Ilya Varshavsky

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ROBBY

Several months ago I celebrated my fiftieth birthday.

After numerous toasts praising my merits and glossing over my inherent faults, radionics laboratory chief Strekozov rose, glass in hand, to say:

'Now our laboratory's youngest representative will greet the hero of the occasion.'

For some reason everyone glanced at the door.

In the silence that set in, a scratching on the door could be heard. Then the door opened and a robot rolled in.

Everyone applauded.

'This robot,' Strekozov went on, 'is a self-teaching automatic machine. It has no prescribed programme, drafting its own programme to suit the changing circumstances. Stored in its memory are more than a thousand words. What's more its vocabulary keeps on growing. It can freely read a printed text, compose sentences and understand human speech. It runs on storage batteries which it recharges itself from the mains whenever necessary. We spent a whole year working evenings to present it to you on your birthday. It can be taught to perform any task.

'Now Robby,' he said, addressing the robot, 'say hullo to your new master.'

Robby rolled up to me and uttered, after a slight pause:

'It will give me pleasure if you will be happy to accept me as a member of your family.'

He put it very nicely—even though I didn't think it so well phrased.

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Everyone crowded around Robby to get a better look at him.

'We can't have him walking around the apartment stark naked,' my mother-in-law said. 'I'll sew him a Mother Hubbard.'

Waking up next morning I found Robby by my bedside apparently awaiting instructions. It was a most exciting moment.

'Be so kind, Robby, as to shine my shoes,' I said. 'They are standing in the hallway at the door.'

'How does one shine shoes?' he asked.

'It's all very simple. In the locker you'll find some brown shoe polish and a couple of brushes. Spread the polish on and rub it in with a brush until the shoes shine.'

Robby obediently made for the hallway.

I was extremely curious to see how he would cope with his first task.

When I came up he had just finished spreading over my shoes the apricot jam my wife was saving for a very special occasion.

'Oh, Robby,' I said, 'I forgot to tell you that the shoe polish is on the lower shelf. You took the wrong jar.'

'The spatial position of any object,' he said imperturbably watching me try to clean my shoes of the mess, 'may be given by three co-ordinates in Descartes' system of co-ordinates. The allowance may not exceed the object's dimensions.'

'Quite right, Robby, I was mistaken.'

'Any point in space, in particular, the corner of this room could be taken as the starting point for the co-ordinates required.'

'Yes, I understand all that, I'll take it into consideration in the future.'

'The co-ordinates of an object may also be given in angular dimensions by means of azimuth and altitude,' he continued in his rasping voice.

'All right, all right, forget it.'

The tolerated allowance in the case in question, consider-

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ing the ratio between the object's dimensions and the length of the radius vector, should not exceed two-thousands of a radian by azimuth and one-thousandth of a radian by altitude/

'Enough!' I exclaimed in anger. 'Stop talking about it.' He indeed stopped talking, but spent the whole day following in my footsteps, trying to explain to me by gestures the singularities involved in switching from a right-angle system to an oblique as in right-angle system of co-ordinates. Frankly speaking I felt worn to a shred before the day ended.

I soon realised that Robby was more suited for intellectual work than manual labour, very unwillingly undertaking anything prosaic. To be fair, though, I must say he was a wizard at numbers.

My wife says that if not for his mania of reckoning everything with an accuracy down to the thousandth of a kopeck, the help he gives in tallying household expenses would be invaluable.

My wife and mother-in-law are convinced Robby is a great mathematician. I, on the other hand, think his knowledge very superficial.

At tea time one day my wife said:

'Robby, get the cake from the kitchen, slice it into three portions and serve it.'

"That can't be done,' he said after a brief period of reflection.

'But why?'

'Because a unit cannot be divided into three parts. The result of such division is a circulating decimal which cannot be calculated with unerring accuracy.'                                y

My wife gave me a helpless look.

T think Robby is right,' my mother-in-law said. 'I seemed to have heard about that before.'

'Robby,' I said, 'this is not a problem of the arithmetical division of a unit into three parts, but the division of a geometric figure into three equivalent areas. The cake is

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round, so if you divide the circumference into three parts and draw radii from the points of division, you will thus be able to divide the cake into three equal parts.'

