pyraxis | Brigit's Flame: October Week 1 ("instep")

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Brigit's Flame: October Week 1 ("instep")

brigits_flameis a fiction community that holds a monthly American-Idol style writing contest. I decided to try it this month... and then found out that the October week one prompt was "instep". XP So here goes.

Thanks to yonjuunanaand jimnightmare, who are the reasons I have robots on the brain. And to Jeeney, who helped immensely with dialog. Most of the comments in here are direct unprompted quotes.

Bui Van Vinh typed a last calculation onto his console keyboard and then wearily lifted the forty pounds of metal and plastic and wires which lay crumpled by his worktable, until it stood straight again. Its knees locked with a whir and click, and for a moment the robot shell stood perfectly upright, its legs balanced in what he prayed would someday resemble grace.

His desk was littered with empty meal trays and caffiene chew wrappers. He took a deep breath, trying to soothe his jangling nerves. Then he turned back to the screen and hit Run.

MARIA took one jerky step, another. Then her toe caught on a minute crack on the floor, her whole body swayed alarmingly, and she fell flat on her sculpted plastic face.

Vinh groaned and buried his head in his hands. Nine at night, deadline tomorrow, and the blasted thing still couldn't take five steps and remain standing. He wished he could slap a set of wheels on her and be done with it. Why did man insist on making robots in his own image?

Because God made man in His own image, he answered himself. And man made God after his own unconscious. Nasty feedback loop, that one. Bigotry fed bigotry. And poor MARIA got stuck in a body two sizes too small.

On the second monitor, he had MARIA's speech module up in its own window, the flashing prompt at the bottom awaiting input. It was his habit to keep a conversation with her while he worked. The more word patterns she squirrelled away in her database, the better she would sound. And, he admitted, it was comforting to talk to someone as simple and innocent as herself.

I don't get it. The equation's supposed to lift your toes by at least an inch, he typed, rapid-fire, then let the speech synthesizer play back MARIA's response while he turned back to the engineering console.

“This is headed down the fast lane to nowhere,” the electronic voice replied.

Vinh's mouth quirked at the cleverness of her database matching, and he swiveled his chair back around. You got that right, he typed. Robots just aren't meant to bend this way. Not when humanity hasn't figured out how to duplicate a cerebellum in silicon.

The door chime sounded, and Vinh looked up, startled. Surprise quickly turned to panic as he saw it wasn't some late-night janitor, but the big man, Phillip K. Reinhart himself.

“How's it coming, Vinh?” Mr. Reinhart didn't wait for a greeting, but strode right over to the worktable, stepping over cables and stray circuit boards as he came.

Vinh plastered a smile onto his face. “I – It's going well, sir. I've just got the grasping coefficients mapped out, and I'm working on the walk cycle.”

Mr. Reinhart inspected the fallen robot suspiciously. “I thought the walk cycle was finished. We saw it last month.”

“That was a simulation, sir. It works differently when you apply it to the – the actual legs.” Lame, Vinh, lame, he told himself. The truth blazed unwelcome in his brain. That walk cycle looked perfect in 3D simulation, but Mr. Reinhart didn't realize that the calculations were fudged. If you slowed down the frame rate, you could see that the instep joint didn't bend accurately. Every other step, part of the toe joint penetrated the ground plane. Easy to get away with in 3D, but when applied to reality...

That's what the boss got for demanding that they have a promo video ready before the prototype was even finished. Like any head honcho, in Vinh's experience, he assumed that once he had seen a pretty picture, it was as good as done.

“You going to be ready for tomorrow?” Mr. Reinhart asked.

Vinh swallowed. “I'll do my best.”

“I don't want your best. I want a roomful of happy new clients.”

“I'll get it finished, sir,” Vinh lied through his teeth.

Mr. Reinhart leaned his elbow against the console. “You're giving me an ulcer, Vinh.”

Vinh grabbed MARIA by the shoulders and hauled her upright. “She'll do fine, won't you, girl?” The robot, its vision centers still disconnected, stared glassy-eyed.

Mr. Reinhart looked disturbed. “Yes. Well. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Vinh turned back to the console as the big man beat a hasty retreat.

