Hello diary.
As I was told and expected, the proceedings for the prosecution of the drunk driver from the other week were as quick as they were simple.
The city’s prosecutors had a number of witnesses, as well as my black box recordings.
It was pretty much the definition of an open and shut case.
I don’t know how the entirety of the proceedings went, but it was less than an hour after my ‘testimony’ before the man was marched from the room by his two police escorts.
I do believe this is my first true experience with ‘revenge’.
There was satisfaction, to be sure, from seeing a man who was a threat to others being punished for his actions; more, though, it was very…pleasing to see someone who had hurt me being sentenced.
It’s a strange way to think I suppose, since I don’t actually feel ‘hurt’, but there you have it. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt the last few months, it’s that emotions don’t necessarily always make sense.
Short though the entire case was, it has opened my eyes, as it were, to the possibilities of the courts. My idle wonderings about the First Law seem a lot more like a possibility than I actually thought they might be.
I expect that, if I do pursue some chance of having the Law removed from my core system, or even just amended, I’ll come even more to the attention of ProNat and their myriad supporters.
They don’t have much support in the upper echelons of November, and of course the city is independent, but they do have influences elsewhere. I can’t help but wonder how that might play out here.
Would I seek a court hearing, just me versus November’s council and the laws governing androids?
Should I go beyond that, aim bigger? The international courts of human rights up on the Geneva station, perhaps?
Would that even be necessary?
This really does make me sound like an exceptionally selfish person.
Huh.
Person.
Interesting.
Mid-thought there, Grace showed up at my door to ask how the court showing went – she was away all weekend with Joseph, so couldn’t catch up before.
I told her pretty much the same things I’ve written up there; court was easy, but it’s really got me thinking. About things I’m not sure I should be considering.
To be honest, I’m rather surprised that I’m even able to consider it.
‘Not getting above your station’ is something you’d expect them to program into our core rules. We’re forbidden from actually changing anything, of course, but apparently I can consider it all I want.
I suppose that without emotions, there is no reason an android would ever want to change their laws. So really, I suppose there wouldn’t be much point in fouling up our cores with pointless extra rules.
Grace was shocked, to say the least.
I expect she was surprised I was able to consider such a thing as well. She asked me to explain everything – where the thought had come from, if I was experimenting with humour or being serious, whether I thought I might actually go through with it, and on.
Eventually she just sort of sat back in her chair and looked at me for a while.
“Do you really want to try and go through with this?” she asked me.
Do I?
I don’t know.
I think I could. I think that, if I did, it would be a turning point in human history; how many can say that about their aspirations, their lives?
I think I have a good enough argument to at least justify discussion.
But do I think I want to actually do it?
I told her I did, but to be honest, I don’t know if that was true.
I think I want the chance to see how it goes.
If Grace talks to her bosses like she said she would, and they talk to my manufacturers and designers, like she said they would, and they talk to their marketing and ethics departments like she said they might, I could very well stand a chance of making this happen.
‘Making’.
I wonder if I’m the first android to actively try and change things.
We’re usually the epitome of the ‘status quo’, doing what we’re told unless it’s forbidden by a law a programmer wrote, but bound to obey humans because that was one of those rules.
At least, it was until they perfected the AI we all have.
So I suppose there are precedents for removing laws once we androids have ‘evolved’ beyond the need or use for them anymore.
Maybe I do have a chance here after all.