Xavier’s Reviews > I,Robot > Status Update

“What does that mean?” cried Calvin. “Only that you didn’t want him to give you the solution. It would puncture your ego to have a machine do what you couldn’t. Did you ask him?” she shot at Bogert. “In a way.” Bogert coughed and reddened. “He told me he knew very little about mathematics.” Lanning laughed, not very loudly and the psychologist smiled caustically. She said, “I’ll ask him! A solution by him won’t hurt

Lanning found his voice and let it out with a roar. “You’re suspended, d’ye hear? You’re relieved of all duties. You’re broken, do you understand?” The smile on the other’s face broadened, “Now, what’s the use of that? You’re getting nowhere. I’m holding the trumps. I know you’ve resigned. Herbie told me, and he got it straight from you.” Lanning forced himself to speak quietly. H

re not going to do that by saying, ‘Your fault! My fault!’ “ Her cold gray eyes fastened upon Ashe, and he grinned. Lanning grinned too, and, as always at such times, his long white hair and shrewd little eyes made him the picture of a biblical patriarch, “True for you, Dr. Calvin.” His voice became suddenly crisp, “Here’s everything in pill-concentrate form.

Listen, Bogert. There wasn’t a hitch in the assembly from start to finish. I guarantee that.” Bogert’s thick lips spread in a patronizing smile, “Do you? If you can answer for the entire assembly line, I recommend your promotion. By exact count, there are seventy-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-four operations necessary for the manufacture of a single positronic brain, each separate operation depending for succ

If any one of them goes seriously wrong, the ‘brain’ is ruined. I quote our own information folder, Ashe.” Milton Ashe flushed, but a fourth voice cut off his reply. “If we’re going to start by trying to fix the blame on one another, I’m leaving.” Susan Calvin’s hands were folded tightly in her lap, and the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened, “We’ve got a mind-reading robot on our hands and it strikes me

All right,” Powell said gloomily, “but if any ‘finger’ gets within twenty feet of us, we’ll be sensed whether we are in the line of sight or not. I hope you know that.” “When I need an elementary course in robotics, I’ll file an application with you formally, and in triplicate. Down through here.”

Powell dropped a restraining arm upon Donovan’s suddenly bunched fist. “Just why do you say
that?”
Cutie laughed. It was a very inhuman laugh — the most machine-like utterance he had yet given
vent to. It was sharp and explosive, as regular as a metronome and as uninflected.
“Look at you,” he said finally. “I say this in no spirit of contempt, but look at you! The material
you are made of is soft and flabby,

Powell’s jaw set lumpily. “You’re being foolish. I told you already that we made you.”
“And if you don’t believe us,” added Donovan, “we’ll gladly take you apart!”
The robot spread his strong hands in a deprecatory gesture, “I accept nothing on authority. A
hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless — and it goes against all the dictates of
logic to suppose that you made me.”

“Sizzling Saturn, we’ve got a lunatic robot on our hands.”
“He says he’s going to figure it all out for himself.”
“Well, now,” said Donovan sweetly, “I do hope he’ll condescend to explain it all to me after he’s
puzzled everything out” Then, with sudden rage, “Listen! If that metal mess gives me any lip like
that, I’ll knock that chromium cranium right off its torso.”

d.” Then, more thoughtfully: “And that, by the way, is what makes him drunk.
At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I’m not a robot
specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he’s lost control of just those parts of his voluntary
mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty.