Isaac Asimov - 01 Robot SS - Dilemma # Connie Willis.pdf

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Dilemma
by Connie Willis
W E WANT TO SEE DR. ASIMOV, “ THE BLUISH-SILVER ROBOT said.
“Dr. Asimov is in conference,” Susan said. “You’ll have to make an appointment.” She turned to
the computer and called up the calendar.
“I knew we should have called first,” the varnished robot said to the white one. “Dr. Asimov is the
most famous author of the twentieth century and now the twenty-first, and as such he must be terribly
busy.”
“I can give you an appointment at two-thirty on June twenty-fourth,” Susan said, “or at ten on
August fifteenth.”
“June twenty-fourth is one hundred and thirty-five days from today,” the white robot said. It had a
large red cross painted on its torso and an oxygen tank strapped to its back.
“We need to see him today,” the bluish-silver robot said, bending over the desk.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. He gave express orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed. May I ask
what you wish to see Dr. Asimov about?”
He leaned over the desk even farther and said softly, “You know perfectly well what we want to
see him about. Which is why you won’t let us see him. “
Susan was still scanning the calendar. “I can give you an appointment two weeks from Thursday at
one forty-five.”
“We’ll wait,” he said and sat down in one of the chairs. The white robot rolled over next to him, and
the varnished robot picked up a copy of The Caves of Steel with his articulated digital sensors and
began to thumb through it. After a few minutes the white robot picked up a magazine, but the bluish-silver
robot sat perfectly still, staring at Susan.
Susan stared at the computer. After a very long interval the phone rang. Susan answered it and then
punched Dr. Asimov’s line. “Dr. Asimov, it’s a Dr. Linge Chen. From Bhutan. He’s interested in
translating your books into Bhutanese.”
“All of them?” Dr. Asimov said. “Bhutan isn’t a very big country.”
“I don’t know. Shall I put him through. sir?” She connected Dr. Linge Chen.
As soon as she hung up, the bluish-silver robot came and leaned over her desk again. “I thought
you said he gave express orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“Dr. Linge Chen was calling all the way from Asia,” she said. She reached for a pile of papers and
handed them to him. “Here.”
“What are these?”
“The projection charts you asked me to do. I haven’t finished the spreadsheets yet. I’ll send them
up to your office tomorrow. “
He took the projection charts and stood there, still looking at her.
“I really don’t think there’s any point in your waiting, Peter,” Susan said. “Dr. Asimov’s schedule is
completely booked for the rest of the afternoon, and tonight he’s attending a reception in honor of the
publication of his one thousandth book.”
“Asimov’s Guide to Asimov’s Guides, “ the varnished robot said. “Brilliant book. I read a review
copy at the bookstore where I work. Informative, thorough, and comprehensive. An invaluable addition
to the field.”
“It’s very important that we see him,” the white robot said, rolling up to the desk. “We want him to
repeal the Three Laws of Robotics. “
“‘First Law: A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to
come to harm,’ “ the varnished robot quoted. “ ‘Second “Law: A robot shall obey a human being’s order
if it doesn’t conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot shall attempt to preserve itself if it doesn’t
 
conflict with the first or second laws.’ First outlined in the short story ‘Runaround,’ Astounding
magazine, March 1942, and subsequently expounded in I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, The
Complete Robot, and The Rest of the Rest of the Robots. “
“Actually, we just want the First Law repealed,” the white robot said. “, A robot shall not injure a
human being. ‘ Do you realize what that means? I’m programmed to diagnose diseases and administer
medications, but I can’t stick the needle in the patient. I’m programmed to perform over eight hundred
types of surgery, but I can’t make the initial incision. I can’t even do the Heimlich Maneuver. The First
Law renders me incapable of doing the job I was designed for, and it’s absolutely essential that I see Dr.
Asimov to ask him—”
The door to Dr. Asimov’s office banged open and the old man hobbled out. His white hair looked
like he had been tearing at it, and his even whiter muttonchop sideburns were quivering with some strong
emotion. “Don’t put any more calls through today, Susan,” he said. “Especially not from Or. Linge Chen.
Do you know which book he wanted to translate into Bhutanese first? 2001: A Space Odyssey!”
“I’m terribly sorry, sir. I didn’t intend to—”
He waved his hand placatingly at her. “It’s all right. You had no way of knowing he was an idiot.
