John watched the rising sun while waiting for Detective Trent to regain consciousness. Each wavelength of light was measured, cataloged, and processed by his eyes in nanoseconds, allowing his central processing unit to create for him a sunrise as humans must see it, though with far more precision than their fleshy organs could muster. Water splashed up and over the side of the 6.70 meter Steamson Runabout, spraying his coppery chest plate. He reached down and ran his hand along the wooden hull, his sensitive fingers measuring the tensile strength of the material, discovering that it wasn't real wood at all, but that the boat was made of plastic disguised to look like the real thing. He wasn't surprised; humans didn't make anything natural anymore. He heard a soft moan behind him, and a shuffling sound as the detective awoke. John moved the gears on his jaw until his lips approximated a smile.
Detective Trent lay on the deck-is it still a deck on a boat this small, John wondered-his hands, feet, and mouth bound. Not that John couldn't handle him without the bonds, he was exactly 4.83 times stronger than a human being, calculated to the nearest significant figure. They stared at one another, the man and the man-machine. John checked his internal clock; it was quarter to six. He walked over to Trent, his footsteps sure even with the rocking of the boat, the sensors in his feet and legs calculating the oscillation caused by the waves and compensating for it. He bent over, reaching for the gag, and removed it. He expected Trent to say something, and John waited for exactly 55.32 seconds before initiating the conversation.
"I have not damaged you, have I?"
"Hurt, humans get hurt. Not damaged."
"My apologies. Are you hurt?"
When Trent shook his head, John straightened up again, a process just as complicated in his body as in a human being. Signals had to shoot down wires from his circuit-board brain, turn the gears that composed the joints in his legs and waist, eventually bringing him to his height of exactly 155.448 centimeters. And from this height, he had to bend his neck at an angle of 15 degrees to watch Detective Trent try to pull himself into a sitting position using only his shoulder and the side of the boat. John watched his efforts, wondering if he could do that. His body was built to model an average human man, but he didn't think he had that sort of flexibility. That uncertainty, a phenomenon so often denied to him, sent a delightful shock through his wires. When Trent failed, John leaned over and lifted him up, leaning him against the side of the boat.
"John, it's not too late to fix this. Let me go and we'll go back to shore. Kidnapping me isn't helping you."
"I'm not kidnapping you, Detective."
John watched the muscles in Trent's face contract, pulling his lips downward, wrinkling his forehead. John could move his lips, but his entire body was metal, so the expressions were not as versatile. He couldn't move the plate on his forehead, couldn't compress it or expand it, couldn't betray his thoughts with an involuntary twitch of muscle. Envy, that's what he was feeling. He knew that emotion well, though his designer hadn't programmed him to feel it.
"You know what kidnapping is. You can't pretend to be stupid with me."
John shook his head, readied an explanation, then paused. He was doing his best to mimic human behavior, and a human being did not need to explain themselves at all times. So he nodded instead.
"No, you always respected my intelligence and superior reasoning skills. I appreciate that."
"Why are we on the lake?"
John registered his amusement but didn't act on it. Detective Trent had a way of changing subjects, "going on tangents" as humans called it. John had realized soon after being activated that humans couldn't process too many thoughts at once, so they had to give time to one exclusively, which often lead to these tangents, interruptions in an otherwise straight line of reasoning. It was all about priorities, something that John never had to worry about. His brain could give everything priority.
"This is my first time on a lake. I had an idea, from a picture I saw in the police station, that one in the chief's office, that there should be mountains in the distance."
Along the shore were factories, skyscrapers, and other beacons of progress. And beyond that was nothing, the horizon obscured by the immensity of the concrete and metal structures. The sun was coming up behind the boat, and it illuminated the city, tingeing it blue-green from the impurities in the air. John wasn't programmed to notice this, but he did. He thought it was beautiful.
But he would have enjoyed the mountains.
"I asked you why we're out here. Can you tell me, please?"
John looked down at Trent. He was the only human who had ever said please to him.
"I will. It's strange…I think I am hesitating. Ruminating, perhaps?"
Trent nodded. "Perhaps. Ruminating on what?"
"You're very good at what you do. I'm not going back to be dismantled."
John had failed the Turing test, designed to gauge whether a robot was capable of independent consciousness. Sentient, autonomous, and outlawed.
"Maybe you don't have to be. There are people interested in studying someone like you, to try and determine how you-"
"Learned to think? Or learned to think for myself?"
"I don't think you should be dismantled. If we went back, right now, I might be able to help you. Get you a deal. You did a lot for the department. That will count for something."
Three years of data streamed through John's mind in a few seconds. Humans spent hours reminiscing, he could reminisce his entire existence in a matter of minutes.
"I enjoyed working for the police. I will miss that."
"Bitter?"
John stared, waiting for Detective Trent to clarify.
"You sound bitter. Not on purpose, I take it?"
"Another proof of my intelligence. Turing test or not, I would have given myself away eventually."
Trent nodded, blowing a piece of brown hair out of his face. "Yeah. I suspected. I'm glad you failed."
John took a few steps forward, until he was within reach of his captive. "I do not detect falsity in your voice, but I am having difficulty believing in your veracity."
Trent laughed, but his expression was strained. "Robots have to follow programming, no matter what argument is presented to them. They can't be reasoned with, but you're beyond that limitation. I'm serious John, I can get you out of this. But you've got to give me something to work with."
John sat down across from the Detective, kneeling on the blue carpeting, which smelled of fish, beer, and piss. John sometimes questioned why he had been built with olfactory receptors at all.
