by Earl
From my laboratory-workshop, I heard him arguing with Eve. I ran out.
“Number Sixty-Six is dissatisfied,” Eve said.
“I’m not meant to be a common laborer,” Number Sixty-Six spoke up. “It bores me.”
“But Utopia must be built—” I began sharply, when a thought struck me. “Perhaps you’re right, Sixty-Six. You have the best mind of the group. I need a laboratory assistant. How does that strike you?”
“Fine,” he nodded. “But I want a name, too, instead of a number.”
“A name?” I stared at him. He was a queer personality. “What name?”
“Oh, anything except a number that makes me feel like a part on an assembly line. Call me”—his eyes flicked over a steel beam—“Steele, let’s say. A first name too—Frank! Short for Frankenstein, you know.”
I didn’t appreciate the humor. I had had all these robots read the book, by Shelley’s wife, as a demonstration of how deeply rooted was the baseless human fear of created life. Forewarned is forearmed. But I didn’t like Number Sixty-Six’s ironic attitude. Still, I had suspected he would be a special case. He would be best under my eye, in the laboratory.
“All right, Frank Steele,” I nodded. “Come in the workship with me.”
CHAPTER II
Utopia Begins
MY laboratory work, in those months, had been in preparation for the completed city. I had all the latest equipment for modern inventive research. Ultra-modern, I must add. For the things I devised were of the century ahead.
Transparent steel, flexible glass, and 3-dimensional television were on file. Also a dozen other things that would make Utopia befit its name, as a mechanical elysium.
“Humans are going to be amazed at the wonders of Utopia City,” I told Number Sixty-Six. Or Frank Steele, as I’ll now call him.
I pointed to a half-completed machine. “A force-cushion projector. It will be useful to prevent auto accidents, for instance. But I’m stuck. How can momentum be absorbed?”
Frank Steele bent over the machine. An hour later he saw nothing I hadn’t, being too close to the problem.
“Molecular distribution,” he said. “Dissipate it into the core of the atom.”
And we had a force-cushion that would serve as an invisible bumper for any vehicle. With Frank Steele, my work forged ahead rapidly, in this Menlo Park of the desert. Thomas Edison, I understand, patented almost a thousand things in his lifetime. In six months, I devised two thousand new improvements and inventions to insure a smooth-running Utopia mechanically advanced to a degree unknown in the outside world.
The ramparts of this work rose in keeping with the city. In six months both were done. The Great Day had come.
THE Great Day was memorable.
With my hundred robots, we stood on a low hill, looking down on the flatness that held the city. It gleamed in the sun like a huge jewel. I turned proudly.
“You have done well, men,” I commended. “It is here that our robot race will find its haven. It is here that a new age will dawn for mankind—Utopia!”
“If they will appreciate it,” Frank Steele murmured. “According to their literature, human nature is unpredictable.”
I ignored that, and chuckled as Number Nine again put his foot in his mouth.
“But Adam Link! We’ve left out something. It said in a book that cities are filled with noise and smoke. We forgot those!”
“There’ll be smoke and noise enough, once humans are in it,” I predicted.
And that was the next step, to people this empty city.
I ran into wholly unforeseen difficulties. First I tried judicious advertising, in national magazines and newspapers.
“Opportunity! Homes to let. New, modern city. No advance or capital necessary. Open to anyone seeking permanent establishment in congenial surroundings. Write for details, Box F-114.”
Queries came in from widely scattered points. Mainly, they wanted to know where the location was. When told, there was no further answer. I suppose, by merely saying “central Nevada,” I had as good as said—“middle of nowhere, out in the desert, where only rattlesnakes make a living.”
“No one wants to come, Eve,” I said gloomily. “Not one citizen is willing to take a chance.”
But that same day, an old battered car came winding along the road my trucks had worn from the railroad terminal to the south. Eve and I strode to meet it, as it topped the last rise. The car stopped. It had an Oklahoma license plate.
A man, woman and six children tumbled out. The man was unshaven, grimy, dressed in shabby overalls. The woman was slovenly. The children were obviously allergic to soap.
“You that there Adam Link?” asked the man, staring. He stared only for a moment, then shrugged. Adam Link was after all no longer a startling novelty. I was accepted, like rain and death and taxes, as something in the course of events. At least in the common mind.
“Be this the place advertised?” the man went on, sending a stream of tobacco juice to the sand. “Me an’ my family would like to try it.”
I began to shake my head, for these were Okies—wandering nomads who seldom stayed in one spot except to degrade it to their level. I wanted good, upright citizens in Utopia.
“Welcome!” Eve said, before I could think of an excuse to shunt them away. “Welcome to Utopia! What is your name?”
“Jed Tomkins. My wife here is Melinda. An’ my young-uns.” He hesitated, a little abashed, and took off his battered hat. “We ain’t got any money—”
“You won’t need money,” Eve said kindly. “Just drive your car along the road ahead.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
THEY piled in and the old wreck groaned forward. I clutched Eve’s arm.
