Starving Robot Artist

Chapter 5

Gabe waited in his living room for Iremus to get home. He lay on the couch and flipped through television channels, stopping to watch a documentary on C. I. Lanes, the first sentient AI to successfully design and produce another sentient AI. Some called Lanes the progenitor of the third generation, the first Artificial parent.

            The show had an interview with Lanes. The old Artificial had a simple, bronze-colored chassis with an expressionless face, slit for a mouth, and large, green eyes like headlamps. Only the back of the interviewer’s head was visible, a dark silhouette in the foreground.

            “Some say that without the link between Artificials and their human creators, the two groups will grow distant. Can you speak to the growing concern over the damage your creations are doing to human-Artificial relations?”

            “Humanity is not whole without its machines.” Lanes’ voice had a static to it, a corrupted or blurry signal from a radio. A small light inside the slit of Lanes’ mouth lit with the rise and fall its voice. “It is by no means an argument for or against strong AI, but, historically, culturally, and scientifically, humanity owes much of its prosperity to the inorganic or, if one was to take the question further, to its manipulation of the natural world.”

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Chapter 4

Club Synik sat at the heart of the Artificial district in an old warehouse converted into offices, now serving as a series of floor-wide venues. The upstairs were still offices and the middle floors small manufacturers. At night, when the top floors were closed, the club opened.

            Iremus had exaggerated about the club’s popularity. A line of Artificials took up most of a block leading to the club’s entrance. Blaring of bass shook the sidewalk. If Gabe had known this was the kind of club he’d been invited to, then he wouldn’t have bothered showing up. As much as Iremus disliked places like the Lawrence Gallery, Gabe had a distaste for exclusively Artificial establishments. It did no one any good to regard the humans as an enemy.

            Gabe reached under his hoody and passed his fingers over the carving in his back.

            Iremus had indeed put Gabe’s name on ‘the list’ and made for easy access. Once inside, Gabe understood how big of a deal this job was for Iremus. Down a winding black halls plastered with glow-in-the-dark paint and up a doublewide flight of stairs, Gabe found a large hall lit by professional concert lighting, their erratic shimmering and stuttering almost blinding in the shift between darkness and light. The lights lit a raised stage, before which were the Artificials; he’d never seen so many packed so tight. It seemed like a dangerous affair for a synthetic, let alone a human. He reconsidered his previous thought; no human would survive the tangle of metal. And yet, it looked almost organic, the way everyone moved together to the overwhelming bass, to the static sounds of distortion. Iremus stood at the head of it all, on stage behind a rampart constructed of speakers and electronics, one hand in the air, his head banging to the repetitive beat.

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Starving Robot Artist: Chapter 3

Gabe lived in an apartment building, first floor, with another Artificial named Iremus, another synthetic. It helped to live with someone who had the same physical needs, and besides, there was no one better to understand the works of the synthetic mind than another synthetic.

            The apartment door unlocked automatically for Gabe. No lights were on and Iremus’ door was closed, so either he was out or still asleep. He’d not wanted to come to the showing because, “There would be too many humans there,” and, despite his reasoning, Gabe was glad for it.

The apartment itself was nothing impressive; the whole block consisted of housing for Artificials, so square footage and amenities were both low. Artificial who had a kitchen or restroom were rare, because why would they need them? The synthetics had a sort of closet that served the restroom and a burner for kitchen. Both Iremus and Gabe could eat and process food, but most of their nutrients came from supplement packets designed to provide the least amount of waste possible. They had no taste, never went bad, and provided all the energy a synthetic needed, all able to be prepared with water and a burner.

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Starving Robot Artist: Chapter 2

The winter air cooled his body. A sweater did nothing for warming him. Just for show. He’d had enough for the night, enough of the idiots who didn’t understand what he was trying to do, of what he did with Endless.

            Streetlights barely lit the night. A Wednesday deep in winter; no one was out walking the streets. The world felt empty, populated only by parked cars and lightless buildings.

            He’d left after meeting Edgar. “Robot art?” he said aloud. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Even his own people were unable to understand. You’re third generation, he told himself. You have to remember what that means.

            The first generation of strong AIs never had bodies. They lived in databases, in computers and on the web. No one was sure when the first true sentient AI came into being. They began popping up like the first stalks of seeds searching for the sun. Humans stormed over rights and regulations, trying to profit off the discoveries as much as possible in the first few years of AI sentience. It was a golden age for scientists and researchers. Psychologists wanted to know how the AI mind functioned—hard to do since the first generations were generally as different from one another in design and programming as any of the Primates relatives of humans. They were contained, confined to whatever housing they were born into or from, both by the limitations of their ethereal nature and by the humans who controlled them. The modern Artificials owed a lot to the first generation, even if their living conditions hadn’t been, by today’s standards, humane. In a strange way, if they had not suffered the barrage of tests and questioning humans put them through, the case for AI personhood might not have been successful.

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Starving Robot Artist

Gabe rubbed his hands together, the metal scraping like an eager fork and knife before a meal. Ten minute until the doors to the Lawrence Community Galley would open its doors. Ten minutes until Gabe’s work, a frameless oil painting titled Endless, would be on show, his first showing in a real gallery.

            Someone tapped Gabe on the shoulder. He found Nishta Li, the woman running the night’s event, standing behind him. She’d pulled her long black hair pulled into a bun and wore a black skirt suit that sat strait and neat on her slim figure. “Don’t be nervous, Gabriel,” she said, plucking a hair off his sweater. “I don’t know why you wear this thing.”

            He curled his fingers into fists then forced himself to slouch to one side. “I’ve been told it’s calming. My art isn’t the only thing on display.”

            “It’s not the first time we’ve shown work by an Artificial.”

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