Three Laws Lethal Read online

  THREE

  LAWS

  LETHAL

  THREE

  LAWS

  LETHAL

  DAVID WALTON

  Published 2019 by Pyr®

  Three Laws Lethal. Copyright © 2019 by David Walton. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover image © Lonely/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

  Cover design © Start Science Fiction

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Inquiries should be addressed to

  Start Science Fiction

  101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Suite 3705

  Jersey City, New Jersey 07302

  Phone: 212-620-5700 www.pyrsf.com

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  ISBN: 978-1-63388-560-8 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-63388-561-5 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Quotes from The Name of the Wind, ©2007 by Patrick Rothfuss, and The Wise Man’s Fear, ©2011 by Patrick Rothfuss, used by permission of the author. All Rights Reserved.

  Quotes from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, ©2011 by Catherynne Valente, and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, ©2011 by Catherynne Valente, used by permission of the author. All Rights Reserved.

  Quotes from Dune, ©1965 by Frank Herbert, used by permission of the author’s estate. All Rights Reserved.

  The Three Laws of Robotics, ©1942 by Isaac Asimov,used by permission of the author’s estate. All Rights Reserved.

  To Caleb

  They say engineers love to take things apart

  and put them back together again.

  You’re halfway there.

  “That the time will come when the machines will

  hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants

  is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can

  for a moment question.”

  SAMUEL BUTLER, 1863

  PROLOGUE

  Annabelle Brighton checked her phone, trying to ignore the twins, who were bickering over nothing in the back seat as usual. She browsed her social media feeds, taking her eyes from the road despite the tense feeling in her shoulders. It still freaked her out a little not to have her hands on a steering wheel, even though it had been two months since they took the plunge and bought a fully automated Mercedes.

  “It’s safer,” Brad had told her. “I don’t want you trusting your life to your own reflexes.”

  She could have taken that personally, but she liked the freedom to read while on the road, or catch up on her messages, or watch one of the home remodeling shows she liked. With Hailey and Hannah turning thirteen next month, it seemed she spent half her life in the car these days, ferrying them to violin lessons, soccer games, ballet recitals, swimming meets, and increasingly, to the mall to hang out with their friends. She wondered what they did there, a gaggle of them just standing around or migrating from store to store. She worried about drugs, and boys, and about losing the influence she had on their choices.

  “Mom, she took my book,” Hailey said.

  Hannah gasped in pretended indignation. “You were done with it!”

  “It’s mine. I didn’t say you could read it.”

  Outside, rain pelted the road, turning the other cars into blurry streaks beyond the wet windows. The Mercedes hit a puddle, the rough sound vibrating through the car, but its steering adjusted smoothly, barely slowing down. They flew along the left lane at eighty miles an hour, a legal speed in the specially marked autocar-only lanes. A miserable-looking motorcyclist rode in the next lane over, his shoulders hunched and his leather jacket streaming with water. His gray beard and full sleeve tattoo might have looked impressive in other circumstances, but at the moment, he just looked like a drowned rat. Annabelle smiled. There was always someone having a worse day than you were.

  “Mom!” Hailey’s voice rose an octave. Annabelle looked back at her, ready to scold her for shrieking, until she saw the terror in her face. Hailey and Hannah both stared, their eyes wide, their hands raised to protect themselves. Annabelle whirled to see a huge tree falling across the road toward them. It struck the asphalt in front of their car, a snarl of wet branches glaring white in the headlights.

  She barely had time to think before the car reacted, swerving with precision, independent brakes on each wheel applying just the right pressure to slow the car but avoid skidding in the rain. As Annabelle’s right foot lunged forward by reflex, the Mercedes danced around the fallen tree as if by magic, changing direction with the suddenness of a bird in flight. She had just enough time to Marvel that they had missed the tree entirely, when the car hit something with a sickening crunch, throwing her forward. She screamed as an airbag exploded into her face and the windshield shattered, raining pebbled glass into the car. They spun, the world whipping around her with the screech of scraping metal, until they finally ground to a halt.

  Rain battered Annabelle through the broken windshield. Hailey and Hannah were screaming, but the sound barely penetrated the ringing in her ears. Eventually, the noise in her head subsided. She pawed at the seat belt release and finally found the button. The twins, still panicked, scrambled out of the car, and she followed them. The rain drenched her clothes instantly.

  Columns of headlights blinded her. She shielded her eyes and looked at the Mercedes, which, except for the windshield, seemed surprisingly undamaged. Beyond it lay a twisted piece of metal and tires that she only belatedly identified as a motorcycle. Its frame was bent, its front wheel mangled, its headlight smashed. And further back, another shape, also twisted unnaturally. She cried out and ran toward it, but stopped when she saw the blood, the torn neck, the empty helmet lying several yards away.

