It's Not In Her Programming

Examination day was always one of Echo’s favorite days when it came to work. As much as he was in this job for the long nights without charge, and the low pay that wasn’t worth the work for, it got him closer to the specimens. Each examination day he hoped his knowledge of the bipeds would inspire the committee to promote him, all he needed was a biped to study. Unfortunately, as an intern, the specimens were only available for examination to interns twice a year. Echo thought it wise not to ask for another opportunity from Hammar. She turned him down every time, and Echo feared if he asked his boss one more time she might fire him. But despite Echo’s doubts, today was a new opportunity to view a new specimen. He crossed his wires hoping for a biped. He’s seen a fair share of cricetinae, cavia porcellus, and even two equus caballus. One biped showed up, but he was not permitted to view. 

Echo oiled his joints, picked up his notepad, and took a shot of flavored grease, and ran to the room with a large table in the center, with a glass box over thin air. Everyone was chattering excitedly about what the specimen could be. There had to be around fifty bionics crowding the room. Greez ran to Echo with the largest grin on her face. 

“Did Hammar tell you what the specimen was, Echo?” Greez’s face told him she already knew, but wanted to tell Echo herself. 

“You know Hammar never tells me anything Greez. Did your boss tell you anything?”

“Maybe…” Greez’s voice got higher as she got more excited. 

“Come on Greez! If you know something, tell me!”

“My boss told be we would be seeing a-“

Greez was cut off by the announcer telling all employees to quiet down, as a small door in the center of the glass covered table opened. A platform raised from the now hole, presenting a female biped clone. She had dark skin for repelling sun, large golden eyes with the best retinas in the industry. Her arms had the same amount of clear muscle and strength as her legs, and her bodily proportions allowed for the most comfortable of working. Everything about her was clearly the peak of health and ability for any biped clone. A collective groan from all bionics in the room sounded as the disappointment of yet a simple clone, and not a discovered biped preserved from history. 

“Now before everyone gives up on this specimen, allow me to explain,” Hammar started. “Before you all, is a home grown biped, brought to the peak physical and mental condition. We call her Tera1234. We have designed a growth plan to mass produce these specimens that have already been programmed to work, design, and help better the daily lives of thousands of bionics. Since she is an artificial intelligence, she will not be able to think for herself, or defy you, the user. She will be completely under your control. The reason this is being shown to the scientific team first, and not the general public, is because we want to be able to fully examine and perfect our new product to assure ourselves that she is perfect. My team and I will be supervising this production. If you have any questions, feel free to contact anyone from my company.”

The room clapped as Greez was looking up at Echo with an even wider smile on her face than before. 

“Don’t you see what this means?” She asked. 

“What?”

“You are on Hammar’s team! You get direct supervision of the specimen. This is exactly what you wanted wasn’t it, Echo?”

The rest of the examination was just a close up of the clone, and everything she could do, but Echo was overwhelmed with emotion. He looked at Greez, and picked her up from the shoulders laughing and spinning her around excitedly. He put her down and ran back to his shared lab with Hammar. 

“I get direct supervision of the specimen!” He yelled as he ran down the hall. 

When Echo walked into his lab to find Hammar, she looked directly at him and smiled. Hammar doesn’t smile. She reached under his center table, as she pressed a button that moved the biped clone atop the desk and motioned him to come forward. 

“Today is the day you’ve been waiting for, Echo.” 

Echo inched onward, confused at Hammar’s happiness on a day he would normally beg for a longer look at today’s specimen. 

“So I actually get a full view of the biped?” Echo asked excitedly.

“Yes! You get to assist me in perfecting the biped!”

Echo looked ecstatic. Even if the possibility of private study wasn’t an option, he still got direct contact and supervision of the project. 

“I won’t let you down, Hammar,” Echo exclaimed as he started cleaning up his work space.

“Echo, we won’t be starting work until tomorrow. It is late. Go home, recharge, and be here tomorrow bright and early.” She went to his coat hook, grabbed his coat, and laid it over him. 

“Don’t let your gears freeze,” she said as she left the room, with Echo, and the still exposed specimen. 

Echo looked at the specimen, not even realizing he had begun to take off his coat. He peeked out his door to make sure Hammar was really gone, and immediately yanked down his ceiling magnifying glass, and lifted Tera1234’s left eyelid. Sure enough. Her activation code was etched into her iris ever so faintly. He knew waking her up would be a death sentence to his job, but he only knew that when his mind wasn’t clouded with excitement. He released her eye, took a deep breath, locked his door then ran back and prepared for activation. 

“Mobilize Tera 1234, fourteen, twenty-one, six.”

Her eyes opened all the way this time. She then put her hands behind her back, and sat up. Her head jerked right first, then quickly left, but stopped, now looking at Echo. 

“Hello. I am Tera model 1234. Please state name for user identification.”

Echo jumped up and down, clasping his hand over his mouth then taking it off, remembering to inhale again. He pulled up a chair getting ready for a lengthy conversation, as he tried to say his name. 

“Uh, um,” Echo tried to get out, but words weren’t forming. So much was going on. “Echo. I am Echo.”

“Hello Echo I am Echo! I am Tera 1234, but you can call me Tera 1234. If you wish to change my activation name, please say so. Let’s start by getting to know you. I will proceed to ask questions I will use to identify you in the case I am misplaced, or attempted to be used by a different user. May we proceed?” 

Her voice was smooth, yet automated in a way. Like she had sentience, but couldn’t access it. 

“Proceed,” Echo said, checking his door once more to assure no one was approaching. 

“How old are you, Echo I am Echo?”

“I am two hundred thirty five.”

“Two hundred thirty five. User is leaving late adolescence. What is your place of work, Echo I am Echo?”

