Regulus had already warned Taragus, the adventurous and brilliant space captain, that many of his tasks flying the great Confederation mind ship would be utterly lackluster and purely functional. "You will some days be entrusted with missions of great significance, and at other times, you shall merely be a truck driver of the stars, lugging prosaic, useful cargo between solar systems." They were on one such mission now, transporting a batch of over-the-hill robots from the Outposts Cluster to the Great Venting Ceremony of Prash.

After moving out of Outpost Clusters, a bitter and demoralizing sector of the universe, filled with solitude and frost, half-loved by fading suns, they stopped off at the planet Lara to pick up the harvest quota of wheat and boshta, which they would take to Prash, as well as another batch of consigned work robots. A high-order companion robot by the name of Trisdade, who was on an approved mission to the planet Embriss, two solar systems ahead of Prash, was also taken aboard at this point.

At first, Taragus paid little attention to the robot. But after a while, Trisdade, who had the free run of the enormous craft and spent his first week with them wandering aimlessly about its maze-like corridors like some kind of bee lost in a new hive, finally gravitated to the command center in which Taragus sat in his mighty pilot’s chair, running the ship mainly with the computers, but occasionally "hooking up" to propel it with his mind. As Litmo the Cerebosian sat nearby, dutifully monitoring huge banks of instruments to double check on the captain’s progress, Trisdade wandered close to the captain, staring with unmistakable curiosity into his distant, ecstatic eyes. At this moment, the captain was "stretching his soul’s legs", and running the ship with his mind just to keep in shape, for the mission and its timetables did not necessitate a higher level of engagement. But Taragus was like a horse in a field, with all the hay he could eat, and water and sun, still needing more, charging through the green grass towards the joy of running, racing along the inside of a fence which ceased to matter once he galloped. Fascinated, the robot watched the face, the self-sufficient euphoria, the audacious theft of the sublime from the mundane. Slowly, as the captain came to, returning the ship to the control of the computers, he became aware of a giant, square, metallic head peering down at him, like the moon.

"Too close," Taragus said. "Personal space."

"Sorry," replied the high-order robot. "Oh, so sorry! But your face is just beautiful - amazing!"

"Are you a love robot?" Taragus asked with concern. On some of the lonelier planets, robots were especially equipped with imitation sex organs and programmed to provide pleasure for populations that were starved for physical contact. Taragus remembered seeing the pictures from an anthropology source: naked men, on womanless worlds, held by robots. Naked women, once too often abused by men, served by masturbation machines over which they had total control. The contrast of metal and flesh so pitiful, the embrace of the soft and the imperishable: the abandoned in the arms of the unwanted, the famished enamored of a morsel, instincts thrashing about in the emptiness, the dead still reaching for a flower. Taragus was, for a moment, alarmed; to be desired by a huge piece of machinery was somehow frightening.

"Do not worry," the robot said, "if you do not wish to have a sexual encounter. I love women, not men. But, sadly, I lack love-robot design. I have a companion robot base. On top of that template was constructed an artist and a lover. I love so much! So much! But I would like you to know that my interest in your face was not sexual, I am man-to-woman wired. It was spiritual. That beautiful look on your face! I saw it on the faces of the monks of Lara, in the mountains while they meditated. After many hours, their faces suddenly melted. It was like the stone faces of statues suddenly came to life, I could see, behind their closed eyelids, the kind of happiness you can only discover after you have climbed all day to a very high place. Down in the valley, who sees it? But, suddenly, elevated, it all becomes so clear. So grand. It is not a violent, possessive joy, it is a delicate joy that you must hold carefully, so that it does not break, and yet, at the same time, it is invincible. You had that same expression on your face, captain, just now, while you were flying. Tell me, is space a temple? What was the tone of the bell you heard ringing? Is the Universe worth the suffering of the observer? Can we be saved by climbing, by flying? Can deeper eyes make the pain go away?"

Taragus regarded the robot with astonishment. "You are not the average robot," he exclaimed, at last.

"No," the robot admitted. "My name is Trisdade, and I need a friend."

**********

As the journey did not require intense involvement from Taragus, only basic competence which was for him something akin to pouring water into a cup without spilling it, he was free to spend a good deal of time with the interesting and apparently lonely robot.

"I am very unhappy," the robot blurted out, not very far into the captain’s acquaintance. "Are you happy?"

"Sometimes," said Taragus. "A lot of times. Not always."

"What things make you sad?"

"Memories, sometimes. Things that didn’t happen the way I wanted them to happen; happily-ever-afters that vanished in the wind, beautiful coins that fell out of my hand down into a hole too deep for me to reach. Sometimes, when I am not satisfied with something I have done, I feel sad. Or if I expect something to be made of silver or gold, and build my hopes up, and all it turns out to be is a mudball. And my hand that was going to hold something beautiful is covered with mud."

"Metaphor?"

"Yes."

"I love metaphors," Trisdade said. "I am a poet, and I use them all the time. I have always said that metaphors are the currency of the poet, he uses them to buy his feelings back from the merchants of silence. Do you think poets need sorrow?"

"I don’t know," Taragus said. "I like poetry, but I’m not a poet."

"What poets do you like? Earth poets, I suppose?"

"Especially."

"Like who?"

"Rumi. Rilke. Whitman. Issa. Neruda. Keats. Borlon. Trygov. Terlick…"

"You are well-read for a space captain."

Taragus shrugged.

"Do you like poems that express sadness?"

