Split Infinity

You are attractive, you are nice, you are the kind of girl I have held in my mind as the ideal, even to your size, for it would be too obvious for me to have a woman smaller than I am, and I don’t like being obvious in this connection. You came to me for what seemed insufficient reason, you did not laugh as you should have, you did not react quite on key. You seemed to know about things, yet when I probed for depth I found it lacking. I probed as a matter of course; it is my nature. I asked about your music, and you expressed interest, but had no specifics. That sort of thing. This is typical of programmed artificial intelligence; even the best units can approach only one percent of the human capacity, weight for weight. A well-tuned robot in a controlled situation may seem as intelligent as a man, because of its specific and relevant and instantly accessible information; a man is less efficiently organized, with extraneous memories obscuring the relevant ones, and information accessible only when deviously keyed. But the robot’s intellect is illusory, and it soon shows when those devious and unreasonable off-trails are explored.  A mortal person’s mind is like a wilderness, with a tremendous volume of decaying constructs and half-understood experience forming natural harbors for wild-animal effects. A robot is disciplined, civilized; it has no vast and largely wasted reservoir of the unconscious to draw from, no spongy half-forgotten backup impression. It knows what it knows, and is ignorant where it is ignorant, with a quite sharp demarcation between.  Therefore a robot is not intuitive, which is the polite way of saying that it does not frequently reach down into the maelstrom of its garbage dump and draw out serendipitous insights. Your mind was more straight-forward than mine, and that aroused my suspicion, and so I could not accept you at face value. I would not be the quality of player I am, were I given to such acceptances.”

Sheen’s eyes had widened. “You answered!” Stile laughed. It had been quite an impromptu lecture! “Again I inquire: why not?”

“Because I am Sheen-machine. Another man might be satisfied with the construct, the perfect female form; that is one reason my kind exists. But you are rooted in reality, however tangled a wilderness you may perceive it to be. The same thing that caused you to fathom my nature will cause you to reject the illusion I proffer. You want a real live girl, and you know I am not, and can never be. You will not long want to waste your time talking to me as if I were worthwhile.”

“You presume too much on my nature. My logic is other than yours. I said you were limited; I did not say you were not worthwhile.”

“You did not need to. It is typical of your nature that you are polite even to machines, as you were to the Dust Slide ticket taker. But that was brief, and public; you need no such byplay here in private. Now that I have seen you in action, discovering how much more there is to you than what the computer knows, I realize I was foolish to—“

“A foolish machine?”

“—suppose I could deceive you for any length of time. I deserved what you did to me.”

“I am not sure you deserved it. Sheen. You were sent innocently to me, to my jungle, unrealistically programmed.”

“Thank you,” she said with a certain unmetallic irony. “I did assume you would take what was offered, if you desired it, and now I know that was simplistic.  What am I to do now? I have nowhere to return, and do not wish to be prematurely junked. There are many years of use left in me before my parts wear appreciably.”

“Why, you will stay with me, of course.”

She looked blank. “This is humor? Should I laugh?”

“This is serious,” he assured her.

“Without reason?”

“I am unreasonable, by your standards. But in this case I do have reason.”

She made an almost visible, almost human connection. “To be your servant? You can require that of me, just as you forced me to submit to the printout. I am at your mercy. But I am programmed for a different relationship.”

“Serf can’t have servants. I want you for your purpose.”

“Protection and romance? I am too logical to believe that. You are not the type to settle for a machine in either capacity.” Yet she looked halfway hopeful. Stile knew her facial expressions were the product of the same craftsmanship as the rest of her; perhaps he was imagining the emotion he saw. Yet it moved him.

“You presume too much. Ultimately I must go with my own kind. But in the interim I am satisfied to play the Game—at least until I can discover what threat there is to my welfare that requires a humanoid robot for protection.”

She nodded. “Yes, there is logic. I was to pose as your lady friend, thereby being close to you at all times, even during your sleep, guarding you from harm. If you pretend to accept me as such, I can to that extent fulfill my mission.”