I, Robot: Evidence & The Inevitable Conflict

But, to get out from under what promises to be a dull and complicated beginning, it might be best to state hastily that Quinn neither ran for office nor canvassed for votes, made no speeches and stuffed no ballot boxes.

Lanning leaned back in his seat, and there was the rapt silence of challenge and response between them, and then the old roboticist shook his head.

“You have no choice. Supposing I were to make my facts public without proof. The evidence is circumstantial enough.”

Lanning bit his words off with a snap, “It is no statement of mine, sir. I would be quite satisfied to have you a member of humanity. Since our corporation never manufactured you, I am quite certain that you are—in a legalistic sense, at any rate. But since the contention that you are a robot has been advanced to us seriously by a man of certain standing—”

First, what makes you think that Quinn—this man of certain standing, you know—wasn’t hoodwinking you, in order to get you to do exactly what you are doing?

You see, I don’t sleep much, that’s true, and I certainly don’t sleep in public. I have never cared to eat with others—an idiosyncrasy which is unusual and probably neurotic in character, but which harms no one.

“Regardless, sir,” began Lanning, with a threatening obstinacy, “of whether you consider this matter serious or not, it will require only the meal I mentioned to end it.”

“But, Dr. Lanning,” said Byerley, “you forget the politics of the situation. I am as anxious to be elected as Quinn is to stop me. By the way, did you notice that you used his name? It’s a cheap shyster trick of mine; I knew you would, before you were through.”

The scene as it appeared in Alfred Lanning’s office that night was a tableau of stares. Francis Quinn stared meditatively at Alfred Lanning. Lanning’s stare was savagely set upon Susan Calvin, who stared impassively in her turn at Quinn.

From what he experienced then to incipient paranoia was but a step.

Quinn grew suddenly keen, “No, you can’t get out of it that way. Being district attorney doesn’t make him human. Don’t you know his record? Don’t you know that he boasts that he has never prosecuted an innocent man; that there are scores of people left untried because the evidence against them didn’t satisfy him, even though he could probably have argued a jury into atomizing them? That happens to be so.”

The news broke upon the city a week before Byerley was to have been nominated. But “broke” is the wrong word. It staggered upon the city, shambled, crawled.

The convention itself had the air of a restive stallion.

The day after Byerley was nominated perfunctorily, hollowly—a newspaper finally published the gist of a long interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, “world famous expert on robopsychology and positronics.”

The day after Byerley was nominated perfunctorily, hollowly—a newspaper finally published the gist of a long interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, “world famous expert on robopsychology and positronics.”

The political campaign, of course, lost all other issues, and resembled a campaign only in that it was something filling the hiatus between nomination and election.

And you may tell your employer, Mr. Harroway, that if he tries to issue a similar paper which does not implicitly recognize me as a human being, he will be immediately faced with a restraining injunction and a civil suit which will make it necessary for him to prove me a robot by means of information now in his possession, or else to pay a whopping penalty for an attempt to deprive me unduly of my Rights under the Regional Articles.

It competed against the inchoate mob howl and the rhythmic cries of the Fundie claques that formed mob-islands within the mob.

Cries of “Quiet” started in various parts of the mob, and rose to a bedlam, then toned down raggedly.

“Except that a robot might fail due to the inherent inadequacies of his brain. The positronic brain has never equalled the complexities of the human brain.”

Stephen Byerley chuckled. “I must reply that that is a somewhat farfetched idea.”

The Co-ordinator’s ruddy glass reflected, in miniature, the discreet gamboling of the flame, and, in even further miniature, it was reflected in each of his brooding pupils.

Stephen Byerley continued, “And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man..."

Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent.

He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation.

It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.

The other map was a huge one, sharply delineated, with all markings in neat Cyrillic characters.

Ching stood before these maps as he spoke to Stephen Byerley in precise English, “No one knows better than you, Mr. Co-ordinator, that my job, to a large extent, is a sinecure. It carries with it a certain social standing, and I represent a convenient focal point for administration, but otherwise it is the Machine!—The Machine does all the work..."

The Tropics had the newest capital city on Earth, and it was called simply that: “Capital City,” in the sublime confidence of youth.

“Sure,” he said, and his English was colloquial and mouthfilling, “the Mexican Canal is overdue. What the hell? It will get finished just the same, old boy.”

“And is it so terrible? No wars! We live in peace—and it is pleasant after seven thousand years of war. We are old, monsieur. In our borders, we have the regions where Occidental civilization was cradled. We have Egypt and Mesopotamia; Crete and Syria; Asia Minor and Greece.—But old age is not necessarily an unhappy time. It can be a fruition—”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Byerley, affably.

I find a parallel here; a very interesting one. There was a time when Rome was master of the world. It had adopted the culture and civilization of Greece; a Greece which had never been united, which had ruined itself with war, and which was ending in a state of decadent squalor.

I find a parallel here; a very interesting one. There was a time when Rome was master of the world. It had adopted the culture and civilization of Greece; a Greece which had never been united, which had ruined itself with war, and which was ending in a state of decadent squalor.

If we are economic vassals of the North, it is humiliating to have the fact advertised too blatantly.

If we are economic vassals of the North, it is humiliating to have the fact advertised too blatantly.

Except for the enclave of Europe with its Scandinavian and Icelandic regions, all the Arctic area was within the Northern Region.

“Impossible,” said Mackenzie, dourly, over the whiskey. “Mr. Byerley, you have had no training as a robot technician, I believe.”

These reactionaries of the Society claim the Machine robs man of his soul.

‘‘Yet, in another way, it’s hard to believe. Both the East and the Tropics are in a state of enormous expansion within their own borders. Both are climbing incredibly. They cannot have the spare energy for military adventures. And Europe can have nothing but its dreams. It is a cipher, militarily.”