Asimov’s Future History Volume 6

by Isaac Asimov

  Lucius repeated the last word as if its mind had been caught in an intractable loop.

  “Nonsense!” snapped Derec. “If your actions did place you in physical danger — which I gather is the general direction we’re headed for — how were you to know for certain? Sure, it might have looked that way, but you had a mission, a deed to accomplish. You had factors to weigh. You had other things on your mind.”

  “Sti — ill — still dar waz dangzzer...”

  “And a likelihood, I take it, that you would come through all right if you kept your wits about you.

  Obviously! Come on, Lucius, it’s got to be obvious, else you wouldn’t be here right now. Come on, the time to fizzle out was then, certainly not now. Live and learn, remember? Just like an artist!”

  Lucius swayed like a drunken man but fixed its optics firmly on Derec. It was difficult to tell if it was getting better because its metal face was incapable of exhibiting the slightest emotion or feeling, and because the dim level of the lights in the optics lingered. But already its voice sounded firmer as it said,

  “We are trained to recognize probability. We deal constantly with probability. We are used to accessing it in a split centad and acting accordingly. And the probability was most unpromising.”

  “But what counts most is what happened — not what didn’t happen. The rest you’re just going to have to chalk up to experience, Lucius.”

  Lucius released Derec’s shoulder. And just in time, Derec thought, rubbing it gently.

  “Yes — I have had experience lately, have I not?” said Lucius in a tone whose very evenness made Derec catch his breath. “Are you implying that when it comes time to gain a little bit of experience in the galaxy, there may be occasions when avoiding risk might conceivably cause one more harm than taking it?”

  “Ultimately, yes, I suppose,” said Derec, nodding for emphasis even though he really didn’t care to commit himself to that point. “In this case an omission of experience might have stunted your mental development in a certain direction — which you could define as harm of a sort. Wouldn’t you say so, Mandelbrot? Lie if you have to.”

  “Pardon me, master, but you know I cannot lie. Was that an attempt at humor?”

  “Thanks, Mandelbrot. What happened next, Lucius?”

  “Despite the unsound nature of the building, I rushed to the lift and activated it. It occurred to me, just for an instant, that if the controls had shifted, then I would have no choice but to exit with the utmost dispatch. But the controls showed no evidence of a transmutation about to take effect, and so I not-quite-reasoned that the safeguards of the city itself would give me time enough to accomplish my goal and then get out. I could not have been more wrong. I must have experienced something akin to human shock, when the full impact of my miscalculation struck me.

  “For when the lift had taken me approximately halfway up, the building itself ruptured. Its foundations dissolved, its walls merged into a chaotic stream that first swept me up and then remorselessly carried me down toward the surface. All I could sense was an ebb tide of meta-cells, yielding to the contours of my body yet not permitting me the slightest freedom of movement.”

  “Wait a second,” said Derec. “Are you trying to tell me that in the history of this city, however brief, no robot has ever happened to be submerged, even accidentally, in a building as it changes or merges back into the city?”

  “Naturally not, sir. There are many interior indications whenever a building is about to change, and our adherence to the Third Law prevents us from staying past the point where even accidental harm is a realistic possibility. Inaddition, the city would normally cease to act if a robot happened to remain inside because he had been rendered immobile through an accident. But I had neglected to foresee the implications of the special circumstances the city was dealing with at the time — the belief that it was under attack, the frantic restructuring, the raging environmental disaster...”

  Forget it — you’re a robot, not a seer. You couldn’t have guessed just how badly the city’s program was crashing. So what happened once you were submerged? What thoughts went through your mind?”

  “Clear ones — the most logical ones I had ever had. Strangely, I felt no sense of time whatsoever.

  Reason indicated that I had only been submerged for a few decads, but for all practical intents and purposes my mind was flowing at a rate strongly emphasizing the subjectivity of the concept of time.

  Every moment I spent in the ebb stretched out for an eternity. And within those eternities, there stretched out an infinity of moments. I realized that for much of my brief existence I had lived in a state of dream-death, living, working, doing all the things I had been programmed to do, but holding back the realization of possibilities ignored. Now, I had no idea what to do about that, but I resolved to explore the appropriate possibilities, whatever they came to be.

  “There came a moment when my sensors indicated I was no longer moving. I had become stationary, but the ebb was moving past me, running over me as though I had been strapped to a rock in turbulent rapids. The weight on my body gradually diminished, and I realized I was being held fast by the surface of the streets beneath the sinking building.

  “And I was left lying on the surface as the final streams of meta-cells trickled over me, leaving my body fresh and cleansed. I, who had been immersed in a building, had an individualized idea of the sort of building Robot City should contain, the design and structure of which was imminent in my own experience.”

  “Didn’t this strike you as being unusual?” asked Derec.

  “No. In fact, it was logical. It was so logical that it made perfect sense to me. I had a purpose and I was going to achieve it. Beyond that, I had no interest in determining why I had it, because that did not appear to be important. I notice, however, from observing the behavior of my comrades, that I am not the only one striving to express something inside me. The ambition seems to be spreading.”

