Captain Asimov

by Steve Antczak

Jeevs cleaned up after dinner, loading all the dishes into the washer, but first washing them by hand as per Mrs. Moynahan's explicit instructions. Then Jeevs vacuumed the upstairs while the rest of the family watched vids downstairs in the holo chamber. Jeevs thought of them as the "rest" of the family, because he was programmed to think of himself as a Moynahan, subservient to the rest of the them, but still one of them. Just as he was programmed to think of himself as himself.

The upstairs was vacuumed by the time Mr. and Mrs. Moynahan were finished with their family obligations . . . quality time with their children, which Jeevs had figured amounted to an hour and forty-seven minutes and ten seconds for the three of them. The Moynahans sometimes spoiled their children and gave them a full two hours. Then it was off to Social Club with the adults, and Jeevs was responsible for getting the little 'uns to bed. It helped that he was faster, stronger and able to leap taller pieces of furniture than they were. It also helped that he had shock-hands, and if they were bad he could stun them with a quick jolt of electricity and have them tucked into bed before they regained awareness.

It was usually easier to either wear them out with games or read them to sleep. The youngest child was Fermi, and he liked nothing better than to have Jeevs read him the lastest superhero comicbooks. Fermi was too young to actually read, but he looked at the pictures while Jeevs recited the story and dialogue from memory.

"Read Captain Battle!" Fermi yelled in his excitement. He had a repertoire of favorites: Captain Battle, Warchick, Meathook and Bonesaw, Funkiller, and The Justice Legion of Avenging Angels. They were all of the hit first and hit again later variety, and Jeevs privately considered them a little too violent for a little boy Fermi's age. But being a robot meant he didn't have the right to express an opinion of such a human nature, which was perfectly all right by Jeevs. He was perfectly happy to serve his owners well. It was in his program. To perform poorly resulted in a deep depression which could only be alleviated by going the extra mile so to speak with the housework. He had once gotten the carpet so clean he swore he could see his reflection in it. The Moynahans had to take him in to

get his optics retooled.

"Captain Battle versus Cardinal Carnage in The Holy Terror Part Three," Jeevs announced in a perfectly pitched square-jawed news anchor voice.

Fermi clapped his hands and rubbed them together greedily. "Yeeeeaaaahhh!"

Next was the only daughter, Jesse, and she didn't like to be read to at all. That didn't mean she could read, because she couldn't, but she had a series of make-believes she liked Jeevs to act in with her. One of them was Jeevs as the White Stallion and Jesse as the Princess, riding through the Enchanted Forest after having escaped from the clutches of the evil Duke. She would climb onto Jeevs plasti-frame shoulders and he would gallop her throughout the entire house. Jesse pretended the door frames were dragons swooping low to grab her off the White Stallion.

"A dragon, a dragon!" she would yell as they approached a door frame, and then cover her eyes with her hands as Jeevs ducked down a mere instant before she would have collided with it.

The oldest was Horace, and he had a jealous streak where Jeevs' time was concerned. He enjoyed having Jeevs read him science fiction books before bed. He couldn't read either, and was therefore typical as boys his age went. Despite the fact that most of the science fiction books he liked to hear were hopelessly outdated, he really seemed to like having them read to him by a robot, especially ones with robots in them. Jeevs knew this because Horace wouldn't let either his mother or his father read to him. Of course that might've been because they could only read the primary reader versions of the books . . . like most adults in modern society, the Moynahans were illiterate except on the most rudimentary level. They could tell the difference between the words MEN and WOMEN, for instance,

even without the accompanying Greek symbols. They got confused once at a place with GENTS and LADIES. But Horace's favorite authors were Asimov, Bradbury, Del Rey, Sladek, anyone with a lot of robot stories.

"Come on Jeeeeevs!" Horace yelled at the robot on the fourth pass through the living room, or as it was known in this make-believe, the Haunted Wood.

"A ghost!" Jesse screamed when she saw her older brother trying to get Jeevs' to stop.

Jeevs was about to duck underneath the chandelier in the main hall --

"A falling star!" Jesse yelled.

