Test Subject

Lots of people will volunteer to test a new gadget. Fewer will volunteer their children.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

“You bastard! You’re ruining my retention numbers!” screamed the Vice President of Human Resources, Hannah Breitfelder.

Tom Cavanaugh, VP of Engineering, raised his hands defensively. “Hey, now. That’s not my fault.”

“It is too your fault! Ever since you asked Iris to let you use your infernal machine on her baby, not one woman has come back from maternity leave at this company. You’re costing me my performance bonus!”

The HR VP’s rant was drawing attention. Employees were peeking out of the doors lining the hallway to watch the confrontation.

“Once. I asked Iris once, she said no, I’ve never asked another employee to support the testing.”

“Because every employee who gets pregnant quits! Monique Farrell just emailed me to say she’s quitting. She hasn’t even delivered yet.”

Tom made an exaggerated shrug. “We announced a policy that employee children won’t be considered as test subjects. What more do you want from me, Hannah?”

By the glare she was giving him, Hannah wanted Tom to die, or maybe just quit. But it was against company policy to demand that unless there was documented misconduct. After a moment she snarled, “You’re ruining my numbers,” and stalked off.

Everybody peeking out at the clashing VPs disappeared back into their offices before Tom could catch them. He was fine with that. More people was the last thing he needed right now.

Tom retreated to the Robotics Test Laboratory in the basement. His team was running another test on the ChangeBot. They’d found a new test subject. He could tell by the WalMart bag and brightly colored packaging in the trash can.

They were prepping for Case Three. One of the engineers was pouring a bottle of baby food into a diaper and sealing it onto the baby doll. A white onesie went on over it, snapped shut at the crotch. His partner took the prepped doll and slid it into the ChangeBot’s opening feet first.

The bot’s curtain drew closed around the doll’s waist. Humming noises indicated it was going to work.

Bob, the senior engineer, noticed Tom’s presence. “Hey, boss. Any luck finding a real test subject?”

“No. And HR doesn’t want me taking any from employees.”

Bob smirked at his co-worker. “Shucks, just when I thought we might have to take on the job ourselves.”

“Sorry, dude, I’m saving myself for Elon,” riposted Mary. “Besides, I wouldn’t want my kid going in the bot until it was proven safe.”

“You and every other woman on the planet,” sighed Tom.

“Hey, Elon would want his kid to support progress,” said Bob.

Mary shook her head. “He has ten. If I had ten kids, I might consider it. But that’s a long way away.”

ChangeBot let out a series of chimes to indicate it was done. The doll lay on the pad, still half inside the bot, until Mary pressed the release button and drew it out.

The onesie was refastened and a new diaper was on the doll. Peeling it off found the doll was completely clean except for a thin layer of rash cream where it would do the most good. “Successful test,” declared Bob.

Tom said, “Of course it was. That doll is well within the test cases we’ve run before.”

The two engineers exchanged looks. Mary said, “The proportions of this one don’t match any of the others we’ve done. It’s worth checking as many points in the configuration space as we can.”

“Besides,” said Bob, “We have to test something.”

“I know.”

“Unless you want to lend us out to the DishBot team?” asked Bob.

Tom shook his head. “They’re fully staffed. There isn’t enough budget for more testers on that team. Besides, they’re just dealing with minor upgrades. It’s a proven design.”

“Boss, ChangeBot is as proven as we can get it. There’s no sense in running more tests until we get a baby. If not a human baby, let us try some more chimpanzee babies.”

“I’ve been pushing for that, but the animal labs want part ownership of the ChangeBot as part of their fee, and Legal refuses to consider it.” Tom offered the engineers a smile to try to boost their morale. “I’ll keep plugging. I’m sure we’ll find something soon.”

Back in his office, Tom went through the list of potential test subject sources. There was a public request for volunteers, but the company review board had declared paying parents for lending their babies to be unethical. Hospitals were afraid of liability. Orphanages pointed to the government regulations on their charges. Foster care agencies wouldn’t even talk to him.

Nobody had responded to any of his emails. A few members of the ChangeBot team sent emails with suggestions, but they were all possibilities he’d tried before.

