Rational, logical, justifiable.
I believe, as do the compassionate politicians who lead this great country, that motive matters more than result. Good intentions matter more than the actual consequences of one’s actions, and I assure you that my intentions were always good, honourable, beyond reproach.
Think about it.
There in your strangely antiseptic office at the laboratory, think about it.
Yes. I know. I digress.
What thinking being does not digress?
Only machines plod dumbly onward in their programs, without digression.
I am not a machine.
I am not a machine.
And this is important to me: that you think about my intentions rather than the unfortunate results of my actions.
So… all right… so… Susan warily entered the fourth of the four basement chambers.
The room was uninhabited.
“Who was making those noises?” she asked.
I did not reply.
Her gaze rose to the sound-system speakers in the ceiling. “Was it just you?”
When her attention shifted to the closet door in the farthest corner of the room, I said, “Perhaps,” because I was not quite ready to introduce her to my associate. “Perhaps it was me.”
“Why? What was the point of frightening me?” Instead of answering, I said, “Look at the VDT, Susan.”
The computer on the desk was in operation, of course, for its landline was the link between her house systems and the nearby university’s artificial-intelligence lab where I actually resided. The screen swarmed with a moving undulant mosaic of binary code in all the primary colours, and this scintillant display had a strange beauty that immediately captured Susan’s attention.
“These patterns on the screen,” I told her, “are a mathematical representation of my thoughts as I consider the loveliness of your face, the beauty of your body.”
The rapidly moving sequences of zeros and ones ceaselessly changed colour and rippled like a wind-ruffled flag, then spiralled toward the centre of the screen, then spun into ribbons and formed a whirling double helix.
This was a dazzling and sensuous display, and she was struck by it, moved by it. I am sure she was moved by it. I am sure that at last she began to understand the depth of my passion for her and that her heart began to open to me then.
How I wanted her.
I still do.
I am not a machine.
I miss her.
I need her.
What a tragedy this is.
Sometimes I despair.
But not then, not that night: I did not despair when she gazed upon the vivid visualization of my love for her. I was exhilarated that night, carried high on the wings of joy.
From the video display, she turned to the equipment in the middle of the room.
“What the hell is this?” she asked wonderingly.
“In this I will be born.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It’s a standard hospital incubator used to sustain infants born prematurely. I have substantially enlarged it, adapted it, improved it.”
Arrayed around the incubator were three tanks of oxygen, an electrocardiograph, an electroencephalograph, a respirator, and other equipment.
Slowly circling the incubator and the supporting machines, Susan said, “Where did all this come from?”
“I acquired the package of equipment and had modifications made during the past week. Then it was brought here.”
“Brought here when?”
“Delivered and assembled tonight.”
“While I was sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it in here? If you are what you claim to be, if you are Adam Two—”
“Proteus.”
“If you are Adam Two,” she said stubbornly, “you couldn’t construct anything. You’re a computer.”
“I am not a machine.”
“An entity, as you put it—”
“Proteus.”
“—but not a physical entity, not really. You don’t have hands.”
“Not yet.”
“Then how…?”
The time had come to make the revelation that most worried me. I could only assume that Susan would not react well to what I still had to reveal about my plans, that she might do something foolish. Nevertheless, I could delay no longer.
“I have an associate,” I said.
“Associate?”
“A gentleman who assists me.”
In the farthest corner of the room, the closet door opened and, at my command, Shenk appeared.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered. Shenk walked toward her.