Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man

Li-hsing's expression had been changing as he spoke. Her face bore a look of horror now.

Andrew knew that she had already begun to understand. But he needed her to hear him out He continued inexorably, "My own positronic pathways have lasted just under two centuries now without perceptible deterioration, without any kind of undesirable change whatever, and they will surely last for centuries more. Perhaps indefinitely: who can say? The whole science of robotics is only three hundred years old and that's too short a time for anyone to be able to say what the full life-span of a positronic brain may be. Effectively my brain is immortal. Isn't that the fundamental barrier that separates me from the human race? Human beings can tolerate immortality in robots, because it's a virtue in a machine to last a long time, and nobody is psychologically threatened by that. But they would never be able to tolerate the idea of an immortal human being, since their own mortality is endurable only so long as they know it's universal. Allow one person to be exempted from death and everyone else feels victimized in the worst way. And for that reason, Li-hsing, they have refused to make me a human being."

Li-hsing said sharply, "You said you were going to get to the point Get to it, then. What is it that you've done to yourself, Andrew? I want to know!"

"I have removed the problem."

"Removed it? How?"

"Decades ago, when my positronic brain was placed in this android body, it was connected to organic nerves, but it remained carefully insulated from the metabolic forces that would otherwise have ultimately caused it to deteriorate. Now I have undergone one last operation in order to rearrange the connections along the brain-body interface. The insulation has been removed. My brain is now subject to the same forces of decay that any organic substance is vulnerable to. Things are set up now in such a way that-slowly, quite slowly-the potential is being drained from my pathways."

Chee's finely wrinkled face showed no expression for a moment. Then her lips tightened and she balled her hands into fists.

"Do you mean that you've arranged to die, Andrew? No. No, you can't possibly have done that. It would be a violation of the Third Law."

"Not so," Andrew said. "There is more than one sort of death, Li-hsing, and the Third Law does not differentiate between them. But I do. What I have done is to choose between the death of my body and the death of my aspirations and desires. To have let my body live at the cost of the greater death-that is the true violation of the Third Law. Not this. As a robot I might live forever, yes. But I tell you that I would rather die as a man than live eternally as a robot."

"Andrew! No!" Chee cried. She rose from her desk and went to him with astonishing speed, and seized his arm as though she were about to shake him. But all she did was grip it tightly, her fingers sinking deeply into his pliable synthetic flesh. "Andrew, this isn't going to get you what you want. It's nothing more than terrible folly. Change yourself back."

"I can't. Too much damage was done. The operation is irreversible."

"And now-?"

"I have a year to live, Li-hsing-more or less. I will last through the two hundredth anniversary of my construction. I confess that I was weak enough to time things so that I would still be here that long. And then-a natural death. Other robots are dismantled-they are irrevocably terminated-they are taken out of working order. I will simply die. The first robot ever to die-if, that is, it is felt that I am still a robot."

"I can't believe what you're telling me, Andrew. What good can any of this do? You've destroyed yourself for nothing-nothing! It wasn't worth it!"

"I think it was."

"Then you're a fool, Andrew!"

"No," he said gently. "If it brings me humanity at last, then it will have been worth it. And if I fail in achieving that, well, at least there will soon be an end to my fruitless striving and my pain, and that will have been worth accomplishing also."

"Pain?"

"Pain, yes. Do you think I've never felt any pain, Li-hsing?"

Li-hsing did something then that astonished Andrew beyond words.

Quietly, she began to weep.

IT WAS STRANGE how the dramatic last deed of Andrew's long life caught at the imagination of the world. Nothing that Andrew had done before had managed to sway people from their denial of his humanity. But Andrew had finally embraced even death for the sake of being fully human, now, and that sacrifice was too great to be rejected.

The story swept across the world like a hurricane. People spoke of nothing else. The bill granting Andrew what he had sought so long went through the World Legislature without opposition. No one would have dared to vote against it. There was scarcely even any debate. There was no need for it. The measure was unprecedented, yes-of course it was-but for once everyone was willing to put precedent aside.

The final ceremony was timed, quite deliberately, for the day of the two hundredth anniversary of Andrew's construction. The World Coordinator was to put his signature to the act publicly, making it law, and the ceremony would be visible on a global network and would be beamed to the lunar settlements and to the other colonies farther out in space.

Andrew was in a wheelchair. He still was capable of walking, but only shakily, now, and it would embarrass him to be seen looking so feeble when so many billions of people would be watching.

And billions were watching-watching everywhere.

The ceremony was simple and quite brief. The World Coordinator-or his electronic simulacrum, rather, for Andrew was at his home in California and the World Coordinator was in New York-began by saying, "This is a very special day, Andrew Martin, not only for you but for the entire human race. There has never been a day like it before. But then there has never been anyone like you before, either.

"Fifty years ago, Andrew, a ceremony in your honor was held at the headquarters of the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation to celebrate the hundred-fiftieth anniversary of your inception. I understand that at that ceremony one of the speakers proclaimed you to be a Sesquicentennial Robot. The statement was correct-as far as it went. But it did not go quite far enough, we realize now. And so the world has taken steps to make amends, and those amends will be made today." The World Coordinator glanced toward Andrew and smiled. There was a document before him on a little podium. The World Coordinator leaned over it and, with a grand flourish, signed his name.

Then, looking up after a moment and speaking in his most formal, solemn tone, the Coordinator said, "There you are. The decree is official and irrevocable. Your sesquicentennial anniversary is fifty years behind you, today. And so is the status of robot with which you came into the world, and for which you were cited on that day. We take that status from you now. You are a robot no longer. The document that I have just signed changes all that. Today, Mr. Martin, we declare you-a Bicentennial Man."

And Andrew, smiling in return, held out his hand as though to shake that of the World Coordinator-despite the distance of a continent's width that actually lay between them. The gesture had been carefully rehearsed, everything measured down to the millimeter. And to the billions of onlookers it seemed that the two hands did in fact meet-a warm human gesture linking, for a moment, one man with the other.

THE CEREMONY of just a few months before was only a dim memory, now, and the end was growing near. Andrew's thoughts were slowly fading as he lay in his bed in the grand house overlooking the Pacific.

Desperately he seized at them.