'Nonsense!' he retorted with obvious annoyance. To divide a circumference into three parts, I must first know the length, which is the product of the diameter times the surd 'pi'. This problem is impossible to solve as, in the final analysis, it represents a variation of the problem of squaring the circle.'

'Quite right!' my mother-in-law seconded. 'We learned that back at school. One day our maths master, whom we all adored, entered the classroom . . .'

'Please excuse me for butting in,' I again intervened, 'but there are several ways of dividing a circumference into three parts and if Robby, you come with me to the kitchen, I'll show you how it's done.'

'I cannot have somebody with thought processes restricted in velocity teaching me what to do,' he challeng-ingly retorted.

Even my wife couldn't take that lying down. She doesn't like it when strangers question my mental capacities.

'You should be ashamed of yourself, Robby!'

'I can't hear you, I can't hear you,' he rumbled demonstratively switching off the tumbler of the sound receptor.

Our first quarrel began with a trifle. At dinner one day, I related the following joke:

'One travelling salesman meets another on a steamer.'

' "Where are you going?" he asks.

' "To Odessa," the second replies.

' "Now you say you're going to Odessa, so that I think you're not going there. However you are really going there, so why lie about it?" '

The joke was appreciated.

'Kindly repeat the initial data,' Robby spoke up.

Now though it's not very pleasant to tell the same story twice to one and the same audience, I reluctantly proceeded to do as requested. Robby said nothing. I knew he was

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able to perform around a thousand logical operations a minute and realised what a titanic effort he was making throughout this protracted period of silence.

'It's absurd,' he at last ejaculated. 'If he's really going to Odessa and says he is going there, then he isn't lying.'

'Quite right, Robby. But the joke's funny precisely because it is absurd.'

Ts everything that is absurd funny in that case?'

'No, not everything. But in this case you have a situation when the absurdity is funny.'

'Are there any algorithms for evolving such situations?'

T really don't know, Robby. There are a vast number of funny jokes but nobody has ever approached them from that angle.'

T see.'

I woke up at night with a jolt as somebody had gripped me by the shoulders and made me sit up. Robby confronted me.

'What on earth has happened?' I asked, rubbing my eyes.

'A says X equals Y, while B claims that X doesn't equal Y as Y equals X. Is that the gist of your joke?'

T really don't know Robby. Now for God's sake, don't bother me with algorithms and let me go to sleep again.'

'There isn't any God,' Robby said, rolling off into his corner.

The next day, when we were at the table, Robby suddenly announced:

'I've got a joke I must tell you.'

'Fire away, Robby,' I said.

'A customer asks a sales clerk how much one unit of the commodity he is selling costs. The sales clerk says that one unit of the commodity he is selling costs one rouble. To that the customer says: "You say the price is one rouble, so that I think the price is not the same as one rouble. But the price is really equal to one rouble. Why are you lying?'

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'What a nice joke,' my mother-in-law said. I'll have to remember it.'

'Why don't you laugh?' Robby asked.

'Well, you see, Robby,' I said, 'your joke isn't very funny. The situation isn't one that seems funny.'

'No, it is a funny joke,' Robby obstinately returned, 'and you've got to laugh.'

'But how can one laugh if it isn't funny?'

'But it is funny! I insist that you laugh! You must laugh! I demand that you laugh! Because it is funny I demand, prescribe, command you to laugh without delay, this very instant! Ha-ha-ha!'

Robby was clearly in a temper.

My wife placed her spoon on the table and turning to me, said:

'You never give us a chance to have dinner in quiet. Who are you trying to convince? Sending poor Robby into hysterics with your silly stupid jokes, indeed!'

Wiping her tears, she went out. My mother-in-law followed, her nose in the air, saying nothing.

Robby and I were left all alone.

That was when he went the whole hog!

The word 'stupid' uncorked a whole splurge of synonyms from his extended vocabulary.

'Dope!' he shouted at the top of his loudspeakers. 'Blockhead! Imbecile! Idiot! Lunatic! Moron! Neurotic! Laugh you, degenerate, because it is funny! X doesn't equal Y because Y equals X. Ha-ha-ha!'

