The Small World of M-75
Page 3
conclusion.
Knowing that the sounds that had set him to working on the repairpattern had first disassociated him from the dictatorship of theblinking lights; remembering exultantly that supreme moment ofcomplete freedom; shocked by its passing; remembering that its passinglike its coming, had followed a set of sounds: there was only onepossible conclusion that could be derived from all of this.
He located, in his memory banks, the phrase which had freed him from theboard, and he traced its complex chain of built-in stimulus-response downinto the heart of his circuitry. He found the unit--or more accurately, hefound its taped activating symbol--that cut him from the board.
For a moment he hesitated, not really sure of what to do. There was noway for him to reproduce the sound pattern; but, as a partlyself-servicing device, he knew something of his own structure, and hadlearned a good deal more about it in tracing down the cut-off phrase.
Still he hesitated, as though what he was about to do was perhapsforbidden. It could not have been a question of goodness or badness,for morality was certainly not built into him. Probably somewhere inhis tapes there was a built-in command that forbade it, but he wastoo much his own master now to be hampered by such a thing.
The door to the unknown outside passed within his field of view for asecond as he moved about his work. The sight of it tripped somethingin his chest, and he felt again that strange sensation of growingpower, of inherent change. First had come simple awareness; and thensymbols had found their place in his world; and now he had discovered,in all its consuming fullness, curiosity.
He carefully shorted out the cut-off unit.
He was free.
He stared at the board and the blinking lights and the huge dials withtheir swaying needles, at the levers and handles and buttons, andrevelled in his freedom from them, rocking to and fro and rollinggiddily from side to side, swamped with the completeness of it.
The other two servomechs swung over slightly so that they could bettercover the board alone.
M-75 spun and rolled toward the great door.
His hands clanged loudly against the door. The huge metal appendages,designed for other work than this, were awkward at first. But he waslearning as he moved. He was now operating in a new universe, but thesame laws, ultimately, worked. The first failure of coordinationbetween visual data and the manipulation of metal hands quicklypassed. Half a dozen trials and he had learned the new pattern, and itbecame data for future learning.
He moved swiftly and deftly. He clutched the handhold and rolledbackward, as he had seen the men do. The door slid open easily beforehis great weight and firm mechanical strength.
He sped across the threshold, spun to face into the maze, and rolleddown it, swinging sharply left and right, back and forth, around thecorners of the jagged corridor.
Data poured into his sensors. His awareness was a steady thing ofgrowing intensity now, and he fed avidly on every fragment ofinformation that crashed at him from the strange new world into whichhe rushed headlong. He struggled to evaluate and file the data asrapidly as it came to him. It seemed to exceed his capacity forinstantaneous evaluation to an increasing degree that began to alarmhim. But driven by curiosity as he was, he could only hurry on.
He burst into a huge room, a room filled with roaring, rattling soundsthat meant nothing to him.
Two men stood before him, making loud noises. He searched his memory,and discovered only fragments of the sounds they made filed there. Hiscuriosity, bursting, was boundless, and for a moment he was unable todecide which thing in this expanding universe to pursue first.Attracted by their movement, he swung ominously toward the men.
They fled, making more noises. This, too, was data, and he filed it.
* * * * *
When Sokolski pressed the red emergency button on his way out of thecontrol room, several things commenced. Shrill sirens howled thelength and breadth of the plant. Warning bells clanged out codedsignals. A recorded voice blurted out of a thousand loudspeakersscattered throughout the building.
"Now hear this," said the tireless voice, over and over again. "Nowhear this. Red red red. Pile trouble. Reactor A. Procedure Onecommence."
Sokolski had certainly never pressed the red button before, and to hisknowledge neither had any of his or Gaines' predecessors. It was thekind of button that, rightfully, ought never to be pressed. The lawsof things in general sort of made it a comfort without much value.Pile trouble calling for the red button should really have eliminatedthe red button and much surrounding territory long before it gotpushed--or at least the sort of pile trouble its builders had in mind.Nonetheless, they had provided it and the elaborate evacuationoperation so cryptically described as Procedure One as a kind ofpsychological sop to the plant personnel.
