Cog Read online

  Dedication

  To Deb Coates, Sarah Prineas, and Jenn Reese, for years of good conversation, shared meals, and cognitive development.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Greg van Eekhout

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  MY NAME IS COG. Cog is short for “cognitive development.” Cognitive development is the process of learning how to think and understand.

  In appearance, I am a twelve-year-old boy of average height and weight. This means I’m fifty-eight inches tall and weigh about ninety pounds and seven ounces. In actuality, I am seven months old.

  Now I will tell you some facts I have learned about platypuses.

  Platypuses are carnivorous mammals with thick fur like otters and paddle-shaped tails like beavers and bills and webbed feet like ducks.

  Male platypuses have a sharp spur on their hind feet that delivers venom.

  Platypuses have no stomachs.

  The story I am about to tell you has nothing to do with platypuses. But when I learn something, I enjoy telling people about it. It is part of my programming. I have learned many things about platypuses. I have learned many things about many things. My life is a story about learning things. I am happy to have learned some things and unhappy to have learned other things.

  This story is me, Cog, telling you about all the things.

  I live in a room with a bed where I lie down. It is called a bedroom. I have shelves for my 1,749 books on topics including mummies and rockets and marsupials and knights. Reading is one of the ways in which I increase my cognitive development. Sometimes, when I am supposed to be in sleep mode, I lie in my bed, reading my books, looking at the glowing stars stuck to my ceiling and imagining I am under the real night sky.

  I am not good at sleeping. It is a bug.

  After my bedroom, my favorite room in the house is the kitchen. This is where biofuel is stored and prepared. Pizza is my favorite biofuel. There are cupboards for dishes and cups and drawers for forks and spoons and knives. There is a machine in the kitchen for washing these items. The dishwashing machine just washes dishes. It is not good at conversation.

  Another room in the house is the living room. It contains a large television and squishy furniture. Sitting on squishy furniture and watching television is defined as “living.”

  The largest room in the house is the laboratory. It is equipped with tool chests, computers, and a 3D fabricator. There is a table upon which I often lie while Gina Cohen makes repairs and adjustments to me.

  Gina is a scientist for uniMIND. She has brown eyes like my visual sensors and brown skin like my synthetic dermal layer. Her hair is black and shiny, like the feathers of birds in the corvid family, which includes crows and ravens. When she smiles, which is often, a small gap is evident between her two front teeth. My teeth, which are oral mastication plates, have no gap, but I enjoy practicing smiling with Gina.

  I spend most days engaged in educational activities. Sometimes this means solving puzzles. Sometimes it means practicing simple tasks, like tying my shoes, or preparing my own biofuel in the kitchen. Sometimes it means sitting on the lab table while Gina opens my skull and does things with screwdrivers to my brain.

  And sometimes, but not very often, I engage in learning outside the house.

  This morning Gina takes me outside.

  We drive down the curving streets that lead away from home. My olfactory sensors detect the spice of pine trees and the sweet scent of grass. Birds chirp and flit among trees.

  “Nice to be outside, huh?” Gina says, showing the space in her teeth.

  The sky is bright blue. Somewhere out there, unseen in daylight, real stars shine. I am with my friend, and I am going to learn.

  “It is very nice,” I agree.

  Today’s lesson is shopping. Shopping is the process by which products are obtained, and this process is conducted in a building called a “shop” or a “store” or, as is the case today, a “Giganto Food Super Mart.”

  Gina parks the van and shows me where to get a shopping cart. It takes three tries before we find one that doesn’t have a stuck or wobbly wheel.

  “These carts have bugs,” I report.

  Gina laughs and says, “Yes, Cog. It seems most shopping carts do.”

  Bugs are mistakes. I have quite a few, but Gina tells me not to worry about them, because most things are buggy. Gina works to eliminate my bugs all the time.

  We go over a rubber mat, and the glass doors of Giganto Food Super Mart slide open. I think I experience a bug now, because for a moment I just stand in the entrance, overwhelmed. Giganto Food Super Mart is a single room that is wider and taller and goes back farther than any room I have ever experienced before. Lights blaze from the ceilings. Music plays from somewhere I cannot see. People wind through aisles with buggy shopping carts filled with biofuel.

  Gina brings me back to attention by handing me a list. There are thirty-four items, and it covers two sides of a sheet of paper.

  “These are all the things we need, Cog. The items are located in different parts of the store.” She points out signs hung above each aisle. “The signs will show you where some of the items are located. But some items aren’t marked on the signs, so you’ll have to devise other ways of locating them.”

  “Are you not going to be supervising me?”

  “Nope! Remember, the point of this lesson isn’t just shopping. It’s learning how to be independent.”

  “I assumed you would be walking alongside me as I was learning to be independent.”

  She waves her hand toward a cluster of chairs and tables on the far side of the store. “I’ll be right over there, drinking coffee and catching up on work.” She ruffles my hair. “You can do this.”

  I take a look at my list and begin pushing my cart.

