Robot Adept

by Piers Anthony

  60 GRAMS UNSWEETENED CHOCOLATE

  60 CUBIC CENTIMETERS BUTTER

  Oops! He was in trouble already! He was not conversant with the metric system used in Proton; he thought in terms of ounces and pounds and cups and quarts.

  But he had the solution. He touched OPTIONS again, and when its listing reappeared, he touched SPECIFY SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENTS. A sublisting of measurements options appeared: the various systems used by the other planets and peoples and creatures of the galaxy. That wasn’t much help either!

  However, there was at the bottom a place for OTHER. He touched that, and when it asked him to PLEASE SPECIFY, he said, “The system used in the Frame o’ Phaze.”

  The screen blinked. For a moment he was afraid that this was not a viable choice, but then it replied OLD ENGLISH SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES INVOKED.

  Well! This was just about like doing magic in Phaze. He returned to the RECIPE. Now it listed:

  2 OUNCES UNSWEETENED CHOCOLATE 1/4 CUP BUTTER

  1 CUP SUGAR

  2 MEDIUM EGGS

  1/8 TEASPOON SALT

  1/2 CUP WHEAT FLOUR

  1/2 CUP WALNUT FRAGMENTS

  1 TEASPOON VANILLA FLAVORING

  This he was able to make some sense of. He glanced across at Agape, and saw that her activity chamber was in operation: things were happening in a lighted box in her section of the wall.

  He read the assembly instructions. He was supposed to melt the chocolate and butter together, then stir in the other ingredients. He should be able to manage.

  He touched 4. LIST OF INGREDIENTS. This turned out to be the master list of everything available. There were dozens of types of chocolates, and similar variety for the others.

  He returned to INSTRUCTIONS and read beyond the point he had before. Sure enough, it mentioned that there were several types of options, including automatic selection of standard variants. He went to OPTIONS, found the place, and touched STANDARD VARIANTS. Then he returned to INGREDIENTS.

  Now the listing was much contracted. There was only one type of chocolate. He touched that, and the screen inquired QUANTITY? followed by a graduated scale of measurements. He touched the scale at the two-ounce point.

  Now his activity chamber came to life. Two ounces of chocolate landed in its floor.

  Um. Perhaps he had overlooked another instruction. He reviewed, and found it: he needed a container. He specified one of suitable capacity, then specified in a SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS option that the available chocolate be placed in the container. The chamber turned dark, then lighted again: the chocolate was in the pan. The mess on the chamber floor had been removed.

  He added the butter, then instructed the chamber to heat it to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Almost immediately the mixture started boiling violently. Goo splatted on the window of the chamber. Oops!

  He turned off the heat and reviewed his general instructions and his recipe. He discovered that at this stage he was only supposed to heat enough to melt the chocolate and butter, not to bake it. He decided to start over.

  ERROR the screen blazoned. It seemed that he had to make do with what he had; no second starts. He should have known; no one would ever let any mistakes stand if restarts were permitted. He could have gotten in trouble with his first loss of chocolate; evidently the system tolerated that amount of spillage.

  Meanwhile, Agape’s project was well along. She might be an alien creature, but she had a much better notion of cooking than he did!

  His start was a mess, but a good deal of the chocolate/ butter solution had been saved. He marked 100° F heat, and got the degree of melt he needed. Then, following instructions, he stirred in the remaining ingredients. The sugar was no problem, but the eggs were in translucent packages, and he had to do spot research to discover how to open these by remote control. He managed to bungle it, getting half an egg splattered across the outside of the pan.

  When he had everything stirred in, he had a rather thick brown mass in the pan. Now he set the heat for 400° F and let it bake for a nominal half-hour. Actually it didn’t take that long; the game computer used microwave energy to do the equivalent in just a few minutes, because otherwise the booth would be tied up too long for each game and would not be able to accommodate all the game players.

  The two finished products were brought out, and for the first time Bane and Agape could smell and touch their brownies.

  His was burned, so dry and hard that it would be a real effort to consume it. Hers was underdone, resembling a pudding; she had evidently set the heat too low, and perhaps included some fluid by mistake.

  “Who wins?” he asked.

  “We can get the machine to judge,” she said unhappily.

  “Nay, no need,” he decided. “Thy concoction resembles thee: amoebic. I like it best.”

  “But yours resembles you,” she countered. “All leather and metal. I like it best.”

  “We’ll eat each other’s,” he said. “We both have won.”

  “We both have won,” she echoed, smiling.

  They leaned into each other and kissed again. Then they had the machine pack their wares in plastic bags, so that they could leave the booth for the next players. As they departed, both their activity chambers were in chaos; the game computer was trying to get them clean, and on this occasion that was a considerable challenge.

  They retired to the private chamber they now shared, and opened the bags. Bane took a bite of pudding, but found it tasteless. This was not because it lacked taste, but because his body, having no need for food, had no taste sensors. What he chewed and swallowed went to a stomach receptacle that he could evacuate subsequently, either by vomiting or by opening a panel and removing the soiled unit. Eating was a superfluous function for a robot, but the ability had been incorporated in order to enable him to seem completely human. He was glad of it; he wanted to reassure her by eating what she had baked. Digestibility was irrelevant.

