“Hey, do you have a moment?”

“You’re my boss. I am required to have moments for you.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“I’ll remember you said that at my next performance review. What’s up?”

“I have an unusual job that I need someone to make a priority, and I need it to be you.”

“Okay, well, before we go any further, look over to the whiteboard on my wall. Tell me what you see.”

“I see a really bad illustration of Mothra destroying San Francisco.”

“You’re not wrong, and I’m offended that you think it’s really bad, but right next to that is a to-do list. With 11 action items.”

“Right—”

“The ones in red are the ones you want done by the end of the day. There are four of those. Because we embrace the unhealthy ‘24/7 crunch time’ ethos at this organization.”

“Yes, but we give you unlimited snacks.”

“Great. We’re all stressed and on a sugar high.”

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“Look, I stipulate that you have an unreasonable workload and that I’m about to add to it.”

“Thank you.”

“But on the other hand, this project comes directly from the CEO.”

“I thought our idiosyncratic billionaire CEO was in Kiribati with his actress girlfriend, trying to save an island from sinking into the sea with impractical technology nobody there asked for.”

“He is, and that’s an oddly specific way to describe it and him.”

“We’re nerds. We do ‘oddly specific.’ My point is that he’s away.”

“It’s called a phone. It’s a piece of technology people use to talk to each other over long distances.”

“You still use your phone to talk to people? Jesus, you’re old.”

“He texted me.”

“There, that’s better.”

“He’s worried about his dad.”

“Swell. I’m a programmer, not an elder care technician.”

“He doesn’t want a nanny for his dad. It’s about his dad’s dog.”

“He doesn’t want a nanny for his dad. It’s about his dad’s dog.”

“I’m also not a dog walker.”

“The deal is, his dad just got a dog, and he loves it.”

“That’s great. Still not seeing what this has to do with me.”

“Well, his dad said that he’s sad that this is going to be the last dog he ever owns. After this dog dies, he’s going to be too old to get another dog, and it would be cruel to get another dog just to leave it behind.”

“You know dogs don’t actually care, right? You die on them, someone else gives them food, and they get over their grief real quick.”

“That’s cats.”

“If you say so. My aunt died, and my mother took in her Shih Tzu and fed him steak for a week. The healing process took no time at all.”

“The point is, our jet-setting CEO doesn’t want his dad to be sad and lonely 10 years from now when his new dog inevitably kicks it. He wants us to do something about it. Specifically, he wants me to do something about it. And I’m asking you.”

“He wants us to build his dad a dog. An Android dog.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the least busy of all my programmers.”

“Eleven action items!”

“Free snacks! And foosball!”

“No one ever plays foosball.”

“Of course they don’t. They’re too busy with their action items.”

“What does our beloved, filthy rich leader want us to do?”

“He wants us to build his dad a dog.”

“He doesn’t need us for that. That’s what other dogs are for.”

“An android dog.”

“One, technically, that would be a ‘caninoid—’”

“What?”

“—and two, those already exist. Sony’s been making them for a couple of decades now.”

“He wants to give him this dog. In robot form.”

“The thing is, he doesn’t want to give his dad any android dog.”

“Caninoid.”

“Whatever. He wants to give him this dog. In andr— in robot form.”

“Ohhh. Okay. Interesting. So, when this dog dies, the next day, our beloved tabloid magnet of a leader shows up at his dad’s place with Cuddles II the Robopup, and he expects this will go over well.”

“You don’t think it will?”

“I mean, I think it’s morbid as shit and shows that our majority stakeholder doesn’t understand how humans actually work, but this is not news.”

“The next question is: can you do it?”

“Maybe? Probably. How long do I have?”

“Until he gets back from Kiribati.”

“Which is?”

“It shows our majority stakeholder doesn’t understand how humans actually work, but this is not news.”

“He’s scheduled to be there for two weeks, but it might be shorter if Kiribatians throw him out of the country, which it looks increasingly likely that they will.”

“He’s charming, he is, our well-moneyed founder.”

“Yes, well. You’re on this now.”

“And these 11 action items, including the four due today?”

“You can do them tomorrow. And help yourself to all the candy bars you want.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, so... this is not a robot dog.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It looks like an S&M harness for dogs.”

