The Positronic Man

by Isaac Asimov

  "In fact," Paul said in a voice that was no more than a husk of itself, "I may not live to see next year."

  "Paul!"

  "Don't sound so surprised. We're mortal, Andrew," Paul said, with a shrug. "We're not like you, and by this time you ought to understand what that means."

  "I do. But-"

  "Yes. Yes, I know. I'm sorry, Andrew. I know how devoted you've been to our family, and what a sad and dreary thing it must be for you constantly to see us growing up and getting older and older and eventually dying. Well, we don't like it much either, I have to tell you, but there's no sense railing against it. We live twice as long as human beings usually did just a few hundred years ago. That's long enough for most of us, I suppose. We simply have to be philosophical about it."

  "But I don't understand. How can you be so calm in the face of-of complete termination? Of the total end of all your striving, all your desire to achieve and learn and grow?"

  "I wouldn't be, I suppose, if I were twenty years old right now, or even forty. But I'm not. And part of the system, Andrew-the good part, I guess-is that when you reach a certain age it generally stops mattering to you so much that you're inevitably going to die soon. You aren't really achieving and learning and growing any more. For better or for worse, you've lived your life and done whatever you can for the world and for yourself, and now your time is up and your body knows that and accepts it. We get very tired, Andrew. You don't know what that word means, not really, do you? No. No, I see that you don't. You can't. You aren't able to get tired and so you have only a theoretical knowledge of what it's like. But it's different for us. We slog on and on for seventy or eighty or maybe a hundred years and eventually it all just becomes too much, and so we sit down and then we lie down and finally we close our eyes and don't open them again, and right at the end we know that it is the end and we simply don't mind. Or don't care: I'm not sure that's the same thing, really, but perhaps it is. -Don't look at me that way, Andrew."

  "Dying is a natural thing for humans," Andrew said. "I do understand that, Paul."

  "No. You don't. You really don't. It just isn't possible for you to understand. You secretly think that death is some sort of lamentable design flaw in us and you can't understand why it hasn't been fixed, because it ought to be pretty simple to keep on replacing our parts indefinitely as they wear out and break down, the way yours have always been replaced. You've even had an entire body replaced."

  "But surely it would be theoretically possible for you to be transferred into-"

  "No. It isn't. Not even in theory. We don't have positronic brains and ours aren't transferable, so we can't simply ask someone to scoop us out of a body that we're finished with and put us into a nice shiny new one. You can't comprehend the fact that humans inevitably have to reach a point where they're incapable of being repaired any more. But that's all right. Why should anyone expect you to be able to conceive the inconceivable? I'm going to die soon and that's all there is to it. And I want to reassure you at least in one respect, Andrew: you'll be well provided for financially when I go."

  "But I am already quite well provi-"

  "Yes. I know that. All the same, things can change very quickly, sometimes. We think we live in a very secure world, but other civilizations have felt just as smug and they had reason sooner or later to see that they were wrong. Anyway, Andrew: I'm the last of the Charneys. I have no heirs except you. There are collateral relatives descended from my great-aunt, but they don't count. I don't know them and I don't care about them. I care about you. The money I control personally will be left in trust in your name and you'll continue to be economically secure as far into the future as anyone can foresee."

  "This is unnecessary, Paul," Andrew said, with difficulty. He had to admit to himself that what Paul had said about his not understanding death, not being able to understand it, was true. In all this time he had not really managed to get used to the deaths of the Charneys.

  Paul said, "Let's not argue, all right? I can't take the money with me and there isn't anything I'd rather do with it than leave it to you, so that's the way it's going to be. And I don't want to consume any more of my remaining life-span discussing the matter with you. Let's talk about something else. -What are you working on these days?"

  "Biology, still."

  "What aspect in particular?"

  "Metabolism."

  "Robot metabolism, you mean? There isn't any such thing, is there? Or is there? Do you mean android metabolism? Human metabolism?"

  "All three," Andrew said. " A synthesis of sorts." He paused, and then he went plunging ahead. Why hold anything back from Paul? "I've been designing a system that would allow androids-I mean myself; I am still the only functioning android, am I not?-to draw energy from the combustion of hydrocarbons rather than from atomic cells."

  Paul gave him a long, slow look.

  "You mean," he said finally, "that you want to make it possible for an android to be able to breathe and eat the same way humans do?"

  "Yes."

  "You've never mentioned any such project as this to me before, Andrew. Is it something new?"

  "Not really. In truth, Paul, it is the reason I began all this biological research in the first place."

  Paul nodded abstractedly. It was as though he was listening from a very great distance. He seemed to be having a difficult time absorbing what Andrew was telling him.

  "And have you achieved anything significant so far?" he asked, after a time.

  "I am approaching something significant," Andrew said. "It needs more work but I think I have succeeded in designing a compact combustion chamber that will be adequate for catalyzed controlled breakdown."

  "But why, Andrew? What's the point of it? You know that it can't possibly be as efficient as the atomic cell your body uses now."

