The Positronic Man

by Isaac Asimov

  "Dr. Magdescu?" Andrew asked.

  "Indeed. Indeed." Alvin Magdescu took up a stance a couple of meters from Andrew and scanned him with undisguised fascination, as though Andrew were an exhibit in a museum. "Splendid! You are absolutely splendid!"

  "Thank you," Andrew said, a little coolly. Magdescu's compliment did not strike him as entirely welcome. It was the kind of impersonal appraisal that some finely manufactured machine might receive; and Andrew saw no reason to take pleasure these days in that sort of thing when it was directed at him.

  "How good of you to come!" Magdescu cried. "How eager I have been to see you! But I am being impolite." And he stepped forward with a sort of lunging, bounding motion until he was virtually standing toe to toe with Andrew. He held out his hand, palm upward, fingers outstretched.

  Yes. A new form of greeting that evidently had replaced the handshake that had dominated human social intercourse for so many hundreds of years. Andrew wasn't in the habit of shaking hands with human beings, let alone making this new gesture. Shaking hands was simply not something that occurred to a robot to do. But Magdescu seemed to be expecting it, and the offer helped to ease the sting of his first few words. And so Andrew responded as he realized he was meant to, by offering his own hand. He held it above Magdescu's and bent the tips of his fingers downward until they touched the tips of the other man's.

  It was an odd feeling, this touching of hands with a human as though they were equals. Odd and a little disturbing, but encouraging, also.

  "Welcome, welcome, welcome!" Magdescu said. He seemed bubbling with energy: a little too much energy, maybe, Andrew thought. But it seemed genuine enough. "The famous Andrew Martin! The notorious Andrew Martin!"

  "Notorious?"

  "Absolutely. The most notorious product in our history. Though it seems almost obscene to call something as lifelike as you a product, I have to say. You aren't offended, are you?"

  "How could I be? I am a product," said Andrew, though without much warmth. He saw that Magdescu was unable to hold a consistent position toward him. Touching hands as though they were simply two men at a business meeting, yes; but in the next breath speaking of him as a something. And describing him as "lifelike." Andrew had no illusions about himself: he knew that that was what he was. Humanoid, not human. Lifelike, not living. A product, not a person. But he did not enjoy hearing it.

  "They did such a wonderful job with you! Remarkable! Remarkable! Almost human!"

  "Not quite," Andrew said.

  "But amazingly lifelike, all things considered. Amazingly! It's a damned shame that old Smythe-Robertson was so set against you. You're terrifically humanoid-looking, no question about it, a wonderful technical accomplishment-but of course he let the company take the android concept only so far. If our people had been allowed really to go all out, we could have done a great deal with you."

  "You still can," said Andrew.

  "No, I don't think so," Magdescu said, and much of the manic gusto went out of him as though he were a balloon that had been pricked. It was a startlingly sudden change of mood. He swung away from Andrew and began to pace the room in an angular zigzagging way that brought greenish light and odd chiming music up from the carpeting. "We're past the time," said Magdescu gloomily. "The era of significant progress in robotics-well, forget it, it's just history now. At least here, that is. We've been using robots freely on Earth for something close to a hundred fifty years now, but it's all changing again. It's back to space for them now, and those that stay here won't be brained."

  "But there remains myself, and I stay on Earth."

  "Well, that's true. But you're you, a complete anomaly, a robot unto himself, the only android robot. You aren't the prototype of a line. You're simply a unique item that they happened to have turned out in a very different sort of era, and after you were produced they made good and sure that you'd remain unique. No scope for further development there. No state-of-the-art advances. No art; no state. There doesn't seem to be much of the robot about you, anyway. You're pretty much out of our horizon. -why have you come here, anyway?"

  "For an upgrade," Andrew said.

  Magdescu laughed harshly. "Didn't you pay any attention to anything I've just been telling you? There's no real progress going on here! This is a research center, yes, but all our research is headed in exactly the wrong direction! We're trying to make robots simpler and more mechanical all the time. And here you are-the most advanced robot that ever existed or apparently ever will exist-coming in here and asking us to make you even better? How could we? What could we possibly do for you that hasn't already been done?"

  "This," said Andrew.

  He handed Magdescu a memory disk. The research director stared at it balefully, as though Andrew had put a jellyfish or a frog into the palm of his hand.

  "What's this?" he asked, finally. "The schematics for my next upgrade."

  "Schematics," Magdescu said puzzledly. "Upgrade."

  "Yes. I wish to be even less a robot than I am now. Since I am organic up to a point, I want now to have an organic source of energy. You can provide it for me. The necessary research work has already been done."

  "By whom?"

  "Me."

  "You've designed your own upgrade?" Magdescu began to chuckle. Then the chuckle became a laugh, and then the laugh dissolved into a manic giggle. "Wonderful! The robot walks in here and hands the Director of Research the upgrade schematics! And who did them? The robot himself did them! Wonderful! Wonderful! -You know, when I was a little boy my grandmother used to read a book to me, an ancient book that I guess has been completely forgotten by now, a book called Alice in Wonderland. About a little girl of three or four hundred years ago who follows a rabbit down a hole and lands in a world where everything is completely absurd, except no one knows it's absurd so they all take it terribly seriously. This is like something right out of that book. Or the sequel. Alvin in Wonderland, I could call it. Although I think there already is a sequel, actually." Magdescu was speaking very rapidly now, almost wildly. "Should I take this seriously, this set of upgrade schematics? It's all just a joke, isn't it?"

