A robot must obey all commands given by a human
“Which one of you idiots made this? Never mind,” Calhoun said as he turned away from the breakroom, “I don't want to know.” He shifted the coffee cup to his left hand and took the file from Kwalski, “What do we got?”
“Homicide. Victim's Jimmy Cornbluff.”
That stopped Calhoun. “Isn't that the farmer who runs that smell-fest over the hill?”
“It's better than those damn suits up in their tall towers glowering over the rest of us riff-raff.”
They turned the corner and Calhoun stopped again. “What is that thing doing, sitting in my chair?” He asked icily.
“You're looking at the murderer,” Kwalski replied cheerfully.
“You're kidding.”
“Nope. Jimmy was headed to the barn to check on the cows and this robot went and ran him over with a skidsteer.”
“A what?”
“It's like a little backhoe without the hoe.”
“Only rogue robots could break their programming like that.”
“Yeah, but if it's a rogue, then it's a strange one. One of the rookies told it to sit, and it's sat there for three days now.”
“So someone told the robot to kill Jimmy?”
“Not in those words, per se, but yeah.”
“Who would go and kill an independent farmer?”
“Don't know. And the robot doesn't remember anything.”
“What? Did it short circuit or something?”
Kwalski shrugged, “Memory's wiped. We only know that he did it because he's the only robot on the farm with the interface to operate machinery.”
“Detective Calhoun?”
Both turned to come face to face with Isaac As Imov, CEO billionaire of ROD Technology, who had three lawyers behind him, along with his personal body-guard and a young-looking woman with red hair at his side.
Imov smiled charmingly at them. “If you don't mind, I'm here to collect 01947 Mark 5 over there.”
“I mind quite a bit, actually,” Calhoun replied, eying the three lawyers as he spoke, “That robot's the only lead we've got.”
“Please, detective, be reasonable. Your technicians have already inspected the positronic memory board and found nothing. 01947 needs to be recycled, as you well know. It could be reprogrammed and shipped back out within days.”
“Reprogrammed? Why would a farm bot need reprogramming? All the farms are the same, nothing new for it to learn.”
Imov looked pointedly around the room. “Is there somewhere more private that we could discuss this?”
“Chief's out at a seminar till the end of the week, boss,” Kwalski said.
“His office will do,” Imov said. He turned to the red-head. “Bring the robot.”
He brushed past Calhoun and headed for the chief's office. The woman walked over to the robot, bent its neck forward, and plugged a small device into the base of its metal skull. The robot came to life, stood up, and followed her as she rushed to catch up.
Once settled into the Chief's office, Calhoun repeated his question. “Why would a farm robot need reprogramming when it already has everything it needs?”
“I'll allow my assistant to explain. However, anything and everything said within these walls must never be repeated elsewhere or there will be unpleasantness. And I have the means to do so. Alice?”
The woman cleared her throat. “It has come to the programming team's attention recently that in our haste to correct the faulty code that resulted in the Robot Uprising, an important detail was overlooked. As you recall, a Second Law was created, worded to read 'A robot must obey all commands given by a human'.”
“Yeah, I know,” Calhoun said, “But the First Law says clearly that a robot cannot harm a human and all that claptrap. So the robot is still our suspect.”
“Until I explain to you that our mistake was that we failed to prioritize the laws. We assumed that the First Law would default to the first position in the ROD Network, but it appears that the most current update is prioritized over past coding.”
“Are you serious? Why hasn't there been a recall of all the robots to get this fixed?”
“Because we were capable of resolving the issue in almost all the robots through the Network.”
“Almost all?”
“We were unable to access robots robots like Jimmy's because he had had them outfitted on a separate network, owned by a company that went up in flames during the Uprising. And it wasn't like we could march up onto his farm and ask to take a look at his robots- the guy was a total paranoid weirdo. And he was the only chance we had to completely cover this up. Jimmy had the loosest security of the independents, so a person could slip onto the property, but there would be nowhere near enough time for us to access the old network and get out before we were caught. Paranoid Jimmy has the newscasters on stand-by as it is for any ruckus that happens there.”
Calhoun studied her. Imov and the others were all calm, but she was nervous and had avoided his gaze. “Feeling guilty about something?” he asked in a quiet voice.
Imov took a step forward. “Now, now, don't go pointing fingers. You wouldn't be able to prove it anyways. The cameras were all off when the command was set. We just need you to rule this as an accident.”
At an electronic chirp, Imov and Alice both looked at the robot. Imov turned back to Calhoun and Kwalski. “Remember, detectives,” he said as Alice removed the chip from the robot's neck, “This conversation does not leave this room. It would be unfortunate for you to experience an accident like Jimmy Cornbluff's.”
They left, the lawyers taking up the rear. Calhoun half-expected someone to look back over and stick his tongue out- no one did.
The next morning, Calhoun's news-feed reported the latest update to the second law.
“A robot must obey all commands given by a human, except when such orders conflict with the First Law.”
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Publication Date: 08-08-2013
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