Ïåðåâåëà ñ ðóññêîãî ÿçûêà Ìàðèÿ Ïîïîâà ("Íåîæèäàííûé óñïåõ")
The robot already knew what ‘life’ meant, so he glibly replied, “Life is when I’m on.”
The difficulties began when the electronic brain received the information that his present life was not his first – the creators had decided to convert their brainchild to Buddhism. They were a little afraid to leave him atheistic as atheism could lead to a riot against the creators.
They were planning to disseminate and sell a new model to wealthy families as a servant, a nanny, a watchman, a cook or a gardener. A potential riot of robots was not very appealing to the designers. Not at all. The business was already on the rocks. The previous robot models had to be completely disassembled particularly because of their disobedience of their owners.
The new model was able to call his owners and its future co-brothers, knew how to use the Internet, and namely, email. The robots could unite.
“You already existed. You were disassembled into base parts and then reassembled, and added a series of new elements,” the designers assured the robot.
It was absolutely true but the creature refused to believe it.
“If I already lived, then why don’t I remember it?” he asked. “I remember everything I did the last time before I went to sleep.”
The robot knew that sleep meant a part of his brain was temporarily off.
The design center received a new assignment to install the robot’s brain with the memories of his past lives. Someone suggested starting with the pyramids and infusing the electronic memory with partaking in the major events of world history. Others – to make the robot believe that he once was a fish, a bird, or an insect. Passions ran high. At last, they chose the easiest way out: they showed the robot the photo and the drawings of the previous model.
“You mean this is me?” he rebelled after carefully studying the snapshots and the operating principle of his ancestor. “How can you prove it? This is so primitive!”
“Listen,” the creators reassured, “we improved it and that’s how you appeared. Try to understand, technical progress is the development from simple to complicated. Our whole life and evolution is like that.
“Such primitive thinking,” the robot commented. He was starting to get exasperated.
“Don’t you think we’ve gone overboard?” whispered the chief designer to his deputy. “Why would a nanny or a cook need such an extensive vocabulary? I think we should erase the word ‘primitive’ from his memory.
“I’ve heard that,” the creature intervened. “That is so mean! You just said that everything gets complicated with time, and now you’re planning to make things easier. Leave my vocabulary alone!”
“See, I told you,” the chief said even quieter. “Why would anyone need an eavesdropping nanny or a gardener? The company will be completely broke. I swear! God, I need a drink.”
“I’ll give you a drink,” the robot said, affronted, promptly scooting toward them with a glass of soda in his hands (which he had dexterously tapped from a soda machine).”No problem. But I don’t eavesdrop. It’s just that I have a good ear.”
“We’ve definitely gone overboard.” The chief sighed. “Cut down his vocabulary and degrade his ear. As for the idioms, it was s a total failure! He’ll be serving drinks in and out of season... I’m giving you a week to work things out.”
“There’s a boatload of idioms,” the engineers protested. “They have to be catalogued, loaded into the memory, and linked to the robot’s actions. It’ll take two years at the very least.”
“I’m giving you a month, period. Otherwise we’re broke, and you’re all fired!” The chief slammed his fist on the table. “Now go! Start working!”
The designers withdrew, downcast, and the robot scooted up to a frustrated chief, saying, “There’s no need to be nervous like that,” started carefully wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Ooh,” the chief signed. “If you only knew how hard my life is. But you’ll never get it. A piece of iron…
“Life’s beautiful and amazing,” remarked the robot, who had been programmed to inspire optimism in others. “You’ll see. Just give it some time.”
“You think so?” asked the chief, forgetting for a split second about who he was talking to. “I wish I could believe you.”
“Believe,” the robot uttered deeply.
***
The assignment was completed on time. The robot’s hearing got worse. Aside from that, his speech was now limited to verbs and questions, “Bring?”, “Take away?” “Open?”, “Wash?’ “Paint?”, “Discard?”
His exposure to Buddhism was highly successful: they had managed to assure the robot that in his previous life, he was a rabbit.