  "No. Not at all."

  "Not-a-joke."

  "No. I am quite serious, I assure you. Why don't you play my disk, Dr. Magdescu?"

  "Yes. Why don't I?" He touched a stud in the wall and a desk rose from somewhere, with a scanner outlet on it. Swiftly he slid the disk into the scanner slot and the screen instantly blossomed into vivid color. Andrew's name appeared in bright crimson, with a long list of patent numbers below it. Magdescu nodded and told the scanner to keep going. A sequence of complicated diagrams began to appear on the screen.

  Magdescu stood stiffly, watching the screen with increasingly intense concentration. Now and then he murmured something to himself or toyed with his beard. After a while he glanced toward Andrew with a strange expression in his eyes and said, "This is remarkably ingenious. Remarkably. Tell me: you really did all of this yourself?"

  "Yes."

  "Hard to believe!"

  "Is it? Please try."

  Magdescu shot a sharp, inquiring look at Andrew, who met his gaze steadily and calmly. The research director shrugged and ordered the scanner to continue. Diagram succeeded diagram. The entire metabolic progression was there, from intake to absorption. Occasionally Magdescu would back the sequence up so that he could restudy one that he had seen before. After a little while he paused again and said, "What you've set out here is something more than just an upgrade, you know. It's a major qualitative alteration of your biological program."

  "Yes. I realize that."

  "Highly experimental. Unique. Unheard-of. Nothing like it has ever been attempted or even proposed. -why do you want to do something like this to yourself?"

  ''I have my reasons," Andrew said.

  "Whatever they are, they can't really be very carefully thought out."

  Andrew, as ever, maintained tight self-control. "On the contrary, Dr. Magdescu. What you have just seen i
s the result of years of study."

  "I suppose so; And technically it's all very impressive, you know. These are terrific schematics and the only word I can find for the conceptual framework is 'brilliant.' But all the same I can think of a million reasons why you shouldn't go in for these changes and none at all why you should. We're looking at really risky stuff, here. Trust me: what you're proposing to have done to yourself is right out on the farthest reaches of the possible. Take my advice and stay the way you are."

  It was more or less what Andrew had feared Magdescu would say. But he had not come here with any intention of yielding.

  "I'm sure you mean well, Dr. Magdescu. I hope you do, at any rate. But I insist on having this work done."

  "Insist, Andrew?" Magdescu said.

  He looked astounded-as though, despite all his earlier talk of what a lifelike product Andrew was, he was only just now beginning to comprehend that it was a robot with which he was having this conversation.

  "Insist, yes." Andrew wondered whether the impatience that he felt was sufficiently visible in his face, but he was certain that Magdescu could detect it in his voice. "Dr. Magdescu, you're overlooking an important point here. You have no choice but to accede to my request."

  "Oh?"

  "If such devices as I've designed here can be built into my body, they can be built into human bodies as well. The tendency to lengthen human life by prosthetic devices is already well established-artificial hearts, artificial lungs, kidneys, liver-surrogates, a whole host of replacement organs have come into use in the past two or three centuries. But not all of these devices work equally well and some are highly unreliable indeed and no one can deny that there is still much room for improvement. The principles underlying my work represent such an improvement. I speak of the interface between the organic and inorganic: the linkage that will permit artificial bodily parts to be connected with organic tissue. It is a new departure. No existing prosthetic devices are the equal of the ones I have designed and am designing."

  "That's a pretty bold claim," Magdescu said.

  "Maybe so. But not unwarranted by the facts, as I think you yourself have already been able to see from the data at hand. The proof of it is that I'm willing to make myself the first experimental subject for the metabolic converter, despite the risks that you seem to see in it."

  "All that proves is that you're willing to take foolhardy chances. Which probably means nothing more than that you don't have a properly functioning Third Law parameter."

  Andrew remained calm. "It may seem that way to you, perhaps. But my outward appearance may be deceiving you. My Three Laws parameters are quite intact. And thus, if I saw anything at all suicidal about my request for this upgrade, you can be quite certain that I would not only be unwilling but also unable to ask you to perform it. No, Dr. Magdescu: the combustion chamber will work. If you won't build and install it for me, I can have it done elsewhere."

  "Elsewhere? Who else can upgrade a robot? This corporation controls all the technical knowhow there is when it comes to robots!"

  "Not all," said Andrew quietly. "Do you think I could have designed this device without full knowledge of my own interior workings?"

  Magdescu looked stunned.

  "Are you saying that you're prepared to set up a rival robotics company if we won't do this upgrade for you?"

  "Of course not. One is quite enough. But if you compel me to, Dr. Magdescu, I will set up a company that produces prosthetic devices like my converter. Not for the android market, Dr. Magdescu, because that market is confined to a single individual, but for the general human market. And then, I think, U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men is going to regret that I was not offered the cooperation I requested."

