Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION This is Mr. Clayton from General Cybernetics Incor- porated; he had some of his engineers examine your robot last night while you were asleep. Their verdict is that the robot needs to be dis- mantled. You see, its brain circuits cannot last for ever, and if something went wrong then several unpleasant things could happen. It could lose all power of muscle co- ordination, its memory could fail, or,’’ he paused grimly, ‘it could go completely berserk.” Clayton continued for him: “So you see, Pamela, we are going to take robot 117——”’ He was interrupted by War- burton: “Ahem. Her own name for him is ‘Tinlid,’ by the way.” “Thank you, Mr. Warbur- ton.”” He turned to Pamela again. “Well, we are going to withdraw robot number... er... Tinlid, from service and use some of his spare parts to build new robots; the rest of him will go as scrap. Your daddy is going to buy you a new one. Of course, it will be much better than that old non-vocal thing you have got now.” He leaned back in his chair and beamed at Pamela. If 114 he expected an answering smile from the child he was sadly mistaken. Much of what the two men had said had gone way above Pamela’s head. She realised two things only: one, they were going to take away her beloved Tinlid; and two, she was going to get an unfamiliar new one in his place. “But I don’t want a new robot,” she began. ‘“Tinlid knows me, he plays with me, we have fun together. I know he’d be unhappy without me.” “But look,”’ said her father, impatiently. “His brain cir- cuits are worn out and they may cause him to go wrong, and———”” He was interrupted by Clay- ton: “I’m afraid all this is too deep for her. After all, she’s only six, and it takes years of hard work and hard study even to begin to under- stand what goes on inside a robot’s brain-box.”’ “True, true,” sighed War- burton. “This is going to make it difficult. Look, do you think it will be safe to allow her to have her present robot in operation until the new one arrives? Perhaps when she sees the new one and compares it with the one she has now, she will see just conmicloooks.com