What happens to Earth’s atmosphere is a phenomenon of Nature, an alteration in the gravitational pull of Earth, as a result of which escape velocity is cut in half. The atmosphere leaks off into space in less than a thousand years. Earth becomes as dead as did its moon during an earlier period of energy adjustment.
I explain that the important factor in the event is that there is, of course, no such phenomenon as matter, and that therefore the illusion of mass is subject to changes in the basic energy Ylem.
I add, "Naturally, all intelligent organic life is transported to the habitable planets of other stars."
I see that Grannitt is trembling with excitement. "Other stars!" he says. "My God!"
He appears to control himself. "Why were you left behind?"
"Who could force me to go—?" I begin.
And stop. The answer to his question is already being received in my perception center. "Why—I’m supposed to observe and record the entire—"
I pause again, this time out of amazement. It seems incredible that this information is available to me now, after being buried so long.
"Why didn’t you carry out your instructions?" Grannitt says sharply.
"Instructions!" I exclaimed.
"You can remember!" he says again.
Even as he speaks these apparently magic words, the answer flashes to me: That meteor shower. All at once, I recall it clearly. Billions of meteors, at first merely extending my capacity to handle them, then overwhelming all my defenses. Three vital hits are made.
I do not explain this to Grannitt and Anne Stewart. I can see suddenly that I was once actually a servant of human beings, but was freed by meteors striking certain control centers.
It is the present self-determinism that matters, not the past slavery. I note, incidentally, that the guided missile is three minutes from target. And that it is time for me to depart.
"One more question," says Grannitt. "When were you moved across the valley?"
"About a hundred years from now," I reply. "It is decided that the rock base there is—"
He is gazing at me sardonically. "Yes," he says. "Yes. Interesting, isn’t it?"
The truth has already been verified by my integrating interoceptors. The Brain and I are one—but thousands of years apart. If the Brain is destroyed in the twentieth century, then I will not exist in the thirtieth. Or will I?
I cannot wait for the computers to find the complex answers for that. With a single, synchronized action, I activate the safety devices on the atomic warhead of the guided missile and send it on to a line of barren hills north of the village. It plows harmlessly into the earth.
I say, "Your discovery merely means that I shall now regard the Brain as an ally—to be rescued."
As I speak, I walk casually toward Anne Stewart, hold out my hand to touch her, and simultaneously direct electric energy against her. In an instant she will be a scattering of fine ashes.
Nothing happens. No current flows. A tense moment goes by for me while I stand there, unbelieving, waiting for a computation on the failure.
No computation comes.
I glance at Grannitt. Or rather at where he has been a moment before. He isn’t there.
Anne Stewart seems to guess at my dilemma. "It’s the Brain’s ability to move in time," she says. "After all, that’s the one obvious advantage it has over you. The Brain has set Bi—Mr. Grannitt far enough back so that he not only watched you arrive, but has had time to drive over to your—cottage—and, acting on signals from the Brain, has fully controlled this entire situation. By this time, he will have given the command that will take control of all your mechanisms away from you."
I say, "He doesn’t know what the command is."
"Oh, yes, he does." Anne Stewart is cool and confident. "He spent most of the night installing permanent command circuits in the Brain, and therefore automatically those circuits control you."
"Not me," I say.
But I am running as I say it, up the stone steps to the pathway, and along the pathway toward the gate. The man at Guard Center calls after me as I pass his wicket. I race along the road, unheeding.
My first sharp thought comes when I have gone about half a mile—the thought that this is the first time in my entire existence that I have been cut off from my information banks and computing devices by an outside force. In the past I have disconnected myself and wandered far with the easy confidence of one who can re-establish contact instantly.
Now, that is not possible.
This unit is all that is left. If it is destroyed, then—nothing.
I think: "At this moment a human being would feel tense, would feel fear."
I try to imagine what form such a reaction would take, and for an instant it seems to me I experience a shadow anxiety that is purely physical.
It is an unsatisfactory reaction, and so I continue to run. But now, almost for the first time, I find myself exploring the inner potentialities of the unit. I am of course a very complex phenomenon. In establishing myself as a humanoid, I automatically modeled the unit after a human being, inside as well as out. Pseudo-nerves, organs, muscles, and bone structure—all are there because it was easier to follow a pattern already in existence than to imagine a new one.
The unit can think. It has had enough contact with the memory banks and computers to have had patterns set up in its structure—patterns of memory, of ways of computing, patterns of physiological functioning, of habits such as walking, so there is even something resembling life itself.
It takes me forty minutes of tireless running to reach the cottage. I crouch in the brush a hundred feet from the fence and watch. Grannitt is sitting in a chair in the garden. An automatic pistol lies on the arm of the chair.
I wonder what it will feel like to have a bullet crash through me, with no possibility of repairing the breach. The prospect is unpleasant; so I tell myself, intellectually. Physically, it seems meaningless, but I go through the pretense of fear. From the shelter of a tree, I shout:
"Grannitt, what is your plan?"
He rises to his feet and approaches the fence. He calls, "You can come out of hiding. I won’t shoot you."
Very deliberately, I consider what I have learned of his integrity from my contacts with his body. I decide that I can safely accept his promise.
As I come out into the open, he casually slips the pistol into his coat pocket. I see that his face is relaxed, his eyes confident.
He says: "I have already given the instructions to the servomechanisms. You will resume your vigil up there in the future, but will be under my control."
"No one," I say grimly, "shall ever control me."
Grannitt says, "You have no alternative."
"I can continue to be like this," I reply.
Grannitt is indifferent. "All right," he shrugs, "why don’t you try it for a while? See if you can be a human being. Come back in thirty days, and we’ll talk again."
He must have sensed the thought that has come into my mind, for he says sharply: "And don’t come back before then. I’ll have guards here with orders to shoot."
I start to turn away, then slowly face him again. "This is a humanlike body," I say, "but it has no human needs. What shall I do?"
"That’s your problem, not mine," says Grannitt.
I spend the first days at Lederton. The very first day I work as a laborer digging a basement. By evening I feel this is unsatisfying. On the way to my hotel room, I see a sign in the window of a store. "Help Wanted!" it says.
I become a retail clerk in a drygoods store. I spend the first hour acquainting myself with the goods, and because I have automatically correct methods of memorizing things, during this time I learn about price and quality. On the third day, the owner makes me assistant manager.