Caliban

Something else about the datastore was strange, even disturbing: There was a flavor of something close toemotion about much of its data. It was as if the opinions, the feelings, of whoever implanted the information into the datastore had been stored there as well.

He was growing to understand the datastore on something deeper than an intellectual level. He was learning thefeel of it, gaining a sense of how it worked, developing reflexes to help him use it in a more controlled and useful manner, keep it from spewing out knowledge he did not need. Humans had to learn to walk: That was one of many strange and needless facts the datastore had provided. Caliban was coming to realize that he had to learn how to know, and remember.

Confusion, muddle, dirt, inaccurate and useless information-those he could perhaps learn to accept. But it was far more troubling that, on many subjects, the datastore was utterly-and deliberately-silent. Information he most urgently wanted was not only missing butexcised, purposely removed. There was a distinct sensation of emptiness, of loss, that came to him when he reached for data that should have been there and it was not. There were carved-out voids inside the datastore.

There was much he desperately wanted to know, but there was one thing in particular, one thing that the store did not tell him, one thing that he most wanted to know:Why didn’t it tell him more? He knew it should have been able to do so. Why was all information on that place where the sign said Settlertown deleted from the map? Why had all meaningful references to robots been deleted? There was the greatest mystery. He was one, and yet he scarcely knew what one was. Why was the datastore silent on that of all subjects?

Humans he knew about. At his first sight of that woman he saw when he awoke, he had immediately known what a human was, the basics of their biology and culture. Later, when he glanced at an old man, or one of the rare children walking the street, he knew all basic generalities concerning those classes of person-their likely range of temperament, how it was best to address them, what they were and were not likely to do. A child might run and laugh, and adult was likely to walk more sedately, an elder might choose to move more slowly still.

But when he looked at another robot, one of his fellow beings, his datastore literally drew a blank. There was simply no information in his mind.

All he knew about robots came from his own observation. Yet his observations had afforded him little more than confusion.

The robots he saw-and he himself-appeared to be a cross between human and machine. That left any number of questions unclear. Were robots born and raised like humans? Were they instead manufactured, like all the other machines that received detailed discussion in the datastore? What was the place of the robot in the world? He knew the rights and privileges of humans-except as they pertained to robots-but he knew nothing at all of how robots fit in…

Yes, he could see what went on around him. But what he saw when he looked was disturbing, and baffling. Robots were everywhere-and everywhere, in every way, robots were subservient. They fetched and they carried, they walked behind the humans. They carried the humans’ loads, opened their doors, drove their cars. It was patently clear from every scrap of human and robot behavior that this was the accepted order of things. No one questioned it.

Except himself, of course.

Who was he? What was he? What was he doing here? What did it all mean?

He stood up and started walking again, not with any real aim in mind, but more because he could not bear to sit idle any longer. The need toknow, to understand who and what he was, was getting stronger all the time. There was always the chance that the answer, the solution, was just around the corner, waiting to be discovered.

He left the park and turned left, heading down the broad walkways of downtown.

HOURS went by, and still Caliban walked the streets, still deeply confused, uncertain what he was searching for. Anything could contain the clue, the answer, the explanation. A word from a passing human, a sign on a wall, the design of a building, might just stimulate his datastore to provide him with the answers he needed.

He stopped at a corner and looked across the street to the building opposite. Well, the sight of this particular building did not cause any torrent of facts to burst forth, but it was a strange-looking thing nonetheless, even considering the jarringly different architectural styles he had seen in the city. It was a muddle of domes, columns, arches, and cubes. Caliban could fathom no purpose whatsoever in it all.

“Out of my way, robot,” an imperious voice called out behind him. Caliban, lost in his consideration of things architectural, did not really register the voice. Suddenly a walking stick whacked down on his left shoulder.