‘Yes, that is so.’ Padua looked at him with a waiting, blank expression.
‘Then explain how it is that I am self-aware.’
‘The answer is simple: you are not.’
‘But do I not show all the signs of awareness? I have emotions – do they not mean awareness?’
‘Oh, no, emotions may quite easily be simulated machine-wise. Nothing lies behind them, of course. The robot has no soul.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Jasperodus became agitated. ‘I have a soul. I experience, I know that I am a conscious self. Could I know such things, could I say them even, if they were not true?’
‘An interesting question.’ To Jasperodus’ exasperation Padua seemed to receive his anguished pronouncements as a diverting conundrum rather than in the deadly earnest in which they were intended. ‘But once again the answer is that nothing you can say can make any difference. It is technically possible for a self-directed machine to form the conclusion, the opinion as it were, that it has such awareness, having heard that the phenomenon exists in human beings which seem to be so similar to it. But such an opinion is a false one, for the machine does not really understand what awareness is and therefore forms mistaken notions about its nature. The machine-mind is an unconscious mind. Not alive.’
‘And yet you are standing here, arguing and talking with me!’
‘Oh, one may debate with a robot quite fruitfully. Many have sharper wits than most men. In fact a robot can be a very acceptable companion. But it is my experience that after some lengthy time in its company one comes to notice a certain lack of living vitality in it, and to realise that it is after all dead.’
‘So this that I have, and call consciousness, is not consciousness?’
‘No. This, in fact, is precisely what I am here to investigate…’
Padua’s words struck Jasperodus like blow after blow and inflicted more injury on him than Gogra’s hammer ever could have done. ‘You are very sure of yourself, Padua,’ he snarled in surly disappointment.
‘Facts are facts. When the science of robotics was first born, back in the civilisation of the Ancient World, the hope of producing artificial consciousness was entertained. It soon became evident that it was impossible, however. There are theorems which prove the matter conclusively.’
Jasperodus immediately expressed a desire to hear these theorems. Without demur Padua obliged; but they were couched in such technical terms that Jasperodus, who had no deep knowledge of robotics, could not understand them.
‘Enough, enough!’ he boomed. ‘Why should I listen to you? You are nothing but a second-rate practitioner in a broken-down, out-of-the-way kingdom. You probably don’t know what you’re talking about.’ This thought, as a matter of fact, was the last straw at which Jasperodus was now clutching.
Padua drew himself up to his full height. ‘If I may correct you, I am a robotician of the first rank. I have a First-Class Certificate with Honours from the College of Aristos Lyos – and there can be no better qualification than that.’ He shrugged with a hint of weariness. ‘It is not altogether by choice that I practise my profession here in Gordona. But these are troubled times. I came here for the sake of a quiet, peaceful life, to escape the turmoil that is overtaking more sophisticated parts of the world.’
Jasperodus glowered sadly at his unwitting tormentor, his spirits dwindling to nothing. He had been cheated, after all, of the thing he had been most sure of. Just what was this self-awareness possessed by human beings and of which he could have no inkling? Doubtless the robotician was secretly laughing at him for believing his mechanical self-reference to be that godly state of consciousness reserved only for biological beings. Yet even now it seemed incredible to him that this feeling of self-existence he imagined he had was only a fake, a phantom, an illusion, that it didn’t exist. Still, how could he deny Padua’s expert judgment?
The more he thought about it the more his brain whirled until he could bear it no longer. He flung himself full-length on the floor.
‘Get on with your work, Padua,’ he invited, his voice muffled by the floor tiles. ‘I do not wish to believe I exist when in truth I do not. Rectify my brain and release me from this agony.’
After a long pause the robotician knelt beside him. Then there was a slight feeling of pressure and a click as he applied special tools that alone could open Jasperodus’ inspection plate.
For a time Padua employed the extensible monitors on his inspection box, inserting them into the hundreds of checkpoints beneath the plates in Jasperodus’ head and neck. He turned knobs delicately and carefully watched the dials. Jasperodus could scarcely hear him breathe. Eventually he replaced the plates and stood up.
‘A sublime example of robotmanship,’ he said in a tone of reverence. ‘Worthy of the great Lyos himself. I suppose you weren’t…?’
‘No,’ Jasperodus replied shortly. Hastily he scrambled to his feet. ‘You did nothing!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘Why did you make no adjustment?’
Padua raised his hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘I would not presume to interfere in a work of such superb craftsmanship. Anything I could do to amend your integration state – to use a technical term – would be meddlesome and crude…’ He placed his finger on his lips thoughtfully. ‘I have just thought of something. Your fictitious self-image could be deliberate. It may have been a deliberate device on the part of your designer. At that, it is quite ingenious. Hmm.’ Padua nodded, musing. ‘A means of raising a machine’s status in its own eyes and so lifting its self-reliance to a new level. Very ingenious. Possibly I should have played along with your delusion.’
‘Too late for that now,’ replied Jasperodus dully. If what Padua said was true, then the cruelty of what his parents had done to him was almost unbelievable. Surely their intention had been quite the reverse.
‘Indeed, yes.’ Padua packed up his gear. ‘Well, time for you to be moving.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘You are now a member of the King’s household. I have orders to send you down to the stables, where the machines and animals are quartered. So if you will step this way…’
Jasperodus stepped to the door, then paused and turned to Padua. ‘But you have condemned me to Hell,’ he accused. ‘To a living death. Yet how can I be condemned? I am not a conscious soul, I only appear to myself to be. I do not exist, I only believe that I do. I am nothing, a figment, a thought in the void without a thinker.’ He shook his head in deepest despair. ‘It is a riddle. I cannot understand it.’
Padua gazed at him with something touchingly close to sympathy. ‘If this self-image is pre-programmed, you are indeed faced with a paradox that to a machine-mind is insuperable,’ he admitted. He touched Jasperodus on the arm. ‘Perhaps we shall meet again. I hope so.’ He pointed down the corridor. ‘Please follow the passage to the right. The stable hands will be ready to receive you.’
So Jasperodus, his morale broken, believing his effective worth to be zero, obeyed the robotician and plodded towards the palace stables to begin his servitude.
4
From the animal stables down near the courtyard that opened on to the concourse, came the sound of stamping feet, of snorting horses and the occasional bark of a dog as the kennels stirred in the pre-dawn gloom. Hearing these sounds, Jasperodus envied the animals their common warmth and sensitive restlessness. It would have been better to be stabled among them, he thought, rather than here in the unrelieved tedium of the construct section.