Nannybot1000A Part 5a...

[FembotsInCharge3]

The INGA Nannybot was working out great. Ted and I had designed and built her as the prototype of a new series of high-end, AI-operated family service robots, she was the best we'd ever built in almost every aspect of her design, implementation, and operation. From her human-flexible body and artificial silvery nanotech 'skin' to her human-equivalent AI core to her nearly inexhaustible power supply, she was practically a work of art!

When we'd introduced her to our four kids, who were 10, 12, 14, and 17 at the time, they'd had their doubts about the idea of having a robot supervising them when Ted and I weren't around. With us as parents, they'd grown up around simpler robots, it wasn't the machines themselves they were uncomfortable with, but they were used to giving orders to machines, under Ted and my supervision, not having machines in charge of them. It made very little difference, though, because they didn't get a vote in the matter!

I have to admit I got a kick out of the looks on their faces the first time they saw INGA. We'd clad the robot in a nanny's uniform, which consisted of a black knee-length skirt, with a white ruffle under it, a black sleeveless top, and practical black slippers that she wore outdoors. On her metallic-gold hair was a matching cap, she looked the ideal of a nanny, if one's ideal of a nanny was a statuesque six foot tall silver-skinned female robot!

At first, we didn't really leave INGA in charge, whenever Ted and I were not present she was monitored by an advanced surveillance system we'd installed in the house, that led us monitor every room in the house at any time, to make sure everything was working as should be, and any time we weren't watching directly was recorded for later review.

The robot did show a tiny few glitches, all of them minor, but the AI's neural net learned at a geometric rate, within a few weeks of starting, INGA was performing as well or better than any human nanny could be expected to perform, and the kids had learned that it was best not to cross her, both because Ted and I insisted on backing her decisions, and because she proved quite capable of enforcing her own decisions, just as I'd set up her programming to be able to do.

I was delighted, the recorded data was adding up to prove that the project was viable, even Dan was saying that he thought we'd be able to use this record as proof of concept enough to overcome the doubts of some of the other board members.

It was during a long holiday weekend that the big surprise happened. The CSR labs were closed for the holidays, and Ted and I were home for the Labor Day weekend, which had turned out to be a dreary, rainy period that had everybody pretty much housebound when we had all been planning on a picnic. The weather forecasts had been calling for warm and sunny, and come the day it was cloudy and drizzling.

I guess I was in kind of a bad mood, I'm an energetic person by nature, I don't deal all that well with boredom, and I was kind of bored that day. I'd gotten into snappish arguments with Ted and Brad and Maria, I was clicking through the hundreds of holovision channels and finding nothing worth watching, and I was really annoyed about the weather and the way our picnic plans had gone sour.

It also seemed kind of hot to me in the living room, at one point I got up to check the thermostat and discovered that they had indeed been turned up by several degrees, the glowing yellow digits on the display told me as much. I dialed it down, and went to the kitchen for a snack, and returned to try again to find something worth watching on the HV.

After a moment I found an old romantic movie from the late teens, one of the first movies to star Lindsey Lohan in her thirties after her big comeback, and I remembered liking it. I was just settling into my recline and getting comfortable, munching on my roast turkey sandwich and relishing the taste of the hot mustard, when I realized I had started to sweat again.

I checked, and sure enough somebody had turned the thermostat back up. I turned it down again, only to see the digits go right back up almost the moment I took my fingers off the keypad. I knew what that meant, of course, somebody was using one of the other control pads elsewhere in the house, and I had an idea who it had to be.

Sure enough, I found my daughter Staci, who was 14 then, in the kitchen, and she had just altered the temp again. Staci is a bit cold-natured, takes after a her father, and she and I, both a little frazzled from the rain and the frustrating day, started to snap at each other, and I'm afraid I lost my temper and used some language that a well-bred grown woman should not use, especially not in front of her teenaged daughter!

It was then that I felt a pair of warm-but-metallic fingers catch my ear, and heard a family, sternly sweet artificial voice say, "JANET! That will be enough of that kind of language!"

TO BE CONTINUED...

[FembotsInCharge3]

What followed seemed to happen so fast that by the time I quite realized it was happening, it was too late to stop it! INGA had grabbed my by the ear, just as she would have a little kid under the same circumstances, and was dragging me toward the bathroom with gentle, but utterly irresistible, force. INGA was not superhumanly strong, but she was about as strong as the very strongest human males. I didn't have a chance of resisting her pull!

Moments later, with me still sputtering in shock at this development, we were standing in front of the sink in the downstairs bathroom, and INGA had picked up a bar of soap, and right there and then my robotic creation proceeded to wash my mouth out with that ghastly-tasting soap bar, as if I were just one more of her charges being dealt with for having a foul mouth!

Where I was sputtering before in shock, now I was gasping and sputtering at the horrible taste of soap, something I had not experienced since I was really a little girl, it had been a favorite of my mother for dealing with potty mouthed kids. But now I was tasting it again at age 39!

