by Isaac Asimov
He reached into the box and pulled out the robot’s manual. “Hey, it’s an early librarian model.”
Donovan started to read out loud from the introduction: “The DN series of robots have been developed to provide all of the functionality of a human library and information expert. It is capable of reading, categorizing, filing and storing all library material within its knowledge banks. This can include manuscripts, books, tapes, CD-ROM’s.”
He trailed off with a grin on his face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Greg?”
“I’m ahead of you, Mike,” said Powell as he threw the switch initiating the robot.
They stepped back and watched as first the photocell eyes flickered into life and then the robot rose smoothly to its feet. It stood there looking at them for a moment and then spoke.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
Powell looked at Donovan. “What a peculiar sounding voice.”
It was definitely feminine but there was something else about it that they could not place; it was quite an old sounding dialect.
Donovan picked up the robot’s manual again and continued to read.
“Fully functional positronic brain, soft pad fingers for delicate material handling, Schipol feet for silent movement.”
He trailed off into mumbling as he continued to flick through the manual. “No, nothing else in here to explain that strange accent in the voice. It could just be the age of the robot; after all, it is …” he paused to look at the front page, “Wow, this robot was manufactured in the year 2011! That’s before we started our field operative work.”
“Well, never mind that,” said Powell, “Let’s get Dawn working on this material and take it easy for the rest of the assignment. Dawn, let’s make a start on these CD-ROM’s and tapes. Get them categorized then filed.”
He passed the disks and tapes to the robot, which just stood looking at them. Although the metal face had no expression, Powell almost imagined he could see a blank look in it.
“What’s wrong?”
The robot turned to look at him. “What are these, sir?”
It was now Powell’s turn to look blank. “Mike, what do you make of this? Do you think it’s a fault in the positronic brain? Perhaps that’s why it was re-boxed.”
“No, I don’t think so. The reactions appear about normal.”
Powell reached into his back pocket and pulled out the Handbook of Robotics that was the bible of every field operative. He still used a very battered, much annotated paperback version of the handbook rather than the more modern e-book version being used by some of the younger field operatives. He started on the basic diagnosis tests.
Twenty minutes later, he sat back in his chair still puzzled. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, she is in perfect working order. The sight functions are acceptable, hearing module has a slight fault, but no real problem except in noisy conditions. I don’t understand why she doesn’t recognize the material.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to do the task,” volunteered Donovan.
“Mike, why do you have to see a conspiracy every time something goes wrong with a robot?” exclaimed Powell.
“Just one of my endearing features,” smiled Donovan, “Well, assuming she understands what it is we want, why isn’t she doing her job?”
“Succinct and to the point as usual,” replied Powell, “What do you want to do next, then? Give up, re-crate her, and forget about it, or try to solve this mystery?”
“Phrased that way, how can we resist a challenge?” said Donovan, rolling up his sleeves.
For the next hour they worked with Dawn, passing her material and getting her to classify it or reject it, and analyzed the result of her decisions.
At the end of the hour, Powell looked at his notes and started to summarize.
“Well, as I see it, what we have is a robot librarian that can work with paper documents, books, etchings, et cetera, but not CD’s, tapes, microfiche –” he trailed off in thought.
Donovan chipped in: “I cannot see a pattern; it’s not that they are all electronic – microfiche is definitely physical. In fact, it’s quite out of date now and hasn’t really been used since the end of the last century.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Powell.
“What’s it?” asked Donovan with a puzzled look on his face, “If I got the answer, I don’t know how.”
“Do you remember in some of our early courses at college how some of the rudimentary computers of the late 20th century had a particular problem with what came to be known as the Millennium Bug?” said Powell.
“Ah, yes. It was all about lack of planning, wasn’t it?”
“Well, sort of. Who would have thought that some of those computers would have been working 15 minutes after they were made, let alone 15 years!” replied Powell, “I actually did some of my science history thesis on that subject and –”
“– it’s probably somewhere in these dusty piles,” finished off Donovan, “So what has this got to do with the price of eggs?”
“Everything, if Dawn here is non-Y2K compliant,” replied Powell. “Year 2000 compliant, that is,” he added before Donovan could ask the next question.
“And what happened to those machines that were non-compliant?”
Donovan jumped in to answer his own question before Powell could continue his ‘lecture.’ “Wait, I know. They defaulted to an earlier date, generally January 1, 1980 – but some of the machines defaulted all the way back to 1900.”