The lowest category in his inbox was newsletters and automated reports. One message stood out. He had an automated news search set up to check for anything in the papers about diapers or infants needing changing. Normally it just caught trash about parents neglecting their children or diaper companies announcing new versions of their products.

The top story in today’s report was a orphanage in Moldova being criticized for several children being hospitalized for infected diaper sores. The head of the orphanage, a nun named Mother Ioana, protested that they’d done their best but blamed the secularization of youth for not having enough nuns to take proper care of the children.

After doing an internet search to find out where Moldova was, Tom bought an airline ticket for the next morning. There was already a ChangeBot prototype sealed in an airline case. It was marked as medical test equipment to soothe the worries of security personnel. He only needed to pack a carry-on bag and send an email telling all his development teams to carry on while he was out of the office.

The transatlantic flight to Berlin was as comfortable as Tom could reasonably expect. The hop to Bucharest, less so. Flying into Moldova was unpleasant. So he was prepared for the rough ride when the overpriced, undermaintained taxi took him into the hills where the orphanage lurked.

The nuns maintained a webpage to collect donations and seek adoptive parents. It included a picture of the place.

When he arrived, he saw the picture must be at least a decade old. The building started life as a Soviet Army barracks. There’d been some cheerful paint applied when it was first converted to an orphanage post-liberation, but it was mostly gone now. The place looked gloomy and industrial, the worst of Stalinist architecture.

The taxi driver handled the conversation with the nun who answered the door. When Mother Ioana arrived, she briskly informed the driver his services as an interpreter were no longer needed.

“You want me to wait?” asked the driver, with a suggestive look.

Tom gave him another hundred dollar bill. “Yes, please.”

Mother Ioana invited Tom in. None of her hair was visible under her wimple, but the grey eyebrows and lined skin said she much older than Tom. The wrists escaping the habit were just skin over bone. She glanced at the case with the robot but did not comment as he lugged it over the threshold.

“Back to work, child,” she said to the nun who’d answered the door. The younger woman trotted off. The towel hanging over her shoulder looked like it was being used for baby messes regularly.

A former guard room was now the orphanage’s sitting room. Mother Ioana served tea. “Email? Oh, we only check the email once a week.”

“Ah.” Tom realized he’d have to start from zero. “My company would like to make a donation to your orphanage. We make robots to help with basic household tasks. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those?”

She took a sip of her tea. “Oh, yes. An American NGO gave us a floor cleaning robot. It’s worked quite well. The novices are tired of me telling them how much time I spent mopping floors as a novice, and now they never do.”

“I’m glad it’s working well for you. That’s one of our competitor’s products. We have a robot which washes dishes and stacks them to be put away. Another will wash and iron clothes. Our latest robot changes babies’ diapers. I understand keeping up on diaper changes has become a problem for your staff.

The china saucer rattled as the tea cup slammed down on it. “Those reporters lied! Poor Baby Jem did not die of an infected rash. He’d come to us with a lung disease. We took him to three doctors, but none of them could cure him.”

Tom flinched back from her. “I’m sorry, I don’t think you did anything wrong. I only know what was in the newspaper. Reporters are often sloppy at their job, I agree.”

The grey eyebrows relaxed a bit at this concession. The rest of Mother Ioana’s face remained stern.

“But I think it’s clear you need more staff for your facility. That’s what I want to help with.”

“How?”

Tom patted the case sitting beside his chair. “The ChangeBot can change a baby’s diaper in three minutes. It undresses, cleans, lotions, diapers, and redresses the baby by itself. Your caretakers won’t need to do anything. Including cleaning the table or their hands.”

The eyebrows approached the edge of the wimple. “Useful, if it can do what you say.”

“May I show you?”

“Certainly.” Mother Ioana helped move the tea makings to a side counter to make space on the table.

Out of the case, the ChangeBot was a cylinder about the size of a Moses basket. A cushioned support stretched out from the front, big enough to hold the baby before and after the change.

A baby doll wearing shorts was part of the standard sales pitch. Tom took it from the case, laid it on the support, and slid it into the opening. A tap on the start button initiated the change process.

