Time Travel Omnibus, page 731
One Temporalist said, “Why do you suppose they were so nice to you, Archie? So cooperative?”
“I received the impression, sir,” said Archie, “that they had some notion I might be arriving. A distant rumor. A vague belief. They seemed to have been waiting for me.
“Did they say they had expected you to arrive? Did they say there were records that we had sent you forward in time?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ask them about it?”
“Yes, sir. It was impolite to do so but I had been ordered carefully to observe everything I could, so I had to ask them—but they refused to tell me.”
Another Temporalist put in, “Were there many other things they refused to tell you?”
“A number, sir.”
One Temporalist stroked his chin thoughtfully at this point and said, “Then there must be something wrong about all this. What is the population of the Earth in 2230, Archie? Did they tell you that?”
“Yes, sir. I asked. There are just under a billion people on Earth in 2230. There are 150 million in space. The numbers on Earth are stable. Those in space are growing.”
“Ah,” said a Temporalist, “but there are nearly ten billion people on Earth now, with half of them in serious misery. How did these people of the future get rid of nearly nine billion?”
“I asked them that, sir. They said it was a sad time.”
“A sad time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In what way?”
“They did not say, sir. They simply said it was a sad time and would say no more.”
One Temporalist who was of African origin said coldly, “What kind of people did you see in 2230?”
“What kind, sir?”
“Skin color? Shape of eyes?”
Archie said, “It was in 2230 as it is today, sir. There were different kinds; different shades of skin color, hair form, and so on. The average height seemed greater than it is today, though I did not study the statistics. The people seemed younger, stronger, healthier. In fact, I saw no undernourishment, no obesity, no illness—but there was a rich variety of appearances.”
“No genocide, then?”
“No signs of it, sir,” said Archie. He went on, “There were also no signs of crime or war or repression.”
“Well,” said one Temporalist, in a tone as though he were reconciling himself, with difficulty, to good news, “it seems like a happy ending.”
“A happy ending, perhaps,” said another, “but it’s almost too good to accept. It’s like a return of Eden. What was done, or will be done, to bring it about? I don’t like that ‘sad time.’ ”
“Of course,” said a third, “there’s no need for us to sit about and speculate. We can send Archie one hundred years into the future, fifty years into the future. We can find out, for what it’s worth, just what happened; I mean, just what will happen.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” said Archie. “They told me quite specifically and carefully that there are no records of anyone from the past having arrived earlier than their own time—the day I arrived. It was their opinion that if any further investigations were made of the time period between now and the time I arrived, that the future would be changed.”
There was almost a sickening silence. Archie was sent away and cautioned to keep everything firmly in mind for further questioning. I half expected them to send me away, too, since I was the only person there without an advanced degree in Temporal Engineering, but they must have grown accustomed to me, and I, of course, didn’t suggest on my own that I leave.
“The point is,” said one Temporalist, “that it is a happy ending. Anything we do from this point on might spoil it. They were expecting Archie to arrive; they were expecting him to report; they didn’t tell him anything they didn’t want him to report; so we’re still safe. Things will develop as they have been.”
“It may even be,” said another, hopefully, “that the knowledge of Archie’s arrival and the report they sent him back to make helped develop the happy ending.”
“Perhaps, but if we do anything else, we may spoil things. I prefer not to think about the sad time they speak of, but if we try something now, that sad time may still come and be even worse than it was—or will be—and the happy ending won’t develop, either. I think we have no choice but to abandon Temporal experiments and not talk about them, either. Announce failure.”
“That would be unbearable.”
“It’s the only safe thing to do.”
“Wait,” said one. “They knew Archie was coming, so there must have been a report that the experiments were successful. We don’t have to make failures of ourselves.”
“I don’t think so,” said still another. “They heard rumors; they had a distant notion. It was that sort of thing, according to Archie. I presume there may be leaks, but surely not an outright announcement.”
And that was how it was decided. For days, they thought, and occasionally discussed the matter, but with greater and greater trepidation. I could see the result coming with inexorable certainty. I contributed nothing to the discussion, of course—they scarcely seemed to know I was there—but there was no mistaking the gathering apprehension in their voices. Like those biologists in the very early days of genetic engineering who voted to limit and hedge in their experiments for fear that some new plague might be inadvertently loosed on unsuspecting humanity, the Temporalists decided, in terror, that the Future must not be tampered with or even searched.
It was enough, they said, that they now knew there would be a good and wholesome society, two centuries hence. They must not inquire further, they dared not interfere by the thickness of a fingernail, lest they ruin all. And they retreated into theory only.
One Temporalist sounded the final retreat. He said, “Someday, humanity will grow wise enough, and develop ways of handling the future that are subtle enough to risk observation and perhaps even manipulation along the course of time, but the moment for that has not yet come. It is still long in the future.” And there had been a whisper of applause.
