On the other hand, a person with a large number of good qualities who happened to be distinctly plain might not be likely to entangle you in the first place unless you were intelligent enough to see those good qualities so that you might settle down to a lifetime of happiness.
What I am saying, then, is that a cyborg with a robotic brain in a human body is going to be accepted by most, if not all, people as a human being; while a cyborg with a human brain in a robotic body is going to be accepted by most, if not all, people as a robot. You are, after all-at least to most people-what you seem to be.
These two diametrically opposed cyborgs will not, however, pose a problem to human beings to the same degree.
Consider the robotic brain in the human body and ask why the transfer should be made. A robotic brain is better off in a robotic body since a human body is far the more fragile of the two. You might have a young and stalwart human body in which the brain has been damaged by trauma and disease, and you might think, “Why waste that magnificent human body? Let's put a robotic brain in it so that it can live out its life.”
If you were to do that, the human being that resulted would not be the original. It would be a different individual human being. You would not be conserving an individual but merely a specific mindless body. And a human body, however fine, is (without the brain that goes with it) a cheap thing. Every day, half a million new bodies come into being. There is no need to save anyone of them if the brain is done.
On the other hand, what about a human brain in a robotic body? A human brain doesn't last forever, but it can last up to ninety years without falling into total uselessness. It is not at all unknown to have a ninety-year-old who is still sharp, and capable of rational and worthwhile thought. And yet we also know that many a superlative mind has vanished after twenty or thirty years because the body that housed it (and was worthless in the absence of the mind) had become uninhabitable through trauma or disease. There would be a strong impulse then to transfer a perfectly good (even superior) brain into a robotic body to give it additional decades of useful life.
Thus, when we say “cyborg” we are very likely to think, just about exclusively, of a human brain in a robotic body-and we are going to think of that as a robot.
We might argue that a human mind is a human mind, and that it is the mind that counts and not the surrounding support mechanism, and we would be right. I'm sure that any rational court would decide that a human-brain cyborg would have all the legal rights of a man. He could vote, he could be enslaved, and so on.
And yet suppose a cyborg were challenged: “Prove that you have a human brain and not a robotic brain, before I let you have human rights.”
The easiest way for a cyborg to offer the proof is for him to demonstrate that he is not bound by the Three Laws of Robotics. Since the Three Laws enforce socially acceptable behavior, this means he must demonstrate that he is capable of human (i.e. nasty) behavior. The simplest and most unanswerable argument is simply to knock the challenger down, breaking his jaw in the process, since no robot could do that. (In fact, in my story “Evidence”, which appeared in 1947, I use this as a way of proving someone is not a robot-but in that case there was a catch.)
But if a cyborg must continually offer violence in order to prove he has a human brain, that will not necessarily win him friends.
For that matter, even if he is accepted as human and allowed to vote and to rent hotel rooms and do all the other things human beings can do, there must nevertheless be some regulations that distinguish between him and complete human beings. The cyborg would be stronger than a man, and his metallic fists could be viewed as lethal weapons. He might still be forbidden to strike a human being, even in self-defense. He couldn't engage in various sports on an equal basis with human beings, and so on.
Ah, but need a human brain be housed in a metallic robotic body? What about housing it in a body made of ceramic and plastic and fiber so that it looks and feels like a human body-and has a human brain besides?
But you know, I suspect that the cyborg will still have his troubles. He'll be different. No matter how small the difference is, people will seize upon it.
We know that people who have human brains and full human bodies sometimes hate each other because of a slight difference in skin pigmentation, or a slight variation in the shape of the nose, eyes, lips, or hair.
We know that people who show no difference in any of the physical characteristics that have come to represent a cause for hatred, may yet be at daggers-drawn over matters that are not physical at all, but cultural-differences in religion, or in political outlook, or in place of birth, or in language, or in just the accent of a language.
Let's face it. Cyborgs will have their difficulties, no matter what.
Chapter 1. The Key To Perihelion
Derec sighed and ran his hand through his brush-cut sandy hair. “Katherine, I don’t know if this stupid computer knows who has the Key to Perihelion or not. Anyhow, if it does, it won’t tell me. I’ve asked it every way I can think of.” He swiveled his chair away from the computer console to face her.
Katherine looked down at him from where she stood, and shook her head in apparent disgust. “I didn’t know computers could be stupid,” she said pointedly.
“Well, this one is,” he muttered lamely, feeling his face grow hot. “Look if someone else programmed a higher priority of secrecy into the computer, it won’t answer any questions it was forbidden to answer. I can’t do anything about that.” He was glad he was seated. She was a bit taller than he, though he was-he hoped-still growing. He guessed that she was a year or two older than he was, but that was as uncertain as the rest of her identity…and his.
Derec sprang out of his chair to put some distance between them and started pacing around the room. Through his manipulation of the computer, he had ordered the builder robots of Robot City to continue developing the quarters he and Katherine shared. They had constructed a bedroom for each of them, a kitchen area, and a console for the computer access equipment he had put together himself. Now he strode around the perimeter of the office, burning up nervous energy.
The apartment was hexagonal, and the furniture was shaped from the interior surface. Light glowed from the ceiling itself in a pleasant, soft diffusion. The room walls now obscured the elegant shape of the quarters, which resembled the interior of a crystal, but he and Katherine were more comfortable than before, and more independent.
Ever since Derec had stopped Robot City from its automatic, frantic, and self-destructive growth, they had been living in a city that almost resembled a normal one. Construction now continued at a steady pace, within the capacity of the city to adjust as it grew. With the Laws of Robotics in effect, the two humans had a comfortable and safe existence here now.
The First Law of Robotics is: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“Look, Derec,” said Katherine. “We both want to get off this planet, I guess. At the moment, we aren’t suffering here. Sure, if we had a ship, we’d be gone by now. But as long as that Key is our only chance to get away, we simply have to find it.”
Her tone was milder now, Derec noticed, but he just spun around, turning his back on her, and went on pacing. Ever since he had found out that she was not really Katherine Ariel Burgess, as she had told him she was, he had known he could not trust her. Or, at least, he could only believe her when she was being sarcastic or condescending. When she sounded pleasant, he had to figure out what she was up to.