by Isaac Asimov
Research 1 had provided it in answer to his request for a mirror; the robots had not possessed, or ever desired, a personal mirror. He ran his hand along his jaw, then gently squeezed his cheeks so that his mouth puffed out. Then he smiled faintly at the face and wiggled his eyebrows up and down.
“It’s you again,” he said, almost in a whisper. “It’s me again.” He was losing the impulse to talk to himself, though, so he quit.
Still, he couldn’t stop looking in his mirror. This was him, like he was supposed to be. He was back again. Jeff Leong, the eighteen-year-old, was alive and getting better, if not exactly well yet.
At the sound of a knock, he lowered the mirror. “Yeah?” He said quietly.
The door opened just enough for Ariel to stick her head inside. “We have to tell you something.”
Jeff tensed. “Yeah?”
She and Derec entered the room. “We just wanted to let you know that as soon as you’re well enough, we have a spacecraft that can take you off the planet. Depending on how fast you recover, you might still make the start of the new semester.”
He studied their faces for a moment. “How much?”
Ariel looked at him, uncomprehending.
“It’s free,” said Derec.
“You’re going to give me a spacecraft, supplies, and fuel for free? What do you want me to do for you?”
“Nothing!” Derec said angrily. “Listen, why —”
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Jeff, you can consider it a loan, if you like. As a matter of fact, if you could send someone back to pick us up someday — we don’t have any money, either, and I know you don’t — but if you ever got the chance to do that, it would be more than enough repayment.”
“I’m no navigator,” said Jeff. “I don’t suppose I could send anyone back here, or even find it myself. I guess I should tell you that.” He watched them closely, expecting them to change their minds.
“Fair enough,” said Ariel. “We know that Mandelbrot lost his data when he stopped being Alpha, so he can’t help, either.”
Jeff shifted his gaze to Derec.
“When you’re well enough, it’s all yours.” Derec nodded.
Jeff looked at them both without speaking, not sure whether to believe them or not. From the moment he had first awakened on this planet, virtually nothing that he had seen, heard, or done had been believable.
This was no different.
“Did you hear what we said?” Ariel asked.
“Yeah.” His voice was low and wary.
They looked at each other uncertainly. He watched them, not sure what to expect. Then, without further comment, they left.
Jeff’s physical recovery progressed well, and Derec suspected that the First Law made his robot medical team more cautious and conservative in their judgments than human doctors would have been.
Still, even when it was clear that his brain had been successfully transplanted, his bodily injuries also had to heal. He remained quiet and wary in his manner, but he was no longer egotistical or insulting. Ariel noticed that that behavior had vanished with his robot body.
Derec suggested to Ariel that they form a farewell gathering for Jeff’s lift-off. Once he had recovered enough to travel, Mandelbrot set the computer in the little ship and gave him a quick course in its manual controls, in the event of emergency. Basically, the computer was to locate the nearest spacelane and wait there, sending a continuous distress signal. No one, including the robots, questioned that in a major spacelane he would be picked up before his life-support ran out.
Jeff remained quiet and cautious even as he was about to leave, but Research 1 was certain that the physical effects of his experience were wearing off.
“He has been integrated with his body for some time now,” said Research 1. “His serum levels are his own.”
As they stood near the hangar waiting for Jeff to enter the ship, Ariel added, “After he’s back in normal human society again, I’m sure he’ll be okay.”
“He hasn’t acted very grateful,” said Derec. “After all, we don’t have to send him. Both of us want to get out of here, too.”
“Shh,” said Ariel.
Jeff walked up to them. He still moved slowly and tentatively sometimes, but he was fully mobile now. “I just wanted to tell you that if I can figure out where this planet is, I’ll get word to some emergency people.”
“I know you will,” said Ariel. “Have a good trip.”
“And thanks for the, uh, chance to go.” He looked away shyly.
“It’s all right,” said Derec. “Take care of yourself.”
Jeff looked up at Research 1 and Surgeon 1 with a slight grin. “Well, it’s certainly been interesting knowing you two. Thanks for getting me all back together.”
“You are welcome,” they said in unison.
He looked around at them all, and stopped at Wolruf. “You okay, kiddo?”
“Okay,” said Wolruf, with a furry nod that quivered her pointed ears. “‘U be careful on ‘urr trip.”
“Well... good-bye.” Jeff nodded awkwardly and joined Mandelbrot at the ship. The robot would make sure he was properly prepared for lift-off.
Moments later, he was in the ship and it was roaring away, ascending quickly into the sky until it was only a sliver of light reflected from the sun.
Derec watched it rise, squinting into the deep sky until the back of his neck hurt from the strain. “Our one greatest wish,” he said. “And we gave it away.”
Ariel took his arm in both her hands and leaned against him. “We did right, Derec. Besides, we aren’t through yet.”
He looked down at her and grinned. “Not us — not by a long shot.”
Together, they turned and led the little group back toward Robot City.
Prodigy
3604 A.D.
Chapter 1
CAN YOU FEEL ANYTHING WHEN I DO THIS?