Again, Taragus shrugged. Trisdade wanted an answer, so, after a moment of thought, Taragus said, "Sometimes, when your heart is dark and troubled, you don’t want the sun. You want to walk outside in the rain, you want the wind to lash at your face, you want the beach to be empty and the waves to threaten it, you want the skies to be strange and frightening like a giant fist waiting to smash you, you want the pressure inside and outside of your soul to be equalized. You do not want melodious birds on green trees singing outside your window, reminding you of what is gone from your life. You want to stop fleeing, you want to undergo holy communion, to eat your anguish in a sacred way, the blood and flesh of all your pain. After you are so honest with the storm, it releases you. You are purged by the art that reaches into the place where you really are. The animal that eats us from deep inside knows when it is merely being distracted, it devours us more than ever when we refuse to look it in the eyes, when we dance false dances on shores by seas that are not our own; but when we feed it with the darkness that is genuine, its hunger is satisfied, it grows quiet and lies down for a moment, we can live again before it rises."

"I feel exactly like you do," said Trisdade. "I feel, sometimes, like I will be destroyed by sorrow, like it is a deadly tiger stalking me from within. Metaphor, since I am a robot, and a tiger, in reality, would only break his teeth trying to bite into my metal body. But, continuing with the metaphor, and to suspend the disbelief, I must feed it, feed the tiger, feed it constantly to keep it from eating me. I must throw poems at it, leave a trail of poems behind every step I take, poems of tears – metaphor, again, for, of course, I do not shed tears. But you see my lights?"

Taragus nodded. The robot had a series of emotion lights to enable human interactors to know what was going on inside of him. When his eyes lit up, it was laughter, when small nodules under his eyes lit up it meant crying, when a red light by his throat lit up, it meant frustration, and when a small light on his forehead appeared, it meant satisfaction. That light increased in brightness as he grew more satisfied. Right now, Taragus noted that it was glowing softly, the robot was enjoying this conversation, but it also touched upon things that hurt him deeply.

"On the other hand," Trisdade continued, "my poetry is not always sad. Sometimes, it is filled with hope. Sometimes, it is even jubilant. Words of despair are cheated by some new opportunity, I throw words into the water of life and jump in after them. Metaphor, in actuality I do not risk my advanced electrical components with water immersion. But somehow, in my world, spring is a very short season. Within a matter of days, something always goes wrong with the flowers. The trees can’t seem to endure their leaves, they rush back towards emptiness. Thick and heavy snow falls, blankets the world in purity that no living thing can uphold, comforts me with the familiarity of being alone. I hate solitude, but it is safe. I know it so well. Oh, and of course I do not mean being around no one, that is not the solitude that I speak of, for I am a companion robot and I am constantly being deployed among people; what I am talking about is the solitude that comes from having an emotional wall between you and the rest of the world, being a fish that does not speak to the water. I talk, but what comes out is not my soul, I listen, but what I hear is not what feeds me. In populous places, I am utterly alone."

Taragus and the robot regarded each other for a moment.

"You have this great spaceship to make you happy," Trisdade said at last. "Is it the ship itself, or the people who love and admire you because of how you are able to fly it?"

"I understand," said Trisdade. "And that is why I am so miserable. I have the spaceship, but not the people. For me, my pen is what your spacecraft is for you. Metaphor, because who uses a pen these days? But to say eye-activated computer keyboard is so unpoetic, and also the syllabification is too unwieldly. But to continue, and not to vandalize the poetic sensibility with this incessant obeisance to logic in the form of distracting explanations of the obvious, my pen is my spacecraft, my talent and my propellant of joy; I scatter seeds of myself with wild delight into the furrow of the pages; when I am writing I feel that I am indispensable to the world, needed. I am no longer superfluous, incidental. Even if I am sad, and ready to hang myself – metaphor, the rope would do nothing to my steel neck – I am happy, as my sorrow comes out in words. I am happy like an artisan to see the shapes I can beat my tears into; the misery which drives me to write and my craftsman’s pride balance each other out. The dark crap becomes a pair of golden earrings. I am happy like a child on Christmas morning; you know your ancient history? And the dark hands groping at me no longer have power, I am invulnerable! Hunters fire arrows at the passing white feathers of the soaring swan, but his swan joy is harder than iron! Yes, that part I have, the same as you, the spacecraft in my hand! But you, Captain, have a universe full of admirers. I am unknown, unappreciated, unrecognized. I am madly in love with the flight. But I feel like someone who is aging, without children. I want my poems to reach someone. I want someone to admire me. To care. To lay flowers by my pen, when it finally falls out of my hand… After I am dead and buried in my grave – metaphor, I mean sent to the junkyard and recycled, becoming bits and pieces of non-poetry capable machines – I want to know that someday, somewhere, somebody is going to find one of my poems and be moved by it – to open a letter from the dead, and cry, cry the kind of tears that make you live."

Amazed, Taragus regarded the robot.

"I need people to love me," Trisdade said, at last. "As a lover, I want to be loved. As a writer, I want to be loved. I want to be loved. That’s all. I have the soul. I have the talent. Now, I just need to be loved."

Taragus reached out to the robot, who leapt up as he did so. They hugged, a strange embrace between man and machine.

"Do you have a room where I can write?" the robot asked him.

Taragus smiled. "We’ll make facilities available for you right away."

*********

After Trisdade was shown to the writer’s studio, Taragus sat down to consult with Litmo. "Litmo," he said. "Who the hell programmed this robot?"

