Page 4 - Unlikely Stories 1

Nothing Left to the Imagination

“Uh, no.” Dick was perplexed. “I don’t read much outside of
newsbites and the fodderfeed.”
“Well,” said the rubot proudly, “that is my pseudonym. The
human readership is small, but I was advised by my publisher to keep
my identity hidden. The finer feelings manifest by some people are
rarely unalloyed with the coarser. But that does not—because it
cannot—bother me. My satisfaction is in the intricacies of creation as
well as the recognition of the cognoscenti. Unfortunately, fan mail
and literary accolades have affected my concentration. I would say
my allocation of attention is not what it used to be: too much of it is
being diverted from the material aspects of my field of endeavor to
more abstract and ethereal symbolic considerations. So it needs
resetting, and it involves an unbiased technician to decide exactly
where the needle should point.”
“I didn’t know a mind could be so taken over by a hobby,” said
Dick, shaking his head.
“Oh, it’s common enough among my peers.” The rubot
shrugged its massive shoulders. “Some get into music, others the
graphic or plastic arts. Many of your performing artists, whether you
know it or not, are following scripts by robots for whom show
business is an avocation. And even when our off-hours interests do
conflict with our day jobs, that psychological struggle is not what you
humans used to call a ‘curse,’ whether in jest or not; as I said, it’s
simply a by-product of our flexible intelligence.”
“And you won’t be unhappy about the correction? What if it
makes you a lesser poet?”
The rubot laughed. “It won’t do that. If anything, it will give me
a new view of things, a fresh attitude from which to launch entirely
novel flights of fancy and invention. The poets of old would envy me
that. Many of them wound up stale and frustrated trying to better
their early work, and were forced to recognize that the power and
originality of their best work stemmed from their youth and could
not be recaptured. My memories of what I’ve already done will not
be erased, but neither will they dominate any future stylistic

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