“MANDELBROT, WHAT DOES it feel like to be a robot?”
“Forgive me, Master Derec, but that question is meaningless. While it is certainly true that robots can be said to experience sensations vaguely analogous to specified human emotions in some respects, we lack feelings in the accepted sense of the word.”
“Sorry, old buddy, but I can’t help getting the hunch that you’re just equivocating with me.”
“That would be impossible. The very foundations of positronic programming insist that robots invariably state the facts explicitly.”
“Come, come, don’t you concede it’s possible that the differences between human and robotic perception may be, by and large, semantic? You agree, don’t you, that many human emotions are simply the by-products of chemical reactions that ultimately affect the mind, influencing moods and perceptions.
You must admit, humans are nothing if not at the mercy of their bodies.”
“That much has been proven, at least to the satisfaction of respected authorities.”
“Then, by analogy, your own sensations are merely byproducts of smoothly running circuitry and engine joints. A spaceship may feel the same way when, its various parts all working at peak efficiency, it breaks into hyperspace. The only difference between you and it being, I suppose, that you have a mind to perceive it.”
Mandelbrot paused, his integrals preoccupied with sorting Derec’s perspectives on these matters into several categories in his memory circuits. “I have never quite analyzed the problem that way before, Master Derec. But it seems that in many respects the comparison between human and robot, robot and spaceship must be exceedingly apt.”
“Let’s look at it this way, Mandelbrot. As a human, I am a carbon-based life-form, the superior result of eons of evolution of inferior biological life-forms. I know what it feels like because I have a mind to perceive the gulf between man and other species of animal life. And with careful, selective comparison, I can imagine — however minimally — what a lower life-form might experience as it makes its way through the day. Furthermore, I can communicate to oth
ers what I think it feels like.”
“My logic circuits can accept this.”
“Okay then, through analogy or metaphor or through a story I can explain to others what a worm, or a rat, or a cat, or even a dinosaur must feel as they hunt meat, go to sleep, sniff flowers, or whatever.”
“I have never seen one of these creatures and certainly wouldn’t presume to comprehend what it must be like to be one.”
“Ah! But you would know — through proper analogy — what it must be like to be a spaceship.”
“Possibly, but I have not been provided with the necessary programming to retrieve the information.
Furthermore, I cannot see how such knowledge could possibly help me fulfill the behavioral standards implicit in the Three Laws.”
“But you have been programmed to retrieve such information, and your body often reacts accordingly, and sometimes adversely, with regards to your perceptions.”’
“You are speaking theoretically?”
“Yes.”
“Are you formally presenting me with a problem?”
“Yes.”
“Naturally I shall do my best to please you, Master Derec, but my curiosity and logic integrals are only equipped to deal with certain kinds of problems. The one you appear to be presenting may be too subjective for my programmed potentials.”
“Isn’t all logic abstract, and hence somewhat subjective, at least in approach? You must agree that, through mutually agreed upon paths of logic, you can use the certain knowledge of two irrefutable facts to learn a third, equally irrefutable fact.”
“Of course.”
“Then can’t you use such logic to reason how it might feel to be a spaceship, or any other piece of sufficiently advanced machinery?”
“Since you phrase it that manner, of course, but I fail to comprehend what benefit such an endeavor may bring me — or you.”
Derec shrugged. It was night in Robot City. He and Mandelbrot had been out walking. He had felt the need to stretch his muscles after a long day spent studying some of the problems complicating his escape from this isolated planet. But at the moment they were sitting atop a rectangular tower and staring at the stars. “Oh, I don’t know if it would be of any benefit, except perhaps to satisfy my curiosity. It just seems to me that you must have some idea of what it is like to be a robot, even if you don’t have the means to express it.”
“Such knowledge would require language, and such a language has not yet been invented.”
“Hmmm. I suppose.”
“However, I have just made an association that may be of some value.”
“What’s that?”
“Whenever you or Mistress Ariel have had no need of my assistance, I have been engaging in communication with the robots of this city. They haven’t been wondering what it means or feels like to be a robot, but they have been devoting a tremendous amount of spare mental energy to the dilemma of what it must be like to be a human.”
“Yes, that makes sense, after a fashion. The robots’ goal of determining the Laws of Humanics has struck me as a unique phenomenon.”
“Perhaps it is not, Master Derec. After all, if I may remind you, you recall only your experiences of the last few weeks, and my knowledge of history is rather limited in scope. Even so, I never would have thought of making connections the way you have, which leads my circuits to conclude your subconscious is directing our conversation so that it has some bearing on your greater problems.”
Derec laughed uncomfortably. He hadn’t considered it before. Strange, he thought, that a robot had.
“My subconscious? Perhaps. I suppose I feel that if I better understand the world I’m in, I might better understand myself.”
“I believe I am acting in accordance with the Three Laws if I help a human know himself better. For that reason, my circuits are currently humming with a sensation you might recognize as pleasure.”
“That’s nice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be alone right now.” For a moment Derec felt a vague twinge of anxiety, and he actually feared that he might be insulting Mandelbrot, a robot that, after all they’d been through together, he couldn’t help but regard as his good friend.
