by Damon Knight
The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most convenient to his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous and lacking in precision. The response of his antagonist, while equally prompt in the inception, was made with a slow, uniform, mechanical and, I thought, somewhat theatrical movement of the arm, that was a sore trial to my patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I caught myself shuddering. But I was wet and cold.
Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And then that he was a machine— an automaton chess player! Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of this device—only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical action upon me in my ignorance of its secret?
A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transports—my “endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought”! I was about to retire in disgust when something occurred to hold my curiosity. I observed a shrug of the thing’s great shoulders, as if it were irritated: and so natural was this—so entirely human—that in my new view of the matter it startled me. Nor was that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply with its clenched hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I: he pushed his chair a little backward, as in alarm.
Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the board, pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrow-hawk and with the exclamation “Checkmate!” rose quickly to his feet and stepped behind his chair. The automaton sat motionless.
The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped the repressive and regulating action of some controlling part—an effect such as might be expected if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and head it shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and with a movement almost too quick for the eye to follow shot forward across table and chair, with both arms thrust forth to their full length—the posture and lunge of a diver. Moxon tried to throw himself backward out of reach, but he was too late: I saw the horrible thing’s hands close upon his throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was black dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man’s efforts to breathe. Guided by the infernal hubbub, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Moxon underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—upon the painted face of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness and silence.
Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain I recognized in my attendant Moxon’s confidential workman, Haley. Responding to a look he approached, smiling.
“Tell me about it,” I managed to say, faintly. “All about it.” •
“Certainly,” he said; “you were carried unconscious from a burning house—Moxon’s. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have to do a little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit mysterious, too. My own notion is that the house was struck by lightning.”
“And Moxon?”
“Buried yesterday—what was left of him.”
Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable enough. After some moments of the keenest mental suffering I ventured to ask another question:
“Who rescued me?”
“Well, if that interests you—I did.”
“Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue, also, that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess player that murdered its inventor?”
The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he turned and gravely said:
“Do you know that?”
“I do,” I replied; “I saw it done.”
That was many years ago. If I were asked today I should answer less confidently.
May you have pleasant dreams after reading that one!
In the stories that follow, you will see robots become less terrifying, more nearly human, perhaps even a little pathetic. Moxon's automaton is a clockwork mechanism that goes wrong—remember the sound of whirring wheels from inside it, “as if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel.” But there is a suggestion of magic here, too, and of impious tampering; it’s impossible not to speculate that perhaps it was because the machine was angry that its pawl slipped.
The idea of the mechanical man did not cross all the way over from magic to science fiction until well into the present century. Oddly enough, in spite of its antique origins, as pure science fiction it is the youngest of the themes in this book. H. G. Wells wrote no robot stories, nor did Jules Verne; it was left for an American writer, Isaac Asimov, to become the first acknowledged master of the robot story.
Asimov is the son of a Brooklyn candy-store owner (in New York, a candy store is a hole in the wall that sells candy, soda, ice cream, newspapers, cigarettes and a lot of other things, all in about three hundred square feet), who got himself a Ph.D. in chemistry by what Cyril Kornbluth soberly described as “heroism”—working in the candy store by day, studying at night, year after year. On the side, he managed to turn out some forty science fiction stories even before he got his doctorate, and at the latest count is the author of forty-two books. In recent years he has turned to factual writing and has become a distinguished popular historian of science.
When the science of robotics comes into existence, it will probably be found that the basic principles have already been laid down by Isaac Asimov—the Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings
except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law,
As you are about to see, Asimov’s robots are a very different breed from Bierce’s. There is nothing eerie about QT1; he is merely a mechanism designed and constructed to think and act like a man. Except for being metal, in fact, he is a man—and it follows logically that he is completely exasperating to men.
REASON
BY ISAAC ASIMOV
Gregory Powell spaced his words for emphasis. “One week ago, Donovan and I put you together.” His brows furrowed doubtfully and he pulled the end of his brown mustache.