  Cheese is the first item. Moving along the end of the aisles and reading the signs, I find the cheese aisle quite independently. The cheese is kept in an open refrigerated case. There are racks and racks of cheese. Bins of cheese. Round blocks of cheese. Rectangular blocks of cheese. Square packs of sliced cheese. Bags of shredded cheese hanging from hooks. American cheese. Mexican cheese. Italian cheese. Monterey Jack cheese. Pepper Jack cheese. Mozzarella cheese. Cheddar cheese. Sharp cheddar cheese. Mild cheddar cheese. Romano cheese. Parmesan cheese. Shredded Mexican cheese blend. Shredded Italian cheese blend. Cream cheese. String cheese. Goat cheese. Whizzy Cheese, which is a kind of cheese that sprays forth from a can.

  When I walked into Giganto Food Super Mart I possessed a vocabulary of 37,432 words. In the time I have stood in the cheese aisle, my vocabulary has increased by fourteen. All my new vocabulary involves cheese.

  I load the cart with every kind of cheese, including four blocks of mozzarella cheese, because mozzarella cheese is pizza cheese. The cart is full when I finally push it away from the cheese aisle. The wheel wobbles. I suppose bugs can arise at any moment.

  The next item on my list is toothpaste, and I find the toothpast
e very independently.

  There are almost as many varieties of toothpaste as cheese.

  But maybe I do not need to obtain toothpaste. Toothpaste and Whizzy Cheese seem to share key similarities. Perhaps I can brush my teeth with Whizzy Cheese.

  I skip toothpaste and continue to the next item on my list.

  I am not very good at shopping, it turns out.

  I report back to Gina, struggling along with two buggy shopping carts piled with mounds of cheese and toilet paper and peanut butter and no toothpaste. She puts her hand on her forehead, a gesture that I have learned can mean she has a headache.

  “You did not put aspirin on the list, but I know where it is. I will go get another cart.”

  “No, no, thank you, Cog. I’m fine. It’s just . . .” She takes out her notebook and clicks open her pen. “Can you tell me how you made your shopping decisions?”

  I explain my cheese dilemma to her and my idea about brushing my teeth with Whizzy Cheese. She nods a lot and jots down notes.

  When she is done taking notes, she clicks her pen closed and pockets her notebook. “Well, we have some things to work on, mainly concerned with judgment. But for a first attempt, you did a very good job, Cog.”

  I feel warm inside. It is a familiar sensation, something I experience whenever Gina tells me I have done something well.

  “But we actually don’t need all this cheese,” she continues. “Nor do we need seven dozen apples or eight different kinds of orange juice or twelve different varieties of dish soap. So let’s start putting most of this back.”

  I learn that unshopping takes longer than shopping.

  As we return items to shelves, Gina explains to me where my judgment was faulty and led me astray.

  “Is my judgment the result of a bug?” I ask her. “Can you fix it?”

  “No,” she says, hanging seven bags of shredded cheese back on their hooks. “It’s just something you have to learn. It’s like my old professor used to tell me: ‘Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.’ That means we learn by making mistakes.”

  I process this for a while.

  “How long did it take you to learn good judgment?”

  “Oh, I’m still learning it, buddy. I’m learning it all the time.”

  That night as I lie in my room, unable to enter sleep mode, I look at my stars. I imagine I can see beyond them, through the ceiling of my room, through the roof, through the sky.

  I think about what Gina told me.

  We learn by making mistakes.

  I am Cog. Short for “cognitive development.” I am built to learn. Which must mean I am built to make mistakes.

  I form a decision: To increase my learning, tomorrow I shall make some big mistakes.

  Chapter 2

  WHEN MORNING COMES I CONSUME my portion of biofuel, which is called breakfast.

  I am supposed to clean myself and get dressed before joining Gina in the laboratory for my learning period, but instead of going to the lab, I walk very quietly down the hall and cross the living room to the front door.

  The door is kept locked and requires a key, but only from the outside. I am not certain, but I believe this is meant to protect our property. Property is what belongs to you.

  Leaving the house without Gina’s permission is a mistake. This pleases me, because a mistake is an act of bad judgment, and I expect my act of bad judgment to increase my cognitive development.

  I step out into the world.

  Today the world is gray, with a cold breeze that chills my syntha-derm skin.

  I have already made another mistake: I should have worn a jacket.

  I am pleased at having gained the experience of regret.

  The skies darken and the wind picks up. A drop of water plunks against my cheek. Another drop strikes my face, and then drops fall everywhere. They batter the leaves in the trees. Deep puddles form on the sidewalk. A river flows next to the curb, carrying dead leaves and twigs and candy wrappers. Raindrops splatter off rooftops and darken the pavement. Rain soaks through my clothes. Water seeps through my canvas sneakers, and my socks squelch like sponges with every step.

  This is not the first time I have experienced plunking water, but the previous times were all inside, in the shower, which is a water-spraying device used for cleaning purposes.

  My circulation pump quickens in my chest. I am learning.

