Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man

"Good. I see that you're going to accede," said Paul. "You may still be hesitating now, but you're going to come around in the end. A very wise decision, may I add. But that leads to a further important point."

Smythe-Robertson's fury seemed to be fading into sullen glumness. He did not try to speak.

Paul continued, "Let me assure you that if, in the process of transferring my client's positronic brain from his present body to the organic one that you ultimately will agree to create for him, there is any damage, however slight, then I will never rest until I have nailed this corporation to the ground."

"You can't expect us to guarantee-"

"I can and I will. You've had a hundred-odd years of experience in transferring positronic brains from one robot body to another. You can surely use the same techniques in transferring one safely to an android body. And I warn you of this: if one brain-path of my client's platinum-iridium essence happens to get scrambled in the course of the work, you can be quite certain that I'll take every possible step to mobilize public opinion against this corporation-that I will expose it before all the world for the criminally vindictive operation that it has plainly revealed itself to be."

Smythe-Robertson said, shifting about miserably in his seat, "There's no way we can provide you with a total waiver of liability. There are risks in any sort of transfer."

"Low-probability ones. You don't lose a lot of positronic brains while you move them from one body to another. We're willing to accept risks of that sort. It's the possibility of deliberate and malevolent action against my client that I'm warning you against."

"We wouldn't be so stupid," said Smythe-Robertson. " Assuming we go through with this, and I haven't yet said we would, we'd exert our utmost skills. That's the way we've always worked and the way we intend to continue. You've backed me into a corner, Charney, but you've still got to realize that we can't give you a 100% assurance of success. 99%, yes. Not 100."

"Good enough. But remember: we'll throw everything we have at you if we have reason to suspect any sort of intentional harm to our client." Paul turned to Andrew and said, "What do you say, Andrew? Is this acceptable to you?"

Andrew hesitated for nearly a full minute, caught in an equilibrium of First Law potentials. What Paul wanted from him amounted to the approval of lying, of blackmail, of the badgering and humiliation of a human being.

But at least no physical harm was involved, he told himself. No physical harm.

And he managed at last to come out with a barely audible "Yes."

IT WAS LIKE being constructed allover again. For days, for weeks, for months, Andrew found himself not himself somehow, and the simplest actions kept giving rise to hesitation.

He had always been utterly at home in his body. He had only to recognize the need for a motion and he was instantly able to make that motion, smoothly, automatically. Now it took a conscious effort of self-direction. Raise your arm, he had to tell himself. Move it over here. Now put it down.

Was this what it was like for a young human child as it strived to master the mysteries of bodily coordination? Andrew wondered.

Perhaps so. He was over a hundred years old and yet he felt very much like a child as he moved about in this startling new body of his.

It was a splendid body. They had made him tall, but not so tall that he would seem overbearing or frightening. His shoulders were broad, his waist was slim, his limbs were supple and athletic. He had chosen light-brown hair for himself, since he found red too flamboyant and yellow too obvious and black too somber, and human hair did not seem to come in other colors than those, except for the gray or white or silver of age, and he had not wanted that. His eyes-photo-optic cells, really, but very convincing in appearance-were brown also, flecked ever so subtly with gold. For his skin color Andrew had selected something neutral in tone, a kind of blend of the prevailing skin colors of the various human types, darker than the pale pink of the Charneys but not quite as dark as some. That way no one would be able to tell at a glance which race he belonged to, since in fact he belonged to none. He had had the U. S. Robots designers peg his apparent age at somewhere between thirty-five and fifty human years: old enough to seem mature, not so old as to show serious signs of aging.

A fine body, yes. He was certain he would be very happy in it, once he grew accustomed to it.

Each day there was a little progress. Each day he gained more control over his elegant new android housing. But the process was terribly slow -agonizingly slow

Paul was frantic. "They've damaged you, Andrew. I'm going to have to file suit."

Andrew said, "You mustn't, Paul. You'll never be able to prove something-m-m-m-m- "Malicious?"

"Malicious, yes. Besides, I grow stronger, better. It's just the tr-tr-"

"Tremble?"

"Trauma. After all, there's never been such an op-op-op-before."

Andrew spoke very slowly. Speech was surprisingly hard now for him too, one of the hardest functions of all, a constant struggle to enunciate. It was an agony for Andrew to get the words out and an agony for anyone who had to listen to him. His entire vocal mechanism was different from what it had been previously. The efficient electronic synthesizer that had been able to make such convincingly human sounds had given way to an arrangement of resonating chambers and muscle-like structures to control them that was supposed to make his voice utterly indistinguishable from that of an organic human being; but now Andrew had to shape each syllable in a way that had been done for him before, and that was difficult work, very difficult.

Yet he felt no despair. Despair was not really a quality that he was capable of, and in any case he knew that these problems were merely temporary. He could feel his brain from the inside. No one else could; and no one else could know as well as he did that his brain was still intact, that it had come through the transfer operation unharmed. His thoughts flowed freely through the neural connections of his new body, even if the body was not yet as swift as it might be in reacting to them. Every parameter checked out perfectly.

He was merely having a few interface problems, that was all. But Andrew knew he was fundamentally well and that it would be only a matter of time until he had achieved complete control over his new housing. He had to think of himself as very young, still. Like a child, a newborn child.

The months passed. His coordination improved steadily. He moved swiftly toward full positronic interplay.

Yet not everything was as he would have wished it. Andrew spent hours before the mirror, evaluating himself as he went through his repertoire of facial expressions and bodily motions. And what he saw fell far short of the expectations he had had for his new body.

Not quite human! The face was stiff-too stiff-and he doubted that that was going to improve with time. He would press his finger against his cheek and the flesh would yield, but not in the way that true human flesh would yield. He could smile or scowl or frown, but they were studied, imitative smiles and scowls and frowns. He would give the smile-signal or the frown-signal or whatever, and the muscles of his face would obediently hoist the smile-expression or the frown-expression into view, pulling his features around in accordance with a carefully designed program. He was always conscious of the machinery, organic though it might be, clanking ponderously around beneath his skin to produce the desired effect. That was not how it happened with human beings, Andrew suspected.

And his motions were too deliberate. They lacked the careless free flow of the human being. He could hope that that would come after a while-he was already far beyond the first dismal days after the operation, when he had staggered awkwardly about his room like some sort of crude pre-positronic automaton-but something told him that even with this extraordinary new body he was never going to be able to move in the natural way that virtually every human being took for granted.