Free Bugs by John Sladek Page A

saw his own desk drawer standing in a row of similar drawers. It was immediately recognizable by the books sticking up in plain sight:
The Dumb Child’s Computer Dictionary
and
Talk Good Software
. He wanted to cover them up, but too many people were passing.
    He went downstairs to the project lab. The robot was currently a jumble of electronic components, a lot of wires and a console. Jerry Boz was fiddling with an oscilloscope.
    ‘We need some input,’ he said. ‘Can you type in some garbage for us?’
    ‘Garbage?’
    ‘I want to see what kind of input makes M flip out. Just type anything.’
    Fred sat down and typed:
    ROBOT DREAMS OF WORLD CONQUEST: Today I found a robot in a cavern of ice and thawed it with an electric blanket. The robot wakened and sat up. Gunpowder ran out the heels of its boots. It introduced itself as Robot M, and explained its plan for conqueringthe world. ‘The human race is deficient and defective and debilitated and degenerate,’ it said. ‘Time for a new start. Melville was a Pratt. I am a tin god, which is a pretty fine thing to find yourself capable of being. Since the entire human species is too busy watching television game shows, or listening to simplified music, or reading comicbook magazines, I shall inherit the earth merely by being ready to do something useful.’
    As he paused for thought, the screen added:
     
    TIME FOR A NEW START … TIN GOD … CAPABLE OF BEING … CAPABLE OF INHERITING … CAPABLE OF CONQUERING …. CAPABLE OF WATCHING … CAPABLE OF LISTENING … CAPABLE OF DOING …
    Startled, Fred jumped back from the keyboard.
    ‘It’s talking back!’
    ‘Naw, not really.’ Jerry scratched at his fringe of woolly red hair. ‘See, it’s just like a reflex action, just a response to your input. Not real talk.’
    ‘But look at it!’
    TELL ME ABOUT GUNPOWDER. T ELL ME HOW TO INHERIT. T ELL ME ABOUT MELVILLE PRATT. H UMAN SPECIES = HUMAN? TIN GOD = GOD? COMICBOOK = COMIC BOOK?
    *
    *
    TELL ME HOW TO WAKEN FROM THE ICE
    ‘That’s funny,’ said Jerry, watching the oscilloscope. ‘It never burped like that before. What did you do?’
    ‘I was just typing in rubbish, as you asked.’
    ‘Hi, man,’ said Pratt, drifting past. ‘They moved us. This crazy place, we’re at the other end of the building now. Come on, I’ll show you.’
    He and Fred went upstairs and walked down unfamiliar corridors, past the lighted windows of conference rooms and offices. Fred could see meetings in progress, someone drawing diagrams on a white wall. A woman in a suit sat in her office, apparently studying the screen of a dead terminal. Not far away, a burst of laughter from a conference room.
    Pratt brought him to an empty area. The floor showed the marks of cubicles, like the traces of some vanished civilization. History moved faster here. In a few weeks, the old arrangement would be forgotten with Carthage.
    ‘This’ll be us. We’ll be moved in tomorrow, and we got to hit the ground running, Fred.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Let’s talk about it in the cafeteria.’
    They bought tiny styrofoam cups of coffee and carried them to a table in the corner.
    As soon as he sat down, Pratt flipped open a tablet of lined paper and began sketching block letters.
    ‘Here, I’ll show you how the name makes itself known to us.’
    Pratt pushed the tablet across.
    LIVING
    mjwjoh
    nkxkpi
    olylqj
    pmzmrk
    qnansl
    ROBOTM
    ‘See, Robot M has to be the name.’
    ‘I can see that, yes. Clever.’
    ‘Clever?’ Abe Lincoln’s hooded eyes seemed to darken. Then Pratt took back the tablet, turned a page and continued sketching rapidly as he talked.
    ‘Living, because made of life. Living parts. Words that speak of life. Fred, ever wonder about words like
hand?’
    ‘I–’
    ‘Think of all the meanings of a word like that. We talk about factory hands and farm hands, because the world sees factory and farm workers as just hands. A clock has to have hands because it’s pseudohuman; it stands in for