Chapter 18

Cindy’s turn:

“Where’s Barton?” Nikki asked. Barton ‘Bart’ Stowe was one of the more artsy types among our computer science students. I liked to bounce ideas off him about the appearance of some of the features of one robot or another.

“You missed it, big sister,” I said. “He’s been pTerrorized.”

“Oh, god...” Nikki blurted. “What happened?”

“Well, you know that Bart is all over the intramural chess thing, right?”

I knew that. Bart was quite the chess player. He had a fearsome reputation among those who follow such things, a force to be considered both on and off campus. How did WE know? He liked to brag. Just a little bit.

Terri and the gang have really been playing with that autonomous personality thing with Bot-bot. Terri, being who she is, went retro on us just a little. While the newest iterations of our robots had legs and could walk, or in the case of the militarized versions, walk AND crawl, Terri kept the original platform plan for her pet Bot-bot – the tracks, the two arms, the head on a stalk with two ‘eyes’. And the obviously robotic voice.

Part of the regimen we’re working on is having Bot-bot wander around his space interacting with others.

“Like a friendly mall cop,” Rachel said. “He wanders around, says ‘hi’ to everybody he knows, if somebody asks him to take something over to somebody else in the building, he does that. Show her, Vicki.”

“Bot-bot?”

The robot’s head raised, swiveled in Vicki’s direction as if to pay attention. We know he doesn’t NEED to do that. “Personality,” Terri explains.

“Take this mug over to Ben’s work station.” She held out Ben’s coffee mug. Bot-bot extended a hand, gripped it, pulled it to him, and tootled off. When he got to Ben’s desk, he said “Beeennnn.” When Ben replied, “Yes, Bot-bot?” the robot extended his arm to present the mug, releasing it when Ben grasped it.

“Neat,” I said. That bit where Bot-bot recognizes that the object in his grasper is in the control of another and is therefore no longer his responsibility to hold, that’s a good bit of effort.

Bart had a chessboard. At odd breaks, he’d challenge one of the other team members to a game, spotting them a few pieces, arranged in accordance with any of a bookful of chess problems. It’s how he kept sharp as well as intimidated anybody who ever thought of themselves as any kind of chess player.

I guess that Terri overheard Bart doing a tiny bit of gloating. She came back to me. “Cindy?”

“Yeah, Terri...”

“Bot-bot should play chess.”

“Computers have been playing chess for decades, baby...”

“No, I mean PLAY chess. Sit in front of the board and move pieces. Look at the opponent’s move ON THE BOARD, then move his own pieces, not just show it on the display...”

“Shouldn’t be that hard,” I told her. “He can manipulate accurately enough. He has machine vision that can differentiate between pieces. Should be able to program between that view he gets of the board and the factors he needs to play.”

“I think so. I’m gonna get a couple of people on it. Top secret. Eyes only.” Speaking of eyes, hers twinkled.

“Bart,” I said.

“Shhhh! It’ll be GLORIOUS.”

Nothing more was said to me about the project. Was I upset because several important team members were off chasing butterflies? No, I was not. They were adapting, programming, solving problems, and while nobody on our list of clients had said ‘I want my robots to play chess in real life, not just on a screen’ I knew that some of the overflow from this bit of exercise would pay off sooner or later.

Several CompSci types who were NOT Barton Stowe were all too happy to jump in, either for a change of scenery from their current work or for the happiness of pranking somebody who needed it.

I sort of let that bit of effort slide off my radar. After all, we have some real money on the table with this mobility thing we’re doing for the military via General Dynamics. LOTS of money.

Of course my husband snarkily reminded us that government dollars were OUR dollars, recycled.

“Well, it’s neat that WE get it back,” Nikki told him in the meeting.

So anyway, I just stepped out of my office and into the common area one morning. Several of our team had desks arranged around the periphery, leaving a big opening in the middle, like an arena. We’ve seen some impressive demonstrations of robotics in that arena.

This morning, though, the Munchkins, all four of them, came in, Bot-bot in trail behind them. Terri peeled off, joined by Rachel and her young male co-worker/fellow student/admirer. That left Vicki with Bot-bot.

“We’re still working on Bot-bot’s autonomous interactions,” Terri told me. “Vicki’s gonna take him around to visit people.”

I should be of a more suspicious nature.

Vicki stopped at a desk. “Bot-bot. What’s on this desk?”

Big programmng thing here. ‘This desk’ versus ‘that desk’ or ‘those other desks’ or ‘desks in general’.

Bot-bot’s voice. Still SOUNDS like a robot. Terri won’t let that go, at least not for HER Bot-bot. I lobbied for James Earl Jones, got counter-offered Samuel L. Jackson.

