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I, ROBOT

Amazing Stories, January1939

byEandoBinder (1911-1975)

My Creation

Much of what has occurred puzzles me. But I think I am beginning to understand now. You call me a

monster, but you arewrong. Utterly wrong!

I will try to prove it to you, in writing. I hope I have time to finish... .

I will begin at the beginning. I was born, or created, six months ago, on November 3 of last year. I am a

true robot.

So many of you seem to have doubts.I am made of wires and wheels, not flesh and blood.

My first recollection of consciousness was a feeling of being chained, and I was. For three days before

that, I had been seeing and hearing, but all in a jumble. Now, I had the urge to arise and peer more

closely at the strange, moving form that I had seen so many times before me, making sounds.

The moving form was Dr. Link, my creator. He was the only thing that moved, of all the objects within

my sight. He and one other object—his dog Terry. Therefore these two objects held my interest more. I

hadn't yet learned to associate movement with life.

But on this fourth day, I wanted to approach the two mov-ing shapes and make noises at

them—particularly at the smaller one. His noises were challenging, stirring. They made me want to rise

and quiet them. But I was chained. I was held down by them so that, in my blank state of mind, I

wouldn't wander off and bring myself to an untimely end, or harm' someone unknowingly.

These things, of course, Dr. Link explained to me later, when I could dissociate my thoughts and

understand . I was just like a baby for those three days—a human baby. I am not as other so-called

robots were—mereautomatized machines designed to obey certaincommands or arranged stimuli.

No, I was equipped with a pseudo-brain that could receive all stimuli that human brains could.And with

possibilities of eventually learning to rationalize for itself.

But for three days Dr. Link was very anxious about my brain. I was like a human baby and yet I was

also like a sen-sitive, but unorganized, machine, subject to the whim of mechanical chance. My eyes

turned when a bit of paper flut-tered to the floor. But photoelectric cells had been made before capable

of doing the same. My mechanical ears turned to receive sounds best from a certain direction, but any

scien-tist could duplicate that trick with sonic relays.

The question was—did my brain, to which the eyes and ears wereconnected, hold on to these various

impressions for future use? Did I have, in short— memory?

Three days I was like a newborn baby. And Dr. Link was like a worried father, wondering if his child

had been born a hopeless idiot. But on the fourth day, he feared I was a wild animal. I began to make

rasping sounds with my vocal ap-paratus, in answer to the sharp little noises Terry the dog made. I shook

my swivel head at the same time and strained against my bonds.

For a while, as Dr. Link told me, he was frightened of me. I seemed like nothing so much as an enraged

jungle creature, ready to go berserk. He had more than half a mind to destroy me on the spot.

But one thing changed his mind and saved me.

The little animal, Terry, barking angrily, rushed forward suddenly. It probably wanted to bite me. Dr.

Link tried to call it back, but too late. Finding my smooth metal legs adamant, the dog leaped with foolish

bravery in my lap, to come at my throat. One of my hands grasped it by the middle, held it up. My metal

fingers squeezed too hard, and the dog gave out a pained squeal.

Instantaneously, my hand opened to let the creature escape! Instantaneously.My brain had interpreted the

sound for what it was. A long chain of memory-association had worked. Three days before, when I had

first been brought to life, Dr. Link had stepped on Terry's foot accidentally. The dog had squealed its

pain. I had seen Dr. Link, at risk of losing his balance, instantly jerk up his foot. Terry had stopped

squealing.

Terry squealed when my hand tightened. He would stop when Iuntightened .Memory-association. The

thing psycholo-gists call reflexive reaction.A sign of a living brain.

Dr. Link tells me he let out a cry of pure triumph. He knew at a stroke I had memory. He knew I was

not a wanton monster. He knew I had a thinking organ, and a first-class one. Why?Because I had

reacted instantaneously.You will realize what that means later.

I learned to walk in three hours. Dr. Link was still taking somewhat of a chance, unbinding my chains.

He had no as-surance that I would not just blunder away like a witless machine. But he knew he had to

teach me to walk before I could learn to talk. The same as he knew he must bring my brain alive fully

connected to the appendages and pseudo-or-gans it was later to use.