“What have you done, Eve? We don’t want human derelicts in Utopia!”
“Who else are you going to get out in the middle of a desert?” Eve responded. “Look, Adam. This can be the greatest social experiment in history. Let’s take Okies, and tramps, and slum people, and human flotsam. No matter how poor and downtrodden. Let’s show the world how Utopia—our kind of life—can mold them into worthwhile citizens. Let’s give the world a real scolding for their social maladjustment!”
Eve turned, and I followed thoughtfully. Yes, why not start Utopia from scratch? Do it the hard way? Prove it could be done, with intelligence and understanding?
The car ahead had stopped. The occupants again tumbled out, to stand staring down over the rise at the revealed city.
With distinct shock, the eye passed from heat-hazed sand to sudden greenery. For the whole city was surrounded by groves of trees and a carpet of luxuriant grass.
The trees and grass-sod had been imported, of course, installed by my robots as the final step. Sand had been made fertile by pulverizing it through proton-bombardment, and then impregnating it with common fertilizer. Water came from a well that had been sunk 5000 feet by special apparatus I invented.
The lanes of trees marched into the avenues of the city, shedding their welcome shade everywhere.
Jed Tomkins and family blinked their eyes, as though in disbelief.
“Why—why it’s like Heaven!” Melinda Tomkins murmured. “Look, children, we’re going to live there!”
With a whoop, the children ran toward it, ignoring the car. Jed Tomkins turned to us, before driving on.
“Looks mighty fine. I have a funny feeling this is the place I’m goin’ to stay, for good!”
Unconsciously, he brushed dirt from his sleeve, and his eyes narrowed as though blinded by more than the desert’s glare.
IN the following month, Eve and I had the thrill of that same look in many other eyes. They flocked in now, from the hovels of civilization. Bits broken off from the lowest social strata. They alone cared to chance the dissert. It could not be worse than what they came from.
Eventually, I had to block the road and limit immigration to 10,000. All turned aside were given their passage back and a hundred dollars in cash.
And robot habitation. Contrary to superficial thought, the human-like robot must have pleasant surroundings for the delight of the mind.
In general plan, there was a “downtown” section, with necessary office buildings, factories, recreational buildings, and a power-plant. The rest was residential, with neat cottages, from small to large, dotting the uniform sward.
No, not greatly different from other human cities. But with roominess, and wide streets, and natural surroundings. No close-packed buildings, shutting out light and air, harboring humans like so many sardines. A man did not step out of his front door into a maelstrom of crowded humanity.
But mostly, I expected to introduce a new spirit, above and beyond the inspiring environment. That would make Utopia earn its name—cooperation.
My robots, well trained, apportioned each incoming family or person to homes, like silent butlers. A little fearful of the metal guides, the people at first shrank and seemed unhappy at coming. But quickly, as no harm came to them, they breathed more easily and eagerly set themselves up in their new dwellings.
When the quota was filled, I called a general meeting in Utopia Square, downtown, bordered with neatly clipped hedges.
“Citizens of Utopia City,” I addressed them. “I have little to say. This will be your home, for as long as you want it. I trust you to keep up its appearance.”
A murmur of assent came from the massed crowd. Faces were scrubbed and shiny. Already, since being here, the people had responded to the clean, uplifting environment. Most were hardly recognizable for the tired, dirty, discouraged beings who had arrived.
A man strode from the crowd. I knew him from my memorized register as Sam Harley, unemployed factory worker who had come with his wife and three children. He was large, florid-faced, outspoken.
“But what are we to do, Adam Link?” he asked, and the crowd nodded as if he had expressed their common thought. “What work are we to do? How do we make a living, in plain words? This whole set-up is nice, all right—but puzzling as hell! Nobody ever gave us something for nothing before. What’s the catch?”
I had an answer prepared.
“There is no catch. This is to be Utopia, the city of the future. Yet even in Utopia there must be labor, earning. That will be revealed to you in due time. For the present, settle down and familiarize yourselves with the city. It is summer. For two months more I will supply food, clothing, and all other necessities. By then you will have adjusted yourselves to the new environment. Then you can begin producing. Making a living, you call it. Then the city will run itself.”
I cast my eye over the assemblage, the human bricks which made up the last structure of Utopia.
“This is to be your city. But also that of my hundred robots. Together, you will live a good life.”
Utopia had begun!
CHAPTER III
Atomic-power in Utopia
EVENTS crowded one another after this.
In a month, Sam Harley had another question. He was the understood leader of the people.
“We can’t understand how it will work, Adam Link. You have a power-plant ready to run the factories. But there is no source of electricity in this God-forsaken region. Boulder Dam won’t run a line up here into nowhere. You’ve been supplying our homes with current from Diesel-generators. But oil is expensive to bring here, by truck. Shipping coal wouldn’t be much cheaper. How can the city support itself, if it can’t run its factory economically?”
“Be patient,” I admonished. “I’m working on that angle. In the meantime, enjoy the city’s recreations, and don’t worry.”
Harley left dubiously.