  "Very likely not," said Andrew. "But it ought to be efficient enough. At least as efficient as the system that the human body uses, I would say, and not all that different from it in fundamental principle. The main problem with the atomic cell, Paul, is that it is inhuman. My energy-my very life, you could say-is drawn from a source that is wholly other than human. And I am not content with that."

  Sixteen

  IT TOOK TIME, but Andrew had all the time he needed. And he was in no hurry to complete his research. He wanted everything to be properly worked out before he attempted to have it put into service. There was another reason for going slowly, also. Andrew had decided not to undergo any further upgrading beyond the android level while Paul Charney was still alive.

  Paul had not expressed any overt criticism of the work Andrew was doing, other than his initial response that Andrew's new combustion chamber might be less efficient than the atomic cell that powered his body now. But Andrew could see that Paul was troubled by the idea. It was too bold for him, too strange, too great a leap. Even Paul, it seemed, had his limits when it came to the progress of robot design. Even Paul!

  Perhaps that was one of the side effects of aging, Andrew thought. Challenging new ideas become too challenging for you, no matter how open your mind may have been to dynamic change when you were younger. Everything new comes to seem disturbing and threatening to you. You feel the world rushing past you in a frightening stampede; you want things to slow down, you want the ferocious pace of progress to slacken.

  Was that how it was? Andrew wondered.

  Did humans inevitably become more conservative with age?

  So it would seem. Little Miss had been uneasy about his wearing clothing. George had thought it odd that he would want to write a book. And Paul-Paul- Looking back now, Andrew remembered how startled, even shocked, Paul had been when he learned for the first time, in Smythe-Robertson's office, that what Andrew wanted was to be transferred into an android body. Paul had made a quick enough adaptation to the idea and had fought furiously and brilliantly to make it a reality. But that did not necessarily mean that he thought it was a good idea for Andrew.

  They have all let me
do what I felt I needed to do, Andrew thought, even when they privately disagreed with it. They have granted me my wishes-out of love for me.

  Yes, love. For a robot.

  Andrew dwelled on that thought for a while, and sensations of warmth and pleasure went through him. But it was a little troubling, too, to realize that sometimes the Charneys had supported him not out of personal convictions of their own but simply because they so wholeheartedly and unconditionally believed in allowing him to follow his own path, whether or not they thought it was the correct one.

  So Paul, then, had won him the right to have an android body. But that transformation had taken Paul to his own limit of acceptance of Andrew's upward path. The next step-the metabolic converter-was beyond him.

  Very well. Paul did not have very much longer to live. Andrew would wait.

  And so he did; and in time came news of Paul's death, not as soon as Paul had supposed it would be, but very soon, all the same. Andrew was invited to attend Paul's funeral-the public ceremony, he was aware, that marked the end of a human life-but there was scarcely anyone there whom he knew, and he felt ill at ease and out of place, even though everyone was scrupulously polite to him. These young strangers-friends of Paul's, members of his law firm, distant relatives of the Charneys-had no more substance than shadows for Andrew, and he stood among them heavy with the double grief of having lost his good friend Paul and of finding himself bereft of his last real connection with the family that had given him his place in life.

  In fact there no longer were any humans in the world with whom he had close emotional ties. Andrew had come to realize by this time that he had cared deeply for the Martins and the Charneys in a way that went beyond the robotic-that his devotion to them was not merely a manifestation of the First and Second Laws, but something that might indeed be called love. His love, for them. In his earlier days Andrew would never have admitted such a thing, even to himself; but he was different now.

  These thoughts led Andrew inevitably, around the time of Paul Charney's death, to a consideration of the entire concept of family ties-the love of parent for child, of child for parent-and how that was related to the inexorable passing of the generations. If you are human, Andrew told himself, you are part of a great chain, a chain that hangs suspended across vast spans of time and links you to all those who have come before you and those who follow after. And you understand that individual links of the chain may perish-indeed, must perish-but the chain itself is ever-renewing and will survive. People died, whole families might become extinct-but the human race, the species, went on and on through the centuries and the millennia and the eons, everyone connected through the heritage of blood to those who had gone before.

  It was a difficult thing for Andrew to understand, that sense of connection, of infinite linkage with intimately related predecessors. He had no predecessors, not really, and he would have no successors, either. He was unique-individual-something that had been brought forth at a certain moment in time out of nothing at all.

  Andrew found himself wondering what it might be like to have had a parent himself-but all he could come up with was a vague image of assembly-robots weaving his body together in a factory. Or what it was like to have a child-but the best he could manage was to envision a table or desk, something that he had made with his own hands.

  But human parents were not assembly-mechs, and human children were nothing like tables and desks. He had it all wrong.

  It was a mystery to him. And very likely always would be. He was not human; why then should he expect human family linkages to be comprehensible to him?

  Then Andrew thought of Little Miss, of George, of Paul, even of fierce old Sir, and what they had meant to him. And he realized that he was part of a family chain after all, though he had had no parents and was incapable of siring children. The Martins had taken him in and had made him one of them. He was a Martin, indeed. An adopted Martin, yes; but that was the best he could have hoped for. And there were plenty of humans who had not had the comfort of belonging to such a loving family. He had done very well, all things considered. Though only a robot, he had known the continuity and stability of family life; he had known warmth; he had known love.

