The Positronic Man

by Isaac Asimov

  At first the promptings of that persona had bewildered and even alarmed him. It seemed wrong to him, a flaw in his design, that it should be there at all. But over the course of time he had come to accept its existence as a real thing. Freedom-the state of not being a slave, the state of not being a thing-was what that persona demanded now. And had to have.

  He knew there were risks. The court might share his attitude that freedom was a thing without price-but could easily rule that there was no price, however great, for which a robot might be able to buy his freedom.

  Andrew was willing to take his chances on that. But the other risk, the risk to Sir's well-being, troubled him deeply.

  "I fear for Sir," he told Little Miss. "The publicity-the controversy-the uproar-"

  "Don't worry, Andrew. He'll be shielded from everything, I promise you. John Feingold's lawyers will see to that This is entirely a procedural matter. It isn't going to involve my father personally at all."

  "And if he is called into court?" Andrew asked.

  "He won't be."

  "If he is, though," Andrew persisted. "He is my owner, after all. And a famous former member of the Legislature besides. What if there is a subpoena? He'll have to appear. He will be asked why he thinks I should have my freedom. He doesn't even really believe that I should-he's going along with this entirely for your sake, Little Miss, I have no doubt about that-and he will have to come into court, sick and old as he is, to testify in favor of something about which he has deep reservations. It will kill him, Little Miss."

  "He won't be called into court. "

  "How can you assure me of that? I have no right to allow him to come to harm. I have no ability to allow him to come to harm. -I think I have to withdraw my petition."

  "You can't," said Little Miss.

  "But if my going to court should be the direct cause of your father's death-"

  "You're getting overwrought, Andrew. And putting interpretations on the First Law that are completely unwarranted. My father isn't a defendant in this case, and he's not the plaintiff either, and he's not even going to be a witness. Don't you think John Feingold is capable of protecting someone who was as well known and important in this Region as my father from the nuisance of being called into court? I tell you, Andrew, he will be shielded. Some of the most powerful people in this Region will see to that, if it becomes necessary. But it won't become necessary."

  "I wish I could be as sure of that as you are."

  "I wish you could too. Trust me, Andrew. He's my father, let me remind you. I love hint more than anything in the-well, I love him very deeply. I wouldn't dream of letting you go ahead with this case if I saw any danger to him in it You've got to believe that, Andrew."

  And in the end he did. He still was uneasy about the possibility of Sir's becoming involved. But Little Miss had given him enough assurance to proceed.

  A man from the Feingold office came to the house with papers for him to sign, and Andrew signed them-proudly, with a flourish, the bold Andrew Martin signature in firm up-and-down strokes that he had been using on his checks ever since the founding of his corporation so many years before.

  The petition was filed with the Regional Court. Months went by, and nothing in particular happened. Occasionally some dreary legal document would arrive, elaborately bound in the traditional stiff covers, and Andrew would scan it quickly and sign it and return it, and then nothing more would be heard for another few months.

  Sir was very frail now. Andrew found himself thinking, sometimes, that it might be for the best if Sir died peacefully before the case ever came to court, so that he would be spared the possibility of any kind of emotional turmoil.

  The thought was horrifying to him. Andrew banished it from his mind.

  "We're on the docket," Little Miss told him finally. "It won't be long now."

  And, exactly as Sir had predicted, the proceedings were far from simple.

  Little Miss had assured him that it would merely be a matter of appearing before a judge, presenting a petition for a declaration of his status as a free robot, and sitting back to wait out the time it took for the judge to do some research, study the legal precedents, and issue his ruling. The California district of the Regional Court was notoriously farseeing in its interpretation of legal matters and there was every reason, so Little Miss asserted, to believe that the judge would, in the course of time, rule in Andrew's favor and issue some sort of certificate that gave him the free status he sought.

  The first indication that things were going to be more complicated than that came when the offices of Feingold and Feingold received notice from the Regional Court-Judge Harold Kramer, presiding over the Fourth Circuit-that counter-petitions had been filed in the matter of Martin vs. Martin.

  "Counter-petitions?" Little Miss asked. "And what does that mean?"

  "It means that there is going to be intervention on the opposing side," Stanley Feingold told her. Stanley was the head of the firm now-old John was in semi-retirement-and he was handling Andrew's case personally. He looked so much like his father, down to the rounded belly and the amiable smile, that he could almost have been John's younger twin. But he did not affect green-tinted contact lenses.

  "Intervention by whom?" Little Miss demanded.

  Stanley took a deep breath. "The Regional Labor Federation, for one. They're worried about losing jobs to robots if robots are given their freedom."

  "That's ancient history. The world doesn't have enough human workers to fill all the available jobs as it is, and everybody knows it."

  "Nevertheless, the labor people will always jump in to prevent any kind of innovation that might further the concept of robot rights. If robots become free entities, they might be able to claim job seniority-union membership-all kinds of things of that sort."

  "Ridiculous."

  "Yes, I know, Mrs. Charney. But they are filing a petition of intervention, all the same. And they are not the only ones who are."