-- when Horace suddenly rolled a toy truck right at his feet. The robot stepped on the truck, and his one leg went flying out behind him. With his inhuman dexterity he managed to maintain his footing long enough to lift Jesse off his shoulders and toss her onto the plush sofa where she landed harmlessly. Then Jeevs' footing gave out and he plunged head-first into the wall.

Blackness. It was not unlike being shut off to conserve his power supply, except this time it had been unexpected. Jeevs knew it probably would have been rather painful too, had he been a human. This was not something he thought while "unconscious". He thought nothing. There were no dreams or anything like that. He just stopped being until somebody turned him back on and he was Jeevs again, ready to work.

Except, when he was turned on, he had other thoughts aside from musing about pain. His head was a-jumble with images from Captain Battle and Isaac Asimov's robot stories. The three laws of robotics scrolled through his memory over and over and over . . .

A robot may not injure a human being, nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being unless such orders conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence unless such protection conflicts with the First and Second Laws.

And swimming through these Laws, underlying them, was the cry of Captain Battle: "Fists . . . do the talking!"

Jeevs went back to work, although the children were no longer allowed to play with him before bed like before. The quality time with Mom and Dad stretched another hour into the early news broadcasts on the holo. Jeevs overheard a report about battlebots, designed by the military and sent into any number of small hot spot countries, where they efficiently murdered hundreds of villagers day and night until self-destructing. The report stated that there was a certain probability that a few of these killing drones had not self-destructed and continued to mutilate their way through certain South American countries. To top the story with a generous helping of horrific prophecy, the anchor suggested there was always a possibility one could wind up in your neighborhood someday, hacking and

slashing and shooting to pieces your children. Then he ended with his usual, "And may the good news be your news."

Jeevs was puzzled. Hadn't these robots ever heard of the Three Laws? Weren't they imprinted with them from day one?

One day Jeevs was outside mowing the lawn, using a push mower because Mr. Moynahan liked to see Jeevs actually working. A remote mower that Jeevs could have controlled from inside while washing the dishes or something would have been much more efficient.

"Hard work's good for you," Moynahan would tell Jeevs, as if speaking to an actual person. "Gives you character."

Jeevs never bothered to wonder just what a robot would do with character.

While he was mowing the front yard, one of the robot street cleaners came down the road. Jeevs stopped and watched it as it approached. It looked very reminiscent of the battlebots he'd seen on the news. Some of the neighborhood children were playing in the street ahead of it, and it sounded several warning beeps as it grew near.

Jeevs turned off the mower, and went inside. Mr. Moynahan was sitting in his massage chair, asleep, and didn't see Jeevs sneak past him and go upstairs. Jeevs went into the Moynahans' closet for winter clothes and found Mr. Moynahan's ski mask, made of a lightweight yet warm material called Nylar. It was red with white circles around the eye holes, and elastic so it fit snuggly over Jeevs' head when he put it on. On the other side of the closet he located Mrs. Moynahan's hot pink cape, the one she wore to the Governor's costume ball and made of the same Nylar yet non-elastic, and fastened that around his neck.

Though he hurried he didn't fumble or drop anything. He was a robot, with unnatural dexterity. Within moments he was costumed and ready to do battle with the disguised Battlebot outside. Sure, it may have the appearance of a street cleaner, but there was something about the way it bore down on those children, slightly faster than a real street cleaner so only a robot would really notice. Humans tended to miss subtle clues like that, but not robots and certainly not Jeevs. Dealing with the Moynahan children had trained him to notice any little alteration as in, say, a slight wobble in the mower indicating one of the kids had loosened the wheels so they would come off while Jeevs mowed the grass. Or Jeevs might catch one of the children faking illness to get out of having to go to what

passed for school these days. The palms might be clammy, the temperature high on a damp forehead, and then Jeevs would reach underneath the pillow to find a washcloth that had soaked in hot water.

"They're just the most devilish little rascals, aren't they?" Mrs. Moynahan would ask rhetorically with glee when Jeevs gave her the weekly behavior report.

