Less Than Human Read Online Free Page B

Less Than Human
Book: Less Than Human Read Online Free
Author: Maxine McArthur
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the controls, it should still be in that position. But it’s at halt.”
    “What’s halt?” Ishihara could guess from the pronunciation of the characters used for the word, but he wanted to be sure.
    “Halt is when the robot pauses in its job. It doesn’t go back to the beginning of the sequence. None of the peripherals”—she
     pointed at the machines around the robot— “should be affected.”
    “So were they affected this time?”
    She nodded, her long, bony features exaggerating the serious expression. “They were all off-line. Which is what I’d expect
     in emergency stop.”
    “So someone turned it from stop to halt?”
    “It’s not a matter of turning the switch back,” she retorted. “Once it’s at emergency stop, the robot’s got to be completely
     restarted. That leaves a record in the programming file. But there’s nothing.”
    “The only entry card used last night belonged to the person on duty,” said Ishihara. The factory’s security system report
     was clear. Unless the dead man had let someone in, he’d been there alone.
    “Another thing.” McGuire stepped back from the robot again, keeping her eye on it as if the thing might still move unexpectedly.
     “The safeties must have been tampered with.”
    “Safeties?”
    She pointed to the wire barrier, a post with a cameralike box on the top, some wire netting mats inside the gate, and the
     warning signs posted all around the enclosure and the line itself. “Measures designed to prevent this happening.”
    “Don’t work very well, do they?”
    “This is the real world, Assistant Inspector.” She stepped right back from the wire and slotted the box into a stand outside
     the cage. “An industrial robot is a complex computer, but its hardware has to interact with the real world, with the possibility
     of infinite errors.”
    “Like us humans.” In spite of the heat, Ishihara was interested.
    “Exactly.” She smiled, pleased that he’d understood, and slipped into what Ishihara mentally labeled “lecture mode.”
    “The robot is programmed to do one thing very accurately and continuously, for years and years. It needs to be stable—we don’t
     want it shifting out of alignment, or your car window, for example, mightn’t be fixed on straight. It has very sensitive sensors,
     but only for its own job, not for what’s around it. Unlike your Helpbots in the Betta, it gets no feedback from the environment.
     It’s taught to go from A to B to C through certain coordinates. It doesn’t know or care if there’s air along the coordinates
     or someone’s head.” She winced at her own words and was silent.
    Ishihara fished his cigarette packet from his shirt pocket and extracted one. “Could Mito have altered the program to keep
     the robot active while he did something?”
    “I would be able to see a change like that. There isn’t anything. In fact…” She stared at the controller, then at Ishihara,
     raising her chin as if facing an unpleasant fact. “The controller log shows nothing after 4:30 A.M. , and the program files are unreadable. I won’t know why until I’ve had a chance to investigate further.”
    “The security office wasn’t called until 5:20, and the body wasn’t discovered until 5:30.” Ishihara twirled the cigarette
     between his fingers. “Would Mito have noticed a malfunction and come close to the robot to investigate?”
    “If there’s a m … minor malfunction”—she frowned at the stammer—“a signal to check it is sent to the control booth. The whole
     line wouldn’t stop, or a signal would have been sent to the security company as well. That didn’t happen until … 5:20, did
     you say?”
    “Yeah. So this robot only had some problem and halted. Or could it have kept running without leaving a record in the log?”
    “That’s impossible.” There was almost enough authority in her voice to make him cancel that possibility. “All I can suggest
     is that Mito went to investigate

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