I stared in silence.
“Indeed,” resumed the Professor, “Roger Bacon might almost be called a thirteenth century van Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first century Roger Bacon. His Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium—”
“What,” I interrupted impatiently, “has all this to do with—that?” I indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the corner of the laboratory.
“Don’t interrupt!” snapped van Manderpootz. “I’ll—”
At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal had ejaculated something like “A-a-gh-rasp” and had lunged a single pace toward the window, arms upraised. “What the devil!” I sputtered as the thing dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.
“A car must have passed in the alley,” said van Manderpootz indifferently. “Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon—”
I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the ‘vision dancer, the little blonde imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company. Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine; maybe it indicates that there’s a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.
I’m Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation, Engineers Extraordinary. I’m supposed to be an engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father hasn’t given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of value of time, and I’m cursed with the unenviable quality of being late to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn’t fair. They’re Post-Romanesque.
Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and ’vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though that’s supposed to be a salary. It’s inconvenient to be so dependent, and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White, and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another instance when I was a little late.
Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit eccentric. Judge for yourself.
“And that’s the thesis,” he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
“Eh? Oh, of course. But what’s that grinning robot got to do with it?”
He purpled. “I’ve just told you!” he roared. “Idiot! Imbecile! To dream while van Manderpootz talks! Get out! Get out!”
I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from my father at the office.
Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window, and I lost no time asking its purpose.
“It’s just a toy I had some of the students construct,” he explained. “There’s a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates the mechanism. The thing’s plugged into the light-circuit, but it really ought to run on gasoline.”
“Why?”
“Well, the pattern it’s set for is the shape of an automobile. See here.” He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a streamlined car like those of that year. “Since only one eye is used,” he continued, “The thing can’t tell the difference between a full-sized vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of perspective.”
He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly came its roar of “A-a-gh-rasp!” and it leaped forward a single pace, arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew the card, and again the thing relapsed stolidly into its place.
“What the devil!” I exclaimed. “What’s it for?”
“Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back of it? I use it as a demonstration in my seminar.”
“To demonstrate what?”
“The power of reason,” said van Manderpootz solemnly.
“How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of electric power?”
“One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz’s concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster’s jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the trails called streets. Understand?”
“No.”
“Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van Manderpootz could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in the shadows of buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys; it skulks on deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring quietly. Then—an unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on the screen behind its eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging it in steel arms to its steel jaws. Through the metal throat of its victim crash steel teeth; the blood of its prey—the gasoline, that is—is drained into its stomach, or its gas-tank. With renewed strength it flings away the husk and prowls on to seek other prey. It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger of mechanics.”
I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that the brain of the great van Manderpootz was cracking. “What the—?” I gasped.
“That,” he said blandly, “is but a concept. I have many another use for the toy. I can prove anything with it, anything I wish.”
“You can? Then prove something.”
“Name your proposition, Dixon.”
I hesitated, nonplussed.
“Come!” he said impatiently. “Look here; I will prove that anarchy is the ideal government, or that Heaven and Hell are the same place, or that—”
“Prove that!” I said. “About Heaven and Hell.”
“Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I add a mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed valve; I add a mathematical sense with any of the calculating machines; I give it a voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse wire phonograph. Now the point I make is this: Granted an intelligent machine, does it not follow that every other machine constructed like it must have the identical qualities? Would not each robot given the same insides have exactly the same character?”
“No!” I snapped. “Human beings can’t make two machines exactly alike. There’d be tiny differences; one would react quicker than others, or one would prefer Fox Airsplitters as prey, while another reacted most vigorously to Carnecars. In other words, they’d have—individuality!” I grinned in triumph.
“My point exactly,” observed van Manderpootz. “You admit, then, that this individuality is the result of imperfect workmanship. If our means of manufacture were perfect, all robots would be identical, and this individuality would not exist. Is that true?”
“I—suppose so.”
“Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our falling short of perfection. All of us—even van Manderpootz—are individuals only because we are not perfect. Were we perfect, each of us would be exactly like everyone else. True?”
“Uh—yes.”
“But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect. Therefore, in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else, and therefore, everybody is thoroughly and completely bored! There is no torture like boredom, Dixon, and—Well, have I proved my point?”
I was floored. “But—about anarchy, then?” I stammered.
“Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here; with a perfect nation—that is, one whose individuals are
