Bryce Walton

“ Alice was dead. Alice had been reborn. Alice had come out of the lonely dark of unborn waste into the living light of love.
She carried on this imagined conversation with Kelsey, rehearsing. No, it was not enough to be filled to overflowing with love. You had to know how to act, you had to smile all the time, you had to say the right things and know when not to speak. Beauty is as beauty does. ”

“ I, Julian, will outdo myself." He leaned over her. His voice was low. "Why is it that a robot can be made more beautiful than a human? Tell me, my dear, tell me and I shall never tell anyone else. Do you have a soul? Do you have a heart? Do you know what it is to be sad and alone and can you find some pleasure in it? Do you perhaps even find pleasure in yourself, and sometimes find it unnecessary to swim in a sea of humanity like a brainless protozoon?"
"But will I feel real, the way a human feels?" ”

“ She got off the Commutor Jet at the uptown station and walked through darkness. She walked alone in the city. No human being would have been walking in the darkness. They were hovering together behind blacked-out windows in groups. But she felt nothing as she walked in the blackness.
She knew where the Clinic was. The address was on the order blank.
She hurried faster and faster. At no moment in her life had she felt dawning in her such a hope of happiness, such a feeling of ecstasy. At no time, even in her deepest dreams, had she dreamed that she might really be loved by Master Kelsey. ”

“ A thing stolen, the result of an act no robot could be guilty of because no robot had a soul.
But I have a soul. There is a point at which the soul is sick. At this point one awakens—awakens or dies.
Clutching the paper she had stolen from her love, she ran toward the Commutor jet station. Nowhere was there a light; not even from the city ten miles from the housing project in which Kelsey lived. But Alice had no thought whatever of an air-raid. There were worse darknesses than a blackout. There were worse ways to die than under a rain of white fire bombs. ”

“ Believe Julian when he tells you this—there is no lonelier being in the world than a man who has not forgotten what beauty is in a world that has turned ugly from having lost its soul."
Then she knew that Julian had turned off her thermostat. Suddenly there was no feeling, no sound, no sight except that of the general blackout rushing in out of the night, down the halls, into the rooms, into her eyes.
How quickly and painlessly a robot could die, she thought. How easy it was to live and die and come back to life. You could be born suddenly full-grown and efficient. ”

“ I can make a robot lovelier than a human."
"Lovelier than a human being!"
"Exactly. Much lovelier. Beauty comes from within as the sages say. It comes from the heart and the soul, my dear. And so few humans any longer have either heart or soul. Of course, that would imply that robots do have hearts and souls, so please, my dear, do not repeat what I have said. Already I am thought to be excessively eccentric for this sad conformistic age of orthodoxy and stupid unimaginative dependency. Beauty comes from individuality and strength, my dear. ”

“ When you stand alone in the dark of a dark, dark closet every night, and when you're alone almost all the time of the day or night, dreaming becomes an art, a necessary art. It becomes the shield against dying inside, losing the soul, being the robot you were originally designed to be. ”

“ Alice watched Kelsey's love, who didn't seem to see Alice at all when she came in, but then domestics had no meaning to anyone but their Masters. Gloria—golden flesh; warm and human love of Kelsey; love in a transparent gown tight and clinging to the flesh; warm and waiting love. Love-kissing and kissing—but Alice tried not to look at love. ”

“ Waiting to look just right, to smile just right. It was a matter of appearance. No one knew that better than Alice did who looked all wrong and could never look any different, never look human, never look full of love.
You smiled when you loved. You smiled and your flesh turned warm. If you had flesh. If your warmth was not a dial to be turned up or down. If on the outside you were human so that everyone could know.
"Oh, Alice," Kelsey called out.
Alice came in from the kitchen. "Yes, Master Kelsey."
Gloria stared on and on into the Tevee while its color flickered over her half sleeping face. ”

“ A receptionist robot looked just like a beautiful human woman. She only acted like a robot. But if I looked like that, so beautiful, I could feel human too. I could be human.
Kelsey could give back my love to me, and our hearts would kiss and loneliness would die. ”

“ In the dark, the suffocating dark now that she knew what it could mean to really be alive and not one of the walking dead. In the dark, alone, dreaming of Kelsey, dreaming of human heart touching human heart, of the lips of his kiss, of his arms around her neck ”

