The Makers
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"Hey, Aia!"
"You have nothing to blame her," Lukasz objected thoughtfully, looking at his feet. "And as for loneliness, then no one relieved us from any social or psychological burden that is boiling somewhere inside our cell ribosomes as fairly as in human ones." In the matter of loneliness, it does not matter who, no matter how and no matter how densely paid his attention to you, all that matters is how this attention settles in your soul."
He lifted his head and looked around at those seated, and then he looked at Aia:
"If there is one who is really cool in this regard, it's Benji. He chose to have a relationship with you, although he has quite a different chemistry..."
14. 2329th year. Benji.
From the simultaneous planning, accounting and decision-making the android was distracted by the call from the outside.
He activated the external video camera and saw three visitors beyond the hatchway: a girl in a coat of bright green fleece, a skinny guy with four cameras on his shoulder and a man in a expensive leather coat.
If Benji didn't disdain to watch the news on a daily basis, he would be able to recognize these two: the girl was Selin Juti, the chief of the evening news "France 24", and the man in the leather coat was the director of operations of Orly named Aler Leroy.
"Hello, Benji," the girl smiled charmingly, staring straight into the camera under the friendly green eye. "France 24. We would like to interview you."
***
"Hello, dear audience! With you the evening news and Selin Juti. Today we are at the Paris airport Orly on a visit to the most famous representative of the glorious family AI-DII, Benji Shabra. How are you, monsieur Shabra?"
"I'm a machine, I never get depressed," Benji replied, looking at his companion.
They sat in the passenger gondola. The android sat in the pilot's seat, turning with his back to the dashboard and facing the passenger room, Selin, blatantly putting one long leg on the other - in the front passenger seat, against the backdrop of a hanging compensatory suit on the far wall.
"Great," she nodded. "Tell me, Benji, how do you think: where does human bad mood come from?"
"People don't always correctly interpret what is happening to them and don't always correctly react to it," the android evasively replied. "And often it happens not because the situation so requires, but because it is so customary and understandable."
"So here's the deal..." she seemed embarrassed. "What does it mean to correctly interpret what is happening?"
"Without comparing it with the expected. With keeping the expected and obvious in different folders," - Benji smiled broadly: first to her, and then to the skinny boy behind the frontal holocamera.
His smile was so open and charming that Selin had no choice but to smile back:
"And this distinguishes the machine from human?"
"I think the fundamental constructive difference is that your upbringing is much more imperfect than our installation. Imperfect because it takes much more time, and in it can be broken an unscheduled gaps, something undesirable, but giving a short-term positive effect."
"Well, that sounds about right." Selin agreed. "And what do you think about emotions? Do they help people or interfere?"
"Emotions are tools. And, like any tool, they need to be properly used. People are strange creatures. None of you going to fly by a hammer or to hammer nails by airplane, but a very few of humans are embarrassed by the use an inappropriate emotions."
"But we, humans, don't so much use emotions as we experience them."
"Which is not always rational," Benji said. "Being exposed, any emotion may be appropriate under some circumstances and completely vain in others."
In general, yes, his companion nodded and went on, leaning slightly toward Benji and squinting up her huge blue eyes:
"Monsieur Shabra, you are familiar with the natural selection idea of monsieur Charles Darwin?"
"Yes," Benji said.
"And how do you see the joint existence in the future of your family and humanity from the point of view of his theory?"
Benji slightly loosed his voice membranes - so that his voice sounded lower and more velvety - and said with a lovely baritone:
"Humans like metaphors, and I'll tell you a metaphor: the DII family and humanity are just different kinds of trees in the same forest. And as for my family, my family is those who need me, and not those who wear the same mark on their neck."
"Do you renounce the family of machines?"
"Not really," the android shook his head. "I'm just getting a new family. By my own choice."
"Wow!" Selin said in surprise. "And whom did you choose?"
"I'm not very different from a human in that regard." Benji shrugged. "I like those who understand me."
"Many people believe that only a person can know about another person. And how do you thought: maybe only another machine could understand the machine?"
Benji turned his silvery palms up on his lap, looked at the star shaped connectors covering them and temporarily drowned through the highmem in Aia's quiet voice - "You have beautiful fingers, Benji..."
"I think understanding is the result not so much of similarity as of interest," he said. "You, people, more interested in each other than machines, such your interest is the basis for the survival of the species. But if anyone of machines had had such a program that requires an indispensable repetition of themselves in another, it definitely would be identified as a malicious code."
"So you equate love with virulence?" Selin asked, leaning back in her passenger seat and watching Benji while he was staring at his metal hands.