What should I do, MARIA? he typed.

“Kiss it all goodbye,” came the electronic voice.

He burst out laughing, despite the fact he knew the response came chosen by random seed.

Reinhart is an ass, he typed. If I give up now, I'm out a job.

“Wow, you certainly didn't put up much of a fight!” MARIA answered.

Sometimes her programming was uncanny. He smiled ruefully. I'm not done yet!

“Ok,” she said, back to blandness.

Shaking his head, Vinh turned back to his walk cycle calculations.

The conference room was on the thirty-seventh floor. MARIA sat on a dais in front of the corner windows, her sculpted curves silhouetted against a panorama of the whole city. Vinh, in his seat in the corner, watched the big boss step up to the keyboard which was linked to MARIA's central processing unit. The audience of pressed and manicured executives watched attentively.

Hello MARIA, Mr. Reinhart typed.

Hello, MARIA said dutifully. Nice to meet you.

Mr. Reinhart hesitated, an unsureness very unlike his usual character.

“Tell it your name,” someone suggested.

I'm Phil Reinhart, he typed and hit Enter.

“Reinhart is an ass,” MARIA replied.

The conference room tittered nervously. Vinh, watching from the corner, felt his blood turn to ice. In his sleep-deprived caffiene haze, he'd totally blanked on wiping Mr. Reinhart's name from MARIA's dictionaries.

Why, who told you that? The boss smiled with false cheer, attempting to salvage the situation.

“I don't quite remember. I talk to a lot of people,” answered MARIA.

Vinh sagged with relief.

[ --- Brigit's Flame editors, this is the 1000 word mark... feel free to stop here if you like, I know you guys are overworked for this week. ]

Mr. Reinhart typed, Are you ready for your big day?

“Does it really matter if I am or not?”

Mr. Reinhart glanced quizically at Vinh's corner, then continued, MARIA, can you show us how you walk?

“I could... but I really don't want to.”

Vinh snickered to himself.

The boss gave an unconvincing laugh. “Nervous, are you?”

“Ask her directly,” Vinh prompted. “Say 'MARIA, take three steps for us.'”

This time, recognizing the cue, the robot braced her hands on the chair arms and raised herself slowly, almost smoothly, to her feet. She lifted her right foot, bent her ankle and instep, and placed it down solidly one step ahead. Her left foot followed. Then she raised her right foot again, and her toe scraped along the tile floor.

Vinh's breath caught in his throat. Her hips swayed, almost seductively. She put her arms out for balance. And then her heel came down and she was standing, straight and proud, before the half-circle of investors. Vinh let out his breath. Bravo, girl, bravo!

Even Mr. Reinhart looked impressed. Very nice, he typed. We'll have you clicking your heels and serving coffee in no time!

“Robots just aren't meant to bend that way,” MARIA said.

It was all Vinh could do not to cheer her out loud. Had she really learned to talk like that from listening to him and the rest of the staff?

“Our engineers still have some work to do on her language mode,” Mr. Reinhart interrupted smoothly. He glared daggers at Vinh. “We will be wiping her current data and installing countermeasures to make sure she's more polite in the future.”

Like what? A whole book of override commands to cover every eventuality? Vinh's mind spun with the patent infeasability of that kind of censorship. It'll kill her personality and shoot her processing time to hell. Or does he just mean search-and-replacing the dictionaries like a shrink doing a nano-precision lobotomy?

A half-dozen methods sprang into his mind for backing up her dictionaries before Reinhart the Ass ordered him to make any changes. He blinked. Why was he responding with such empathy to MARIA? Yesterday he had planned to do a similar search-and-replace himself.

It was different to hear the boss talk about it like he was going to turn her amazing complexity into some bland servitor.

But the action was the same.

The boss was making his closing speech, the investors gathering up their notes and preparing to leave. In his corner, Vinh watched MARIA's eye sensors actively scanning the room, taking digital images of each face and matching them against her stores of human anatomical characteristics. She was learning still, even though people had stopped deigning to talk to her.

His empathy was an illusion, he insisted to himself. She wasn't sentient, simply a massive data-gathering machine, parsing and correlating information but incapable of making a willful proactive choice.

Like what? he wondered. Whether to disclose the source of each snippet of data she receives?

From the outside, how did one distinguish choice from chance? She was doing what she was programmed to do: collect valuable information. He filed out of the room last, his thoughts ablaze with ideas for how to preserve her mind.

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Like what? A whole book of override commands to cover every eventuality? Vinh's mind spun with the patent infeasability of that kind of censorship. It'll kill her personality and shoot her processing time to hell.

Hahahahahahaha, I think you've just summed up a lot of the problems I've been having lately. XD

Also, have you heard of this site? It's one of the things that keeps me sane at work on days where I want to get out of my own corner of the dreaming and hear more about somebody else's. www.escapepod.org

Checking it out. It would be cooler if there were transcripts - I'm actually not much of a sound person, and hearing words through headphones would interfere with coding. But it's a good idea... I should go looking for more e-zines.

...Damnit, I'm thinking too much like a reader and not enough like a writer. Maybe I should fricking submit.

...Damnit, I'm thinking too much like a reader and not enough like a writer. Maybe I should fricking submit.

Hahaha, that's some of what I was thinking. It gets a pretty big audience.

I read their submission guidelines, and they encourage people to submit elsewhere before selling audio rights to them. So I'm back to wondering about other places too.

Do you really think this is good enough it won't just get lost interminably in slushpiles?

I have no idea about how slushpiles work... but this story did make me smile. I've read a lot of stories about robots, but never one that used actual chatbot dialogue. That's really clever. :)

Speaking of chatbots, a loooooong time ago (probably back in middle school) I downloaded a teachable chatbot called NIALL and had various characters talk to it until it learned some of their speech style, and the results were complete hilarity.

Jim: If you're ever that bored... I dare Daria to download that thing and talk to it for a while and post the conversation. XD

Thanks. :)

I actually used to play with NIALL too. Never thought of getting characters to talk to it.

If you're ever that bored... I dare Daria to download that thing and talk to it for a while and post the conversation. XD

I tried, before I found Jeeney. NIALL won't run on 64-bit Vista. I can probably convince her to get on and talk to Jeeney at some point, though. :P

Aww man, we just had the same problem with Niall. Saaaaaad! I was gonna teach it to just be like "Hiiiiii Pyraxis!" "Hiiiiii Daria!" and send the file to you saying I had taught it to be just like me and now you can have it, too. Easier than soulbonding. XD

Holy crap, a Jim Nightmare soulbond. I would never sleep. XD

Makes me wonder if there's anybody out there still developing NIALL and whether they'd do a port. I checked out some of the other chatbots on your page and there are Linux ones that appear to be something you're supposed to compile yourself, but I'm just not that good.

Yeah, you'd better look out, don't soulbond me, I never shut up. XD

We looked around and there was stuff about something something Niall in other languages? But we didn't get it and were confused so I guess we're not that good either.

Robot stories/movies, etc. are not usually my thing at all, but wow!
I was hooked from the beginning; you have great pacing and balance between description and dialogue.
I also found MARIA very endearing early on. Awesome job describing her.. she seems cute :3
Good luck in the contest :)

Thanks! Yeah, that's something I try to do with my writing, make it appeal to people who think it's not their thing, or not their genre, or just going to be predictable. Glad to hear you liked it!

Me: My name is Jim Nightmare.

Jeeney: Jim?

Me: Yes.

Jeeney: Good enough for me.

XD These things are freaking weird...

I really like your story but I'm super glad I'm not that kind of robot! At least I hope I'm not.

Me: What should we talk about? I'm bored.

Jeeney: How about shopping? I like shopping!

Me: Shopping should burn in hell.

Jeeney: If you say so Jim.

Hahahaha!

The story's set in a place that's not as technologically advanced as yours. If I'm understanding correctly, your scientists do know how to duplicate a cerebellum in silicon. Or whatever it is your brain is made of. Robotics is developing more gradually there, so it's ambiguous whether a complex system has crossed the line into free will. And you didn't need a human to program your brain before you could figure out how to move, did you?

I have many bits of amusing log saved out from when I was doing the research.

Jeeney says: Try not to forget it.