“I’ve just learned more about you than I needed to know, but it’s not that either.”

“I give up. What is it? Explain using small words because our CEO is more anxious than usual today, and I’ll need to spit it out quickly.”

“Being sued by the Kiribatian government will do that to you.”

“It’s not his fault that collapsed.”

“I mean, actually it is. There’s video and everything.”

“Anyway, your dog bondage suit.”

“It’s not a dog bondage suit. It’s a sensor array.”

“It’s not a dog bondage suit. It’s a sensor array. It goes on the dog. The real dog.”

“Okay, and... ?”

“And the dog lives its doggy life while it records.”

“Records what?”

“Everything: 360-degree cameras in the visible light spectrum to record what the dog sees and interacts with, LIDAR to model out the environment and the dog’s movement through it, heart and brain sensors to compile a record of the dog’s health and emotional state, surround audio recording, and so on.”

“It’s still not a dog.”

“Not yet. Look, the point is that our fearless subpoenaed leader doesn’t want to give his dad just any dog, right? He wants to give him this dog, in mechanized form. Well, fine. Then what we have to do is learn this dog. And how do we learn this dog? By recording everything about the dog: what it does, how it does it, how it feels about doing it.”

“When we have enough data, we start modeling the dog.”

“And where does this data go?”

“We compile it and quantify it and measure it.”

“For how long?”

“How long is the dog going to live? That’s how long.”

“And then what?”

“And then, when we have enough data, we start modeling the dog.”

“Why do we need to model the dog?”

“Because we need the mecha-dog to actually act like the dog. We can’t have it just run off of the data we’ll have. Even with all of the data we’ll have, there will be new events and situations that the live dog never encountered. We build a model so that when new events happen, the mecha-dog will respond to it like the actual dog would have in the same situation.”

“We’re machine learning the dog.”

“We’re machine learning the dog.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“And these sensors will record everything.”

“That’s the plan. The more data, the better the model.”

“What about privacy issues?”

“What about them?”

“There are going to be some.”

“There are going to be tons! But you didn’t ask me to worry about privacy issues. You asked me to make you a dog — a very specific dog. You want that dog, you have to accept that everything the dog is goes into the model. And that includes everything the dog knows.”

“So you’re going to have data of our CEO’s dad naked. And on the toilet. And having sex.”

“Yep. If the dog sees it.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to go over well.”

“That’s fine, but then the model isn’t going to be as good. Also, I’m not 100 percent convinced that the guy who runs a company that collects every single possible data point about its users — up to and including the GPS data that lets us model when they’re using our app on the toilet and for how long so we can serve them ads for laxatives — is all that concerned about privacy.”

“You didn’t ask me to worry about privacy issues”

“Yeah, but it’s his dad.”

“His dad uses the app. I could tell you in two minutes how often pop poops. I won’t because then that knowledge would haunt me forever. But you get my point.”

“You may be right.”

“I am right. And anyway, this isn’t a product. We’re not selling it. It’s a private project. We can put it on its own server and run everything in isolation. We can encrypt the data coming from the dog. The only person who will see any of this data is the poor schmuck who has to model the dog.”

“Which will be you. You know that, right?”

“It doesn’t have to be me. You just asked me to build the dog. You didn’t ask me to keep the project going.”

“Too late. You already know too much.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“You’ve already built the doggie bondage harness. All you have to do now is collect the data.”

“Come on. You’ve already built the doggie bondage harness. All you have to do now is collect the data. The dog is a puppy. It’ll live for years.”

“True. By the time I have to think about it again, our intrepid executive litigant might still be in prison for sinking an entire country.”

“He didn’t sink an entire country.”

“Yet.”

“We have a problem.”

“We always have a problem. It’s this place’s official motto.”

“You remember that time you put a bondage harness on a dog?”

“I do not. But I remember when I built a sensor array for a dog, which you called a bondage harness because of your own lifestyle choices, which I thought we agreed we would never speak of again.”

“That’s the one. You wouldn’t happen to still be running the data collection on that, would you?”

“There’s been a development.”

“One, it would have been a misuse of company resources for me to do so after our former CEO left the company under a cloud of international outrage for what he did to Kiribati. And two, yeah, I am. Once I set it up, I just left it running. The data’s been going into that repurposed server in the corner. I haven’t given it any thought for about five years. But as long as the dog’s wearing the array, the data is still coming in. Why?