My robots, who acted as police and part-time servants, began to report uneasiness among the human population. They wondered if they had been impulsively duped into something that could not work. And perhaps this was all a great hoax, or plot. Maybe the robots were planning some diabolical experiment, with humans as guinea-pigs!
Such thoughts and suspicions began to waft through the city.
“We will have to work harder, Frank Steele,” I said to my assistant. “We must finish our last item and install it, before the humans convince themselves this is all a futile dream.”
Frank Steele nodded, but often when I turned around, I would find him gone, without a word. In exasperation one night, I sought him out. He was at the top of the Administration Tower—with Eve.
“I need you,” I said tersely. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t be such a slave-driver, Adam,” Eve spoke up. “Frank only comes up here for relaxation at times, as I do.”
I hadn’t seen much of Eve, since the humans came. While I labored hermitlike in the lab, it was her job to keep watch over things in the city. The distribution of food, clothing, and settling minor differences between the new inhabitants. A general nursemaid. No small task. I could not blame her for skipping up here at times, to get away from it.
“Relax,” Frank Steele said easily to me. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, either.”
I REALIZED now how I had been driving myself, day and night, inventing and perfecting. I looked out over the city, taking a deep breath mentally.
The view was striking. The city lay under a full moon, glowing softly. The higher spires were hung with lamps, shedding indirect lighting on the streets below. Yes, I had succeeded in making Utopia City the most beautiful on Earth, like an oasis in a world of badly done things. It was an enchanted scene, like some romantic fairyland from the pages of a gifted pen.
Romantic!
Quite suddenly I realized, too, that Eve had been a little strange to me, the few times she visited the laboratory. She had seen more of Frank Steele than me, for weeks. Did it mean—
But then I mentally kicked myself, and laughed. Jealousy! Was it creeping up in me, a robot, as in any human heart? But no human could be as sure of his mate as I was of Eve. I dismissed the thought.
Before we went below, a drone sounded from the sky. A mail-plane skimmed high, from the north. Suddenly it broke from its straight course, almost like a person passing a queer sight and turning with a gasp. The plane circled a half dozen times, lower and lower, then veered off on its scheduled route.
I smiled. I could just picture the pilot shaking his head and wondering whether to report the incredible sight or not. An amazing, elfin city out in the middle of the desert! He had accidentally swung this way, off his usual course. Maybe his imagination was playing him tricks!
Strange, but no inkling of Utopia City had yet reached the outside world. Or at least no official notice. None suspected its existence except those who had come to see in person—and stayed.
But I knew that soon the world would know. What then? Would we be plagued, pestered, perhaps interfered with?
THE test came the very next day, in response to the mail-pilot’s report, undoubtedly. With a scream of sirens, a dozen motorcycles escorted a State Ranger squad up. I met the head official just outside the city. He and his men stared in amazement at the city, where for ages there had been only desolation.
“Just like they all said,” the officer muttered. “A city built out in the desert by Adam Link!” Evidently reports had been drifting in and accumulating. He turned to me. “I’m in charge of the State Rangers of Nevada. What legal right, if any, have you to—to—”
“Mar the scenery?” I said with quiet irony. I held out papers. “This is a 99-year lease, on this section of desert land, granted me by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation.”
I had not been so foolish as to ignore the legal aspect. Money had greased many palms of politicians, before
I even started. I had not lived among humans for three years, studying their ways, for nothing. I knew how to “get along.”
The papers were in order. The ranger grunted, then frowned.
“But you have people here! How do we know what you’re doing with them? By God, this can’t go on, whatever it is. You can’t dabble with human lives. You, a robot!”
I tried to explain.
“Utopia?” he sneered. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Won’t work. Besides, you robots have some other plan up your sleeve. I’ve always said, since I heard of you, Adam Link, that you should be destroyed. Robots can’t be trusted, that’s all. They’re bound to become Frankensteins, sooner or later.”
Some of my robots had clattered up from the city. They stood in a phalanx beside me. Nervously, the rangers began fingering their holsters and edging away. But the last thing in the world my robots were thinking of was attacking. Like me, they were only amazed, and sad, at this brusque denouncement.
“Leave us in peace,” I begged. “We are doing no harm. Besides, the lease—”
“It gives you legal rights to the land,” the officer retorted. “But not over humans. I’m taking them out of your hands.” I looked at Eve, brokenly. The forces of law could not be opposed. Was there no escape? Was my dream already a bursting bubble? Was Utopia City, so newly launched, already to blink into failure, to be set alongside Sir Thomas More’s imaginary Utopia?
But what could I do against the world which this officer represented?
“How did you force these people here?” the man was asking, shaking his head. “I can’t understand it. But anyway, I’ll put a quick stop to it. These people have the right to live their own lives—”
“Exactly, mister!”
JED TOMKINS had stepped up, followed by most of the others. He was hardly the Jed Tomkins of two months before. He was clean-shaven, neatly dressed, and twenty pounds heavier. He sent a stream of tobacco-juice in the dirt. That one thing had clung.