The danger of his entering an endless loop was more complex. He had never noticed any tendency on his part to enter any sort of long-term loop. If the scientists on the Oversight Committee had learned of this problem, he would have heard from them before now. That meant that the problem was likely to hit with no internal warning.
His own monitoring systems might not be reliable. He judged that his best chance to learn something quickly about his own basic design was to contact his creator, Wayne Nystrom. Wayne was not part of the Oversight Committee, of course, since its mission was to study his work. MC Governor would have to call him and instruct the city computer to shield the call and delete all records of it.
MC Governor did not want-in human terms-to die.
2
Wayne Nystrom stood inside his air-conditioned mobile office, looking out the window. In the distance, the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the pale sand of the Florida beach were bright in the sunlight. Immediately in front of him, however, robot drivers were piling the sand in huge mounds with giant earth movers, preparing a place for Turquoise Coast, the latest underground city of Wayne’s own design. Like the others, it would be run by a Governor robot that was still under construction.
“Biggest challenge yet,” he muttered. He was alone in his office, as he always preferred. Eccentric and secure in the knowledge of his own brilliance, he preferred his own company to anyone else’s and often carried out private conversations with himself, being the only human on any planet whom he really trusted. At the age of forty-one, he was finally achieving the success with his creations that he had always known he deserved.
His telephone beeped his personal code. He moved toward it reluctantly, still watching the robot crew dig into the sand outside. “And they told me I couldn’t build an underground city here because you strike water so soon under the surface,” he growled sourly. “Wrong again, as usual.”
He sighed and pushed the button on his telephone speaker. “Yeah?”
“Good day, Dr. Nystrom.” The humaniform robot face of Mojave Center Governor came on the video screen.
“Hello, Governor!” Wayne instantly relaxed when he realized that the caller was one of his own robotic creations. “I’m glad to hear from you! How are you?”
“I have an emergency situation that I may not be able to handle,” said MC Governor somberly.
“Not likely,” said Wayne, though he welcomed the challenge of an intellectual puzzle. Besides, MC Governor had always been somber and serious. “What’s the problem?”
“The Third Law prevents me from speaking of it by public telephone. I need help. Will you come to see me so that we can talk in private?”
“Of course,” said Wayne. “I stand by all of my creations. You know that. Will tomorrow be soon enough?”
“I fear not,” said MC Governor. “Every hour counts. Perhaps every minute.”
Wayne hesitated, surprised. He was anxious to know more and was suddenly frightened by the sense of urgency that MC Governor was conveying. “All right. This project doesn’t need me right now. I’ll arrange a flight right away.”
MC Governor disconnected, unsure whether Dr. Nystrom could really help him. While Dr. Nystrom might be the only one who could enlighten him quickly on his basic design flaw, his creator might simply arrive too late.
Dr. Nystrom would first have to pack and arrange a chartered SST flight from Florida to Mojave Center’s small airport. That would take some time, as would the flight itself. If nothing unexpected occurred to slow him down, he needed a couple of hours to get here at absolute minimum.
MC Governor decided to review his internal data. He began by examining his design in three-dimensional blueprint, but he saw nothing he had not seen before. Then he began running the standard simulation programs.
All the simulations presented options that involved the Three Laws of Robotics. As he reviewed them, he ran short segments of each, looking for irregularities. These simulations were as close to a hobby as he possessed.
MC Governor especially liked the simulations that presented him with First Law imperatives. In fact, they were the part of his programming that kept his morale high. He opened his favorite one, Earthquake Simulation 9, near the climax.
In this one, a major earthquake has shaken the San Andreas Fault, roughly seventy kilometers west of Mojave Center. Because of the danger of earthquakes in the region, Mojave Center had been designed and constructed as a self-contained, sealed unit. Its four sides and floor were sealed, the surfaces smooth and the edges rounded. Theoretically, it would float in the sand around it during an earthquake of virtually any magnitude, with its water tanks and batteries safely inside.
During a major quake, the box containing the city would be shaken, mostly laterally, snapping off the aqueducts that brought water down from the mountaintops in the area. The solar panels on the top surface, however, would remain attached and functional. When the quake stopped, the city should remain intact, though the floating might bring it to rest at a slightly tilted angle.
Inside the city, of course, all the positronic robot labor would be warning humans to stay inside and helping them find secure locations.
However, Earthquake Simulation 9 postulated an additional problem. After a simulated earthquake of nine on the Richter scale, Mojave Center has survived intact but has come to rest at a severe angle. The robots can adjust their perception of spatial relations more easily than humans, and the human residents are disoriented and near hysteria.
Then a major aftershock hits. Now that the city is no longer in its original position, and has already sustained major stress to its outer shell, it is much more vulnerable, and parts of the city begin to break. At this point, MC Governor decided to turn on the simulation.
In MC Governor’s positronic imagination, he strode through Antelope Valley Boulevard against four feet of rushing water. It flowed out of broken water pipes protruding from the walls and poured down all the streets.
“City computer,” MC Governor ordered in quick, firm tones through the radio link. “Shut down all electricity in Mojave Center now. Trigger all emergency chemical lights immediately. Priority I, First Law emergency in effect.”
Instantly, the normal bright, indirect electric light went off, to be replaced by slightly dimmer orange and yellow light sources provided by chemical reactions. They were in self-contained, waterproof units that would not, if broken, endanger humans by sending an electrical charge into the water. Meanwhile, helpless humans screamed and clung to whatever railings or fixed furnishings they could, in danger of drowning or being dashed against the walls, debris, and malfunctioning ramps and escalators.
As MC Governor passed, he picked them up in his strong arms as though they were children, holding them high above the dangerous water. “You will be taken to safety,” he said calmly. “Please do not struggle.”
Respecting his judgment and ability, the frightened humans obeyed him.
All around him, other robots were also rescuing humans from imminent death and severe injury wherever they could. Still more robots used tools or their own robotic body strength to close valves or crimp pipes shut in whatever way was possible. Driven by the First Law, every robot present was risking his own existence to save the humans.
With a woman sitting on his shoulders and two grown men under each arm, MC Governor forced his way to an upper level where an escalator was still functioning. He could have just set them down and let them find their way to the surface, but his interpretation of the First Law would not allow that. Instead, he climbed up the moving escalator, still carrying his charges.
On the top level, which was devoted entirely to engineering, MC Governor set down his human burden in temporary safety. Then he reached up to manipulate the controls of an emergency exit. It was a trapdoor that operated on springs instead of electricity so that it could still be used in moments such as this. He threw it open with a clang and led the three humans out into the fresh, dry air of the Mojave Desert, where, blinking and squinting in the bright sunlight, they stumbled onto the shiny solar panels that lay on the top of the city.