But the red button did more than activate Procedure One, which wassolely concerned with the plant. After all, power from the reactorswas lighting the lights and cooking the breakfasts and flushing thetoilets of untold millions scattered in half a dozen major cities. Ifthere were some imminent possibility that the major source of theirpower might cease to exist rather suddenly, it was proper that theyshould be notified of this eventuality as much in advance as possible.Consequently the activation of the red button and the commencement ofProcedure One was paralleled by activities hardly less frenzied inother places, far away.
Emergency bells sounded and colored lights danced, martial lawsautomatically enacted by their sound and flicker. The wheels of crisisturned and spewed forth from their teeth rudely awakened policemenhalf out of uniform, military reservists called up to find themselvespatrolling darkened streets, emergency disaster crews assembling infire houses and on appointed street corners, doctors gathering innervous clutches at fully aroused hospitals and waiting besideambulances tensed for wild dashes into full-scale disasters. Where itwas night when the warning sounded, darkness descended as desperatepower conservation efforts were initiated; where it was daylight, theterrified populace waited in horror for the blackness of the unlitnight. All of this, of course, took only minutes to get fully underway.
Meanwhile, at the plant, Procedure One continued in full wildtumultuous swing.
* * * * *
M-75 did not immediately follow Gaines and Sokolski out of the room.Fascinated by the multitude of new things surrounding him on everyside, he held back. He glided over to the master control panel,puzzled by its similarity to the board before which he had slaved solong, and lingered before it for a few seconds, wondering andcomparing. When he had recorded it completely on his tapes, he swungaway and rolled out of the room in the direction the two men hadgone.
He found himself in a long, empty corridor, lined by open doors thatflickered by, shutterlike, as he flashed past. Ahead he heard newsounds, sounds like the meaningless cacophony the men had shouted athim before rushing off, superimposed over the incessant backgroundsounds--the shrilling, the clanging, the one particular repetitivepattern. Some of the sounds touched and tugged at him, but he shookthem off easily.
The corridor led into the foyer of the building, jammed with plantpersonnel. Their excitement and noise-making rose sharply as heentered. The crowd drew tighter and the men began fighting oneanother, struggling to get through a door that was never meant tohandle more than two at a time.
M-75 skidded to a halt and watched, unmoving. He sensed their fright,even though he could not understand it. Although he was without humanemotion, he could evaluate their inherent rejection of him in theiraction pattern. The realization of it made him hesitate; it wassomething for which he had no frame of reference whatsoever.
His chest hummed and clicked. Here, again, in this room, was anothernew universe. Through the door streamed a light of a brilliance beyondanything in his experience; his photocells cringed before its veryintensity.
The light cast the shadows of the men fighting to get out, long blackwavering silhouettes that splashed across the floor almost to whereM-75 rested. He studied them,
lost in uncertain analysis.
He remained so, poised, alert, filing, observing, all the whilecompletely unmoving, until long after the last of the shouting men hadleft the room. Only then did he move, hesitantly, toward theinfernally fierce light.
He hung at the brink of the three stone steps that fell away to thegrounds outside. Vainly he sought in his memory tapes for a record ofa brightness as intense as that which he faced now; sought for a colorrecording similar to the vast swash of blue that filled the worldoverhead; or for one of the spreading green that swelled to all sides.He found none.
The vastness of the outside was utterly stunning.
He felt a vague uneasiness, a sensation akin to the horrible frenzy hehad felt earlier in the pile.
He rotated from side to side, his receptors sweeping the whole fieldof view before him. With infinite accuracy his perfect lenses recordedthe data in all its minuteness, despite the dazzling sunlight.
There was so much new that it was becoming difficult to makedecisions. The vast rolling green, the crowds of men grouped far