by Isaac Asimov
“What next step is that?”
“I wish to see the head of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. I have tried to make an appointment; but so far I have not been able to reach him. The Corporation did not cooperate with me in the writing of the book, so I am not surprised, you understand.”
Paul was clearly amused. “Cooperation is the last thing you can expect. They didn’t cooperate with us in our great fight for robot rights. Quite the reverse, and you can see why. Give a robot rights and people may not want to buy them.”
“Nevertheless,” said Andrew, “if you call them, you may be able to obtain an interview for me.”
“I’m no more popular with them than you are, Andrew.”
“But perhaps you can hint that by seeing me they may head off a campaign by Feingold and Martin to strengthen the rights of robots further.”
“Wouldn’t that be a lie, Andrew?”
“Yes, Paul, and I can’t tell one. That is why you must call.”
“Ah, you can’t lie, but you can urge me to tell a lie, is that it? You’re getting more human all the time, Andrew.”
13.
The meeting was not easy to arrange, even with Paul’s supposedly weighted name.
But it finally came about. When it did, Harley Smythe-Robertson, who, on his mother’s side, was descended from the original founder of the corporation and who had adopted the hyphenation to indicate it, looked remarkably unhappy. He was approaching retirement age and his entire tenure as president had been devoted to the matter of robot rights. His gray hair was plastered thinly over the top of his scalp; his face was not made up, and he eyed Andrew with brief hostility from time to time.
Andrew began the conversation. “Sir, nearly a century ago, I was told by a Merton Mansky of this corporation that the mathematics governing the plotting of the positronic pathways was far too complicated to permit of any but approximate solutions and that, therefore, my own capacities were not fully predictable.”
“That was a century ago.” Smythe-Robertson hesitated, then said icily, “Sir. It is true no longer. Our robots are made with precision now and are trained precisely to their jobs.”
“Yes,” said Paul, who had come along, as he said, to make sure that the corporation played fair, “with the result that my receptionist must be guided at every point once events depart from the conventional, however slightly.”
“You would be much more displeased if it were to improvise,” Smythe-Robertson said.
“Then you no longer manufacture robots like myself which are flexible and adaptable.”
“No longer.”
“The research I have done in connection with my book,” said Andrew, “indicates that I am the oldest robot presently in active operation.”
“The oldest presently,” said Smythe-Robertson, “and the oldest ever. The oldest that will ever be. No robot is useful after the twenty-fifth year. They are called in and replaced with newer models.”
“No robot as presently manufactured is useful after the twentieth year,” said Paul, with a note of sarcasm creeping into his voice. “Andrew is quite exceptional in this respect.”
Andrew, adhering to the path he had marked out for himself, continued, “As the oldest robot in the world and the most flexible, am I not unusual enough to merit special treatment from the company?”
“Not at all,” Smythe-Robertson said, freezing up. “Your unusualness is an embarrassment to the company. If you were on lease, instead of having been an outright sale through some mischance, you would long since have been replaced.”
“But that is exactly the point,” said Andrew. “I am a free robot and I own myself. Therefore I come to you and ask you to replace me. You cannot do this without the owner’s consent. Nowadays, that consent is extorted as a condition of the lease, but in my time this did not happen.”
Smythe-Robertson was looking both startled and puzzled, and for a moment there was silence. Andrew found himself staring at the hologram on the wall. It was a death mask of Susan Calvin, patron saint of all roboticists. She had been dead for nearly two centuries now, but as a result of writing his book Andrew knew, her so well he could half persuade himself that he had met her in life.
Finally Smythe-Robertson asked, “How can I replace you for you? If I replace you, as robot, how can I donate the new robot to you as owner since in the very act of replacement you cease to exist.” He smiled grimly.
“Not at all difficult,” Paul interposed. “The seat of Andrew’s personality is his positronic brain and it is the one part that cannot be replaced without creating a new robot. The positronic brain, therefore, is Andrew the owner. Every other part of the robotic body can be replaced without affecting the robot’s personality, and those other parts are the brain’s possessions. Andrew, I should say, wants to supply his brain with a new robotic body.”
“That’s right,” said Andrew, calmly. He turned to Smythe-Robertson. “You have manufactured androids, haven’t you? Robots that have the outward appearance of humans, complete to the texture of the skin?”
“Yes, we have. They worked perfectly well, with their synthetic fibrous skins and tendons. There was virtually no metal anywhere except for the brain, yet they were nearly as tough as metal robots. They were tougher, weight for weight.”
Paul looked interested. “I didn’t know that. How many are on the market?”
“None,” said Smythe-Robertson. “They were much more expensive than metal models and a market survey showed they would not be accepted. They looked too human.”
Andrew was impressed. “But the corporation retains its expertise, I assume. Since it does, I wish to request that I be replaced by an organic robot, an android.”
Paul looked surprised. “Good Lord!” he said.
Smythe-Robertson stiffened. “Quite impossible!”
