THE BICENTENNIAL MAN

by Isaac Asimov

  William said, “I'm sure of it, Anthony.”

  The Sun burned down in a warm contrasting world of white and black, of white Sun against black sky and white rolling ground mottled with black shadow. The bright sweet smell of the Sun on every exposed square centimeter of metal contrasting with the creeping death-of-aroma on the other side.

  He lifted his hand and stared at it, counting the fingers. Hot-hot-hot­­­--turning, putting each finger, one by one, into the shadow of the others and the hot slowly dying in a change in tactility that made him feel the clean, comfortable vacuum.

  Yet not entirely vacuum. He straightened and lifted both arms over his head, stretching them out, and the sensitive spots on either wrist felt the vapors-- the thin, faint touch of tin and lead rolling through the cloy of mercury.

  The thicker taste rose from his feet; the silicates of each variety, marked by the clear separate-and-together touch and tang of each metal ion. He moved one foot slowly through the crunchy, caked dust, and felt the changes like a soft, not quite random symphony.

  And over all the Sun. He looked up at it, large and fat and bright and hot, and heard its joy. He watched the slow rise of prominences around its rim and listened to the crackling sound of each; and to the other happy noises over the broad face. When he dimmed the background light, the red of the rising wisps of hydrogen showed in bursts of mellow contralto, and the deep bass of the spots amid the muted whistling of the wispy, moving faculae, and the occasional thin keening of a flare, the ping-pong ticking of gamma rays and cosmic particles, and over all in every direction the soft, fainting, and ever-renewed sigh of the Sun's substance rising and retreating forever in a cosmic wind which reached out and bathed him in glory.

  He jumped, and rose slowly in the air with a freedom he had never felt, and jumped again when he landed, and ran, and jumped, and ran again, with a body that responded perfectly to this glorious world, this paradise in which he found himself.

  A stranger so long and so lost-- in paradise at last.

  William said, “It's all right.”

  “But what's he doing?” cried out Anthony.

  “It's all right. The programming is working. He has tested his senses. He has been making the various visual observations. He has dimmed the Sun and studied it. He has tested for atmosphere and for the chemical nature of the soil. It all works.”

  “But why is he running?”

  “I rather think that's his own idea, Anthony. If you want to program a computer as complicated as a brain, you've got to expect it to have ideas of its own.”

  “Running? Jumping?” Anthony turned an anxious face to William. “He'll hurt himself. You can handle the Computer. Override. Make him stop.”

  And William said sharply, “No. I won't. I'll take the chance of his hurting himself. Don't you understand? He's happy. He was on Earth, a world he was never equipped to handle. Now he's on Mercury with a body perfectly adapted to its environment, as perfectly adapted as a hundred specialized scientists could make it be. It's paradise for him; let him enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy? He's a robot.”

  “I'm not talking about the robot. I'm talking about the brain--the brain--that's living here.”

  The Mercury Computer, enclosed in glass, carefully and delicately wired, its integrity most subtly preserved, breathed and lived.

  “It's Randall who's in paradise,” said William. “He's found the world for whose sake he autistically fled this one. He has a world his new body fits perfectly in exchange for the world his old body did not fit at all.”

  Anthony watched the screen in wonder. “He seems to be quieting.”

  “Of course,” said William, “and he'll do his job all the better for his joy.”

  Anthony smiled and said, “We've done it, then, you and I? Shall we join the rest and let them fawn on us, William?”

  William said, “Together?”

  And Anthony linked arms. “Together, brother!”

  I won’t deny that the unworthy thought crossed my mind that Jim was young and that when he took STRANGER IN PARADISE he might, unconsciously, have been more impressed by my name than by the story. That thought, fugitive at best, vanished completely when Donald Wollheim, of DAW Books, picked it up for one of his anthologies. It simply passes the bounds of belief that Don, hardened and cynical veteran that he is, could possibly be impressed by my name under any circumstances or, in fact, by anything about me. (Right, Don?) So if he wanted the story, it was for the story’s sake.

  I have on occasion written articles for The New York Times Magazine but my batting average with them is less than .500.

  Ordinarily that sort of thing would be disheartening and I would get to feel that I didn’t have the range on that particular market and that I ought to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. However, the Times is a special case, and I kept trying.

  By the fall of 1974, however, I had received three rejections in a row and I made up my mind to turn down the next request for an article that I received from them. That’s not as easy as it sounds, because the request usually comes from Gerald Walker, who is as nice a fellow as was ever invented.

  When he called, I tried desperately to steel myself to a refusal whatever he said, and then he mentioned the magic phrase “science fiction.”

  “A science fiction story?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “For the magazine section?”

  ”Yes. We want a four-thousand-word story that looks into the future and has something to say about the relationship between man and machine.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. What else could I do? The chance of hitting the Times with a science fiction story was too interesting to pass up. I began working on the story on November 18, 1974, sent it in. to the Times without any real confidence concerning the outcome, and damned if they didn’t take it. It appeared in the January 5, 1975, issue of the Sunday Times and, as far as I could find out, it was the first piece of fiction the Times had ever commissioned and published.

