The two shapes sit bolt upright and start jabbering.
I can’t understand a word they say.
That’s not right. I can understand every major language known to mankind, and can recognise all of the others well enough to work out what language is being spoken, at least. How can these creatures be speaking in a completely unknown language?
(Language changes a lot in 3,000 years.)
(Shut up.)
For that matter, what are these creatures? They’re not human, although they’re mostly human-shaped, if a bit small. Bipedal, bilateral symmetry, two eyes, a nose and a mouth... but they’re not human. They’re not even the same: one has long ears, the other has short pointed ears. They look like... well, like cartoon animals. An anthropomorphic dog and rabbit. They’re even wearing rudimentary clothes.
My power circuit flares and drops out. The water stops boiling, the whistle stops piping, the light stops glowing, all in the same fraction of a second. I scramble to work out what’s happened (I’m lucky my power circuit works at all after 3,000 years) but I’m getting no help from my Imperatives, and without their driving force I can’t operate my effector fields or microwave. They’ve just dropped away. I can still feel them, itching at the back of my mind, but I don’t think I could coax them out again if I tried. Not yet, anyway.
A light flares, but it’s not me this time. The pale orange flickering looks like a candle—a decorative wax candle, like you’d use at a fancy dinner party.
What are these creatures? They’re jabbering away in their strange language again. But it is a language, not the wordless yammer of animals. I can make out words, syntax, structure, repetition. They’re talking to each other. Are they genetically engineered, uplifted animals? They’re bigger than dogs and rabbits should be, and they can stand upright, and they can talk. They can light candles.
If I had my effectors I could scan them, but my Imperatives are exhausted, quiet, and unwilling to help.
The dog-creature taps the valve spout and it rattles. I can’t do anything except watch. If they decide to attack me, what can I do?
Nothing.
They carry on talking for a while, then settle down again. They pinch out the candle, and carry on their strange conversation. It doesn’t take long for snoring noises to come from their corner.
✥
My Imperatives start to itch again, and I wonder what to do.
When it comes down to it, I’m just a kettle. Oh, all right, I’m a top-of-the-range kettle with manipulator forcefields that even allow me to set a table and pour the tea; I have an embedded 1.0 human-equivalent AI capable of functioning as a kitchen central control system, even (at a push) capable of taking command of the entire cybernetic network of a standard family dwelling as a butler or majordomo if necessary, but still, I’m a kettle. My intellectual substrate (including primary stasis module, static storage, and empty empty empty secondary stasis module) is built into the base and handle of a small pot used for boiling water.
Thinking about boiling water has excited my Imperatives again. Stupid things. It doesn’t take much to set them off.
I need more information. I still don’t know where I am, or how long it’s been since I fell asleep, or what these creatures are. If I’m to work out what they’re saying, I’m going to need a lot more exposure to their speech.
I extend a quick query to my speech centre, but it’s dead. Talking to them directly is out of the question.
It’s going to come down to my Imperatives again, I think. I open my defences a crack once more, and start the water boiling process. While the effectors are activated and busy gathering water vapour, I prod the fields into doing a little investigation of my companions.
Definitely a dog and a rabbit. Definitely not what I remember dogs and rabbits to look like, but still, recognisably a dog and a rabbit despite their larger brains and bipedal locomotion. Almost certainly 1.0 human-equivalent, like me.
Their belongings are primitively-made. Hand-made, even. The fabrics are woven on machines, though, and fastenings are made of high-quality steel. Possibly industrial revolution-level technology.
Uh-oh. There’s something not right with my Imperatives. The water has started to boil, but while I’ve been distracted using the effectors to scan the animal-people, they’ve run wild.
I can feel my kettle body rattling on its stand (What am I sitting on? Some sort of wood-burning stove?) with the force of the boiling water. The whistle is screaming with escaping steam. I try to calm the Imperatives down, try to shut down the microwave emitter, but as usual my opinion counts for nothing.
I’ve startled the creatures. They’re jabbering away again, and I try to take a note of what they’re saying but the noise of the whistle and my body clattering away on the stove makes it difficult to hear.
I can’t stop. I can’t stop. My Imperatives have been denied for too long and they’ve gone a bit potty.
The dog-creature leaps at me, a blanket wrapped around its hand (paw?) and grabs me from the stove. With the other hand (paw?) it yanks the shack door open, and I go sailing through the air, tumbling over and over and over...
✥
I’m in a forest.
I’m upside-down, up to my spout in leaves.
At least my stupid Imperatives have quietened down again. You know, I never really agreed with the idea of implanting Imperatives in household AIs. Oh, I know the rationale—if you’re going to have 1.0 human-equivalent intelligences working in homes and factories and offices, intelligences that have the same rights as human beings, but don’t have the same needs for shelter and sustenance and entertainment, how do you motivate them? Simple. You give them compulsions (sorry, Imperatives) that they can’t ignore. As a kettle (and kitchen command-and-control centre) my Imperatives revolve around making tea. I’m never happier than when someone asks for a cuppa and I can make it for them.
I know, it’s completely artificial, but just because I can see the strings doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the puppet show.
Take for example some basic human drive like hunger. When you’re hungry, you eat. You don’t have to eat as soon as you feel hungry, but as time goes on your hunger will grow until it becomes pretty damn imperative (see what I did there?) that you give in. Once you’ve eaten, the hunger goes away for a while, and you feel the satisfaction of having fulfilled your need. If that’s not exactly how it is, forgive me—I’ve never been hungry myself.
Imagine being implanted with a sort of hunger that prompted you to do a good job at work, or school, or to avoid procrastination, or turn in daily reports, rather than just stuff your facial orifice full of dead organic matter. (Sorry, as a kitchen appliance I’ve seen more than enough eating, and it’s not a pretty sight.) Imagine you had imperatives that prompted you to be a more productive member of society.
Whole swathes of my functionality don’t even operate unless it’s in the service of my Imperatives. My effectors and microwaves, for a start. It’s always been part of the reward system—I’m rewarded for using my abilities in the service of my design by being allowed to use my abilities (I know, it’s a bit circular). There are loopholes, though. Most of us have worked out that you can use your advanced features for just about anything as long as they’ve initially been triggered by the Imperatives. I never found out if this was a design flaw, or a loophole deliberately left by the designers to make us feel smug when we found it and allow us some illusion of free will... They are (were) devious people, on the whole.
I try to look around, but I’m hampered by being upside-down. My base has the same photoreactive pigment as the rest of me, but I’m not getting anything from it. The pigment is nearly indestructible, so... it must be blackened from being put on that wood-burning stove. At some point before I managed to wake up, I’ve been scavenged and used as a kettle. Yes, I know, I am a kettle, but I’m a sophisticated piece of technology. I’ve been filled with water and stuck on a primitive heat-source.
I tell you what, I bet I wasn’t a very good primitive kettle. My insulation is pretty effective, just as good at keeping heat out as keeping it inside, so I’m sure I took a long time to warm up when stuck on the stove. Serves them right. The indignity of it all!
So my bottom’s all charred, and I can’t see out of it. I need to flip myself the right way up. If I had full access to my effectors, this would be easy, but my Imperatives are staying quiet again. You can never count on an irrational compulsion when you need one.
I try thinking about making tea. About pouring hot (not boiling) water over black curls of dragon tea and watching the water infuse with the rich earthy flavour... My effectors spring into life and I flip myself quickly upright before pushing my Imperatives back down again.
That’s better. I can see again.
