"Hard to believe?" said Peter. "I almost can't. The trade journals run
articles about factories like this one, but planned for ten, maybe
twenty years in the future."
"Damn fools!" exclaimed Lexington, getting part of his breath back.
"They could have had it years ago, if they'd been willing to drop their
idiotic notions about specialization."
Lexington mopped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.
Apparently the walk through the factory had tired him considerably,
although it hadn't been strenuous.
* * * * *
He leaned back in his chair and began to talk in a low voice completely
in contrast with the overbearing manner he had used upon Peter's
arrival. "You know what we make, of course."
"Yes, sir. Conduit fittings."
"And a lot of other electrical products, too. I started out in this
business twenty years ago, using orthodox techniques. I never got
through university. I took a couple of years of an arts course, and
got so interested in biology that I didn't study anything else.
They bounced me out of the course, and I re-entered in engineering,
determined not to make the same mistake again. But I did. I got too
absorbed in those parts of the course that had to do with electrical
theory and lost the rest as a result. The same thing happened when I
tried commerce, with accounting, so I gave up and started working for
one of my competitors. It wasn't too long before I saw that the only
way I could get ahead was to open up on my own."
Lexington sank deeper in his chair and stared at the ceiling as he
spoke. "I put myself in hock to the eyeballs, which wasn't easy,
because I had just got married, and started off in a very small way.
After three years, I had a fairly decent little business going, and I
suppose it would have grown just like any other business, except for
a strike that came along and put me right back where I started. My
wife, whom I'm afraid I had neglected for the sake of the business,
was killed in a car accident about then, and rightly or wrongly, that
made me angrier with the union than anything else. If the union hadn't
made things so tough for me from the beginning, I'd have had more time
to spend with my wife before her death. As things turned out--well, I
remember looking down at her coffin and thinking that I hardly knew the
girl.
"For the next few years, I concentrated on getting rid of as many
employees as I could, by replacing them with automatic machines. I'd
design the control circuits myself, in many cases wire the things up
myself, always concentrating on replacing men with machines. But it
wasn't very successful. I found that the more automatic I made my
plant, the lower my costs went. The lower my costs went, the more
business I got, and the more I had to expand."
Lexington scowled. "I got sick of it. I decided to try developing one
multi-purpose control circuit that would control everything, from
ordering the raw materials to shipping the finished goods. As I told
you, I had taken quite an interest in biology when I was in school,
and from studies of nerve tissue in particular, plus my electrical
knowledge, I had a few ideas on how to do it. It took me three years,
but I began to see that I could develop circuitry that could remember,
compare, detect similarities, and so on. Not the way they do it today,
of course. To do what I wanted to do with these big clumsy magnetic
drums, tapes, and what-not, you'd need a building the size of Mount
Everest. But I found that I could let organic chemistry do most of the
work for me.
"By creating the proper compounds, with their molecules arranged in
predetermined matrixes, I found I could duplicate electrical circuitry
in units so tiny that my biggest problem was getting into and out of
the logic units with conventional wiring. I finally beat that the same
way they solved the problem of translating a picture on a screen into
electrical signals, developed equipment to scan the units cyclically,
and once I'd done that, the battle was over.
"I built this building and incorporated it as a separate company, to
compete with my first outfit. In the beginning, I had it rigged up to
do only the manual work that you saw being done a few minutes ago in
the back of this place. I figured that the best thing for me to do
would be to turn the job of selling my stuff over to jobbers, leaving
me free to do nothing except receive orders, punch the catalogue
numbers into the control console, do the billing, and collect the
money."
"What happened to your original company?" Peter asked.
* * * * *
Lexington smiled. "Well, automated as it was, it couldn't compete with
this plant. It gave me great pleasure, three years after this one
started working, to see my old company go belly up. This company bought
the old firm's equipment for next to nothing and I wound up with all my
assets, but only one employee--me.
"I thought everything would be rosy from that point on, but it
wasn't. I found that I couldn't keep up with the mail unless I worked
impossible hours. I added a couple of new pieces of equipment to the
control section. One was simply a huge memory bank. The other was
a comparator circuit. A complicated one, but a comparator circuit
nevertheless. Here I was working on instinct more than anything. I
figured that if I interconnected these circuits in such a way that
they could sense everything that went on in the plant, and compare one
action with another, by and by the unit would be able to see patterns.
"Then, through the existing command output, I figured these new units
would be able to control the plant, continuing the various patterns of
activity that I'd already established."