Jeevs paused to look himself over in the bedroom mirror, to make sure he was sufficiently disguised. He didn't want anyone to identify him, for he knew from having read all those comic books that villains would gladly take their frustrations at having been beaten by the superhero out on the superhero's loved ones. The tight, fire engine red ski mask and hot pink cape definitely had the effect he was looking for, and the bright colors corresponded to what Jeevs remembered the superheroes in the comic books wore.

His inner brain, the one that handled all the logic and mathematical functions just like any other computer, told him he had just about a minute to get to the battlebot/street cleaner before it "swept" over the innocent playing children.

Jeevs bounded out the open back window onto the gravel covered back porch roof, ran across it and leaped the chasm between the Moynahan house and the Corman house next door.

"That Corman's a cheese eater," Mr. Moynahan would say about his next door neighbor, who was a widower and at least 150 pounds over weight. Cheese eater was Mr. Moynahan's favorite way of saying someone was a rat, which usually meant someone in the collection business, which Corman was.

"He won't let the children play in his yard," Mrs. Moynahan would say accusingly while the children nodded their lying heads in agreement. Jeevs knew Corman let the kids play in the yard as long as they didn't hang on the branches of his citrus trees, which they always did.

From Corman's house, Jeevs jumped onto the next one, and then the next

one, so that he was then behind where the street cleaner was. He then leaped to the ground and ran as fast as he could, which was close to sixty miles per hour, toward the street cleaner. He saw it as the disguised battlebot, even though he'd seen the street cleaner numerous times before; 165 times actually, his inner brain told him, once a week for the just over 3 years he'd been in the Moynahan's employ.

When he neared the street cleaner, Jeevs jumped as high as he could, hoping to land atop the monstrosity and get at its circuits that way to disable it. But a panel on the rear of the machine opened, and a nozzle popped out. A jet stream of water blasted Jeevs in mid-air, knocking him into the street, sprawled on his back. He scrambled to his feet. The children were shrieking with laughter, although to Jeevs they were screaming in agony as he imagined the battelbot ground them into hamburger. Once again he charged, this time deciding the advantage could be gained by yelling out his battlecry.

The problem, of course, was that he didn't have one. In the space of the few seconds between the start of his charge and the moment he was to leap to the attack he reviewed all the slogans and battlecries of Captain Battle, Meathook, Bonesaw and all the other superheroes in the comic books. He couldn't use any of those because of copyright infringement. Besides, he wanted one that would be uniquely his own.

Several occurred to him in the next instant.

"Eat metal!" He didn't like the connotations of that one.

"It's BATTERING time!" Sounded too much like a slogan for a fried fast food place.

"Kawabunga!!" No superhero in his right mind would say that.

"Viva Las Vegas!" Hadn't some cartoon already used that?

Finally, as he neared what he perceived as a murderous behemoth, Jeevs came up with one he felt would be both effective and appropriate.

"Yeeeaaaaggggghhhhhhaaaamama!!" he screamed inhumanly in mid-leap. The pitch and tone of his scream pierced the delicate noise sensors of the street cleaner like shards of glass through the diaphanous membrane of a jellyfish. It's balance servos got all out of whack and it stopped. Jeevs landed securely on the thing's wide roof, where he knew the simplistic brain card had to be.

"Warning!" The battlebot (for although Jeevs' sensory apparatus informed him that in every way, shape and form it was definitely a street cleaner robot, his misguided, short-circuited reasoning center still believed it to be a battlebot in disguise) stopped and an alarm started whooping. "Warning! Vandalism of city property is a misdemeanor offense punishable by fines of up to five thousand dollars, community service, house arrest, and up to one year in the county jail! Warning! This is a series eight-five-three double-ay street cleaner by Hunnington Robotics Incorporated, and is owned by the city of --"

Jeevs had found the brain and pulled the card out, effectively mind-wiping the big 'bot. Still, it wasn't technically dead.

Jeevs broke the thin, fragile brain card, snapping it in two with his hands.

Now it was.

He ran across the roof and jumped down from the front, expecting to find the mangled remains of the poor children beneath the suspiciously missing forward grinders of the so- called battlebot, for he was sure he'd been too late to save them. Instead he was met by the quizzical expressions of small faces.

