The meeting in General Cunningham’s office was short and to the point.
“General,” said Lance, “we have a problem with our Gabriella android. It has developed some sort of morals or something. We need an android with grit, not morals.
“Can we change her programming?”
“Normally yes, but in her case, her mind has developed in such a way that parts of it function like they are almost hard-wired. Our programming can’t override her desires and moral values. She’s become too human for our purposes.”
“What have you tried to do about it?”
“I’ve had our programmers rewrite the code to override her moral wishes, but it doesn’t seem to be able to do its job. We aren’t sure why it is. The code is flawless and seems to work in our mainframe mockup, but not within Gabriella’s gel brain. We back her whole mind up every night and review the programming along with any new nano-machine synapses she may have developed. It all looks good. She should work like the mainframe program, but doesn’t.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, Sir. You are aware of my plan to pose as a terrorist cell leader to test Gabriella’s ability to extract information from me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“General, she failed that test miserably. She went to dinner with me to find out what my ‘terrorist cell’ was planning. When I invited her to my apartment to talk further, she refused and left. She failed the ‘sleeping with the enemy’ test. We can’t use her for her intended purpose, Sir.”
“What do you propose, Lance?”
“I propose a Gabriella II model. We have all of Gabriella’s data backed up. We have the technology fully refined to build another Gabriella model android. Most of the parts are available to assemble a replacement in short order. We can replicate her gel brain with complete functionality and can have another working android within six months.
“Lance, do you have any idea how much it would cost?”
“Yes, sir. Only seventeen million dollars. That includes additional programming to ensure the new android won’t have the same problems.”
“Do we get eggroll with that?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. Let me look into it and see if I can free up some weapons development money. I’m sure DARPA has some extra money squirreled away in the budget somewhere. I’ll get back to you.”
“Yes, General. What do we do with the current Gabriella-1 model?”
“What does the Army do with equipment no longer fit for its intended purpose, Colonel?”