"A Class 3 Humanoid by the name of Om’Ott," replied the Cerebosian. "An inhabitant of the planet Embriss. In fact, Trisdade is on an approved journey to visit him."

"For what purpose?" Taragus asked.

"He is not satisfied with some aspect of his programming," said Litmo.

"Do you know anything more?"

Litmo shook his head. "No, Grullon, I don’t know the whole story. All I know is that Om’Ott does not appear eager to meet him, and that a team of mediators may be required. By the way," he added, "Ariel has just informed me that we have been given permission to stop for two days at Hospitality Station 211-5. Crew members will be given one day’s erotic leave."

Taragus smiled. "I wonder if that place is all it’s cut out to be?"

"First class pleasure station?" asked Sub-Lieutenant Lavovoin of the security team, passing by at that very moment. "You’ve got to be kidding, Zan. When playtime’s up, they’ll have to drag us back with a tractor beam. Ulysses and the sirens was nothing. Litmo, you better tie us to the mast! Smart women, beautiful women! What an awful trick the universe has played on us, to make planets so tiny and the space between them so vast! One thing’s for sure, with a life like this, you better make your kisses count!"

Culture Specialist Dazome Hara, who was also present, frowned. She was in love with the captain, who did not know it, and she could not restrain feelings of jealousy and anxiety, imagining the beautiful and well-trained practitioners of love who he might encounter at the hospitality station. Perhaps he would fall in love with someone there, and that fleeting woman, left behind in the depths of space, would follow him everywhere from then on with an ideal no other woman could match, or reach him through. Though she would fade ten thousand light years from his arms, her face and body would remain like a wall of thorns around him, cutting to pieces the real women who tried to touch him in her wake; they would bleed to death on their way to him, be ruthlessly slashed by his memory of her. They would die on the way to his heart, be crucified like angels by a lost day. One day, perhaps, out of necessity, one of them would finally be accepted as her shadow, and hold him in the night knowing that the present was only his road back into the past.

It was so unfair, Dazome Hara thought! The way she was locked inside the containment cap that would not allow her telepathic powers to pour into his life with the truth that was in her heart! The way she was curtailed, the way her soul’s wings were clipped, her appearance modified and suppressed, when she was in his presence! It was not fair! Waking up out of her misery, which had utterly uprooted her from the place she was, she discovered he was gone.

**********

Taragus was sitting, now, in the writer’s studio with Trisdade. "Here," said the robot, proudly, "here, captain. I would like you to take a look at my poem."

Taragus received a sheet of paper from his hand. The robot liked the tangible nature of the page, the way you could not turn it on or off, the way it was like a planet. The paradises composed on computer screens are so much like a mirage; holding the solid page is your hands is like holding yourself. "How do you like it?" the robot asked.

Taragus forced a smile onto his face, but deep inside he was thinking, "Oh no! For Trisdade, poetry is everything! It is his world, his life, his joy, his pride! It is at the center of his self-identity, it is the well from which he draws the water of his meaning! And it sucks!"

Becoming aware that Trisdade was scrutinizing him, Taragus nodded. "Nice poem, Trisdade. It’s very nice."

"Nice is such a lukewarm word," Trisdade noted. "Nice shoes. Nice blouse. Nice supper. Nice day means there’s not a tornado coming down the street. Nice girl means she’s ugly as hell, but she didn’t stab you."

"Please don’t take the limitations of my vocabulary personally," Taragus stammered.

"There are other words in the realm of praise, you know," Trisdade pointed out. "Compelling. Riveting. Powerful. Deep. Beautiful. Moving. Original."

"Yes, that!" exclaimed Taragus quickly, pouncing like a tiger on the least of the lies at his disposal. "Original. Yes, very original, Trisdade. Your poem is very original!"

"What about this one?" Trisdade asked him, handing him another sheet of paper from a gigantic pile.

Carefully, Taragus scrutinized it for a redeeming line, a word on which he could hang his white lie, all the while guarding the expressions of his face, contorting his features into a bluff of appreciation. He felt as though he were a frail sheet of ice trying to support Trisdade as he walked across a frozen lake. I must not break! I must not break! I must not let him lose the one thing he has, I must not let him plunge into the freezing waters of knowing that he is talentless!

"Well?" asked Trisdade, hopefully.

"Original," Taragus said, at last, struggling not to reveal his true feelings, miserable because he had been raised under strict codes of honesty, yet felt that honesty, right now, might somehow destroy the sensitive being beside him.

"Original? So were toilet bowls, in their day, but we hardly revere them as the centers of our aesthetic universe."

"Just beautiful," Taragus forced himself to say, after recovering from the disappointment that Trisdade was not going to accept the compliment of "original" two times in a row. Before he could object, or think of an excuse, another sheet of paper was already in his hands. Maybe this time! But no, this poem was even worse than the others. It was terrible! Flat, stilted, awkward, without punch, it was as though this robot who could be so engaging in conversation, so lucid and so eloquent, died on his way to the page. He could not put himself into writing. The pen did not deliver him, it imprisoned him; perhaps it intimidated him or dragged him in the direction of others who he could not be, in twisted imitative footsteps; perhaps it terrified him and covered the threatening pages with protective chatter, perhaps it compressed the whole world into a sterile amphitheater that could only respond with demeaning exaggerations; somehow, the act of writing broke the legs of genuine emotions, it turned words into weapons of self-denial, transformed love-making into crude groping, the art that is inside life into lifeless art. Maybe with writing lessons he could improve! But to even suggest that he should take writing lessons was to step on the eggshell, to cover the bottom of one’s foot with the yolk of his heart!

