Dal and Chit, of course, were off
at their day gigs with the uptown rich folks’ and just about to receive Baby
Girl’s first report. Meanwhile, Angelina threw down her pack, ran to the wall
comm, and pressed Mommy’s account. I repeat the conversation here only because
I now recognize it as being cute and enjoyable.
“Mommy, Mommy, we had cookies and
made paper mackay, and played nominoes, and I hit Brenda, and Avey’s going to
kill the dogs so I can have pudding!” She responded, “Yes,” “no,” “yes” to a
few questions from the other end of the line and then handed the ear piece to
me. I connected to my audio-in.
“AV-1 here.”
“Avey, is everything alright? Were
there dogs about?”
“Not many, four or so, but nothing
happened. Angelina is fine and we’re going to eat lunch now.”
“You’re not giving her pudding if
she hasn’t eaten any meat, are you?”
“No.”
“What is she talking about then?”
I reiterated the entire previous
conversation. Well, actually just the first few entries. She got the point.
That was Angelina’s first day at
school. I look back at it wistfully now that I can actually be wistful, or
tearful, or melancholy, or maudlin, or sentimental. I can be all those things
now. Back then I was merely instructional, and so I set about getting the kid’s
lunch at that point.
oOo
It took a few years before
Angelina’s social skills had elevated to those of a civilized human being.
Three years, innumerable time-outs, uncountable notes home to Dal and Chit,
endless nights without pudding, and regular good talkings-to that resulted in
contrite promises to “never kick Tommy in the head again.”
By third grade, Angelina’s corners were more rounded
out. She fit into her little peg snugly with only a few burrs catching every
now and then. She was well on her way to a place in society that Dal and Chit
hoped would be more comfortable than the uneasy poverty that characterized her
beginning years.
When they were first starting out,
through no fault of their own, Dal and Chit had found themselves migrating from
their home in the warm climate of Belize to America. They didn’t have a chance
to naturalize into the tight middle class, with its purchased education and
dental insurance. Throughout Angelina’s early years, they remained on the
fringes with the lower classes, where public education and services were
available— but dangerous.
Angelina was lucky. By third grade
it was apparent that her temperament had become manageable enough for her to be
taught. Her second grade teacher pronounced it in her final report card: “This
one will be going to college.”
I take pride (now that I have
pride) in knowing I helped her there. I protected her from rabies and
pedophilia on her way to and from school. I recorded her misdemeanors and
regurgitated them when prompted by school officials or Dal and Chit hoping to
get to “the bottom of this.” I helped her with her homework when needed.
The latter was most difficult.
Physically hard, in fact. Artificial intelligence, fabulous as it is, is
limited. Our processes refuse to jump circuits in order to see things from an
illogical angle, which humans can do at the drop of a hat. That, in fact, is
their strength. Their flexible logic circuits produce their canny human
understanding. Misunderstanding, actually. They don’t see the face value of
something because they often see things in an illogical way. There aren’t enough
angles a logical powerhouse (like me) can turn a statement to illuminate that
face value. Humans are always reading more into it than what is there, so they
miss the forest. We miss the trees. Sometimes the answer lies amongst the trees
and not in the forest.
Take for instance the learning of
the alphabet. Or the teaching of it, rather. When you want to teach a robot its
ABCs, you load in the symbols for the letters and a sound program with that
silly song. Escape the “and’s” and the w and tell it to memorize the sequence,
matching each bit with its symbol. Each bit being a syllable in this case,
assuming that there’s a high enough threshold on the vowels, so that the
diphthongs fly under the radar. You add in the w afterward as a special case at
position #23 and voilá, your robot can read, write, and sing its ABCs.
A kid learns the song easily, what
with “Jesus Loves Me,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Yo Mama Don’t Dance,”
imprinted onto his or her brain since the age of two. Explaining that each sound
is a letter is not so bad until they get to the elemenopee. Pee is a naughty
word to a preschooler so they spend five minutes laughing about that, or
lecturing if they are a particularly sanctimonious child. Then there’s the
explanation that elemenopee is not a single sound, even though as per the
cadence of the song, it certainly is. A lecture on syllables ensues. Finally,
after half an hour, they understand. Of course when practicing the next day,
they forget that elemenopee is not a single sound and burst into laughter (or
lecture) for ten minutes. You explain it all again. Several days later they
understand el, em, en, oh, pee as separate letters.
Diphthongs fly under the radar of
most humans, even after they know what the word means and that the letter “I”
is not simply pronounced “eye” but “ah-eye,” so you generally don’t have to
worry about the diphthongs. Things seem set…then you get to w. They understand
syllables now and throw a tantrum because “yuu” has already been “yuu-sed.”
“Not fair!” they scream. It doesn’t
make sense, and no amount of mollycoddling and apologizing will get them to
accept that dubbleyuu is in fact a single sound and therefore not dub, bull,
and yuu.
The two of you take a long and
arduous trip, perhaps the most difficult in the child’s life, but you do get
through. The song has meaning finally. Then the child must learn to write it
down.
oOo
An ebook version (pdf, mobi, lit, lrf,html) of We, Robots is available from Book View Cafe.
Published by Book View Café, Cover design by Deb Deysher (http://www.doubledmedia.net/portfolio.htm)
We, Robots A Novella by Sue Lange was originally published
in January 2007 by Aqueduct Press as Volume 16 in the Aqueduct Press
Conversation Pieces Series.