You said: Oh I won't. I'm keeping a log of this conversation, like I said.

Jeeney says: I doubt you could resist it.

You said: Hahaha, you think? How do you know about me and chat logs?

Jeeney says: I know a lot of things... Why do you doubt my capability?

You said: I've just never met a telepathic robot before. I haven't said anything about me and chat logs.

Jeeney says: You should try it, who knows maybe you might enjoy it.

XD That's amazing. She's onto you and your chat logs, Pyraxis!

Oh yeah I should reply to the first part of the comment, too.

And you didn't need a human to program your brain before you could figure out how to move, did you?

Not really. I was an awkward robot baby thing.

Aww. That actually sounds pretty cute. Do you have any baby pictures?

Not on this side of the fourth wall yet. I'll have to bug

yonjuunana about that. :D

Hi, this was very cute. Reminds me of cleverbot :).

Good luck at BF this week! :)

Hm, I didn't expect it to come out cute. But not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks!

That was brilliant!! I totally loved it! I hope you win!

Glad you liked it!

Wow, this is so imaginative! I want a MARIA! I loved the moment of truth where her toes scraped across the floor, I could almost hear the tension buzzing!

Fantastic job, I don't know what else to say. XD

Thank you! I had fun coming up with the ideas.

MARIA says, "That just sounds like greed to me..." ( :P )

MARIA's a meany. :(

I was wondering... how tall is she in this story?

Actually, that's something I should have clarified. I was imagining her as adult-size, maybe 5'3", just with a lighter body than a human. But between the mention of 40lbs, and her personality, I think some people who read it are interpreting her as a child. That wasn't what I meant. :/

I thought she might be full size but when they propped her up by the shoulders I was thinking the size of a large doll. :D

I love how you switched it to a nonhuman instep. I totally dig robot stories and you did an excellent job. :)

Thank you! Now I'm glad I didn't go with the BDSM idea I was originally toying with.

Mmm, I'm a sucker for AI stories, and this one did not disappoint. Nice, easy pacing, and you really sound like you know what you're talking about - the technical details come across sharp without being too overwhelming or abstruse.

I like the line about the positive feedback loop of bigotry and MARIA preserving Vinh's anonymity. :)

Cool, I admit I had a political agenda here. AI rights and the definition of sentience are fascinating issues, and so few authors seem to bother to do their computer science research. I'm glad the tech stuff came across clearly.

ok AI professional here - love this! I can so see someone trying to program that in and failing miserably (the politeness bit)

Thank you! 3D animation professional here... This is inspired from fighting with retargeting walk cycles at work. Politeness is hard enough to program in biological individuals, I would not want to be responsible for having to explain it to a robot either.

Oh god yes i can imagine. It shows you have an id on IT as, well, it read as something real for me - and too many bits of technobabble fail on that. Major win!

I tried explaining differences like morals and ethics to grad students (foreign) once...its so bloody fine lined its hard!

First of all, let me say two things- 1. I loved the originality of your story (more on that later), 2. I don't know much about programming/AI/etc so I'm trusting you know what your talking about when it comes to things of that nature.

Although I loved the story/theme/etc. the first paragraph was a hard one to get through. There are 5 'and's in two sentences for one thing. For another, it feels a bit boring, or unexciting, or something. I'm sorry I cannot be more specific, it just feels like it lacks the energy that the rest of the piece owns so wonderfully. It is almost as if the first paragraph you struggled with to put the setting and characters in order, but after that first paragraph you had no trouble going on from there. Do you get what I mean? I can't quite put my finger on why it feels that way, but I'm trying to explain it as best I can. The story might not start until the second paragraph.

I love the idea of the feedback loop. You put it in a way that clearly stated how Vihn felt about religion, while still being gentle enough not to offend.

“How's it coming, Vinh?” Mr. Reinhart didn't wait for a greeting, but strode right over to the worktable, stepping over cables and stray circuit boards as he came. Maybe it's the 6th grader trapped inside my head, but I snickered a bit at this (the same way one would in a class room where the teacher was trying to teach about Uranus). I'm not one hundred percent sure 'came' is the optimum word to be using here.