Who was I, less than any of those engaged in Project Four, that I should disagree and go my own way? Perhaps it was the courage I gained in being so much less than they were—the valor of the insufficiently advanced. I had not had initiative beaten out of me by too much specialization or by too long a life of too deep thought.
At any rate, I spoke to Archie a few days later, when my own work assignments left me some free time. Archie knew nothing about training or about academic distinctions. To him, I was a man and a master, like any other man and master, and he spoke to me as such.
I said to him, “How did these people of the future regard the people of their past? Were they censorious? Did they blame them for their follies and stupidities?”
Archie said, “They did not say anything to make me feel this, sir. They were amused by the simplicity of my construction and by my existence, and it seemed to me they smiled at me and at the people who constructed me, in a good-humored way. They themselves had no robots.”
“No robots at all, Archie?”
“They said there was nothing comparable to myself, sir. They said they needed no metal caricatures of humanity.”
“And you didn’t see any?”
“None, sir. In all my time there, I saw not one.”
I thought about that a while, then said, “What did they think of other aspects of our society?”
“I think they admired the past in many ways, sir. They showed me museums dedicated to what they called the ‘period of unrestrained growth’. Whole cities had been turned into museums.”
“You said there were no cities in the world of two centuries hence, Archie. No cities in our sense.”
“It was not their cities that were museums, sir, but the relics of ours. AU of Manhattan Island was a museum, carefully preserved and restored to the period of its peak greatness. I was taken through it with several guides for hours, because they wanted to ask me questions about authenticity. I could help them very little, for I have never been to Manhattan. They seemed proud of Manhattan. There were other preserved cities, too, as well as carefully preserved machinery of the past, libraries of printed books, displays of past fashions in clothing, furniture, and other minutiae of daily life, and so on. They said that the people of our time had not been wise but they had created a firm base for future advance.”
“And did you see young people? Very young people, I mean. Infants?”
“No, sir.”
“Did they talk about any?”
“No, sir.”
I said, “Very well, Archie. Now, listen to me—”
If there was one thing I understood better than the Temporalists, it was robots. Robots were simply black boxes to them, to be ordered about, and to be left to maintenance men—or discarded—if they went wrong. I, however, understood the positronic circuitry of robots quite well, and I could handle Archie in ways my colleagues would never suspect. And I did.
I was quite sure the Temporalists would not question him again, out of their newfound dread of interfering with time, but if they did, he would not tell them those things I felt they ought not to know. And Archie himself would not know that there was anything he was not telling them.
I spent some time thinking about it, and I grew more and more certain in my mind as to what had happened in the course of the next two centuries.
You see, it was a mistake to send Archie. He was a primitive robot, and to him people were people. He did not—could not—differentiate. It did not surprise him that human beings had grown so civilized and humane. His circuitry forced him, in any case, to view all human beings as civilized and human; even as god-like, to use an old-fashioned phrase.
The Temporalists themselves, being human, were surprised and even a bit incredulous at the robot vision presented by Archie, one in which human beings had grown so noble and good. But, being human, the Temporalists wanted to believe what they heard and forced themselves to do so against their own common sense.
I, in my way, was more intelligent than the Temporalists, or perhaps merely more clear-eyed.
I asked myself if population decreased from ten billion to one billion in the course of two centuries, why did it not decrease from ten billion to zero? There would be so little difference between the two alternatives.
Who were the billion who survived? They were stronger than the other nine billion, perhaps? More enduring? More resistant to privation? And they were also more sensible, more rational, and more virtuous than the nine billion who died as was quite clear from Archie’s picture of the world of two hundred years hence.
In short, then, were they human at all?
They smiled at Archie in mild derision and boasted that they had no robots; that they needed no metal caricatures of humanity.
What if they had organic duplicates of humanity instead? What if they had humaniform robots; robots so like human beings as to be indistinguishable from them, at least to the eyes and senses of a robot like Archie? What if the people of the future were humaniform robots, all of them, robots that had survived some overwhelming catastrophe that human beings had not?
There were no babies. Archie had seen none. To be sure, population was stable and long-lived on Earth, so there would be few babies in any case. Those few would be taken care of, made much of, be well-guarded, and might not be distributed carelessly through society. But Archie had been on the Moon for two months and population there was growing—and he had still seen no babies.
Perhaps these people of the future were constructed rather than born.
And perhaps this was a good thing. If human beings had died out through their own rages, hatreds, and stupidities, they had at least left behind a worthy successor; a kind of intelligent being that valued the past, preserved it, and moved on into the future, doing their best to fulfill the aspirations of humanity, in building a better, kinder world and in moving out into space perhaps more efficiently than we “real” human beings would have.
How many intelligent beings in the Universe had died out leaving no successor? Perhaps we were the first ever to leave such a legacy.
We had a right to feel proud.
Ought I to tell all this to the world? Or even to the Temporalists? I did not consider that for a moment.
