Caliban

“As I said, it is a question that few of us would ever stop to ask. At first glance, it is like asking what use the sky is, or what the planet we stand upon is for, or what good it does to breathe air. As with these other things, robots seem to us so much a part of the natural order of things that we cannot truly picture a world that does not contain them. As with these natural things, we-quite incorrectly-tend to assume that the universe simply placed them here for our convenience. But it was not nature who placed robots among us. We did that to ourselves.”

Notforourselves, Kresh noticed.To ourselves. What the devil had Leving been saying the night of the lecture? He found himself wishing that he had been there.

Fredda Leving’s image kept talking. “On an emotional level, at least, we perceive robots not as tools, not as objects we have made, not even as intelligent beings with which we share the universe-but as something basic, placed here by the hand of nature, something part of us. We cannot imagine a world worth living in without them, just as our friends the Settlers think a world thatdoes include them is no fit place for humans.

“But I digress from my own question. ‘What are robots for?’ As we seek after an answer to that question, we must remember that they arenot part of the natural universe. They are an artificial creation, no more and no less than a starship or a coffee cup or a terraforming station. We built these robots-or at least our ancestors built them, and then set robots to work building more robots.

“Robots, then, are tools we have built for our own use. That is at least the start of an answer. But it is by no means the whole answer.

“For robots are the tools that think. In that sense, they are more than our tools-they are our relatives, our descendants.”

Again there was a hubbub in the audience, a stirring, this time of anger and surprise. “Forgive me,” Fredda said. “That is perhaps an unfortunate way to phrase it. But it is, in a very real sense, the truth. Robots are the way they are because we humans made them. They could not exist without us. There are those who believe that we humans could not exist without them. But that statement is so much dangerous nonsense.”

Now there was a full-fledged roar from the back of the hall, where the Ironheads had congregated. “Yes, that does strike a nerve, doesn’t it?” Fredda asked, the veneer of courtesy dropping away from her voice. “ ‘We could not live without them ‘-it is not a factual statement, but it is an article of faith. We have convinced ourselves that we could not survive without robots, equatingthe way we live with ourlives themselves. We have to look no further than the Settlers to know that humans can live-and live well-without robots.”

A chorus of boos and shouts filled the hallway. Fredda raised her hands for quiet, her face stern and firm. At last the crowd settled down a bit. “I do not say that weshould live that way. I build robots for a living. I believe in robots. I believe they have not yet reached their full potential. They have shaped our society, a society I believe has many admirable qualities.

“But, my friends, our society is calcified. Fossilized. Rigid. We have gotten to the point where we are certain, absolutely certain, that ours is the only possible way to live. We tell ourselves that wemust liveprecisely as our ancestors did, that our world is perfect just as it is.

“Except that to live is to change. All that lives must change. The end of change is the beginning of death-and our world is dying.” Now there was dead silence in the room. “We all know that, even if we will not admit it. Inferno’ s ecology is collapsing, but we refuse to see it, let alone do anything about it. We deny the problem is there.”

Kresh frowned. The ecologycollapsing? Yes, there were problems, everyone knew that. But he would not place it in such drastic terms. Or was that part of the denial she was talking about? He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and listened.

“Instead,” Leving’s image went on, “we insist that our robots coddle us, pamper us, while we go about our self-indulgent lives, as the web of life that supports us grows ever weaker. Anytime in the last hundred years, we, the citizens of Inferno, could have taken matters into our own hands, gotten to work, and saved the situation-saved our planet-for ourselves. Except it was so easy to convince ourselves that everything was fine. The robots were taking care of us. How could there be anything to worry about?

“Meantime, the forests died. The oceans’ life-cycle weakened. The control systems broke down. And we, who have been trained by our robots to believe that doing nothing is the highest and finest of all activities, did not lift a finger.