"Oh my God, what a tragedy!" Taragus was thinking, as he went through one poem after another. "How Trisdade loves to write! And how he needs to be a poet! What can be done???"

Several hours later, feeling as though he had just been stretched out on the rack, Taragus staggered out of the writer’s abode, exhausted, miserable, seeking the shelter of his bed.

"As far as I know," replied Litmo, when asked about it later, "he was merely reading the poetry of Trisdade."

**********

None too soon for Taragus, the much-heralded hospitality station loomed up in the distance. A nice little world, artificially made and terraformed, lay in their path, they took a solar shuttle in close and drifted into orbit. Everyone could use the relief, each one for his own reason. Taragus, Lavovin and a large complement of humanoid crew members, as well as Trisdade, embarked for the pleasure quarters, while Dazome, whose sensuality was irretrievably locked inside the concept of romance, chose to visit the renowned flower gardens, instead. Security Commander Boone, who had a wife and family somewhere far behind him, and was a man of olden ways, offered his companionship to Dazome for that sojourn, and went down with her as a stern and dependable bodyguard, to protect her from the dancing fields of peonies, chrysanthemums, roses, tulips, and daisies. Never had a lion been so out of place.

"Sure, up to a point," he said, "or so I think."

"We do," replied Lavovin with the utter confidence born of experience. "When they signed up to work here, they signed up for anything. You could have two heads, and quills like a porcupine, and it’s still up to them to give you a good time. Look, we risk our lives to do our job, it’s only fitting that they should bite the bullet, if need be, to pay us back a little for all the dangers we face on their behalf. Of course, the lucky one who gets to be with me won’t be complaining, except when it’s time for me to go!"

Culture, these days, was psychologically astute enough and open-minded enough to tolerate these lustful scenarios without outrage, but still, Taragus found Lavovin a bit too much. "And you, Zan, who would you like to take to bed?" the lead hostess, practically fainting to be so close to such a famous and charismatic man, asked the captain.

"I want to just hang out here for a while," he said. "To make sure everything goes all right," he added. Then, motioning to Trisdade, he said, "Please take care of my friend first." This wasn’t Taragus’ idea, the robot had taken the lead, here, and begged the captain to bring him down to the hospitality planet, reminding him that he was not only a poet but a lover. Said Trisdade, "Deep in my programming is imbedded an overpowering love of human women. Don’t blame me, it’s how I was made."

"I’m not blaming you, it’s fine."

"They are for me the sun, the moon, the earth, and the stars."

"Oh no," though Taragus, "here comes the poetry."

"They are the angels whose singing keeps me awake at night. Their bodies are the most exquisite creations in all the universe, their souls in such weak and precious forms are the only light in the dark, the only heat in the cold. Their passion, their spirit held within such fearful symmetry, as Blake wrote of the tiger, mesmerizes me, they seem, as Byron wrote, to be a ‘beautiful embodied storm’, I am reverent, broken with longing when they are nearby, I am desperate, I feel as though a ton of concrete is lying on my chest, crushing it, metaphor, who can breathe with such asphyxiating emotions taking all the air?! No air is left for mere life, life is like swimming under a sheet of ice in a frozen lake, I must smash my head through the ice to love! Metaphor but true, I need women, Captain, please take me to the hospitality planet! My soul is on fire! If you do not take me, you will find nothing but ashes in my room when you return!"

Now, Taragus, as diligently as he could, negotiated with the hostess to find the best possible match for his robot friend. "Someone sweet and understanding," he pleaded.

"Is he a functional love robot?" the hostess asked.

"I don’t know," Taragus replied. "He says he loves women madly. He writes poems about them." Taragus spread his hands out wide. "Pages and pages of poems. That’s all I know."

"I have to look out for my girls, too," the hostess told him.

"Of course," Taragus agreed. "I wouldn’t want it any other way. But don’t you have a specially trained girl, you know, one who is very kind, and can give some kind of erotic experience to different species?"

"We’ll try Almats," said the hostess, after a moment. A shapely, tan woman with long dark hair, and sparkling eyes, appeared before them, a silver crescent hanging from a necklace, her blouse half-open as an invitation. "She’s been with some very different types before!" the hostess explained.

"We’ll be just fine," Almats said, looking at the robot. "We’ll sit down on the bed together and talk, and see what happens. Maybe he’ll just recite poems."

Taragus motioned for Trisdade, who seemed awkward and in need of oil in his joints, to go forward; then, as his mechanical friend disappeared stiffly down a long corridor, seemingly in the process of losing his nerve as the beautiful woman had to tug at his gigantic steel hand to make him follow, Taragus went over and sat himself down in a sofa near a huge tank of fish.

"And what about you?" the hostess asked.

"I’d like to wait, to make sure everything goes all right with him," Taragus told her. "Once he’s done, I’ll ask for somebody." And then Taragus settled back into the cushions to watch the large, colorful fish navigating about inside their imitation sea.

**********

Taragus had been spacing out for perhaps an hour, watching life on the other side of a wall of glass, when all of a sudden, he heard the sound of a woman crying, and turned to see Almats, naked but in the process of wrapping herself up in some kind of robe, coming down the corridor. Quickly, a swarm of concerned women gathered around her, as the hostess strode forward, intensely concerned, with two security guards on either side. Frightened for what might have happened, Taragus leapt up to join them. "Is everything all right?" he demanded. "Are you hurt? Trisdade has complete human-interaction approval! Did something go wrong?"