For one thing, they were likely not to believe me. For another, if they did believe me, in their rage at the thought of being replaced by robots of any kind, would they not turn on them and destroy every robot in the world and refuse ever to build others? This would mean that Archie’s vision of the future, and my own vision, would never come to pass. That, however, would not stop the conditions that were to destroy humanity. It would just prevent a replacement; stop another group of beings, made by humans and honoring humans, from carrying human aspirations and dreams through all the Universe.
I did not want that to happen. I wanted to make sure Archie’s vision, and my own improvement of it, would come to pass.
I am writing this, therefore, and I will see to it that it will be hidden, and kept safe, so that it will be opened only two hundred years from now, a little sooner than the time at which Archie will arrive. Let the humaniform robots know that they should treat him well and send him home safely, carrying with him only the information that would cause the Temporalists to decide to interfere with Time no more, so that the future can develop in its own tragic/happy way.
And what makes me so sure I am right? Because I am in a unique position to know that I am.
I have said several times that I am inferior to the Temporalists. At least I am inferior to them in their eyes, though this very inferiority makes me more clear-eyed in certain respects, as I have said before, and gives me a better understanding of robots, as I have also said before.
Because, you see, I, too, am a robot.
I am the first humaniform robot, and it is on me and on those of my kind that are yet to be constructed that the future of humanity depends.
3 RMS, GOOD VIEW
Karen Haber
“Apartment for rent,” said the net ad. “3 rms, gd view. Potrero Hill area, $1200 a month, utilities pd.”
It sounded like a dream. Every San Francisco apartment I had seen in the last six months had waiting lists for their waiting lists.
“Southern exp. Pets OK.”
Better and better.
Then I found the catch. The apartment was available, all right. In 1968.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not one of those with a temporal bias. And God knows, I’ve always wanted to live in San Francisco.
I first came north in ’07 on a family expedition to the Retro-Pan-Pacific Exposition. The fair was fun, but what I loved even better was San Francisco: the sunswept hillsides, the streets lined with bright flower boxes, the digitalized ding-a-ling of the streetcar bells floating in the cool air, the fog creeping in at dusk. Heaven, especially after thirteen summers spent baking in the San Fernando Valley. I vowed to come back.
It took me seventeen years and a divorce, but I did it. Right after I graduated from Boalt and passed the bar.
Unfortunately, housing was tight—in fact, strangulated. The city had instituted severe building restrictions back in ’03 and got what it asked for: all residential construction not only stopped but vanished, gone eastward to the greener pastures of Contra Costa County.
I got on the waiting list of every real estate agent in the Bay Area, but the best digs I would find was a studio apartment—more like a large walk-in closet with plumbing—in a renovated duplex in Yuba City. Add on a three-hour commute to my job in San Francisco’s financial district, and we’re not exactly talking about positive quality of life.
So when I saw the net ad, I jumped. And stopped in midair. As I said, I have no temporal biases. But I’m not one of those sentimental history nuts just dying to travel back to the Crucifixion, either. I like real time just fine, thank you. Always have. It’s a peculiar trait, considering my family.
My grandmother lives in 1962, and has for the last ten years. She said it was the last time that America believed in itself as a country. And it’s safe. She likes the peace and quiet of the pre-computer era. “Loosen up, Chrissy,” she said to me before she left. “You should be more flexible. There’s nothing wrong with living in the past.”
My brother lives in 1997 where he’s pierced his nose, lip, eyebrows, and had his scalp tattooed in concentric circles of red and black. Every now and then I get a note from him through e-mail: “Come visit. We’ll hit the clubs. Don’t you ever take a vacation? I thought girls wanted to have fun.”
As for Mom, well, she likes 1984. But then, she always did have an odd sense of humor.
Pardon me if I like realtime best. I’ve always had my feet planted firmly in the present. Practical, sturdy Christine. In the lofty hierarchy of Mount Olympus, I’d be placed just to the left of Zeus in the marble frieze, in the Athena position. Yes, I even have the gray eyes and brown hair to go with the no-nonsense attitude. I’m tall and muscular, as befits your basic warrior goddess/business attorney type. My stature is useful, too—who wants a lawyer who doesn’t look intimidating?
And I’ve never wanted to go backward. We all remember the first reports of time-travel glitches. Shari, one of my prelaw classmates at Berkeley, wanted to spend her Christmas break in the village where her French great-great-great-grandmother lived. But a power surge from Sacramento sent her to the fourteenth century instead. Talk about your bad neighborhoods. If she hadn’t gotten her shots before she left—complaining all the way—she’d probably have come back sporting buboes the size and color of rotten nectarines.
After Shari’s brush with the Black Death, I told myself I was immune to the allure of era-hopping. I ignored the net ads for Grand Tours: the Crucifixion and sack of Rome package, $1,598. Dark Ages through the Enlightenment, two weeks for $2,100, all meals and tips included. (These packages are especially popular with the Japanese, who have become time-travel junkies. And why not? They can go away and come back without losing any realtime at work.)
