by Anthology
In the end, of course, all had been said, and no one could any longer think of a warning, or an objection, or a possibility that had not been thoroughly aired.
Archie repeated all he had been told with robotic calmness and precision, and the next step was to teach him how to use the machine. And he learned that, too, with robotic calmness and precision.
You must understand that the general public did not know, at that time, that time-travel was being investigated. It was not an expensive project as long as it was a matter of working on theory, but experimental work had punished the budget and was bound to punish it still more. This was most uncomfortable for scientists engaged in an endeavor that seemed totally “blue-sky.”
If there was a large failure, given the state of the public purse, there would be a loud outcry on the part of the people, and the project might be doomed. The Temporalists all agreed, without even the necessity of debate, that only success could be reported, and that until such a success was recorded, the public would have to learn very little, if anything at all. And so this experiment, the crucial one, was heart-stopping for everyone.
We gathered at an isolated spot of the semi-desert, an artfully protected area given over to Project Four. (Even the name was intended to give no real hint of the nature of the work, but it always struck me that most people thought of time as a kind of fourth dimension and that someone ought therefore guess what we were doing. Yet no one ever did, to my knowledge.)
Then, at a certain moment, at which time there was a great deal of breath-holding, Archie, inside the machine, raised one hand to signify he was about to make his move. Half a breath later—if anyone had been breathing—the machine flickered.
It was a very rapid flicker. I wasn’t sure that I had observed it. It seemed to me that I had merely assumed it ought to flicker, if it returned to nearly the instant at which it left—and I saw what I was convinced I ought to see. I meant to ask the others if they, too, had seen a flicker, but I always hesitated to address them unless they spoke to me first. They were very important people, and I was merely—but I’ve said that. Then, too, in the excitement of questioning Archie, I forgot the matter of the flicker. It wasn’t at all important.
So brief an interval was there between leaving and returning that we might well have thought that he hadn’t left at all, but there was no question of that. The machine had definitely deteriorated. It had simply faded.
Nor was Archie, on emerging from the machine, much better off. He was not the same Archie that had entered that machine. There was a shopworn look about him, a dullness to his finish, a slight unevenness to his surface where he might have undergone collisions, an odd manner in the way he looked about as though he were re-experiencing an almost forgotten scene. I doubt that there was a single person there who felt for one moment that Archie had not been absent, as far as his own sensation of time was concerned, for a long interval.
In fact, the first question he was asked was, “How long have you been away?”
Archie said, “Five years, sir. It was a time interval that had been mentioned in my instructions and I wished to do a thorough job.”
“Come, that’s a hopeful fact,” said one Temporalist. “If the world were a mass of destruction, surely it would not have taken five years to gather that fact.”
And yet not one of them dared say: well, Archie, was the Earth a mass of destruction?
They waited for him to speak, and for a while, he also waited, with robotic politeness, for them to ask. After a while, however, Archie’s need to obey orders, by reporting his observations, overcame whatever there was in his positronic circuits that made it necessary for him to seem polite.
Archie said, “ All was well on the Earth of the future. The social structure was intact and working well.”
“Intact and working well?” said one Temporalist, acting as though he were shocked at so heretical a notion. “Everywhere?”
“The inhabitants of the world were most kind. They took me to every part of the globe. All was prosperous and peaceful.”
The Temporalists looked at each other. It seemed easier for them to believe that Archie was wrong, or mistaken, than that the Earth of the future was prosperous and peaceful. It had seemed to me always that, despite all optimistic statements to the contrary, it was taken almost as an article of faith, that Earth was on the point of social, economic, and, perhaps, even physical destruction.
They began to question him thoroughly. One shouted, “What about the forests? They’re almost gone.”
“There was a huge project,” said Archie, “for the reforestation of the land, sir. Wilderness has been restored where possible. Genetic engineering has been used imaginatively to restore wildlife where related species existed in zoos or as pets. Pollution is a thing of the past. The world of 2230 is a world of natural peace and beauty.”
“You are sure of all this?” asked a Temporalist.
“No spot on Earth was kept secret. I was shown all I asked to see.”
Another Temporalist said, with sudden severity, “ Archie, listen to me. It may be that you have seen a ruined Earth, but hesitate to tell us this for fear we will be driven to despair and suicide. In your eagerness to do us no harm, you may be lying to us. This must not happen, Archie. You must tell us the truth.”
Archie said, calmly, “I am telling the truth, sir. If I were lying, no matter what my motive for it might be, my positronic potentials would be in an abnormal state. That could be tested.”
“He’s right there,” muttered a Temporalist.
He was tested on the spot. He was not allowed to say another word while this was done. I watched with interest while the potentiometers recorded their findings, which were then analyzed by computer. There was no question about it. Archie was perfectly normal. He could not be lying.
He was then questioned again. “What about the cities?”