  “Like a plague,” said Derec.

  “Strangely, now the stars and clouds that had once fascinated me held no interest. All I cared about was fashioning, with the tools and instruments available tome, my idea into a reality.”

  “You did not think that others would perhaps object?” asked Derec.

  “It did not occur to consider the opinions of others at all. There was too much of an inner crackling in my transistors for me to be seized by distractions. My circuits had flashes of uncontrollable activity, and they made unexpected connections between thoughts I had once believed were entirely unrelated. These continuous flashes of realization came unbidden, at what seemed to be an ever-accelerating rate. I perceived still more buildings hidden in the flux, and all I had to do to find them was reach down into the pseudo-genetic data banks to shape them.”

  A hundred notions bloomed in Derec’s mind. He had once believed that he understood robots, that he knew how they thought because he knew how their bodies and minds were put together. He believed he could take apart and reassemble the average model in half a day while blindfolded, and probably make a few improvements in the process. In fact, he bragged about it often to Ariel, not that she ever believed him.

  Nevertheless, before this moment he had always imagined that an untraversable gulf lay between him and the robots. There was nothing about his mind, he had always assumed, that in the end bore much resemblance to their minds. Derec was a creature of flesh, composed of cells following complex patterns ordained by DNA-codes. Flesh and cells that had grown either in a womb or in an incubator (he wouldn’t know which until he regained his memory). Flesh and cells that would one day be no more. Of these facts his subconscious was always aware.

  While robots — while this robot was made of interchangeable parts. A robot’s positronic potentials were naturally capable of endowing it with subtle personality traits, and they had always been able to take some initiative within the Three Laws. But even those initiatives were fairly dependable, predictable in hindsight because ge
nerally one robot thought like another.

  However, it was rapidly becoming undeniable that, on this planet at least, the robotic mind resembled the human mind in that it was an adaptive response to selective pressures. From that point on, the possibilities were endless.

  So Lucius was, in its own way, like the first fish that had crawled from the water onto the ground. Its positronic potentials had adapted to life in Robot City by taking definite evolutionary steps. And other robots weren’t very far behind.

  “Master? Are you well?” inquired Mandelbrot gently.

  “Yes, I’m fine. It’s just taking an effort to assimilate all this,” Derec replied in a distracted tone, looking about for Ariel. He wanted to hear what she thought of what he had learned, but she was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Wolruf. They had both slipped away while he had been preoccupied. “Uh — and how are you, Lucius?”

  “I’m well-functioning at peak capacity,” said Lucius evenly. “Evidently merely talking things through has helped me.”

  “There’s much more I’d like to ask you — about your building and how you went about it. I’m especially interested in how you dealt with the central computer and managed to alter some of the pseudo-genetic codes.”

  “Certainly, master, my mind and methods are at your disposal. But any reasonable explanation would take several hours.”

  “That’s quite all right. I’ve made an appointment with another robot in the morning, but I should finish with him in a few hours. Then I’d like to interview you.”

  “You don’t wish to examine me?”

  “No, I’m afraid taking you apart — even for a quick look-see — would cause you harm. I don’t want you to change.”

  Lucius bowed slightly. “I suspected as much, but the confirmation is appreciated.”

  “I would like to know one thing, though. Does your building have a name?”

  “Why, yes. You’re the first to ask. Its name is ‘Circuit Breaker.’”

  “An interesting name,” said Mandelbrot. “May I ask what it means?”

  “You may ask,” replied Lucius. But that was all it said.

  “Mandelbrot, I want you to do me a favor,” said Derec.

  “Certainly.”

  “Find Ariel and keep an eye on her. Don’t let her find out you’re around. Obviously, she wishes to be alone, but she obviously can’t be in her condition.”

  “It has already been taken care of. I saw a ten percent probability of a First Law situation coming up but was sufficiently cognizant of her wishes to realize that privacy was her goal. So I signaled Wolruf to keep a watch on her.”

  Derec nodded. “Good.” He felt vaguely ashamed that he hadn’t been on top of the situation earlier.

  Perhaps he was a little too self-involved for his own good. But he already felt better that Mandelbrot had automatically watched out for her interests, in a manner protecting both her body and her sense of self-identity. It seemed that for a robot to serve man most efficiently, it had to be something of a psychologist as well. Or at least a student of human nature.

  Lucius asked, “And how did my building affect you, sir?”

  “Oh, I enjoyed it,” said Derec absent-mindedly, his thoughts still on Ariel.

  “Is that all?” said Lucius.

  Derec hid his smile with his hand. “You must remember, this is the first time you’ve ever created something that approaches the concept of art. Tonight was the first time your fellows had ever experienced the power of art. We humans have been surrounded by it and influenced by it all our lives, from the first gardens we see, to the first holo-landscape reproductions, to the first holodramas, everything we see that’s created by or influenced by the hand of man.