  “Don’t look,” she told her girls, whose eyes had gone wide. She drew them both to her, and for once, they didn’t push away. She led them to the side of the road, where they stood in the rain and waited for the emergency vehicles to arrive.

  She gave her story to the police in a daze, and barely registered their responses. She couldn’t help thinking: the car did this on purpose. It would have known the motorcycle was there. Its sensors would have registered its location, speed, direction. It would have taken into account the barrier to their left, the fallen limb, the time available to brake or steer. In that split second, it had plotted all the possible courses and had chosen the route that would minimize the danger. To them, at least. Not to the motorcyclist.

  Had she been behind the wheel, she probably would have plowed into the tree limb, maybe killing all three of them. The Mercedes had the time and skill to plot a different course, and had chosen to sacrifice a man’s life to save theirs. She tried to feel sorry about that, but she couldn’t. Her daughters were worth more to her than a thousand strangers. All she felt was a profound sense of relief. But by what right had the car’s algorithms chosen their lives over his?

  When Brad finally came to pick them up, the rain had stopped. He leaped from the car, worried and shaken. Annabelle threw her arms around his neck, reveling in the solidity of him, the familiar reality. “We’re all right,” she said. “We’re fine.”

  Behind him, two men
lifted a stretcher with the motorcyclist’s body into a coroner’s van. She heard a paramedic say the words “injuries incompatible with life.” Rainwater dripped from the sheet that covered his face and dribbled onto the street.

  “I called a tow truck,” Brad said. “They should be here any minute.”

  Over Brad’s shoulder, Annabelle saw a woman with dyed blonde hair standing by the van. She wore black leather pants and a sleeveless leather jacket, displaying a full sleeve tattoo on her left arm. Annabelle wasn’t sure, but she thought it might have been identical to the motorcyclist’s.

  Their eyes met. Something changed in the woman’s face, and she strode suddenly in Annabelle’s direction. Annabelle took a step back, and Brad turned to look.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” the woman said. “You’re the one who killed him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annabelle said. “We couldn’t help it. A tree fell in our lane.”

  “And I bet you didn’t check for a bike next to you before you turned, did you? Nobody ever does.”

  Her posture was belligerent, aggressive, and Annabelle took another step back, afraid. “I wasn’t even driving. The car was. It turned by itself. The tree . . .”

  The woman’s eyes traveled down Annabelle’s body, looking at her clothes, taking in Brad’s tailored suit and the girls’ matching designer outfits. She glanced at the Mercedes, then back, and gave Annabelle an acid smile. “So that’s how it is.”

  “Look,” Brad said, stepping between them. “I’m very sorry, but this was an accident.”

  “Accident, my ass,” the woman said. “Your fancy Benz just killed my husband. We don’t have much, but you bastards always find a way to take more.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” Annabelle said, trying not to cry. “Did you want us all to die instead?”

  “Yeah,” the woman said, walking forward until she was almost close enough to touch. “Yeah, that would be fine by me. But you’re too rich to die. Rich enough to have a car that can kill someone else instead.”

  “Step back,” Brad said. “Officer? Could you help us here?”

  “Well, it’s my lucky day, I guess,” the woman said, though her voice cracked and her lower lip trembled. “I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got.”

  A police officer broke away from what he was doing and approached them. “Ma’am,” he said, but the woman was already turning away.

  She threw one parting shot over her shoulder as she went. “I’ll see you in court.”

  The Three Laws of Robotics

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

  2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

  —Isaac Asimov, 1942

  The Three Laws of Warfighting AIs

  1. An AI may not injure a friendly human being, or, through inaction, cause a friendly human being to come to harm.

  2. An AI must efficiently neutralize enemy humans and machines, except as it may conflict with the First Law.

  3. An AI must accept the definitions of enemy and friend as given by its commanding officer.

  —Gregory Harrison, 2028

  CHAPTER 1

  Tyler couldn’t help checking the time again. He didn’t have any experience with venture capitalists, but the later it got past midnight, the less likely it seemed this one would show up. He tried to ignore the nervous twisting in the pit of his stomach, but it was no use. This mattered to him. He didn’t need to make millions designing self-driving cars, but he wanted to succeed at it. He’d wanted it for most of his life. A serious investor could erase all of his and Brandon’s funding problems and catapult their dreams into a very real future, if he believed in what they were doing.

  Tyler plucked his bottle of Yuengling off the roof and took a drink. He wiped his mouth, then balanced the bottle back on the curved surface of Brandon’s silver Prius, where they both sat with their tablets perched on their knees. Their fleet of self-driving cars whipped past, kicking up a breeze, and it was testimony to how much their software had improved that neither of them even flinched.

  “When did Professor Lieu say this guy was coming?” Tyler asked.

