Rog Phillips

“ I lifted my head and stared at the doctor, avoiding Paula's eyes. They were standing there, holding their breath, waiting for my next words. I let my head drop into concealment in my arms again.
"The next step would be a robot body for myself," I said mechanically, tonelessly. "I would build it and enter it. And I would never be able to re-enter my normal body, because it would die in the transfer. I would be immortal—but at an awful price. The price of normal life, loving, being loved, and someday getting married and having children—and a mother for those children. ”

“ I'll prove it to you. I know how you built the synthetic brain. I know how you built the robot body. I even know how you charged the brain. I even know that that Boston Bull Terrier pet you had at your feet while they questioned you, and which followed you out the door when you left, disgraced, was not a living creature!"
I lifted my hands and looked at them. They were trembling so much their outlines were blurred.
"Show him to his room," Dr. Leopold Moriss said suddenly. "Keep a generous supply of grapefruit and tomato juice near him." ”

“ There must be a way out. There had to be a way out. All I had to do was think about it, if I could think through the torture of my body. One thing I knew: I would never tell him what he wanted to know. Not to escape a thousand years of torture.
I sat up and drank the glass of tomato juice. The empty glass slipped out of my fingers to the floor, landing with a dull thud on the rug. Getting out of bed, I went into the bathroom and washed my face in cold water. ”

“ Paula's voice said doggedly. "I don't care if you never finish. It's inhuman anyway—to discard the body you were born in and transfer the electronic pattern of your mind and consciousness to a mass of non-living colloid dielectric perched inside the head of a robot made of stainless steel bones, plastic muscles, and copper nerves. You've got to stop torturing January." ”

“ Paula sat on the edge of the bed and washed my face and ran an electric razor over it while I basked in the pleasant rays from her deep blue eyes. She fed me tall glasses of tomato juice spiked only with grapefruit juice, and with cool, clinking ice cubes that caressed my fevered lips....
"You're looking much better this morning, January," she said, leaning back and inspecting her handiwork with the shaver. "Feel up to trying a scrambled egg fried in butter, with golden brown toast and nice crisp bacon?"
"And make the coffee black—and hot," I said. ”

“ That pitcher of tomato juice was the last piece. Everything fit, including that.
I would be able to tell my lie, and make Dr. Leopold Moriss believe it. Then—I would help him. My wild laughter burst into my ears. By an effort of will I shut it off and climbed back into bed, simulating sleep, my ears tuned for the first sound of the doctor's coming.
The door opened. After a moment of suspense during which I kept my breathing slow and deep it closed softly. Padded footsteps came across the rug.
"January!" The doctor's voice was impersonal and insistent. ”

“ A realization of the fallacy of believing that by destroying oneself at the instant of creation of that other mind it would in some absolute way become oneself.
As I looked at him standing there on the stairs the hate that I had nurtured disappeared. In its place was pity and sympathy.
I was up the stairs catching him before he could fall, lifting him, surprised at his lightness. Paula, her lips trembling on a hesitant worried smile, was opening doors ahead of me as I carried her father into the house and laid him on his bed. ”

“ I buckled the straps with fumbling fingers, my thoughts racing. There was not a tool in sight anywhere. Nothing that could cut that wire.
"We forgot to warm up the tubes!" Dr. Moriss exclaimed.
"You aren't as calm as you pretend to be," I chided, hiding the thrill of triumph that rose in me. "As soon as I finish buckling the straps on you and your future receptacle I'll warm up the circuit."
"Thanks, January," he said with relief.
I finished with him and went to the robot, the robot so soon to be activated with the doctor's intelligence. ”

“ Paula isn't expecting me to do it this way."
I took a deep breath. My eyes studied the straps to be buckled around the robot in such a way that it could only release itself when it became activated by a calm intelligence, and the straps fastened into the vacant table that could be buckled and unbuckled the same way, that would keep the body from throwing itself around violently under the wild play of neutral forces set loose as the mind was plucked from the living brain. ”