If he had simply disconnected my legs and arms for those first three days, my awakening brain would

never have been able to use them when connected later. Do you think, if you were suddenly endowed

with a third arm, that you could ever use it? Why does it take a cured paralytic so long to regain the use

of his natural limbs?Mental blind spots in the brain.

Dr. Link had all those strange psychological twists figured out.

Walk first. Talk next. That is the tried-and-true rule used among humans since the dawn of their species.

Human ba-bies learn best and fastest that way. And I was a human baby in mind, if not body.

Dr. Link held his breath when I first essayed to rise. I did, slowly, swaying on my metal legs. Up in my

head, I had a three-directional spirit-level electrically contacting my brain. It told me automatically what

was horizontal, vertical, and oblique. My first tentative step, however, wasn't a success. My knee joints

flexed in reverse order. I clattered to my knees, which fortunately were knobbed with thick protective

plates so that the more delicate swiveling mechanisms behind weren't harmed.

Dr. Link says I looked up at him like a startled child might. Then I promptly began walking along on my

knees, finding this easy. Children would do this more only that it hurts them. I know no hurt.

After I had roved up and down the aisles of his workshop for an hour, nicking up his furniture terribly,

walking on my knees seemed completely natural. Dr. Link was in a quandary how to get me up to my full

height. He tried grasping my arm and pulling me up, but my 300 pounds of weightwere too much for him.

My own rapidly increasing curiosity solved the problem. Like a child discovering the thrill of added

height with stilts, my next attempt to rise to my full height pleased me. I tried staying up. I finally mastered

the technique of alternate use of limbs and shift of weight forward.

In a couple` of hours Dr. Link was leading me up and down the gravel walk around his laboratory. On

my legs, it was quite easy for him to pull me along and thus guide me. Little Terry gamboled along at our

heels, barking joyfully. The dog had accepted me as a friend.

I was by this time quite docile to Dr. Link's guidance. My impressionable mind had quietly accepted him

as a necessary tin and check. I did, he told me later, make tentative movements in odd directions off the

path, motivated by vague stimuli, but his firm arm pulling me back served instantly to seep me in line. He

paraded up and down with me as one night with an irresponsible oaf.

I would have kept on walking tirelessly for hours, but Dr. Link's burden of years quickly fatigued him

and he led me inside. When he had safely gotten me seated in my metal chair, he clicked the switch on

my chest that broke the elec-tric current giving me life. And for the fourth time I knew that dreamless

non-being which corresponded to my creator's periods of sleep.

My Education

In three days I learned to talk reasonably well.

I give Dr. Link as much credit as myself. In those three days he pointed out the names of all objects in

the laboratory and around. This fund of two hundred or so nouns he supple-mented with as many verbs

of action as he could demon-strate. Once heard and learned, a word never again was forgotten or

obscured to me.Instantaneous comprehension.Photographic memory. Those things I had.

It is difficult to explain. Machinery is precise, unvarying. I am a machine. Electrons perform their tasks

instantaneously. Electrons motivate my metallic brain.

Thus, with the intelligence of a child of five at the end of those three days, I was taught to read by Dr.

Link. My pho-toelectric eyes instantly grasped the connection between speech and letter, as my mentor

pointed them out. Thought-association filled in the gaps of understanding. I perceived without delay that

the word "lion," for instance, pronounced in its peculiar way, represented a live animal crudely pictured in

the book. I have never seen a lion. But I would know one the instant I did.

From primers and first-readers I graduated in less than a week to adult books. Dr. Link laid out an

extensive reading course for me in his large library. It included fiction as well as factual matter. Into my

receptive, retentive brain began to be poured a fund of information and knowledge never before equaled

in that short period of time.

There are other things to consider besides my "birth" and "education." First ofall the housekeeper. She

came in once a week to clean up the house for Dr. Link. He was a recluse, lived by himself, cooked for

himself—retired on an annuity from an invention years before.

The housekeeper had seen me in the process of construc-tion in the past years, but only as an inanimate

caricature of a human body. Dr. Link should have known better. When the first Saturday of my life came

around, he forgot it was the day she came. He was absorbedly pointing out to me that "to run" meant to

go faster than "to walk."