  Her mode of eating differed. She set the brownie lump on the table, leaned over it, and let her top part melt. Her features blurred and became puddingy, indeed resembling the consistency of what she had baked. She drooped onto the food, her flesh spreading over and around it. Her digestive acids infiltrated it, breaking it down, and gradually the mound subsided. When all of it had been reduced to liquid and absorbed into her substance, she lifted her flesh from the table. Her head formed, and her shoulders and arms and breasts. Her eyes developed, and her ears and nose and mouth, assuming their appropriate configurations and colors. She had a human aspect again.

  “I hope it doesn’t poison thee,” Bane said, not entirely humorously.

  “It was solid and burned, but not inedible,” she reassured him. “You made it; that is all I need to know.”

  He took her in his arms. “I have never before known a creature like thee.”

  “I should hope not,” she said. “I am the only Moebite on this planet.”

  “I wish I could love thee in thy natural form.”

  “I have no natural form,” she reminded him. “I am merely protoplasm. I assume whatever shape pleases you.”

  “And I am pleased by them all. I never loved an alien amoeba before.”

  “And I never loved a terrestrial vertebrate before. But—”

  “Say it not!” he protested. “I know we must part, but fain would I delude myself that this moment be forever.”

  “If we continue speaking of this, I will melt,” she warned him.

  “And thou leave me, I may melt,” he said.

  “Perhaps, when I am safe among my own kind, you could visit?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Let me go with thee now!”

  “No, you must remain, and communicate with your opposite self, and return to your own frame. Our association is only an interlude.”

  “Only an interlude,” he repeated sadly.

  “But we can make it count. Tell me what to do, and I shall do it for you.”

  She was not being facetious. She had com
e to Proton to learn human ways, including especially the human mode of sexual interplay, because the Moebites wanted to work toward bisexual reproduction. They understood the theory of it, but not the practice. They believed that their species development was lagging because they lacked the stimulus of two-sex replication, and they wanted to master it.

  But in the pursuit of this quest, Agape had run afoul of another aspect of such reproduction: she had fallen in love. Now she had much of the information, but lacked the desire to return to her home world and demonstrate it to others of her kind. She wanted only to remain with Bane.

  Now that it was feasible to do, Bane found that he had lost the desire for sexual activity. Part of it might have been her sheer accommodation; no challenge remained, when she was completely willing and malleable. But most of it was his foolish gut feeling that once Agape had learned all that he might teach her in this regard, there would be no need for her to remain with him. Thus he wanted to conserve the experience rather than expending it, to keep her with him longer. He knew this was nonsensical, but it unmanned him for the moment.

  “Let’s play another game,” he said.

  She gazed at him in surprise. “Another game? But I thought—”

  “Thou didst think rightly! But I—I find I be not ready. I want to experience more things with thee, a greater variety, while I may. I want to build up a store o’ precious memories. Or something. I know not exactly what I want, only that I want it to be with thee.”

  “I see I have much to learn yet about the human condition,” she said, perplexed.

  “Nay, it be not thee, but me,” he reassured her. “Only accept that I love thee, and let the rest be confused.”

  She spread her hands in a careful human gesture. “As you wish, Bane.”

  They went out to play another game, and another, and another, the victories and the losses immaterial, only the experience being important. So it continued for several days, with physical, mental and chance games of every type. They raced each other in sailcraft, they played Chinese checkers, they bluffed each other with poker, they battled with punnish riddles. Sometimes they cheated, indulging in one game while nominally playing another, as when they made love while theoretically wrestling in gelatin. Whatever else they did, they lived their joint life to the fullest extent they could manage, trying to cram decades into days.

  They found themselves in machine-assisted art: playing parts in a randomly selected play whose other parts were played by programmed robots. Each of them was cued continuously on lines and action, so that there was no problem of memorization or practice. It was their challenge to interpret their parts well, with the Game Computer ready to rate their performance at the end. They had specified a play involving male-female relations, of a romantic nature, with difficulties, and the computer had made a selection from among the many thousands in its repertoire.

  Thus they were acting in one by George Bernard Shaw titled You Never Can Tell, dating from the nineteenth century of Earth. Bane was VALENTINE and Agape was GLORIA CLANDON. They were well into the scene.

  “Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you?” he demanded.

  “What have I done?” she asked, startled.

  “Thrown this enchantment on me…” And as he spoke the scripted lines, he realized that it was true: she had enchanted him, though she had not intended to.

  “I hope you are not going to be so foolish—so vulgar—as to say love,” she responded with uncertain feeling. According to the play, she had no special feeling for him, but in reality she did; this was getting difficult for her.

  “No, no, no, no, no. Not love; we know better than that,” he said earnestly. “Let’s call it chemistry…” And wasn’t this also true? What was love, really? But as he spoke, he became aware of something that should have been irrelevant. They had an audience.

  “Nonsense!” she exclaimed with more certainty.