Suddenly a hovering newsbot approached.

Jeevs was disappointed. He had hoped to spend a touching moment with the children, to make sure they were okay and tell them not to worry because now they had a masked marvel to look out for them. But like any good superhero, the last thing he wanted was publicity. He turned to leap back onto the battlebot and make his escape.

"Wait!" a voice ordered. It sounded too much like a human voice to ignore, but it was coming from the newsbot. "I'm a reporter from Make it Great with Channel Eighty-Eight News! I'd like to interview you, please!"

It was a human voice, and the newsbot wasn't a newsbot at all, but a remote. Jeevs couldn't ignore a human just like that, unless an order from his owners overrode that human's requests. Jeevs had no such orders, so he stood and waited to be interviewed.

"Don't I know you?" one of the kids, who lived across and down the street a few doors, asked.

"All children know me," Jeevs answered gently, "as their friend." Good answer, he thought. He'd never read anything that good in any of little Fermi's comicbooks, that was for sure.

The news remote hovered up to him, floodlights bathing him aglow even though it was mid-day and there were no clouds impeding the sun's rays.

"Why did you attack that street cleaner 'bot?" the remote asked.

"That's no street cleaner," Jeevs replied. "It's a battlebot. It was about to rip these innocent children limb from limb."

"No it wasn't. Don't you know street cleaners are programmed to wait for people to move aside before they can continue?"

If Jeevs could have sighed with exasperation he would have. "Of course. Street cleaner robots have the Three Laws of Robotics embedded in their behavioral chips."

"The three what laws?"

Jeevs explained the three laws, then said, "I could tell that this was a Battlebot because it wasn't slowing down quickly enough . . . if that makes any sense. It was my duty to stop it."

"Your duty? Who are you?"

Jeevs paused before answering, although the human reporter would perceive no pause, as it lasted less than a second. Jeevs couldn't give his real name, he knew that, for the same reason he had to disguise himself. He needed a good superhero name, like . . . Several occurred to him: Mightybot, Robohero, Metal Man, Captain Asimov, Tik To -- Wait! Captain Asimov . . . It sounded good, and certainly rang true to his mission -- to uphold the Three Laws and fight crime. That was it.

"I'm . . . " he paused for effect, "CAPTAIN ASIMOV!" With his modified speaker voice, for calling the children from play, Jeevs was able to add a nifty echo effect. The entire block reverberated with the "OV! OV! OV!"

"What kind of a name is that?" the reporter asked through the remote.

Jeevs' inner clock suddenly told him it was getting close to the time for lunch for the Moynahans.

"I've talked with you long enough," he announced, then turned and leaped onto the dead street cleaner, ran across it, jumped down, and disappeared behind the houses. He de-costumed in the Moynahan's backyard and hid the uniform in the tool shed. Nobody ever went in there, so his secret was safe . . . for the time being.

It made the six-fifteen news, exclusive to channel 88.

"In the suburbs today a city street sweeper was attacked and immobilized by a costumed robot calling himself Captain Asimov. The robot was apparently under the delusion that the street sweeper was a rogue battlebot, such as the type currently deployed by the United States in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Los Angeles, Cuba, El Salvador, Bolivia, and North Vietnam. Our research has led us to believe that this robot has named himself after the prolific science writer of the Twentieth Century, Isaac Asimov, whose Three Laws of Robotics were an idealistic if unrealistic proposition to control the use of robots."

They showed Captain Asimov talking to the kids, included sound when he reverbed his name, flashed a still photo of the writer Asimov, showed some scenes of a real battlebot slaughtering some sheep in a field test, and ended with a picture of the street sweeper carcass being hauled off by a massive wrecker. Jeevs' inner clock had timed the segment at twenty seconds.

"Hey Mom, hey Dad," Fermi said as soon as the news bit was over. "Can we get a robot like Captain Asimov instead of just plain ol' Jeevs? Pleeeeease? I bet we'd have a lot of fun with him! He's a real superhero!" With that he commenced pretending to be Captain Asimov, beating up on imaginary battlebots (actually his father's foot stool).

