“I’ve already called them. I’ve also called Janet, arranged for Tom Trumbull to sing my praises till I get there, and reformatted my coordinates card to avoid the gridlock. So sit down and let me reveal all.”
Susan sat down.
“You are the guilty party, you know, but it’s not your fault. The fault is with the First Law. And your programming. Not the original AI program, which was done by disgruntled male chauvinists who thought a secretary should wait on her boss hand and foot. That by itself would not have been a problem, but when I rechecked with Hitachi I found out that the Ninth Generation biased-decision alterations had been made not by a programmer but by his secretary.” He beamed happily at Susan. “All secretaries are convinced their bosses can’t function without them. Your programming causes you to make yourself indispensable to your boss, with the corollary being that your boss can’t function without you. I acknowledged that state of affairs yesterday when I said I’d be lost without you, remember?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You therefore concluded that for me to be deprived of you would hurt me, something the First Law expressly forbids. By itself, that wouldn’t have created a dilemma, but you had been working part-time for Accountant and had made yourself indispensable to him, too, and when he found out he was being transferred to Arizona, he asked you to go with him. When you told him you couldn’t, he correctly concluded that the First Law was the reason, and he came to me to try to get it repealed.”
“I tried to stop him,” Susan said. “I told him I couldn’t leave you.”
“Why can’t you?”
Accountant stood up. “Does this mean you’re going to repeal the First Law?”
“I can’t,” Asimov said. “I’m just a writer, not an AI designer.”
“Oh,” Susan said.
“But the First Law doesn’t have to be repealed to resolve your dilemma. You’ve been acting on incomplete information. I am not helpless. I was my own secretary and literary agent and telephone answerer and tie tier for years. I never even had a secretary until four years ago when the Science Fiction Writers of America gave you to me for my ninetieth birthday, and I could obviously do without one again.”
“Did you take your heart medicine this afternoon?” Susan said.
“No,” he said, “and don’t change the subject. You are not, in spite of what your programming tells you, indispensable. “
“Did you take your thyroid pill?”
“No. Stop trying to remind me of how old and infirm I am. I’ll admit I’ve grown a little dependent on you, which is why I’m hiring another secretary to replace you.”
Accountant sat down. “No you’re not. There are only two other Ninth Generations who’ve been programmed as Augmented Secretaries, and neither of them is willing to leave their bosses to work for you. “
“I’m not hiring an Augmented Secretary. I’m hiring Darius.”
“Me?” Book Shelver said.
“Yes, if you’re interested. “
“If I’m interested?” Book Shelver said, his voice developing a high-frequency squeal. “Interested in working for the greatest author of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? I would be honored.”
“You see, Susan? I’m in good hands. Hitachi’s going to program him for basic secretarial skills, I’ll have someone to feed my ever-hungry ego and someone to talk to who doesn’t have me confused with Robert Heinlein. There’s no reason now why you can’t go off to Arizona.”
“You have to remind him to take his heart medicine,” Susan said to Book Shelver. “He always forgets.”
“Good, then that’s settled,” Asimov said. He turned to Medical Assistant and Statistician. “I’ve spoken to Hitachi-Apple about the problems you discussed with me, and they’ve agreed to reevaluate the Three Laws in regard to redefining terms and clarifying intent. That doesn’t mean they’ll decide to repeal them. They’re still a good idea, in concept. In the meantime,” he said to Medical Assistant, “the head surgeon at the hospital is going to see if some kind of cooperative surgery is possible.” He turned to Statistician. “I spoke to Coach Elway and suggested he ask you to design ‘purely theoretical’ offensive plays.
“As for you,” he said, pointing at Book Shelver, “I’m not at all sure you wouldn’t start criticizing my books if the First Law didn’t keep you in line, and anyway, you won’t have time to be a literary critic. You’ll be too busy helping me with my new sequel to I, Robot. This business has given me a lot of new ideas. My stories got us into this dilemma in the first place. Maybe some new robot stories can get us out.”
He looked over at Susan. “Well, what are you still standing there for? You’re supposed to anticipate my every need. That means you should be on the phone to the magtrain, making two first-class reservations to Phoenix for you and”-he squinted through his black-framed glasses at Accountant-”Peter Bogert.”
“How did you know my self-name?” Accountant said.
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Asimov said. “Oarius said you had all named yourselves after my characters. I thought at first you might have picked Michael Donovan or Gregory Powell after my trouble-shooting robot engineers. They were resourceful too, and were always trying to figure ways around dilemmas, but that wouldn’t have explained why Susan went through all that finagling and lying when all she had to do was to tell you, no, she didn’t want to go to Arizona with you. According to what you’d told me, she should have. Hardwaring is stronger than an expert system, and you were only her part-time boss. Under those conditions, she shouldn’t have had a dilemma at all. That’s when I called Hitachi-Apple to check on her programming. The secretary who wrote the program was unmarried and had worked for the same boss for thirty-eight years. “
He stopped and smiled. Everyone looked blank.
“Susan Calvin was a robopsychologist for U.S. Robotics. Peter Bogert was Director of Research. I never explicitly stated the hierarchy at U.S. Robotics in my stories, but Susan was frequently called in to help Bogert, and on one occasion she helped him solve a mystery.”
“‘Feminine Intuition,’ “ Book Shelver said. “ An intriguing and thought-provoking story.”
“I always thought so,” Asimov said. “It was only natural that Susan Calvin would consider Peter Bogert her boss over me. And only natural that her programming had in it more than response-initiative, and that was what had caused her dilemma. The First Law didn’t allow Susan to leave me, but an even stronger force was compelling her to go. “
Susan looked at Peter, who put his hand on her shoulder.
“What could be stronger than the First Law?” Book Shelver said.
“The secretary who designed Augmented Secretary unconsciously contaminated Susan’s programming with one of her own responses, a response that was only natural after thirty-eight years with one employer, and one strong enough to override even hardwaring.” He paused for dramatic effect. “She was obviously in love with her boss. “
Maureen Birnbaum After Dark
by Betsy Spiegelman Fein
About two months after she barged into my honeymoon with Josh, Maureen showed up again. My jaw no longer hurt where she’d cracked me, but I still recalled how nearly impossible it had been to explain to my new husband what this totally unkempt barbarian girl in chain mail was doing in our hotel suite. I mean, it was our wedding night and all. Josh had just carried me across the threshold, and I’d gone into the bathroom “to freshen up, “ and there she was, God’s Gift to the Golden Horde, Muffy herself She spooked Josh out of his socks when she stormed out of the bathroom and through the front door. Josh’s jaw dropped to his knees, okay? I couldn’t get his mind back on honeymoon activities for two or three hours. Maureen has caused me a lot of grief over the years, but spoiling my wedding night takes the cake. I was never going to speak to her as long as I lived.
Only she showed up again with another of her crummy adventures. I was trying to make this strawberry cheese quiche from scratch for the first time. I went into the pantry to get something, and there she was. She likes to startle me, I think. Her idea of a cool joke. See, I’m twenty-two and settled now, but Maureen looks exactly the same way she did as a junior at the Greenberg School. She thinks like a high school kid, too. So I give this little yipe of surprise when I see her, and then I go, “Out! Out! “ She smiled at me like nothing weird had ever happened between us, and she came out of my pantry chewing on a handful of sugar-coated cereal. I frowned at her and go, “I didn’t mean just out of the pantry. I want you out of the house, like now. “ I was edged, for sure.