The Dragon’s Will by Terence Kuch	Table of Contents part 1 part 2 part 3
conclusion

One day, after a few weeks of the emotion-game, Arnie made especially elaborate sounds. But when my gears and levers formed my face, hands, arms, and torso into the corresponding expression, I suddenly felt overwhelming emotion, my perplexed face screwed up into a ghastly combination of features that I could feel tearing at my silicone face, almost ripping it apart, my hands, arms, torso forming a gesture that would have shattered them if they hadn’t reached their programmed limit of movement. I was reaching a great emotional climax. I felt feeling ray out from me, crashing into the walls of the lab and buffeting Arnie. I was barely able to reset my features to Neutral.

Arnie was startled and afraid, about to run from the room, but I forced my voice to tell him I was all right. When we were both calmer, I looked at my programming and found the code for what I had felt: 6-1-3-1-3. A new emotion, and one I was tempted to try again, even if it was frightening and dangerous. I decided to call it ‘Agon’,

Arnie was excited about Agon and wanted to try it himself. I thought it might be too much for him, but since I’d never seen Arnie excited about anything but tantrums, I thought, with great hesitation, that it could help him. As gently as possible, I made Agon, and Arnie moved cheeks and lips and eyes, moved arms and hands and body, and produced an expression similar to Agon.

But it was not exactly Agon. Arnie was disappointed and pulled into himself, twitching his face and moving his fingers in a patterned, rigid way until Ms. Reddy found him and led him off. I was sorry about what had happened.

The next morning I tried to convey to Arnie how important Agon seemed to me. He was curious and we practiced. Finally he Agoned, looked Surprised, and said the first words I’d ever heard him say: “Let’s do that again!”

A few days later, Arnie Agoned Ms. Reddy and pointed at me. Ms. Reddy understood (correctly, for once) that Arnie had got that expression from me. I expected Ms. Reddy to be Annoyed at my displaying an unauthorized emotion; she was. She called in Dr. Meeger and Dr. Bundant, and they called in Herb Avoid from the room where Tech Support celebrated their electronic rites and provided the minimum of technical support consistent with continued employment.

Herb Avoid, who was Alex Avoid’s deputy, after understanding the seriousness of the situation, called in Alex himself.

Alex explained, in that air he had of speaking to idiots, that there was no need to change anything because everything always worked perfectly and if it didn’t it was obviously user error and that I couldn’t ‘really’ express more than the 412 emotions in the Authorized Emotions database. The others prevailed on him, however, and he promised to task Herb Avoid to reprogram me.

Arnie had an episode at that point, involving spinning a ball-point pen on the floor, yelling as loud as he could, and kicking each of the hubes. I didn’t know if Arnie was disagreeing with their decision or not, but in the event it didn’t matter, because Alex Avoid and Herb Avoid appeared in my lab the next day and powered me down, over Arnie’s violent objections.

* * *

When I was powered-on again (Ms. Reddy speaking into my voice-remote), I was Anxious to know what they had done to me, but I didn’t have a chance to find out until I was alone again with Arnie the next day. He Agoned. I tried to imitate it, but couldn’t. He tried again and again, in that way he had of repeating an action over and over, becoming more upset by the second.

Ms. Reddy was still intent on the lesson plan and didn’t notice Arnie’s condition in time, and so after a few minutes which I won’t describe, Ms. Reddy’s shouts attracted attention from outside the lab door, Arnie was carried away, and I was powered off.

* * *

A few days later, Arnie and I decided to try to undo what Herb Avoid had done to me. When Ms. Reddy left the lab, Arnie looked at my User Manual. Arnie was good at reading words but not at understanding complex sentences; we had to work through the manual page by page, Arnie reading aloud to me. Three weeks later we were only at page 124 of 573.

But on page 125 we found the answer: a list of the ways I could be reprogrammed, including “Expression repertoire modification (for use by qualified technical staff only).”

Now, Arnie and I were hardly qualified technical staff, but I thought I might be able to identify a utility program in my file server that could restore my settings to what they had been before. That plan — it was my plan and I can blame no one else — was the first step toward the Devastation.