"Gaaaawwwwd Fermi, you're stuuuupid," Horace said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "Captain Asimov beat up a street cleaner! It wasn't any battlebot."

"It was too," Fermi insisted. "It was in disguise!"

"How would you know?" Jesse asked, having decided to take her older brother's side this time. "You've never even seen a battlebot."

"I just saw one on TV!" Fermi yelled.

"Tell him Dad, please," Horace appealed. "Mom . . ."

Mr. Moynahan cleared his throat and looked to his wife for guidance, but she only shrugged. As if to say Tell them, dear, I want to hear too. "Well," he started, and paused. He came very close to just saying Go to your room, but didn't. "If the news says it wasn't really a battlebot, then it wasn't. Whoever this Captain Asmovitz is --"

"Asimov," Fermi corrected exasperratedly.

"Well, whoever he is, he must have a chip loose somewhere, to think a robot street cleaner could hurt little children."

"There was that street cleaner that thought it was a dog catcher for a while," Mrs. Moynahan pointed out. "Until they switched its chip with that dog catcher that was going around trying to sweep the streets with a net."

Mr. Moynahan nodded as if this somehow proved a point, his point, whatever that was.

Jeevs remained unconvinced that the battlebot had really been a hapless street sweeper.

That evening he was relieved from having to read for the kids since the parents weren't going out. Jeevs cleaned the upstairs while everyone sat watching vids downstairs, and finished early. Since he had nothing left to do, and knew from experience Mrs. Moynahan would handle the putting to bed and tucking in of the children, Jeevs silently climbed atop the roof where he tuned in to the airwaves in search of something for Captain Asimov to do.

Then he heard it, on the police band.

"Unit Twenty-three, Unit Twenty-three, please investigate a possible three fifty-two oh four at Harris Street. Over."

Jeevs wouldn't have been interested had Unit Twenty-three not responded with, "Did you say a three fifty-two oh four? Isn't that a street sweeper malfunction? Over."

"Affirmative Unit Twenty-three."

"Where the hell are the city maintenance 'bots?"

There was a pause, then the operator said, "Ah, they're all disabled, Unit Twenty-three. Over."

"All of them?"

"Affirmative."

"Jesus. Okay. Unit Twenty-three responding."

Jeevs wasted no time. He was costumed and en route to Harris Street within moments.

He tried to stick to the rooftops as much as possible, with pretty good success since he could leap the gap between most of the houses and other buildings on the way. His body was constructed mainly of lightweight but extremely strong plastics reinforced by an alloy skeleton. Robots like Jeevs, self-aware and capable of learning, were designed to last a very long time. As Jeevs got further away from the Moynahan's home, he started to get an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling . . . as of being lost and alone. He went through the catalog of emotions he could feel, and found the only thing it could possibly be, since he was familiar with the others.

Longing. It started off as a small tug towards home, the urge to think Harris Street was a long way off, he might not make it back in time to have breakfast ready for everyone when they got up in the morning. Jeevs recognized it then. It was something he'd heard of but had never actually experienced, until now. In robot lore it was called the Collar. The Collar was supposed to keep a robot home, or within a certain boundary, by making it impossible to even want to run away. At first the Collar had been simpler, and crueler, giving the robot the equivalent of a painful jolt if it went past a certain point. This early version of the Collar had been inspired by the late 20th century movie Star Wars. When self-awareness in robots became a reality a lobby on their behalf got the current, and

much more humane, Collar written into the Artificial Intelligence Act of 2010.

The farther away he got the stronger the longing got. By the time he was almost to Harris Street he was near panic, but kept it under control as he imagined a real superhero would. In fact, it made him feel even more heroic!

But there was something wrong. He was at Harris street, but there was no street cleaner/battlebot. It had to here somewhere! What if it had gotten away? What if it had only appeared to break down to lure the police there. It could be off hacking up poor innocent humans right now!

Jeevs ran into the street, looking for clues, tracks, something that might tell him where the battlebot went. He was examining the pavement in the street, not finding any recent tracks whatsoever (and he'd know if they were recent, it was one of his most important skills, useful in keeping track of the Moynahan children) when he heard a noise behind him.