“There are no cities of our kind, sir. Life is much more decentralized in 2230 than with us, in the sense that there are no large and concentrated clumps of humanity. On the other hand, there is so intricate a communication network that humanity is all one loose clump, so to speak.”
“And space? Has space exploration been renewed?”
Archie said, “The Moon is quite well developed, sir. It is an inhabited world. There are space settlements in orbit about the Earth and about Mars. There are settlements being carved out in the asteroid belt.”
“You were told all this?” asked one Temporalist, suspiciously.
“This is not a matter of hearsay, sir. I have been in space. I remained on the Moon for two months. I lived on a space settlement about Mars for a month, and visited both Phobos and Mars itself. There is some hesitation about colonizing Mars. There are opinions that it should be seeded with lower forms of life and left to itself without the intervention of the Earthpeople. I did not actually visit the asteroid belt.”
One Temporalist said, “Why do you suppose they were so nice to you, Archie? So cooperative?”
“I received the impression, sir,” said Archie, “that they had some notion I might be arriving. A distant rumor. A vague belief. They seemed to have been waiting for me.
“Did they say they had expected you to arrive? Did they say there were records that we had sent you forward in time?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ask them about it?”
“Yes, sir. It was impolite to do so but I had been ordered carefully to observe everything I could, so I had to ask them—but they refused to tell me.”
Another Temporalist put in, “Were there many other things they refused to tell you?”
“A number, sir.”
One Temporalist stroked his chin thoughtfully at this point and said, “Then there must be something wrong about all this. What is the population of the Earth in 2230, Archie? Did they tell you that?”
“Yes, sir. I asked. There are just under a billion people on Earth in 2230. There are 150 million in space. The numbers on Ear
th are stable. Those in space are growing.”
“Ah, “ said a Temporalist, “but there are nearly ten billion people on Earth now, with half of them in serious misery. How did these people of the future get rid of nearly nine billion?”
“I asked them that, sir. They said it was a sad time.”
“A sad time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In what way?”
“They did not say, sir. They simply said it was a sad time and would say no more.”
One Temporalist who was of African origin said coldly, “What kind of people did you see in 2230?”
“What kind, sir?”
“Skin color? Shape of eyes?”
Archie said, “It was in 2230 as it is today, sir. There were different kinds; different shades of skin color, hair form, and so on. The average height seemed greater than it is today, though I did not study the statistics. The people seemed younger, stronger, healthier. In fact, I saw no undernourishment, no obesity, no illness—but there was a rich variety of appearances.”
“No genocide, then?”
“No signs of it, sir,” said Archie. He went on, “There were also no signs of crime or war or repression.”
“Well,” said one Temporalist, in a tone as though he were reconciling himself, with difficulty, to good news, “it seems like a happy ending.”
“A happy ending, perhaps,” said another, “but it’s almost too good to accept. It’s like a return of Eden. What was done, or will be done, to bring it about? I don’t like that ‘sad time.’ ”
“Of course,” said a third, “there’s no need for us to sit about and speculate. We can send Archie one hundred years into the future, fifty years into the future. We can find out, for what it’s worth, just what happened; I mean, just what will happen.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” said Archie. “They told me quite specifically and carefully that there are no records of anyone from the past having arrived earlier than their own time—the day I arrived. It was their opinion that if any further investigations were made of the time period between now and the time I arrived, that the future would be changed.”
There was almost a sickening silence. Archie was sent away and cautioned to keep everything firmly in mind for further questioning. I half expected them to send me away, too, since I was the only person there without an advanced degree in Temporal Engineering, but they must have grown accustomed to me, and I, of course, didn’t suggest on my own that I leave.
“The point is,” said one Temporalist, “that it is a happy ending. Anything we do from this point on might spoil it. They were expecting Archie to arrive; they were expecting him to report; they didn’t tell him anything they didn’t want him to report; so we’re still safe. Things will develop as they have been.”
“It may even be,” said another, hopefully, “that the knowledge of Archie’s arrival and the report they sent him back to make helped develop the happy ending.”
“Perhaps, but if we do anything else, we may spoil things. I prefer not to think about the sad time they speak of, but if we try something now, that sad time may still come and be even worse than it was—or will be—and the happy ending won’t develop, either. I think we have no choice but to abandon Temporal experiments and not talk about them, either. Announce failure.”
“That would be unbearable.”
“It’s the only safe thing to do.”
“Wait,” said one. “They knew Archie was coming, so there must have been a report that the experiments were successful. We don’t have to make failures of ourselves.”
“I don’t think so,” said still another. “They heard rumors; they had a distant notion. It was that sort of thing, according to Archie. I presume there may be leaks, but surely not an outright announcement.”
