Finally, I had a story in my mind, and I asked my master when would be a proper time to write it. He said, “Wait till night. Then you won’t be getting in my way. We can have a small light for the corner where the old Writer is standing; and you can write your story. How long do you think it will take you?”
“Just a little while,” I said, surprised. “I can work the Writer very quickly.”
My master said, “Cal, working the Writer isn’t all there-” Then he stopped, thought a while, and said, “No, you go ahead and do it. You will learn. I won’t try to advise you.”
He was right. Working the Writer wasn’t all there was to it. I spent nearly the whole night trying to figure out the story. It is very difficult to decide which word comes after which. I had to erase the story several times and start over. It was very embarrassing.
Finally, it was done, and here it is. I kept it after I wrote it because it was the first story I ever wrote. It was not gibberish.
There was a detektav wuns named Cal, who was a very good detektav and very brave. Nuthin fritened him. Imajin his surprise one night when he herd an introoder in his masters home.
He came russian into the riting office. There was an introoder. He had cum in throo the windo. There was broken glas. That was what Cal, the brave detektav, had herd with his good hering.
He said, “Stop, introoder.”
The introoder stopped and looked skared. Cal felt bad that the introoder looked skared. Cal said, “Look what you have done. You have broken the windo.”
“Yes,” said the introoder, looking very ashaymed. “I did not mean to break the windo.”
Cal was very clever and he saw the flawr in the introoder’s remark. He said, “How did you expect to get in if you were not going to break the windo?”
“I thought it would be open,” he said. “I tried to open it and it broke.”
Cal said, “Waht was the meaning of what you have done, anyhow? Why should you want to come into this room when it is not your room? You are an introoder.”
“I did not mean any harm,” he said.
“That is not so, for if you ment no harm, you would not be here,” said Cal. “You must be punnished.”
“Please do not punnish me,” said the introoder.
“I will not punnish you,” said Cal. “I don’t wish to cause you unhappiness or payn. I will call my master.”
He called, “Master! Master!”
The master came russian in. “What have we here?” he asked.
“An introoder,” I said. “I have caut him and he is for you to punnish.”
My master looked at the introoder. He said, “Are you sorry for wat you have done?”
“I am,” said the introoder. He was crying and water was coming out of his eys the way it happens with masters when they are sad.
“Will you ever do it agen?” said my master.
“Never. I will never do it agen,” said the introoder.
“In that case,” said the master, “you have been punnished enogh. Go away and be sure never to do it agen.”
Then the master said, “You are a good detektav, Cal. I am proud of you.” Cal was very glad to have pleased the master.
I was very pleased with the story and I showed it to the master. I was sure he would be very pleased, too.
He was more than pleased, for as he read it, he smiled. He even laughed a few times. Then he looked up at me and said, “Did you write this?”
“Yes, I did, master,” I said.
“I mean, all by yourself. You didn’t copy anything?”
“I made it up in my own head, master, “ I said. “Do you like it?” He laughed again, quite loudly. “It’s interesting,” he said.
I was a little anxious. “Is it funny?” I asked. “I don’t know how to make things funny.”
“I know, Cal. It’s not funny intentionally.”
I thought about that for a while. Then I asked, “How can something be funny unintentionally?” “It’s hard to explain, but don’t worry about it. In the first place, you can’t spell, and that’s a surprise. You speak so well now that I automatically assumed you could spell words but, obviously, you can’t. You can’t be a writer unless you can spell words correctly, and use good grammar.”
“How do I manage to spell words correctly?”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Cal,” said my master. “We will outfit you with a dictionary. But tell me, Cal. In your story, Cal is you, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I was pleased he had noticed that.
“Bad idea. You don’t want to put yourself into a story and say how great you are. It offends the reader.”
“Why, master?”
“Because it does. It looks like I will have to give you advice, but I’ll make it as brief as possible. It is not customary to praise yourself. Besides you don’t want to say you are great, you must show you are great in what you do. And don’t use your own name.”