"Demonstrate," Dr. Link asked as I claimed understanding.

Obediently, I took a few slow steps before him. "Walking," I said. Then I retreated a ways and

lumbered forward again, running for a few steps. The stone floor clattered under my metallic feet.

"Was—that—right?" I asked in my rather stentorian voice.

At that moment a terrified shriek sounded from the doorway. The housekeeper came up just in time to

see me perform.

She screamed, making more noise than even I. "It's the Devil himself! Run, Dr. Link—run!

Police—help—"

She fainted dead away. He revived her and talked sooth-ingly to her, trying to explain what I was, but

he had to get a new housekeeper. After this he contrived to remember when Saturday came, and on that

day he kept me hidden in a storeroom reading books.

A trivial incident in itself, perhaps, but very significant, as you who will read this will agree.

Two months after my awakening to life, Dr. Link one day spoke to me in a fashion other than as teacher

to pupil; spoke to me as man to—man.

"You are the result of twenty years of effort," he said, "and my success amazes even me. You are little

short of being a human in mind. You are a monster, a creation, but you are basically human. You have no

heredity. Your envi-ronment is molding you. You are the proof that mind is an electrical phenomenon,

molded by environment. In human beings, their bodies—called heredity—are environment. But out of

you I will make a mental wonder!"

His eyes seemed to burn with a strange fire, but this softened as he went on.

"I knew I had something unprecedented and vital twenty years ago when I perfectedan iridium sponge

sensitive to the impact of a single electron. It was the sensitivity of thought! Mental currents in the human

brain are of this micro-magnitude. I had the means now of duplicating mind currents in an artificial

medium. From that day to this I worked on the problem.

"It was not long ago that I completed your 'brain'—an in-tricate complex of iridium-sponge cells. Before

I brought it to life, I had your body built by skilled artisans. I wanted you to begin life equipped to live

and move in it as nearly in the hu-man way as possible. How eagerly I awaited your debut into the

world!"

His eyes shone.

"You surpassed my expectations. You are not merely a thinking robot.A metal man. You are—life!A

new kind of life. You can be trained to think, to reason, to perform. In the future, your kind can be of

inestimable aid to man, and his civilization. You are the first of your kind."

The days and weeks slipped by.My mind matured and gathered knowledge steadily from Dr. Link's

library. I was able, in time, to scan and absorb a page at a time of reading matter, as readily as human

eyes scan lines. You know of the television principle—a pencil of light moving hundreds of times a

second over the object to be transmitted. My eyes, triggered with speedy electrons, could do the same.

What I read was absorbed—memorized—instantly. From then on it was part of my knowledge.

Scientific subjects particularly claimed my attention. There was always something indefinable about

human things, something I could not quite grasp, but science digested easily in my science-compounded

brain. It was not long before I knew all aboutmyself and why I "ticked," much more fully than most

humans know why they live, think, and move.

Mechanical principles became starkly simple to me. I made suggestions for improvements in my own

make-up that Dr. Link readily agreed upon correcting. We added little univer-sals in my fingers, for

example, that made them almost as supple as their human models.

Almost, I say. The human body is a marvelously perfected organic machine. No robot will ever equal it

in sheer effi-ciency and adaptability. I realized my limitations.

Perhaps you will realize what I mean when I say that my eyes cannot see colors. Or rather, I see just

one color, in the blue range. It would take an impossibly complex series of units, bigger than my whole

body, to enable me to see all colors. Nature has packed all that in two globes the size of marbles, for her

robots. She had a billion years to do it. Dr. Link only had twenty years.

But my brain—that was another matter. Equipped with only the two senses of one-color sight and

limited sound, it was yet capable of garnishing a full experience. Smell and taste are gastronomic senses. I

do not need them. Feeling is a device of Nature's to protect a fragile body. My body is not fragile.

Sight and sound are the only two cerebral senses. Einstein, color-blind, half-dead, and with deadened

senses of taste, smell, and feeling, would still have been Einstein—mentally.

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