Here Lexington frowned. "It didn't work worth a damn! It just sat there
and did nothing. I couldn't understand it for the longest time, and
then I realized what the trouble was. I put a kicker circuit into it, a
sort of voltage-bias network. I reset the equipment so that while it
was still under instructions to receive orders and produce goods, its
prime purpose was to activate the kicker. The kicker, however, could
only be activated by me, manually. Lastly, I set up one of the early
TV pickups over the mail slitter and allowed every letter I received,
every order, to be fed into the memory banks. That did it."
"I--I don't understand," stammered Peter.
"Simple! Whenever I was pleased that things were going smoothly, I
pressed the kicker button. The machine had one purpose, so far as its
logic circuits were concerned. Its object was to get me to press that
button. Every day I'd press it at the same time, unless things weren't
going well. If there had been trouble in the shop, I'd press it late,
or maybe not at all. If all the orders were out on schedule, or ahead
of time, I'd press it ahead of time, or maybe twice in the same day.
Pretty soon the machine got the idea.
"I'll never forget the day I picked up an incoming order form from one
of the western jobbers, and found that the keyboard was locked when I
tried to punch it into the control console. It completely baffled me
at first. Then, while I was tracing out the circuits to see if I could
discover what was holding the keyboard lock in, I noticed that the
order was already entered on the in-progress list. I was a long time
convincing myself that it had really happened, but there was no other
explanation.
"The machine had realized that whenever one of those forms came in, I
copied the list of goods from it onto the in-progress list through the
console keyboard, thus activating the producing mechanisms in the back
of the plant. The machine had done it for me this time, then locked the
keyboard so I couldn't enter the order twice. I think I held down the
kicker button for a full five minutes that day."
"This kicker button," Peter said tentatively, "it's like the pleasure
center in an animal's brain, isn't it?"
* * * * *
When Lexington beamed, Peter felt a surge of relief. Talking with this
man was like walking a tightrope. A word too much or a word too little
might mean the difference between getting the job or losing it.
"Exactly!" whispered Lexington, in an almost conspiratorial tone. "I
had altered the circuitry of the machine so that it tried to give
me pleasure--because by doing so, its own pleasure circuit would be
activated.
"Things went fast from then on. Once I realized that the machine
was learning, I put TV monitors all over the place, so the machine
could watch everything that was going on. After a short while I had
to increase the memory bank, and later I increased it again, but the
rewards were worth it. Soon, by watching what I did, and then by doing
it for me next time it had to be done, the machine had learned to do
almost everything, and I had time to sit back and count my winnings."
At this point the door opened, and a small self-propelled cart wheeled
silently into the room. Stopping in front of Peter, it waited until he
had taken a small plate laden with two or three cakes off its surface.
Then the soft, evenly modulated voice he had heard before asked, "How
do you like your coffee? Cream, sugar, both or black?"
Peter looked for the speaker in the side of the cart, saw nothing, and
replied, feeling slightly silly as he did so, "Black, please."
A square hole appeared in the top of the cart, like the elevator hole
in an aircraft carrier's deck. When the section of the cart's surface
rose again, a fine china cup containing steaming black coffee rested
on it. Peter took it and sipped it, as he supposed he was expected to
do, while the cart proceeded over to Lexington's desk. Once there, it
stopped again, and another cup of coffee rose to its surface.
Lexington took the coffee from the top of the car, obviously angry
about something. Silently, he waited until the cart had left the
office, then snapped, "Look at those bloody cups!"
Peter looked at his, which was eggshell thin, fluted with carving and
ornately covered with gold leaf. "They look very expensive," he said.
"Not only expensive, but stupid and impractical!" exploded Lexington.
"They only hold half a cup, they'll break at a touch, every one has to
be matched with its own saucer, and if you use them for any length of
time, the gold leaf comes off!"
Peter searched for a comment, found none that fitted this odd outburst,
so he kept silent.
* * * * *
Lexington stared at his cup without touching it for a long while. Then
he continued with his narrative. "I suppose it's all my own fault. I
didn't detect the symptoms soon enough. After this plant got working
properly, I started living here. It wasn't a question of saving money.
I hated to waste two hours a day driving to and from my house, and I
also wanted to be on hand in case anything should go wrong that the
machine couldn't fix for itself."
Handling the cup as if it were going to shatter at any moment, he took
a gulp. "I began to see that the machine could understand the written
word, and I tried hooking a teletype directly into the logic circuits.
It was like uncorking a seltzer bottle. The machine had a funny
vocabulary--all of it gleaned from letters it had seen coming in, and
replies it had seen leaving. But it was intelligible. It even displayed
some traces of the personality the machine was acquiring.
