The Positronic Man (Page 55)

"But there remains myself, and I stay on Earth."

"Well, that’s true. But you’re you, a complete anomaly, a robot unto himself, the only android robot. You aren’t the prototype of a line. You’re simply a unique item that they happened to have turned out in a very different sort of era, and after you were produced they made good and sure that you’d remain unique. No scope for further development there. No state-of-the-art advances. No art; no state. There doesn’t seem to be much of the robot about you, anyway. You’re pretty much out of our horizon. -why have you come here, anyway?"

"For an upgrade," Andrew said.

Magdescu laughed harshly. "Didn’t you pay any attention to anything I’ve just been telling you? There’s no real progress going on here! This is a research center, yes, but all our research is headed in exactly the wrong direction! We’re trying to make robots simpler and more mechanical all the time. And here you are-the most advanced robot that ever existed or apparently ever will exist-coming in here and asking us to make you even better? How could we? What could we possibly do for you that hasn’t already been done?"

"This," said Andrew.

He handed Magdescu a memory disk. The research director stared at it balefully, as though Andrew had put a jellyfish or a frog into the palm of his hand.

"What’s this?" he asked, finally. "The schematics for my next upgrade."

"Schematics," Magdescu said puzzledly. "Upgrade."

"Yes. I wish to be even less a robot than I am now. Since I am organic up to a point, I want now to have an organic source of energy. You can provide it for me. The necessary research work has already been done."

"By whom?"

"Me."

"You’ve designed your own upgrade?" Magdescu began to chuckle. Then the chuckle became a laugh, and then the laugh dissolved into a manic giggle. "Wonderful! The robot walks in here and hands the Director of Research the upgrade schematics! And who did them? The robot himself did them! Wonderful! Wonderful! -You know, when I was a little boy my grandmother used to read a book to me, an ancient book that I guess has been completely forgotten by now, a book called Alice in Wonderland. About a little girl of three or four hundred years ago who follows a rabbit down a hole and lands in a world where everything is completely absurd, except no one knows it’s absurd so they all take it terribly seriously. This is like something right out of that book. Or the sequel. Alvin in Wonderland, I could call it. Although I think there already is a sequel, actually." Magdescu was speaking very rapidly now, almost wildly. "Should I take this seriously, this set of upgrade schematics? It’s all just a joke, isn’t it?"

"No. Not at all."

"Not-a-joke."

"No. I am quite serious, I assure you. Why don’t you play my disk, Dr. Magdescu?"

"Yes. Why don’t I?" He touched a stud in the wall and a desk rose from somewhere, with a scanner outlet on it. Swiftly he slid the disk into the scanner slot and the screen instantly blossomed into vivid color. Andrew’s name appeared in bright crimson, with a long list of patent numbers below it. Magdescu nodded and told the scanner to keep going. A sequence of complicated diagrams began to appear on the screen.

Magdescu stood stiffly, watching the screen with increasingly intense concentration. Now and then he murmured something to himself or toyed with his beard. After a while he glanced toward Andrew with a strange expression in his eyes and said, "This is remarkably ingenious. Remarkably. Tell me: you really did all of this yourself?"

"Yes."

"Hard to believe!"

"Is it? Please try."

Magdescu shot a sharp, inquiring look at Andrew, who met his gaze steadily and calmly. The research director shrugged and ordered the scanner to continue. Diagram succeeded diagram. The entire metabolic progression was there, from intake to absorption. Occasionally Magdescu would back the sequence up so that he could restudy one that he had seen before. After a little while he paused again and said, "What you’ve set out here is something more than just an upgrade, you know. It’s a major qualitative alteration of your biological program."

"Yes. I realize that."

"Highly experimental. Unique. Unheard-of. Nothing like it has ever been attempted or even proposed. -why do you want to do something like this to yourself?"

”I have my reasons," Andrew said.

"Whatever they are, they can’t really be very carefully thought out."

Andrew, as ever, maintained tight self-control. "On the contrary, Dr. Magdescu. What you have just seen is the result of years of study."

"I suppose so; And technically it’s all very impressive, you know. These are terrific schematics and the only word I can find for the conceptual framework is ‘brilliant.’ But all the same I can think of a million reasons why you shouldn’t go in for these changes and none at all why you should. We’re looking at really risky stuff, here. Trust me: what you’re proposing to have done to yourself is right out on the farthest reaches of the possible. Take my advice and stay the way you are."

It was more or less what Andrew had feared Magdescu would say. But he had not come here with any intention of yielding.

"I’m sure you mean well, Dr. Magdescu. I hope you do, at any rate. But I insist on having this work done."

"Insist, Andrew?" Magdescu said.

He looked astounded-as though, despite all his earlier talk of what a lifelike product Andrew was, he was only just now beginning to comprehend that it was a robot with which he was having this conversation.

"Insist, yes." Andrew wondered whether the impatience that he felt was sufficiently visible in his face, but he was certain that Magdescu could detect it in his voice. "Dr. Magdescu, you’re overlooking an important point here. You have no choice but to accede to my request."