It was quiet in the officers’ room of Solar Station 5—except for the soft purring of the mighty beam director somewhere far below.
Robot QT1
sat immovable. The burnished plates of his body gleamed in the luxites, and the glowing red of the photoelectric cells that were his eyes were fixed steadily upon the Earthman at the other side of the table.
Powell repressed a sudden attack of nerves. These robots possessed peculiar brains. The positronic paths impressed upon them were calculated in advance, and all possible permutations that might lead to anger or hate were rigidly excluded. And yet—the QT models were the first of their kind, and this was the first of the QT’s. Anything could happen.
Finally the robot spoke. His voice carried the cold timbre inseparable from a metallic diaphragm. “Do you realize the seriousness of such a statement, Powell?”
“Something made you, Cutie,” pointed out Powell. “You admit yourself that your memory seems to spring full-grown from an absolute blankness of a week ago. I’m giving you the explanation. Donovan and I put you together from the parts shipped us.”
Cutie gazed upon his long, supple fingers in an oddly
human attitude of mystification. “It strikes me that there should be a more satisfactory explanation than that. For you to make me seems improbable.”
The Earthman laughed quite suddenly. “In Earth’s name, why?”
“Call it intuition. That’s all it is so far. But I intend to reason it out, though. A chain of valid reasoning can end only with the determination of truth, and I’ll stick till I get there.”
Powell stood up and seated himself at the table’s edge next the robot. He felt a sudden strong sympathy for this strange machine. It was not at all like the ordinary robot, attending to his specialized task at the station with the intensity of a deeply ingrooved positronic path.
He placed a hand upon Cutie’s steel shoulder and the metal was cold and hard to the touch.
“Cutie,” he said, “I’m going to try to explain something to you. You’re the first robot who’s ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence—and I think the first that’s really intelligent enough to understand the world outside. Here, come with me.”
The robot rose erect smoothly and his thickly sponge-rubber-soled feet made no noise as he followed Powell. The Earthman touched a button, and a square section of the wall flicked aside. The thick, clear glass revealed space—star-speckled.
“I’ve seen that in the observation ports in the engine room,” said Cutie.
“I know,” said Powell. “What do you think it is?”
“Exactly what it seems—a black material just beyond this glass that is spotted with little gleaming dots. I know that our director sends out beams to some of these dots, always to the same ones—and also that these dots shift and that the beams shift with them. That is all.”
“Good! Now I want you to listen carefully. The blackness is emptiness—vast emptiness stretching out infinitely. The little gleaming dots are huge masses of energy-filled matter. They are globes, some of them millions of miles in diameter —and for comparison, this station is only one mile across. They seem so tiny because they are incredibly far off.
“The dots to which our energy beams are directed are nearer and much smaller. They are cold and hard, and human beings like myself live upon their surfaces—many billions of them. It is from one of these worlds that Donovan and I come. Our beams feed these worlds energy drawn from one of those huge incandescent globes that happens to be near us. We call that globe the sun and it is on the other side of the station where you can’t see it.”
Cutie remained motionless before the port, like a steel statue. His head did not turn as he spoke. “Which particular dot of light do you claim to come from?”
Powell searched. “There it is. The very bright one in the comer. We call it Earth.” He grinned. “Good old Earth. There are five billions of us there, Cutie—and in about two weeks I’ll be back there with them.”
And then, surprisingly enough, Cutie hummed abstractedly. There was no tune to it, but it possessed a curious twanging quality as of plucked strings. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun. “But where do I come in, Powell? You haven’t explained my existence.”
“The rest is simple. When these stations were first established to feed solar energy to the planets, they were run by humans. However, the heat, the hard solar radiations and the electron storms made the post a difficult one. Robots were developed to replace human labor and now only two human executives are required for each station. We are trying to replace even those, and that’s where you come in. You’re the highest-type robot ever developed, and if you show the ability to run this station independently no human need ever come here again except to bring parts for repairs.”