  "Who else?" said Little Miss in an ominous voice.

  "The United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation," Feingold said.

  "They are?"

  "Is it so surprising? They are the world's sole manufacturers of robots, Mrs. Charney. Robots are their main product. Their product, let it be said, with some stress on that word-and products are inanimate things. The U.S.R.M.M. people are disturbed at the idea that anyone might come to consider robots to be anything more than that. If Andrew's petition succeeds in gaining freedom for robots, U.S.R.M.M. probably fears, then it may succeed in gaining other rights for them as well-civil rights, human rights. So of course they will want to fight against that. Just as a manufacturer of shovels and pick-axes regards its products as mere inanimate tools, not as persons, Mrs. Charney, and would be likely to oppose any legal ruling that gave its shovels and pick-axes any sort of civil rights which might lead the shovels and pick-axes to attempt to control the way they are manufactured, warehoused, and sold."

  "Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!" Little Miss cried, with a ferocity in her tone that was worthy of Sir.

  "I agree," Stanley Feingold said diplomatically. "But the interventions have been filed, all the same. And there are others besides these two. We also find ourselves faced with objections from-"

  "Never mind," said Little Miss. "I don't want to hear the rest of the list. Just go in there and refute every single stupid argument that these reactionaries put forth."

  "You know I'll do my best, Mrs. Charney," Feingold said.

  But there wasn't a great deal of confidence in the lawyer's tone.

  The next development came just a week before the trial. Little Miss called Feingold and said, "Stanley, we've just received notice that television crews will be coming to my father's house on Monday to set up the special wiring for the hearing."

  "Yes, of course, Mrs. Charney. It's quite routine."

  "Is the hearing going to be held at my father's house?"

  "Andrew's deposition will be taken there, yes."
/>
  "And the rest of the trial?"

  "It isn't a trial, exactly, Mrs. Charney."

  "The rest of the proceedings, then. Where will they take place? In Judge Kramer's courtroom?"

  "The usual procedure," Feingold said, "is for each concerned party involved in the action to participate electronically. The judge will receive all the inputs in his chambers."

  "No one goes to court in person any more?"

  "Rarely, Mrs. Charney. Very rarely."

  "But it does still happen?"

  "As I said, very rarely. The world is so decentralized now, people have spread out over such great distances-it's so much easier to do these things electronically."

  "I want this done in a courtroom."

  Feingold gave her a quizzical look. "Is there any special reason why-"

  "Yes. I want the judge to be able to see Andrew face to face, to listen to his actual voice, to form a close-range opinion of his character. I don't want him to think of Andrew as some sort of impersonal machine whose voice and image are coming to him over telephone lines. Besides which, I very much don't want my father to have to put up with the stress and turmoil of technical crews invading his privacy to wire his house for whatever kind of transmission is necessary."

  Feingold nodded. He looked troubled. "In order to assure a courtroom hearing at this late date, Mrs. Charney, I would have to file a writ of-"

  "File it, then."

  "The intervening parties will certainly object to the extra expense and inconvenience involved."

  "Let them stay home from the hearings, then. I wouldn't want them put to the slightest inconvenience, not for all the world. But Andrew and I intend to be in that courtroom."

  "Andrew and you, Mrs. Charney?"

  "Did you think I was going to stay home that day?"

  And so it came to pass that the appropriate writ was filed, and the intervening parties grumbled but could raise no sustainable objection-for it was still anyone's right to have his day in court, electronic testimony being by no means mandatory-and on the appointed day Andrew and Little Miss at last presented themselves at the surprisingly modest chambers of Judge Kramer of the Fourth Circuit of the Regional Court for the long-awaited hearing on the petition that was, for purely technical reasons, listed on the docket as Martin vs. Martin.

  Stanley Feingold accompanied them. The courtroom-located in a tired-looking old building that might have gone back to Twentieth Century times-was surprisingly small and unglamorous, a modest little room with a plain desk at one end for the judge, a few uncomfortable chairs for those rare people who insisted on appearing in person, and an alcove that contained the electronic playback devices.

  The only other human beings present were Judge Kramer himself-unexpectedly youthful, dark-haired, with quick glinting eyes-and a lawyer named James Van Buren, who represented all the intervening parties gathered into a single class. The various intervening parties themselves were not present. Their interventions would be shown on the screen. There was nothing they could do to overturn the writ Feingold had secured, but they had no desire to make the trip to court themselves. Almost no one ever did. So they had waived their right to be physically present in the courtroom and had filed the usual electronic briefs.

  The positions of the intervenors were set forth first. There were no surprises in them.