“So,” joined in Powell, “Dawn here thinks that it is the turn of the century: January the first in the year one thousand nine hundred. William McKinley is president of what used to be known as the United States of America, Victoria I is queen of the United Kingdom, and microfiche, CD-ROM’s and the like don’t exist, probably not even in the science fiction of the day.”
“Which means that Dawn here can only work with things that exist in her world, so bang goes the idea of saving our time down here,” Donovan exclaimed in frustration.
“Why?” said Powell, “She can still file the old-fashioned dusty stuff, and that will save us considerable time and effort.”
“Hey, that is a thought,” said Donovan, cheering up as he led her towards the next aisle of books and files, “Let’s get her started.”
He began to instruct her: “Dawn, here are 14 aisles of books, files and papers. Please categorize them by age and subject and record the information for archival storage. After that, we can get them crated for long-term storage and eventual disposal.”
The robot turned to the first rack, began carefully to take down the boxes of papers, and started to scan them.
Donovan turned to Powell. “Well, that’s all we should have to do in the dirty environment. Let’s get the last few of these electronic media out of the way.”
As they both moved away, Dawn opened up a box of manuscripts among the early science fiction works section. The first manuscript, typed on an old manual typewriter, was headed ‘The Snows of Pluto’ and she began to scan the content:
David Starr looked down the long slope that led away from the base dome on Pluto. The snow, actually frozen ammonia, glistened from the searchlights mounted outside of the curved dome surface. He checked the fastenings on his skis prior to setting off on his cross-planet trek.
Dawn moved across the aisle and placed the document in the fantasy section under unpublished work/not to be reviewed further and turned to the next document.
The Evitable Conflict
2052 A.D.
THE CO-ORDINATOR, IN his private study, had that medieval curiosity, a fireplace. To be sure, the medieval man might not have recognized it as such, since it had no functional significance. The quiet, licking flame lay in an insulated recess behind clear quartz.
The logs were ignited at long distance through a trifling diversion of the energy beam that fed the public buildings of the city. The same button that controlled the ignition first dumped the ashes of the previous fire
, and allowed for the entrance of fresh wood. – It was a thoroughly domesticated fireplace, you see.
But the fire itself was real. It was wired for sound, so that you could hear the crackle and, of course, you could watch it leap in the air stream that fed it.
The Co-ordinator’s ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.
And in the frosty pupils of his guest, Dr. Susan Calvin of U. S. Robots & Mechanical Men Corporation.
The Co-ordinator said, “I did not ask you here entirely for social purposes, Susan.”
“I did not think you did, Stephen,” she replied.
“– And yet I don’t quite know how to phrase my problem. On the one hand, it can be nothing at all. On the other, it can mean the end of humanity.”
“I have come across so many problems, Stephen, that presented the same alternative. I think all problems do.”
“Really? Then judge this – World Steel reports an overproduction of twenty thousand long tons. The Mexican Canal is two months behind schedule. The mercury mines at Almaden have experienced a production deficiency since last spring, while the Hydroponics plant at Tientsin has been laying men off. These items happen to come to mind at the moment. There is more of the same sort.”
“Are these things serious? I’m not economist enough to trace the fearful consequences of such things.”
“In themselves, they are not serious. Mining experts can be sent to Almaden, if the situation were to get worse. Hydroponics engineers can be used in Java or in Ceylon, if there are too many at Tientsin. Twenty thousand long tons of steel won’t fill more than a few days of world demand, and the opening of the Mexican Canal two months later than the planned date is of little moment. It’s the Machines that worry me; I’ve spoken to your Director of Research about them already.”
“To Vincent Silver? – He hasn’t mentioned anything about it to me.”
“I asked him to speak to no one. Apparently, he hasn’t.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Let me put that item in its proper place. I want to talk about the Machines first. And I want to talk about them to you, because you’re the only one in the world who understands robots well enough to help me now. – May I grow philosophical?”
“For this evening, Stephen, you may talk how you please and of what you please, provided you tell me first what you intend to prove.”
“That such small unbalances in the perfection of our system of supply and demand, as I have mentioned, may be the first step towards the final war.”
“Hmp. Proceed.”
Susan Calvin did not allow herself to relax, despite the designed comfort of the chair she sat in. Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even voice were becoming accentuated with the years. And although Stephen Byerley was one man she could like and trust, she was almost seventy and the cultivated habits of a lifetime are not easily broken.
