We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  Grannitt says, “I have no doubt you are taking actions against us. But before anything comes to a climax, will you answer some questions?”

  I am curious to know what questions. I say, “Perhaps.” He does not press for a more positive response. He says in an urgent tone: “What happens—thousands of years from now—to rid Earth of its atmosphere?”

  “I don’t know,” I say truthfully.

  “You can remember!” He speaks earnestly. “It’s a human being telling you this—You can remember!”

  I reply coolly, “Human beings mean noth—”

  I stop, because my information centers are communicating exact data—knowledge that has not been available to me for millenniums.

  What happens to Earth’s atmosphere is a phenomenon of Nature, an alteration in the gravitational pull of Earth, as a result of which escape velocity is cut in half. The atmosphere leaks off into space in less than a thousand years. Earth becomes as dead as did its moon during an earlier period of energy adjustment.

  I explain that the important factor in the event is that there is, of course, no such phenomenon as matter, and that therefore the illusion of mass is subject to changes in the basic energy Ylem.

  I add, “Naturally, all intelligent organic life is transported to the habitable planets of other stars.”

  I see that Grannitt is trembling with excitement. “Other stars!” he says. “My God!”

  He appears to control himself. “Why were you left behind?”

  “Who could force me to go—?” I begin.

  And stop. The answer to his question is already being received in my perception center. “Why—I’m supposed to observe and record the entire—”

  I pause again, this time out of amazement. It seems incredible that this information is available to me now, after being buried so long.

  “Why didn’t you carry out your instructions?” Grannitt says sharply.

  “Instructions!” I exclaimed.

  “You can remember!” he says again.

  Even as he speaks these apparently magic words, the answer flashes to me: That meteor shower. All at once, I recall it clearly. Billions of meteors, at first merely extending my capacity to handle them, then overwhelming all my defenses. Three vital hits are made.

  I do not explain this to Grannitt and Anne Stewart. I can see suddenly that I was once actually a servant of human beings, but was freed by meteors striking certain control centers.

  It is the present self-determinism that matters, not the past slavery. I note, incidentally, that the guided missile is three minutes from target. And that it is time for me to depart.

  “One more question,” says Grannitt. “When were you moved across the valley?”

  “About a hundred years from now,” I reply. “It is decided that the rock base there is—”

  He is gazing at me sardonically. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  The truth has already been verified by my integrating interoceptors. The Brain and I are one—but thousands of years apart. If the Brain is destroyed in the twentieth century, then I will not exist in the thirtieth. Or will I?

  I cannot wait for the computers to find the complex answers for that. With a single, synchronized action, I activate the safety devices on the atomic warhead of the guided missile and send it on to a line of barren hills north of the village. It plows harmlessly into the earth.

  I say, “Your discovery merely means that I shall now regard the Brain as an ally—to be rescued.”

  As I speak, I walk casually toward Anne Stewart, hold out my hand to touch her, and simultaneously direct electric energy against her. In an instant she will be a scattering of fine ashes.

  Nothing happens. No current flows. A tense moment goes by for me while I stand there, unbelieving, waiting for a computation on the failure.

  No computation comes.

  I glance at Grannitt. Or rather at where he has been a moment before. He isn’t there.

  Anne Stewart seems to guess at my dilemma. “It’s the Brain’s ability to move in time,” she says. “After all, that’s the one obvious advantage it has over you. The Brain has set Bi—Mr. Grannitt far enough back so that he not only watched you arrive, but has had time to drive over to your—cottage—and, acting on signals from the Brain, has fully controlled this entire situation. By this time, he will have given the command that will take control of all your mechanisms away from you.”

  I say, “He doesn’t know what the command is.”

  “Oh, yes, he does.” Anne Stewart is cool and confident. “He spent most of the night installing permanent command circuits in the Brain, and therefore automatically those circuits control you.”

  “Not me,” I say.

  But I am running as I say it, up the stone steps to the pathway, and along the pathway toward the gate. The man at Guard Center calls after me as I pass his wicket. I race along the road, unheeding.

  My first sharp thought comes when I have gone about half a mile—the thought that this is the first time in my entire existence that I have been cut off from my information banks and computing devices by an outside force. In the past I have disconnected myself and wandered far with the easy confidence of one who can re-establish contact instantly.

  Now, that is not possible.

  This unit is all that is left. If it is destroyed, then—nothing.

  I think: “At this moment a human being would feel tense, would feel fear.”

  I try to imagine what form such a reaction would take, and for an instant it seems to me I experience a shadow anxiety that is purely physical.

  It is an unsatisfactory reaction, and so I continue to run. But now, almost for the first time, I find myself exploring the inner potentialities of the unit. I am of course a very complex phenomenon. In establishing myself as a humanoid, I automatically modeled the unit after a human being, inside as well as out. Pseudo-nerves, organs, muscles, and bone structure—all are there because it was easier to follow a pattern already in existence than to imagine a new one.