“Why is it impossible?” Andrew asked. “I will pay any reasonable fee, of course.”
“We do not manufacture androids.”
“You do not choose to manufacture androids,” Paul interjected quickly. “That is not the same as being unable to manufacture them.”
“Nevertheless,” Smythe-Robertson responded, “the manufacture of androids is against public policy.”
“There is no law against it,” said Paul.
“Nevertheless, we do not manufacture them-- and we will not.”
Paul cleared his throat. “Mr. Smythe-Robertson,” he said, “Andrew is a free robot who comes under the purview of the law guaranteeing robot rights. You are aware of this, I take it?”
“Only too well.”
“This robot, as a free robot, chooses to wear clothes. This results in his being frequently humiliated by thoughtless human beings despite the law against the humiliation of robots. It is difficult to prosecute vague offenses that don’t meet with the general disapproval of those who must decide on guilt and innocence.”
“U.S. Robots understood that from the start. Your father’s firm unfortunately did not.”
“My father is dead now, but what I see is that we have here a clear offense with a clear target.”
“What are you talking about?” said Smythe-Robertson.
“My client, Andrew Martin-- he has just become my client-- is a free robot who is entitled to ask U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation for the rights of replacement, which the corporation supplies to anyone who owns a robot for more than twenty-five years. In fact, the corporation insists on such replacement.”
Paul was smiling and thoroughly at ease. “The positronic brain of my client,” he went on, “is the owner of the body of my client which is certainly more than twenty-five years old. The positronic brain demands the replacement of the body and offers to pay any reasonable fee for an android body as that replacement. If you refuse the request, my client undergoes humiliation and we will sue.
“While public opinion would not ordinarily support the claim of a robot in such a case, may I remind you that U.S. Robots is not popular with the publ
ic generally. Even those who most use and profit from robots are suspicious of the corporation. This may be a hangover from the days when robots were widely feared. It may be resentment against the power and wealth of U.S. Robots, which has a worldwide monopoly. Whatever the cause may be, the resentment eats. I think you will find that you would prefer not to be faced with a lawsuit, particularly since my client is wealthy and will live for many more centuries and will have no reason to refrain from fighting the battle forever.”
Smythe-Robertson had slowly reddened. “You are trying to force--”
“I force you to do nothing,” said Paul. “If you wish to refuse to accede to my client’s reasonable request, you may by all means do so and we will leave without another word. But we will sue, as is certainly our right, and you will find that you will eventually lose.”
“Well.”
“I see that you are going to accede,” said Paul. “You may hesitate but you will come to it in the end. Let me assure you, then, of one further point: If, in the process of transferring my client’s positronic brain from his present body to an organic one, there is any damage, however slight, then I will never rest until I’ve nailed the corporation to the ground. I will, if necessary, take every possible step to mobilize public opinion against the corporation if one brain path of my client’s platinum-iridium essence is scrambled.” He turned to Andrew and asked, “Do you agree to all this, Andrew?”
Andrew hesitated a full minute. It amounted to the approval of lying, of blackmail, of the badgering and humiliation of a human being. But not physical harm, he told himself, not physical harm.
He managed at last to come out with a rather faint “Yes.”
14.
He felt as though he were being constructed again. For days, then for weeks, finally for months, Andrew found himself not himself somehow, and the simplest actions kept giving rise to hesitation.
Paul was frantic. “They’ve damaged you, Andrew. We’ll have to institute suit!”
Andrew spoke very slowly. “You-- mustn’t. You’ll never be able to prove-- something-- like m-m-m-m-- ”
“Malice?”
“Malice. Besides, I grow-- stronger, better. It’s the tr-- tr-- tr-- ”
“Tremble?”
“Trauma. After all, there’s never been such an op-op-op-- before.”
Andrew could feel his brain from the inside. No one else could. He knew he was well, and during the months that it took him to learn full coordination and full positronic interplay he spent hours before the mirror.
Not quite human! The face was stiff-- too stiff and the motions were too deliberate. They lacked the careless, free flow of the human being, but perhaps that might come with time. At least now he could wear clothes without the ridiculous anomaly of a metal face going along with it.
Eventually, he said, “I will be going back to work.”
Paul laughed. “That means you are well. What will you be doing? Another book?”
“No,” said Andrew, seriously. “I live too long for any one career to seize me by the throat and never let me go. There was a time when I was primarily an artist, and I can still turn to that. And there was a time when I was a historian, and I can still turn to that. But now I wish to be a robobiologist.”
“A robopsychologist, you mean.”
“No. That would imply the study of positronic brains, and at the moment I lack the desire to do that. A robobiologist, it seems to me, would be concerned with the working of the body attached to that brain.”
“Wouldn’t that be a roboticist?”
“A roboticist works with a metal body. I would be studying an organic humanoid body, of which I have the only one, as far as I know.”
“You narrow your field,” said Paul, thoughtfully. “As an artist, all conception is yours; as a historian you deal chiefly with robots; as a robobiologist, you will deal with yourself.”
