Revenge of the Robot

by Otis Adelbert Kline

  They came goose-stepping out into the spotlight, dressed like soldiers of the World War, with steel helmets, rifles and bayonets.

  “Mein schildren, giff a demonstration of the trench fighting during the Vorld Var,” commanded Dr. Meyer. “Broceed.”

  The robots instantly divided into two parties, four on a side, and savagely attacked each other with fixed bayonets. One by one, they went down, until only one robot with a battered helmet and torn sleeve remained standing.

  "Hans,” said the doctor, addressing the remaining robot, "come here.”

  The robot goose-stepped toward the doctor and stood stiffly at attention.

  “Vill you question him, Mr. President?” Dr. Meyer suggested.

  "How old are you, Hans?” the President asked.

  “Six months,” was the ready reply.

  “Quite a big boy for your age. You speak English well.”

  “I speak many languages und I speak all of them veil.”

  At this point one of the judges nudged the President.

  "Don’t look now,” he said, “but when you question the robot, observe the doctor. He always holds that big seal ring on his right hand near his mouth.”

  “But you speak English with a German accent, Hans,” continued the President with a smile-.

  “Dot’s because German iss my native tongue,” Hans replied promptly.

  The President glanced slyly at the doctor, and observed that he had raised the ring to his lips.

  “May I see that ring you are wearing, Herr Doktor," the judge asked politely.

  “Look at it if you vant too,” the doctor replied, “but don’t remove it from my finger. I’ve made a vow sever to take it off.”

  “Don’t tell me you are superstitious, Doctor.” Carefully the judge examined the ring which the scientist held before him. He had palmed a small jeweler’s screw driver, and suddenly he brought it into play, with the result that a monogrammed hinged lid sprang upward, revealing the hollow interior of the ring.

  The scientist withdrew his hand with an oath, and his florid jowls turned a deep purple.

  WHAT did you see in the ring?” the President asked.

  “A radio transmitter, Mr. President,” was the reply.

  “We have located a radio receiving set in the robot,” called one of the others.

  Without a word Dr. Meyer rose and waddled toward the door. One by one, his fallen robots arose and goose-stepped after him, Hans bringing up the rear. As Hans went out the door he turned, placed his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers at the assemblage, producing a gale of laughter.

  “Now we come to the entry of Hugh Grimes,” announced the President when the laughter had subsided. “I believe you have two robots, Mr. Grimes. Where are they?”

  "They have been in this room for some time, witnessing the ludicrous performance staged by the learned Herr Doktor Meyer,” Grimes replied.

  A young couple, wearing evening clothes, arose from the end of the table where they had been sitting for the past fifteen minutes, and walked into white circle of light.

  A murmur of astonishment went up from the audience. Those who had observed the entrance of the couple, and had seen them conversing with animation while they laughed at the antics of the learned doctor’s robots, were more than astounded— they were awe-stricken.

  "You don’t mean to tell us that these two are robots!” exclaimed the President.

  "I most assuredly do,” replied Grimes. “And before the demonstration takes place, I insist that I be searched by your radio experts and that you put two of your best psychologists near me. I want it absolutely proved that I am not controlling them either by mental or electrical means."

  "Very well, we’ll have you searched,” answered the President. “And while we’re at it, we’ll have the couple examined to see if they really are mechanical beings.”

  The examination was conducted, and the examiners pronounced themselves satisfied with Grimes and the two figures.

  Young Doctor Gunning nudged Yvonne. “Those are the robots stolen from Al’s laboratory?”

  “Yes,” she whispered in reply. “No one but Albert ever made robots so nearly perfect.”

  “Now that the examiners are satisfied,” said Grimes, “permit me to introduce Gwendolyn and Percival. If the orchestra will play a waltz, they will dance for you.”

  THE orchestra obliged, and the robots waltzed gracefully about in the circle of light. Then Percival held up his hand for silence.

  “My partner and I,” he said, “challenge the two best bridge players in the house to a game. If there is any doubt in your minds that we can reason intelligently, I think we can readily allay it.”

  A table and cards were brought, and two volunteer bridge players took their places. Both men were members of the Cabinet and judges of the contest, and both were acknowledged the two best bridge players of their set.

  At first, the two Cabinet members appeared to underrate the prowess of their mechanical adversaries. Presently, however, they began to wear worried frowns, and before long both threw down their hands in defeat.

  “It’s absolutely uncanny,” said Andrew Gorman, Secretary of Agriculture. “They seem to read our minds.”

  “Are there any further questions, Mr. President?” asked Percival. “Do you wish us to submit to further examination?”

  “One moment, please.” The President turned to confer with the two discomfited Cabinet members, and also summoned the technicians.