And that was how it was decided. For days, they thought, and occasionally discussed the matter, but with greater and greater trepidation. I could see the result coming with inexorable certainty. I contributed nothing to the discussion, of course—they scarcely seemed to know I was there—but there was no mistaking the gathering apprehension in their voices. Like those biologists in the very early days of genetic engineering who voted to limit and hedge in their experiments for fear that some new plague might be inadvertently loosed on unsuspecting humanity, the Temporalists decided, in terror, that the Future must not be tampered with or even searched.
It was enough, they said, that they now knew there would be a good and wholesome society, two centuries hence. They must not inquire further, they dared not interfere by the thickness of a fingernail, lest they ruin all. And they retreated into theory only.
One Temporalist sounded the final retreat. He said, “Someday, humanity will grow wise enough, and develop ways of handling the future that are subtle enough to risk observation and perhaps even manipulation along the course of time, but the moment for that has not yet come. It is still long in the future.” And there had been a whisper of applause.
Who was I, less than any of those engaged in Project Four, that I should disagree and go my own way? Perhaps it was the courage I gained in being so much less than they were—the valor of the insufficiently advanced. I had not had initiative beaten out of me by too much specialization or by too long a life of too deep thought.
At any rate, I spoke to Archie a few days later, when my own work assignments left me some free time. Archie knew nothing about training or about academic distinctions. To him, I was a man and a master, like any other man and master, and he spoke to me as such.
I said to him, “How did these people of the future regard the people of their past? Were they censorious? Did they blame them for their follies and stupidities?”
Archie said, “They did not say anything to make me feel this, sir. They were amused by the simplicity of my construction and by my existence, and it seemed to me they smiled at me and at the people who constructed me, in a good-humored way. They themselves had no robots.”
“No robots at all, Archie?”
“They said there was nothing comparable to myself, sir. They said they needed no metal caricatures of humanity.”
“And you didn’t see any?”
“None, sir. In all my time there, I saw not one.”
I thought about that a while, then said, “What did they think of other aspects of our society?”
“I think they admired the past in many ways, sir. They showed me museums dedicated to what they called the ‘period of unrestrained growth’. Whole cities had been turned into museums.”
“You said there were no cities in the world of two centuries hence, Archie. No cities in our sense.”
“It was not their cities that were museums, sir, but the relics of ours. AU of Manhattan Island was a museum, carefully preserved and restored to the period of its peak greatness. I was taken through it with several guides for hours, because they wanted to ask me questions about authenticity. I could help them very little, for I have never been to Manhattan. They seemed proud of Manhattan. There were other preserved cities, too, as well as carefully preserved machinery of the past, libraries of printed books, displays of past fashions in clothing, furniture, and other minutiae of daily life, and so on. They said that the people of our time had not been wise but they had created a firm base for future advance.”
“And did you see young people? Very young people, I mean. Infants?”
“No, sir.”
“Did they talk about any?”
“No, sir.”
I said, “Very well, Archie. Now, listen to me—”
If there was one thing I understood better than the Temporalists, it was robots. Robots were simply black boxes to them, to be ordered about, and to be left to maintenance men—or discarded—if they went wrong. I, however, understood the positronic circuitry of robots quite well, and I could handle Archie in ways my colleagues would never suspect. And I did.
I was quite sure the Temporalists would not question him again, out of their newfound dread of interfe
ring with time, but if they did, he would not tell them those things I felt they ought not to know. And Archie himself would not know that there was anything he was not telling them.
I spent some time thinking about it, and I grew more and more certain in my mind as to what had happened in the course of the next two centuries.
You see, it was a mistake to send Archie. He was a primitive robot, and to him people were people. He did not—could not—differentiate. It did not surprise him that human beings had grown so civilized and humane. His circuitry forced him, in any case, to view all human beings as civilized and human; even as god-like, to use an old-fashioned phrase.
The Temporalists themselves, being human, were surprised and even a bit incredulous at the robot vision presented by Archie, one in which human beings had grown so noble and good. But, being human, the Temporalists wanted to believe what they heard and forced themselves to do so against their own common sense.
I, in my way, was more intelligent than the Temporalists, or perhaps merely more clear-eyed.
I asked myself if population decreased from ten billion to one billion in the course of two centuries, why did it not decrease from ten billion to zero? There would be so little difference between the two alternatives.
Who were the billion who survived? They were stronger than the other nine billion, perhaps? More enduring? More resistant to privation? And they were also more sensible, more rational, and more virtuous than the nine billion who died as was quite clear from Archie’s picture of the world of two hundred years hence.
In short, then, were they human at all?
They smiled at Archie in mild derision and boasted that they had no robots; that they needed no metal caricatures of humanity.
What if they had organic duplicates of humanity instead? What if they had humaniform robots; robots so like human beings as to be indistinguishable from them, at least to the eyes and senses of a robot like Archie? What if the people of the future were humaniform robots, all of them, robots that had survived some overwhelming catastrophe that human beings had not?