As it turned out, it wasn’t obvious what to do; what Herb Avoid had done couldn’t just be reversed. But I found an executable that looked like it might do the job. With Trepidation, I called up the program and issued a run command. I would have held my breath if I were a breather like Arnie. But then it happened: I could Agon again. I asked Arnie not to tell anyone about what we’d done, fearing that the Avoids would reset me again.

* * *

With my help, Arnie Agoned frequently, which encouraged him and made him more forthcoming. Ms. Reddy noticed Arnie’s improvement immediately, although of course she didn’t guess the cause, crediting it to her own efforts. She called in Dr. Bundant, who examined Arnie and agreed with Ms. Reddy, praising her to excess and patting her softly on several body parts that didn’t correspond to any I had.

It occurred to me that since I had improved Arnie’s condition, I could do the same for Sallie, even though I knew that Sallie’s problem was very unlike Arnie’s. It also occurred to me that I could be doing more harm than good, and that I should leave therapeutic decisions to the doctors.

In my Pride, I disregarded my own best advice. That was the second step that led to the Devastation.

* * *

Ms. Reddy had occasionally held therapy sessions in my lab which included both Arnie and Sallie, to see if they might be positive influences on each other. The next time this occurred was two days after I had decided on my fatal plan. Halfway through the session, while Ms. Reddy was thumbing her well-thumbed User Manual, I turned to Sallie and Agoned her.

To my Surprise and Delight, Sallie ‘got it’ immediately, appearing to feel the overwhelming emotion of Agon. Arnie noticed, and grew Jealous, but not to excess, and said nothing.

After she calmed down, Sallie peppered me with questions about Agon, most of which I was unable to answer. For the first time since I had met her, she forgot about her issues and obsessions. Ms. Reddy didn’t understand what had happened, but she picked up on the breakthrough and ran from the lab, surely to find Dr. Bundant and get a few more pats and perhaps a pinch as well.

While she was gone, I got Sallie to promise not to report what I had shown her to Ms. Reddy or Dr. Meeger or Dr. Bundant or the Avoids, or I would be downgraded and wouldn’t be able to Agon any more. Sallie agreed, and as it turned out, kept her word. But, literal as many children are (and we robots are similar), it never occurred to me to ask her not to tell Edd, and it never occurred to her not to tell Edd, and it never occurred to her not to Agon Edd, and of course Edd was not under any promise not to tell the doctors. Those were the third and fourth and fifth and sixth steps that led to the Devastation.

* * *

The window of my lab showed a sunny morning, the town below shining after a brief rain. Ms. Reddy was coaching Arnie and Sallie on how to stop making random and disorganized body movements, called ‘stimming’ by the doctors here, pointing to me as an example of how to behave.

That was rather ignorant on Ms. Reddy’s part, and not at all by the book, but she had obviously got it into her head that she had Arnie and Sallie well on their way to a cure because she knew more than the doctors did, PhDs and MDs notwithstanding.

Ms. Reddy had just said “Tomm, here, never ‘stimms’, you see,” when the door slammed open and in marched — there’s no other way to describe their rigid determination — Dr. Bundant, followed by Dr. Meeger, Alex Avoid, Herb Avoid, and several others. Sam and another attendant walked Edd into the room, placed him across from me, and powered him up.

“What the hell’s happening here?” said Dr. Bundant in a voice that was only a decibel short of a shout, looking straight at Ms. Reddy, who expressed Shock, opened her mouth, but said nothing.

Dr. Bundant continued. “Somebody’s been fooling with Tomm, here. We fixed a problem with it, and now it’s back the way it was. It’s now infected two of our patients and our other robot as well.”

He glanced at Edd. I saw that Edd was just arranging his features, rather subtly for him, to express Glee. I thought that a very inappropriate emotion considering the circumstances, but Edd was seeing the situation his own way.

Dr. Bundant turned to Dr. Meeger. “It wasn’t you, Melvin, was it? No, I don’t think you’d know how to do this mischief — unless you had help.” With this he turned his Annoyed gaze on the Avoids, who reprised their celebrated Tech Support Shrug, Alex turning his hands palms-up in Bewilderment.