Mother Ioana paid more attention to the machine than to Tom’s sales patter. He’d learned it from the sales reps the company had sent out with him, before repeated rejections and warnings from Legal made them refuse to support the project any more.

When the chimes sounded, he pulled the doll out and opened the diaper to show the lotion coverage.

“Hmmm. I’m more impressed by this than the floor robot, I’ll admit. But would you put your hand in there?”

She wasn’t the first to make that comment. Version 1.0.2 of the software added support for treating a hand as a baby. Tom spread his fingers in a Star Trek salute before sticking it in the ChangeBot. His other hand pressed the start button.

Her lips turned up a tiny bit for the first time since he’d mentioned the problems. “You’re no coward, my son.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe, ma’am. It does tickle a bit.”

His hand came back out with a diaper pressing the middle and ring fingers of his hand apart. Tom peeled off the diaper and took a napkin to wipe the lotion off.

Mother Ioana picked up her tea cup again. “Has that machine ever hurt a child?”

“No, ma’am. That is, we’ve done changes on piglets and baby chimpanzees, and they’ve all been fine.”

“You’ve never put a human child in that thing before?”

“Unfortunately, people are reluctant to let their children be the first one for anything like this. I was hoping, since you’re in need of more help with the children, we could help you with the labor, and you could help us—”

The gentle clink of the tea being set down said Mother Ioana’s hands should be empty. But it felt like she’d clamped a vise grip on Tom’s ear. The twisting grip forced him to bend down to put his nose level with his belly button to lessen the pain.

“You would use my children as experimental animals?” Her face now looked like a steel statue painted to look human.

“Somebody has to be the first one. And it would be such a help to so many people if we could—”

“Take your thing and go.” An extra twist to the ear gave the flat words emphasis.

Tom grabbed the case in one hand and the ChangeBot in the other. Mother Ioana towed him by the ear to the front door, not letting him straighten up.

The taxi driver was leaning on his car, smoking a cigarette.

She took Tom to the driver before letting go. “Take this baby-stealing monster back to the airport and make sure he leaves.”

“Yes, Sister,” said the driver.

Tom knelt down to pack the ChangeBot into its case. The doll wasn’t there. Well, some orphan could play with it, the company could afford another one.

After the door of the orphanage closed, the driver said, “Baby-stealing?”

“I didn’t try to steal any babies. I don’t want to steal a baby.” Tom decided saying he just wanted to borrow one wouldn’t help. “She’s just overreacting.”

“Not my problem, Yank.” The driver didn’t help with putting the case back in the rear seat. “I will point out if you want a different ride to the airport, it’ll be a long wait for a car to come out here.”

Tom sighed. He peeled off two more hundred dollar bills and handed them over. Accounting hated it when he put cash expenditures on his expense reports.

The return flight brought him home around lunchtime, so he went back to the office. Five minutes after he signed into the company Slack, the CEO walked into his office.

“Hi, Werner,” said Tom warily. Werner was a good boss, but he usually communicated by email.

Closing the door of the office meant this was definitely bad news.

“I take it the trip wasn’t a success,” said Werner.

“No.” Tom summarized it for him. If it had been a success, he would have sent an exultant email from the plane instead of slinking back quietly.

“The State Department sent us a polite note informing us that Moldova has declared all employees of our company persona non grata.”

“That . . . seems a little excessive.”

Werner shrugged. “I’m not that worried about it. Moldova isn’t much of a market for us. But I don’t like the precedent.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, sir.”

“I’m confident you will.” Werner dropped into Tom’s guest chair and stared at him for a long moment. “I am a bit worried about you. I thought the ChangeBot was a great idea. I’ve changed enough diapers that I think there’s a big market for it. But if we can’t get past this hump, no one’s ever going to buy it.”

Werner’s comment reminded Tom of how many diapers he’d changed—but that was before the car accident which cost him his family. Tom slumped in his chair. “I know. I’ve been trying every option I can think of.”

“Well, I won’t kill the project. But I think you need to back burner it for a while. Focus on some other projects. What happened with that concept for a bot that could fold and put away laundry?”

“I have some guys working on it. The current concept looks like a hat rack on wheels.”

Werner stood. “Transfer some people to it. Let’s make some hardware and turn it loose on someone’s closet. Mine, if you want. I’ll keep some funding allocated for the ChangeBot so you can move forward if there’s an opportunity.”

“Thank you. I’ll get on that.”

Werner left the door open as he left.

Tom checked his email for emergencies. Then he approved the transfers of every member of the ChangeBot team who’d requested to work on something else.

That was most of them. Over the next two weeks, the remaining members requested transfers as well. A new project started up for a bot to trim hedges. Tom convinced the team to not try for elaborate topiary sculptures until their prototype handled plain spheres and cylinders on actual bushes.

A few of the transfers were conditional on spending a few hours a week testing one of the ChangeBot prototypes. Tom wanted to make sure they stayed functional. If an opportunity came up, he didn’t want to find that a year of disuse had left them dirty and brittle. The engineers didn’t mind. They’d put a lot of work into the ChangeBot project. They wanted to cling to the hope that it would prove useful, too.

When the opportunity did come, it didn’t use one of the existing prototypes.

Tom’s cell rang with an unrecognized number. Probably another job hunter. “Hi, this is Tom.”

“Mr. Cavanaugh? This is Doctor Levinson at City Children’s Hospital. Do you still have that diaper-changing robot you demonstrated for us last year?”

Tom sat up straight. “Yes. We’re still testing it.”

“I have a patient who may need that. We’re looking at doing a surgical delivery of a baby at 23 weeks. Baby Bergen has a genetic disorder which keeps his immune system from functioning. There’s a new gene therapy which can cure that, but we can’t do it before birth, and until it takes effect he’ll be vulnerable to any germ out there. I want to have as sterile an environment as we can provide. If your robot can do the diaper changes, that reduces the chances of exposing him to germs while changing him.”

“That’s—yes, we can do that. How big a baby?”

“Probably about a pound, if he stays on his current growth curve. The delivery is scheduled for three weeks from now. Can you handle that?”

“Yes.” They went into some of the technical details of needing to integrate a ChangeBot with the ‘glove box’ incubator. Dr. Levinson promised to send over an incubator. He sent some 3D ultrasounds of Baby Bergen and some 23-week preemies right away.

When the call ended, Tom frantically typed up notes on the conversation to make sure he wouldn’t forget anything. Then checked the availability of the big conference room. It was in use, but the meeting would finish at two o’clock.

He scheduled it immediately. The invite was sent to all the former members of the ChangeBot team. The subject line was ‘MANDATORY CHANGEBOT ALL HANDS.’

Tom debated adding some explanation, but he couldn’t figure out a good summary. He pressed send.

The crowd of engineers, programmers, and technicians in the room were nervous as they filed in. The sales reps in there already picked up on the mood and cleared out fast.

As the last few filed in, Tom took his place by the screen. “I know a lot of you think a short notice all hands meeting is bad news. This time, it’s good news for the project, but bad news for your social life.”

He clicked the remote. The latest ultrasound of Baby Bergen filled the screen. “This is Baby Bergen. He’s going to be delivered by surgical section. They’re doing this because he has a disorder which keeps his immune system from working. There’s a gene therapy that will cure that, but it’s going to take a few weeks to take effect.”

Next picture was an infant incubator with rubber gloves attached to the sides for doctors and nurses to reach in and treat him. “While he’s in this sealed incubator, he’s safe from any germs getting at him. But taking him out for a diaper change risks exposing him. The staff will be gloved and masked, the room will be clean, but there’s a lot of germs in hospitals. That’s where we come in.”

Tom tapped one end of the incubator. “We need to make a downsized ChangeBot for a one pound baby. We need to test it. We need to make sure it stays sterile. We need to fit it on the end of the incubator so there’s no need to break the seal.”

He glanced out at his team. They were all intent. Even the ones not leaning forward in their seats were watching with their full attention.

“And we need to do it in three weeks.”

“Oh, come on!” was the most audible reaction out of the moans and mutters in the room.

