The Peculiar Constraints of Peacetime

By Michael Zahniser

Each day’s mission was the same: to escort the high-value asset from the training facility to headquarters while avoiding the attention of hostile elements. Em One arrived at the rendezvous early and concealed itself in the shadow of a tree across the street. Usually they met by the entrance, but the hostiles had an uncanny ability to spot Em One’s diminutive kevlar carapace the moment the robot broke cover, so it had decided to experiment with a more subtle approach.

It was fine weather for standing and waiting. Em One sampled the air: acceptable levels of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter. The grass was freshly trimmed; volatile compounds drifted upward from the wounded blades. Faint levels of fungal byproducts hinted at autumn’s approach, dappled patches of sunlight danced across Em One’s skin, and thirty-seven sparrows whistled in the tree overhead. A human would have called it a perfect day.

Within the dark brick edifice, a dozen bells rang. A cloud passed over the sun, and Em One experienced a visual and auditory malfunction. There was snow on the ground and blood in the snow and a distant crump and crackle of artillery and small-arms fire. The air smelled of sulphur. The wind howled and the snow whirled up in a blinding white spiral.

And the sun shone warm on the grass.

Caught by surprise, Em One took a moment to run its self-diagnostics. The sensory glitches had ceased during the summer, but after the reassignment to the new training facility they had returned with alarming frequency. When Em One reported the issue during its yearly maintenance, the engineer had dismissed it as impossible: electronic minds don’t work that way, he said.

The doors of the training facility swung open. The high-value asset was the very first to emerge; she must have had her gear stowed and her pack shouldered even before the bell. A crowd of other young civilians followed closely behind her. The asset--whose name was Jemma--scanned the walkway in front of the facility and the crowd of older civilians gathered by the flagpole. Apparently Em One’s absence from its usual post confused her. The robot stepped out of the shadows just long enough for Jemma to spot it, then returned to hiding.

The building disgorged more young civilians, including several hostiles. These were gathered in a tight cluster, laughing and conversing loudly. Focusing its auditory and signal processing facilities, Em One determined that they were exchanging sensitive intelligence concerning other clients of the training facility. But their attention was not on Jemma; apparently Em One’s tactical decision to wait across the street had succeeded.

A sparrow landed on Em One’s shoulder. The robot swiveled its head to examine the bird and it leapt back into the air, beating its wings in such inefficient panic that it plummeted and nearly hit the ground before regaining altitude. Em One observed that the bird’s heuristics for identifying danger must be relatively simplistic; the robot’s immobility had fooled it.

Em One was, by a large margin, the most dangerous thing in the park.

The high-value asset crossed the street and approached Em One with her hands on her hips. “What are you doing all the way over here?” she asked, glaring down at the robot. A year ago Jemma had been shorter than Em One, but young humans grow quickly, and due to either the height advantage or a developmental shift Jemma had also become bossier.

“You’re a big girl,” said Em One. “You can cross the street without holding my hand.” So far in this training cycle Jemma had been subject to fifty-seven percent more derogatory comments when walking hand in hand with Em One. “Shall we head home?” the robot asked. The hostiles were still loitering by the entrance to the training facility; if Em One and Jemma returned to headquarters now they could avoid any enemy engagements.

Jemma frowned, and Em One could guess at the emotional calculus playing out within her mind. The house was dark, empty, and lonesome; the sun was warm and other young civilians were running around the park and climbing on the exercise structures. In addition to developing muscle tone and coordination, those activities were enjoyable. A year ago Jemma would have joined them, but since switching to the new training facility she had stopped seeking interactions with members of her age cohort. Em One blamed the hostile elements for that. “Did you make any friends at school today?” it asked.

Jemma shook her head. “But maybe you could come with me for show and tell tomorrow?” She sat down on the bench next to Em One and kicked absentmindedly at the gravel.

Clearly Jemma had not yet formed an adequate tactical understanding of the enemy. The robot said, “That would be inadvisable.”

Jemma had a vast repertoire of angry and petulant expressions. “What do you mean, inadvisable?”

“That means, it would be a bad idea.”

“I’m in fifth grade, I know what ‘inadvisable’ means. I was asking why you think that.”

