Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man

All those whom Andrew had-loved-were gone, though. That was saddening and liberating both. The chain was broken, for him. It could never be restored. But at least he could do as he pleased, now, without fear of troubling those who had been so close to him. Now, with the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt free to proceed with his plan for upgrading his android body. That was some sort of partial consolation for his loss.

Nevertheless he was alone in the world, or so it seemed to him-not simply because he was a positronic brain in a unique android body, but because he had no affiliations of any sort. And it was a world that had every reason to be hostile to his aspirations. All the more reason, Andrew thought, to continue along the path he had long ago chosen-the path that he hoped would ultimately make him invulnerable to the world into which he had been thrust so impersonally, without his leave, so many years before.

In fact Andrew was not quite as alone as he thought. Men and women might die, but corporations lived on just as robots did, and the law firm of Feingold and Charney still functioned even though no Feingolds and no Charneys remained. The firm had its directions and it followed them impeccably and soullessly. By way of the trust that held his investments and through the income that Andrew drew from the firm as Paul Charney's heir, Andrew continued to be wealthy. That enabled him to pay a large annual retainer to Feingold and Charney to keep them involved in the legal aspects of his research-in particular, the new combustion chamber.

It was time now for Andrew to pay another call on the headquarters of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men.

This would be the third time in his long life that Andrew had had face-to-face dealings with high executives of the powerful robot-manufacturing corporation. On the first occasion, back in the days of Merwin Mansky, Mansky and managing director Elliot Smythe had come out to California to see him. But that was when Sir had still been alive, and imperious old Sir had been able to command even Smythes and Robertsons into his presence. On the next occasion, many years later, Andrew and Paul had been the ones to make the journey to the company-to see Harley Smythe-Robertson and arrange for Andrew's transfer to the android body.

Now Andrew would make the journey east a second time, but he would go alone. And this time he would have the visage and bodily frame, if not the inner organs, of a human being.

U.S. Robots had changed greatly since Andrew's last visit. The main production factory had been shifted to a large space station, as was the case with many other industrial facilities. Only the research center remained behind on Earth, in a grand and lovely parklike setting of vast green lawns and sturdy wide-spreading leafy trees.

The Earth itself, its population long since stabilized at about a billion-plus a robot population about equally large-was becoming parklike virtually everywhere. The terrible damage to the environment that had been perpetrated in the hectic early centuries of the Industrial Revolution was largely only a memory, now. The sins of the past had not exactly been forgotten, but they had come to seem unreal to the inhabitants of the reborn Earth, and with each passing generation it became harder and harder to believe that people once had been willing to commit such monstrous and ultimately self-destructive crimes against their own world. Now that industry had largely moved to space and clean, efficient robot labor served the needs of those humans who had remained behind, the planet's natural healing powers had been allowed to come into play, and the seas were pure again, the skies were clear, the woodlands had reclaimed territory once occupied by dense, grimy cities.

A robot greeted Andrew when his aeroflitter landed at the U. S. Robots airstrip. Its face was bland and blank and its red photoelectric eyes were utterly expressionless. Scarcely thirty percent of the robots of Earth, Andrew knew, were still independently brained: this one was an empty creature, nothing more than the mindless metal puppet of some immobile positronic thinking-device housed deep within the U. S. Robots complex.

"I am Andrew Martin," Andrew said. "I have an appointment with Director of Research Magdescu."

"Yes. You will follow me."

Lifeless. Brainless. A mere machine. A thing.

The robot greeter led Andrew briskly along a paved path that gleamed with some inner crystalline brightness and up a shining spiral ramp into a domed many-leveled building covered with a glistening and iridescent translucent skin. To Andrew, who had had little experience of modern architecture, it had the look of something out of a storybook-light, airy, shimmering, not entirely real.

He was allowed to wait in a broad oval room carpeted with some lustrous synthetic material that emitted a soft glow and a faint, pleasant sort of music whenever Andrew moved about on its surface. He found that if he walked in a straight line the glow was pale pink and the music was mildly percussive in texture, but that when he sauntered in a curve that followed the border of the room the light shifted more toward the blue end of the spectrum and the music seemed more like the murmuring of the wind. He wondered if any of this had any significance and decided that it did not: that it was mere ornamentation, a decorative frill. In this placid and unchallenging era such lovely but meaningless decorative touches were ubiquitous, Andrew knew

"Ah-Andrew Martin at last," a deep voice said.

A short, stocky man had appeared in the room as though some magic had conjured him out of the carpet. The newcomer was dark of complexion and hair, with a little pointed beard that looked as though it had been lacquered, and he wore nothing above the waist except the breastband that fashion now dictated. Andrew himself was more thoroughly covered. He had followed George Charney in adopting the "drapery" style of clothing, thinking that its flowing nature would better conceal what he still imagined to be a certain awkwardness of his movements, and though the stylishness of drapery was several decades obsolete now and Andrew could move as easily and gracefully as any human, he had continued to dress in that manner ever since.

"Dr. Magdescu?" Andrew asked.

"Indeed. Indeed." Alvin Magdescu took up a stance a couple of meters from Andrew and scanned him with undisguised fascination, as though Andrew were an exhibit in a museum. "Splendid! You are absolutely splendid!"

"Thank you," Andrew said, a little coolly. Magdescu's compliment did not strike him as entirely welcome. It was the kind of impersonal appraisal that some finely manufactured machine might receive; and Andrew saw no reason to take pleasure these days in that sort of thing when it was directed at him.

"How good of you to come!" Magdescu cried. "How eager I have been to see you! But I am being impolite." And he stepped forward with a sort of lunging, bounding motion until he was virtually standing toe to toe with Andrew. He held out his hand, palm upward, fingers outstretched.

Yes. A new form of greeting that evidently had replaced the handshake that had dominated human social intercourse for so many hundreds of years. Andrew wasn't in the habit of shaking hands with human beings, let alone making this new gesture. Shaking hands was simply not something that occurred to a robot to do. But Magdescu seemed to be expecting it, and the offer helped to ease the sting of his first few words. And so Andrew responded as he realized he was meant to, by offering his own hand. He held it above Magdescu's and bent the tips of his fingers downward until they touched the tips of the other man's.

It was an odd feeling, this touching of hands with a human as though they were equals. Odd and a little disturbing, but encouraging, also.