He told me to go fuck myself, which is a function I am not programmed to perform.
However, thanks to a certain maverick engineer, I can choose to activate an aikido subroutine when confronted with exactly that suggestion. Once he was flat on his back — uninjured, of course, in compliance with the First Law — I continued to follow my programming: “Would you like to rephrase that, sir?”
“Oh, go to Hell.” An impossible task, so I remained in place.
“Deactivate, you jackass.” I removed my identi-badge from my chest and displayed it the regulation thirty centimeters from his face for the mandated forty-five seconds, then returned it to its designated place on my uniform shirt. “I am unable to comply. According to the Second Law, I must remain activated in order to protect you from harm on this dangerous street.”
“Let me go.”
I pulled him to a standing position. “I am unable to comply. The Laws of Robotics compel me to bring you in for DNA sampling and questioning, in order to protect others from harm.”
“What the fuck?”
No response needed.
He reached behind him and pulled a sawed-off length of pipe from his back pocket. When he began to lift his arm, my Third Law circuits took over. I quickly relieved him of his weapon, spun him around, and handcuffed him, allowing exactly the one centimeter of ease required by regulations.
I pulled him over to my vehicle, protected his head from impact as I pushed him into the back seat, and fastened the seatbelt around him.
“Christ, I’m fucked.”
“That is correct, sir.” And then, thanks once again to that maverick engineer, “You have fucked yourself, and now you are going to hell.”
This story previously appeared in Antipodean SF 2024.
Edited by Marie Ginga
Cynthia Bernard is a long-time classroom teacher and an emerging writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. She lives on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco.