We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  “John,” said my friend to a workman who was passing through the room at the moment, “is that improved double-action minister wound up?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the man: “but he isn’t oiled; and the power hasn’t been regulated.”

  “Never mind,” answered Budlong, turning to me: “he’ll click and rattle, and grin and squirm a little; but you can get an idea of the operation of the works.” So saying, he threw the machinery into gear with a key.

  With a suddenness that caused me to spring backwards, and thereby to occasion a very unnecessarily hearty chuckle on the part of Mr. Budlong and of the workman, who had stopped to see, the machine threw both its hands to arm’s-length before it, as if to catch me, and held them stiffly out; raised its eyebrows; stared hideously with its eyes; opened its mouth long and wide, grinning, and showing two great rows of white teeth, like a vicious horse; and shouted out in a high, harsh, ringing tone, a steady and sustained vowel-sound of “A—a—a—a—a—ah!”

  This vocable it pronounced as in the exclamation, “Ah!” A bellows in the abdomen of the creature wheezed and blew busily. All his senseless entrails sprang into miscellaneous activity; and with much rattling, squeaking, and whizzing, and an occasional gesture and grimace, the substantial portion of the ministerial functions was directly under my notice, in actual operation.

  Having waited a few moments, my guide turned off the wind; and the shriek of the spectre ceased. He still, however, held out his hands, gibbered, stared and grinned; occasionally rose as if on tiptoe, and came down on his heels with a hard jerk; shook his head violently, or seemed to squint for a moment at the end of his nose. All at once something choked or hitched in his viscera: the eyes turned clear round as if in a fit, and stuck fast; and with a snap and a click the minister stood still.

  “No matter,” remarked Budlong. “They operate rather singularly sometimes, before the power is regulated, and the oiling completed; but it’s all right.” So he led the way to the tailor’s shop.

  This was merely a shop where all the well-known varieties of current costume were manufactured; and no particular account of it is necessary. The ministers now being turned out were clothed to order, either in dress-suits, or in surplices, or other pulpit overcloths of white or black. Some were trimmed in a truly superb style, even to a real gold chain and diamond ring, and did very great credit to the enterprise and decorative talent of the concern.

  We remained only a little while in the tailoring department, and passed on to the proving-room. Upon opening the thick and well-secured double door of this room, the scene within, and the sudden and terrific hubbub of voices that burst out, again startled me. I was reminded of those old magic halls wherein heroes of romance find enchanted armed statues shouting and striking furiously about to guard the entrance, or exclude the curious from the secrets of their prison.

  Upon entering the room, I beheld nearly two dozen of finished (or, as one might figuratively say, ordained) ministers, in complete clerical costumes of various kinds, and in full blast, delivering each his sermon in heterogeneous and chaotic confusion of matter and manner altogether indescribable. The scene was wholly without parallel either in my experience or my conception, unless in the study-rooms of the great conservatorio or music-school at Naples, where, as I have read, a hall full of students practise each his own instrument, without regard to time or tune of the rest; or in the bedlamitish vociferations of a crew of maniacs confined in one place.

  I gazed at this extraordinary exhibition in utter extremity of astonishment. Not only was the human quality of the voices, and the thoroughly natural articulation, perfectly astounding, but the forms and attitudes of the speakers—such was the artistic skill of the manufacturers, were also entirely and unaffectedly human; some, as in life, being easy and graceful, in one or two instances almost to statuesque beauty; while others were grotesquely stiff, angular, and awkward. The eyes, moreover, and the motions of the whole countenance and head, as well as those of the hands, arms, and figure, were governed by a similar adaptation.