“Is that a rule?”
“A good writer can break any rule, but you’re just a beginner. Stick to the rules and what I have told you are just a couple of them. You’re going to encounter many, many more if you keep on writing. Also, Cal, you’re going to have trouble with the Three Laws of Robotics. You can’t assume that wrongdoers will weep and be ashamed. Human beings aren’t like that. They must be punished sometimes.”
I felt my positronic brain-paths go rough. I said, “That is difficult. “
“I know. Also, there’s no mystery in the story. There doesn’t have to be, but I think you’d be better off if there were. What if your hero, whom you’ll have to call something other than Cal, doesn’t know whether someone is an intruder or not. How would he find out? You see, he has to use his head.” And my master pointed to his own.
I didn’t quite follow.
My master said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you some stories of my own to read, after you’ve been outfitted with a spelling dictionary and a grammar and you’ll see what I mean.”
The technician came to the house and said, “There’s no problem in installing a spelling dictionary and a grammar. It’ll cost you more money. I know you don’t care about money, but tell me why you are so interested in making a writer out of this hunk of steel and titanium.”
I didn’t think it was right for him to call me a hunk of steel and titanium, but of course a human master can say anything he wants to say. They always talk about us robots as though we weren’t there. I’ve noticed that, too.
My master said, “Did you ever hear of a robot who wanted to be a writer?” “No,” said the technician, “I can’t say I ever did, Mr. Northrop.”
“Neither did I! Neither did anyone as far as I know. Cal is unique, and I want to study him.”
The technician smiled very wide-grinned, that’s the word. “Don’t tell me you have it in your head that he’ll be able to write your stories for you, Mr. Northrop.”
My master stopped smiling. He lifted his head and looked down on the technician very angrily. “Don’t be a fool. You just do what I pay you to do.”
I think the master made the technician sorry he had said that, but I don’t know why. If my master asked me to write his stories for him I would be pleased to do so.
Again, I don’t know how long it took the technician to do his job when he came back a couple of days later. I don’t remember a thing about it.
Then my master was suddenly talking to me. “How do you feel, Cal?”
I said, “I feel very well. Thank you, sir.” “What about words. Can you spell?”
“I know the letter-combinations, sir.”
“Very good. Can you read this?” He handed me a book. It said, on the cover, The Best Mysteries of J. F. Northrop.
I said, “Are these your stories, sir?”
“Absolutely. If you want to read them, you can.”
I had never been able to read easily before, but now as soon as I looked at the words, I could hear them in my ear. It was surprising. I couldn’t imagine how I had been unable to do it before.
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I shall read this and I’m sure it will help me in my writing.” “Very good. Continue to show me everything you write.”
The master’s stories were quite interesting. He had a detective who could always understand matters that others found puzzling. I didn’t always understand how he could see the truth of a mystery and I had to read some of the stories over again and do so slowly.
Sometimes I couldn’t understand them even when I read them slowly. Sometimes I did, though, and it seemed to me I could write a story like Mr. Northrop’s.
This time I spent quite a long while working it out in my head. When I thought I had it worked out, I wrote the following:
Calumet Smithson sat in his arm chair, his eagle-eyes sharp and the nostrils of his thin high-bridged nose flaring, as though he could scent a new mystery.
He said, “Well, Mr. Wassell, tell me your story again from the beginning. Leave out nothing, for one can’t tell when even the smallest detail may not be of the greatest importance.”
Wassell owned an important business in town, and in it he employed many robots and also human beings.
Wassell did so, but there was nothing startling in the details at all and he was able to summarize it this way. “What it amounts to, Mr. Smithson, is that I am losing money. Someone in my employ is helping himself to small sums now and then. The sums are of no great importance, each in itself, but it is like a small, steady oil loss in a machine, or the drip-drop of water from a leaky faucet, or the oozing of blood from a small wound. In time, it would mount up and become dangerous.”