“Perhaps you can work that out for yourself?” It was Em One’s opinion that young humans were essentially sociopaths. Professionally, Em One had nothing against sociopaths; at least they were predictable, and they had been common in Em One’s previous line of work. But five years in training facilities ought to have taught Jemma that other civilians were products of a context quite unlike her own. The robot made a sighing noise--purely for effect, because Em One didn’t actually breathe--and gave Jemma a hint. “Do the other kids here have their own robots?”

“At my old school everyone thought you were cool.”

Indeed. “At your old school everyone treated me like a bipedal jungle gym or a life-sized doll depending on what game you were playing,” said Em One. That had been a very different context.

Early on, Em One had found it nearly impossible to communicate with Jemma, and even now it sometimes struggled to translate its thoughts into the civilian vernacular. Humans could learn a second language fluently enough to think in it. But either artificial brains didn’t work that way or Em One’s mind simply could not shake the imprint of the war. The robot pondered how to express its tactical assessment. “I make these kids angry because they think you’re showing off how rich you are,” it said.

That, and eight of the young civilians in this facility had lost their fathers in the same war that made Jemma’s father rich. That deep reservoir of resentment among the bereaved, culminating in the incident three years earlier, was what convinced Jemma’s father to take Em One out of cold storage and assign it this new mission. Cold storage had been total oblivion, and sometimes Em One missed it.

Jemma still seemed torn between returning to headquarters and staying to use the exercise equipment. Surveying the movements of the other civilians, Em One noticed that a young female in a pink dress sitting in the architectural training enclosure was attempting to make visual contact with Jemma. “That girl in the sandbox keeps looking in your direction,” said the robot. “I bet she would like to be friends with you.”

“I think she’s a third-grader,” said Jemma with the sort of distaste that she usually reserved for things like brussels sprouts and dried-up worms on sidewalks.

Over the last few years, Em One had developed a workable model of how Jemma’s mind worked. Rather than arguing, the robot let the silence drag out until she admitted, “I don’t like talking to new people. It’s hard.”

Jemma was capable of social interaction, and success would boost her confidence. Making eye contact and speaking in its sternest-sounding voice, Em One said, “Miss Jemma, we all need to do hard things sometimes. It’s how we grow stronger.” Or how we end up broken. But young humans don’t break easily.

“Nothing’s hard for you,” said Jemma. “You’re a robot.” But she walked over to the sandbox anyway and introduced herself. Deciding to give them some space, the robot sat down on the bench and began surveilling the surroundings for threats. Vehicles rattled on the distant highway, and somewhere in the city one of the trucks that sell frozen bovine secretions played a mournful melody. The grass at Em One’s feet was full of tiny invertebrates, including some that Jemma might have found alarming, but none were actually dangerous. An airplane flew overhead. Its wings had no weapon emplacements; it was probably just a passenger transport.

One of the young civilians, a male, was jumping off the very top of the exercise structure, climbing back up, and jumping again, over and over. He didn’t seem to be injuring himself, but each time he launched himself into the air Em One had to resist the impulse to run over and catch him. Even before the modifications that Jemma’s father made, Em One’s subroutines for minimizing collateral damage had prioritized the lives of young civilians above all others. Of course, given that infants were easy to manufacture and adults represented decades of training and experience, that was an irrational design decision, perhaps reflecting a human emotional blindspot.

Em One would in fact have done many things differently if given a chance to alter its own design. For example, war robots ought to be enabled to identify and excise intrusive memories that were causing performance degradation. Once after a day when the malfunctions had been particularly disruptive, Em One had even gone so far as to request a factory reset. Jemma’s father had refused. Em One’s accumulated experiences, he said, were the source of the robot’s “inimitable effectiveness” in combat.

Em One heard Jemma saying its name and focused its auditory sensors on the conversation between Jemma and the younger female. “Em One is a prototype,” Jemma was saying. “My dad built Em One all by himself.” That wasn’t technically true. Jemma’s father was in the upper leadership echelons; he had probably never in his life used a soldering iron or hex wrench. Or handled a gun, for that matter, except for entertainment purposes.