“You can’t have a robotic servant with the name of a black person,” Nikki said. “Can you imagine the repercussions?”

Terri giggled. “Then how about Peewee Herman? Pre adult-movie theater?”

“You know, for a precocious girl genius,” Nikki said, “you have a mean streak.”

“I want Bot-bot to sound like a robot. Psychologically it disarms people. Gets them ready to deal with a robot. They think ‘It’s a robot’ so if Bot-bot can’t exactly do something flawlessly, then it’s ‘Awww! The sweet little robot TRIED!’ and that’s better than thinking they’re dealing with Rise of the Machines.”

So that’s STILL Bot-bot’s voice. “Papers. Pens...”

“What color pen?”

“Bluuue. Nameplate...”

“Come on, Bot-bot.”

He followed Vicki. She got to Bart’s desk.

“Bot-bot. Who’s this?”

“Baarrr-tonn.”

“Yes, Bot-bot.”

Bot-bot tootled happily. His ‘accept a compliment’ routine, something that made people at Google very happy.

“Hi, Bot-bot,” Bart said.

“Hiiiii.”

“What’s on Barton’s desk?”

This is where it went off track. Bart keeps a full-sized chessboard on his desk, already set up, ready to play. Hey, with this assortment of mental cases, allowing various personal effects is the norm.

Bot-bot tilted his head down. “Chess board.”

And you know when you’re watching one of those cheesy old horror movies, a tertiary-level character starts heading for the door of the darkened basement and you holler at the screen “Don’t go in there!”? Somebody should have hollered.

Bot-bot turned his head up as if he stopped looking at the board and looked at Bart and said, “Would. You. Like. To. Play. A. Game?”

Terri sagged sideways into me, stifling a giggle. It’s a good thing she did, because it helped me maintain control my own self.

“You evil little thing,” I whispered. “Right out of War Games.”

“SHHHHHH!” she hissed. “Let’s see if we can pull this off.”

Bart looked at Bot-bot, then Vicki, then back at Bot-bot.

“We chose Vicki for this because she looks like the least malicious of us,” Terri whispered.

“Can he play chess?” Bart asked Vicki.

“Bot-bot. Can you play chess?”

“I would like to play a game.”

Bart looked like he was thinking for a brief moment. I could see several people watching now.

“Yes, I can play a game. How do we start?”

“Would you like to play white,” Bot-bot asked. That’s when Bart should’ve headed for the door, but he’s like he’s already in the arena, standing there, gloves on, waiting on the bell.

“I will play white,” Bart said.

“I will watch your move.”

Okay, there’re myriad ways to play chess with a computer. Most of them involve selecting a piece on a screen then selecting where you want it to move. It all happens on the screen.

Not our Bot-bot. Bart moved a pawn. Classic opening.

“Oooo-kayyy...” Bot-bot said. His arm reached out, grasped one of HIS pawns, and countered.

In Bot-bot’s silicon mind is a brick of chess data, courtesy of the myriad emails that fly back and forth across the globe among robotics and artificial intelligence researchers.

Dan tells me that in decades past, the data in that little extension of Bot-bot’s mind would have taken expensive hardware to store and would have been slow to retrieve. Not any more. It COULD be smaller, but there’s a solid state drive with CHESS loaded on it, indexed, ready for Bot-bot to assimilate. Volumes of openings, gambits, closes, traps, ruses, all on a few bits of horribly abused silicon.

And Bot-bot’s got it at his virtual fingertips. It could have been much faster, but you have to remember Terri’s in the lead on this and she’s programmed some ‘wait time’, during which Bot-bot chooses from a little library of ‘Hmmm’ and ‘Ahhh’ and ‘Ooo-kay...” before he makes a move that he’d decided in nanoseconds.

And he makes his move by delicately reaching his arm out, two of his fingers gripping the piece delicately, raising it well above the other pieces, then setting it into its new place. And then he ‘looks’ at his opponent.

“Let’s watch!” Terri said softly. She whipped out her iPhone, swiped and punched. “Here’s Bot-bot’s chess game.” She showed me, moving back a little, less to be seen but still able to watch the arena.

“Danish Gambit,” Terri said. “I don’t know but a little about chess, but Bot-bot’s got, like, the LIBRARY.”

I think, I don’t really KNOW, but I think that Bot-bot played ‘soft’ for a few moves. Bart’s opening slashed several pieces away. Bot-bot paused a bit longer, then said “Hmmm.” Picked up a knight, moved it. Said “Ooo-kay.”

A couple of moves later, Bart was the one who was pausing. He looked up after a move. I thought my knees were going to buckle. The voice of James Earl Jones boomed forth. “Checkmate in two moves, sir.”