“Every period of human development, Susan,” said the Co-ordinator, “has had its own particular type of human conflict – its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself, – what’s the expression, – ah, yes ‘not with a bang, but a whimper,’ as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars, – apparently endlessly cyclic.
“Consider relatively modern times. There were the series of dynastic wars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when the most important question in Europe was whether the houses of Hapsburg or Valois-Bourbon were to rule the continent. It was one of those ‘inevitable conflicts,’ since Europe could obviously not exist half one and half the other.
“Except that it did, and no war ever wiped out the one and established the other, until the rise of a new social atmosphere in France in 1789 tumbled first the Bourbons and, eventually, the Hapsburgs down the dusty chute to history’s incinerator.
“And in those same centuries there were the more barbarous religious wars, which revolved about the important question of whether Europe was to be Catholic or Protestant. Half and half she could not be. It was ‘inevitable’ that the sword decide. – Except that it didn’t. In England, a new industrialism was growing, and on the continent, a new nationalism. Half and half Europe remains to this day and no one cares much.
“In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a cycle of nationalist-imperialist wars, when the most important question in the world was which portions of Europe would control the economic resources and consuming capacity of which portions of non-Europe. All non-Europe obviously could not exist part English and part French and part German and so on. – Until the forces of nationalism spread sufficiently, so that non-Europe ended what all the wars could not, and decided it could exist quite comfortably all non-European.
“And so we have a pattern-”
“Yes. Stephen, you make it plain,” said Susan Calvin. “These are not very profound observations.”
“No. – But then, it is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you? In the twentieth century, Susan, we started a new cycle of wars – what shall I call them? Ideological wars? The emotions of religion applied to economic systems, rather than to extra-natural ones? Again the wars were ‘inevitable’ and this time there were atomic weapons, so that mankind could no longer live through its torment to the inevitable wasting away of inevitability. – And positronic robots came.
“They came in time, and, with it and alongside it, interplanetary travel. – So that it no longer seemed so important whether the world was Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Neither made very much sense under the new circumstances. Both had to adapt and they ended in almost the same place.”
“A deus ex machina, then, in a double sense,” said Dr. Calvin, dryly.
The Co-ordinator smiled gently, “I have never heard you pun before, Susan, but you are correct. And yet there was another danger. The ending of every other problem had merely given birth to another. Our new worldwide robot economy may develop its own problems, and for that reason we have the Machines. The Earth’s economy is stable, and will remain stable, because it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of Robotics.”
Stephen Byerley continued, “And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth-wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth knows that there will be no unemployment, no over-production or shortages. Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed. – Not because men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it.
“It puts an end to war – not only to the last cycle of wars, but to the next and to all of them. Unless-”
A long pause, and Dr. Calvin encouraged him by repetition. “Unless-”
The fire crouched and skittered along a log, then popped up.
“Unless,” said the Co-ordinator, “the Machines don’t fulfill their function.”
“I see. And that is where those trifling maladjustments come in which you mentioned awhile ago – steel, hydroponics and so on.”
“Exactly. Those errors should not be. Dr. Silver tells me they cannot be.”
“Does he deny the facts? How unusual!”
“No, he admits the facts, of course. I do him an injustice. What he denies is that any error in the machine i
s responsible for the so-called (his phrase) errors in the answers. He claims that the Machines are self-correcting and that it would violate the fundamental laws of nature for an error to exist in the circuits of relays. And so I said-”
“And you said, ‘Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.’”
“Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn’t.”
“Too busy?”
“No, he said that no human could. He was frank about it. He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation. Thus, a team of mathematicians work several years calculating a positronic brain equipped to do certain similar acts of calculation. Using this brain they make further calculations to create a still more complicated brain, which they use again to make one still more complicated and so on. According to Silver, what we call the Machines are the result of ten such steps.”
“Ye-es, that sounds familiar. Fortunately, I’m not a mathematician. Poor Vincent. He is a young man. The Directors before him, Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, are dead, and they had no such problems. Nor had I. Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations.”
“Apparently not. The Machines are not super-brains in Sunday supplement sense, – although they are so pictured in the Sunday supplements. It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.
“And then I tried something else. I actually asked the Machine. In the strictest secrecy, we fed it the original data involved in the steel decision, its own answer, and the actual developments since, – the overproduction, that is, – and asked for an explanation of the discrepancy.”
“Good, and what was its answer?”
“I can quote you that word for word: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’”