  Hugh Grimes looked on with a triumphant smile. Presently he became aware that someone had slipped unobtrusively into a chair beside Yvonne. He glanced closely at the man, and his face blanched at what he saw. For the man was either Albert Bradshaw, or his twin! He had the same sunken chest, the deep blue eyes, the hollow cheeks with their consumptive flush. The man even raised his hand to cover a cough, in the manner so characteristic of Albert Bradshaw.

  Yet Hugh Grimes had seen the fellow lying dead in his coffin seven months before—had seen the coffin closed, and had later witnessed the cremation!

  The man turned and whispered something to Dr. Gunning, who got up and strode toward the door from which the various robots had emerged.

  Then Grimes tore his fascinated gaze away from this twin of his murdered rival as he heard the President speaking:

  “It is the opinion of the judges,” said President Matthews, “that the robots Percival and Gwendolyn, created by that famous scientist Hugh Grimes, fulfill all the conditions necessary for the winning of the prize. If there are no further entries, we will consider the contest closed, and award the prize.”

  He looked around the room.

  Suddenly the twin of Albert Bradshaw stood up.

  “Mr. President,” he said, “there is another entry. I request that you hold the. contest open a few moments longer.”

  “Whose entry?” the President asked. “And who are you?”

  “The entry of Albert Bradshaw.” The second question went unanswered.

  “But Bradshaw died several months ago,” the President answered.

  “Does that disqualify him?”

  The President turned to his fellow judges, and conferred with them for a moment.

  “No, it doesn’t disqualify him. Produce the entry,”

  “I am that entry,” was the reply. The President stared at the speaker for a moment.

  “By the Lord Harry!” he gasped. “It’s Bradshaw himself, come to life!” The newcomer pushed back his chair and strode out into the spotlight.

  “As I previously informed you,” he said, “I am Bradshaw’s entry—Bradshaw’s reasoning robot, if you please.

  I am not going to do any card tricks for you. But I am going to expose the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on a group of gullible scientists. Hugh Grimes, do you mind having your two entries step once more into the spotlight?” '

  “Why—er—not at all.” Grimes nervously adjusted his pince-nez. “Percival. Gwendolyn'. Come here.” The two robots that had
put on such a convincing performance a moment before remained motionless.

  “You will notice that they do not respond,” said Bradshaw’s entry. “It is because they are controlled from outside, and that control has been broken.”

  At this moment young Doctor Gunning stepped into the spotlight, grasping a frightened young man by his coat collar.

  “This man,” continued the Bradshaw robot, “is Grimes’ laboratory assistant, Carl Overton. I believe his name is known to all of you, since he is the international bridge champion. Bring him here, will you, Doctor?” Expertly, he went through the pockets of the young man, and produced two flat rectangular objects studded with a number of buttons and each topped by a small visiphone disc.

  “Those robots were stolen from Bradshaw, who made the control boxes I now hold, after Grimes had attempted to murder him with poison gas—an attempt which resulted in his death five months later. These robots cannot reason for themselves; therefore they are ineligible to win the prize which you were so ready to award them. I will let them tell you their own astonishing story.”

  He manipulated several buttons on the control boxes, and the two rigid robots immediately came to life. Clasping hands, they ran out into the spotlight.

  "We were created by Albert Bradshaw,” said Percival.

  “And Mr. Grimes stole us from Mr. Bradshaw's laboratory,” said Gwendolyn.

  Grimes’ face blanched. He rose to steal away, but two burly Secret Service men seized his arms and forcibly seated him.

  GRIMES broke a window and hurled a poison gas bomb through,” continued Percival; “He didn’t try to hide his face from Bradshaw, as he thought the latter would surely die in horrible agony. The fact that Bradshaw was holding a strip of blue litmus paper temporarily prolonged his life. The paper was turned red by the acid gas, and he broke a bottle of ammonia, thereby neutralizing it and preventing it from searing him further. Had it not been for this, he would never have been able to reach the door.”

  “When Mr, Bradshaw left the laboratory,” continued Gwendolyn, “Grimes had two of his men carry us away.”

  “That’s so,” broke in Yvonne D’Arcy. “I saw Grimes and two men load both robots into the helicopter limousine and roar away.”

  “Enough,” said President Matthews. Mr. Grimes, you are under arrest for murder, robbery and fraud. Mr. Overton, you also are under arrest for complicity.

  “And now, Mr. Bradshaw, or Mr. Bradshaw’s entry, as you choose to call yourself, you have not proved to us that you are a robot, independently thinking.” ~

  “Both points are easily proven, Mr. President,” smiled the robot, advancing. He rolled up a sleeve, and taking a knife from his pocket, slit the skin of an arm. It did not bleed, and the muscles and tendons revealed beneath were undeniably artificial. Then he opened his shirt front, slit his chest, and revealed mechanism.

