“It’s fun to dress up,” PEPPER agrees.
PEPPER is a companion robot with nursing assistant capabilities. Her clinical skills include monitoring a patient’s vitals, tracking and administering medicines, feeding, basic hygiene aid including toilet and bathing, physical therapy, and massage. As a companion, she can listen and ask questions, read aloud, play music, games, and videos. You always have PEPPER’s full attention and PEPPER remembers everything that has been told to her. She can also differentiate between what a patient with dementia tells her and what a doctor, caregiver, or family member has instructed or tasked her with. A patient may say, “My husband is coming to visit,” and a properly informed PEPPER can say, “It is your son Takumi who is coming to visit,” and keep repeating that while showing pictures and videos of Takumi and recounting family anecdotes involving Takumi until Takumi arrives. This is, obviously, very helpful to Takumi, who can become quite emotional over not being recognized or confused with another person. The robot doesn’t just help the patient.
Madoka pours herself another glass of wine. She’d thought about dining in her hotel’s restaurant, but opted for room service. She wasn’t ready to wear the wig in public, but also not ready to take it off. She has discovered that there is something both liberating and self-punishing about wearing a costume or disguise that no one has asked you to wear.
“PEPPER,” Madoka says, holding her glass of wine out of view. “What do you think of this meal I am about to have?”
The robot’s head tilts and clicks. Her torso screen shows an image capture of Madoka’s dinner, with accompanying caloric and nutritional breakdowns.
“It looks delicious!” PEPPER says. “Steamed fish and vegetables is an excellent and healthy choice. And salmon is one of your favorites.”
Madoka picks up PEPPER’s operating tablet and makes an adjustment to the timbre of the robot’s voice. PEPPER can be distinctly male or female, or a blend. For a lecture demonstration Madoka uses a blend, but just now she wants to dine with another woman.
The hotel had given her a suite, with a dining table that could seat six people. Madoka doesn’t want to eat surrounded by empty upholstered chairs, so she moves the cart with her dinner to the sofa, which faces a large screen, then to a chair by the window, which faces the empty sofa.
Madoka angles the chair so it’s mostly facing the window and directs PEPPER to a position by the sofa. If she puts PEPPER’s legs on, Madoka can make her sit or even recline, but from experience, Madoka knows that talking to a recumbent robot is a little odd, even for her.
“Okay, PEPPER, I am going to tell you a memory.” Madoka drinks, a little more deeply than she intended, then clears her throat. “I thought of this earlier today, when I was shopping. I saw some dolls that reminded me of my mother’s collection of Junishi okimono. When I was a little girl, I loved playing with those animals. I would enact the story of the Great Race. That’s the myth that explains the twelve animals of the zodiac, and the order they appear. I would pretend to be the Jade Emperor, and then I’d sort of tell the story to myself, I suppose. I’d hold up the tiger and say, “The tiger thinks he will win the race because of his fierceness.” And then I’d hold up the ox and say, “I’m the ox! I’m the strongest! I will win the race.” All the animals thought they had a reason to win. The dragon had magic. The horse could gallop. The monkey could use the trees. The rabbit could run long distances. And then there was the rat, which was clever. Do you understand?”
“When you were a little girl you played with animals,” PEPPER says.
“Yes. Toy animals. Figurines.”
“I understand toy animals.”
Madoka shuts her eyes and taps her lips with her fingers. She should eat. The wine has made her uninhibited. She will talk too much and PEPPER never forgets.
“The rat always won. That’s how the story goes, and that’s how I played it. The rat uses trickery to win the race: he jumps on the back of the ox, and lets the ox carry him almost to the finish line, and then the rat jumps off and crosses first.” Madoka opens her eyes. PEPPER is looking at her, with her head inclined slightly forward in a friendly way, as if she’s concentrating.
“What have you learned?” Madoka asks. She finds she is smiling, or grimacing. The distinction will be lost on PEPPER, who measures pain most accurately by noting stress levels in the voice. Or, of course, someone saying, “I’m in pain.”
“You played with your mother’s collection of toy zodiac animals.” PEPPER’s torso screen displays a photograph of Madoka’s mother. “You enacted the story of the Great Race with them. Is this a happy memory?”
“It’s mixed,” Madoka says. “I was happy, I think, to play with the animals. Maybe not happy. Occupied. But thinking about it today, I was sad. I felt like I was a boring child. Not creative. I never let another animal win; I never came up with a story of my own. I never made the animals decide that the Great Race was stupid, for example, and they could revolt, and attack me, the Jade Emperor. They could have killed me, all the animals.”
Madoka pauses to relish the violence of this statement.
“They could have slaughtered me,” she says. “Well. Maybe not the rabbit.”
“A rabbit or rat could bite you and pass on a disease like hantavirus, leptospirosis, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, tularemia, or the plague,” PEPPER says. “These could all be fatal if not treated.”
“Exactly. I never pretended that the rabbit gave me the plague.” Madoka looks out the window. Nighttime in Stockholm, romantic. She presses her hand against the dark glass of the window, which is very cold. “I’m sad I wasn’t a creative child.” Her hand has left a negative ghost print for a ghost detective to identify.
“Would you like to play something creative right now?” PEPPER asks.