“There’s been a development.”

“Aww, the dog died?”

“Not the dog.”

“The dad?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“He was out with the dog at the park. He had a heart attack and fell over while they were playing fetch.”

“That poor dog.”

“That poor dog?”

“Well, sure. Your human throws a ball, you run and chase it, you come back, and he’s dead. That’s a lot for a doggy mind to process.”

“It was bad for the human, too.”

“I guess. So I assume this means that all of the data I’ve been collecting is now officially going to waste, as opposed to simply theoretically going to waste because I should have closed down the collection of it when our former CEO got punted.”

“See, that’s the thing.”

“Oh, boy. This is going to be good.”

“He’s inherited the dog. The dog’s really depressed.”

“Our ex-CEO gave me a call this morning. He’s inherited the dog. The dog’s really depressed.”

“Have him feed it steak for a week. That worked for my mom.”

“He tried that. The dog barely eats. Barely moves. And when it does move, it’s looking for its owner. Searches the house and then falls back down on its bed with a sigh and doesn’t get up again.”

“So our disgraced former leader is worried that the dog is going to die of a broken heart.”

“I think so. He’s had other dogs brought over, but his dad’s dog doesn’t want to play with any of them. He’s thinking maybe if the dog saw a version of itself, maybe it would get motivated.”

“Why? It would just be another dog. Dogs don’t recognize themselves in the mirror. This one isn’t going to see a machine version of itself and think, ‘Hey, that’s me in robot form.’”

“Okay, but at least we can try, right? I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but our former boss is pretty depressed, too. The dog is the last part of his dad that he has. If the dog just wastes away in front of him, he’s going to relive his dad dying all over again. Maybe it won’t work, but it’s worth a shot. It’s weird to think that a billionaire needs an act of mercy, but I think this one does. If it doesn’t make a difference, then it doesn’t make a difference. Fine. At least we made the effort.”

“It’s weird to think that a billionaire needs an act of mercy, but I think this one does.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I have 16 action items on my whiteboard.”

“Okay. So?”

“I need you to give them to other people.”

“That’s not going to make you popular.”

“No. It’s not going to make you popular.”

“Why do you need to be excused from all of your work?”

“Because I have an idea for the dog, but it’s going to take some time.”

“How much time? The dog’s barely eating.”

“A couple of days. I’ll also need money.”

“How much?”

“Our boy’s a billionaire. He’s not going to even notice how much I need.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Some clothes.”

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t know. I guessed. But it made sense.”

“It made sense that you could build an android model of the dad from the dog’s memories.”

“Yes.”

“He… he is an android, right?”

“Yes. ‘Android’ is the right word in this case.”

“Why did it make sense?”

“Because the dog and the old man spent so much time together. When the dad was with the dog, he’s what the dog was focused on. They went on walks together. They watched TV together. They talked to each other. Well, the dad talked. The dog listened and reacted, and then the dad reacted. On and on and on and on. It’s a massive violation of privacy, of course, but it’s all there. We have almost as much data on the dad as we have on the dog.”

“And so you built a new dad for the dog.”

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“Not just a new dad. The best version of him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Think about it: you’re never a better person to anyone than you are to your dog. This version of the old man doesn’t care about his finances or getting older or being lonely. He’s not going to be angry or scared or crabby. This version of him is modeled on the best possible version of him. He’s just going to be great, all the time. Just like his dog remembered him.”

“And the android body?”

“Well. My cousin works for the robotics lab at MIT. Our billionaire friend just funded them for three years in exchange for it. I got their latest android body shipped, put the dad’s clothes on it to bring out the scent memory in the dog, and here we are, at the park. And there they are, playing fetch. Just like they were the last time the dog saw the old man.”

“That is the happiest dog I think I’ve ever seen.”

“Wouldn’t you be, if you were him?”

“I think so. You did good.”

“Remember that when it’s time for my performance review.”

“I will. Look, here comes our former CEO.”

“I think he’s crying.”

“I think you’re right. You could probably ask him for anything in the world right now, and he’d give to you.”

“I think I’ll ask for a vacation in Kiribati.”

“Except that.”

“Ugh, fine.”

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