  All those whom Andrew had-loved-were gone, though. That was saddening and liberating both. The chain was broken, for him. It could never be restored. But at least he could do as he pleased, now, without fear of troubling those who had been so close to him. Now, with the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt free to proceed with his plan for upgrading his android body. That was some sort of partial consolation for his loss.

  Nevertheless he was alone in the world, or so it seemed to him-not simply because he was a positronic brain in a unique android body, but because he had no affiliations of any sort. And it was a world that had every reason to be hostile to his aspirations. All the more reason, Andrew thought, to continue along the path he had long ago chosen-the path that he hoped would ultimately make him invulnerable to the world into which he had been thrust so impersonally, without his leave, so many years before.

  In fact Andrew was not quite as alone as he thought. Men and women might die, but corporations lived on just as robots did, and the law firm of Feingold and Charney still functioned even though no Feingolds and no Charneys remained. The firm had its directions and it followed them impeccably and soullessly. By way of the trust that held his investments and through the income that Andrew drew from the firm as Paul Charney's heir, Andrew continued to be wealthy. That enabled him to pay a large annual retainer to Feingold and Charney to keep them involved in the legal aspects of his research-in particular, the new combustion chamber.

  It was time now for Andrew to pay another call on the headquarters of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men.

  This would be the third time in his long life that Andrew had had face-to-face dealings with high executives of the powerful robot-manufacturing corporation. On the first occasion, back in the days of Merwin Mansky, Mansky and managing director Elliot Smythe had come out to California to see him. But that was when Sir had still been alive, and imperious old Sir had been able to command even Smythes and Robertsons into his presence. On the next occasion, many years later, Andrew and Paul had been the ones to make the journey to the company-to see Harley Smythe-Robertson and arrange for Andrew's transfer to the android body.

  Now Andrew would make the journey east a second time, but he would go alone. And this time he would have the visage and bodily frame, if not the inner organs, of a human being.

  U.S. Robots had changed greatly since Andrew's last visit. The main production factory had been shifted to a large space station, as was the case with many other industrial facilities. Only the research center remained behind on Earth, in a grand and lovely parklike setting of vast green lawns and sturdy wide-spreading leafy trees.

  The Earth itself, its population long since stabilized at about a billion-plus a robot population about equally large-was becoming parklike virtually everywhere. The terrible damage to the environment that had been perpetrated in the hectic early centuries of the Industrial Revolution was largely only a memory, now. The sins of the past had not exactly been forgotten, but they had come to seem unreal to the inhabitants of the reborn Earth, and with each passing generation it became harder and harder to believe that people once had been willing to commit such monstrous and ultimately self-destructive crimes against their own world. Now that industry had largely moved to space and clean, efficient robot labor served the needs of those humans who had remained behind, the planet's natural healing powers had been allowed to come into play, and the seas were pure again, the skies were clear, the woodlands had reclaimed territory once occupied by dense, grimy cities.

  A robot greeted Andrew when his aeroflitter landed at the U. S. Robots airstrip. Its face was bland and blank and its red photoelectric eyes were utterly expressionless. Scarcely thirty percent of the robots of Earth, Andrew knew, were still independently brained: this one was an empty creatur
e, nothing more than the mindless metal puppet of some immobile positronic thinking-device housed deep within the U. S. Robots complex.

  "I am Andrew Martin," Andrew said. "I have an appointment with Director of Research Magdescu."

  "Yes. You will follow me."

  Lifeless. Brainless. A mere machine. A thing.

  The robot greeter led Andrew briskly along a paved path that gleamed with some inner crystalline brightness and up a shining spiral ramp into a domed many-leveled building covered with a glistening and iridescent translucent skin. To Andrew, who had had little experience of modern architecture, it had the look of something out of a storybook-light, airy, shimmering, not entirely real.

  He was allowed to wait in a broad oval room carpeted with some lustrous synthetic material that emitted a soft glow and a faint, pleasant sort of music whenever Andrew moved about on its surface. He found that if he walked in a straight line the glow was pale pink and the music was mildly percussive in texture, but that when he sauntered in a curve that followed the border of the room the light shifted more toward the blue end of the spectrum and the music seemed more like the murmuring of the wind. He wondered if any of this had any significance and decided that it did not: that it was mere ornamentation, a decorative frill. In this placid and unchallenging era such lovely but meaningless decorative touches were ubiquitous, Andrew knew

  "Ah-Andrew Martin at last," a deep voice said.

  A short, stocky man had appeared in the room as though some magic had conjured him out of the carpet. The newcomer was dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard that looked as though it had been lacquered, and he wore nothing above the waist except the breastband that fashion now dictated. Andrew himself was more thoroughly covered. He had followed George Charney in adopting the "drapery" style of clothing, thinking that its flowing nature would better conceal what he still imagined to be a certain awkwardness of his movements, and though the stylishness of drapery was several decades obsolete now and Andrew could move as easily and gracefully as any human, he had continued to dress in that manner ever since.