Jemma and the other young civilian came over to the bench where Em One was sitting. The girl looked Em One up and down--the armored joints, the urban camouflage. “Do you have guns in your arms, like in the war videos?” she asked.

What sort of caretaker would allow a young person to view those videos? Em One made a laughing sound. “Do you think they’d allow a robot to play in the park if it was carrying live munitions?” Despite popular myths to the contrary, robots like Em One were quite capable of lying. But the training materials that Em One studied had suggested that it was harmful to tell outright lies to young humans. Fortunately a bit of creative misdirection often worked just as well.

“Did you fight in the war?” the young civilian asked.

“That’s not something I can talk about,” said Em One.

“Did you kill people?” she asked, wide-eyed.

Em One was used to evading questions like that; there were some truths Jemma must not be burdened with. “I was never deployed on the front lines,” it said. Again, not a falsehood: the men who led wars lived well behind the front and believed themselves safe. Em One had moved through their territory as silently as a windblown leaf. There, far from the tanks and the soldiers in power armor, bullets were so seldom needed that after seven years of war Em One’s guns--those loud, inelegant weapons--had still held some of their original rounds.

Em One’s wrist-blades were very sharp.

Em One did not miss its former life; it privately questioned whether any thinking being should be assigned such work, and sometimes felt a pang of undeserved wonder at the way Jema looked at it with trust in her eyes. But there had been comfort in simple mission objectives: knowing what was expected and being able to deliver. In this new caretaking role with its amorphous requirements, Em One was out of place. Its designers had never expected Em One to navigate the peculiar constraints of peacetime.

Another uninvited memory flashed through the robot’s mind. Em One was walking away from a burning city, poorly disguised in a puffy pink snowsuit like the one Jemma had worn the previous winter. Surrounding it, a tide of human civilians flowed in the same direction, eyes glazed with exhaustion. Perhaps they did not even notice the presence of the robot, its face only slightly more grey and expressionless than their own. The snowsuit was smudged with dirt and grime, and Em One had pulled the hood in tight to hide its unnatural head. In the distance, heavy war machines stomped back and forth, their bodies made ghost-like by the smoke. One of the buildings collapsed, sending gouts of embers skyward. Flakes of ash fell like snow.

Em One was brought back to the present by an escalation in the threat level: several of the hostile elements had crossed the street and were approaching on an intercept course. Instantly the robot’s mind lit up with tactical assessments: exits from the park, lines of sight, and predictions of the mental state and likely actions of the hostiles. In an involuntary and completely inappropriate reaction, the defensive hardware hidden in Em One’s arms even began whirring through its self-test routines.

The oldest hostile approached with the ungainly chest-extending gait of a human male attempting to look intimidating. “Aww,” he said, “the weirdos are all hanging out together. Are you having fun playing with your robot dolly?” The other two snickered as if their leader had made an excellent joke. Jemma and the other female wisely said nothing.

“Hey,” said the hostile squad leader, “I’m talking to you.”

He took another step forward, and Em One leapt in front of him. It happened so reflexively that Em One was not even conscious of having decided to act; it merely found itself suddenly standing directly in front of the hostile with an arm outstretched and its palm aimed at his center of mass. Dirt sprayed up at Em One’s feet and the wind stirred by the robot’s motion ruffled the hostile’s shirt. He glared down at Em One in surprise and with a hint of fear; no human could have moved so swiftly.

“Please proceed to the nearest civilian shelter immediately.” The words came out automatically, and Em One was not sure who it meant them for. After all, everyone was a civilian here. Even the hostiles. Then Em One realized where its palm was pointed and quickly swung its arm down toward the ground, curling its fingers into a fist to cover the gun port. Jemma’s father had instructed Em One to use anything up to and including lethal force to defend his daughter, but this was hardly an appropriate situation for it.

There was wariness in the male’s eyes, but the ingrained logic of pack behavior would not allow him to display cowardice. Instead of prudently retreating the male took another step forward so that his chest was nearly touching Em One’s. “You don’t scare me,” he said, shoving the robot. His eyes widened in surprise as Em One went flying backward. With a body of carbon fiber and muscle wire, Em One weighed even less than Jemma; the only dense metal in Em One’s body was in its weapon systems. A poet might have found sublime symbolism in the fact that those leftover implements of war were the heaviest things that Em One carried.