“ I waited in the chemical lab, knowing that Paula would be watching the door of the building, and not wanting to face her until it was all finished. I was waiting for the sound of footsteps over my head. Slow steps that would cross and come down the stairs.
And finally I heard them. I watched the stairs and saw first the legs and then the rest of the man that was descending. It was the robot, controlled by the mind of Dr. Leopold Moriss. ”

“ I said harshly. "My stomach couldn't hold even the coffee right now." I jerked my eyes away from hers, past Dr. Leopold Moriss, to the curtains on the windows.
"Get him a big glass of half tomato juice half grapefruit juice," the doctor said. "He can hold that down. It'll make him feel better."
I continued to hold my eyes on the curtains, but I knew that I was licked. Whipped. Beaten into submission. When I heard the pert footsteps return and felt the cold roundness of the glass against my hand, I turned and looked up into her smiling, sympathetic eyes. ”

“ The first thing he did in the robot body was look around for the bone. Rapid as the flicker of a film."
"Yes, I know," I said dryly. "I found the same thing. No consciousness of transfer or any other sensation. With the scanner-transferer it takes place in less than a ten thousandth of a second. Every electrical pattern of the brain complex is lifted out as an infinitesimal segment and transplanted into the colloid dielectric complex without alteration."
"Like a television eye scans a scene, in a way," the doctor added. "But let's go out to my laboratory. I'll show you my body." ”

“ I think you're half falling for him. It wouldn't be any good being married to an alcoholic who is incurable because he's hiding the thing that made him an alcoholic to begin with."
His next words shocked their way into my startled thoughts.
"But my motive isn't that humanitarian and you know it," he said, returning to his school-teacherish, lecturing voice. "I've repeated January's experiments. Out in my laboratory I have the completed and tested robot body exactly like my own, all ready for the transfer of my mind. ”

“ But it'll be good therapy, and with Paula in the background I don't believe you'll have any trouble resisting the temptation to gain immortality in a non-living robot."
"Maybe you're right," I said.
"With me it's different," he went on enthusiastically, paying little attention to my comment. "I'm getting on in years. My wife has been gone long enough so that she's just a memory. Paula is grown up. There's nothing to keep me from making the jump. ”

“ If you were to wrap the cup and saucer in tightly stretched dull white plastic or rubber sheeting and paint eyes in the proper places you would have it down pat.
Maybe it was the eyes that made me dislike him. They were faded blue, but not the kind you would call characterless. It would be more accurate to call them emotionless. Not emotionless in a cold way, but in a dead way. ”

“ He looked back at me, his face expressionless behind the cigar. My rage subsided gradually.
"That's better," he said finally. From that moment I hated him.
Then the door opened. The girl in the watermelon red dress entered, wheeling a tray crowded with white sandwiches, green pickles and steaming black coffee. ”

“ I said. "I'm hungry. I'd mow your lawn on an empty stomach and get maybe fifty cents. That's one hamburger and two cups of coffee. I'd still be hungry."
Instead of answering, he reached one of his blue-veined hands inside his coat and drew out a new looking black leather billfold. I watched him while he pulled out a thick sheaf of currency.
He carefully counted out ten twenty dollar bills, dropping them one by one in a neat pile on the park bench. He stuck the rest back in his billfold and took out a white glossy card, dropping it on the pile of bills. ”

“ In a moment I had clipped the blue coated wire where it was soldered to the red one. Quickly, with sure movements, I fastened the cover back on the case, threw the switch that sent electric current glowing through the cold filaments of tubes, and returned the wire clipper to its drawer. And by the time I had adjusted the two hoods into position over Dr. Leopold Moriss' head and that of the waiting robot form, the meters on the instrument panel showed that everything was ready for the final moment. The moment I had been looking forward to, working toward ”

“ He chuckled while I wiped it off.
"I'd like you to go over my research with me," he said, reverting abruptly to his school teacher voice. "You're the only living man who knows anything about it other than me. ”