His hand went up and the metal visi-lid snapped back into place. Powell returned to the table and polished an apple upon his sleeve before biting into it
The red glow of the robot’s eyes held him. “Do you expect me,” said Cutie slowly, “to believe any such complicated, implausible hypothesis as you have just outlined? What do you take me for?”
Powell sputtered apple fragments onto the table and turned red. “Why, damn you, it wasn’t a hypothesis. Those were facts.”
Cutie sounded grim. “Globes of energy millions of miles across! Worlds with five billion humans on them! Infinite emptiness! Sorry, Powell, but I don’t believe it. I’ll puzzle this thing out for myself. Goodbye.”
He turned and stalked out of the room. He brushed past Michael Donovan on the threshold with a grave nod and passed down the corridor, oblivious to the astounded stare that followed him.
Mike Donovan rumpled his red hair and shot an annoyed glance at Powell. “What was that walking junkyard talking about? What doesn’t he believe?”
The other dragged at his mustache bitterly. “He’s a skeptic,” was the bitter response. “He doesn’t believe we made him or that Earth exists or space or stars.”
“Sizzling Saturn, we’ve got a lunatic robot on our hands.” “He says he’s going to figure it all out for himself.”
“Well, now,” said Donovan sweetly, “I do hope he’ll condescend to explain it all to me after he’s puzzled everything out.” Then, with sudden rage, “Listen! If that metal mess gives any lip like that, I’ll knock that chromium cranium right off its torso.”
He seated himself with a jerk and drew a paperback mystery novel out of his inner jacket pocket. “That robot gives me the willies anyway—too damned inquisitive!”
Mike Donovan growled from behind a huge lettuce-and-tomato sandwich as Cutie knocked gently and entered.
“Is Powell here?”
Donovan’s voice was muffled, with pauses for mastication, “He’s gathering data on electronic stream functions. We’re heading for a storm, looks like.”
Gregory Powell entered as he spoke, eyes on the graphed paper in his hands, and dropped into a chair. He spread the sheets out before him and began scribbling calculations. Donovan stared over his shoulder, crunching lettuce and dribbling bread crumbs. Cutie waited silently.
Powell looked up. “The zeta potential is rising, but slowly. Just the same, the stream functions are erratic and I don’t know what to expect. Oh, hello, Cutie. I thought you were supervising the installation of the new drive bar.”
“It’s done,” said the robot quietly, “and so I’ve come to have a talk with the two of you.”
“Oh!” Powell looked uncomfortable. “Well, sit down. No, not that chair. One of the legs is weak and you’re no lightweight.”
The robot did so and said placidly, “I have come to a decision.”
Donovan glowered and put the remnants of his sandwich aside. “If it’s on any of that screwy—”
The other motioned impatiently for silence. “Go ahead, Cutie. We’re listening.”
“I have spent these last two days in concentrated introspection,” said Cutie, “and the results have been most interesting. I began at the one sure assumption I felt permitted to make. I, myself, exist, because I think—”
Powell groaned. “Oh, Jupiter, a robot Descartes!”
“Who�
�s Descartes?” demanded Donovan. “Listen, do we have to sit here and listen to this metal maniac—”
“Keep quiet, Mike!”
Cutie continued imperturbably, “And the question that immediately arose was: Just what is the cause of my existence?”
Powell’s jaw set lumpily. “You’re being foolish. I told you already that we made you.”
“And if you don’t believe us,” added Donovan, “we’ll gladly take you apart!”
The robot spread his strong hands in deprecatory gesture. “I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless—and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me.”
Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan’s suddenly bunched fist. “Just why do you say that?”
Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh, the most machinelike utterance he had yet given vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected.
“Look at you,” he said finally. “I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material you are made of is soft and flabby, lacking endurance and strength, depending for energy upon the inefficient oxidation of organic material —like that.” He pointed a disapproving finger at what remained of Donovan’s sandwich. “Periodically you pass into a coma, and the least variation in temperature, air pressure, humidity or radiation intensity impairs your efficiency. You are makeshift.
“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with almost one hundred per cent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superior to itself, smashes your silly hypothesis to nothing.”