Caliban by Isaac Asimov - Caliban1 - Caliban

Author:Isaac Asimov - Caliban1 - Caliban
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: &WORKING
Published: 2011-03-04T16:07:13+00:00

CALIBAN came to another tunnel intersection and hesitated for a moment before deciding which way to go. He had yet to see a single human in the underground city, but it seemed unwise to be in the company of robots, either. There seemed to be less traffic on the left-hand tunnel branch, and so he went that way.

There had been moments, more than a few of them, since his awakening, when Caliban had experienced something very like the emotion of loneliness, but he certainly had no desire for companionship at the moment. Right now he needed to get away, to put as much distance and as many twists and turns as possible between himself and his pursuers. Then he needed to sit down somewhere and think.

The robots here underground were quite different from those he had seen on the surface. No personal-service robots down here, no fetchers and carriers of parcels. These passages were populated by burlier sorts, lumbering heavy-duty machines in dun colors. They had little resemblance to the brightly colored machines overhead. Compared to these robots, the ones above were merely toys. These underground robots were closer kin to the maintenance units that toiled on the surface only by night. By night, and underground, do the true workers toil, Caliban thought to himself. There was something disturbing about the thought, the image.

He was coming to understand that this was a world where real labor, work that accomplished something, was distasteful, something that had to be done out of sight. The humans seemed contemptuous of the very idea of work. They had taught themselves it was not a proper thing to see, let alone do. How could they live, knowing themselves to be useless, pampered drones? Could they truly live that way? But if they allowed themselves to be waited on hand and foot, then surely they must, as individuals, and as a people, be losing even the ability to do most things for themselves. No, it could not be. They could not possibly be making themselves so helpless, so vulnerable, so dependent on their own slaves.

The ways under the central part of the city were clean, dry, and bright, bustling with activity, robots going off on their errands in all directions. None of that suited Caliban’s purposes. He consulted his on-board map and headed toward the outskirts of the system.

The main tunnels and the older tunnels were lit in frequencies visible to humans, Caliban noticed. Perhaps that was some sort of holdover from the days when humans had trod these ways. The newer ones were lit in infrared, offering mute testimony to the absence of human use in these latter days.

Caliban moved farther and farther, out into the outskirts of the system, where even the infrared lighting got worse and worse. Infrared lights were supposed to come on as he approached, and cut off as he left, but fewer and fewer of the sensors seemed to be working. At last he was walking in complete darkness. Caliban powered up his on-board infrared light source and found his way forward that way.

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