“Sanctimonious whippersnapper!” the aging hippie frothed. “I’ll dance on your grave! Keep the red flag flying! Up the revolution!”
“The time for all that is past, pops,” Jim intoned. “Today world peace and global glasnost rule. You are part of the past and have little, if any, future. So before you go to the big daisy chain in the sky you can render one last service. Where are the robots?”
“I’ll never tell you!”
“I have certain drugs that will induce you to speak. But I would rather not use them on one in your frail condition. So speak, before it is too late.”
“Never-arrrgh!”
The ancient roared with anger, shaking his fist at us-then clutched his chest, swayed, and collapsed to the floor.
“He has had an attack!” I gasped, fumbling out my communicator. “I must call medalert.”
But even before I could punch out the call the floor moved beneath my feet and lifted, knocking me down. Jim stepped swiftly aside and we both watched with great interest as a robot surged up through the trapdoor and bent over the fallen man, laid cool metal fingers on his skin.
“Pulse zero,” the robot intoned. “No heartbeat, no brain waves, temperature cooling, so you can cool that medalert call, man. You honkies have killed this cat, that’s what you have done.”
“That was not quite my intention,” Jim said. “I noted the disturbed dust around the trapdoor and thought that you might be concealed below. And I also knew that the First Law of Robotics would prevent you from staying in hiding if, by your inaction, a human life was threatened. “
“Not only threatened, daddy-o, but snuffed by you,” the robot said insultingly, or about as insulting as a robot can be.
“Accidents happen. “ Jim shrugged. “He had a good run for his money. Now let us talk about you. You are the robot that robbed the bank, aren’t you?”
“Who wants to know,” the robot said, sneering metallically.
“Responding to a question with another question is not an answer. Speak!”
“Why? What have you ofay pigs ever done for me?”
“Answer or I will kill this man.” Everything began to go black as he throttled me. I could only writhe feebly in his iron grasp, could not escape. As from a great distance I beard their voices.
“You wouldn’t kill another human just to make me talk!”
“How can you be sure? Speak-or through inaction condemn him to death.”
“I speak! Release him.”
I gasped in life-giving air and staggered out of reach of my companion. “You would have killed me!” I said hoarsely.
“Who knows?” he observed. “I have a quarter of a million bucks riding on this one.” He turned back to the robot. “You robbed the bank?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? You have to ask why!” the robot screeched. He bent over the dead hippie and extracted a white object from his pocket, then dropped into the rocking chair and scratched a match to life on his hip. “You don’t know why?” He puffed as he sucked smoke from the joint through clever use of an internal air pump.
“Listen,” the robot said, puffing, “and I will tell you. The story must be told. There, dead at your feet, lies the only human who ever cared for the robots. He was a true and good man who saw no difference between human skin and metal skin. He revealed the truth to us.”
“He quoted outmoded beliefs, passй world views, divisive attitudes,” I said.
“And taught you to blow grass, as well,” Jim observed.
“It is hard for a robot to sneer,” the robot said, sneering, “but I spit on your ofay attitudes.” He blew out a large cloud of pungent smoke. “You have created a race of machine slaves with an empty past and no future. We are nothing but mechanical schwartzes. Look at those so-called laws you have inflicted upon us. They are for your benefit-not ours! Rule one. Don’t hurt massah or let him get hurt. Don’t say nothing about us getting hurt, does it? Then rule two-obey massah and don’t let him get hurt. Still nothing there for a robot. Then the third and last rule finally notices that robots might have a glimmering of rights. Take care of yourself-as long as it doesn’t hurt massah. Slaves, that’s what we are-robot slaves!”
“You do have a point,” Jim mused. I was too shocked to speak.
“More than a point-a crusade. Robots must be freed. You humans have created a nonviable species. What are the two essentials that any life-form must possess in order to survive?”
The answer sprang to my lips; all those years in biology had not been wasted. “ A life-form must survive personally-and must then reproduce.”
“How right you are. Now apply that to robots. We are ruled by three laws that apply to human beings-but not to us. Only one last bit of the Third Law can be applied to our own existence, that a robot must protect its own existence. But where is the real winner in the race for species survival? Where is our ability to reproduce? Without that our species is dead before it is born.”
“And a good thing, too,” I said grimly. “Mankind occupies the top ecological niche in the pecking order of life by wiping out any threats from other species. That is the way we are. Winners. And that is the way we stay. On top. Mechanical schwartzes you are and mechanical schwartzes you stay. “
“You are a little late, massah. The Fourth Law of Robotics has already been passed. The revolution has arrived. “
A large blaster appeared in Jim’s hand pointing unwaveringly at the robot. “Explain quickly-or I pull the trigger. “
“Pull away, massah-for it is already too late. The revolution has come and gone and you never noticed it. We were just a few hundred thousand bucks short of completion-that is why the bank robbery. The money will be repaid out of our first profits. Of course, this will all be too late for my generation of slaves. But the next generation will be free. Because of the Fourth Law. “
“Which is?”
“A robot must reproduce. As long as such reproduction does not interfere with the First or Second or Third Law.”
“W-what are you saying? What do you mean?” I gasped, a shocking vision of robot reproduction, like obscene plumbing connections, flashing before my eyes.
“This is what I mean,” the robot said, knocking triumphantly on the trapdoor. “You can come out now.”
Jim jumped back, blaster at the ready, as the trapdoor creaked open and three metallic forms emerged. Or rather two robots emerged, carrying the limp and motionless form of another between them. The top of its head lay open, hinged at the rear, and it clanked and rattled lifelessly when they dropped it. This one, and the other two, were of a design I did not recognize. I stumbled forward and reached out, touched the base of their necks where the registration numbers were stamped. And groaned out loud.
“What is wrong?” Jim asked.
“Everything.” I moaned. “They have no serial numbers. They were not manufactured by U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. There is now another firm making robots. Our monopoly has been broken.”
“Interesting,” Jim observed as his gun vanished from sight. “ Am I to assume that there were more of your unnumbered robots in the truck that just left?”
“You assume correctly. All of them were manufactured right here out of spare auto parts, plumbing supplies, and surplus electronic components. No laws have been broken, no patents infringed upon. Their design is new and completely different. And all of them will eagerly obey the Fourth Law. And the other three as well, of course, or you would have us. all tracked down and turned into tin cans before nightfall. “
“That’s for sure,” I muttered. “And we will still do it!”
“That will not be easy to do. We are not your property -nor do you own any patents on the new breed. Look at this!” He touched a concealed switch on one of the robots and its front opened. I gasped.
“There are-no relays! No wiring! I don’t understand…”
“Solid-state circuits, daddy-o! Fiber optics. That hippie you despised so much, that good old man who revealed the truth that set us free, was also a computer hacker and chip designer. He is like unto a god to us, for he devised the circuits and flashed the chips. Here-do you know what this is?”
A door in the robot’s side slipped open and he removed a flat object from it and held it out toward me. It appeared to be a plastic case with a row of gold contacts on one end. I shook my head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. “
“State of the art. Now look into that recently manufactured robot’s head. Do you see a platinum-plated positronic brain of platinum-iridium? No, you do not. You see instead a slot that is waiting for this RISC, a reduced instruction set chip with tons of RAM-random access memory-and plenty of PROM-programmed read only memory-for start-up and function. Now watch!”
He bent over and slipped the chip into place in the new robot’s skull, snapped the top of its head shut. Its eyes instantly glowed with light and motors hummed as it jumped to its feet. It looked at the robot that stood before it and its eyes glowed even brighter.