  “He didn’t,” Brandon said. “He just texted me to say some big investor friend of his might stop by. I don’t know anything more than you do.” He yawned. “Probably a no-show at this point.”

  It was well after 1:00 a.m., but the city lights provided more than enough illumination to see what they were doing. The parking lot belonged to the athletic complex of the University of Pennsylvania, where Tyler and Brandon were grad students in the computer engineering department. The school permitted them to use it between the hours of 12:00 and 6:00 a.m., when the athletic fields were officially closed.

  Brandon yawned again.

  “Wake up,” Tyler said. “No mistakes tonight, okay?”

  “Me? I don’t make mistakes.”

  “No? Are you telling me you meant to run into that handicap parking sign?”

  “That was months ago.”

  “I’m serious,” Tyler said. “We can’t make any more mistakes. Not today, not ever. Once we go public with this, one mistake is all it would take to bury us. People might commute to work in death traps every day, but one public accident, and nobody’ll ride in our cars, not ever. Doesn’t matter what the statistics say.”

  It was why what they were doing was so important. Thousands of people died in car accidents every day. Millions every year. Tyler knew firsthand how devastating just one death could be. A week before his eighth birthday, on their way to pick him up after karate practice, his parents had been sideswiped by a FedEx truck. Over an hour had passed while he waited, adults speaking over him in urgent, hushed voices, until his grandmother finally came and, through her own tears, explained to him that he would never see his parents again.

  That had been fifteen years ago, but the question of who was to blame for the daily carnage on the roads was never far from Tyler’s thoughts. Cancer, heart disease, old age—those were things people had fought against for centuries. But cars? That was something people had invented. And they killed more people every year than the Vietnam War. For Brandon, it was all about the engineering. He loved working with the cars. For Tyler, it was personal.

  “So what do you think?” he asked. “That case in Seattle where the motorcyclist died. Is someone responsible?”

  “You’re obsessed, you know that?” Brandon said. “It’s an important question. If we’re going to be asking people to put their lives in our hands, we need to know what we’re responsible for.”

  “The Mercedes did what it was supposed to do.” Brandon was taller and broader than Tyler, and his large hands gestured freely. “It protected its passengers. It avoided the large obstacle which was the greater threat and swerved into the small obstacle instead. You buy a car, you expect it to keep you safe, not sacrifice you to save somebody else.”

  Professor Lieu had mentioned the case to them that morning. The motorcyclist’s wife had sued not only the woman in the car but also Mercedes-Benz and the software company that developed the driving algorithm, claiming that the car had intentionally killed her husband. Which, in a way, it had.

  “I don’t think it’s so cut and dried,” Tyler said. “What if a little boy ran out in front of your car, but swerving meant hitting a tree? Should your car just run the kid down to keep you safe?”

  “Those cars don’t differentiate between a little boy and somebody’s pet dog. Or a box that falls off a truck, for that matter. They’re all just obstacles.”

  “For now. The algorithms are out there to classify those things, though; the companies just haven’t worked them into their software yet.”

  “Because it doesn’t matter to the car. Its job is to keep its own passengers safe.
Besides, it wasn’t a little boy—it was a fifty-year-old man on a motorcycle.”

  Tyler grinned. “I changed it.”

  Grassy dividers striped the parking lot every five lanes, each carefully landscaped and planted with young, identical-looking trees. Tyler pressed a button on his screen, and their fleet of cars switched from a loop to a wide S-curve, slaloming around the dividers. The “fleet” consisted of two ten-year-old gas-burning Honda Accords: the best they could afford by combining a Department of Transportation grant, a Kickstarter campaign, and some money that Brandon’s father had donated.

  They had no way to hack the cars’ onboard computers, and Honda didn’t publish the APIs. Instead, they had used two solenoids for the gas and brake pedals and a wheelchair motor with position feedback for the steering wheel. Once they could control the car externally, it was a simple matter to drive their setup using one of the open-source robotic hardware platforms that were in wide use with the maker crowd. They used the latest NavBerry robotics brain and sensor package, complete with the optional lidar sensor that allowed their cars to see a continuous 360-degree field of view around them. It amazed Tyler how low the barriers to entry had dropped for all the hardware required to put together a self-driving car. The software, however, was another story.

  “It doesn’t matter if it was a little boy or an elderly man with a heart condition,” Brandon said. “The question is, did the car choose the best alternative under the circumstances? If so, then it did the best it could, certainly as well as any human could have done in the same situation.”

  “So you’re going to go with ‘run the kid down,’” Tyler said.

  Brandon thought about it. “Not if the car can tell the difference between human obstacles and non-human ones. Then it becomes a matter of relative risk. There’s a chance of harm to me if my car swerves toward the tree, but there’s a hundred percent certainty of harm to the kid if I don’t. That has to be taken into account.”