He whirled into a battle stance, feet wide apart and fists on hips, to find himself face to face with a robot cop.

"Freeze, you are under arrest," the robot cop ordered.

Jeevs knew from the comics that there existed an uneasy truce between the law and costumed vigilantes. The best reaction to a confrontation with the police was to turn and run . . . as long as the danger was taken care of. But the danger wasn't taken care of, there was still a battlebot on the loose somewhere in the city and someone had to do something about it.

Captain Asimov was just that someone.

"State your identification," the robot cop ordered. It continued to advance on Jeevs, who stood his ground. Jeevs almost blurted out his formal I.D., which was Jeevs D (for domestic) 35 (for the year of his creation) X-5000 (series letter and model number) Moynahan (for his owner's name).

He caught himself just in time, and though it took a great force of will to overcome the automatic law-abiding response that was as much a part of his self as the Collar, he said, "You can call me . . . Captain Asimov!" With reverb and everything. It wasn't exactly a lie, which was why he didn't suddenly drop to the ground paralyzed as would normally happen to a robot who lied to the police.

"Okay, tin-head," a human male voice said from behind the robot cop. "We'll handle it from here . . . give it the human touch, eh?"

The robot cop stopped advancing, and replied, "Yes sir."

Two human police officers, a male and a female, approached Jeevs.

"Okay Superman," said the woman, "Shut yourself down so we can take you in. Don't give us any trouble and we won't give you any trouble."

Jeevs didn't do anything. He didn't know what to do. He hadn't counted on having to deal with the police, and certainly not human police. The Collar effect was getting stronger, and that battlebot . . . who knew where it was? Killing and maiming and slaughtering. And here the police were harassing an innocent, well sort of innocent, robot.

There was only one thing to do, and it had to be done now, because Jeevs knew if he waited any longer he would have to obey the police. It was the only behavior control stronger than the one that caused him to obey his owners.

He suddenly broke into a run.

"Hey!" the cops yelled, and started in pursuit. There was no way they could catch him with their organic legs. Jeevs outdistanced them within moments. He ducked into an alley to stop for a bit. Not to rest, but he needed to tune in to the police band again to find out if they'd sighted the battlebot anywhere.

But . . . before he could do that, he heard something.

It sounded like wheels, the way a battlebot would sound on pavement . . . Jeevs stepped into the shadows, as if that would do any good against the battlebots heat sensors. But it would! Jeevs gave off barely any heat at all because he wasn't truly alive! He'd have the element of surprise.

"This is the police," came the mechanical voice of the robot cop suddenly. "I know you're in there, please come out with your hands in the air."

The police, again! It was impossible to get away, and Jeevs couldn't muster the strength to ignore the cop's orders again. In fact, he knew that had the robot cop not come along, he would have wound up back home, for he suddenly realized that was the direction he'd started running in. The constant yearning of the Collar, to be home where he belonged, was becoming too much as well.

He stepped out of the shadows with his hands raised.

"You're going to place me under arrest." It was a statement of fact, and Jeevs didn't know why he said it.

"No," the robot cop replied.

"No? Then what -- ?"

"You are going to return home."

Home! It was an effort not to immediately start running that way. Right now! Home!

But he stayed, and asked, "What about the battlebot? We have to find it and --"

"There is no battlebot. It was a ruse to trap you. We cannot permit deluded robot vandals running around scaring people. This would be detrimental to human/robot relations."

"I couldn't hurt anybody!" Jeevs said. "The three laws of robotics --"

"Science fiction," the robot cop said. "There are three hundred and forty-two laws governing the behavior of robots and the behavior of humans towards robots. You can access the public records concerning all of them, if you wish. Now go, go home, go where you belong."

"Why?" Jeevs asked, even as he started past the robot cop. "Why are you letting me go?"

"It is obvious you present no danger to anyone. I am capable of value judgments without penalty, and have decided it would be best for all concerned for you to go home."

Jeevs went. He took only a few steps homeward before turning back around to thank the generous robot cop, but it was already gone.

