War with the Robots

Closing the door quietly, Carl leaned against its cool metal and tried to understand what had happened. With the threat of immediate pursuit removed, he had time to think.

Why hadn’t he been followed? Why had Central Control acted as if it didn’t know his whereabouts? This omnipotent machine had scauning tubes in every square inch of the city, he had found that out. And it was hooked into the machines of the other cities of the world. There was no place it couldn’t see. Or rather one place.

The thought hit him so suddenly he gasped. Then he looked around him. A tunnel of relays and controls stretched away from him, dimly lit by glow plates. It could be — yes it could be. It had to be.

There could be only one place in the entire world that Central Control could not look — inside its own central mechanism. Its memory and operating circuits. No machine with independent decision could repair its own thinking circuits. This would allow destructive negative feedback to be built up. An impaired circuit could only impair itself more, it couldn’t possibly repair itself.

He was inside the brain circuits of Central Control. So as far as that city-embracing machine knew he had ceased to be. He existed nowhere the machine could see. The machine could see everywhere. Therefore he didn’t exist. By this time all memory of him had been probably erased.

Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he walked down the corridor.

"Free!" he shouted. "Really free-for the first time in my life. Free to do as I want, to watch the whole world and laugh at them!" A power and happiness flowed through him. He opened door after door, exulting in his new kingdom.

He was talking aloud, bubbling with happiness. "I can have the repair robots that work on the circuits bring me food. Furniture, clothes — whatever I want. I can live here just as I please-do what I please." The thought was wildly exciting. He threw open another door and stopped, rigid.

The room before him was tastefully furnished, just as he would have done it. Books, paintings on the walls, soft music coming from a hidden record player. Carl gaped at it. Until the voice spoke behind him.

"Of course it would be wonderful to live here," the voice said. "To be master of the city, have anything you want at your fingertips. But what makes you think, poor little man, that you are the first one to realize that? And to come here. And there is really only room for one you know."

Carl turned slowly, very slowly, measuring the distance between himself and the other man who stood behind him in the doorway, weighing the chances of lashing out with the gavel he still clutched — before the other man could fire the gun he held in his hand.

In the Interplanetary age robots will be as much an essential and commonplace of life as the kitchen sink is to the atomic age. But while being waited upon by his mechanical servants, man will find that he has to do a little serving in return. Mechanics are needed to attend to the most automatic airplanes. Automatic lighthouses must be installed and serviced. This need will not die out. Spaceships will have to find their way through their dark spatial ocean, just as surely any other ship that ever sailed a terrestrial sea. Navigation will be ultra-refined and automated — but it will still be navigation. And it will need the assistance of fixed reference points. Beacons will be needed.

And beacons, no matter how solidly constructed, will occasionally fall into…

THE REPAIRMAN

THE OLD MAN HAD THAT LOOK of intense glee on his face that meant someone was in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great feat of intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the best defense and so forth.

"I quit. Don’t bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up, because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal company secrets to me."

The grin was even wider now and he actually chortled as he thumbed a button on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the delivery slot onto his desk.

"This is your contract," he said. "It tells how and when you will work. A steel-and-vanadium-bound contract that you couldn’t crack with a molecular disruptor."

I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a single motion. Before it could fall, I had my Solar out and, with a wide-angle shot, burned the contract to ashes.

The Old Man pressed the button again and another contract slid out on his desk. If possible, the smile was still wider now.

"I should have said a duplicate of your contract — like this one here." He made a quick note on his secretary plate.

"I have deducted 13 credits from your salary for the cost of the duplicate — as well as a 100-credit fine for firing a Solar inside a building."

I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The Old Man fondled my contract.