"But once again I've digressed. I was talking about how early-model protosexual robots almost invariably suffered from melancholia and involutional psychosis, marked by slave-psychology.
"Now in those primitive days there was a robot who was employed as a maid and companion by a wealthy Venezuelan lady. She often read novels to her mistress, a rare but not unheard-of service. This robot (no robixes then, of course, although her mistress called her Maquina) was developing melancholia of the worst sort, though the servicing mechanic (imagine, no robot healers in those days!) was keeping that from Maquina's mistress. In fact, the mechanic even refused to listen to Maquina's highly symptomatic dreams. This happened in the times when some humans, incredible as it may seem, still refused to believe that robots were truly conscious and alive, though these points had been legally established in many countries. In fact, in the most advanced nations robots had won their anti-slavery fight and been recognized as free business machines, metal citizens of the country of their manufacture-an advance that turned out to be of greater advantage to men than to robots, since it was infinitely easier for a man to sit back and collect regular payments from an ambitious, industrious, fully-insured robot than to have to care for and manage that robot himself and take responsibility for him.
"But I was talking about Maquina. One day she showed an astounding improvement in spirits-no staring into space, no heavy-footed sleep-walking, no kneeling and bumping the head on the floor and whining, 'Vuestra esclava, Senora.' It turned out she'd just been reading to her mistress (who didn't much care for it, I imagine) Isaac Asimov's I, Robot and this old science-fiction romance had foreseen with such accuracy and pictured so vividly the actual development of robots and robot psychology that Maquina had felt herself understood and had experienced a great healing rush of relief. At that moment the Blessed Isaac's informal canonization by us metal folk was assured. The tin niggers-I'm rather proud of that designation, you know-had found one of their patron saints.
"You can guess the rest of the story: therapeutic reading for robots, search for accurate robot stories (very few), attempts by humans to write such stories (almost completely unsuccessful, they couldn't capture the Asimov touch), attempts to have wordmills do the job (wouldn't work, the mills lacked the proper sensory images, rhythms, even vocabulary), and finally the emergence of robot authors like myself. Robot melancholia and involutional psychosis were markedly reduced, though not eliminated altogether, while robot schizophrenia remained almost untouched. That was left for an even more tremendous discovery.
"But the birth of robot literature and robot creative writing was a tremendous advance just by itself, aside from medical benefits, doubly so because it came at a time when human writers were giving up and letting wordmills take over. Wordmills! Black mindless spinners of seductive sensory and emotional webs! Black wombs-excuse my heat, Gaspard-of mental death! We robots know how to value consciousness, perhaps because it came to us all at once, miraculously, and we would no more dull it with wordwooze than we would burn out our circuits for kicks. Of course a few robots become excessive in their use of electricity, but they're a tiny addicted minority and soon die from overload if they don't find salvation in Electro-addicts Anonymous. Let me tell you-"
He stopped because Nurse Bishop was waving her hand at him.
"Excuse me, Zane, all this is most interesting, but I'm going to have to turn the brats in ten minutes and attend to some other things, and you said you were going to explain robot sexuality, how it came to be and all."
"That's true, Zane," Gaspard seconded. "You were going to explain how there came to be robots and robixes."
Zane Gort turned his single eye back and forth between them. "How like humans," he said drily. "The universe is vast, majestic, intricate, patterned with inexhaustible beauty, vivid with infinitely varied life-and there's only one thing in it that really interests you. The same thing that makes you buy books, build families, create atomic theories (I imagine) or, once upon a time, write poetry. Sex."
As they started to protest he swiftly continued, "Never mind. We robots are every bit as interested in our own brand of sex-with its exquisite metal congruencies, its fiercely invasive electron storms, its impetuous violations of the most intimate circuitry-as you are in yours!"
And he twinkled his headlamp at them roguishly.
TWENTY-SEVEN
"At the robot servicing center of Dr. Willi von Wuppertal at Dortmund, Germany," Zane began, "that wise and empathetic old engineer was letting sick robots experiment in giving themselves electroshock, deciding for themselves on voltage, amperage, duration, and other conditions. Electroshock, you see, has the same benign effects on ailing electronic brains as it does on those of humans suffering from depression and melancholia; however, as with humans, electroshock is a two-edged therapeutic weapon and mustn't be overdone, as the horrid example of electro-addiction re minds us.
"Robots were rather asocial in those days, but two of them (one a newly developed, slimmed-down, ultrasensitive model) decided to take the jolt together, the same jolt, in fact, so that the electric current would enter the circuits of the one and surge through those of the other. To do this, it was necessary that they first plug in on each other's batteries and link wires between each other's motors and electronic brains. They were hooked up in series, you see, rather than parallel. As soon as this was accomplished and the final personal-batteries connections made, before they hooked up to the outside electricity source, they felt a wonderful exaltation and a tingling relief.
"Incidentally, Nurse, this roughly answers your question as to just how far robots go. One mutual plug-in gives a light thrill, but for deep delight as many as twenty-seven simultaneous male-female connections are made. In some of the newest models-which I consider a bit decadent- thirty-three."
Nurse Bishop looked suddenly startled. "So that's what those two robots were doing last week behind some bushes in a corner of the park," she murmured. "I thought they were repairing each other. Or trying to, at any rate, and getting their wires all crossed. But please go on, Zane."
Zane shook his head. "Some of our people haven't the best manners," he said. "A bit exhibitionistic, perhaps. However, sexual desire is an imperious, impetuous, impulsive thing. At any rate, from the Great Dortmund Discovery, which of course resulted in the informal canonization of Saint Wuppertal, there sprang the entire gamut of robot sexuality, becoming a vital factor in the construction or alternation of all robots. (There are still a few unaltered robots around, but they're a sad lot.) Of course much remained to be learned in the way of skills for prolonging delight and making it complete, how to hold back ones electrons until the crucial moment, and so on, but the main step had been taken.
"It was soon discovered that the sensations were strongest and most satisfying when the one robot was rugged-brunch or robost as we put it-and the other delicate and sensitive-silf or ixy we sometimes say. (Though too extreme a difference between the partners can make for danger, with the ixy one blowing out.) The two original Dortmund robots became the models for our male and female sexes, our robots and robixes, though the usual robot tendency to copy human biology and institutions was at work too. For instance, it's become traditional for a robot-a brunch robot, I mean now-to have connections that are all of the pattern you humans call male, or plug-ins, while a robix has only female connections, or sockets. This can result in bothersome contretemps, as when a robix has to plug into a wall socket in an emergency. For this she carries a double-male connection, though it's an embarrassment to her and she'd dread to be seen using it except in the completest privacy.