Part 3

I waited until he had gone back to his bench--the one I had considered mine when I was so sure I was Fred Martin. I was trembling in every muscle as I stood up, even though I knew that outwardly I appeared to be a bored and indifferent lab boss.

I crossed over to the door to the storeroom where the abandoned computers were stored. When I reached it I paused and looked around the lab. My two new assistants were busy at their benches. They weren't looking my way.

I went in and closed the door, placing my back to it. In front of me was an aisle. Walling the aisle were two tiers of open box storage spaces. Some of them were empty. In several dozen were computers, all constructed in this lab, all identical, and all unusable because they held random charges that produced errors in mathematical calculations.

It was like a tomb here in the storeroom. Quiet. The computers rested in their niches like bodies in a morgue. And one of them was me.

Here, somewhere, was my body. It was a neat body with its brown crackle finish and orderly keyboard. But it was like all the others and there was no way of telling which one was me.

I took step after slow step, pausing at each one, trying to probe with mental fingers and find some indication of which I was. I paused at each, and when I was through I still didn't know.

* * * * *

There was a way of finding out. My new assistant had mentioned it. I could take each of these computers and shield the wires that served as antennae, transmitting my thoughts and receiving those of Mintner.

But how could I be sure that he would unshield my antenna wires once he had covered them and severed my contact with him? It was a risk I was going to have to take. I started to tremble again. Somewhere in this storeroom, in one of these sepulchral niches, was _I_! I had to know which one.

I went back to the lab and returned with a kit of small tools. My fingers were calm and sure now. My trembling was gone. I took the front panel off the first computer near the door. The short wires from the dialectric mix to the tube bank were in plain view, easily accessible.

I stood there studying them, considering and discarding a dozen plans for shielding them so they could be quickly unshielded again.

Finally I decided on a procedure that was as foolproof as any I could possibly devise. Rubber pads, with aluminum plates to be put over the rubber.

After that it was merely a matter of carrying out the routine. I built the rubber shields and the aluminum ones. I fitted them carefully over the wires on the first machine, then as carefully took them off. Nothing had happened.

I did the same to the second machine.

I was on the fifth machine when the storeroom door opened and my two assistants announced they were leaving for the day. I glanced at my watch. It was five-thirty.

"Okay," I answered. "See you in the morning."

They closed the door. I started taking off the panel of the sixth computer.

It was getting a little stuffy in the storeroom. I set the panel down carefully and opened the lab door and a window. Then I placed the rubber shield on the wires.

I picked up the aluminum shield plates and started to cover the rubber shielding with them. Instead, I laid them down again. I would go across the street to the cafe and have something to eat before going ahead.

I entered the lab. It was dark. A storm must be coming up for it to get dark so soon and so suddenly.

I switched on the lights and unconsciously glanced at my watch to make sure of the time, and froze in surprise. It was nine-thirty.

I reviewed my movements. My assistants had said goodnight about five minutes ago. I had glanced at my watch then, and it was five-thirty. Now it was nine-thirty. After they had gone I had placed the rubber covers over the wires, then started to put the aluminum shields on--and changed my mind.

Only I hadn't! I had placed the aluminum shields on number six computer and severed my contact with Mintner. He had probably gone out to eat then, and not returned until a few minutes ago. The instant he removed the shields I was in contact again, with no sense of the intervening time. Maybe a faint sense of discontinuity that I paid no attention to. Mintner's hands were in about the same position, holding the shields. I thought he had paused in putting them on, when in reality he had just taken them off.

That was the explanation.

* * * * *

I turned toward the storeroom door with a mixture of emotions. Suddenly I ran to the door and flung it open. I went down the aisle and looked at the computer, at the dialectric mix in the case deep in its heart.

It was I. In that small space, that non-living mass, was the spark that was I. For a long moment I caressed its every atom with my eyes. Then, carefully, I put back the cover.

It was a strange, almost a Holy moment. I recalled my first moment of awareness. It seemed now an eternity ago that I had seen Orville's wife standing there.

From that moment to this I had groped, sometimes utterly confused, sometimes with purposeful strides, toward the answer to the riddle of my existence.

I touched my protective case tenderly with Mintner's fingers. Finding myself filled me with two conflicting emotions. Delight in at last knowing, with all the confusion behind me. Dread, that something might happen to destroy me.

I didn't worry about Mintner. By now I knew enough about the working relationship between me and man to realize his own ego was rationalizing like mad to keep the sense of being master of his movements.

My physical structure had to be protected, preserved. And there was a way to do it. Destroy the other computers and keep this one as a museum piece. Put it in a hermetically sealed glass exhibition case down in the main office.

I could _feel_ the Mintner ego seizing on this idea as its own. I was strong now. No longer was I a chameleon wisp of vague and bewildered thought. I was master of my fate.

From this moment on I knew what I was going to do. I had no idea whether my existence would be long or short. I might continue to exist for centuries. On the other hand, vibrations--I made a mental note to be sure the display case was vibration proof--might shake something vital loose in months.

But that didn't concern me too much. In this moment of the discovery of my physical home, in the birth of my discovery of _self_, a realization of my destiny, my purpose, was also born.

_I, through the hands of Mintner and his two assistants, was going to build the first robot!_