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Words: 19594 in 14 pages
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THE EGO MACHINE
Nicholas Martin looked up at the robot across the desk.
"Was your mother's name Helena Glinska?" the robot asked.
"It was not," Martin said.
"Ah, then she must have been the Great Hairy One," the robot murmured.
Martin took his feet off the desk and sat up slowly.
"It's quite all right," the robot said hastily. "You've been chosen for an ecological experiment, that's all. But it won't hurt. Robots are perfectly normal life forms where I come from, so you needn't--"
"Shut up," Martin said. "Robot indeed, you--you bit-player! This time St. Cyr has gone too far." He began to shake slightly all over, with some repressed but strong emotion. The intercom box on the desk caught his eye, and he stabbed a finger at one of the switches. "Get me Miss Ashby! Right away!"
"I'm so sorry," the robot said apologetically. "Have I made a mistake? The threshold fluctuations in the neurons always upset my mnemonic norm when I temporalize. Isn't this a crisis-point in your life?"
Martin breathed hard, which seemed to confirm the robot's assumption.
"Exactly," it said. "The ecological imbalance approaches a peak that may destroy the life-form, unless ... mm-m. Now either you're about to be stepped on by a mammoth, locked in an iron mask, assassinated by helots, or--is this Sanskrit I'm speaking?" He shook his gleaming head. "Perhaps I should have got off fifty years ago, but I thought--sorry. Good-bye," he added hastily as Martin raised an angry glare.
Then the robot lifted a finger to each corner of his naturally rigid mouth, and moved his fingers horizontally in opposite directions, as though sketching an apologetic smile.
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