“ For the soul can be trapped in ugliness, or in the slashing streak of electrons. Dying there, the soul alone can mourn its dying, for who can feel the soul in the rectifiers and diodes, or behind the ugliness of a distorted shell? ”

“ He was pushing and pulling and finally she was lying down and staring at the whirling lines of the white ceiling and seeing Kelsey's smiling waiting yearning face in it. "That is a joke, a very funny joke. The receptionist out there is a human being. At least she would lead the unsuspecting to believe that she is. However, I must confess, my dear, that I have learned the sad truth that she is human in name only, that her heart is ice, and she is bitter with ambition." ”

“ She would have to listen again to love, while she stood alone and frozen in the dark closet of her own longings.
"Alice?"
"Yes."
"It's that ten minutes on the commutor to the jet station. Don't they realize that a man is alone those ten minutes? Nobody else to talk to. No Tevee. No sound even. Alone."
She nodded. He was asking her if she knew what loneliness was!
He started for the bathroom, as though to avoid thinking of something.
"Everything ready for my love?" he asked nervously.
"Yes," she said. Yes, the robot says. Yes, my love, everything is ready for your love. ”

“ They had to be lovely to look at, and be able to smile in the most pleasant way possible.
Laboring robots, domestics, their form was more functional than beautiful. It lacked the surface polish of the office-working robots. And yet Alice knew that one of the beautiful receptionist robots for example was indeed beautiful, and that it was almost impossible to distinguish them from beautiful human beings.
It was daring and risky enough to be going to the clinic to pretend she was a receptionist from Kelsey's office, there to be beautified. ”

“ Kelsey was suddenly smiling intensely, as though his very life had been threatened.
"That's better," the Mirror said.
Alice had tried so hard and so often to smile, pulling at the plastoid stuff of her face. She guessed that Humans were supposed to smile all the time, and robots never. Why should a robot smile. A robot had nothing to sell. ”

“ You could be born ugly, or round, or square, or like a pyramid, or something almost all arms, or legs, or eyes, or ears.
You could be born beautiful, hardly distinguishable from a beautiful human being who could receive love. ”

“ There was a large supply of food, and a method of reprocessing the air. A person could live in it for a long time. Alice knew she could. She would have loved being there just with Kelsey, but Kelsey was empty, and there was no way he could give her back her love, nothing in him he could use to share loneliness with her.
"Two hours—"
"But I love you," she said weakly. "We have one another. We can talk. We can tell one another all about—"
"No Tevee," Kelsey whispered. "We can't get out! No one can get in! ”

“ What's happening? You're more real than the woman who invites me to her apartment and assures me with insipid smiles and phony gestures that she is real. What's real? You're real—but you can't be real! ”

“ You could be blotted out again, just as suddenly. You could be born in any shape or size, born to do any one or combination of so many different things, and when your job was done you could so quickly be put to rest again. ”

“ But she told him about the order blank, and convinced him she really was Alice and Anita Starre did not exist.
He ran and called a robot repair clinic. He was almost incoherent, trying to tell the clinic what had happened, but they finally understood and said they would be right out to take the domestic away.
He seemed frightened as he looked at her.
"I don't understand," he said several times. "No one told you to do such a thing. How could a robot just up and do such a thing?"
She started to answer, but didn't. There was nothing to say.
"Robots can become inefficient," Kelsey said. ”

“ You can own a Sky-Splitter jet sporter now without offending your crowd. Our special consumer's research proves that now at last these amazing Sky-Splitters are no longer conspicuous items, but are fully accepted as normal by over ninety-three per cent of the consumer public. You can enjoy the cloud thrills of a Sky-Splitter without being considered in any way eccentric. ”

“ Due to our wonderful cooperative spirit, the enemy's cowardly attack accomplished little except the minor destruction of a few scattered points. We're sure now that anyone who has not ordered our Cozy-Corner Air-Raid Shelter will do so without further delay! It comes equipped, remember, with three-dimensional Tevee. There is the illusion of real people—"
Over fifty million air-raid shelters were sold within an hour.
But Alice wasn't concerned about that. She gave Kelsey a sedative and put him to bed, and then she went to her dark closet and stood in it until Wednesday morning. ”