  They had not had an audience when they started. Several serfs had entered the chamber and taken seats. Why? This was a private game, of little interest to anyone else. “…you’re a prig: a feminine prig: that’s what you are,” he said, enjoying the line. “Now I suppose you’ve done with me forever.”

  “…I have many faults,” she said primly. “Very serious faults—of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig.” She gazed challengingly at him.

  “Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my experience tells me so.” And his reason and experience told him that something was wrong: there should be no audience.

  “…your knowledge and your experience are not infallible,” she was saying, handling her lines with increasing verve. “At least I hope not.”

  “I must believe them,” he said, wishing he could warn her about the audience without interfering with the set lines. “Unless you wish me to believe my eyes, my heart, my instincts, my imagination, which are all telling me the most monstrous lies about you.”

  “Lies!”

  Yet more serfs were entering the audience chamber. Were they players waiting for their turn? “Yes, lies.” He sat down beside her, as the script dictated, but wasn’t sure he did it convincingly. “Do you expect me to believe that you are the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  Now she was evidently feeling the relevance! “That is ridiculous, and rather personal.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous…” His developing paranoia about the audience was, too! He wished they could just quit the play here, and get away; he didn’t trust this at all. But as they exchanged their lines, his apprehension increased. Suppose the Contrary Citizens had managed to divert Blue’s minions, so that there was no protection for the moment?

  “And I’m a feminine prig,” she was saying.

  “No, no: I can’t face that: I must have one illusion left: the illusion about you. I love you.”

  She rose, as the cue dictated, and turned. Then she spied the audience. She almost lost her place. “I am sorry. I—” Now she did lose it, and barely recovered. “What can I say?”

  What, indeed? Now it seemed sure: the Citizens were about to make their move. But how could he get away from here with Agape, without setting off the trap? They needed a natural exit, to get offstage, out of sight.

  “…I can’t tell you—” he was saying.

  “Oh, stop telling me how you feel: I can’t bear it.”

  And he saw that the scene was coming to a close. Here was their chance! “Ah, it’s come at last: my moment of courage.” He seized her hands, according to the script, and she looked at him in simulated terror, also scripted. But their emotions were becoming real, for a different reason. “Our moment of courage!” He drew her in to him and kissed her. “Now you’ve done it, Agape. It’s all over: we’re in love with one another.”

  Oops—he had used her real name, not her play name! But he couldn’t change it now. It was time for his exit.

  “Goodbye. Forgive me,” he said, and kissed her hands, and retreated.

  But now the men of the audience were advancing on the stage. Bane ran back, grabbed her arm, and hauled her along with him offstage.

  “It is happening!” she exclaimed as they ran for a rear exit.

  “I think so. We must get back to the main complex, where Citizen Blue is watching.” For this particular chamber was outside the region of the Experimental Project of humans, robots, androids, cyborgs and aliens living in harmony. Most facilities were set within it, but when particular ones were crowded, the Game Computer assigned players to the nearest outside ones. Thus it seemed that Bane and Agape had inadvertently strayed beyond the scope of Citizen Blue’s protection, and the Contrary Citizens had seized the moment.

  There were serfs in the hall outside. They spotted Bane and Agape and moved purposefully toward them.

  They retreated back into the play complex. But they could hear the serfs in pursuit here too, coming through the stage region.

  “The service apertures,” Agape said. “Go there
!”

  Bane obeyed. Maybe there would be an escape route there.

  There was not. The service door led only into a chamber in which an assortment of maintenance machines were parked.

  “We be lost!” Bane exclaimed.

  “Maybe not!” She hurried to a communications panel, activated it, and tapped against it with a measured cadence.

  “Approach the cyborg brusher,” the speaker said. The lid lifted on the top of a huge cleaning machine.

  “Come, Bane!” she said, running toward the device,

  “What—?”

  “The self-willed machines are helping us! Trust them!”

  Bemused, he followed her. “Remove the brain unit,” the speaker said.

  There was a pounding on the door. Evidently it had locked behind them, barring access by the serfs. That could not last long, for all doors had manual overrides.

  Bane saw that there was a complicated apparatus just below the lid, with wiring and tubing and plastic-encased substance that looked alive. He took hold of the handles at either side and lifted. He had to exert his robotic strength, for the unit was heavy, but it came up and out.

  “Set it here,” the speaker said. A panel slid aside, revealing a chamber set in the wall.

  He carried the brain unit across and shoved it into the chamber. The panel slid shut. Evidently this was a servicing facility for the living cyborg brain.

  “Stand for dismantling,” the speaker said. Another machine rolled toward him.

  Bane hesitated. Then he heard an ominous silence at the door. They were setting up for the override! He stood for dismantling.

  Quickly, efficiently, and painlessly the machine removed his arms, legs and head. It carried these to the big cyborg husk and installed them in the bowels of it. Then it stashed his torso in a refuse chamber in its base. Finally it separated his head into several parts, and his perceptions became scattered. The chamber seemed to wave crazily as one of his eyes was carried across and set into a perceptor extension. He had no idea how it was possible for him to see while his eyes were disconnected from his head, or to remain conscious while his head was apart from his body, but evidently it was. The machines of Proton had strong magic!