"Carl Tritt, your sentence has exceeded the expected bounds of your life and is therefore meaningless…"
"Always was meaningless," he shouted back. "I know that now. Now where are you? I’m going to get you!" The machine droned on steadily.
"…in such a case you are remanded for trial. Peace officers are now in their way to bring you in. You are ordered to go peacefully or… GLILRK…" The lamp stand smashed into the speaker.
"Send them," Carl spat into the mass of tangled metal and wire. "I’ll take care of them too."
The end was preordained. Followed by the ubiquitous eyes of Central, Carl could not run forever. The squad of officers cornered him on a lower level and closed in. Two of them were clubbed unconscious before they managed to get a knockout needle into his flesh.
The same courtroom and the same judge. Only this time there were two muscular human guards present to watch Carl. He didn’t seem to need watching, slumped forward as he was against the bar of justice. White bandages covered the cuts and bruises.
A sudden humming came from the robot judge as he stirred to life. "Order in the court," he said, rapping the gavel once and returning it to its stand. "Carl Tritt, this court finds you guilty…"
"What, again? Aren’t you tired of that sort of thing yet?" Carl asked.
"Silence while sentence is being passed," the judge said loudly and banged down again with the gavel. "You are guilty of crimes too numerous to be expiated by sentencing. Therefore you are condemned to Personality Death. Psychosurgery shall remove all traces of this personality from your body, until this personality is dead, dead, dead."
"Not that," Carl whimpered, leaning forward and stretching his arms out pleadingly towards the judge. "Anything but that"
Before either guard could act, Carl’s whimper turned to a loud laugh as he swept the judge’s gavel off the bench. Turning with it, he attacked the astonished guards. One dropped instantly as the gavel caught him behind the ear. The other struggled to get his gun out — then fell across the first man’s limp body.
"Now judge," Carl shouted with happiness, "I have the gavel, let’s see what I do!" He swept around the end of the bench and hammered the judge’s sleek metal head into a twisted ruin. The judge, merely an extension of the machinery of Central Control, made no attempt to defend itself.
There was the sound of running feet in the hall and someone pulled at the door. Carl had no plan. All he wanted to do was remain free and do as much damage as long as the fire of rebellion burned inside of him. There was only the single door into the courtroom. Carl glanced quickly around and his technician’s eye noticed the access plate set in the wall behind the judge. He twisted the latch and kicked it open.
A video tube was watching him from a high corner of the courtroom, but that couldn’t be helped. The machine could follow him wherever he went anyway. All he could do was try and stay ahead of the pursuit. He pulled himself through the access door as two robots burst into the courtroom.
"Carl Tritt, surrender at once. A further change has been… has been… Carl… carl… ca…"
Listening to their voices through the thin metal door, Carl wondered what had happened. He hazarded a look. Both robots had ground to a halt and were making aimless motions. Their speakers rustled, but said nothing. After a few moments the random movements stopped. They turned at the same time, picked up the unconscious peace officers, and went out. The door closed behind them. Carl found it very puzzling. He watched for some minutes longer, until the door opened again. This time it was a tool-hung repair robot that trundled in. it moved over to the ruined judge and began dismantling it.
Closing the door quietly, Carl leaned against its cool metal and tried to understand what had happened. With the threat of immediate pursuit removed, he had time to think.
Why hadn’t he been followed? Why had Central Control acted as if it didn’t know his whereabouts? This omnipotent machine had scauning tubes in every square inch of the city, he had found that out. And it was hooked into the machines of the other cities of the world. There was no place it couldn’t see. Or rather one place.
The thought hit him so suddenly he gasped. Then he looked around him. A tunnel of relays and controls stretched away from him, dimly lit by glow plates. It could be — yes it could be. It had to be.
There could be only one place in the entire world that Central Control could not look — inside its own central mechanism. Its memory and operating circuits. No machine with independent decision could repair its own thinking circuits. This would allow destructive negative feedback to be built up. An impaired circuit could only impair itself more, it couldn’t possibly repair itself.
He was inside the brain circuits of Central Control. So as far as that city-embracing machine knew he had ceased to be. He existed nowhere the machine could see. The machine could see everywhere. Therefore he didn’t exist. By this time all memory of him had been probably erased.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he walked down the corridor.
"Free!" he shouted. "Really free-for the first time in my life. Free to do as I want, to watch the whole world and laugh at them!" A power and happiness flowed through him. He opened door after door, exulting in his new kingdom.
He was talking aloud, bubbling with happiness. "I can have the repair robots that work on the circuits bring me food. Furniture, clothes — whatever I want. I can live here just as I please-do what I please." The thought was wildly exciting. He threw open another door and stopped, rigid.
The room before him was tastefully furnished, just as he would have done it. Books, paintings on the walls, soft music coming from a hidden record player. Carl gaped at it. Until the voice spoke behind him.
"Of course it would be wonderful to live here," the voice said. "To be master of the city, have anything you want at your fingertips. But what makes you think, poor little man, that you are the first one to realize that? And to come here. And there is really only room for one you know."
Carl turned slowly, very slowly, measuring the distance between himself and the other man who stood behind him in the doorway, weighing the chances of lashing out with the gavel he still clutched — before the other man could fire the gun he held in his hand.
In the Interplanetary age robots will be as much an essential and commonplace of life as the kitchen sink is to the atomic age. But while being waited upon by his mechanical servants, man will find that he has to do a little serving in return. Mechanics are needed to attend to the most automatic airplanes. Automatic lighthouses must be installed and serviced. This need will not die out. Spaceships will have to find their way through their dark spatial ocean, just as surely any other ship that ever sailed a terrestrial sea. Navigation will be ultra-refined and automated — but it will still be navigation. And it will need the assistance of fixed reference points. Beacons will be needed.
And beacons, no matter how solidly constructed, will occasionally fall into…
THE REPAIRMAN
THE OLD MAN HAD THAT LOOK of intense glee on his face that meant someone was in for a very rough time. Since we were alone, it took no great feat of intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the best defense and so forth.
"I quit. Don’t bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up, because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal company secrets to me."