I would prefer ,to refrain from relating the revolting things that happened further. I am afraid I wasn't able to behave like a real man. Bombarded with abuse and clenching my fists in impotent fury I broke into a cowardly giggle, trying to pacify the rampant robot.

'Laugh louder you nitwit!' He would not be appeased. 'Ha-ha-ha.'

The next day, the doctor ordered me to bed with high blood pressure.

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Robby preened himself on his ability to identify visual images. He had a staggering visual memory which enabled him to recognise from among a hundred and one intricate patterns the one he had once but casually glimpsed.

I did my best to develop this ability.

In summer my wife left for her holiday, while my mother-in-law went to visit her son. Robby and I were left all alone in our flat.

'I needn't worry about you,' my wife said on parting. 'Robby will take good care of you. But don't you insult him.'

There being a heat wave at the time, I followed my customary practice of shaving my head.

Back from the barber's, I summoned Robby. He appeared at once.

'Robby be kind enough to give me dinner.'

'All the food in this flat and equally so all the articles therein contained, with the exception of objects of the municipal service, belong to its owner. I cannot comply with your demand, it being an attempt to appropriate the property of others.'

'But I am the owner of this flat.'

Robby stalked right up to me and scrutinised my person from head to foot.

'Your image does not correspond to the image of the owner of this flat as stored in my memory cells.'

'I've simply shaved my head, Robby, that's all. I myself haven't changed at all. Can't you recognise my voice?'

'A person's voice can be taped,' Robby dryly returned.

'But there are hundreds of other tokens to show that I am I. I always thought you capable of realising such elementary things.'

'External images represent an objective reality that does not depend on one's perceptive faculties.'

His smug pomposity began to irritate me.

'I've long been planning to have a serious talk with you, Robby. I think it would be much more useful for you not

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to clutter up your memory with too intricate notions and give more attention to your main obligations.'

'Depart from these premises at once,' he commanded in a rattle. 'Depart, go, disappear, move off! Otherwise I shall employ with respect to you physical force, violence, coercion, blows, knocks, bruises, injuries.'

As ill-luck would have it, I knew that when Robby got into that vein, all arguing was futile.

To cap it I did not at all relish the prospect of being bashed in the face by him. He had quite a heavy hand.

I spent the next three weeks at my friend's place, returning home only after my wife had come back.

By that time an inch of hair had grown.

Robby feels quite at home in our flat. He spends every evening watching the telly. The rest of the time he narcissistically tinkers with his own set-up, loudly whistling some sort of a tune the while. Unfortunately he has no ear, his designer having failed to provide it.

I am afraid Robby's urge for self-perfection is assuming ugly forms. He does household chores most reluctantly and negligently. Everything that has no bearing on his own person he treats with obvious disdain, taking a patronising tone to everyone.

My wife tried to use him for translation from foreign languages. He learned the Franco-Russian dictionary off by rote with amazing ease and now avidly devours a mass of trashy paperbooks. Whenever asked to translate what he has read, he airily returns:

Tt's absolutely uninteresting. Read it yourself.'

I have taught him chess. At first everything went swimmingly, but then a logical analysis evidently suggested that dishonest methods presented the surest way to a win.

He avails himself of every opportunity to surreptitiously re-arrange my figures.

Once, in the middle of a game I discovered that my king had vanished.

'What on earth have you done with my king, Robby?'

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'I mated you at the third move and so removed your king,' he insolently declared.

"That's theoretically impossible. Mate is impossible in the first three moves. Put my king back.'

There's a lot you've got to learn in chess,' he said, sweeping the figures off the board.

Lately, he has been showing an interest in poetry. Unfortunately, it is of one-sided nature. He is willing to spend hours overhauling the classics to find a poor rhyme or wrong turn of phrase. Whenever he spots one his deafening guffaws cause the entire flat to reverberate.

His character is getting worse from day to day.

Only elementary decency restrains me from presenting him to someone else.

Then I wouldn't like to disappoint my mother-in-law. There is quite a bond of affection between her and Robby.