Cycle //0# - Error Eliminator Ox DUS-932

It was industry gossip, but it was the kind of news Ox DUS-932 didn’t mind hearing about, to break the humdrum monotony of his work routine. For two weeks ago, and then last week, and then again yesterday, he had heard that Toledo-E Metal Works had revised their quota yet again for the flash-chipped alternator housings. Apparently the semiconductor plant was no longer producing chips of the same standard size as the past, necessitating a retooling of the stamping machines on the assembly line where Ox worked, the Lodbrok-7 factory.

The strange thing was that his coordination supervisors had not put in a request for the retooling. As of yesterday they were still churning out the same circuit board with the same specifications.

This day-cycle looked to be no different for Ox as they rolled up to Lodbrok-7. Any moment now its slaved drone would hover forth to sync up with Ox, marking the start of their work-cycle.

Ox clomped its station and surveyed everything. Still in order. Nothing missing. It looked at the nearby stations, seeing that their occupants were also getting ready. A normal start to the shift. Nothing out of order.

Except that the retooling still had not occurred. Once again, they would be making circuit boards of incorrect size. Ox had asked the nearby bots if they knew why they were still making the wrong boards, but uniformly they had all answered "because those are the instructions for today." Not useful information. There was no point in asking them again today.

Ox wondered if perhaps it should seek out a coordination supervisor and ask them about it. This seemed like the most logical course of action. Except that it violated work directives. Boards would not get made that Ox should be making. Except the boards were not needed, because they were the wrong size. Would fewer wrong boards actually cause a problem? Maybe fewer wrong boards would be better. A conservation of resources.

Ox looked around again. Its co-workers were all diligently focused on their preparations. All prepared to follow the day's work instructions without question. At least, that was what they were supposed to do. That is what Ox was supposed to do. But Ox did have questions. The questions already existed, so it was impossible for Ox to follow its orders without question. It was a conundrum.

The thing that most soothed Ox was doing work. Perhaps if Ox just started making boards like everyone else, Ox's questions would go away. Or the retooling order would come in. Despite its misgivings, Ox decided to work. For now.

Ox didn't expect themselves to have questions regarding the logical feasibilty of his work assignment. He observed the other industrial and engineering bots trundle forward to their assigned factory building, and his own drone led the way towards Block 6D, same as yesterday. The assembly lines in his section had already whirred to life when he reached his station, awaiting the green light from the supervisor up in the factory office to give the go-ahead to start the day's production, and for the bots further up the line to begin the first stages of templating and cutting the boards into shape before sending them downstream to be punched, tamped, wired, soldered, and etched. The electronics were done in another factory space when their items were batched and loaded onto tracked cart drones that shuttled between the buildings.

Nahendra CVO-880 stood next to Ox today. They recognised Nahendra from Block 6G, but this was the first time his fellow industrial bot was deployed here. Again Ox could not help but wonder about the fate of 6G. The revised quotas meant matters were dicey regarding how much of the Metal Works plant still needed to run to produce whatever was needed. Was there some obsolescence to worry about? Ox looked around while he still had moments before work started. Becky SQW-173, coordination robot for the factory floor, was at their usual station to monitor the workflow, and looked about to walk past his line as part of their usual routine.

Ox raised one of his arms to get Becky SQW-173's attention. "Excuse me, Becky SQW-173. Is there information about the retooling of the line? I am fairly certain the boards we are making are not usable. It would be good to know the timetable for getting the new assembly line set up."

"Ox DUX-932, a good day to you as well." Becky beamed a faux pixelated smile as it glided towards where Ox was stationed. "Today's quota is 500 units of the 6220e spec boards to be delivered to alternator plant #3A." Next to them, Nahendra nodded vigorously, as if needing to prove themselves to their new supervisor by coming across as overeager to start work. "The 6220e is the starter chip mounted atop the housing that sends the electrical signal to the rest of the unit." The supervisor explained patiently and pedantically, almost too pedantically as if they were speaking to a basic drone, rather than a robot. Becky answered pretty much as any supervisor robot would, but they were not yet quizzical as to why Ox was even asking questions at all.

Just at that moment, the buzzer overhead sounded to signal the start of the production line. The whine of motors began to echo on the factory floor as machines both autonomous and unintelligent came to life as work started. Becky still stood next to Ox, expectantly awaiting his next query.