But if he calls back, put him on hold and play Also Sprach Zarathustra in his ear.”
“I don’t see how he could have confused your style with Arthur Clarke’s,” the varnished robot said,
putting down his book. “Your style is far more lucid and energetic, and your extrapolation of the future
far more visionary. “
Asimov looked inquiringly at Susan through his blackframed metafocals.
“They don’t have an appointment,” she said. “I told them they—”
“Would have to wait,” the bluish-silver robot said, extending his finely coiled Hirose hand and
shaking Dr. Asimov’s wrinkled one. “ And it has been more than worth the wait, Dr. Asimov. I cannot
tell you what an honor it is to meet the author of I, Robot, sir. “
“And of The Human Body, “ the white robot said, rolling over to Asimov and extending a
four-fingered gripper from which dangled a stethoscope. “ A classic in the field.”
“How on earth could you keep such discerning readers waiting?” Asimov said to Susan.
“I didn’t think you would want to be disturbed when you were writing,” Susan said.
“Are you kidding?” Asimov said. “Much as I enjoy writing, having someone praise your books is
even more enjoyable, especially when they’re praising books I actually wrote.”
“It would be impossible to praise Foundation enough,” the varnished robot said. “Or any of your
profusion of works, for that matter, but Foundation seems to me to be a singular accomplishment, the
book in which you finally found a setting of sufficient scope for the expression of your truly galaxy-sized
ideas. It is a privilege to meet you, sir,” he said, extending his hand.
“I’m happy to meet you, too,” Asimov said, looking interestedly at the articulated wooden extensor.
“ And you are?”
“My job description is Book Cataloguer, Shelver, Reader, Copyeditor, and Grammarian. “ He
turned and indicated the other two robots. “ Allow me to introduce Medical Assistant and the leader of
our delegation, Accountant, Financial Analyst, and Business Manager.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Asimov said, shaking appendages with all of them again. “You call
yourselves a delegation. Does that mean you have a specific reason for coming to see me?”
“Yes, sir,” Office Manager said. “We want you to—”
“It’s three forty-five, Dr. Asimov,” Susan said. “You need to get ready for the Doubleday
reception. “
He squinted at the digital on the wall. “That isn’t till six, is it?”
“Doubleday wants you there at five for pictures, and it’s formal,” she said firmly. “Perhaps they
could make an appointment and come back when they could spend more time with you. I can give them
an appointment—”
 
“For June twenty-fourth?” Accountant said. “Or August fifteenth?”
“Fit them in tomorrow, Susan,” Asimov said, coming over to the desk.
“You have a meeting with your science editor in the morning and then lunch with Al Lanning and the
American Booksellers Association dinner at seven.”
“What about this?” Asimov said, pointing at an open space on the schedule. “Four o’clock.”
“That’s when you prepare your speech for the ABA.”
“I never prepare my speeches. You come back at four o’clock tomorrow, and we can talk about
why you came to see me and what a wonderful writer I am.”
“Four o’clock,” Accountant said. “Thank you, sir. We’ll be here, sir.” He herded Medical Assistant
and Book Cataloguer, Shelver, Reader, Copyeditor, and Grammarian out the door and shut it behind
them.
“Galaxy-sized ideas, “ Asimov said, looking wistfully after them. “Did they tell you what they
wanted to see me about?”
“No, sir.” Susan helped him into his pants and formal shirt and fastened the studs.
“Interesting assortment, weren’t they? It never occurred to me to have a wooden robot in any of my
robot stories. Or one that was such a wise and perceptive reader. “
“The reception’s at the Union Club,” Susan said, putting his cufflinks in. “In the Nightfall Room.
You don’t have to make a speech, just a few extemporaneous remarks about the book. Janet’s meeting
you there.”
“The short one looked just like a nurse I had when I had my bypass operation. The blue one was
nice-looking, though, wasn’t he?”
She turned up his collar and began to tie his tie. “The coordinates card for the Union Club and the
tokens for the taxi’s tip are in your breast pocket.”
“ Very nice-looking. Reminds me of myself when I was a young man,” he said with his chin in the air.
“Ouch! You’re choking me!”
Susan dropped the ends of the tie and stepped back.
“What’s the matter?” Asimov said, fumbling for the ends of the tie. “I forgot. It’s all right. You
weren’t really choking me. That was just a figure of speech for the way I feel about wearing formal ties.