  The life and Times of Multivac

  The whole world was interested. The whole world could watch. If anyone wanted to know how marty did watch, Multivac could have told them. The great computer Multivac kept track-as it did of everything.

  Multivac was the judge in this particular case, so coldly objective and purely upright that there was no need of prosecution or defense. There was only the accused, Simon Hines, and the evidence, which consisted, in part, of Ronald Bakst.

  Bakst watched, of course. In his case, it was compulsory .He would rather it were not. In his tenth decade, he was showing signs of age and his rumpled hair was distinctly gray.

  Noreen was not watching. She had said at the door, “If we had a friend left--” She paused, then added, “Which I doubt!” and left.

  Bakst wondered if she would come back at all, but at the moment, it didn’t matter.

  Hines had been an incredible idiot to attempt actual action, as though one could think of walking up to a Multivac outlet and smashing it--as though he didn’t know a world-girdling computer, the world-girdling Computer (capital letter, please) with millions of robots at its command, couldn’t protect itself. And even if the outlet had been smashed, what would that have accomplished?

  And Hines did it in Bakst’s physical presence, too!

  He was called precisely on schedule--”Ronald Bakst will give evidence now.”

  Multivac’s voice was beautiful, with a beauty that never quite vanished no matter how often it was heard. Its timbre was neither quite male nor, for that matter, female, and it spoke in whatever language its hearer understood best.

  “I am ready to give evidence,” Bakst said.

  There was no way to say anything but what he had to say. Hines could not avoid conviction. In the days when Hines would have had to face his fellow human beings, he would have been convicted more quickly and less fairly--and would have been punished more crudely.

  Fifteen days passed, days during which Bakst was quite al
one. Physical aloneness was not a difficult thing to envisage in the world of Multivac. Hordes had died in the days of the great catastrophes and it had been the computers that had saved what was left and directed the recovery-and improved their own designs till all were merged into Multivac--and the five million human beings were left on Earth to live in perfect comfort. .

  But those five million were scattered and the chances of one seeing another outside the immediate circle, except by design, was not great. No one was designing to see Bakst, not even by television.

  For the time, Bakst could endure the isolation. He buried himself in his chosen way-which happened to be, these last twenty-three years, the designing of mathematical games. Every man and woman on Earth could develop a way of life to self-suit, provided always that Multivac, weighing all of human affairs with perfect skill, did not judge the chosen way to be subtractive to human happiness.

  But what could be subtractive in mathematical games? It was purely abstract--pleased Bakst--harmed no one else.

  He did not expect the isolation to continue. The Congress would not isolate him permanently without a trial--a different kind of trial from that which Hines had experienced, of course, one without Multivac’s tyranny of absolute justice.

  Still, he was relieved when it ended, and pleased that it was Noreen coming back that ended it. She came trudging over the hill toward him and he started toward her, smiling. It had been a successful five-year period during which they had been together. Even the occasional meetings with her two children and two grandchildren had been pleasant.

  He said, ‘Thank you for being back.”

  She said, “I’m not back.” She looked tired. Her brown hair was windblown, her prominent cheeks a trifle rough and sunburned.

  Bakst pressed the combination for a light lunch and coffee. He knew what she liked. She didn’t stop him, and though she hesitated for a moment, she ate.

  She said, “I’ve come to talk to you. The Congress sent me.”

  “The Congress!” he said. “Fifteen men and women--counting me. Self-appointed and helpless.”

  “You didn’t think so when you were a member.”

  “I’ve grown older. I’ve learned,”

  “At least you’ve learned to betray your friends.”

  “There was no betrayal. Hines tried to damage Multivac; a foolish, impossible thing for him to try.”

  “You accused him.”

  “I had to. Multivac knew the facts without my accusation, and without my accusation, I would have been an accessory. Hines would not have gained, but I would have lost.”

  “Without a human witness, Multivac would have suspended sentence,”

  “Not in the case of an anti-Multivac act. This wasn’t a case of illegal parenthood or life--work without permission. I couldn’t take the chance.”

  “So you let Simon be deprived of all work permits for two years,”

  “He deserved it.”

  “A consoling thought, You may have lost the confidence of the Congress, but you have gained the confidence of Multivac,”

  “The confidence of Multivac is important in the world as it is, “ said Bakst seriously. He was suddenly conscious of not being as tall as Noreen,

  She looked angry enough to strike him; her lips pressed whitely together, But then she had passed her eightieth birthday-no longer young-the habit of non-violence was too ingrained. ...Except for fools like Hines.

  “Is that all you have to say, then?” she said.

  “There could be a great deal to say, Have you forgotten? Have you all forgotten? Do you remember how it once was? Do you remember the Twentieth Century? We live long now; we live securely now; we live happily now.”

  “We live worthlessly now.”

  “Do you want to go back to what the world was like once?”

  Noreen shook her head violently. “Demon tales to frighten us. We have learned our lesson. With the help of Multivac we have come through--but we don’t need that help any longer. Further help will soften us to death. Without Multivac, we will run the robots, we will direct the farms and mines and factories.”

  “How well?”

  “Well enough. Better, with practice. We need the stimulation of it in any case or we will all die.”