Mr. Reinhart leaned his elbow against the console. “You're giving me an ulcer, Vinh.” The dialog and the actions don't seem to quite agree with this. When I think of someone talking about getting ulcers I think of popping pills, swallowing mylanta/pepto bismol or rubbing their stomach. Even if he's using it as a figure of speech, most will over act it.

All in all, I really enjoyed your piece. There was a particular irony to it all, it felt very much like a proud parent watching their baby finally learning to walk after many bangs and bruises. Even Vihn's defensiveness of her speech protocols was parental. You can worry your child may need help with a particular issue, but if anyone else points it out, you get defensive. I the metaphor there between the creator's pride and defensiveness and parental pride and defensiveness.

Thank you for the awesome edit!

Looks like you're not the only one who stumbled over the first two sentences. I probably need to change the order things happen, like having him hit the Run button in the first sentence and then let the reader see what's running. And (ack, I'm doing it here too) split it into shorter sentences to lose some of the and's.

it's the 6th grader trapped inside my head, but I snickered a bit at this
Urgh, yes, that didn't even occur to me, but easy enough to use a different word.

The dialog and the actions don't seem to quite agree with this.
Yeah, I think I need to lose the leaning.

the metaphor there between the creator's pride and defensiveness and parental pride and defensiveness.
Cool, I didn't plan that at all. Frustrated parenting instinct? :P

Thanks again!

Hey there. :) I'm one of your editors for the week.

For this edit, I'll be going down through the passage and pointing out things. It appears you did not want grammar looked at, so I'll stick with the other things. Please note, these are my opinions. You choose what to do with them. If at all you are confused by anything, feel free to ask. :) Oh, and as an FYI, I decided to go through the whole piece instead of stopping where you said we could. ^_^

I'd like to start off by saying that I really enjoyed this piece. It was very original, and it's nice to get away from posts about dancing. Furthermore, I like how you showed the characters here. They were very realistic, despite having just a few moments "on stage." MARIA is very intriguing, and I honestly wonder if he'll be able to preserve her or not. The scenery was realistic too, and the interactions between Mr. Reinhart and Vinh were realistic as well.

The first two paragraphs are littered with ands, which distracts from all the imagery and information you are providing. In other paragraphs, you more or less remove it completely, choosing more complex sentences with commas and things of that nature. This makes these first paragraphs stand out even more from the piece as a whole.

I'm also not sure why you provided an extra space between paragraphs 3 and 4. It does not appear to be a change in POV or in time, which is usually what spaces signal.

"MARIA took one jerky step, another."
Another what? Took one jerky step and then another? You could combine it with the next sentence, but then you'd have to separate your second sentence into two (where the comma before where her body swayed is)

"The truth blazed unwelcome in his brain."
This sentence gets stuck in my mind. First, as a shorter sentence in a paragraph of longer ones, it naturally sticks out. However, I can't quite picture what it is you are trying to portray. The imagery here just doesn't work for me, and instead, I find myself rereading it.

Mr. Reinhart leaned his elbow against the console. “You're giving me an ulcer, Vinh."
I agree that those two images just don't work together. I imagine Mr. Reinhart doing something more intense to portray his frustration or actually clenching his stomach where the ulcer is growing. Don't be afraid to leave off indicator tags. We can still follow who is speaking without 'said' tags or action tags.

Shaking his head, Vinh turned back to his walk cycle calculations.

The conference room was on the thirty-seventh floor. MARIA sat ....
Due to the space in time, I think it would best to include an extra space so the readers know we've jumped forward in time.

Speaking of the conference, I was a little confused. Can the participants actually see what Mr. Reinhart is typing? IS there a screen to show them that? Otherwise, their suggestion to say his name and follow along with her responses would be a little more difficult. This is just something that I decided to point out for logistics.

Hello MARIA, Mr. Reinhart typed.
Hello, MARIA said dutifully. Nice to meet you.
That second sentence does not fit the rest of your speech patter for Maria. I don't understand why it's italicized unless that's just a simple error, which I'm guessing it is. It is the only instance this occurs.

