Love stories; Robots -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
Frank's head came up slowly and he said: "I have no choice, sir. I'll
give you a complete statement. First let me say that Rationaloid Robot
Elizabeth Seven, #DX78-947, Series S, specialty: sales demonstration,
is entirely innocent. I plead guilty to inducing Miss Seven to leave her
place of employ, Atomovair Motors, Inc., of disassembling and concealing
Miss Seven, and of smuggling her as unlawful cargo aboard a Minor
Planets freighter to these premises."
"That's more like it," chuckled Roberts, whipping out his notebook.
"Let's have the details."
"It all started," Frank said, "when the California Legislature passed
its version of the Robot Leniency Act two years ago." The act provided
that all rationaloid mechanisms, including non-memory types, receive
free time each week based on the nature and responsibilities or their
jobs. Because of the extra-Terran clause Frank found himself with a good
deal of free time when he wasn't flying the asteroid circuit.
"At first humans resented us walking around free," the big servo
continued. "Four or five of us would be sightseeing in San Francisco,
keeping strictly within the robot zones painted on the sidewalks, when
people would yell 'Junko' or 'Grease-bag' or other names at us.
Eventually it got better when we learned to go around alone. The humans
didn't seem to mind an occasional mech on the streets, but they hated
seeing us in groups. At any rate, I'd attended a highly interesting
lecture on Photosynthesis in Plastic Products one night at the City
Center when I discovered I had time for a walk before I started back for
the rocketport."
Attracted by the lights along Van Ness Avenue, Frank said he walked
north for a while along the city's automobile row. He'd gone about three
blocks when he stopped in front of a dealer's window. It wasn't the
shiny new Atomovair sports jetabout that caught Frank's eye, it was the
charming demonstration robot in the sales room who was pointing out the
car's new features.
"I felt an immediate overload of power in my DX circuit," the
servo-pilot confessed. "I had to cut in my emergency condensers before
the gain flattened out to normal. Miss Seven experienced the same thing.
She stopped what she was doing and we stared at each other. Both of us
were aware of the deep attraction of our mutual magnetic domains.
Although physicists commonly express the phenomenon in such units as
Gilberts, Maxwells and Oersteds, we robots know it to be our counterpart
of human love."
At this the two inspectors snorted with laughter.
"I might never have made it back to the base that night," said Frank,
ignoring them, "if a policeman hadn't come along and rapped me on the
shoulder with his nightstick. I pretended to go, but I doubled around
the corner and signaled I'd be back."
Frank spent all of his free time on Van Ness Avenue after that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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