“I am an intern at Bionics Citizens Development Research Center.”

“User is an intern at Bionics Citizens Development Research Center. Would you like to provide me with an emergency contact? Since I am human, I am unable to remember long number sequences, however, I am able to process names.”

Echo paused to think about this. She is only a prototype, so she probably will not be able to remember anything she is told. He could say Greez, but she would get in trouble if traced back to Tera. Hammar was an option, but she was too much of Echo’s boss. 

“I have no desire for emergency contact,” Echo exclaimed defyingly. 

“Very well, Echo I am Echo. I am at your service.”

Echo thought long and hard. This is an opportunity to talk to organic life without sentience. One that has been implanted with just enough information to be intelligent, but not more so than the user. He could ask how the world will end, or what the meaning of life is. He could ask if clone sentience is more powerful bionic sentience. There are so many possibilities when it comes to experimenting with new life. 

“What is your purpose, Tera?” Echo asked, putting his elbow on his knee gears, and his chin in his palm. She took a moment to think, which was a strange thing to witness this day and age. Normally answers from bionics without sentience came to him in a second, yet it was taking this biped a few. He grew impatient, ready to ask again, but she began to speak.

“I am here to make the life of bionics easier, when needing someone to talk to, aid them in everyday tasks, and being a new form of media and entertainment for the bionic race. To protect them should the time come, and stop them should the circumstance occur.” Her voice continued to move so smoothly, yet with the same emotion normal to bionics. Echo took a breath, then asked again. 

“What do you mean, stop them should the circumstance occur?” His voice grew shaky at the fear of what he thought was only possible in the movies. 

I need to go home, He thought. 

“How do I shut you down, Tera. Put you to sleep?” His voice was struggling to calm down. 

“Simply tell me to deactivate. You seem troubled. Is there something I can do to ease your mind? Someone to talk to?”

Echo stood up and stepped back. If he had some way to eliminate her, he would. Yet he felt the inability to harm her, or even put her in harm's way. 

“No insentient being is capable of understanding bionic feelings. Deactivate, Tera1234.” 

“See you soon, Echo I am Echo.”

Her voice trailed off as Echo pulled a glass covering over her, grabbed his coat, took one last look at her, then left the room. 

The next morning he went to Hammar’s office to express his concerns. Despite the fact he would walk out today without a job. But Hammar was not in her office. He went to his lab to start with Tera again. He walked in to be met with Tera, and Hammar looking sternly at him, tapping her foot. 

“Would you like to explain to me why our prototype greeted me, as Echo I am Echo, Echo?”

He walked forward putting his hands together. 

“I can explain, but there are bigger matters to discuss. Last night when I talked to her, I-“

“You talked to her?” She yelled at him smacking the table causing Tera to flinch. “You messed with this biped in the early development stage?”

“Yes, but only because I have some concerns,” he tried to get out but Hammar was standing up now. Tera seemed to notice, because she attempted to move off of the table. 

“Do you have any idea what you could’ve messed up?” She screamed. 

Echo tried again to make her listen. 

“I’m just worried that the clones could put together an uprising! There is something appealing about them, that almost forces me not to harm her. That I can’t even allow anyone else to harm her! We have to find some way to get rid of her, before there is some sort of human uprising, or takeover, or-’’ he tried to get it out but was interrupted. 

“Do you hear yourself? This isn’t like the movies, Echo! It’s not even in her programming! You are going insane!” 

As she said this she took one more step forward, and shoved Echo knocking him over. Harm had come to Echo, and was in need of protection. But now, so was Hammar. 

“No harm must come to the user. No harm must come to the user,” Tera said, stumbling towards Hammar, who was still standing over Echo. 

“No harm must come to the user,” she said one final time, as she reached down and grabbed Hammar by her exterior wires. 

“Echo! Call her off! Now!” Hammar was raised in the air. For a bionic made of stainless steel and iron, she sure was light for this biped. 

“Deactivate, Tera! Deactivate please,” Echo yelled from the floor, finally beginning to stand up. 

“I am sorry,” Tera started, now with such a grip on Hammar, she couldn’t escape if she wanted to. “But I must ensure the safety of my user. No matter what.”

“You aren’t thinking Tera! There is more to emotion in doing what’s right, than ensuring survival! I don’t know why I can’t harm you, but you need to put her down! I order you!”

She let go of her left hand’s grip, and looked at Echo. 

“I am sorry, but I must ensure the safety of my user. No matter what.” 

Echo tried to yell at Hammar once again. 

“Didn’t you give her a final shutdown code! A rule in her system to make sure she can’t hurt bionics?”

Hammar took one more look at Echo, and sighed. Tera reached through Hammar’s chest cavity, and ripped out the wires. 

“It’s not in her programming,” Hammar tried to get out before her voice went slow and eventually stopped. 

Her eyes shut off. Her screws stopped rotating. She was unresponsive. She had shut down. 

“What is wrong with you Tera?” Echo screamed at her, with so much rage it was almost inhumane. 

“I have successfully ensured my user’s survival. Proceeding to deactivate.”

Tera laid on the floor, almost on top of what once was Hammar. 

Echo was looking at the specimen on the floor, and called out for anyone then Greez. She came running moments later and clapped her hands over her mouth at the sight of Hammar’s shut down body. 

“We have to stop the Tera1234 project, Greez.”

“What? Why? I thought this was meant to be your big break? Your step up? For all bionics!”

“No. I wasn’t able to harm the biped. I don’t know what came over me, but Hammar couldn’t either. We knew we had to stop her, but we couldn’t.”

“What’s going on? How do we get rid of her?”

“I’m not sure. It must be in our programming.”