Sprockets
Authors: Alexander Key
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Sprockets
A Little Robot
Alexander Key
T
O MY SON
,
who naturally knows much more about robots than I, and keeps me properly informed.
To Dr. Isaac Asimov, the father of modern robotics who conceived the positronic brain, I offer no apologies, but much respect and many thanks
.
A.K.
Contents
3. He Becomes Partially Educated
1
He Escapes
Sprockets was born on the assembly line at the robot factory owned by the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation. His birth, or rather his putting together, was entirely an accident, and was the last thing anyone wanted. Here is how it happened:
The assembly line at the robot factory was a mile long and possibly longer, for it had to handle a million different partsârods and wires, nuts and bolts, bulbs and sockets, springs, sprockets, and little wheels and cogs, not to speak of nine hundred thousand other things that go into a robot. Whenever the big boss robot pressed the button at the beginning of the line, there would be a mighty whirring clatter, a quick zipping and purring, and a thousand mechanical hands would begin punching, twisting, turning, driving, pounding, brazing, and fitting things together. Then like magic, zip, zip, zip, one new robot after another would take shape on the speeding belt. That is, this zip-zipping was usually the way it went when new robots were ordered.
But on this dismal day of days at the robot factory something went wrong. Perhaps the big boss robot missed a zip. Perhaps a spring was sprung or a spark went sput. Anyway, a roll of metal didn't roll, and suddenly there just wasn't enough metal for the assembly line to turn out the usual full-size, clanking, half-ton model that was the specialty of the Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation.
The assembly line did the best it could with the scraps on hand, but the only thing that appeared on the mile-long moving belt was one little pint-size model no larger than a smallish boy with a biggish head. Nor was that the worst of it.
The worst of it (which in reality was the best of it) was his brain. The ordinary brain box, used for ordinary robots, wouldn't fit the new shape of this robot's head. That, however, did not bother the assembly line. It merely reached forth a tentacle and plucked down a special box from a special shelf marked S
PECIAL
B
RAINS
, T
O
B
E
U
SED
O
NLY ON
S
PECIAL
M
ODELS
. It was a genuine Asimov Positronic Brain that had taken a whole year to make, for it contained twenty trillion microscopic printed circuits. Into the little robot's head went the special brain, and he plopped off the end of the assembly line all ready to be oiled, numbered, inspected, registered, given his orders, crated, and shipped away.
It was now that the trouble started.
The inspector was a real man, not a mechanical one. At the sight of Sprockets, who was yet to be named, his eyes widened. Then angrily he stopped the machinery and bellowed for his assistant.
“What's the matter with this factory?” he roared. “Can't it do an honest day's work without wasting good parts? Call the salvage robots! Have them haul that junk bundle of sprockets into the salvage room and take it apart!”
Sprockets not only heard what was said, but he understood it because, in rolling off the assembly line, his switch had been accidentally turned on. It was like coming awake and finding himself alive. In an instant he sat up, ticking like a clock. His eyes lighted and the row of buttons across his forehead flashed with color. The words “salvage” and “take it apart” shot with deadly meaning through the upper circuits of his brain. In less time than it takes for a human to bat an eye, he was on his little feet and running.
Haul him to the salvage room and take him apart, would they? Oh, no! Never as long as he had a spark left in his atomic battery!
Now, a robot is not supposed to run away or to disobey authority. But Sprockets was not actually disobeying anyone, because as yet he had not been given a proper registered name or a number, and no one thought to speak to him directly or give him orders. And a robotâespecially one with an Asimov Positronic Brainâknows he is a very valuable mechanism and must protect himself from harm.
So Sprockets ran. Behind him all he heard were the hoarse cries of men and robots calling to each other. “Stop him! Stop him! Don't let him get away!” This, naturally, only made him run faster.
He darted through the first open door. Three big robots clanked and thumped close at his heels. He evaded them by dashing under a table and streaking down a long passage and through a succession of doors. Suddenly, before he realized where he was, he found himself outside.
It was night. Sprockets had never seen night and the city before nor traffic on a busy street, but his special brain knew about such things from the basic learning tapes that had been fed into it. He paused just long enough to study the street and pick what seemed a safe direction. Then the approaching shouts drove him on.
In less than a minute, however, he realized this was a poor way to escape. People stared at him and he had to slow down, not merely to attract less attention but to avoid running into someone and possibly hurting himâfor never, never, must a robot hurt a human being. As he turned a corner he almost ran into a policeman.
The policeman blinked at him, astounded.
“Now what would the likes o' you be after in such a hurry, an' all alone at night?”
It was only the very special fast-thinking positronic brain that saved Sprockets now. In another second the policeman would be ordering him to halt, and of course he would have to obey. He would be questioned, and he would have to give truthful answers, for a robot cannot lie. It would all end with the policeman returning him to the robot factory where every nut, bolt, cog, and sprocket of him would be taken apart.
Never that!
In a flash, before the policeman's big hand could grab him, Sprockets streaked away. At the same instant his finger reached for one of the lighted buttons in the row across his forehead. This particular button controlled his hearing antennae, which he wasn't supposed to touch except in an emergency. Sprockets figured this was an emergency of the most desperate kind, and he was considerably relieved when his sound apparatus went completely blank. So he ran, blessedly unable to hear the policeman's orders not to do so.
In the next block he found a deserted alley and raced through the darkness of it for several minutes before turning on his hearing button. There was no sound of pursuit. He slowed to a walk.
Now what should he do?
Suddenly he stopped. Just what does a little robot do when he has managed to escape and has no place to go?
It was a perplexing problem, and to add to his troubles was the realization that it had begun to rain. He didn't know much about rain, but he had the vague feeling that it wasn't at all good for his circuits.
“To get out of the rain,” he told himself, “I will have to go where there are people. People will ask questions, then they will send me right back to the robot factory. If I want to save my cogs and sprockets, I'd better do some positive positronic cerebration.”
Immediately he sat down in a puddle in the pouring rain and touched the middle button on his forehead. It was his cerebration button. On the instant all the buttons on his forehead began to flash in a dozen colors, and he was plunged into the deepest thought. So deep and so vast was his thinking that his brain began snapping and clicking like a runaway clock. At this moment he could have solved some of the most difficult problems in the world.
His own problem, however, appeared to have but a single answer, and that answer seemed utterly impossible.
“A robot,” he said in his thoughtful little voice, “cannot wander uselessly and do nothing. A robot's purpose in life is to help human beings. Therefore I must find a human being who will not send me back to the robot factory to lose all my sprockets.”
He thought a moment longer, and said: “In this city, according to my learning tapes, there are ten million human beings. If only one person in ten is friendly enough to accept my services and has real need of me, I must consider the other nine persons as unfriendly. It follows, therefore, that my predicament is dire, for I am alone in the midst of nine million enemies.”