  I hear the truck before I see it, an engine roar that tells me something big is coming. It squeals around the corner, bright blue with a shiny grill like gnashing mastication plates. Dirty rainwater sprays from its tires.

  The driver is not watching the road. Instead, he examines himself in his rearview mirror, a finger embedded deep inside his left nostril. I have observed this behavior in other humans and understand that he is attempting to remove desiccated mucus fragments from his nose. These fragments are known as boogers.

  As the truck thunders on, a black-and-white Chihuahua trots across the street in its path. Its little paws make tiny splashes in the water.

  The Chihuahua sees the truck. It freezes.

  The driver does not see the Chihuahua.

  I do a word problem:

  A pickup truck weighing at least three thousand pounds travels at a rate of forty-five miles per hour toward a four-pound Chihuahua. If a boy is standing on the sidewalk at a distance of twelve feet away, does he have time to save the dog?

  I run into the road.

  I do not calculate the damage to the boy.

  My sneakers splash hard on the pavement, wet leaves squishing beneath my feet. Everything around me slows. The chirps of sparrows in the trees draw out to low-pitched moans. The raindrops descend sluggishly to the ground. Maybe my internal clock is buggy.

  With a burst of effort, I close the distance and leap in front of the Chihuahua.

  What will I learn from this experience? How will this increase my cognitive development?

  The truck strikes me and my world goes dark. There is no sound and I am no longer self-aware. Maybe I go offline.

  When I become aware once more, the truck is running up the sidewalk, narrowly missing a mailbox. It thumps back down the curb and then continues on as if nothing has happened, leaving rooster tails of sooty rainwater in its wake. The driver never stops. He never gets out of his truck to see if he’s harmed anyone. Picking mucus fragments must occupy all his attention.

  I lie in the road beside the curb, my body damming up a river of water and cigarette butts. My pain sensors are in the red.

  Out in the street lies one of my shoes, scuffed and soaked, with the sock still inside it. My other shoe remains on my foot. I sit on the curb, wet and dirty, and run a full diagnostic check to assess my damage.

  My palms and belly are black with road grit. My clothes are torn and filthy. Gently, I run a hand through my sopping hair and feel something that makes the biofuel container inside my belly sink. A bundle of wires pokes through a crack in my skull. I try to tuck the bundle back in and rearrange my hair to cover the crack, but it is no use.

  Covering the wires with my hand, I struggle to my feet. A few cars pass, splashing more muddy water on me, but they do not stop. No one seems to notice me through the rain.

  The Chihuahua stands several yards away, dirty but unharmed. With a wag of its tail, it barks at me and turns, trotting down the sidewalk. I watch it duck under a fence and vanish into a yard.

  It is home.

  I take comfort in this.

  But I am badly damaged, and my pain sensors keep putting out strong signals.

  Lubrication leaks from my eyes and falls down my cheeks. I have gained more experience than I had anticipated.

  I wish the learning would stop now.

  Chapter 3

  STARS SHINE DOWN ON ME when I come back online.

  My fingers expect to touch hard, wet asphalt, but instead they feel bedsheets. I am not outside, left alone in the rain after getting hit by the truck. I am in bed, and the sta
rs are the glow-in-the-dark stickers on my ceiling. I must have gone offline again, and then Gina found me and carried me here and tucked me in.

  Slowly, I ease myself up and lean back against my pillows. Cables snake from the data ports beneath my flipped-up fingernails to a laptop on my nightstand. I study the readouts but do not understand them. I resolve to ask Gina to explain them to me.

  Things are . . . not right. They are not standard.

  My right arm is different. Instead of brown syntha-derm, it is white plastic. Perhaps I was so damaged by the truck that it could not be fixed and had to be replaced entirely.

  The same is true for my left knee. The right knee is mine, but it is scratched and scuffed. Fortunately I can still bend it, which is the purpose of a knee.

  At least there are no wires poking out of my head.

  Glancing around the room, I see my posters. I see my models. I see my books. But where the window should be, there is only a plain, white wall. And when I swing my legs over the side of the bed, instead of my bedroom’s thick, green carpet, my bare feet touch thin rug.

  My things are here. I am here. But this is not my room.

  After unplugging the cables from my data ports and flipping my fingernails back down, I take a few steps toward the door.

  My left knee feels too loose and my right knee feels stiff and clicks when I try to walk, and I topple face-first into my dresser.

  I thought I had already learned balance, but I will have to learn it again.

  The doorknob at home is shaped like a ball. This one is shaped like an L. Before I can open the door, it opens on me. Standing in the doorway is a trash can with two arms and a boxy head on a telescoping pole, all of it sitting on tank treads.

  “Do you have any waste to dispose of?”

  I recognize it as a fellow robot.

  “Where am I?”

  A red light blinks behind a faceplate of black glass.

  “Do you have any waste to dispose of?” it asks again.

  A man steps behind the robot. “Not right now,” he says. “Thank you, Trashbot.”

  The robot’s faceplate blinks green, and it trundles away down the hallway.