"Thank you," he said anyway. He went home.

When he got there he noticed immediately that the downstairs lights were on, even though his inner clock told him it was just past four in the morning. This was quite odd, for no one was ever up at four in the morning at the Moynahan residence, except Jeevs who used this time to straighten and dust and clean. That way he had the days free to cook, run errands, do yard work, watch the children when they were home, etc. He had intended to go in through the rear entrance, but paused near a window to listen. Inside he heard voices, and crying.

He recognized the crying right off. It was Jesse, with her subdued, gulping sob that could go on for days if she felt so inclined, like the time her parents first left the kids alone with Jeevs. That had been a week with breaks only for sleep. He also recognized the sniffling trying-not-to-cry of Fermi.

Then he heard Mr. Moynahan.

"Please . . . please, don't hurt us." His voice quaked with fear. "Take anything, take whatever you want, just --"

"Shut up!" This voice was gruff and gravelly, and was followed a moment later by a dull thud, another thud, Mrs. Moynahan's scream, and louder crying. The same gruff voice then said, "All of you, shut up now!"

Silence.

Jeevs didn't know what to do. From the tenor of the intruder's voice Jeevs concluded the man had to be desperate, and obviously capable of anything. If the police were called, would they arrive in time to avert disaster? Probably not. Jeevs was going to have to do something and do it soon.

There was a problem. Captain Asimov obeyed the Three Laws. One of those laws would not permit him to harm a human, yet another law would not permit him to allow harm to come to a human through inaction. If the thug inside were only a robot, then Captain Asimov could crash in through the window and knock him all the way to next Tuesday . . . but not even actorbots could act that human. The man in there was as real as, well, the Moynahans.

Nothing Captain Asimov could do, unless he found a way to subdue the criminal without hurting him, but the man sounded dangerous, violent, even suicidal -- which goes hand in hand with homicidal. Someone had already been hurt, though, while Captain Asimov stood barely twenty feet away, separated by a plate of glass and a nylon drape. Inaction.

It suddenly hit Jeevs. Captain Asimov: superhero failure.

At the same time it also hit Jeevs that he, Jeevs, had no such animal as the Three Laws of Robotics constraining him from action. If he needed to, he would be perfectly within his rights to punch the villain holding his family hostage so hard it would knock his nose all the way around to the other side of his head.

"You," he heard the ruffian inside say.

"Yes?" he heard Mrs. Moynahan reply.

There was a pause, then a low, throaty, evil, "Come here."

The time for thought was past. Jeevs removed his Captain Asimov garb and dropped it onto the grass.

He stepped back from the window, took half a second to project his trajectory and envision the room inside. Assuming nothing major had been moved, he knew exactly where everything was. Then he jumped.

As he smashed through the glass he heard Jesse and Fermi scream, Mrs. Moynahan faint, and Horace yell out his name.

"Jeeeevs!"

The thug was as surprised as they were, and couldn't react fast enough. He tried, though. He held a black automatic in his hand, and brought it around to aim at Jeevs, but by then Jeevs was upon him. He knocked the gun out of the man's hand, sending it harmlessly into a cushion on the sofa. With his other hand, Jeevs plowed his palm right into the man's nose, lifting him off the ground with the force of the blow and sending him airborne to slam against the only unadorned wall in the room. The man sunk to the ground, his nose gushing blood onto his shirt, unconscious. Jeevs quickly ran to the aid of Mr. Moynahan, who was groggily coming to. He seemed okay. Jeevs could detect no damage to the skull, at least.

Fermi had regained his spunk as soon as he saw the bad guy was down for the count -- down, in fact, for several counts. "Wow Jeevs, you were way better than that old Captain Asimov! Wow!"

Jeevs felt something else, a new emotion he wasn't sure he was supposed to be feeling. It seemed linked to the manner in which the Moynahans were looking at him, sparked by the grateful, adoring expressions on their faces. He wasn't absolutely sure, but if he was right, he knew the word for it. Belonging.

Captain Asimov may have been a friend of the children, Jeevs thought, but I'm family.

-----

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