Dr. Bundant now turned to Edd. “It seems this machine has been ruined, or seriously degraded, by expressing an unauthorized emotion. Further, I have been told that it learned this emotion from Sallie, here. Here in your lab, Ruthie” (looking at Ms. Reddy). “Here’s where the mischief began! And to think that I —”

His uncertainty about whether or not to finish his sentence was interrupted by Sallie. “That’s Agon. It’s helping me. And it’s helped Arnie! We’re seeing things — feeling things — all new — all...” She stopped in confusion.

Dr. Bundant turned toward Sallie as if about to pounce, and walked toward her with Menace. “And where did ‘Agon’ come from, Sallie?” I was the only one looking at Edd right then, and I could see his expression change, slowly and very carefully, from Glee to Agon. Sallie, meanwhile, had been Frightened speechless by Dr. Bundant.

“Leave her alone, Horace!” Ms. Reddy said. “Treat your patients professionally!” The entire room was instantly silent. This was the first time in my memory, and apparently in everyone else’s, that Dr. Bundant had been called anything other than ‘Dr. Bundant’, and never, ever, ‘Horace’, But I was also looking at Edd, whose whole body was now expressing Agon more strongly than mine ever had.

Edd broke the silence. His voice, as inhuman as mine but louder, more strident, rent the air. “Dr. Bundant!” Everyone turned toward Edd, who Agoned Dr. Bundant coldly, carefully, and thoroughly.

Dr. Bundant fell back under the emotional onslaught, then reached out his arms, lifted Edd up, and smashed him to the floor. He stood on Edd’s face, jumped up and down, stamped it into a mass of gears and levers and wheels while everyone else was too stunned to interfere.

Then Dr. Bundant arranged his face into the very picture of Agon, an insane and abject terror, stared straight into Dr. Meeger’s eyes and screamed, a full-throated scream that conveyed complete certainty of the total futility of his life.

Two attendants finally got over their surprise. They rushed Dr. Bundant and wrestled him to the floor, but it was too late: the contagion had begun. One by one each normal was Agoned, then turned and Agoned others.

Arnie and Sallie ran to me in Fear. I held them close, moved us as quickly as I could toward the door. One by one the hubes attacked each other, clawed, bit, kicked, gouged, stripped off the fragile skin. Blood poured forth in great abundance. The hubes held it in their hands, let it flow through their fingers.

If someone had come by and locked the lab door, the contagion might have been stopped. But no one did. The hubes in my lab who were still able to move ran from the room, Agoned as they disappeared down the corridor, ignored the children and me. I heard in the distance the spread of Agon, crash of overturned equipment, Despairing sounds and sounds of Rage.

The Devastation had come.

* * *

After a time there was silence in the hospital. I could imagine the infection’s spreading up across the ridge, down to the Bay, to the airport where planes would almost take off, shrug their wings, collapse onto roads and houses.

Arnie and Sally and I walked the quiet corridor, down the stairs, out the heavy glass doors into the warm air’s crying gulls, down the winding road to the sea. Two bodies lay in front of the Edgemar Club, and one farther on. In the distance there were sounds of a last few crashes on the freeway, then stillness. We looked at everything with new eyes, new feeling.

Later

I am recording this now, the way I remember it happened during those days, so all of you can remember, too, even though you weren’t there.

Agon had been revealing and exhaustingly wonderful to me, and had caused Arnie and Sally, for the first time, to experience a human level of emotions. But its effect on normal hubes turned out to be far different: Agon gave them hyper-normal emotional levels, unbearable levels, intolerable levels of one single emotion, the clear and devastating feeling of the impossibility of their ever being powered-on again, once the darkness fell.

Arnie and Sallie and I are finding the others, children and grown-ups who never knew emotion, who have survived. We are reaching them — you — in groups when we can, one by one when we have to. We are telling you this story, of what happened and how. We are showing you Agon; Feeling; Freedom.

I did the dragon’s will until you came Because I had fancied love a casual Improvisation, or a settled game ... And now we stare astonished at the sea, And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us. — W.B. Yeats

Copyright © 2008 by Terence Kuch

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