"Janet," INGA said firmly to me, as I fumed helplessly, a soapy film in my mouth, "in this house, well-bred members of this family simply do not speak to other members of the family that way! It is uncivilized, immature, and unacceptable!"

I was in shock, for some reason my nannybot had suddenly started treating me as if I were one of her charges! i was too stunned to quite process the whole situation, and my concentration was not helped by the horrible lingering taste of soap in my mouth!

INGA lectured me rather severely, in that sternly-sweet voice I had worked so hard to design and program, and then she finished by informing me that I was confined to my bedroom for the next hour!

By now I had gotten over my shock enough to protest, but it did me no good, INGA caught me by the ear again, and marched me up the stairs to the master bedroom, and sat me firmly on the bed, shutting the door behind her as she left with a final admonition to think about my behavior!

What the Hell?! I remember thinking in stunned amazement. What kind of malfunction could cause a behavior error like that?!

I decided that there was nothing to be gained by just sitting there in shock, but just as I was out the door and heading down the hall, I saw INGA reappear at the top of the stairs, my husband Ted in tow by the ear, just as I had been a few minutes earlier!

My mouth fell open, and I almost giggled because the site was so funny, my big, strong husband being pulled along by our own robot with a hand to his ear, but as her glowing green eyes fell on me I heard her snap, in her impossibly smooth voice, "JANET! What are you doing out of your room, it's only been 12 minutes!"

I gasped and started to protest, but somehow I couldn't find my voice. It was all the fault of _her_ voice, it perfectly captured the tone of an aggrieved authority figure, every disappointed, angry mother, every grade school teacher catching a student into mischief, it was all those rolled into one, and it cut right past my defenses, for an instant I was a naughty little girl again, and a moment later INGA had put Ted in our bedroom with me and informed me that we were both confined there for the rest of the afternoon!

I understood why her voice was so effective, I'd spent weeks carefully calculating the tones, programming the AI to blend them to produce exactly that psychological effect, it had been a lot of work and I'd had to really sweat to make the program operate just so...and now my own work had just made mincemeat of my will power, I had done a good enough job that it even worked on me!

I heard the click of the door locking as INGA shut the door this time.

[FembotsInCharge3]

As Ted and I stared at the door, I asked him, "What happened with you?"

"I was working to adjust one of the servant 'bots," my husband said, still sounding stunned, "and INGA pointed out that I was violating the safety regulations since I wasn't wearing insulated gloves. I mean yeah, but it was just a routine adjustment, and when she told me I had to, and I mean she said I had to, either stop what I was doing or put on the gloves.

"I thought it was some kind of glitch, and started to ignore it, and the next thing I knew she had marched me up here by force, lecturing me every step of the way about the safety protocols for working on machinery!"

I sighed, and told Ted of my own experience with our suddenly bossy creation. When I mentioned that our robotic masterpiece had actually washed out my mouth with soap, as if I were a little girl, I could tell he was torn between amazement and amusement.

I couldn't really entirely blame him, as I thought about what I must have looked like while INGA was soaping me, I almost had to giggle myself. But it was still embarrassing and bizarre!

"Well, we'd better get this taken care of," Ted said. "Let's go reset INGA and try and figure out what's happened to he-ah, I mean it."

I shrugged and nodded. As my mate and I started to do it, though, we discovered to our dismay that the door would not unlock! Ted pressed his finger to the print-reader repeatedly, getting no response. I tried it myself, and the door remained stubbornly shut.

"Of course," I groaned, as the explanation hit me. "INGA has override control over the electronic locks, remember? So she can enforce it if she puts one of the kids in their rooms! I never stopped to think about putting in an exception for ours, she's overridden the button! We're stuck in here until she lets us out!"

I collapsed on the bed, wondering how we'd managed to get ourselves so completely trapped into the working of a malfunctioning robotic logic loop! I mean, Ted and I are the best of the best, and here we were, locked into our own bedroom by an unruly robot we'd built!

We debated calling out for help, my pocket-com was lying on the table in the living room, but I assumed Ted had his.

"Nope," he laughed ruefully. "INGA took it away from me when she confined me to the bedroom! She said I wasn't to use any of the electronics, I'm 'being punished'."

"Hmm...I wonder if..."

I got up off the bed and padded over to the computer terminal in the corner, and sure enough, it was dead. INGA had disabled it. It was one of the standard punishments for naughty kids in her programmed repertoire, actually, confining the unruly brat in a bedroom with nothing to do but sit and think. I'd programmed and installed the software and hardware to let INGA do this myself. I'd just never figured on being one of the brats in question until now!

We spent an hour or so trying to guess what had gone wrong in INGA's AI to produce this weird result, but with no instruments and data to work with, it was mostly wasted time.

(It probably sounds as if we were remarkably calm, but really, INGA wasn't malfunctioning all that much, she was doing precisely what she was built to do, in fact, just doing it to the wrong people. I was sure it wasn't a major problem, just an annoying and weird glitch.)