  "You are undoubtedly a robot,” admitted the President. “Now, will you be good enough to show us your reasoning mechanism?”

  “First,” said the robot, “I will tell you what Bradshaw discovered after more than twenty years of research. There can be no reasoning or thought without life. All life as we know it is a combination of two things—mind and matter. We have never been able to discover any form of life that is not a combination of both. The brain is not the mind, but in human beings it is the medium through which it makes itself manifest. Behold!”

  He snatched off the blond wig and skull-case. The astounded onlookers saw a human brain snugly encased in a transparent skull-shaped receptacle. Tenuous, fine strands, almost invisible, extended in an intricate network over the delicate brain membranes. The hairlike strands almost completely covered the cerebellum and cerebrum, converging in the sickleshaped partition of the falx cebri, which divides the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. The entire brain was immersed in some viscous solution, and the fascinated audience could see it envelop the exposed furrows and convolutions.

  THE robot continued: "At first it was the intention of Bradshaw to obtain the brains of two individuals at the point of death, one a male and the other a female, and preserve them in this solution, which prevents organic tissue from wearing out and which also provides enough nourishment to last each brain a thousand years. Once destroyed, cells do not replace themselves—and they feed very slowly. Bradshaw perfected his solution after years of experimentation with the brains of lower animals.

  “Science has proven that thought impulses are electrical in nature. Bradshaw effected a way to isolate the multiple thousands of nerve fibres, neurilemma, ganglia, axons and other essential parts of the nervous system. The olfactory nerves, the optic, auditory, motor, hypoglossal and other of the cranial nerves—all are connected to mechanical muscles, and the slightest electrical impulse motivates the mechanical robot. The brain, of course, gives off these electrical impulses.

  “But before Bradshaw could obtain the two brains, he found himself at the point of death. He called upon his two friends, Frank Gunning, the surgeon, and Yvonne D’Arcy, his nurse, to transplant his brain in this solution.

  “Mr. President, judges and spectators of this contest—as you may readily see, I am a robot physically. Mentally, I am Albert Bradshaw. Since there was no specification in the contest rules that organic as well as inorganic matter might not be used, I submit that I am the robot for which you offered the grand prize—the reasoning robot.” '

  The President turned and conferred with his Cabinet members for a few moments. Then he stood up.

  "It is the unanimous opinion of the judges of this contest that the prize of one million dollars be awarded to the robot of Albert Bradshaw,” he announced.

  “I thank you, Mr. President and gentlemen,” bowed the robot. “And now, since I am to depart once and for all upon that greatest of all adventures, death, I will first make a few bequests. To you, Mr. President, I hand my complete plans and formula for the construction of reasoning robots. By the employment of these plans and formulae, everyone who wishes to do so and whose brain is not too badly injured, may add to his short span of physical life a thousand useful years.

  “One half of the prize—five hundred thousand dollars, I set aside for a fund to be devoted to the manufacture of reasoning robots. The other half I bequeath to my friends, Dr. Frank Gunning and Yvonne D’Arcy. I once thought that Yvonne loved me with a devotion that would endure, but now, since I have become a robot, I see how it is between these two, that it was my friend the doctor whom she really loved—so I wish much happiness to both.

  “You will now see a demonstration of the way a reasoning robot can end his existence any time he cares to do so.”

  He took a small hammer from his coat pocket, and raised it over his head.

  “Are there any questions before I break this glass shell that will release me?"

  There was a scream from Yvonne. She ran up to him, caught his arm and snatched the hammer away.

  “So! You thought I didn’t love you, Albert!" she cried. “You were always inclined to be obtuse where women were concerned, however brilliant in other ways. I’ll show you whether I loved you. Look!”

  She snatched at her hair, tore a glossy black wig away, together with a skull-case, revealing another brain suspended in a glass container.

  “I am a robot,” she cried, “the robot you molded with your own hands! Do you want more proof than this?"

  “But how—” stammered the bewildered Bradshaw.

  “After Dr. Gunning had removed your brain and sealed it in the container,” she said, “I asked him to do the same with mine. He refused. Said it would be murder and tried to dissuade me. For months I begged him to perform the operation. That is why you saw us so much together. Finally, in desperation yesterday, I swallowed a corrosive chemical that would burn out my abdominal organs without injuring my brain. The doctor tried to use a stomach pump. I fought him off until he knew it was too late to save my life.

  “When at last I sank to the floor, in agony, he agreed to perform the ope
ration, and mercifully administered the anesthetic. I awoke as I am now—a robot—your robot. Don’t you want me, dear?”

  Bradshaw clapped on his own wig and skull case, and gently replaced those of Yvonne.

  “Want you?”

  Suddenly he caught the slight, black-haired figure in his arms.

  “Darling, I want you for a thousand years.”

  The End