  Close to me stood a large and pompous man, declaiming in a full and even tone a discourse in which I thought I recognized a sentence; and indeed, upon listening more closely, I discovered that it was one of Bishop South’s best sermons. At the farther end of the apartment, a tall, gaunt spectre with large frame, harsh features, and rather coarse garments, was swinging his fists, and vociferating an exhortation which seemed suitable for a camp-meeting. Near him stood the apparition of a smug, fat young divine, of comfortable appearance and oleaginous smile, enunciating, in silvery voice, and the style of Praed’s

  “Gentle Johnian,

  Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,

  Whose rhetoric is Ciceronian,”

  a series of well-balanced and correctly worded sentences. Another, I should have said, in secular rather than clerical costume—a dry-visaged, dogmatic-looking creature—was reciting in a lifeless way a string of phrases, which I could not define, until I caught the words, “egoism,” “altruism,” “altruistic,” “egoistic,” all in one single sentence. He was a Positivist, of course.

  The remainder of this assembly were, each in his own proper style, performing the duties of their office, with an honest zeal, and, even in some cases, an impassioned ardor, which could not be sufficiently commended. After listening and looking for a considerable time, I signified that I was satiated with the whirlwind of ministerial eloquence. Hereupon we left the exercitants in charge of certain workmen who were superintending the proving process, and passed on to the exhibiting room.

  This was a large and convenient hall, somewhat obscurely lighted, and fitted up with small desks, or pulpits, for the better display of the wares on sale. We entered the room at one end; and, the windows being darkened with heavy curtains, the various clerical forms, standing calmly and silently in two rows along the sides of the long room, each in his place of authority, recalled to my remembrance that tremendous and impressive representation in the Hebrew prophecy, of the long and stern array of departed kings sitting still in the depths of Hades, ready to welcome the great Babylonish tyrant to his throne at their head. I also recollected—by some uncomfortable and fantastic association of ideas, and to my mortification at the absurd and unseasonable suggestion—Jarley’s Wax-Work.

  My guide hastened to admit more light into the room, so that the deep gloom was lifted away, and the various aspects of the patent ministers became distinguishable; although the room was yet, with shrewd, business-like, tact, left dim enough materially to enhance their very remarkably life-like appearance. He then proceeded to exhibit for my benefit the operation of various single styles of execution, and the working of those adjunct mechanisms which he had mentioned in the machine-shop. For this purpose he selected an automaton which he called a “first-rate article of the grand improved combined-action patent minister,” and which he characterized as superbly finished; and, indeed, as a very favorable specimen of the manufacture. Unceremoniously fumbling about various portions of the ministerial uniform, he seemed to adjust springs or machinery in sundry places, wound up the mainspring with a crank, and, turning to me, observed—

  “There! the machine is wound up and ready to go: I have, however, disconnected all the actions except the bellows and escape-pipe. You will therefore observe, that, upon being put in motion, he will only blow.”

  Such was accordingly the result. The accurate workmanship and careful adjustment of the machinery rendered its operation as entirely noiseless as the normal functions of the human body; and a sort of whew or puff was the only evidence that the minister was at work.

  Budlong then proceeded to gear on the vocalizing apparatus; whereupon the squall or shrieking monotone of “Ah!” which I mentioned before, again came from the lips of the automaton. He next put into operation the gesture and expression attachment, which caused also, as before, the stretching out of the arms, the contortions of the visage, &c.

  “His sermon’s in him,
I presume,” said Budlong, inspecting a recess in the figure. “Yes; about half delivered. He’ll begin somewhere in the middle; for we don’t wind them up until they are entirely run down, to avoid uneven wear of the works.”

  Then he touched another spring; and the automaton preacher, ceasing to “blaat out”—if we may use an expressive rustic verb—his “Ah!” slid from it into the midst of a passage in the first part of Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s “Discourse of Lukewarmness and Zeal,” somewhat on this wise: “A—a—a-—a—and to make it possible for us”—and here the image subsided into a graceful, impressive, and powerful delivery of the strong old-fashioned English sentences—’’to come to that spiritual state where all felicity does dwell. The religion that Christ taught is a spiritual religion: it designs (so far as the state will permit) to make us spiritual; that is, so as the Spirit be the prevailing ingredient. God must now be worshipped in spirit; and not only so, but with a fervent spirit.”

  And so the minister went on with the solid and sonorous rhetoric of the powerful old bishop.