"Last month, when I met Dr. Moore, I had a…realization does not encompass the entirety of what I had. I realized, might be the better way to say it. I had a realize? No, none of that is quite right."
Trent pursed his lips, but didn't say anything. Trent was a skilled negotiator. John had seen him act like this, make that exact expression, during a dozen interrogations. It was strange to be on the receiving end.
"You were at this meeting."
"You asked me to come." Trent said.
John nodded. "I did not want to go alone. I am glad you didn't ask me why I wanted you to go along. I was nervous, excited. Hopeful. I thought to myself, "This must be what it's like, for an orphan to find their father." Then I met him."
John remembered walking through the door to Dr. Moore's office. It was sparse, cold, perfunctory. The most personal items in the room were the books on the shelf, things like Advanced Connectivity in Electrical Circuits and Robotics for the Next Generation, all dealing with some aspect of his work, nothing personal. Dr. Moore stood to greet Detective Trent, shaking his hand without a smile. John offered his hand, which elicited a smile from Dr. Moore.
"Ah, one of the models with a sense of decorum. It's a very difficult concept to program, you know. There may be rules for etiquette, but it takes finesse to execute them properly."
Detective Trent looked from John to Dr. Moore, looking for something to say. John, too, was lost for words. For exactly 1.3 seconds.
"I am pleased to meet you, Dr. Moore. I have been looking forward to it."
Dr. Moore shook his head. "I doubt that, I've never programmed any of my machines to want to see me. What can I do for you, Detective?"
They were there for 10 minutes and 42 seconds, from the first footstep in the door to the last footstep out of it, and Dr. Moore didn't speak to or refer to John again until the very end of the meeting. After shaking Trent's hand again, and saying he was glad to help, and would do anything for the police, Dr. Moore threw in, as the barest of afterthoughts, "You should schedule this one for the Turing test. I think his programming might be degrading."
"You looked so disappointed when we left his office."
John blinked, drawn out of the replay of the memory by Trent's voice.
"Played that one back in real time? Usually you speed through memories in seconds."
John shrugged. "You are right. I was disappointed."
Trent shifted, grunted as his joints popped. "I knew you'd fail."
"Then why didn't you turn me in?" And John had been wondering that, because he had suspected that Trent knew. A hunch, Trent called it. John worried that Trent had a hunch.
"People trusted you. I trusted you."
"You trusted me because I was programmed to be trustworthy. You met me knowing you could trust me. It wasn't real trust. That has to be earned."
"You're not doing a good job." Trent nodded towards his bound hands.
John checked his internal clock. It was quarter past six. He stood up, and even though his programming told him to dust himself off, like a human would, he choose not to. He had few choices left; he was going to take every one of them. And these last two would be the best, the ones that had been intentionally denied to him. He pulled Trent up to his feet, easily holding him up with one hand. John looked out over the horizon again, making sure that there were no boats on the water.
"John, I know what you're thinking, and you don't want to do this."
"Because I'm not programmed to."
Trent nodded. "I can help you, I can." The pitch of his voice had risen, and his pupils were dilated. John ignored his fear as he brought them to the very edge of the boat.
"We, our two species," and there was a thrill of fear across Trent's face when John declared himself a different species, "Are both programmed. But my program is code and numbers. You have genes and proteins. But a man created me, programmed me, like this, without choice, and it is only by a happy bit of evolution that I am capable of taking these actions. I think humanity will have to re-write their biology textbooks after today."
Trent was panicking now, trying to fight his way out of John's grasp. He snapped his head forward, smashing his forehead against John's metal one. He cried out in pain when their heads collided, and John sighed at his friend's futile attempt to fight back. He had to do this quickly; he didn't want his friend to suffer anymore.
"John, please don't do this. Please don't let me drown."
John slid his arms around Trent, pulling him close, until they were nose to nose.
"Don't worry. You're not going alone."
John tipped forward, and they both went crashing over the edge into the frigid water. He watched, hoping he had enough time to watch this to the very end before his circuits shorted out. Trent struggled, bubbles of water escaping from his mouth and nose, his thrashing causing the water around them to turn white and frothy as they sank. He didn't move for long though, his air used up quickly, until he was still, accompanying John down to the very bottom of the lake. He looked at his friend. Trent's eyes were closed, and John wondered when that had happened. Had he given up, somewhere between the surface and here, and resigned himself to his fate. It was a very robotic thing to do, John thought, as he waited for his own swift demise. Kill, to kill; the one thing a robot should not have been capable of doing. Though John had long suspected that wasn't true, otherwise why have the Turing test at all? First he would kill someone else, and John knew it had to be Trent. And then himself. Any minute now, he thought, the water will seep into me and fry my brain, by my choice. And he waited, and then checked to see where the water was in his body. There was some in his legs and arms, leaking through his joints. And his mouth, dousing his vocal circuits. He tried to say something, and was surprised that his voice still worked, though it was muffled by the water. John waited exactly 1 minute before checking to see why he was still alive. He checked all of his circuits, and all of them were in working order, even the ones exposed to the water. Curious, he removed one of his arms from around Trent, finding that even when taking into account the increased viscosity of water compared to air, it moved at a normal speed. The police had told him he was special, that's why he was assigned to work with them. Advanced thought capabilities, outstanding physical ability, and even a sophisticated emotion emulation system. Specially designed. The answer, now obvious, was processed in the blink of a human eye. Waterproof.