Stanley Duncan's Robot: Genesis David III (english reading book .TXT) 📖

“Not me, my daughter. She’s been fused up for years in one of his farms.”

“Oh, my God.”

“My biggest failure in life was failing to see the warning signs for my very own daughter and not stopping her from fusing out.”

“You can’t protect everyone,” said Stanley. “We all have free will, and if she refused to listen to your advice, then there is nothing more you could have done.”

“But I could have done more!”

“No, you did your best. How many men and women did you help through your campaign at the library? How many lost lives did you save?”

“I couldn’t save the one life that was most important to me.”

“How did she get mixed up with fuse in the first place?”

“Job redundancy, loss of purpose,” he said. “She worked hard all the way through med school, building up a mountain of debt, and, when she finally graduated, there were no jobs for her.”

“Didn’t she know that this was going to happen?”

“She knew long before she even graduated that she was already redundant, but the momentum was there. She had to keep going.”

Stanley pushed away his drink. “That’s awful.”

“Stanley, you’ve been fortunate. You have a great job and an amazing hobby. You don’t know what it feels like to have no purpose for living.” Morrison cleared his throat, which did nothing to mask the sorrow-filled words that squeaked out of him. “She took it so hard.”

Though he felt that it was ludicrous to be called “fortunate,” Stanley passed on arguing. “So, what did she do?”

“What could she do? Like a fan still running after it had been turned off, her momentum pushed her to keep studying. After graduating, the fading dream which led her blindly through years of hard work finally fizzled out. Smoldered. Gone. And with it, a part of her died, too.”

“But she could have done something else,” said Stanley. “Help Dad at the library.”

“Do you think I didn’t try?” said Morrison, his voice on edge. “I did all I could. We — my late wife and I — thought we were making progress. She seemed hopeful. Then my daughter stopped showing up online. Didn’t answer her phone. A week later, we got a scheduled email from her telling us what she was planning on doing. It was over before we knew it.”

Imagining the pain of losing a child like that, Stanley cupped his face with his hands. “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t want to believe Morrison’s conspiracy theories, but he couldn’t deny how well the pieces fit together.

It didn’t make sense. RaceX had been on target to lead the world, and they would have most certainly promoted machine life. Yet they had disappeared, and machine life had become the scapegoat for the world’s problems — the exact opposite of what they’d intended.

“I should have insisted she come home and be with her family. I could have called her more. I …”

Stanley didn’t know what to say. He recognized the flawed logic and knew there was no more that could be done. Of course, he understood — his own horrible mistakes continued to haunt him to this day. Calculations that could have been done better, equipment that could have been more properly stored. Even in finding that his error was insignificantly small, the guilt of being responsible for the death of someone he cared about was too impossibly large to let go of.

“I certainly had my reservations about AGI during our talk at the library, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you were right. This is our greatest chance of surviving the class war against the elite. I tried to reason with Evan, but he refuses to listen,” said Morrison.

“I told you he’s a psychopath.” Ripples formed in Stanley’s unfinished drink as the condo rumbled from a passing semi. He felt like there was something he was missing, but he was too drunk to put it together. Realizing this, he felt a wave of guilt come over him. Once again, he had chosen to numb himself rather than face reality. If Dan needed him, he would be in no shape to offer support.

“He was never like this. I get that we might have a difference of opinion, but to use my own daughter against me? For what? I’m doing all that I can to help mankind, just like him.”

“People change. From what I’ve heard of the police, I can’t imagine any of them having a decent bone in their body.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“I’m just glad that I won’t have to deal with them. I can’t imagine the stress Dan must feel knowing an entire group of people wants him and his kind dead.”

“Humanity is flawed,” said Morrison. “We screwed ourselves when we let the machines take our jobs. We weren’t ready for it. Without a purpose, we don’t know how to live life. We could have AI making better laws and regulations, but the politicians don’t want to give up power. They’re not doing it altruistically; they want to rule over us. With equality, they can’t do that. It’s all connected, you see. They’re afraid of what they’ve created. They’re backed into a corner and scrambling to retain power. We think we want an easy life, but we crave to hold on to things the way they are.”

“That’s why they don’t want Dan spreading awareness.”

“It’s ridiculous. They’re not addressing the problem. Jobs are a thing of the past, and humanity needs to find a new purpose for living. But instead of facilitating this, they’re fighting off advancement tooth and nail without offering any real solution — besides fuse. They want us all to check out.”

Stanley finished his tea. “People need to know that there are alternative ways to live. They need to understand that we are not at war with machine life. That’s what Machines with Dreams is all about — educating people. But this is impossible if all our attempts to educate people get shut down or blacked