  Bakst said, “We have our work, Noreen; whatever work we choose.”

  “Whatever we choose, as long as it’s unimportant, and even that can be taken away at will-as with Hines. And what’s your work, Ron? Mathematical games? Drawing lines on paper? Choosing number combinations?”

  Bakst’s hand reached out to her, almost pleadingly. “That can be important. It is not nonsense. Don’t underestimate--” He paused, yearning to explain but not quite knowing how he could, safely. He said, “I’m working on some deep problems in combinatorial analysis based on gene patterns that can be used to--”

  “To amuse you and a few others. Yes, I’ve heard you talk about your games. You will decide how to move from A to B in a minimum number of steps and that will teach you how to go from womb to grave in a minimum number of risks and we will all thank Multivac as we do so.”

  She stood up. “Ron, you will be tried. I’m sure of it. Our trial. And you will be dropped. Multivac will protect you against physical harm, but you know it will not force us to see you, speak to you, or have anything to do with you. You will find that without the stimulation of human interaction, you will not be able to think--or to play your games. Goodbye.”

  “Noreen! Wait!”

  She turned at the door. “Of course, you will have Multivac. You can talk to Multivac, Ron.”

  He watched her dwindle as she walked down the road through the parklands kept green, and ecologically healthy, by the unobtrusive labors of quiet, single-minded robots one scarcely ever saw.

  He thought: Yes, I will have to talk to Multivac.

  Multivac had no particular home any longer. It was a global presence knit together by wire, optical fiber, and microwave. It had a brain divided into a hundred subsidiaries but acting as one. It had its outlets everywhere and no human being of the five million was far from one.

  There was time for all of them, since Multivac could speak to all individually at the same time and not lift its mind from the greater problems that concerned it.

  Bakst had no illusions as to its strength. What was its incredible intricacy but a mathematical game that Bakst had come to understand over a decade ago? He knew the manner in which the connecting links ran from continent to continent in a huge network whose analysis could form the basis of a fascinating game. How do you arrange the network so that the flow of information never jams? How do you arrange the switching points? Prove that no matter what the arrangement, there is always at least one point which, on disconnection

  Once Bakst had learned the game, he had dropped out of the Congress. What could they do but talk and of what use was that? Multivac indifferently permitted talk of any kind and in any depth precisely because it was unimportant. It was only acts that Multivac prevented, diverted, or punished.

  And it was Hines’s act that was bringing on the crisis; and before Bakst was ready for it, too.

  Bakst had to hasten now, and he applied for an interview with Multivac without any degree of confidence in the outcome.

  Questions could be asked of Multivac at any time. There were nearly a million outlets of the type that had withstood Hines’s sudden attack into which, or near which, one could speak. Multivac would answer.

  An interview was another matter. It required time; it required privacy; most of all it required Multivac’s judgment that it was necessary. Although Multivac had capacities that not all the world’s problems consumed, it had grown chary, somehow, of its time. Perhaps that was the result of its ever-continuing self-improvement. It was becoming constantly more aware of its own worth and less likely to bear trivialities with patience.

  Bakst had to depend on Multivac’s good will. His leaving of the Congress, all his actions since, even the bearing of evidence against
Mines, had been to gain that good will. Surely it was the key to success in this world.

  He would have to assume the good will. Having made the application, he at once traveled to the nearest substation by air. Nor did he merely send his image. He wanted to be there in person; somehow he felt his contact with Multivac would be closer in that way.

  The room was almost as it might be if there were to be a human conference planned over closed multivision. For one flash-by moment, Bakst thought Multivac might assume an imaged human form and join him-the brain made flesh.

  It did not, of course. There was the soft, whispering chuckle of Multivac’s unceasing operations; something always and forever present in Multivac’s presence; and over it, now, Multivac’s voice.

  It was not the usual voice of Multivac. It was a still, small voice, beautiful and insinuating, almost in his ear.

  “Good day, Bakst. You are welcome. Your fellow human beings disapprove of you.”

  Multivac always comes to the point, thought Bakst. He said, “It does not matter, Multivac. What counts is that I accept your decisions as for the good of the human species. You were designed to do so in the primitive versions of yourself and--”

  “And my self-designs have continued this basic approach. If you understand this, why do so many human beings fail to understand it? I have not yet completed the analysis of that phenomenon.”

  “I have come to you with a problem,” said Bakst. Multivac said, “What is it?”

  Bakst said, “I have spent a great deal of time on mathematical problems inspired by the study of genes and their combinations. I cannot find the necessary answers and home computerization is of no help.”

  There was an odd clicking and Bakst could not repress a slight shiver at the sudden thought that Multivac might be avoiding a laugh. It was a touch of the human beyond what even he was ready to accept. The voice was in his other ear and Multivac said:

  “There are thousands of different genes in the human cell. Each gene has an average of perhaps fifty variations in existence and uncounted numbers that have never been in existence. If we were to attempt to calculate all possible combinations, the mere listing of them at my fastest speed, if steadily continued, would, in the longest possible lifetime of the Universe, achieve but an infinitesimal fraction of the total.”