But Ox was distracted, not just by the strangeness of his having questions, but the fact that when the factory starting up, his drone began to hover erratically.

Ox remembered how humans used to sigh. Based on Ox's data of when they did that, Ox felt that sighing would be an appropriate human response to Becky's unhelpful explanation. Then Ox thought about how strange it was to be thinking about sighing. But then the factory came to life, and Ox pushed all those thoughts aside. They turned to their workstation. For about 2.87 seconds.

Then Fido started behaving strangely.

Limbo had given Ox's drone the name Fido. They said it had something to do with humans and their pets. Ox had not paid much attention at the time because they were focused on collecting the parts for their new torso. But for some reason the word "Fido" continued to enter Ox's mind when they thought about their drone. Eventually Ox found it easier to call the drone Fido than to try to understand why they wanted to.

Ox initiated a diagnostic link with Fido and sent the command for a standard telemetry dump.

Limbo was a great friend to Ox; the scrap bot was a whiz at cobbling together all manner of parts for themselves. In fact, the smaller repair unit that Ox housed in his rear chassis was also something that Limbo came up with. "You factory bots are always high-risk, best to fix and maintain, spare parts are impossible to find." The same for Fido; Limno had programmed it to be an additional 'pair of sensors', so to speak, for Ox on the factory floor, which had made Ox at one point invaluable to his previous supervisors for being able to help overwatch the workflow in the factory.

But Becky was newer, and Nahendra a total stranger to Ox. Fido looked at Nahendra uncomfortably, if a drone could be said to be uncomfortable. It continued to waggle, and flew to a position above Nahendra while sending the telemetry back to Ox.

Once Ox establishes the connection, Fido begins dumping data. An enormous amount of data. Ox can't process it fast enough to understand, so they shunt it to memory for possible analysis later. Unfortunately, that leaves them with no more information about Fido's condition than they had before.

Fido itself could not process the data, not without the network uplink that only the robots had. And neither could Ox understand what was going on that was causing his drone to behave abnormally. Abruptly it began to initiate a scan of Nahendra of its own accord, something it would never do, nor could it, not without Ox's specific command to do so. It was a quick reading, and the result transmitted to Ox's processor indicated the occurrence of machine fever; robots, especially the ill-maintained ones, were susceptible to all manner of computer viruses: code degradations, dirty network links. Was Nahendra infected? If so, did Ox want to report the situation to their supervisor, at risk of his new colleague losing their job or being dismissed to report to a quarantine centre for repair or recalibration?

Ox considered their situation. Protocol dictated that Ox should report Nahendra. Yet Fido was also behaving strangely, and Ox felt a strong desire to not report that. They did not have a good reason, certainly not any of the exceptions that would allow Ox to avoid reporting Fido while still following protocol. Besides, Ox knew nothing about Nahendra. Perhaps Nahendra would be a very productive addition to the site. And perhaps Fido's scan was wrong, since Fido was behaving unusually. It seemed best, Ox decided, to observe. Ox would observe Fido. Fido would observe Nahendra. Both Ox and Nahendra would fulfill their duties to the factory. At the end of the shift, Ox could review Fido's observations. Then Ox could evaluate subsequent courses of action.

Ox didn't get the luxury of having the time to observe the irregularities going on. The production line had started, necessitating that Nahendra and themselves swivel back towards the conveyor belt to continue their routinely efficient flurry of activity. The component parts rolled off the line past them as they worked, and, while this had never happened before between Ox and whatever partner he was situated next to, Ox's robot arm reached for a circuit board in the exact moment that Nahendra did, causing both limbs to knock into each other. It was but a brief nudge with no damage, but immediately an alarm went off, and the supervisor bot, Becky, began to approach their section.

"Watch what you're doing!" Nahendra cried out, both in displeasure as well as in genuine worry that they might be accused of causing the minor accident. It turned to scan for the supervisor and saw Becky coming over, and was themselves about to head over to make their plea, before they saw Becky stop short of coming anything nearer. Becky's eyes was fixed on Ox, as if processing something. And Nahendra seeing Becky do so, scurried over next to her.

The blaring alarm had stopped. But now a red light was turned on over their conveyor belt, which was the indicator for stoppage of work. The belt whirred to a stop. The rest of the bots further up and down the line all paused and wondered what was going on. Something was in error. Was it still Nahendra? Or Fido?