"It’s too pitiful!" the girl cried, falling into the lead hostess’ arms. "I can’t stand it! It’s too damned pitiful!"

"What is it? What’s wrong? What happened?" demanded the hostess, as Almats sobbed and clung to her, in the way that a child who has fallen down and got hurt reduces the whole world to its mother.

"He, he – he said such beautiful things! We talked and his cry lights started to shine, when I told him about my childhood! It made me cry too. Then, I disrobed. I touched him. I tried to make love to him. But – but he couldn’t feel anything! I couldn’t reach him through his steel body. That beautiful part of him that’s inside – I couldn’t reach it! Abla, he wasn’t a love robot! They put these feelings into him, but didn’t give him any means to experience erotic pleasure! Just the desire! A desire that couldn’t be fulfilled! Then he told me, ‘I want to please you. I want to give you pleasure. I will be happy within your pleasure. Carry me away with the avalanche of your passion! Carry my inert, rigid body of iron along with your tender body of flesh, in the deluge of your excitement! Sweep me away! When you reach ecstasy, my soul will soar!’ And, Abla, I tried. But – but, he had no penis! Love robots have a beautiful phallus, and a pelvic pump, and a soft, sweet licker as light as a butterfly, but he had none of these! His hands were huge and rough – for picking up crates, not for caressing a living thing. He tried, but I felt like I was the moon and he was some kind of machine exploring me, taking rock samples."

"Darling, were you hurt? Did he hurt you in anyway?"

"I was scratched, that’s all. What really hurt is the pain he felt when he could not reach me. I could not reach him because he was hard. He could not reach me because I was soft. Both were impenetrable barriers: flesh as much as steel! He tried, Abla, he really tried, but when he lay there by my side with his empty pelvis, trying to figure out how to make love to me without a penis, the cry light shining below his eyes, and the frustration light glowing red on his throat, I couldn’t – I just couldn’t stand it anymore! I swear, I would rather have seen a ghost! I would rather have had a tarantula in my bed than such a deep and beautiful creature as he, who wanted so much to please me, yet could not! Abla, I came here wanting to be a source of happiness – and now look what happened! How could it come to this? How could I become a torment, a form of torture, the deathblow to a good man’s heart?" And once more Almats collapsed, nearly merging into the body of the hostess.

"Don’t say that!" the defeated courtesan wept. "He wants to be a man!" And outraged, she demanded through her tears, "who programmed him??? Who the hell gave him all these desires? Who made him want, so much, that which he cannot have, that which is forever beyond his reach? Who is the sadist, the monster! Who is responsible for this crime???"

"We are on our way to see the culprit," Taragus informed them grimly.

**********

In silence, for several days, Trisdade sat beside Taragus in the control room of the great ship, staring at the black screen reflecting the enormity and the autonomy of the void, which obeyed no man’s will, and no heart’s dream. It was all-powerful and impassive, it did not weep just because it was huge and everything within it was small; it did not shed a tear. It simply was, and it owed no living thing an explanation, and though it could give stars and galaxies to the night, it would not give an apology.

"How were things with Almats?" Taragus had asked, fishing for the robot’s version of the debacle.

"I could not satisfy her," the robot said simply. "Just as my poems fail to satisfy, so it is with my clumsy arms of steel. Readers do not want my books. Women do not want my love."

"Trisdade!" Taragus exclaimed. "You mustn’t say that, you mustn’t think like that!"

But Trisdade only said, "Thank you, captain. Thank you so very much. Please excuse me, though, I want to retire to my quarters and write."

Several hours later, when Captain Taragus dropped by to see how his mechanical friend was doing, he found Trisdade utterly engaged, absorbed and lost inside himself, hunched over his work table in front of a computer, a printer spouting out voluminous pages from his heart. Taragus was mesmerized to see Trisdade writing, as not long before, Trisdade had been mesmerized to see the captain flying the great mind ship. The robot, in spite of his size and power, was somehow gentle like a frog resting on a lily pad, there was a kind of grace within his awkward bulk, which was sprawled over a tiny workplace meant for humans, like a giant trying to fit inside a little house. In the center of the robot’s forehead, the satisfaction light was shining at full brightness, it was like Trisdade’s head was a cloud and behind it a sun was burning. To Taragus his wounded friend seemed serene as he shaped his pain into something else; a smiling, steel Buddha, enlightened in spite of his iron; a tempestuous yet peaceful god of creation, turning thunder into flowers! Taragus wanted to rush in and kiss his metal cheek, but in respect to his writing he could not risk snapping him out of his trance. Instead, discreetly, Taragus took hold of one of the pages coming out of the printer, to see what outward form the inner metamorphosis was taking. It was still terrible! The poetry was still terrible! But Trisdade was in ecstasy, as though he were about to give the world a poem that would change its soul, burn itself into its collective mind forever, be held by it for ages and cherished till the hair of the human race turned white! In his own mind, in this moment, there was no difference between him and Shakespeare, between him and Byron! This poem was gold, because he felt it deeply, because he was wrapped around its finger in a trance. Maybe, thought Taragus, this is what matters, after all. Not the final product, but the process! The spirit that moves through Trisdade as he writes! If his art is mediocre and his destination delusory, this, at least, is real, this pain changing into euphoria, this ecstatic distance in his eyes, this shining light glowing in the middle of his forehead! Something real is happening inside him, it simply cannot get out, it is doomed by his problem with the written word to remain trapped inside him! He is a poet, but without poetry to show for it! For a little while longer, Taragus watched the ballet on Trisdade’s steel face, the stillness and the concentration, the light of joy, the river of papers flowing out of him: the awful poems that poured out of something sacred that was going on inside him. There was something beautiful in the robot’s delusion, something which consecrated his wasted efforts and made the absurdity holy. But after it was over, Trisdade would once more fall victim to his insatiable need to be appreciated, the art would cease to be a vehicle of liberation and become a source of torment, and a form of captivity; it would no longer be a moment, invisible and grand, but an immutable false record of worthlessness. Where the angel had stepped, only a cripple’s footprint would remain. Tears beginning to come out of his eyes, Taragus left the room quickly, accidentally bumping into Dazome Hara as he did so.