Next time I say it, you just say, ‘I’m not choking you, so stand still and let me tie this.’ “
“Yes, sir, “ Susan said. She finished tying the tie and stepped back to look at the effect. One side of
the bow was a little larger than the other. She adjusted it, scrutinized it again, and gave it a final pat.
“The Union Club,” Asimov said. “The Nightfall Room. The coordinates card is in my breast
pocket,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, helping him on with his jacket.
“No speech. Just a few extemporaneous remarks.”
“Yes, sir.” She helped him on with his overcoat and wrapped his muffler around his neck.
“Janet’s meeting me there. Good grief, I should have gotten her a corsage, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes, sir,” Susan said, taking a white box out of the desk drawer. “Orchids and stephanotis.” She
handed him the box.
“Susan, you’re wonderful. I’d be lost without you.”
“Yes, sir,” Susan said. “I’ve called the taxi. It’s waiting at the door.”
She handed him his cane and walked him out to the elevator. As soon as the doors closed she went
back to the office and picked up the phone. She punched in a number. “Ms. Weston? This is Dr.
Asimov’s secretary calling from New York about your appointment on the twenty-eighth. We’ve just
had a cancellation for tomorrow afternoon at four. Could you fly in by then?”
Dr. Asimov didn’t get back from lunch until ten after four. “Are they here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Susan said, unwinding the muffler from around his neck. “They’re waiting in your office.”
“When did they get here?” he said, unbuttoning his overcoat. “No, don’t tell me. When you tell a
 
robot four o’clock, he’s there at four o’clock, which is more than you can say for human beings. “
“I know,” Susan said, looking at the digital on the wall.
“Do you know how late for lunch At Lanning was? An hour and fifteen minutes. And when he got
there, do you know what he wanted? To come out with commemorative editions of all my books. “
“That sounds nice,” Susan said. She took his coordinates card and his gloves out of his pockets,
hung up his coat, and glanced at her watch again. “Did you take your blood pressure medicine?”
“I didn’t have it with me. I should have. I’d have had something to do. I could have written a book
in an hour and fifteen minutes, but I didn’t have any paper either. These limited editions will have
cordovan leather bindings, gilt-edged acid-free paper, water-color illustrations. The works. “
“Water-color illustrations would look nice for Pebble in the Sky,” Susan said, handing him his
blood pressure medicine and a glass of water.
“I agree,” he said, “but that isn’t what he wants the first book in the series to be. He wants it to be
Stranger in a Strange Land!” He gulped down the pill and started for his office. “You wouldn’t catch
those robots in there mistaking me for Robert Heinlein. “ He stopped with his hand on the doorknob.
“Which reminds me, should I be saying ‘robot’?”
“Ninth Generations are manufactured by the Hitachi-Apple Corporation under the registered
trademark name of ‘Kombayashibots’,” Susan said promptly. “That and ‘Ninth Generation’ are the most
common forms of address, but ‘robot’ is used throughout the industry as the general term for
autonomous machines. “
“And it’s not considered a derogatory term? I’ve used it all these years, but maybe ‘Ninth
Generation’ would be better, or what did you say? ‘Kombayashibots’? It’s been over ten years since
I’ve written about robots, let alone faced a whole delegation. I hadn’t realized how out of date I was.”
“‘Robot’ is fine,” Susan said.
“Good, because I know I’ll forget to call them that other name—Comeby-whatever-it-was, and I
don’t want to offend them after they’ve made such an effort to see me.” He turned the doorknob and
then stopped again. “I haven’t done anything to offend you, have I?”
“No, sir,” Susan said.
“Well, I hope not. I sometimes forget—”
“Did you want me to sit in on this meeting, Dr. Asimov?” she cut in. “To take notes?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” He opened the door. Accountant and Book Shelver were seated in the
stuffed chairs in front of Asimov’s desk. A third robot, wearing an orange and blue sweatshirt and a cap
with an orange horse galloping across a blue suspension bridge, was sitting on a tripod that extended out
of his backside. The tripod retracted and all three of them stood up when Dr. Asimov and Susan came
in. Accountant gestured at Susan to take his chair, but she went out to her desk and got her own, leaving
the door to the outer office open when she came back in.
“What happened to Medical Assistant?” Asimov said.
“He’s on call at the hospital, but he asked me to present his case for him,” Accountant said.