“Baby Bergen is scheduled for surgical delivery in three weeks. We need to get them a ChangeBot by then, or they’ll be changing diapers by hand. Every time they open that incubator is a chance for an infection. Eight, ten, maybe twelve times a day.”

The mutters subsided, but no one looked enthusiastic.

“Look. We’ve all seen news about people dying because some engineer screwed up. Space Shuttles exploding, bridges collapsing, cars catching on fire. And I bet every one of you had a moment where you looked at one of those disasters and thought, ‘I could have saved them if I’d worked that project.’ That’s one of the motives for being an engineer. To save lives.”

Tom clicked back to the ultrasound picture. “We’re not looking at saving dozens of lives. Just this one. Maybe it is impossible. But we have to try. We have to give Baby Bergen a chance.”

He waved toward the double doors to the side of the screen. “Now, if you don’t want to help try, I won’t force you. The door’s unlocked. You can leave any time. But this is something worth doing, and I’ll be very grateful if you pitch in.”

No one left. A few looked ashamed. More looked like they were thinking about the technical problems in downsizing the ChangeBot.

“Flip side. This is a good team, you’ve worked well together, and I don’t want to screw up your cohesion. There’s also an old joke about trying to get a baby in one month by putting nine women on the job. So I’m not assigning people from other projects to this team. But if you know someone who can solve a problem, grab them. I’ll sort out the paperwork later.”

They were settled down now. “All that said, let’s get to work. We need to define the specifications for the new version. I have the neonatal ward’s procedure document for changing preemies, thanks to Dr. Levinson. Let’s go through that, then figure out what additional specs we’ll have from needing to keep the sterile environment.”

A couple of hours of team brainstorming produced a workable list. The top items were:

1.      Reduce physical volume.

2.      Reduce force applied to baby’s skin.

3.      Negative air pressure relative to incubator.

4.      Positive air pressure relative to outside.

5.      Self-clean to sterile conditions.

6.      Diaper, wipe, lotion inputs must be sterile.

They took over the BushBot offices to start working. Tom ordered pizza for them.

Dr. Levinson’s 3D ultrasounds let them quantify most of the specifications. One of the neonatal ward nurses came in to explain how they handled the preemies. An instrumented test doll used for the early stages of testing the ChangeBot had sensors to measure pressure against its ‘skin.’ A quick demonstration let the nurses define what ‘gentler’ meant for diaper changes.

The software update was done first. The coders used parameters for all the applicable variables, so it was easy enough to rescale the numbers. The simulation for testing the code took a bit more work, but it was ready before the hardware team.

The test team went on a shopping spree. There were preemie baby dolls out there. They also found a pet store willing to lend baby guinea pigs. “Well—adolescent ones,” explained Mary. “The real babies are way too small. We’re trying to get close to one pound.”

All the real work of changing a diaper was done by small robotic arms inside the ChangeBot. One of the hardware engineers described their activity as ‘three spiders having a slap fight.’ Their tips were replaced by softer and broader plastic pads.

Mostly the Hardware team focused on air movement. Fans pulled air away from the incubator to be pushed outside. Multiple simulation runs were done to ensure Baby Bergen would never come close to one of the fans, no matter how much he kicked. A padded barrier was set up inside the ChangeBot.

The teams were interlocked. Whenever Hardware changed something, the Software team updated their code and simulator to match. Testing worked with the sim and new hardware. Any problem they found sent the other teams back to work to fix it.

Whenever Dr. Levinson took a new ultrasound of Baby Bergen, the picture went up on the office walls. Engineers were working as much as they could stand to try to meet the deadline.

The more cynical ones made jokes that ‘deadline’ was more literal this time.

Tom spent as much time as he could with the team. His formal role was to resolve arguments when engineers couldn’t agree on a design, but the ChangeBot team was good about letting data override egos. When there was a split on the team, they’d take it to the simulator or a hardware test.

He kept the pizzas coming. After seeing engineers curled up in a corner two evenings running, he put some cots and sleeping bags on his expense account.

A week and a half into the death march, Tom came into the offices at 11pm carrying a case of tacos. He found Werner looking over the shoulders of some engineers running a sim.

The CEO was not normally on site at 11pm.