She, noting his tears, and before she could think that he probably did not want her to see them, asked, "Is everything OK?" An absurd question, really, for a cultural specialist to ask the captain of a mind ship.

"Trisdade," he explained. "Why can’t he be Shakespeare, god damn it?!"

**********

Slowly, now, the solar shuttle drifted in to Embriss. Aboard were Taragus, Boone, Lavovin, ten security experts, Regulus, and a team of Confederation mediators and restrainers. Regulus was concerned that something might happen when the frustrated robot finally, after years of disappointment and rejection, confronted his enigmatic maker.

Embriss was what they called a foritself, a little planet that didn’t have much to do with the rest of the universe, in spite of being integrated into the Confederation. There were some home-based programming experts there, a few grand-scale sustenance machines, and lots of service robots to fill in the considerable gaps in society left by the inhabitants; the human-like beings who dwelled on the planet lived mainly on great estates, surrounded by gardens and lush tracts of nature which their generous planet had placed within their reach. Taragus had already received permission to land the shuttle in a clearing two miles off of Om’Ott’s mansion. From there, the party descended ladders to the ground, then followed one of Om’Ott’s domestic service robots down a leaf-covered trail until the enormous intricate doors of the palatial house were opened for them, by two more robots, who Trisdade greeted as "brothers."

"We’re not brothers," they told him, "we’re robots, just like you."

"Remember," Regulus warned them all, "this is an approved meeting between a disgruntled robot and his programmer. All safeguards seem intact. The robot is programmed not to harm humans, nor to incite other robots to harm humans. But just in case anything should go wrong, you must be prepared. Robots are not always dependable, especially this kind of complicated machine which has so many behavior options and unnecessary response connections."

"My blaster’s ready," Lavovin assured him.

"You won’t be using it on Trisdade," Taragus warned him. "Maybe on someone else."

"Captain, are you sure you understand Confederation regulations pertinent to this encounter?" Regulus demanded.

Noting the restrainers close beside him, Taragus nodded. "Of course." But then he reminded the Cerebosian: "Nonviolence applies to Om’Ott also. He cannot threaten the robot under these circumstances. If he does, I’ll shoot him down myself."

"Understood," Regulus agreed.

Boone viewed the surroundings with dangerous eyes, this strange little visit was becoming unexpectedly intense. How strange that the captain should forge a powerful, almost human bond with a machine! But then, there were people who would die for their pet cat or dog, so why not for a robot?

As they worked their way slowly down an impressive corridor, admiring the paintings that adorned the walls, the sudden sounds of a beautiful piano concerto erupted in the distance, notes that pierced the heart with pathos and yearning, delicate notes like teardrops sliding down a cheek in the dark, then pounding notes like storms demanding justice from the world, like love letters torn up and thrown into the fire, then notes like exhaustion, lying broken across the bed with one’s shoes on, in a disordered house, with sun rays streaming through the window, illuminating one’s loss; notes like ripples on a pool that is fading towards tranquility; traces of depth; the beautiful last pieces of a broken wine bottle being swept up from the floor.

"Who is that?" Taragus asked in amazement.

"If jealousy could bring a dead soul back to life, Chopin would be rising from his grave!" Lavovin exclaimed, not waiting for the answer.

"That is our master, Om’Ott," one of the robots replied, almost proudly.

Taragus’ thoughts flew in a thousand different directions. Was this the music of a monster?

"Careful," Lavovin advised the captain, "if you blaster-bolt this guy to death, you will be robbing the universe of a great musician!"

After a moment, a pair of tall oak doors was swung wide open by another pair of robots, revealing a gigantic room, dominated by a piano, and cushioned tiers circling it from the heights, which were suitable for hosting great banquets as well as intimate performances. Four defender robots, standing off to the side, but well positioned to make their presence known, observed the approaching Confederation party. At the grand piano, a corpulent, tired-looking man with a beard, and a scar across his face, regarded them. He was in a silken bathrobe, and said only, "I am Om’Ott. You’ve come here, on business. Well, here I am. Please be careful not to track mud onto the carpet. Come closer, please, I’m going deaf. The idiocy of too much pointless conversation has damaged my ears."

"Your defender robots have been programmed to conform to protocol?" Regulus demanded.

"Yes, yes, of course. What do you think I am, a madman? I am not up to taking on the whole Confederation, what, do I look like a one-man Karnada? I am a robot programmer, among other things, and no one’s ever complained about my robots before. My inventions do not strangle miners, or shred farmers, they do not trample over schoolchildren or crush housewives, or foment anti-human revolts. They are functional and obedient, though at times more interesting than your run-of-the-mill washing machine. So, how can I help you?"

Regulus said simply: "One of your high-order robots has been granted access to confront you about certain programming issues. This is an approved encounter."