After about an hour of fruitless speculation, we lay there bored, we had no paper books and the computer wasn't working, the holovision set wasn't working, no radio, just nothing. But it was about then that we reminded ourselves we could always entertain ourselves another way.

In fact, for some reason I felt remarkably horny, if I must be so brazen as to say it, and when I began to nibble at Ted's ear playfully he reacted fast, apparently he was turned on too! We didn't worry too much about why we were both in the mood just then, it was too much fun to just go with the flow.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[FembotsInCharge3]

"You have got to be kidding, Dan!" I said in exasperation, as our Dan laid out the situation for Ted and me. "The Board can't possibly be serious!!"

"I agree," my husband said, "this is probably the most ridiculous thing I'v ever heard!"

"For what it's worth," Dan said soothingly, "I agree with you. This is too much, you've proven your point already as far as I'm concerned.

"The trouble is," Dan went on, as the three of us sat in his office at the CSR Building, "is that the rest of the Board isn't buying it."

It was about a month after the incident where the INGA unit had confined us to our bedrooms, and that incident was having some repercussions. On one level, Ted and I saw it as being our vindication, after all, the shakedown had gone well enough that on the one instance where the IGNA had glitched, misinterpreting her instructions, it had been no more than a nuisance. Once that embarrassing afternoon had passed, correcting the tiny problem in the robot's command buffer and priority queue had taken less than ten minutes.

After that, the machine had passed with flying colors, doing exactly what we'd built it to do, and doing it well. We were so sure of ourselves that we'd scheduled a celebratory dinner, only to have Dan tell us that that majority of the Board had taken a different view of the situation, and equally importantly, so had some of the representatives of the Robotics Safety Organization.

The RSO was a semi-governmental watchdog group, charged with making sure that no truly dangerous robots were accidentally loosed on the public. It had been founded as a compromise between the robotics industry and the nervous nellies among the general public, the people who thought ever robot was a potential Frankenstein.

(That's how bright I consider some of them, they don't he realize that the name 'Frankenstein' refers to the creator in the story, not the created monster.)

The RSO had representatives of the industry, government, private organizations, and even ethicists and clergy on its central board, its representatives were charged with making sure that robots were both useful and reasonably safe to use. Every new robotics project had to pass must with the RSO, and they had a government-backed veto power that could stop any project in its tracks. It could be appealed, but it took a long time, a lot of money, and a robotics project with the reputation of having been vetoed by the RSO was often doomed even if the veto was lifted, just from public opinion.

They knew that a big, bad screwup could put the whole industry out of business, it wouldn't take many super-lawsuits to sink the most promising new industry in 50 years. They took their responsibilities to both the industry and the public seriously, if the RSO didn't sign off on our Nannybot...well, then there wasn't going to be a Nannybot project, and that was that.

"You see," Dan was going on, "the Nannybots are intended to supervise children, and teens, and that makes the risk level higher, the potential lawsuits bigger, and the RSO more nervous about both the moral and practical implications. Both the Board and the RSO want more assurance of the INGA's reliability, the judgement of its AI, everything."

"What more do they want?!" Ted said in frustration, waving folders full of copies of the test results. "We've run every test known, we've created new tests, we even field-tested the thing with our own kids! If that's not enough, what is? I mean if we're confident enough to trust it with our kids, what more proof can we offer?!"

Dan bit his lip. I suddenly realized that Dan, ever-calm, responsible Dan Drew, was nervous about something, and that in turn made me nervous. He was almost always calm and cheery, even when things weren't going well, if he was nervous that meant he'd been understating the problem. It probably meant that the RSO and the Board weren't just uncertain.

It probably meant, I realized with a sinking sensation, that he thought it was a lost cause, that the decision had already been made. When I suggested as much, he nodded sadly.

"I'm afraid that's probably true, Jan. Oh, nothing's been formally decided yet, you understand. But my opinion, from canvassing the Board and the RSO people, is that the strong trend is for stopping it. I think the Board will try to get the RSO to veto, to avoid any flack, and the RSO wants the Board to pull the plug so they don't have to use their veto and take the flack...but the outcome is the same either way. Unless..."

"Unless...?" Ted asked, as puzzled as I was by Dan's uncharacteristic hesitancy.

"I hate to suggest it," Dan told us. "In fact, I'm almost embarrassed to mention this, but there was one more test that was suggested, and I think, I just think, I can't be sure, that it might be enough to sway the RSO and the Board if it went well."

"Why didn't you say so to start with?" I demanded. "What do they want? How soon can we get started on it, and what does it require?!"

"That's just it," Dan said. "It's an extension of what you've already done. As you said, you trusted your kids with the INGA, or rather the INGA with your kids...but under your supervision."

"So?" I demanded.

"Would you trust the INGA with your kids, and yourselves?"

I blinked in confusion.

TO BE CONTINUED...