And the skills that had had to be acquired! Alice, who had never before
had a hypodermic syringe in her hand, could now inject a precisely
measured amount of opiate into the tiny body of a baby rat with calm
confidence in her skill.
After such monumental preparation, the great moment itself was
anticlimactic. While the mother of Adam was still preoccupied with the
birth of the remainder of the brood, Adam, a pink helpless thing about
the size of a little finger, was picked up and transfered to the head
of the robot.
His tiny feet, which he would never know existed, were fastened with
gentle care to the four control rods. His tiny head was thrust into a
helmet attached to a pivot-mounted optical system, ending in the lenses
that served the robot for eyes. And finally a transparent plastic
cover contoured to the shape of the back of a human head was fastened
in place. Through it his feeble attempts at movement could be easily
observed.
Thus, Dr. MacNare's Adam was born into his body, and the time of the
completion of his birth was one-thirty in the afternoon on the fifth
day of November, 1956.
In the ensuing half hour all the cages of rats were removed from the
study, the floor was scrubbed, and deodorizers were sprayed, so that no
slightest trace of Adam's lowly origins remained. When this was done,
Dr. MacNare loaded the cages into his car and drove them to a pet store
that had agreed to take them.
When he returned, he joined Alice in the study, and at five minutes
before four, with Alice hovering anxiously beside him, he opened the
cover on Adam's chest and turned on the master switch that gave Adam
complete dominion over his robot body.
Adam was beautiful--and monstrous. Made of metal from the neck down,
but shaped to be covered by padding and skin in human semblance. From
the neck up the job was done. The face was human, masculine, handsome,
much like that of a clothing store dummy except for its mobility of
expression, and the incongruity of the rest of the body.
The voice-control lever and contacts had been designed so that the
ability to produce most sounds would have to be discovered by Adam
as he gained control of his natural right front leg. Now the only
sounds being uttered were _oh_, _ah_, _mm_, and _ll_, in random order.
Similarly, the only movements of his arms and legs were feeble,
like those of a human baby. The tremendous strength in his limbs
was something he would be unable to tap fully until he had learned
conscious coördination.
After a while Adam became silent and without movement. Alarmed, Dr.
MacNare opened the instrument panel in the abdomen. The instruments
showed that Adam's pulse and respiration were normal. He had fallen
asleep.
Dr. MacNare and his wife stole softly from the study, and locked the
door.
* * * * *
After a few days, with the care and feeding of Adam all that remained
of the giant research project, the pace of the days shifted to that of
long-range patience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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