Worse, Werner was accompanied by Hannah and—it took Tom a moment to recognize him—Ian Valani. The CFO. What the hell were the CEO, CFO, and VP of HR doing here?

Nothing good.

“Hi, Werner. Hi, folks. Let me take care of this and I’ll be right with you.” He turned to an engineer who was paying attention to the visitors instead of his work. “Take this to the conference room and let everyone know there’s some food. Thanks.”

With the tacos out of the way, he could begin the confrontation. “Thanks for coming by. We have lots of progress I can show you. I’m pretty sure we’ll make the deadline for the new prototype.”

“Thank you, let’s hold off on the technical review for now,” said Werner. “We’re more worried about the business side of this project.”

“Yes, you’ve completely overrun your budget,” said Ian. “Both your discretionary Engineering budget and the R&D reserve aren’t enough to cover all the overtime being charged for this.”

“Never mind the money!” snapped Hannah. “You’re working these people to death. Half of them are going to quit in the next year. That’s why we have a policy limiting how much overtime can be demanded. You’re violating the hell out of it.”

“Nobody’s on mandatory overtime,” said Tom. “We’re all volunteering to work on this project because we think it’s important. It is important.”

He shifted to the CFO. “Most of us are going to take compensatory time off when we’re done. That’ll solve your budget problem.”

Ian sniffed. “If they take comp time. They could quit and take the full paycheck, as Hannah says.”

“They’re not going to quit. This is the best chance they have to be on cutting edge development. They’re seeing their work go out into the world, not get shelved. That’s the best way to retain engineers.” That was Tom’s counter to Hannah’s retention argument.

Werner cut in as Hannah inhaled for her next pronouncement. “My worry isn’t that as much as the schedule for the other projects these people have been pulled away from. The BushBot is on hold. The LaundryBot team warned me they may miss their next milestone. The company needs to deliver new products to keep our place in the market.”

Tom glanced to the side. His team was drifting into the room, tacos in hand, to listen to the higher ups debate. “You’re getting one. This prototype will be used on a human infant. With that test, we can start producing the ChangeBot for the general market.”

Ian scoffed. “What market? People have a kid in diapers for two or three years, then they’ll give the bot away. If they have a kid at all, lots don’t. Everybody needs help with their laundry. We should pull the plug on this and go all out on LaundryBot.”

“Yes, have you looked at birth rates?” demanded Hannah. “You’re marching us into a shrinking demographic. There’s fewer babies every year. That’s a stupid market to commit us to.”

“Yes, I have looked at the demographics!” snarled Tom.

Hannah and Ian stepped back, unused to Tom raising his voice.

“People are having fewer babies because our society is making life harder for parents. We’re taking away the supports they had, cousins and grandparents, by moving everyone around. We’re demanding higher standards for taking care of kids, and punishing them harshly whenever they don’t keep up with the ever-changing rules.”

Tom leaned forward, making the other two back up again.

“We need to help parents. We need to make it easier to have babies. If people don’t have babies, there won’t be any markets for anything!”

He paused, took a breath, tried to calm himself a little before continuing. “There’s a lot of hard things about being a parent. Diapers aren’t hard, but they’re icky and create a lot of mess to take care of. I know, I’ve done it. Hannah, have you ever changed a diaper?”

“Of course not!” she snapped.

“Thought so. How about you, Ian?”

“I didn’t get to this level by taking time off work to change diapers.”

That won a smirk from Werner. Good. Though Werner probably did most of his diaper-changing when he was between companies.

“I have. It’s not fun. That’s why I want to help parents with the worst part of the job. Then we’ll have more babies. Parents will have three or four babies, getting lots of use out of their ChangeBot. That’ll grow the markets you’re worried about. But before we help them, we’re going to save the life of Baby Bergen!”

Tom realized he was panting from the rant. His adrenaline level was ridiculously high. His body was gearing up for a fist fight, not a management priorities discussion.

Applause sounded. The managers all looked over to the conference room door. Engineers were clapping and cheering. Bob shouted, “You tell ‘em, boss!”

Werner looked over the assembled employees. He smiled. “I don’t think we need to worry about retention yet. Ian, is my personal reserve still where it was at the quarterly review?”