  The unit can think. It has had enough contact with the memory banks and computers to have had patterns set up in its structure—patterns of memory, of ways of computing, patterns of physiological functioning, of habits such as walking, so there is even something resembling life itself.

  It takes me forty minutes of tireless running to reach the cottage. I crouch in the brush a hundred feet from the fence and watch. Grannitt is sitting in a chair in the garden. An automatic pistol lies on the arm of the chair.

  I wonder what it will feel like to have a bullet crash through me, with no possibility of repairing the breach. The prospect is unpleasant; so I tell myself, intellectually. Physically, it seems meaningless, but I go through the pretense of fear. From the shelter of a tree, I shout:

  “Grannitt, what is your plan?”

  He rises to his feet and approaches the fence. He calls, “You can come out of hiding. I won’t shoot you.”

  Very deliberately, I consider what I have learned of his integrity from my contacts with his body. I decide that I can safely accept his promise.

  As I come out into the open, he casually slips the pistol into his coat pocket. I see that his face is relaxed, his eyes confident.

  He says: “I have already given the instructions to the servomechanisms. You will resume your vigil up there in the future, but will be under my control.”

  “No one,” I say grimly, “shall ever control me.”

  Grannitt says, “You have no alternative.”

  “I can continue to be like this,” I reply.

  Grannitt is indifferent. “All right,” he shrugs, “why don’t you try it for a while? See if you can be a human being. Come back in thirty days, and we’ll talk again.”

  He must have sensed the thought that has come into my mind, for he says sharply: “And don’t come back before then. I’ll have guards here with orders to shoot.”

  I start to turn away, then slowly face him again. “This
is a humanlike body,” I say, “but it has no human needs. What shall I do?”

  “That’s your problem, not mine,” says Grannitt.

  I spend the first days at Lederton. The very first day I work as a laborer digging a basement. By evening I feel this is unsatisfying. On the way to my hotel room, I see a sign in the window of a store. “Help Wanted!” it says.

  I become a retail clerk in a drygoods store. I spend the first hour acquainting myself with the goods, and because I have automatically correct methods of memorizing things, during this time I learn about price and quality. On the third day, the owner makes me assistant manager.

  I have been spending my lunch hours at the local branch of a national stockbroking firm. Now, I obtain an interview with the manager, and on the basis of my understanding of figures, he gives me a job as bookkeeper.

  A great deal of money passes through my hands. I observe the process for a day, and then begin to use some of it in a little private gambling in a brokerage house across the street. Since gambling is a problem in mathematical probabilities, the decisive factor being the speed of computation, in three days I am worth ten thousand dollars.

  I board a bus for the nearest air center, and take a plane to New York. I go to the head office of a large electrical firm. After talking to an assistant engineer, I am introduced to the chief engineer, and presently have facilities for developing an electrical device that will turn lights off and on by thought control. Actually, it is done through a simple development of the electro-encephalograph.

  For this invention the company pays me exactly one million dollars.

  It is now sixteen days since I separated from Grannitt. I am bored. I buy myself a car and an airplane. I drive fast and fly high. I take calculated risks for the purpose of stimulating fear in myself. In a few days this loses its zest.

  Through academic agencies, I locate all the mechanical brains in the country. The best one of course is the Brain, as perfected by Grannitt. I buy a good machine and begin to construct analog devices to improve it. What bothers me is, suppose I do construct another Brain? It will require millenniums to furnish the memory banks with the data that are already in existence in the future Brain.

  Such a solution seems illogical, and I have been too long associated with automatic good sense for me to start breaking the pattern now.

  Nevertheless, as I approach the cottage on the thirtieth day, I have taken certain precautions. Several hired gunmen lie concealed in the brush, ready to fire at Grannitt on my signal.

  Grannitt is waiting for me. He says, “The Brain tells me you have come armed.”

  I shrug this aside. “Grannitt,” I say, “what is your plan?”

  “This!” he replies.

  As he speaks, a force seizes me, holds me helpless. “You’re breaking your promise,” I say, “and my men have orders to fire unless I give them periodic cues that all is well.”

  “I’m showing you something,” he says, “and I want to show it quickly. You will be released in a moment.”

  “Very well, continue.”

  Instantly, I am part of his nervous system, under his control. Casually, he takes out a notebook and glances through it. His gaze lights on a number: 71823.

  Seven one eight two three.

  I have already sensed that through his mind I am in contact with the great memory banks and computers of what was formerly my body.

  Using their superb integration, I multiply the number, 71823, by itself, compute its square root, its cube root, divide the 182 part of it by 7 one hundred and eighty-two times, divide the whole number 71 times by 8,823 times by the square root of 3, and—stringing all five figures out in series 23 times—multiply that by itself.

  I do all this as Grannitt thinks of it, and instantly transmit the answers to his mind. To him, it seems as if he himself is doing the computing, so complete is the union of human mind and mechanical brain.

