Chapter 18

612 words

18

THE ROBOTS OF VISION

Daneel and Giskard also owned a three-and-three-eighths-of-a-mile island on Aurora, off the coastline of Eos province, that they called Robot City  (har har-okay) where they built and trained all their robot staff.  Aurora is the only planet where robots are legally allowed to build other robots and so Giskard and Daneel had had built a picturesque sprawl of terracotta adobe-look low-rise factory buildings amongst the semitropical vegetation and woods, just clearing the parts that they actually needed so it all looked very sympathetic. They reached this by the usual gravitonic seaplane commonly used over water on Aurora and many other planets.  It looked like a wonderland to the formerly-City-bred Elijah.  There was even an amazing saffron, black-and-coral-streaked flowered creeper which Daneel had had the idea of training to grow over the building entrance, and there were a lot of palmate and bromeliad type plants around for the offing.

It was this that had naturally given the robots the idea of re-creating a huge half-mile ‘al fresco’ jungle setting aboard the Spacecruiser, with wonderful hardwood structures on stilts to house restaurants and an entertainment ‘happenings’ centre.  At ‘night’ this would be lit by hundreds of lanterns and one could utterly believe that one was in a balmy outdoor setting high up in the trees – complete with intermittent recorded sounds of tropical birds!

After this these robots of vision had then gone on to re-create another half-mile of a tented oasis desert setting, with gorgeous carpets, divans and huge cushions for post-prandial lolling.  This always had a permanent setting sun going onto night, so that one could eat or loll (or even make love) bathed in glorious western light as the ‘sun’ set over the sanddunes and the palm trees, again with intermittent recorded sounds of cicadas and bullfrogs.

Daneel, Giskard and Elijah had decided against bringing the boys down to Robot City as they were afraid the boys, inadvertently, wouldn’t be able to resist blabbing about it back on Earth  – it would make wonderful boasting material after all. (Get ones over on their mingy-minded bullying adversaries!) But starting up a rumour like that with the Medievalists would be most undesirable.  It was bad enough with the feelings against any robot – even the clunky old Earthish ones!

When a robot got built and was ‘brought to life’ and had gone through the elaborate initial programming and data-input it was sent off to live, work and ultimately play with chosen human families on Aurora so that it could be humanized as much as possible.  Giskard and Daneel had both benefited greatly from this bottom-up (arse-up) learning: being allowed to ‘bump into reality’. Gain a bit of streetwisdom. Aquire common-sense. Develop a sense of humour and some good oldfashioned cynicism.  Naturalize one’s speech.  And sharpen one’s wit (and all those bad jokes!).  Oh – and attain rational-emotionalism.

A more positively humanized pair of robots than Daneel and Giskard would be hard to find anywhere. Giskard and Daneel were mavericks in that they’d surpassed all the expected goals –and, what’s more, had the nous not to let on about this as it could engender fear and reprisals amongst humans, particularly Earthish ones.  So ‘not letting on’ was rigorously programmed into the immergent mavericks who came out of the Robot City factory.

  Elijah and Daneel feasted on the picnic that Elijah had brought along, complete with wine and sweatmeats and things curried and strawberries-and-cream and both white and dark chocolates, whilst Giskard sucked on the finest metallo snacks.  Afterwards they all lay on and made love on the tarten picnic rug to the sound of birdsong and the waves lapping on the shore.

 THE END  (For this Era at any rate)

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