“Yes, sir,” said the CFO.

“Put half of it on the ChangeBot project. And Hannah, I’ll add a codicil to your bonus objectives for the next two years that Engineering retention will not count against your goals. I think this answers your objections?”

That drew reluctant nods from the two of them.

“Then we should let these people get back to work,” said the CEO. He gave Tom a firm handshake before ushering the other two out before him.

After accepting congratulations from his team, Tom pulled up the latest test results. The simulations were good. The tests on the instrumented preemie doll showed the cleaning was being too rough on the skin. The programming and hardware teams were both brainstorming solutions. The fear was making the arms swiping over the baby’s skin so gentle that not all of the poop was removed.

It was past midnight. Sometimes setting a good example meant going home and getting some sleep.

A week later they had a prototype which met all the specs. It was bolted on to the incubator the hospital had sent over. Half the team watched as Mary used the built-in gloves to slide the instrumented preemie doll into ChangeBot.

Three minutes later, she drew it out again. The display next to the incubator showed that all pressure sensors stayed in the acceptable range. It also showed the interior of the ChangeBot kept the air pressure where it needed to be.

“It meets the spec,” said Bob.

“So far,” countered Mary. “I have sixty test points I need to run.”

Tom gave them all a smile. “Good work, everybody. If you’re not on the testing team, you can go home and catch up on sleep.”

One of the engineers muttered, “I’m heading for my cot. I need a nap before I’m safe to drive.”

The prototype passed all sixty tests. Tom delivered it to the hospital a day early. A table in the neonatal ward was waiting for it.

The hospital had vetoed a telemetry feed from the ChangeBot back to the company so the team could monitor its performance. There were too many other devices in the ward it could interfere with.

Tom waited to hear from Dr. Levinson. He’d promised to send updates, but it was not at the top of his priority list. As each email arrived, he pasted the info into the team Slack.

‘Caesarean complete. Baby Bergen in incubator.’

‘First urination. Diaper change complete.’

‘First BM. Diaper change complete.’

As the routine messages stacked up, Tom relaxed. It worked. Baby Bergen was still in danger, but they’d done their part to take care of him.

Two days later, Dr. Levinson sent a non-routine message. ‘Bruise noticed under diaper. Not serious.’

Tom phoned the doctor at once. “Could you send us a picture of the bruise? We want to make sure we’re not aggravating it.”

“Sure.”

An email with a photo arrived in an hour. Tom put it on the Slack channel for ChangeBot. The engineers began chatting about it.

Mary spotted the problem. “That’s under the Velcro fastener for the diaper. We’re probably pressing too hard when we close it up.”

“What happens if we don’t attach it firmly?” asked Wang.

“For Baby Bergen? Nothing. The fastener spec was written to make sure toddlers crawling around wouldn’t drop their diapers off,” said the specification lead.

The senior coder said, “Let me halve the pressure for the fastener seal, and we can see how that works in the sim.”

It worked in the sim. Once the new version of the software was installed, it worked in one of the other prototypes as well. In a matter of hours Tom was on his way to City Children’s Hospital with a memory stick to upgrade the ChangeBot software.

The front desk of the hospital didn’t bat an eye as Tom walked past. The neonatal ward was more strongly protected. Dr. Levinson needed to escort Tom in, after loaning some sterilized scrubs and talking him through the procedure for washing up.

The USB stick with the new software had been sterilized back at the lab. The upload went quickly. The ChangeBot reported a successful installation.

Tom looked down at the tiny baby. “How’s he doing?”

“Better than we expected,” said Dr. Levinson. “The gene therapy is taking hold. White blood cell count is up. Might be home by his original due date.”

“That’s great news. I’m glad we could help.”

The doctor ran a hand over the ChangeBot. “Yes, this has been useful. I never asked—how much are you charging us for it?”

Tom shrugged. “It’s a prototype, so no charge. You’re helping us test it, after all.”

“Well, the nurses were thinking a couple more of them would be useful. Can you provide them?”

“I’ll send you a quote.”

More stories by Karl K. Gallagher are on Amazon and Audible.