  “But you robots are articulate and intelligent from the first moment you’ve been switched on. And this is the first time, to my knowledge, that one has created something in the more profound sense of the word.

  Had I conceived a similar project, I doubt if I could have done as well.”

  “Your talents may lie in other areas,” said Lucius.

  “Well, yes — I’m good at math and programming. Those are arts, too, though normally those not actively involved with them think of them as arcane crafts. But the moment of inspiration is similar, and they say the level of creativity is somewhat the same.”

  “That is not what I meant, and I suspect you know it,” said Lucius pointedly. “If I am to grasp the true nature of human creativity, then it stands to reason that my fellow robots and I would profit by seeing you create art.”

  “But, Lucius, I don’t even know if I am creative in the sense you are.”

  “Another sense, then,” Lucius suggested.

  “Hmmm. I’ll think on it, but right now I’ve got other things on my mind.”

  “As you wish. But it is perhaps unnecessary to add that our study of the Laws of Humanics would benefit greatly from any creation you’d attempt.”

  “If you say so,” replied Derec absently, looking up at the clouds reflecting the colors of Circuit Breaker and seeing only the outline of Ariel’s face looking down on him.

  Chapter 4

  ARIEL AND THE ANTS

  ARIEL WANDERED THE city alone. Bored with the discussion between Derec and Lucius, she had discovered she cared little about the robotic reasoning behind the building’s creation. She had seen it and been moved by it, and that was enough for her. I guess that puts me in the I-know-what-I-like category, she had observed as she slipped away into an alley.

  It was a few moments later, as she walked beside a large canal (currently dry, since it hadn’t rained for days), when the strange things started happening again to her mind. Well, not to her mind exactly, she decided upon further consideration, but to her mind’s eye. She never had any doubt about who she was or what her real circumstances were, but nevertheless she saw menacing shadows flickering between the buildings beyond, in places so dark she shouldn’t have been able to distinguish shades in the first place.

  And the shadows were flickering toward her. They reached out with long, two-dimensional fingers across the conduit and disappeared in the lights on the sidewalk. The streetlamps switched on and off, matching her progress. She was constantly bathed in light, forever beyond the grasping fingers’ reach, yet she was always walking toward the darkness where the danger was. Ariel wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It certainly aggravated her sense of insecurity.

  On Aurora, the existence of a solid building had been a dependable thing. Change there happened rarely and gradually.

  And her life since she had been exiled from Aurora presented her with a decided contrast. Like Derec and his Shakespeare, she had been doing a little reading on her own lately, on subjects of her own choosing. In a book of Settler aphorisms she’ d read an ancient curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

  Well, interesting times were what she had wished for all those years on Aurora, where something moderately interesting happened once a year if you were lucky. From her earliest memory she had yearned to break free of the boredom and sterility.

  And now that she had succeeded beyond her wildest expectations, she wished for nothing more than a little peace and quiet — for nothing more than a period of flat-out boredom, where she had nothing to do and no one to worry about, not even herself. Thanks in part to the disease ravaging her, she was finding it difficult to know just how to act and what to do — a problem she had never had on Aurora, where customs and ethics provided a guide for virtually every social situation.

  She imagined herself not in Robot City, but in the fields of Aurora, walking at night, alone but not alone, followed by unseen, loyal robots who would ensure, to the best of their abilities, that she would not come to harm.

  Instead of buildings closing in around her there were expansive, open fields of grass and trees, plains whose consistency was broken only by occasional buildings of a more familiar, safer architectural style.

  The clouds above inspired thoughts of the tremendous Au
roran storms, when the thunder rumbled like earthquakes and the lightning exploded from the sky in the shape of tridents.

  During such storms the rain flowed as if a dike in the sky had been punctured. The rainfall drenched the fields, cleansed the trees, and she could walk in it and feel it pounding against her all day if she liked — well, at least until her unseen robots would fear she might catch cold and insist she seek shelter.

  Here the rain only inspired the gutters to overflow. Here the rain could be a harbinger of death and destruction, rather than of life.

  Now where’s Derec, she suddenly thought, now that I need him?

  Oh. That’s right. Talking to Lucius. That’s just like him, to be so self-absorbed in things that don’t matter, when he should be trying to find some way for us to get off this crazy planet.

  Doesn’t he understand how badly we both need help? Him for his amnesia. Me for my madness.

  Madness? Was that what it was? Wasn’t there some other word she could use for it? An abnormality or an aberration? A psychoneurosis? A manic-depressive state? Melancholia?

  Where were the fields? she wondered. They had been here just a few moments ago.

  Where had these buildings come from?

  Were the fields behind them?

  She ran around the buildings to take a look. There were only more buildings, extending as far as she could see, until they merged into a flattened horizon. A wall of blackness. More shadows.

  She shook her head, and a few mental mists dissipated long enough for her to remember that there were no fields on this planet, that there’d just been desolate rock here before the city had arrived. A city that grew and evolved just like life.