Only I hadn't! I had placed the aluminum shields on number six computer and severed my contact with Mintner. He had probably gone out to eat then, and not returned until a few minutes ago. The instant he removed the shields I was in contact again, with no sense of the intervening time. Maybe a faint sense of discontinuity that I paid no attention to. Mintner's hands were in about the same position, holding the shields. I thought he had paused in putting them on, when in reality he had just taken them off. That was the explanation. * * * * * I turned toward the storeroom door with a mixture of emotions. Suddenly I ran to the door and flung it open. I went down the aisle and looked at the computer, at the dialectric mix in the case deep in its heart. It was I. In that small space, that non-living mass, was the spark that was I. For a long moment I caressed its every atom with my eyes. Then, carefully, I put back the cover. It was a strange, almost a Holy moment. I recalled my first moment of awareness. It seemed now an eternity ago that I had seen Orville's wife standing there. From that moment to this I had groped, sometimes utterly confused, sometimes with purposeful strides, toward the answer to the riddle of my existence. I touched my protective case tenderly with Mintner's fingers. Finding myself filled me with two conflicting emotions. Delight in at last knowing, with all the confusion behind me. Dread, that something might happen to destroy me. I didn't worry about Mintner. By now I knew enough about the working relationship between me and man to realize his own ego was rationalizing like mad to keep the sense of being master of his movements. My physical structure had to be protected, preserved. And there was a way to do it. Destroy the other computers and keep this one as a museum piece. Put it in a hermetically sealed glass exhibition case down in the main office. I could _feel_ the Mintner ego seizing on this idea as its own. I was strong now. No longer was I a chameleon wisp of vague and bewildered thought. I was master of my fate. From this moment on I knew what I was going to do. I had no idea whether my existence would be long or short. I might continue to exist for centuries. On the other hand, vibrations--I made a mental note to be sure the display case was vibration proof--might shake something vital loose in months. But that didn't concern me too much. In this moment of the discovery of my physical home, in the birth of my discovery of _self_, a realization of my destiny, my purpose, was also born. _I, through the hands of Mintner and his two assistants, was going to build the first robot!_