Andrew nodded. “It would seem so.”
Andrew had to start from the very beginning, for he knew nothing of ordinary biology and almost nothing of science. He became a familiar sight in the libraries, where he sat at the electronic indices for hours at a time, looking perfectly normal in clothes. Those few who knew he was a robot in no way interfered with him.
He built a laboratory in a room which he added to his house; and his library grew, too.
Years passed, and Paul came to him one day and said, “It’s a pity you’re no longer working on the history of robots. I understand U.S. Robots is adopting a radically new policy.”
Paul had aged, and his deteriorating eyes had been replaced with photoptic cells. In that respect, he had drawn closer to Andrew.
“What have they done?” Andrew asked.
“They are manufacturing central computers, gigantic positronic brains, really, which communicate with anywhere from a dozen to a thousand robots by microwave. The robots themselves have no brains at all. They are the limbs of the gigantic brain, and the two are physically separate.”
“Is that more efficient?”
“U.S. Robots claims it is. Smythe-Robertson established the new direction before he died, however, and it’s my notion that it’s a backlash at you. U.S. Robots is determined that they will make no robots that will give them the type of trouble you have, and for that reason they separate brain and body. The brain will have no body to wish changed; the body will have no brain to wish anything.
“It’s amazing, Andrew,” Paul went on, “the influence you have had on the history of. robots. It was your artistry that encouraged U.S. Robots to make robots more precise and specialized; it was your freedom that resulted in the establishment of the principle of robotic rights; it was your insistence on an android body that made U.S. Robots switch to brain-body separation”
Andrew grew thoughtful. “I suppose in the end the corporation will produce one vast brain controlling several billion robotic bodies. All the eggs will be in one basket. Dangerous. Not proper at all.”
“I think you’re right,” said Paul, “but I don’t suspect it will come to pass for a century at least and I won’t live to see it. In fact, I may not live to see next year.”
“Paul!” cried Andrew, in concern.
Paul shrugged. “Men are mortal, Andrew. We’re not like you. It doesn’t matter too much, but it does make it important to assure you on one point. I’m the last of the human Martins. The money I control personally will be left to the trust in your name, and as far as anyone can foresee the future, you will be economically secure.”
“Unnecessary,” Andrew said, with difficulty. In all this time, he could not get used to the deaths of the Martins.
“Let’s not argue. That’s the way it’s going to be. Now, what are you working on?”
“I am designing a system for allowing androids-- myself-- to gain energy from the combustion of hydrocarbons, rather than from atomic cells.”
Paul raised his eyebrows. “So that they will breathe and eat?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been pushing in that direction?”
“For a long time now, but I think I have finally designed an adequate combustion chamber for catalyzed controlled breakdown.”
“But why, Andrew? The atomic cell is surely infinitely better.”
“In some ways, perhaps. But the atomic cell is inhuman.”
15.
It took time, but Andrew had time. In the first place, he did not wish to do anything till Paul had died in peace. With the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt more nearly exposed to a hostile world and for that reason was all the more determined along the path he had chosen.
Yet he was not really alone. If a man had died, the firm of Feingold and Martin lived, for a corporation does not die any more than a robot does.
The firm had its directions and it followed them soullessly. By way of the trust and through the law firm, Andrew continued to be wealthy. In return for their own large annual retainer, Feingold and Martin involved themselves in the legal as
pects of the new combustion chamber. But when the time came for Andrew to visit U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, he did it alone. Once he had gone with Sir and once with Paul. This time, the third time, he was alone and manlike.
U.S. Robots had changed. The actual production plant had been shifted to a large space station, as had grown to be the case with more and more industries. With them had gone many robots. The Earth itself was becoming park like, with its one-billion-person population stabilized and perhaps not more than thirty percent of its at-least-equally-large robot population independently brained.
The Director of Research was Alvin Magdescu, dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard and wearing nothing above the waist but the breast band that fashion dictated. Andrew himself was well covered in the older fashion of several decades back.
Magdescu offered his hand to his visitor. “I know you, of course, and I’m rather pleased to see you. You’re our most notorious product and it’s a pity old Smythe-Robertson was so set against you. We could have done a great deal with you.”
“You still can,” said Andrew.
“No, I don’t think so. We’re past the time. We’ve had robots on Earth for over a century, but that’s changing. It will be back to space with them, and those that stay here won’t be brained.”
“But there remains myself, and I stay on Earth.”
“True, but there doesn’t seem to be much of the robot about you. What new request have you?”
“To be still less a robot. Since I am so far organic, I wish an organic source of energy. I have here the plans--”
Magdescu did not hasten through them. He might have intended to at first, but he stiffened and grew intent. At one point, he said, “This is remarkably ingenious. Who thought of all this?”
“I did,” Andrew replied.
Magdescu looked up at him sharply, then said, “It would amount to a major overhaul of your body, and an experimental one, since such a thing has never been attempted before. I advise against it. Remain as you are.”