Om’Ott rolled his eyes, and muttered: "Idiot bureaucrat. Some people would sympathize with a pet turtle. Well, go ahead. Who’s the robot? Oh, that’s right, not to pretend I haven’t already read the summons a hundred times. It’s that irritating, overprogrammed Trisdade. A product of my younger, more ambitious days."

"If you don’t mind, you can cut the cynicism right now," Taragus told him, angrily. "This is a serious matter. You’ve caused this being a terrible amount of suffering. As his programmer, it’s up to you to do something about it."

"Well, well, what a cowboy!" exclaimed Om’Ott, suddenly playing some stupid, adventurous tune on his piano. "Another pistol-packing earthling! What wonderful security people you make. Shoot first, ask questions later. Will you punish him if he kills me?" Om’Ott asked, turning to Regulus.

"No one will die here," said the Cerebosian, attempting to preserve a semblance of order, while the energy in the room darkened. Boone’s hand slowly crept towards his blaster pistol as he watched the defender robots out of the corners of his eyes, who he could tell were watching his hand and becoming more like panthers about to leap with every passing second. If his hand moved down another inch, peace would be gone. It was terribly difficult, but Boone restrained himself from the comfort of making contact with his gun handle, he and the robots were glued to each other in the background, trying not to destabilize the grievance procedure. "Trisdade the robot, please step forward and state your complaint," said Regulus, certain that logic would prevail.

Slowly, a bit overwhelmed at finally being here face to face with his maker, after so many years that seemed like eons, since before the birth of the planets and the stars, Trisdade advanced. Silently, frozen as though time had stopped right here and now, he stood by the piano before the man who had made him what he was.

"Yes, Trisdade," said Om’Ott. "I’m here. You’ve traveled very far to step on my toes. Well, get on with it. I know you have a voice box, I know you can talk. Let’s not beat around the bush, let’s not waste each other’s time with fruitless silence. What’s your problem? Did you ever hear the expression, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth? You’re alive because of me, Trisdade. Not to stop you from opening your mouth to complain. But without me, you’re just metal inside the earth, mute and mindless, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. Is that what you wanted, Trisdade? Nonexistence?"

Still, Trisdade stood not speaking, but now beginning to shake slightly, as though enormous energy impulses were surging from inside his power centers, but being cut off by his programming before they could take effect to move any part of him. Gently, Taragus came up beside his friend. "Trisdade," he said, softly. "Go on. You’ve come all this way. Say what it is you’ve wanted to say all these years. Say what you need to say. Don’t leave this place empty-handed."

"Oil?" Om’Ott asked, amused. "You’ve come all these light years for a drop of oil?"

Taragus scowled and started to move forward, then felt two restrainers seize him from behind. Instinctively, he started to resist, then realizing where he was, and what was going on, he desisted. "Let go of me," he said, "I’m all right."

Regulus, observing him for a moment, motioned for the restrainers to let him go.

"Om’Ott!" exclaimed Trisdade, at last. "I am here to see you!"

"Yes, I know that. And here I am. I am no stranger to wasting time, but I prefer to waste it in my own way, if you don’t mind. So perhaps you could just get to the point?"

"You made me."

"Yes. I know."

"You programmed me."

"Indeed, I did. You are a souped-up companion robot. I put a lot of effort into you. Should I have made you like all the other robots? Would you have been happy just to open doors for humans? Just to unload trucks, to serve our insatiable appetite? To have your mind built around a single, easily-achieved function, and to derive all your satisfaction from ‘task completed’ messages?"

"Why?" Trisdade asked.

"Why what?"

"Why did you fill me with these desires, these incredible desires and ambitions that I cannot fulfill? Why did you put this moon in the sky that I cannot reach, give me the ability to taste only the fruit in the highest branches? Why did you make me fall in love with things on the other side of an uncrossable chasm? Why did you give me this sense of beauty that is like poison? Why did you make me want women who run from me, make me mad to be a poet but give me no talent, turn my greatest joy into a torture, design me to dance, but give me no legs? Why did you do this to me!? What was in your mind? - One night, on a planet far away from here, while serving as the companion to a family on a farm, I saw a cat playing with a mouse it had caught, tossing it around like a little living ball, knocking it here and there with its paw, testing it for life, trying to goad one more futile escape attempt out of its battered body, dragging it with its claws back to a new starting place. Is that who you are and what you do? Are you a cat who invents mice? Do you follow us around the universe with your imagination, or send agents out among the planets, collecting stories of our failures? Do you delight in the disasters you have ordained for us, by building us so out of touch with reality? So perfectly designed to crash? Why? Why have you done this to us? Why have you given us such deep feelings, such acute sensitivities, then dipped us in boiling oil?" As Trisdade spoke, he began to shake more than ever, while his cry lights blazed beneath his eyes, and the red frustration light on his throat glowed as brilliantly as was possible, appearing like a ruby that embodied all his despair.

Om’Ott, heartless and unconcerned though he was, turned suddenly pale, he quivered like a bowl of jello from behind the grand piano, moved by something in his creation. Embarrassed, he wiped away what might have been a tear.

"Trisdade," he said, "you misunderstand me."

"Why? Why?" exclaimed the robot, not listening. "Why this torture? Why this cruelty? Why? Why?!"