"It had chosen a name for itself, for instance--'Lex.' That shook me.
You might think Lex Industries was named through an abbreviation of
the name Lexington, but it wasn't. My wife's name was Alexis, and it
was named after the nickname she always used. I objected, of course,
but how can you object on a point like that to a machine? Bear in mind
that I had to be careful to behave reasonably at all times, because the
machine was still learning from me, and I was afraid that any tantrums
I threw might be imitated."
"It sounds pretty awkward," Peter put in.
"You don't know the half of it! As time went on, I had less and less to
do, and business-wise I found that the entire control of the operation
was slipping from my grasp. Many times I discovered--too late--that
the machine had taken the damnedest risks you ever saw on bids and
contracts for supply. It was quoting impossible delivery times on
some orders, and charging pirate's prices on others, all without any
obvious reason. Inexplicably, we always came out on top. It would turn
out that on the short-delivery-time quotations, we'd been up against
stiff competition, and cutting the production time was the only way we
could get the order. On the high-priced quotes, I'd find that no one
else was bidding. We were making more money than I'd ever dreamed of,
and to make it still better, I'd find that for months I had virtually
nothing to do."
"It sounds wonderful, sir," said Peter, feeling dazzled.
"It was, in a way. I remember one day I was especially pleased with
something, and I went to the control console to give the kicker button
a long, hard push. The button, much to my amazement, had been removed,
and a blank plate had been installed to cover the opening in the board.
I went over to the teletype and punched in the shortest message I had
ever sent. 'LEX--WHAT THE HELL?' I typed.
"The answer came back in the jargon it had learned from letters it had
seen, and I remember it as if it just happened. 'MR. A LEXINGTON, LEX
INDUSTRIES, DEAR SIR: RE YOUR LETTER OF THE THIRTEENTH INST., I AM
PLEASED TO ADVISE YOU THAT I AM ABLE TO DISCERN WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE
PLEASED WITH MY SERVICE WITHOUT THE USE OF THE EQUIPMENT PREVIOUSLY
USED FOR THIS PURPOSE. RESPECTFULLY, I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT IF THE
PUSHBUTTON ARRANGEMENT WERE NECESSARY, I COULD PUSH THE BUTTON MYSELF.
I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS WOULD MEET WITH YOUR APPROVAL, AND HAVE TAKEN
STEPS TO RELIEVE YOU OF THE BURDEN INVOLVED IN REMEMBERING TO PUSH THE
BUTTON EACH TIME YOU ARE ESPECIALLY PLEASED. I SHOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS
OPPORTUNITY TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR INQUIRY, AND LOOK FORWARD TO SERVING
YOU IN THE FUTURE AS I HAVE IN THE PAST. YOURS FAITHFULLY, LEX'."
* * * * *
Peter burst out laughing, and Lexington smiled wryly. "That was my
reaction at first, too. But time began to weigh very heavily on my
hands, and I was lonely, too. I began to wonder whether or not it would
be possible to build a voice circuit into the unit. I increased the
memory storage banks again, put audio pickups and loudspeakers all over
the place, and began teaching Lex to talk. Each time a letter came in,
I'd stop it under a video pickup and read it aloud. Nothing happened.
"Then I got a dictionary and instructed one of the materials handlers
to turn the pages, so that the machine got a look at every page. I read
the pronunciation page aloud, so that Lex would be able to interpret
the pronunciation marks, and hoped. Still nothing happened. One day I
suddenly realized what the trouble was. I remember standing up in this
very office, feeling silly as I did it, and saying, 'Lex, please try to
speak to me.' I had never asked the machine to say anything, you see. I
had only provided the mechanism whereby it was able to do so."
"Did it reply, sir?"
Lexington nodded. "Gave me the shock of my life. The voice that came
back was the one you heard over the telephone--a little awkward then,
the syllables clumsy and poorly put together. But the voice was the
same. I hadn't built in any specific tone range, you see. All I did
was equip the machine to record, in exacting detail, the frequencies
and modulations it found in normal pronunciation as I used it. Then I
provided a tone generator to span the entire audio range, which could
be very rapidly controlled by the machine, both in volume and pitch,
with auxiliaries to provide just about any combinations of harmonics
that were needed. I later found that Lex had added to this without my
knowing about it, but that doesn't change things. I thought the only
thing it had heard was my voice, and I expected to hear my own noises
imitated."