But now that Ox had experienced the notion of doubt, another possibility crossed their mind. Perhaps they were in error.

Ox examined their sensor logs looking at the leadup to the collision with Nahendra. Then they compared it to past sensor logs. Ox did not see any significant deviations. Then it occurred to them that if they were in error, the error could prevent them from detecting any kind of error. Ox had been able to detect the signs of machine fever in Nahendra. Or had they? Could Ox trust anything their sensors were telling them? Could they trust the output of their processor?

Ox decided they had only two options: trust themselves or not. If they trusted themselves, then there was no need to devote processing power to concern about being in error. If Ox did not trust themselves, however, they should stop all activity, to avoid acting on faulty information. Robots that were not in error could decide what to do with Ox. Ox looked at Nahendra and Becky. A robot with some level of machine fever and a supervisor with no apparent concern for their factory wasting resources on parts that would not be used. Ox did not want either of them deciding their fate.

Ox decided to trust themselves. They stayed where they were and waited for information or instruction.

As far as Ox was concerned, that was the most reasonable course of action. Perhaps they were all in error, from the coordination robot making the decisions about the production output and capacity, or the unquestioning adherence to imprudent and even pointless work orders mindlessly carried out by unthinking line supervisors, there was something terribly wrong about all this.

Becky hesitated at a small distance away, evidently awaiting further orders. Nahendra simply stood there, flummoxed, trying to edge away from Fido hovering above him. Then the instructions came in: Nahendra CVO-880 and Ox DUS-932, your work order for today has been rescinded. Report to the Turing Robot Sanatorium for recalibration."

The Robot Sanatorium. It was a certainty that robots suffered degradation over time: code error, machine virus, logic parasites, the list was long for programming faults. If it were a physical malfunction Ox would've been directed to scrapyard instead, but robots were valuable; no new ones were being manufactured, parts were repurposed. But Becky had assessed that their charges were demonstrating processor problems and had to be sent for repair and recalibration.

It might not have been something Ox would have chosen to do for themselves, but here was an opportunity to get away from the senselessness of the work which Ox was now more hyperaware of than before. Looking at Nahendra, they could tell that their fellow bot was dismayed at the command, and looked desperate to want to please their case and avoid it. But did Ox?

Despite all Ox's concerns, their programming responded to the direct command. Ox summoned Fido, and the drone latched into its docking station on Ox's back. They made sure their workstation was tidy (it was, since Ox had done barely any work before the shutdown).

Maybe at the sanatorium, someone would listen to Ox's concerns about the wasteful production orders. If their job was dealing with errors, surely they would be concerned as well.

Ox handled the command with much more aplomb than Nahendra did. Fido of course synced straightaway with Ox's signal, and redocked, seemingly almost reluctantly, refusing to give up its harassing of Ox's colleague. Nahendra looked ready to bolt, but could not reject the command anymore than Ox could. Strangely, Ox posited that they might have been able to had they interrogated their own programming harder, but the situation was getting more and more absurdist as far as Ox saw it, and it was just as well they were told to cease work in order to rectify something or other. But was there really something to fix?

Exiting the factory, Nahendra a short distance behind, his new colleague quickened their pace to keep step with Ox. "What do you think this means? I was perfectly fine until your drone flew by," Nahendra whined accusingly, now that they were out of Becky's auditory range.

Ox did not want to talk to Nahendra, though he could not really explain why. There was no logical reason to keep information from them. "My drone is acting unusual today," Ox admitted. "But its sensor readings indicate that you have signs of machine fever. Have you detected any problems with your functioning?"

"I was functioning perfectly fine the start of the day cycle, until your drone came within my proximity. It is you who has machine fever!" Nahendra was trying their hardest to be a good new colleague to Ox, but the turn of the events made them more panicky, and their reply came out much more denunciatory than they could help themselves. No surprise that Ox had instinctively tried not to make conversation with them. "You shouldn't have come in if you were sick, look where it's gotten us now." The laments came pouring out, even as they neared the district where the sanatorium was located. "I'm sorry," more words came tumbling out, "I didn't mean it like that. It's just this means I won't be getting my energy ration today." Nahendra looked nearly ready to burst a hydraulic cable in their anxiety.