  The spokesman for the Regional Labor Federation did not place much explicit stress on the prospect for greater competition between humans and robots for jobs, if Andrew were granted his freedom. He took a broader, loftier way of raising the issue:

  "Throughout all of history, since the first ape-like men chipped the edges of pebbles into the chisels and scrapers and hammers that were the first tools, we have realized that we are a species whose destiny it is to control our environment and to enhance our control of it through mechanical means. But gradually, as the complexity and capability of our tools have increased, we have surrendered much of our own independence-have become dependent on our own tools, that is, in a way that has weakened our power to cope with circumstances without them. And now, finally, we have invented a tool so capable, so adept at so many functions, that it seems to have an almost human intelligence. I speak of the robot, of course. Certainly we admire the ingenuity of our roboticists, we applaud the astonishing versatility of their products. But today we are confronted with a new and frightening possibility, which is that we have actually created our own successors, that we have built a machine that does not know it is a machine, that demands to be recognized as an autonomous individual with the rights and privileges of a human beingand which, by virtue of its inherent mechanical superiority, its physical durability and strength, its cunningly designed positronic brain, its bodily near-immortality, might indeed, once it has attained those rights and privileges, begin to regard itself as our master! How ironic! To have built a tool so good that it takes command of its builders! To be supplanted by our own machinery-to be made obsolete by it, to be relegated to the scrapheap of evolution-"

  And so on and on, one resonant clichй after another.

  "The Frankenstein complex allover again," Little Miss murmured in disgust. "The Golem paranoia. The whole set of ignorant anti-science anti-machine anti-progress terrors dragged forth one more time."

  Still, even she had to admit that it was an eloquent statement of the position. As Andrew sat watching the screen, listening to the lawyer for the Labor Federation pour forth his stream of horrors, he found himself wondering why anyone thought robots would want to supplant human beings or to relegate them to any sort of scrapheap.

  Robots were here to serve. It was their purpose. It was their pleasure, one might almost say. But even Andrew found himself wondering whether, as robots grew to be more and more like human beings, it might become so difficult to tell the one from the other that the humans, lacking the built-in perfection of robots, would indeed come to look upon themselves as a second-rate kind of creature.

  Eventually the tirade of the Labor Federation's spokesman ended. The screen dimmed and a brief recess was called. Then it was the turn of the speaker from United States Robots and Mechanical Men.

  Her name was Ethel Adams. She was a sharp-featured, taut-faced woman of middle years, who-probably not by any coincidence-bore a striking resemblance to the celebrated robopsychologist Susan Calvin, that great and widely revered scientific figure of the previous century.

  She did not indulge in any of the previous speaker's inflated rhetoric. She said simply and predictably that to grant Andrew's position would greatly complicate the ability of U.S.R.M.M. to design and manufacture the robots that were its main product-that if the company could be shown to be producing not machines but free citizens, it might be liable to all sorts of bewildering new restrictions that would critically hamper its work-that, in short, the whole course of scientific progress would be placed in needless jeopardy.

  It was, of course, the direct opposite of the first speaker's position. He had held up the advance of technology as something worthy of dread; she was warning that it might be placed in serious danger. But the contradiction was only to be expected, Stanley Feingold said to Little Miss and Andrew. The real weapons that were being used in today's struggle were emotions, not serious intellectual concepts.

  But there was one more speaker: Van Buren, the attorney who was there in person as the general representative of all those who had taken issue with Andrew's request. He was tall and impressive, with classic senatorial mien: the close-cropped graying hair, the costly suit, the magnificently upright posture. And he had an extremely simple argument to offer, one that did not in any way attempt to deal with emotional issues:

  "What it comes down to, your honor, is an issue so basic-so trivial, even-that I am not really sure why we are all here today. The petitioner, Robot NDR-113, has requested of his owner, the Honorable Gerald Martin, that he be declared 'free.' A free robot, yes, the first of his kind. But I ask you, your honor: what meaning can this possibly have? A robot is o
nly a machine. Can an automobile be 'free'? Can an electronic screen be 'free'? These questions have no answers because they have no content. Human beings can be free, yes. We know what that means. They have, as one of our great ancestors wrote, certain inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Does a robot have life? Not as we understand it. It has the semblance of life, yes-but so does the image on the face of a holocube. Nobody would argue that holocube images need to be set 'free.' Does a robot have liberty? Not as we understand the word: they are so far from having liberty that their very brains are constructed in such a way that they must obey human commands. And as for the pursuit of happiness-what can a robot possibly know about that? Happiness is a purely human goal. Freedom is a purely human state. A robot-a mere mechanical thing built out of metal and plastic, and from the very start of its existence intended and designed entirely as a device to serve the needs of human beings-is by definition not an object to which the concept of 'freedom' can be applied. Only a human being is capable of being free."

  It was a good speech, clear and direct and expertly delivered. Van Buren was obviously aware of the excellence of the points he was making, because he went on to make them several more times in various forms, speaking slowly and with great precision, his hand coming down rhythmically on the desk before him to mark the cadence of his words.

  When he was done, the judge called another recess.

  Little Miss turned to Stanley Feingold and said, "It'll be your turn next, right?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "I want to speak first. On Andrew's behalf."

  Feingold turned red. "But, Mrs. Charney-"

  "I know you've got a wonderful brief ready to deliver. I'm not in any way trying to imply that you don't. But the judge has heard enough oratory today. I want to go up there and make a very simple statement, and I want to do it before anyone else has a chance to make a speech. Even you, Stanley."