  “That,” said Budlong, “is the principal stop, or even tone. I will now set the damnatory, or threatening stop”—

  “Stay a moment,” I interrupted. “It would be a pity to have such noble thoughts as Bishop Taylor’s inappropriately delivered. Couldn’t you illustrate the other stops by inserting other matter?”

  “Oh, yes!” he replied. “Here is a list of our prepared printed compositions, arranged with directions for the stops. Just select at your pleasure, and we’ll insert them accordingly. We generally use the principal for exhibition.”

  I took the little catalogue, and selected from under the head of “Triumphant” the Ninety-fifth Psalm, in the Vulgate Latin, “Venite exultemus Domino.”

  This having been taken from a closet, inserted in the combined-action minister, and delivered by him in an overpowering strain of congratulatory eloquence, my friend proceeded, at my request, to cause the enunciation by the figure of the Athanasian Creed, with all the curses complete (I looked for that of Ernulphus, but it was not on the list), as an exemplification of the damnatory or threatening stop. After that he gave me Wesley’s “Sinners, turn; why will ye die?” on the hortatory, or didactic stop; and other pieces in the three other sermon styles—the hifalutin or camp-meeting, the intoning or liturgic, and the sweet-cream or dearly-beloved.

  Having thus seen all that was to be seen in the factory, we completed our circuit by returning to the office, where I had a long and interesting conversation with Budlong, of which I may reproduce some of the chief points, without pretending to verbal accuracy.

  The first of these points, if I may say so, was an interruption. I had hardly sat down, when I jumped up again; not because I sat on a cat or a pin, but because a great awful voice cried, “Twelve o’clock!” The tone was really awful. It was musical, but vast, booming, and deep; and the sound throbbed in my ears like the note of a heavy bell close at hand; and its reverberations filled all the air; so that it came, seemingly, from everywhere—not from any place.

  Budlong laughed until he cried. “I forgot to tell you,” he said when he could speak, “we have Friar Bacon’s brazen head, discovered at Oxford, and imported expressly for us at great expense. We use it instead of a bell or a whistle, just as the American Organ Factory in Boston plays a common chord for the same purpose.”

  I recovered myself as well as I could, and told him, that, after all, he had only revived an old device in his mechanical devotions; that his clock-work sermonizing bore much analogy to the Buddhist praying-mills, that are turned by water-wheels or by wind.

  Budlong laughed again. “I confess,” he said, “ this much. I am a member of the First Radical Club; and you know they run a Buddhist prayer-mill in the back-room all the time, by a little hydraulic ram supplied from the Cochituate pipes. Not one of them will admit that they believe there’s any thing in it; but still, you know, it can do no harm to be right on the record. You remember the old story of the Englishman in Rome, who took off his hat and made a low bow to Jupiter, and requested the civility should be remembered in case the Olympian dynasty should ever be re-established? I am not sure but our modern wise men of the western east may have given me the idea, really. But I have made it practical.”

  “In a certain sense,” I admitted. “But have you made it pay? What is the present state of the enterprise financially?”

  “Eminently satisfactory. We are just now, for instance, filling an order for ministers. But the next is for lecturers”—

  “Lecturers!” I interrupted, as that grim row of portrait heads in the Bluebeard chamber flashed across my mind in a new light—“then those likenesses”—I stopped; but I had let it out. Budlong turned quite red, and looked, I may say, almost sheepish; but finally he made the best of it by saying good-naturedly—

  “Ah, peeping Tom!”

  “I confess,” I said; “but I couldn’t possibly have imagined the door forbidden.”

  “And it is our own fault too,” rejoined he. “We ought to have locked it, and hidden the key. So I’ll confess too. The fact is, that we are running a pretty important part of the lecturing business at present. Don’t you remember that odd little newspaper controversy a few weeks ago, in consequence of ‘The Leavenworth Champion’ and ‘ The Bangor Courier’ each saying that a certain eminent speaker lectured at its respective city on one and the same evening?”

