Free The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg

learning how to make the pathways more precise, more closely on the nose, more deeply on the track, but that is a double-edged kind of improvement. The new robots don't shift. They have no mental agility. There's nothing in the least unpredictable about them. They simply do what they're designed to do and never a smidgeon more. I like you better, Andrew."
    "Thank you, Sir."
    "Of course, the company will tell you that their current generation of robots is 99.9% efficient, or maybe they're claiming 100% efficiency this year. Well, good for them. But a robot like you, Andrew-you're 102% efficient; 110%, maybe. That isn't what they want, at U. S. Robots. They're after perfection, and I suppose they've attained it-their idea of perfection, anyway. The perfect servant. The flawlessly functioning mechanical man. But perfection can be a terrible limitation, Andrew. Don't you agree? What it leads to is a kind of soulless automaton that has no ability to transcend its builders' predetermined notions of its limitations. Not at all like you, Andrew. You aren't soulless, that's obvious to us all by now. And as for limitations-"
    "I definitely have limitations, Sir."
    "Of course you do. But that's not what I'm talking about, and you know it damned well! You're an artist, Andrew, an artist in wood, and if you're an artist you've got to have a soul somewhere in those positronic pathways of yours. Don't ask me how it got there-I don't know and neither do the people who built you. But it's there. It enables you to make the wonderful things that you make. That's because your pathways are the old-fashioned generalized kind. The obsolete generalized kind. And it's all on account of you, Andrew, that pathways of the kind you have are no longer used. Are you aware of that?"
    "Yes, Sir. I think I am, Sir."
    "It's because I let Merwin Mansky come out here and get a good look at you. I'm convinced that he and Smythe ordered all generalized-pathways robots pulled out of production the moment they got back to the factory. They must have felt deeply threatened after they saw what you were like. It was the unpredictability that frightened them."
    "Frightened, Sir? How could I possibly be frightening to anyone?"
    "You frightened Mansky, that much I know. You scared him silly, Andrew. I saw his hand shaking when he passed that little carving you had made to Smythe. Mansky hadn't anticipated any such artistic abilities in an NDR robot. He didn't even think it was possible, I'd bet. And there you were, turning out all those masterpieces. -Do you know how many times over the next five years he called me, trying to wheedle me into shipping you back to the factory so that he could put you under study? Nine times! Nine! I refused every time. And when you did go back to the factory for upgrades, I made a point of going over Mansky's head to Smythe or Jimmy Robertson or one of the other top executives and getting an iron-clad guarantee that Mansky wouldn't be allowed to fool around with your pathways. I always worried that he would do it on the sly, though. Well, Mansky's retired, now, and they aren't making robots with your kind of pathways any more, and I suppose we'll finally have some peace."
    Sir had given up his seat in the Regional Legislature by this time. There had been some talk on and off over the years of his running for Regional Coordinator, but the timing of his candidacy had never been right. Sir had felt he wanted to stay on one more term in the Legislature to see certain measures into law, and meanwhile a new Coordinator was elected who seemed to be merely an interim figure at first, holding the job until Sir was ready to take it.
    But then the supposed interim man had turned out to be an energetic and forceful Coordinator in his own right, and he had stayed on another term and then another, until Sir began to grow weary of his life of public service and lost interest in running. (Or perhaps had simply admitted that the public would now prefer a