“Case?” Asimov said.
“Yes, sir. You know Book Shelver, Cataloguer, Reader, Copyeditor, and Grammarian,”
Accountant said, “and this is Statistician, Offensive Strategist, and Water Boy. He’s with the Brooklyn
Broncos.”
“How do you do?” Asimov said. “Do you think they’ll make it to the Super Bowl this year?”
“Yes, sir,” Statistician said, “but they won’t win it.”
“Because of the First Law,” Accountant said.
“Dr. Asimov, I hate to interrupt, but you really should write your speech for the dinner tonight,”
Susan said.
“What are you talking about?” Asimov said. “I never write speeches. And why do you keep
watching the door?” He turned back to the bluish-silver robot. “What First Law?”
 
“Your First Law,” Accountant said. “The First Law of Robotics. “
“’A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm,’
“ Book Shelver said.
“Statistician,” Accountant said, gesturing at the orange horse, “is capable of designing plays that
could win the Super Bowl for the Broncos, but he can’t because the plays involve knocking human
beings down. Medical Assistant can’t perform surgery because surgery involves cutting open human
beings, which is a direct violation of the First Law.”
“But the Three Laws of Robotics aren’t laws,” Asimov said. “They’re just something I made up for
my science fiction stories.”
“They may have been a mere fictional construct in the beginning,” Accountant said, “and it’s true
they’ve never been formally enacted as laws, but the robotics industry has accepted them as a given from
the beginning. As early as the 1970s robotics engineers were talking about incorporating the Three Laws
into AI programming, and even the most primitive models had safeguards based on them. Every robot
from the Fourth Generation on has been hardwared with them.”
“Well, what’s so bad about that?” Asimov said. “Robots are powerful and intelligent. How do you
know they wouldn’t also become dangerous if the Three Laws weren’t included?”
“We’re not suggesting universal repeal,” the varnished robot said. “The Three Laws work
reasonably well for Seventh and Eighth Generations, and for earlier models who don’t have the memory
capacity for more sophisticated programming. We’re only requesting it for Ninth Generations.”
“And you’re Ninth Generation robots, Mr. Book Shelver, Cataloguer, Reader, Copyeditor, and
Grammarian?” Asimov said.
“‘Mister’ is not necessary,” he said. “Just call me Book Shelver, Cataloguer, Reader, Copyeditor,
and Grammarian.”
“Let me begin at the beginning,” Accountant said. “The term ‘Ninth Generation’ is not accurate. We
are not descendants of the previous eight robot generations, which are all based on Minsky’s
related-concept frames. Ninth Generations are based on nonmonotonic logic, which means we can
tolerate ambiguity arid operate on incomplete information. This is accomplished by biased-decision
programming, which prevents us from shutting down when faced with decision-making situations in the
way that other generations are.”
“Such as the robot Speedy in your beautifully plotted story, ‘Runaround,’ “ Book Shelver said. “He
was sent to carry out an order that would have resulted in his death so he ran in circles, reciting nonsense,
because his programming made it impossible for him to obey or disobey his master’s order.”
“With our biased-decision capabilities,” Accountant said, “a Ninth Generation can come up with
alternative courses of action or choose between the lesser of two evils. Our linguistics expert systems are
also much more advanced, so that we do not misinterpret situations or fall prey to the semantic dilemmas
earlier generations were subject to.”
“As in your highly entertaining story ‘Little Lost Robot,’ “ Book Shelver said, “in which the robot
was told to go lose himself and did, not realizing that the human being addressing him was speaking
figuratively and in anger.”
“Yes,” Asimov said, “but what if you do misinterpret a situation, Book Shelver, Cataloguer,
Reader, Copyeditor, and Gramm—Don’t you have a nickname or something? Your name’s a mouthful.”
“Early generations had nicknames based on the sound of their model numbers, as in your wonderful
story, ‘Reason,’ in which the robot QT—I is referred to as Cutie. Ninth Generations do not have model
numbers. We are individually programmed and are named for our expert systems.”
“But surely you don’t think of yourself as Book Shelver, Cataloguer, Reader, Copyeditor, and
Grammarian?”
“Oh, no, sir. We call ourselves by our self-names. Mine is Darius.”
“Darius?” Asimov said.
“Yes, sir. After Darius Just, the writer and detective in your cleverly plotted mystery novel Murder
 

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