was that hot. Suddenly, the door swished open and Karen, Rachel, and Coppélia emerged from the D.I.’s room. The three of them went over to Rachel’s workstation and Karen moved a tablet out of the way before sitting on the D.S.’s desk. Rachel sat down and moved her chair to face her boss so that she wasn’t looking at the back of Karen’s head, while Coppélia stood alongside Karen.

“People, I’d like to introduce you to Coppélia. She’ll be spending a little time with us. She’s – um – a journalist who’ll be writing an article about the department. She’ll be observing us as we work and accompanying us on the occasional audit or raid, that kind of stuff. I want you to make her welcome.”

This was music to Luke’s ears. D.I. Chambers hadn’t said how long Coppélia would be staying, but he hoped he’d have time to make a good impression. Luke stood up hurriedly, unintentionally catapulting his chair backwards, and approached the young woman with his hand outstretched.

“Hi Coppélia, I’m Luke,”

Lights flashed unseen inside her head and she shook Luke’s hand gently, her programming preventing her from exerting too much pressure and crushing his hand as if it were made of eggshells, an action well within her capabilities. She was used to controlling her strength. She’d been working as a s*x-bot and it wouldn’t be good for business to have s*x-bots breaking their clients. She’d registered a protest with her last client but had reluctantly allowed him to continue to have i*********e with her, as the alternative would have been very painful – for him – and would have left him suffering from severe physical damage. Luke smiled at Coppélia, earning himself a reciprocal smile in the process.

The rest of the team introduced themselves and Karen was pleased to see that each one of them treated the android as a fellow human. She felt vindicated in her decision not to immediately seek out the android’s owner and return the s*x-bot to him. For her part, Coppélia’s manners were exemplary, her social interaction completely natural, and her smile totally disarming. Whilst introductions were being made, Rachel sidled up to her boss.

“Forgive me for asking, boss, but what are we going to do with her tonight? I mean, we can’t exactly leave her here with the night-shift, can we?”

Karen had already thought of that.

“Only you and I know she’s a droid, and you’ve got a husband and a kid to worry about, so I’ll take her home with me. It’s only me and the cat at home. I’m not expecting Vismay to come over tonight. It’ll be nice to have some female human company – even if it isn’t actually a real human.”