  I did.

  “Well, we had a terrible time to quiet it down. You see, the first-class speakers receive ten times as many invitations as they can accept. Now, we furnish a facsimile, who exactly duplicates the eminent gentleman; and we have half the money. Between you and me, we have had as many as five of one or two men speaking in different parts of the United States at the same time. Very likely it won’t last; but we’re coining money out of it now!”

  “And the celebrated foreign gentlemen?” I asked.

  “Pshaw!” said Budlong. “They’re all safe at home, minding their own business. Nobody knows them: so that it’s a great deal easier to put their doubles on the stage than the domestic article.”

  I parodied Campbell—

  “Both Pepper and his Ghost a shade!”

  and then I added; “but really you’ll do away with all public speaking, seems to me?”

  “None of my lookout if we do,” was his cynical answer. “Not with real speaking, though. Reading a manuscript isn’t speaking. We have done away with some of that. What do you suppose it is, except our invention, that has caused the decrease that the religious papers are always complaining of, in the number of graduates from the theological seminaries?”

  “But, my dear fellow,” I remonstrated, “what the dickens— What is the effect of all this, pray tell me, on the stated religious observances of the country? You surely do not think it right to impede them, or to push them out of use?”

  “No. But what I do think is this, that real religion will harmonize just as readily and perfectly with improvements in art as with advances in science. The question isn’t what the new invention or scientific truth will bring to pass: that will take care of itself. The only question is, whether it is a truth, whether it is a discovery.”

  “I can’t bring myself to give up sermons.”

  “Give up? You’re going to have ’em cheaper than ever. Why, the interest on one of our first-class ministers isn’t one-tenth of a decent salary; and I’ll guarantee him to outlive a crow. He’ll save his own first cost full up in from five to ten years; and with care he won’t cost five dollars a year for repairs. Then, look at the economy of the whole plan. Here are your human ministers that must have a salary, and a family and houseroom, and grow old or sick or heretical or tiresome; or they quarrel with the parish; or the parish quarrels with them. But the patent minister is exempt from all the weaknesses of humanity. He requires neither wife, child, nor friend; neither house, land, nor salary; bed nor board, rest, exchange, nor vacation—nothing in the world except a cool cupboard and a ve
ry little sweet oil. He is conveniently stored in a closet in the vestry, or covered with a dust-cloth in the pulpit; or he can stand on a trap, and go up and down by a bell-wire arrangement running under the floor, that the senior deacon can pull where he sits in his pew. If you choose to have him wound up once in six hours, he will maintain a perpetual discourse day and night, like the perpetual chant in the chapel of Mr. Ferrar’s famous religious establishment at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. He cannot quarrel; he says only what he is inspired (literally) to say; and the congregation can have whatever approved discourse they like, instead of taking their chances of getting one they do not. There are at least thirty thousand ministers of the gospel in the United States: at four hundred dollars a year, they are paid twelve million dollars. What would this annual sum not accomplish—I do not say in secular enterprises, but for benevolent undertakings, the missionary work, home charities, education, reformatory institutions?”

  “Do you find that your customers pay a higher average for such purposes than other people?” I asked.

  “I have not the least doubt that it will prove to be so whenever you will get together the statistics,” answered Budlong with great assurance.

  “I can’t help it: I couldn’t bear to lose my dear old pastor—”

  “Look here!” broke in Budlong, with some heat. “Hold on! I haven’t time for details to-day. I’ll talk it out with you next time. But bear this one thing in mind—the Sermonate is not the Pastorate; and Budlong and Faber haven’t offered yet to sell you a PASTOR; have they?”

  I declare I had never thought of it before—I was brought up under the stated preaching of the gospel as practised in New England—but it isn’t: they hadn’t. I perceived how wide an inquiry this distinction opened up; and so, dropping the ethical aspects of the business, I took my friend’s hint, and came back to facts.

  “No, you haven’t. And the only thing that I need detain you for any longer, is to get a few more points about the extent and prospects of the business, such as will look well in my article.”