But if Mandelbrot had taken umbrage, he showed no evidence of it. He was, as always, inscrutable. “Of course. I shall wait in the lobby.”
Derec watched as Mandelbrot walked to the lift and slowly descended. Of course Mandelbrot hadn’t taken umbrage. It was impossible for him to be insulted.
Crossing his legs to be more comfortable, Derec returned to looking at the stars and the cityscape spread out below and beyond, but his thoughts remained inward. Normally he was not the reflective type, but tonight he felt moody, and gave in easily to the anxiousness and insecurity he normally held in check while trying to deal with his various predicaments more logically.
He smiled at this observation on what he was feeling. Perhaps he was taking himself too seriously, the result of lately reading too much Shakespeare. He had discovered the plays of the ancient, so-called
“Immortal Bard” as a means of mental escape and relaxation. Now he was finding that the more he scrutinized the texts, the more he learned about himself. It was as if the specific events and characters portrayed in the plays spoke directly to him, and had some immediate bearing on the situation in which he had found himself when he had awakened, shorn of memory, in that survival pod not so long ago.
He couldn’t help but wonder why the plays were beginning to affect him so. It was as if he was beginning to redefine himself through them.
He shrugged again, and again pondered the stars. Not just to analyze them for clues to the location of the world he was on, but to respond to them as he imagined countless men and women had throughout the course of history. He tried to imagine how they had looked to the men of Shakespeare’s time, before mankind had learned how the universe came to be, where the Earth stood in relation to it, or how to build a hyperspace drive. Their searching but scientifically ignorant minds must have perceived in the stars a coldly savage beauty beyond the range of his empathy.
One star in the sky, perhaps, might be the sun of his homeworld. Somewhere out there, he thought, someone knew the answers to his questions. Someone who knew who he really was and how he came to be in that survival pod.
Below him was the city of towers, pyramids, cubes, spires and tetragons, some of which, even as he watched, were changing in accordance with the city’s program. Occasionally robots, their activity assisting the alterations and additions, glistened in the reflections of the starlight reflected in turn from the city walls. The robots never slept, the city never slept. It changed constantly, unpredictably.
The city was like a giant robot, composed of billions upon billions of metallic cells functioning in accordance to nuclei-encoded DNA patterns of action and reaction. Although composed of inorganic matter, the city was a living thing, a triumph of a design philosophy Derec called “minimalist engineering.”
Derec had partially been inspired to ascend to the top of this tower — through a door and lift that appeared when he needed them — precisely because he had watched its basic structure coil, snakelike, from the street like a giant, growing ribbon. And once the ribbon had reached its preordained height, the cells had spread out and coalesced into a solid structure. Perhaps they had multiplied as well.
Two towers directly in front of him merged and sank into the street as if dropping on a great lift. About a kilometer away to his right, a set of buildings of varying heights gradually became uniform, then merged into a single, vast, square construction. It stayed that way for approximately three minutes, then methodically began metamorphosing into a row of crystals.
A few days ago, such a sight would have instilled within him a sense of wonder. Now it was all very ordinary. No wonder he had sought to amuse himself by engaging in what he had thought was a slight mental diversion.
Suddenly a tremendous glare appeared in the midst of the city. Derec averted his eyes
in panic, assuming it was an explosion.
But as the seconds passed and the glare remained, he realized that no sound or sensation of violence had accompanied its birth. Whatever its nature, its presence had been declared as if it had been turned on by a switch.
Feeling a little self-conscious, he slowly removed his fingers from his eyes and ventured a look. The glare was coalescing into a series of easily definable colors. Various hues of crimson, ocher, and blue. The colors changed as the tetragonal pyramid they were coming from changed.
The pyramid was situated near the city’s border. The eight-sided figure was balanced precariously on the narrow tip of its base, and it rotated like a spinning top in slow motion. From Derec’s vantage point it resembled a tremendous bauble, thanks to those brilliantly changing lights.
Watching it, he gradually felt all anxieties cease. His own problems seemed dwarfed into insignificance compared to the splendor of this sight. What beauty this city was capable of!
Soon this feeling of calm was uprooted by his growing curiosity, a restless need to know more that quickly became overwhelming, relentlessly gnawing. He would have to examine the building firsthand, then return to his “roost” where his access controls were, and get down to seriously plumbing the depths of the city’s mysterious programming.
Like the plays of Shakespeare, the strange structure seemed a good place to escape to for a time.
Besides, he never knew — he might find out something that would help him and Ariel get off this crazy planet.
“So there you are!” said a familiar voice behind him. “What are you doing here?”
He looked up to see Ariel staring down at him. She stood with her legs apart and her hands on her hips.
The breeze blew strands of hair across her nose and mouth. She had a mischievous light in her eyes.
Suddenly it was time to forget the city for a moment and to stare at her. Her unexpected presence had taken his breath away. His nerves had come back.
All right, he admitted to himself, so it’s not just her presence — it’s her — everything about her!