  There was a long silence. Then Magdescu said numbly, "I think I see what you're driving at, now."

  "I hope so. But I'll be very explicit," Andrew said. " As it happens, I control the patents on this device and on the entire family of devices that can be derived from it. The firm of Feingold and Charney has represented me very ably in all the legal work, and will continue to do so. It would not be very difficult for me to find backers and go into business for myself-the business of developing a line of prosthetic devices which, in the end, may give human beings many of the advantages of durability and easy repair that robots enjoy, with none of the drawbacks. What do you think will happen to United States Robots and Mechanical Men, in that case?"

  Magdescu nodded. His face was grim.

  Andrew continued, "If, however, you build and install in me the device that I have just shown you, and you agree to outfit me upon demand with such other prosthetic upgrades as I may subsequently devise, I'm prepared to work out a licensing agreement with your company. A quid pro quo, that is: I have need of your expertise in robot/android technology, though I'm confident that I could duplicate it myself if you forced me to, and you have need of the devices I've developed. Under the licensing agreement that I intend to propose, United States Robots and Mechanical Men would receive permission to make use of my patents, which control the new technology that would permit not only the manufacture of highly advanced humaniform robots but also the full prostheticization of human beings. -The initial licenses will not be granted, of course, until the first operation on me has been successfully completed, and after enough time has passed to make it unquestionably clear that it has been a success."

  Magdescu said lamely, "You've thought of everything, haven't you?"

  "I certainly hope so."

  "I can hardly believe that you're a robot. You're so damned-aggressive!"

  "Hardly, Dr. Magdescu."

  "Demands-conditions-threats of setting up competitive companies -my God, don't you have any First Law inhibitions at all?"

  Andrew smiled the broadest smile that was possible for him to smile.

  "Most certainly I do," he replied. "But I happen to feel no First Law pressure at this moment. The First Law forbids me to harm human beings, of course, and I assure you that I am as incapable of doing that as you would be to detach your left leg and reattach it while I stood here watching you. But where does the First Law enter into our present discussion? You are a human being and I am a robot, yes, and I have set certain stern conditions for you which I suppose you may interpret as demands and threats, but I see the matter entirely differently. To my way of thinking I am not threatening you or the company for which you work at all. What I am doing is offering it the greatest opportunity it has had in many years. -What do you say, Dr. Magdescu?"

  Magdescu moistened his lips, tugged at the point of his little beard, nervously adjusted and readjusted the sash that lay across his bare chest. "Well," he said. "You have to understand, Mr. Martin, that it's not in my power to make any sort of decision on something as big as this. The Board of Directors would have to deal with it, not a mere employee like me. And that's going to take time."

  "How much time?"

  "I can't say. I'll pass everything you've told me today up to them, and they'll take it up at their regular monthly meeting, and then I suppose they'll create a study committee, and so on. -it could be a while."

  "I can wait a reasonable time," said Andrew. "But only a reasonable time, and I will be the judge of what is reasonable. You would do well to tell them that." He thanked Magdescu for his time and announced that he was ready to be conducted back to the airstrip. And he thought with satisfaction that Paul himself could not have done any of this in a better way.

  Seventeen

  MAGDESCU MUST HAVE made things very clear to the Board of Directors, and the urgency of the message must have gotten through to them. For it was within quite a reasonable time indeed that word reached Andrew that the corporation was willing to do business with him. U.S.R.M.M. would build and design the combustion chamber and install it in his android body at its own expense; and it was prepared to enter into negotiations for a licensing arrangement covering manufacture and distribution of the entire range of prosthetic organs that Andrew might have under
development.

  Under Andrew's supervision a prototype metabolic converter was constructed and extensively tested at a newly constructed facility in Northern California, first within robot hulls, then with newly fabricated android bodies that had not been equipped with positronic brains and were operated on external life-support systems.

  The results were impressive, everyone agreed. And finally Andrew declared that he was ready to have the device installed in himself.

  "You're absolutely certain?" Magdescu asked.

  The bouncy little Director of Research looked concerned. During the course of the project Magdescu and Andrew had developed a curious but sturdy friendship, for which Andrew was quietly grateful now that none of the Charneys were left. In the time since Paul Charney's death Andrew had come clearly to recognize that he needed some sort of sense of close connection with human beings. He knew now that he did not want to be a completely solitary creature, that in fact he could not exist comfortably in total solitude, though he was not sure why. Nothing in the design of the robot brain mandated any need for companionship. But it often seemed to Andrew now that he was more like a human in many ways than he was like a robot, although he understood that he really existed in a strange indefinable limbo, neither man nor machine, partaking of some characteristics of each.

  "Yes," he said. "I have no doubts that the work will be done skillfully and well."

  "I'm not talking about our part of the work," said Magdescu. "I'm talking about yours."

  "You can't possibly doubt that the combustion chamber will work!"

  "The tests leave no question of that."

  "Then what-?"

  "I've been against this thing from the start, Andrew, as you know. But I don't think you fully understand why."

  "It's because you think that the radical technological upheaval that my prosthetics will cause for U. S. Robots is going to be too much for the company to handle."