Yet, unfortunately, there was a defect: he constantly asked to repeat.
“I didn’t ask to make a deaf cook maid of him!” the chief broke off. “You progressed with the rabbit of course, but for some reason the robot is getting on my nerves now. He used to be a much more interesting talker before.
“Need a drink?” asked the robot. Without hearing the answer, he took the initiative: slightly bouncing, he fetched his boss a glass of soda, spilling a half of it on the go.
“Did I ask for it?” the chief exclaimed. “And why are you bouncing?”
“I was afraid that you asked, and I didn’t hear it,” the robot guiltily replied.
He appeared to be on the verge of tears. Luckily, this model was not equipped with the crying option.
“My hearing got worse,” the robot continued. “And I bounce because I recall my previous life. I used to be very happy back then, as a rabbit.”
“Really? Why so?”
“I had a hot rabbit girlfriend.”
“What the hell’s going on?” seethed the chief. “Descent people won’t let him close to their children! How did slang appear in his vocabulary? Remove it! And spare him of the deafness! Erase the rabbit girlfriend from his memory once and for all!”
After the improvement, the robot stopped bouncing, swearing, and remembering his lover. Now he accepted that in his previous life he had been a robot.
But he’d developed an unpleasant trait bordering on megalomania. Each phrase he began with, “We robots…”, which was inevitably followed by a comparison with humans. In the disfavor of the latter.
The chief clutched his head when as an answer to his request for a cup of coffee, he heard a lecture:
“We robots are certainly very compliant creatures, and I shall bring you the coffee. But no sane robot would drink coffee as this drink is harmful. Humans act indiscreetly, and hence why, in contrast with us robots, do not live long.”
“We’ve already launched advanced advertising!” yelled the chief. “We’ve got almost a hundred orders for the servant-robot! Who let him hand out advice?”
“I did,” confessed the youngest employee. “You see…My parents had a housekeeper. She constantly taught us reason, and – that was fine with us, we all really loved her.”
A survivor clutching to a lifeline, the chief thought. His young wife often complained that her husband didn’t listen to the opinions of the youngsters.
“Well then,” the chief sighed. “Let’s change something in the advertising slogan. We’ll add the passage ‘a real-life simulator robot’.”
The ‘Rabbit’ model robots (as they’d been dubbed after a long debate) started selling like hot cakes.
One day, the chief picked up the phone to hear the kind voice of the Rabbit, very familiar to him from the days when they had been testing the model.
“So how’s life?” asked the Rabbit.
“Life’s beautiful and amazing,” the chief replied brightly.
Hell yeah! The company had dealt with the debts, and was growing and prospering.
The Rabbit thanked the chief for having been sold to such a wonderful family.
Then he insistently advised him to quit smoking.
“We robots don’t smoke,” he said. “And we live much longer than you, humans. Mind if I ask, who were you in your previous life?”
“A robot,” the chief blurted without thinking.
He didn’t believe in reincarnation and that kind of stuff.
“See. And now you’re a human. The degradation is obvious. If you keep on smoking, it may continue in your next incarnation. You may turn into a plant. Into tobacco. You’ll be plucked off and sent to a tobacco factory. And then you’ll vanish without a trace in the smoke of a cigarette.
Rumor has it, a month later the chief’s wife called the Rabbit and thanked him profusely: her husband had finally quit his obsessive habit.
And the chief was contacted by the local dalai lama, who thanked him for his help in gaining new followers – all the families where the Rabbits worked, sooner or later joined Buddhism.
***
The company producing the Rabbit models created two fellow subsidiaries. One of them helped quit smoking on the commercial basis, and the other propagandized Buddhism. The clients were interviewed solely by the robots. The business was flourishing. The chief had never imagined in his wildest dreams such a smashing success.
“Everything of genius is simple because,” the chief now liked to philosophize, leaning back in his wing chair, and popping candies into his mouth every now and then, “everything genius happens entirely by accident.”
.