The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 Read Free

behind the glass. I cannot, cannot , reach it. The breakroom is off-limits to me for all eternity.
    However, there are other phones in this building. There’s one in Mildred’s room!
    I hurtle across the building’s brick exterior to her window, climb through, and approach the nightstand phone. Mildred is sleeping, one of her frail hands hanging over the bedside.
    I festoon her wrist with silk from my spinnerets. It takes all my strength to pull it the four inches needed to brush the phone’s biometric pad.
    The phone lights up on contact.
    I dash to it and dial the police.
    “Emergency,” a woman answers.
    I have no voice. But I dutifully tap out a rudimentary pattern against the receiver, explaining that Nurse Janet with the mermaid earrings is planning to kill Mildred in three hours.
    “Hello?” the voice says. “Is anyone there?”
    I halt, confused by this lack of understanding.
    The line disconnects.
    Sunrise is only minutes away. Somewhere, the flies are multiplying.
    Hurriedly, I build a web.
    My web is of a mermaid, hung at the correct angle to better catch the sunrise. Not my best work, I admit. But it brings a smile to Mildred’s face when she sees it upon waking at 5:41 a.m.
    “Did you make this mermaid, little spider?” she asks on the other side of the glass. “How did you do it? Oh! It’s so pretty!” She closes her eyes, a childish grin on her lips. “ Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey … ”
    I like when she sings to me.
    I like when Millie’s happy.
    Happiness is only possible if she’s alive.
    Janet is plotting to end her life in two hours and forty-nine minutes.
    If her life is ended, Millie won’t be happy. There will be no more songs.
    Nurse Janet, I conclude, needs to die.
    * * *
    Prior to my reprogramming, there were specific tabulations I needed to complete during the course of a given day. How large should my webs be? Where should they be built? How many webs should I build without marring the overall aesthetic of the retirement home?
    Now I aim my tabulation talents at a different challenge:
A robot must never harm a human being …
    It’s hardwired into me, yet the wording itself is cause for analysis. The First Law does not say Homo sapiens . It says human being .
    At 5:52 a.m. I invade Mildred’s room and scamper down the glossy hallway to the room marked STUDY on my internal map of Sheldon Springs Retirement Home.
    On one of the counters is a book I’ve noticed from the window: The Galactic Empire Seventh Edition Dictionary. I pry open its cover, flipping the pages:
    HUMAN BEING :
an individual of the species Homo sapiens.
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of human beings.
the human race, as distinguished from animals and robots.
empathetic, sympathetic; humane.
    Mildred and Nurse Janet are both Homo sapiens. Yet according to the Galactic Empire Seventh Edition Dictionary, not all Homo sapiens are humane and therefore not all are human. By this argument, Janet is not protected by the First Law, but Mildred is.
    I can kill her.
    In theory.
    It is 6:28 a.m.
    Janet will kill Mildred in two hours and two minutes.
    Six hundred and ninety-five ways to murder Janet immediately flash through my processors. I quickly reduce these to a pair of options which I calculate have the greatest chance for success:
I can create a multilayered silk mask and suffocate her with it when she enters Mildred’s room.
I can lure her to the rooftop with a note claiming to be from Daniel, and impale her with a spring-loaded trigger-trap built from kitchen knives, a cutting board, two mop handles, and forty-six flies’ worth of silken strands.
    Grudgingly, I admit that the artistry implicit in the second option is outweighed by the relative ease of the first. I hastily return to Mildred’s room. A fly buzzes by me; the window has been left open—Millie likes fresh air—and there are flies in here, likely attracted to the pastries she stockpiles. I ignore the flies