Adam's Inquisitiveness

A young man, one year old, looked outside of the restaurant, after hearing a loud siren. "What is it?" he asked his companion, a middle aged woman, who was watching him with a calculated smile.

It's an ambulance," the lady replied. "It's driven by men and women who wish to rescue somebody in danger."

The young man looked at the lady, studied the expression on the lady's face, and then himself smiled.

"Your eyes, son, they also need to smile," the lady said.

"Yes, Mother."

A waitress approached the table. "What are you smiling about?"

The young man looked at the girl, his expression a warm, unwavering light. "There is reason behind a smile?" he asked.

The girl frowned quizzically, since the man's expression never faltered and his voice had one tone. She stepped close to the man, peered closely, and then touched his forehead. "You're a robot, but your skin feels real...."

"Real, you say my skin feels real. Why?"

Standing up straight, the girl crossed her arms in front of herself. "Why do you ask why?"

"I'm a robot. I think logically, thus everything real to me is real."

"No, why do you ask why? I've never seen a robot that asked anything before," the girl said, perplexed.

"His name is Adam, miss," the lady said. "I've uploaded a program into his artificial mind, which assesses his environment."

"Pardon?" the girl asked, lost.

"Perhaps I'm too technical," the lady said. "But I so badly want to share Adam with the world, that to have anyone to speak with, I race ahead of myself!" She cackled. "Anyway, robots we see everywhere do not assess their environment like Adam. Rather, they are given perimeters, and then commands to carry out within these boundaries. An everyday robot cannot be told though, to bend this spoon into a 90-degree angle. It must be programmed to hold the spoon in fingers, move wrists with outside of wrist.... It's too complicated to describe. It's a million lines of code simply for the robot's hands, never mind holding a spoon!"

The girl nodded. "How is Adam different?"

"He learns, which is assessing his environment," the lady replied. "He can grab a spoon, because he knows what a spoon is, knows what a hand is, knows what a grab is. An average robot doesn't know anything. It is simply a puppet. Its command, its code are simply the puppeteer's strings."

An expression of wonder crept over the girl's face as she listened. "He learns? What does he learn?"

"He learned to speak, because I've always talked to him. He learned to see, because he opened his eyes, after he found had a lot of stuff on his face, like his mouth." The lady cackled. "He laid on a table for a whole month, listening to me, before saying anything."

"He only laid there?"

"He never knew he had a mouth, which at the time I didn't know. But then a fly landed on his chin, which shocked him into moving his jaw, which led to him discovering his voice. From that day on, he hasn't shut up!" Again, the lady cackled. "And from then on, he found his eyes, his neck, his neck muscles, and then his entire body, since he looked at it, when he flexed his neck."

"How amazing...."

"Anyway, for now whole year, he's learned enough to sit here in this restaurant quietly, which pleases me to no end."

"Mother, it's the ambulance again, but now it's driving slowly, without its siren," Adam said. "Has it rescued the person in danger?"

The lady, the girl, and Adam all looked outside to watch the ambulance drive slowly past the restaurant, it pace a tear trickling down a face.

"My god, it's the apple all over again," the lady said, her voice a whisper.