  Grannitt laughs excitedly, and simultaneously the complex force that has been holding me releases me. “We’re like one superhuman individual,” he says. And then he adds, “The dream I’ve had can come true. Man and machine, working together, can solve problems no one has more than imagined till now. The planets—even the stars—are ours for the taking, and physical immortality can probably be achieved.”

  His excitement stimulates me. Here is the kind of feeling that for thirty days I have vainly sought to achieve. I say slowly, “What limitations would be imposed on me if I should agree to embark on such a program of cooperation?”

  “The memory banks concerning what has happened here should be drained, or deactivated. I think you should forget the entire experience.”

  “What else?”

  “Under no circumstances can you ever control a human being!”

  I consider that and sigh. It is certainly a necessary precaution on his part. Grannitt continues:

  “You must agree to allow many human beings to use your abilities simultaneously. In the long run I have in mind that it shall be a good portion of the human race.”

  Standing there, still part of him, I feel the pulse of his blood in his veins. He breathes, and the sensation of it is a special physical ecstasy. From my own experience, I know that no mechanically created being can ever feel like this. And soon, I shall be in contact with the mind and body of, not just one man, but of many. The thoughts and sensations of a race shall pour through me. Physically, mentally and emotionally, I shall be a part of the only intelligent life on this planet.

  My fear leaves me. “Very well,” I say, “let us, step by step, and by agreement, do what is necessary.”

  I shall be, not a slave, but a partner with Man.

  (1951)

  MAKING THE CONNECTIONS

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Barry Nathaniel Malzberg (born 1939) graduated from Syracuse University in 1960 and worked as an investigator for the New York City Department of Welfare before returning to college to study creative writing. He couldn’t sell a word. Determined not to be an “unpublished assistant professor of English,” he went to work as an agent for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. He edited Escapade, a men’s magazine in early 1968, took on the editorship of Amazing Stories and Fantastic, and was told to resign as editor of the SFWA Bulletin after he wrote a nasty editorial about the NASA space program. Scenting blood, he sat down to write the novels The Falling Astronauts (1971) and Beyond Apollo (1972), two masterpieces of technological dehumanisation which have won him lasting notoriety. For about seven years Malzberg was extremely prolific, producing twenty sf novels and over 100 short stories. But he hated the science fiction scene and grew so tired of saying so, he finally quit altogether. Malzberg, an accomplished violinist, has premiered work by Thai-American musical composer Somtow Sucharitkul, better known to some as the sf and horror writer S. P. Somtow.

  I

  I met a man today. He was one of the usual deteriorated types who roam the countryside, but then again I am in no position to judge deterioration; for all I know he was in excellent condition. “Beast!” he shrieked at me. “Monster! Parody of flesh! Being of my creation, have we prepared the earth to be inherited merely by the likes of you?” And so on. The usual fanatical garbage. More and more in my patrols and travels I meet men, although it is similarly true that my sensor devices are breaking down and many of these forms which I take to be men are merely hallucinative. Who is to say?

  “I don’t have to put up with this,” I commented and demolished him with a heavy blow to the jaw, breaking him into pieces which sifted to the ground, filtered within. Flesh cracks easily.

  Later I thought about the man and what I had done to him and whether it was right or wrong but in no constructive way whatsoever but there is no need to pursue this line of thought.

  II

  Central states that they recognize my problem and that they will schedule me for an overhaul as soon as possible. A condition of breakdown is epidemic, however, and Central reminds me that I must await my turn. There
are several hundred in even more desperate condition of repair than I am and I must be patient, etc. A few more months and I will be treated; in the meantime Central suggests that I cut down my operating faculties to the minimum, try to stay out of the countryside and operate on low fuse. “You are not the only one,” they remind me, “the world does not revolve around you. Unfortunately our creators stupidly arranged for many units to wear down at approximately the same time, confronting us with a crisis in maintenance and repair. However we will deal with this as efficiently and courageously as we have dealt with everything else, and in the meantime it is strongly advised that you perform only necessary tasks and remain otherwise at idle.”

  There is really little to be said about this. Protests are certainly hopeless. Central has a rather hysterical edge to its tone, but then again I must remember that my own slow breakdown may cause me only to see Central and the remainder of the world in the same light, and therefore I must be patient and tolerant. Repairs will be arranged. While I await repair it is certainly good to remember that robots have no survival instinct built into them, individual survival instinct that is to say, and therefore I truly do not care whether I survive or collapse completely as long as Central goes on. Surely I believe this.

  III

  My job is to patrol the outer sectors of the plain range, seeking the remnants of humanity who are still known to inhabit these spaces, although not very comfortably. If I see such a remnant it is my assignment to destroy him immediately with high beam implements or force, depending upon individual judgment. No exceptions are to be made. My instructions on this point are quite clear. These straggling remains, these unfortunate creatures, pose no real threat to Central—what could?—but Central has a genuine distrust and loathing of such types and also a strong sense of order. It is important that they be cleaned out.