Em One’s mind was as swift as a sparrow; the robot had plenty of time as it fell to decide what sort of landing to make. Its default would be to roll and spring back up into a fighting stance, but that would escalate the situation. And given how Em One’s systems had been malfunctioning lately, it might not be able to engage in combat without injuring the hostiles. So instead Em One landed in a carefully orchestrated tangle of limbs that presented as unthreatening an aspect as possible. Perhaps the bully, having made his display, would depart peaceably.

The three hostiles looked at each other in disbelief. Then the leader laughed and said, “It’s not a war robot at all. It’s just a toy made out of plastic.” Leaning over, he lifted Em One up by the neck and flung the robot down again.

“Stop!” said Jemma, “you’re hurting it.”

“I bet your daddy will buy you another,” said the hostile. Em One saw the kick coming and was able to relax its muscles before the blow landed, but the impact triggered a whole new cascade of combat subroutines. Em One’s auxiliary generator came online. Its muscles hummed with energy. Status sensors began enumerating power levels and rounds of ammunition. Em One squeezed its hands shut again and tucked its deadly arms close to its chest, wrapping its whole body around the weapons as if by doing so it could keep from releasing their violence into the world.

“Come on, man,” said one of the other hostiles uncertainly, “we’re going to get in trouble.”

An aerial strike team zoomed overhead and Em One tensed, listening for the telltale whistle of bombs or the screaming roar of missiles. The fractured carcasses of buildings loomed overhead: gaping windows and twisted steel beams. The street was filled with bodies: humans and robots, half-buried in the rubble, their mangled fragments trailing wires and blood and hydraulic fluid. War titans lumbered past, crushing vehicles and houses beneath their feet. They didn’t notice Em One, the tiny robot huddled in the ruins of an alley.

And the blood-stained rubble was only playground dirt, and the skeletal skyscrapers were exercise structures.

The squad leader took a step backward. “If you go home and squeal to your dad, you’ll wish you hadn’t,” he said. The hostiles retreated.

Em One lay curled up in the dirt for another minute until its weapon systems had powered down, while Jemma stroked its shoulders and asked if it was all right. Finally the robot sat up. “It’s okay, miss,” said Em One. “I’m undamaged.” But it set a new layer of mental diagnostics in motion, logging the malfunctions and the reflexive activation of its defensive equipment. Em One was supposed to be guarding Jemma, but what if the robot itself was a threat to her? It must urge the engineers to take the glitches more seriously.

Jemma didn’t look convinced; in fact, she was wiping away tears. “He kicked you,” she said.

Em One’s muscles were still shaking with excess energy as its generator ramped back down to the standby level. The robot considered informing Jemma that it had been shot numerous times and once survived a grazing blow from an anti-tank round; a pre-adolescent could hardly hurt it. But so far it had been careful never to tell Jemma stories about combat.

“My grandfather fought in the war,” said the young civilian in the pink dress. She was watching Em One closely. “The old war, the one before I was born. He gets like that sometimes.”

“Like what?” said Em One, confused.

“Like that,” she said, pointing at Em One’s hands, and the robot realized its fists were still tightly clenched. “The army has people who are paid to talk to you. Grandma says they’re really helpful.”

Em One tried to imagine what would happen if it walked into a VA hospital and asked to see a psychologist. “I’m a robot,” it said, relaxing its fingers. “They don’t have people like that for me.”

The air was beginning to cool as the sun approached the horizon. Em One flinched as the young civilian took its hand and ran her thumb over the rough polycarbonate of the robot’s knuckles, while Jemma continued to glare in the direction of the departed hostiles. A hawk drifted lazily overhead, leaves rustled in the wind, and a squirrel chattered at them from high in an oak tree. The exercise equipment stood vacant.

Subtle shifts in body language marked the difference between a human preparing to flee and one intending to stand her ground. Jemma’s spine straightened. Her shoulders squared back. Then she reached for Em One’s other hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home.”