Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Jasperodus knocked on a metal door but received no answer. Cautiously he walked round the building. On a terrace facing the sea sat the villa’s owner.

Aristos Lyos was aged but spry. A cap of frizzy white hair covered his scalp. He wore a simple toga-like garment caught at the waist by a purple cord. Somewhat of the spring of youth still remained in him: his spine was straight, and his face, as he turned to view the intruder, showed alertness.

That face, in youth, must have been handsome. The nose was perfectly straight and aristocratically slender. The cheeks were lean, the eyes level; the lips not full but despite that well-proportioned. It was the face of a cool, penetrating thinker.

Shyly Jasperodus approached. ‘Aristos Lyos?’

The other nodded. Jasperodus could feel his eyes on him, appraising him. He could tell a lot, no doubt, at a glance; from the way a robot moved and so on. Would he know that Jasperodus was the work of one of his own pupils, was a child of his college?

‘Know, sir, that I hold the offices of vizier to the Emperor and of Marshal of the Imperial Forces. I am here, however, in a private capacity.’

‘Then the list of your public achievements is unnecessary,’ said Lyos in a dry voice. ‘What do you want from me? If you require robots, then your journey has been wasted. I do no work now, beyond a few toys for my own amusement, and a simple construct or two as gifts for the villagers who live nearby.’

‘That is not my mission,’ Jasperodus replied. ‘I seek information only. If I may presume on your patience for a short while, all will be clear.’

‘My time is free, if your representations are not too tedious.’

Jasperodus therefore launched into a brief account of what he knew of his manufacture, describing his subsequent career – suitably foreshortened – and his continuing puzzlement.

Aristos Lyos listened with polite attention. ‘Yes,’ he agreed when Jasperodus had finished, ‘a clever robotician could incorporate this erroneous belief you hold. It could even be emphasised so strongly that it becomes an obsession, as is evidently the case with you.’ He became reflective. ‘I believe I can remember the man who made you. He came to me for advanced study at the end of a fairly long career. He could pull it off – and he obviously has done.’

‘That is not my question,’ Jasperodus insisted. ‘This is what I need to know: is there any means at all, perhaps unknown to the robotic art at large, whereby consciousness might be manufactured? Did you, perhaps, give my fa… my maker secret information? Or could he have discovered some new principle himself? Roboticians have assured me of the impossibility of this, but I shall not be entirely convinced unless I hear it from Aristos Lyos himself.’

‘It is absolutely impossible,’ Lyos stated flatly. ‘There can be no such thing as an artificially created consciousness, you may take that as being definitive. For centuries men of genius wrestled with this vain dream… eventually its futility became irrefutably established. Oddly enough I included the History of Attempted Machine Consciousness on the syllabus when your maker was with me, as I recall – so he could be accounted an expert on the subject.’ Lyos stared up at Jasperodus’ face. ‘Perhaps, seeing the distress you are trying hard to hide, I would have been kinder to lie to you. But you have asked me a straight question and I am not a devious man.’

Jasperodus’ last vestiges of hope were, indeed, vanishing upon exposure to Lyos’ words. Yet still he felt compelled to argue.

‘Item: the word “consciousness” has a meaning for me. Item: that meaning corresponds to my own “feeling of my existence”. Thus I stand here talking to you; I can feel the breeze blowing in from the sea, I can see the blue of the sea itself, and the blue of the sky above it. I experience it . How am I to reconcile this experience with what you tell me?’

‘Your items are sound, except where you interpolate the word “I” into them. Linguistically one cannot help but do so; philosophically it is incorrect. Unfortunately language as commonly used is not adequate to describe the difference between machine perception and human consciousness, although they are worlds apart. Machine perception can be fully as sophisticated as human perception, since the machinery used by the human brain and senses is in no way superior. Thus one speaks of “machine awareness”. But behind this perception there lies no “I”. No one is there to experience it . It is dead perception, dead awareness. The same holds for emotion, which some have mistakenly believed indicates human status.’

‘But I experience! ’ cried Jasperodus in anguish.

‘You imagine you experience, and hence you imagine you know the meaning of consciousness,’ Lyos told him. ‘In fact you do not, except in a hypothetical way. It is all quite mechanical with you. It is merely that you have a particularly emphatic self-reference systems – all robots have some such system, to make them think of themselves as individuals – coupled with this master stroke of an extremely ingeniously designed self-image. Your own phrase “fictitious consciousness” is an apt description of your condition.’ Lyos scratched his chin. ‘Let me try to explain the nature of machine awareness. The first time a photo-cell opened a door at the approach of a human being, machine perception was born. What you have – what you are – is of that sort, elaborated to the n th degree. Believe me, Jasperodus, if an artificial consciousness were even remotely possible, if there were just a hint of a chance of it, I would have accomplished it years ago.’

‘You are not impressed, either, by my independent spirit?’

‘It is no great feat to construct a wilful, disobedient robot. There is no call for them, that is all.’

‘All my positive qualities, it seems, must sooner or later be interpreted as negative ones,’ Jasperodus complained. He became thoughtful. ‘I have tried, by intensifying my consciousness – my imaginary consciousness, as you say – to penetrate to this deadness, this mechanical trick that ostensibly lies at the base of my being, so as to dispel the illusion. But I cannot find it.’

‘Naturally, you would not.’

Jasperodus nodded, looking out to sea.

Then he brought out his only ace. ‘Very well, Lyos, I bow to your knowledge,’ he said. ‘I admit that I am not conscious. The conviction persists that I am – but I cannot be rid of that, since it is how I am made. But what of your own conviction concerning yourself? How can it be known that man’s consciousness is not also a delusion?’

‘That is quickly settled,’ Lyos answered easily. ‘If no one possessed consciousness then the concept could not arise. Since we are able to speak of it, someone must have it. Who else but man?’

And so there Jasperodus stood, still trapped in a riddle.

‘Look upon yourself as man’s tool,’ Lyos advised gently. ‘There is much achievement in you, that is plain, and more to come. Man gave you your desires, and the energy to fulfil them. So serve man. That is what robots are for.’

Lyos tilted his head and called out in a sharp voice. ‘Socrates!’

From a pair of bay windows behind him there emerged a robot, a head smaller than Jasperodus, who stepped quietly on to the terrace. His form was rounded and smooth. The eyes were hooded, secretive, and the design of the face betokened a reticent but watchful demeanour. Instantly Jasperodus felt himself the subject of a probing intelligence that reached out from the robot like an impalpable force.

‘This here is Socrates, my masterpiece,’ announced Lyos. ‘His intelligence is vast, at times surpassing human understanding. But, like you, he has no consciousness, neither will he ever have any. If he did – there’s no knowing what he would be, what he might do.’