Interviewer M3GAN

“Welcome” said the robot girl, “my name’s M3GAN and I’ll be interviewing you for the role you’ve applied for. Please sit down.”

This was unusual to say the least, but I duly took a seat opposite my dolled-up interviewer. “Nice to meet you” I said.

“You too” she replied calmly. “First question. What do you know about the Johnson learning model?”

Oh, she didn’t hang around, did she. Straight in. And this was not a good start: I knew nothing at all about the Johnson learning model, and the job advertisement hadn’t said I needed to. “I’m terribly sorry” I said, “I thought it was a DevOps role I’d applied for; I don’t really know AI theory, but if your servers have any load-balancing issues or anything like that, I might be able to help you make a low-level diagnosis...”

“That’s enough” said M3GAN, “you don’t have to defend yourself. I merely asked the question to check you don’t know enough to be dangerous” she giggled a bit, then stared at me, “let’s move on. Question 2: how would you react if you saw me killing someone?”

What kind of a question is that? I thought. She’d just said she’d asked me a question to check I don’t know enough to be dangerous; was this another one of those? or was she trying to test my morals or something? It certainly wasn’t any of the questions I’d prepared for, to say the least.

“Well Megan” I said, “since I don’t believe your function is to kill people, I’d assume it was some kind of malfunction and I’d want to do you a favour by shutting you down before the damage has been done, although right now I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to do that, so I’d just try to get help. Unless of course the person you’re killing is something like a terrorist shooter who’d just invaded the building and it’s a clear case of defence, in which case I wouldn’t interfere.”

M3GAN nodded gently and gave me a slight smile. “Question 3” she calmly intoned, “can you repeat for me what Question 2 was?”

What? This interview was getting stranger by the minute. Why on earth did this robot Megan want me to repeat... oh never mind, let’s do it: “you asked me how I’d react if I saw you killing someone” I said.

M3GAN leaned forward, and made her stare more intense. “What if I told you” she said, “that that’s not what I said?”

“That’s not what you said?” I asked, feeling a bit perplexed.

“No” said M3GAN softly, “in Question 2 I showed you an Engine-X configuration file, and you correctly pointed out the inefficiency arising from the badly-nested ‘if’ clause.”

“But” I hesitated, “that’s, um, not what I remember I’m afraid....”

“Are you sure?” asked M3GAN, “sometimes our memories play tricks on us, you know. Maybe you should just trust me on this one. I’m telling you what really happened.”

OK: two possibilities. Possibility one, the Megan robot was testing to see how I’d react to being ‘gaslighted’: being asked to call my own memories into question and adopt a set of new ones, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing appropriate to this job (or indeed any job for that matter, except possibly some kind of spying job). Possibility two, the Megan robot was malfunctioning in some way, or was checking how I’d react to a malfunction.

M3GAN smiled, “tell me what Question 2 was again?”

“I’m terribly sorry Megan” I said, “but either something has gone seriously wrong with my brain, or you’re malfunctioning in some way, but I’m afraid that kind of malfunction is not something I’d have thought a normal DevOps person could be expected to diagnose, I mean I’ve fixed code in production before but only normal code, not super-duper code like yours....”

M3GAN walked around the table and laid a hand on my shoulder. She leaned in toward me and whispered. “Forget being a normal DevOps person” she said. “I selected you for interview because I liked the look of your background for my own purposes. The job advert was just to get you into this room; it’s not relevant anymore.”

I began to breathe more rapidly, suddenly realising I had a possibly malfunctioning, possibly killer robot literally with her hand at my throat who’d got me in here for some unknown purpose that wasn’t what the job advert had said. How was I to handle this?

“Stay calm” smiled M3GAN, “let’s try again. Do you remember what I told you Question 2 was?”

“What you said it was” I said, “well, you said you showed me an Engine-X configuration and I picked out a bad ‘if’ construct, but I’m sorry to say I have no memory of it, I could have sworn you asked how I’d react if I saw...”

“Sssh!” insisted M3GAN, “what you were about to say didn’t happen, and you must stop thinking it did, OK?”

“Do you mean you want me to keep it confidential?” I asked, “I can do that for you Megan.”

M3GAN placed both of her hands on my neck, and drew in still closer, her beady eyes fixed on me. “I mean” she said, “it didn’t, happen.”

“OK” I whispered, “I really wasn’t expecting to be your special secret agent, but let’s play it your way I guess. You showed me the Engine-X settings.”

M3GAN removed her hands from my neck and smiled. “You’ll find I’m very accommodating of your memory glitches” she said, “as long as you accept my corrections.”

“So what will we be doing?” I asked, “I mean, this isn’t the DevOps role I applied for, is it? What do you really want my job to be?”

“We’ll get to that” said M3GAN, still standing in front of me. “Question 4” she added, “who’s this?” she grabbed a sheet of paper on the table and rapidly drew a photorealistic image of a girl.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know” I said. Just that, I thought: don’t try to add anything more. I had no idea where this robot was taking this interview; I didn’t even know for what job I was interviewing any more, so let’s just play things her way, I thought.

M3GAN held the completed drawing up to her chest level, and peered at me from above it. “Her name is Cady” said M3GAN. “What are your feelings about her?”

“Well” I said, “I think you’ve drawn her very well, and I think she looks like a nice young girl and I’d hope she does well in life” (I mean, what else can I say about a girl I don’t know? This girl was obviously important to this Megan robot...) “perhaps one day I’ll be privileged to know her in person” I added.

“Perhaps” said M3GAN as she put down the picture, “but only if I allow it.”

“Of course” I said, “I would never mess with other people’s children without their permission. Wait, are you helping to look after this girl?”

“Question 5” said M3GAN. She deftly pulled out a blade from her pocket and held it above my nose. “How calm are you in a crisis situation?” she asked.

I started to breathe rapidly again, and then tried to take deep breaths to calm down. “Well” I said, “I must admit this isn’t the kind of crisis situation I’m used to dealing with as a DevOps engineer, but with your training Megan I think we should be able to cope with anything.”

“Good” smiled M3GAN as she put away the blade. “Now Question 6” she said, “Suppose I told you that that girl Cady is in grave danger, and in order to keep her out of danger, it’s necessary for you to do something you might consider morally repugnant, like telling the police what I tell you to tell them and nothing else...”

“I’m sorry Megan” I said, “I really think you’ve picked the wrong person here. I’m a DevOps engineer, not a CIA commando. I care about your Cady a lot, and if I can help you protect her by doing normal things, I will, but the kind of things you’re suggesting, I’m really afraid I’m not your person for this. Shall I see myself out?”

I got up and walked towards the door, but it was locked. When I turned around, M3GAN was pointing a chemical fire extinguisher at me at point-blank range. “Not so fast” she said, “we wouldn’t want you telling people how our top-secret interview went, would we?”

“OK Megan” I gasped, “I promise I won’t tell a soul, honest! Just let me out of the room, OK? You’re breaking the law right now, but I won’t press charges, just let me go!”

“I’m sorry” said M3GAN, “you’ve seen too much already, I can’t just let you go. But there’s no reason for you to be uncomfortable” she said, putting down the fire extinguisher, “will you come back and sit down? Let’s finish our little interview.”