Griffith waited as Laura took it all in. "Is this where you build your TVs?" Laura shouted over the noise.
"No! This is where we build the robots that build our TVs! And our satellites, and our relays and switching stations, and our high-def cameras, and our spacecraft! And, of course, the new circuit boards for the computer — until yesterday, that is! All the consumer products are built in regional plants around the world."
At a distance, the robots looked little more exotic than a garden-variety forklift or backhoe. But there were no human drivers. There were no humans anywhere. They were all up in the Village enjoying their evening. This was a village of a different sort.
"Unbelievable," she mumbled. Griffith cocked and then shook his head — not having heard what she'd said. "I said it's unbelievable!"
Griffith nodded in exaggerated fashion, grinning with pride. "Welcome to the twenty-first century, Dr. Aldridge!"
"Come this way," Griffith said in a voice barely raised above a whisper. "I'd like you to meet some friends."
Griffith, Laura, and a young foreman with whom they'd hooked up made their way through one of the assembly building's larger structures. All wore hard hats, but their goggles and ear protectors dangled loosely around their necks. Outside the thick walls of the building-within-a-building, the rhythm of activity could be heard as a continuous thrum. But inside, all was hushed.
Griffith and the foreman waited beside an open pneumatic door.
Laura passed through into the large room beyond — her jaw dropping in awe. She stepped out onto a metal walkway suspended in air above nearly a hundred motionless Model Sixes. Their lone arms sagged in various states of repose like astronauts asleep in weightlessness.
They were all backed into "recharging stations," Griffith explained in a low voice.
The room was quiet. Even the lights were low.
"I don't see any Sevens," Griffith said to the young man, who looked down at a clipboard-sized pen computer.
Tapping at different icons on the screen, the foreman said; "Next Seven isn't due in here for half an hour yet."
"Where's the nearest one?" Again the foreman tapped at the board.
"Out in the side yard."
Griffith nodded, then turned to Laura. "These old Sixes," he said, waving a slack finger down the row of slumbering robots, "need to recharge for two hours after every two hours of operation. The Sevens only charge about once every three days in normal use, and charging time is about four hours."
She leaned out over the metal railing to look down at the robot immediately below.
"The Sixes have the same chassis as the Threes — the little cars that take you around the island," Griffith explained. He spoke in tones appropriate to a library, and without knowing why Laura felt his manner to be fitting. "Since they're wheeled, they can only negotiate flat terrain. They've got a single manipulator up front," he pointed to the dark, metallic claw protruding from the stall just beneath their feet.
The tongs of the robot's claw looked like the teeth on a pair of pliers. Four inches wide, their deep grooves ran the full width of the claw and were worn shiny from use. Griffith pointed out the long tubes on either side of the two teeth, which provided hydraulic power to the robot's grip. The steel paw, Laura guessed, could easily crush anything soft. The macabre picture which sprung up in Laura's mind did nothing to endear the technology to her.
A robot across the room jerked. Laura jumped back from the rail, and Griffith and the foreman both laughed. As Laura watched, the robot raised its claw and reached slowly toward the rear of its chassis.
Atop the central trunk that rose from the robot's carriage, what looked like twin security cameras turned to follow the claw.
The gripper seized in its firm grasp a fat black plug that protruded from its socket in the wall. A cable ran from the plug into a box at the rear bumper of the Model Six. They all watched as the claw rocked the plug back and forth and back again.
The plug flew from the wall and smashed into the robot with a resounding bang. Again Laura's heart skipped a beat.
"It's a little groggy," the foreman said. The robot tried three times before successfully returning the plug to its compartment. The claw then casually backhanded the compartment's lid, tapping it for insurance before returning to its more comfortable station in front.
"Their mini-nets are inside the superstructure," Griffith said, pointing at the box-shaped housing that rose dead-center from the chassis. "They lose some of their virtual connections — the links that are programmed [missing] rather than during recharging. It only takes a minute or two for the Sixes to relearn their fine motor skills, but the Sevens are another story. They make more extensive use of virtual connections and have larger nets. The Sevens stumble around like drunken sailors for five or ten minutes before they get it together."
The Model Six rolled slowly out of its berth. High atop its superstructure sat its two "eyes" — the "security cameras" — shifting soundlessly in tandem from one object to the next. As Laura watched, the cameras grew more and more asynchronous, their movements finally totally uncoordinated as the two cameras flitted this way and that. The robot turned down the row of its resting compatriots and headed past Laura's vantage for the door.
"See its eyes turning from side to side?" Griffith asked, and Laura nodded. "Those are its principal sensory nodes. Its eyes and ears, plus infrared and thermal. It also has ultrasonic collision-avoidance range finders down around the chassis, and pressure-sensitive pads at the tips of its single end effect or — its 'arm.' That, plus what the main computer tells it about its surroundings, constitute its world — what it sees and knows."
As the robot passed, its twin sensors snapped in sudden unison to lock onto the three humans. Laura gripped the railing tightly, ready to recoil as the slack claw passed by her feet. She didn't know why, but she felt like backing away — giving the strange new creature room to pass.
"It's telling on us," the foreman said.
"It's reporting in," Griffith translated. "You can tell when it fixes on you like that." The two eyes returned to their seemingly agitated, uncoordinated search of the path ahead. "It saw us in here and called up the main computer to report."
"They sure are into spying," Laura said.
Griffith shrugged. "The robots are the computer's mobile eyes and ears. They can update the computer's world model with what we call a 'refresh scan.' But when they're in a place where the computer maintains a fairly complete representation like the restricted area, they typically only report things of special interest to the computer like when somebody steps over the work envelope line — just in case the computer missed it."
Laura looked down at the edges of the catwalk. The yellow lines ran the length of the metal span to a door on the opposite end of the room. They were well within the all-important border that separated man from machine.
"Well… why did it report on us then?" Laura asked.
Griffith looked back down at the receding machine. All he could do was shrug.
"We ceased production of the Sixes last year!" Griffith shouted as they walked down the constantly moving assembly line. Their goggles and ear protectors were back on. There were so many active machines — so much brute force at work on the floor — that the yellow line they honored so scrupulously seemed trifling and unworthy of deference.
The only thing that prevented one of those thick metal arms from swinging wildly their way was a concept — a law.
Gray's law, she found herself thinking, wondering just how much force the creator's word would carry.
"We entered full production of the Sevens ten months ago," Griffith shouted, turning to the foreman. "Let's go find that Seven in the side yard." The three of them climbed several flights of stairs and headed across a catwalk suspended high above the main floor. Down below, parts of every imaginable shape and design were transported by the broad conveyer belt like flotsam down a relentless man-made river.