Free How It Ends: Part 1 - The Evaluation by Scott C Lyerly Page A

and leave you to your work.”
    The robot twisted the doorknob in his gloved
metallic hand. It swung open silently. Sidney blessed the wave of
cool air that washed into the room and over him. The robot hovered
out the door.
    “Dr. Kilgore?”
    “Yes, Dr. Hermann?”
    “I appreciate your understanding.”
    The robot shook its head. Another programmed
response. And this one was a reaction to a statement the robot
obviously found false. How amazingly complex.
    “I do not understand as you suggest it,” it
said. “This is an emotional response that is based in compassion
and empathy. I have neither of these qualities. I go merely to
relieve you of my presence. Since I make you uncomfortable I am
concerned that my behavioral inhibiting programming could trigger
and shut me down.”
    With that it left without looking back.
    Sidney watched Kilgore go. His heart beat
even faster than when the robot was in the room. He may have just
witnessed the first step in artificial intelligence evolution. A
being programmed without emotions but with the concept of
self-preservation. Did the robot just act in order to save
itself?

Chapter Six
    Three weeks to complete the collation of
notes and data and technical descriptions and other analysis. Two
more weeks to research additional items in library texts. Four
weeks worth of writing. Another two days to format the report. Then
submit to Denlas-Kaptek for their review.
    Sidney had met with Anita several times over
the course of the week while they worked through the meat of the
report, shaping the raw data into something usable, something
readable. She spent weeks buried in the library stacks cultivating
material for the report. They huddled into his smallish office and
spread their papers out along his desk and on the floor. They hung
schematics on the walls with tape. The door was always closed. When
he left for the day he locked the office door and double-checked
that he had actually locked it.
    Her eyes wandered over page after page. Each
one said CONFIDENTIAL at the top. Sidney asked her if she
understood what that meant. She said she wasn’t an idiot. He
countered that he didn’t mean the word. He meant the responsibility
of viewing them. As easily as he had handed them to her to read, he
could just as easily take them away. She might never see such
confidential documents again. She quickly said she understood and
they never talked about it again.
    Sidney held the finished product in his
hand, a smartly-bound collection of papers one hundred fifty pages
thick. He couldn’t keep the smile from spreading over his face. He
looked across his cluttered desk at Anita, who was smiling in
return.
    “Want to take a look at it?” he asked.
    “Sure do.”
    He handed it across the desk and Anita took
it carefully, like an ancient artifact from a bygone age. She
opened it, careful not to break the crisp binding. She thumbed
through the pages.
    “I really couldn’t have done this without
your help,” Sidney said. “It would have taken me forever to cull
through all the academic research. That sort of thing is not my
strong suit.”
    He looked at her.
    “Thank you. I mean that.”
    Anita wasn’t listening. Her brow was pulled
into a furrow. A strange look was on her face.
    “Is something wrong?” he asked.
    “My name isn’t on it as an author.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    “Uh, shouldn’t it be?”
    “Well, no,” Sidney said. Almost sheepish,
embarrassed. “You’re listed as the research assistant.”
    “I wrote half the material in this
thing.”
    “I understand that—”
    “You wouldn’t have gotten half the quality
of research if you’d done it yourself,” she cut him off.
    “I realize that—”
    “And the best I get is ‘research
assistant’?”
    Her voice was rising even as her body
remained motionless. Sidney could tell her muscles were tightening.
Like a snake, coiling.
    “That’s kind of a standard credit people in
your position get.”
    “People in my