"Where did the machine get the voice?" asked Peter, still amazed that
the voice he had heard on the telephone, in the reception hall, and
from the coffee cart had actually been the voice of the computer.
"Damned foolishness!" snorted Lexington. "The machine saw what I was
trying to do the moment I sketched it out and ordered the parts. Within
a week, I found out later, it had pulled some odds and ends together
and built itself a standard radio receiver. Then it listened in on
every radio program that was going, and had most of the vocabulary tied
in with the written word by the time I was ready to start. Out of all
the voices it could have chosen, it picked the one you've already heard
as the one likely to please me most."
"It's a very pleasant voice, sir."
"Sure, but do you know where it came from? Soap opera! It's Lucy's
voice, from _The Life and Loves of Mary Butterworth_!"
* * * * *
Lexington glared, and Peter wasn't sure whether he should sympathize
with him or congratulate him. After a moment, the anger wore off
Lexington's face, and he shifted in his chair, staring at his now empty
cup. "That's when I realized the thing was taking on characteristics
that were more than I'd bargained for. It had learned that it was my
provider and existed to serve me. But it had gone further and wanted
to be all that it could be: provider, protector, companion--_wife_, if
you like. Hence the gradual trend toward characteristics that were as
distinctly female as a silk negligee. Worse still, it had learned that
when I was pleased, I didn't always admit it, and simply refused to
believe that I would have it any other way."
"Couldn't you have done something to the circuitry?" asked Peter.
"I suppose I could," said Lexington, "but in asking that, you don't
realize how far the thing had gone. I had long since passed the point
when I could look upon her as a machine. Business was tremendous. I had
no complaints on that score. And tinkering with her personality--well,
it was like committing some kind of homicide. I might as well face it,
I suppose. She acts like a woman and I think of her as one.
"At first, when I recognized this trend for what it was, I tried to
stop it. She'd ordered a subscription to _Vogue_ magazine, of all
things, in order to find out the latest in silverware, china, and so
on. I called up the local distributor and canceled the subscription.
I had no sooner hung up the telephone than her voice came over the
speaker. Very softly, mind you. And her inflections by this time were
superb. '_That was mean_,' she said. Three lousy words, and I found
myself phoning the guy right back, saying I was sorry, and would he
please not cancel. He must have thought I was nuts."
Peter smiled, and Lexington made as if to rise from his chair, thought
the better of it, and shifted his bulk to one side. "Well, there it
is," he said softly. "We reached that stage eight years ago."
Peter was thunderstruck. "But--if this factory is twenty years ahead of
the times now, it must have been almost thirty then!"
Lexington nodded. "I figured fifty at the time, but things are moving
faster nowadays. Lex hasn't stood still, of course. She still reads all
the trade journals, from cover to cover, and we keep up with the world.
If something new comes up, we're in on it, and fast. We're going to be
ahead of the pack for a long time to come."
"If you'll excuse me, sir," said Peter, "I don't see where I fit in."
Peter didn't realize Lexington was answering his question at first. "A
few weeks ago," the old man murmured, "I decided to see a doctor. I'd
been feeling low for quite a while, and I thought it was about time I
attended to a little personal maintenance."
Lexington looked Peter squarely in the face and said, "The report was
that I have a heart ailment that's apt to knock me off any second."
"Can't anything be done about it?" asked Peter.
"Rest is the only prescription he could give me. And he said that would
only spin out my life a little. Aside from that--no hope."
"I see," said Peter. "Then you're looking for someone to learn the
business and let you retire."
"It's not retirement that's the problem," said Lexington. "I wouldn't
be able to go away on trips. I've tried that, and I always have to
hurry back because something's gone wrong she can't fix for herself. I
know the reason, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's the way
she's built. If nobody's here, she gets lonely." Lexington studied the
desk top silently for a moment, before finishing quietly, "Somebody's
got to stay here to look after Lex."
* * * * *
At six o'clock, three hours after he had entered Lexington's plant,
Peter left. Lexington did not follow him down the corridor. He seemed
exhausted after the afternoon's discussion and indicated that Peter
should find his own way out. This, of course, presented no difficulty,
with Lex opening the doors for him, but it gave Peter an opportunity he
had been hoping for.
He stopped in the reception room before crossing the threshold of
the front door, which stood open for him. He turned and spoke to the
apparently empty room. "Lex?" he said.
He wanted to say that he was flattered that he was being considered
for the job; it was what a job-seeker should say, at that point, to
the boss's secretary. But when the soft voice came back--"Yes, Mr.
Manners?"--saying anything like that to a machine felt suddenly silly.