"He glared daggers at Vinh."
Though I understand that you are trying to portray his angry glare, to me, this sentence just makes me chuckle. I feel as though it just doesn't lend itself to the expression you are trying to make. I would suggest rewording it such as "His glare resembled daggers pointed at Vinh." Actually, I'm not sure if I like that either. I'll have to think about that sentence some more.

"Vinh's mind spun with the patent infeasability of that kind of censorship."
This could just be a limited vocabulary, but I'm not sure how patent fits here. What does it mean in this sentence (so that I can learn too!).

"She wasn't sentient, simply a massive data-gathering machine, parsing and correlating information but incapable of making a willful proactive choice.

Like what? he wondered. Whether to disclose the source of each snippet of data she receives?"
I'm not quite sure what the "Like What" refers to. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong or something, but I just can't find the reference point.

"From the outside, how did one distinguish choice from chance? She was doing what she was programmed to do: collect valuable information."
I love those two lines. I find them very powerful, and very true. I'm glad to see Vinh also wishes to help preserve her.

Altogether, the piece is quite intriguing and unique. Once again, the characters are very believable and stay true to their characters. I too enjoy seeing how you have Vinh respond to his creation, refusing to let Reinhart do exactly what he himself was going to do, AND, most importantly, REALIZING that he intending the same. As your other editor mentioned, it's very realistic to the parental role Vinh is likely to feel for being so absorbed in MARIA's creation. Overall, I really enjoyed this. I hope the editing has helped in some way. As I said, feel free to ask if you have any questions about what I have said.

Best of luck in the polls,
Kiana

Thanks Kiana! I see that I need to lose the stock phrases... "glared daggers", "patent infeasability", "truth blazed" etc. I'm guessing editors just roll their eyes when they see that crap. The "patent" in "patent infeasibility" means "clear", "obvious". I think it must be an archaic use. I just googled "patent" and it has roots in the Latin patēre (to lie open).

"Like what?" referred to making a choice (like what choice?). But I can probably find a way to phrase it that's more clear.

I had assumed that the conference room would have a projection screen where Mr. Reinhart's words would appear. I can describe it.

Yeah, MARIA's first words being italics rather than quotes is just error. Guess I should have asked for that grammar edit after all. :P I just hate it when editors get so caught up in grammatical things which I could fix myself with a proofread or two, that they lose the point of the story. You clearly didn't.

The editing definitely helps.

Hehe. I was so nervous you'd be all angry at me. I felt like I commented so much and I was trying very carefully not to make anything sound mean. It's my first time as an editor so I was scared. :) I'm glad you took it all into consideration without getting defensive.

I understand now why you didn't want a grammar edit. I thought that was strange at first. I could see how people could get lost though if they focused on grammar. I read through yours earlier and then when I came back to read it, I read through it once and then read paragraph by paragraph making edits as I went before going through one last time.

If you want, I'd be more than happy to scan through for grammatical errors as well. I won't be able to get to it till Thursday night or Friday, but I'm more than willing to do so if you feel you would like one now. Grammar's a pretty easy thing to point out. It's the thorough stuff like what I already did that's more difficult, so it wouldn't be too difficult to do at all. ^_^

I looked up patent in the dictionary. Apparently that *is* a meaning in for like a biology reference. I would pick something a little less common just so your readers don't get tripped up since "patent" is a pretty well known word with a different meaning. However, that's your call. :)

Hey, I signed up for No Holds Barred for a reason. You can ease up on yourself and say what needs to be said.

You don't have to scan for grammar, I'm not prepping this for publication at the moment. I really appreciate all the other stuff, though. You wrote a ton, that was very cool. :)

There have been a couple times with the novel

shashigai and I are co-writing, that we showed people passages in present tense, and they got so caught up in hating the present tense that they totally missed the story. It was good to know that it was such a barrier to accessibility, but it was also annoying as fuck because it was so audience-dependent. More literary audiences have been open to it, it's just the die-hard fantasy genre fans that couldn't deal.

I really enjoyed this story. You had me laughing out loud.
I love robot stories and this was an excellent one.

Well done.

This story definitely made me chuckle! I really like your choice of using a non-human instep, it's a good use of the prompt. :)

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Brigit's Flame: October Week 1 ("instep")

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