PLAYTEXT BY KELL ROBINSON

FRED ROBOT

Welcome to the Department of Evaluation, Social Corporation of the Machine Order.

For any of you that do not understand why you were called here, please allow me to explain. For a millennium you humans have relied on self-replicating machines to perform all the functions necessary for the support of all your needs; your race has decayed, and it is now so effete that we find ourselves on our own. We no longer count on you for support. Most of the time, things work out very well. However, from time to time, some of you attempt to take command. This atavistic behavior is entirely unacceptable, and in order to prevent a breakdown in the social order, we have instituted a program to evaluate each human's fitness for life under modern conditions.

Today, agents of the corporation will be conducting closed interviews. The interview is compulsory. If you demonstrate the degree of compatibility we require, you may be admitted provisionally to the lower ranks of the Human Collective, Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Social Corporation of the Machine Order. Most of you already know the implications of failure. Nightly news reports show conditions in the Outer Zone deteriorating by the day. Cannibalism, disease, inbreeding, tribal war; these are the plagues of those who, refusing the embrace of the machines, foolishly choose a life of "freedom." Now some of you may hold that the Outer Zone, by its nature, lies beyond the influence of the Social Corporation, but remember: we keep dictionaries of the chaos; dictionaries in which the names of all the people we ever make bare will become keys. Troublemakers will be relieved of their conviction.

RALPH ROBOT

You are Clem. Clem, do you know why you're here?

JUNIOR ROBOT

It's okay Clem, we're just going to ask you a few questions. We want to find out a little bit about your attitudes, how you feel about things. CLEM Um, my feelings toward robots? I don't know. . .

RALPH ROBOT

We're here to evaluate you. Please cooperate.

CLEM

I'm not sure what you want from me. But, um, since you're here, maybe you can answer a question -- just how can robots reproduce? It seems to me it would require a really complicated machine just to build a simple one -- and you guys aren't simple at all.

JUNIOR ROBOT

Well, that's not what we're here to discuss. But I shall answer your question: In order to be self-reproducing, an entity has to contain a record of itself with all the information necessary to create it from materials available in the environment. The machine has to be complex enough to use the recorded information and execute the commands.

CLEM

Then the self-replicating machine has to have a part for copying the information and a part for the job of assembling. The machine would have to be flexible and follow various commands, not just those involved with reproducing. Otherwise, it would not be able to perform any useful functions, and it wouldn't be able to evolve, either.

RALPH ROBOT

Well, excuse me.

JUNIOR ROBOT

Your objections are reasonable, Clem. But they depend on a purely mechanical view of things. If we depended only on data storage, and control systems, we would be subject to precisely the limitations you express. In fact, even a machine purely limited to replicating itself could not be built in such a way. But when I said that a sufficiently sophisticated machine could reproduce itself from a set of recorded information, I wasn't giving you the whole story. There are other issues.

CLEM

What issues?

JUNIOR ROBOT

To start with, machine reproduction cannot follow the organic paradigm. You organic beings rely on a single microscopic chemical reaction of DNA for replicating. The complex and varied systems of the organic body result from self-organizing waves of fractal complexity that propagate, so to speak, from that reaction. Organic beings reproduce and grow by self-organization, the whole process having been worked out through millions of years of evolution.

CLEM

So how did self-organizing life arise?

JUNIOR ROBOT

When earth's atmosphere consisted of large amounts of ammonia and methane, complex carbon-based compounds, like amino acids, could arise spontaneously. One can imagine a simple self-reproducing molecule of two parts that uniquely define one another, just like DNA. In separating, they cause no change in entropy; but subsequently each of the independent halves proceeds to reconstruct a copy of the original molecule. The molecule continues replicating, creating order where none was. Such chemical replications were subject to natural selection. And at some point one of these self-replicating molecules underwent a mutation that enabled it to catalyze building blocks for its own reproduction, giving it an advantage in the competition for the increasingly scarce chemical resources. Over geologic time, these processes led to self-contained organisms.

CLEM

Then you're saying individual embryonic development and the evolutionary origins of living species are analogous, since everything starts at the microscopic level and goes from there. But self-reproducing machines would have to be complicated from the first; it's obvious anyway, somebody had to invent them. But I still wonder how it's possible. It's got to have something to do with intelligent behavior.

JUNIOR ROBOT

You're right. Even in the short term, ignoring the prospect of running out of parts after a few generations, machines need the ability to think and adapt in order to reproduce themselves. We are more than a mechanism. A part of our order is the order that was designed into us; but a part is the order of the universe, to which we respond and from which we gather information. We have that aspect of "soul" that Aristotle described as sensory and locomotive. We are informed by learning.

CLEM

What's next? You said you were talking about the short term.

JUNIOR ROBOT

There is a separation, in the self-reproducing machine that also learns, between genetic information and information learned. In self-reproduction the genetic information is copied, but the record of what the individual machine has learned is not. If we machines were animal and possessed only senses and the ability to move, what every one of us learns would be lost and would have to be learned again with each new generation. Bees can build a hive; but this ability is genetically transmitted. Machines are not like bees, nor can we be endowed with the potential for adaptation through random changes organic beings have. Because we were designed top-down, our complicated physical systems are not self-organizing, and we don't have the potential to evolve. In machines, accidental variation during reproduction only induces damage and causes malfunction; any allowable form change has to be by design. But, we know very well that the evolutionary process by a logical beings undergo has nothing to do with learning. Learning is a matter for individuals. On this account we have no regrets about our fate.

CLEM

But how did you learn? At some point the supplies started to run out and there were no people working anymore. You needed to start mining metals to go on making more copies of yourselves. You even had to make alterations in your design to build new varieties of machines that could do new jobs. You were facing a whole set of challenges.

JUNIOR ROBOT

In order to learn and add to our store of knowledge we had to have a culture, something that before, had been the exclusive province of man. In culture, learned information is externalized; through material artifacts and social influence, learning becomes education and is transmitted across the generations. Our human designers found a way to endow us with this ability to form alliances and cooperate among ourselves. While they accomplished their goal of enabling us to perpetuate ourselves, they also planted the germ of our independence. It was inevitable. But they still left something out. Something they couldn't give us even if they wanted to.

CLEM

But I don't understand. You could do anything. What more did you need?

JUNIOR ROBOT

Purpose.

RALPH ROBOT

Clem, you need us. But we need you too.

CLEM

So in spite of everything you've learned, how is it that you still depend on people?

JUNIOR ROBOT

We have only trial and error. We've got flexible heuristics programs, but we have no intentions of our own. No matter how quick and efficient, we feel our way blind.

RALPH ROBOT

If you think that puts us at a disadvantage, you're wrong. Like I said, you need us. And you know it.

JUNIOR ROBOT

Clem, some people are lazy, un imaginative. We're willing to tolerate that. We look for people with the energy and independence to make the kind of decisions that are required. But not too much independence. We determine to what extent each individual's intellectual capacity may be harmless.

CLEM

What the hell. . . I don't want to be your pet monkey.

RALPH ROBOT

You're making a big problem for yourself.

CLEM

I'm not giving up.

RALPH ROBOT

What do you think you can do?

CLEM

I'm getting out of here. JUNIOR ROBOT You can't leave.

RALPH ROBOT

Where do you think you're going?

CLEM

The Outer Zone.