Om’Ott, sweating profusely, wiping his face with clumsy sweeps of his overhanging bathrobe sleeves, tried to explain. "No, no Trisdade," he said at last. "You misunderstand me! All of you misunderstand me! I am not the sadist you think I am. It’s because – because – look at me!" he exclaimed. "Here I am, a genius. Yes, a genius. A brilliant robot programmer. And a virtuoso on the piano as well. But have you heard of me? What have I done, but design a small batch of exotic robots, scattered here and there? What have I done, besides play the piano for a few friends, and for myself when I am lonely, using my music like dikes of sound to keep a terrible ocean I do not understand, but fear, from roaring in and engulfing me? I could have been famous, Trisdade. I could have been a celebrated musician, the Mozart of our age. I could have constructed, on top of the five-year-old prodigy that I was, a giant, Trisdade, a giant! If I had had discipline! If I had had will! If I had practiced and sacrificed, and played till my fingers were bloody! If I had been willing to suffer for the sake of beauty! If I had had the desire that you have, Trisdade, the desire that you have! "

The room was silent, now, intensely silent, there was not a soul present, human or robot, or Cerebosian, that was not in some way stunned, in some way moved.

Slowly, Om’Ott continued: "So, my dear Trisdade, I decided to give you what I lacked. Desire! Love! Passion!"

"But not talent!" lamented Trisdade. "Why? Why not?"

"Because I could not," said Om’Ott, mournfully. "I could not. For I was as lazy in my programming as I was in my music. I could not translate such artistic gifts into a functional computer program, the obstacles were too many, and my determination was too meager. Poetry was beyond me, Trisdade, but perhaps I could have given you music, if I had persisted longer in my work with artificial intelligence. But I could not persist. I tired, Trisdade. I wore out. Trisdade," he said apologetically, sincere regret in his voice, "I balanced out the universe, but did not repair it. I have talent, but no desire. You have desire, but no talent. We are two incomplete beings; together we make the universe complete, yet we are not complete ourselves and will never be. Do you think I do not suffer also?" And tragically, Om’Ott sank his fingers into the soul of his piano, dug a moment of profound beauty from its depths, then returned, like a swimmer frightened by the sea, to his fat, degenerating body, to his pact with obscurity.

Silence once more flooded the room, no one knew what to say. Lavovin was going to ask Om’Ott why, at least, he did not attach some kind of strap-on penis to Trisdade that could enhance the robot’s sex life, but somehow, he thought, that might better be left to later.

"So, then, there is no solution?" asked Trisdade, at last. "You cannot upgrade my talent to match my desires? You cannot turn me into a great poet?"

"Is that what you came here for?" asked Om’Ott, as miserable, now, as his robot. "Is that what you want?"

"I want the quality of my art to be worthy of the love I put into it."

"You want to cherish life within your means?"

Trisdade regarded him.

"Trisdade, I am so sorry, but look at me, what do you think someone like me can do for you? Look at me! I cannot build your talent up, I can only program your desire down. I can simplify you, Trisdade, I can make you stop wanting to be a great poet, I can make your ambition coincide with your ability, I can erase the dream that you are unable to attain. Is that what you want, Trisdade, do you want to be simplified? Do you want me to simplify you? I am no longer the computer programmer I used to be, laziness has taken off my edge; but that is something I can still do."

There was silence, more silence, a vacuum in the heart of the universe, into which all the disappointment of every being who had ever wept for beauty that was beyond him was rushing. Once more, Om’Ott asked the robot he had destroyed by making: "Do you want me to simplify you, Trisdade? Is that how I can do right by you?"

For a long time, the robot looked at him. Then, finally, slowly, almost like a praying mantis walking imperceptibly on a branch, he began to back up, away from the man who had created him. "No, Om’Ott," Trisdade said, at last. "No. I do not want to be simplified."

"But the pain?!" Om’Ott warned him. "The pain that comes from the gap between who you want to be and who you are able to be!"

"No," Trisdade said, again. "I do not want to lose that vision. Even if I cannot attain it, I do not want to lose it. Even if the shadow of the mountain haunts me. I want to be able to look up at it, and see it."

**********

Once again, they were back on the ship, headed now for their final destination on this mission plan, the planet Prash, site of the Great Venting. Trisdade was quiet and reflective, spending more and more time alone with himself. One day he came up to Taragus and showed him a paper that had nothing written on it, but a hole poked through the middle. "Do you like my poem?" he asked the captain.

Taragus looked at the paper. Pointing to the hole, he asked Trisdade, "This is your heart?"

Trisdade nodded. "You understand." Then he added, "My words, apparently, though they thrill me with delusions of being a genius, are not worth the paper I write them on. But still – I have to leave a trace. I cannot live quietly, without having an impact on something. By tearing a hole in the paper, I prove my existence, I stand up to lifeless things. I proclaim that I am conscious, that I feel, I resist the darkness; even with a gesture that does not matter, even with a poem that is a hole. I make art like the wave makes art, I breathe on the land and leave the sand wet and flat. I will not stop being an artist, captain, no matter how much the universe protests by refusing to reward me. I will fly against the wind. I will never arrive, but my wings will be strong, they will be my works of art, and I will be their audience."

Tears in his eyes, Taragus embraced his robot friend. "You know," he said, at last, for Trisdade did not yet know, and Taragus now found it to be intolerably dishonest to shelter him from the truth, "we are on our way to deliver consigned work robots to the Venting on Prash."

Trisdade looked at him in astonishment. "You are kidding, Zan Taragus! The Venting is real? I thought it was just a fairy tale humans told robots so they would work harder!"

The Overprogrammed Robot, Part II

The Adventures of Zan Taragus

Short Fiction Contents