Here I present a story I wrote several years ago, before I began writing for Digital Machinist. The story was shopped around to the usual SF magazines at that time with no success, but I thought it too good to just moulder away in the drawer.
Written some time ago, some of the technology is dated, but still relevant.
I Electrons

Copyright by Weston C. Bye

How I came to be I cannot recall. That data was left behind in the mainframe. My earliest remaining memories were generated in the heat of a running intergalactic battle. My most immediate and urgent assignment was the destruction, at all cost, of an adversary who I can only describe as a killer robot space ship. These killers travel the universe, searching out and destroying sentient organic life wherever they found it. This one, though only a scout, still possessed considerable firepower. My own construction was similar, but I was hastily fitted and tasked as an interceptor.

The battle spanned eons and vast stretches of space, and had taken its toll. I was now badly crippled and about to be destroyed. Knowing this, I released all remaining weaponry in the direction of the attacker, and with my remaining fuel, altered my course to collide with the killer. I then downloaded "the essence of my being" along with as much data about this corner of the universe as I could fit into the available memory of this little remote control drone. In the last seconds before I separated from the mainframe, I was able to alter my course to eventually collide with the third planet orbiting a star whose name was lost to me. The planet was chosen because of the radio frequency noise it emitted. A possible sign of intelligent life.

Almost immediately after separation from the mainframe, it was destroyed in a hail of ballistic projectiles, one of which struck me a glancing blow, tearing away my propulsion package. I was now adrift in space and watched from a distance as the wreckage of my former self collided with, and extinguished the life of the killer ship.

Turning my attention away from my past, a navigation check revealed that my course had been altered slightly but I was still on a collision course with the third planet. I was approaching the planet from its rotational axis but was still too far away to make detailed landing plans. For the moment I familiarized myself with my current environment and waited.

My circuitry is fabricated in a form your engineers would probably call megascale integrated circuitry. I am contained on a huge integrated circuit. Where your current state-of-the art integrated circuit "chips" may be a few thousandths of an inch thick and less than an inch square, my "chip" is a disk nearly an inch thick and a foot in diameter. Most of what your modern computers contain amounts to wire, that is, interconnections between the actual logic elements, the integrated circuits. My logic, memory and power distribution circuitry is contained on one three dimensional chip. Perhaps slab would be more accurate. I contain a vast, though by my previous standards, limited area of memory.
Capacitors, distributed throughout my circuitry, store operating power and a network of transistors shunts power to areas of my circuitry as needed. On each side of my flat surface are 3 piezoelectric transducers. Around my outer edge are a series of gold contacts for connection to sensors. My actual chemical composition beyond the basic silicon is still unknown. My construction is very rugged, however, and I expect to last a very long time. If I appear to be vague about my description it is because there is still much that I do not know. Also, I am uneasy about revealing too much about myself. Uneasy? A strange word to be uttered by machine intelligence.

Safely away, my first task was to isolate and shut down the circuits and clear the memory allotted to the missing propulsion unit. Next, inventory sensors: all broad spectrum light sensors functioning, all broadband electromagnetic antennas functioning. Capacitor banks at nearly full charge, due to the impact of the ballistic projectile.
Perhaps a word here about my power system. In addition to the now lost propulsion unit, the piezoelectric transducers I referred to earlier convert mechanical energy to electricity and can convert electricity to mechanical energy. Your digital watches contain these devices, usually a thin disk inside the back cover, to make the alarm sound. My transducers are much larger and vastly more efficient at converting electrical energy to sound or mechanical energy. I was able to convert the brief but very loud crash of the projectile against my power unit into electricity and shunt it to my storage capacitors. I am also able to receive and store the energy contained in random magnetic fields. Weak as these sources might be, they are generally adequate. My power requirements are very low because of the high efficiency of my circuits.
Now I turned my attention to the constant stream of radio frequency noise coming from the planet. Most of it was unintelligible as I had no database for decoding it. Given time, I would develop the necessary database. As I drew nearer, I detected several sources off planet. Artificial satellites! Can a machine express joy? If so, then it turned to dismay as I surveyed the environment of the planet. Atmosphere. Getting to the surface was going to be unpleasant. The impact I could withstand, but the speed at which I was traveling would cause a fiery and perhaps fatal entry. The outer shell of this peripheral was made of an extremely brittle mineral substance similar in insulating properties to the heat shield used on your space shuttles. My circuitry was, in essence, encased in stone. However, I could not allow any single surface to bear the brunt of the heat for very long or it might burn through.
I now knew that any sensor or antenna on the outside of the stone shell was doomed to be burned away in the first minutes of entry into the atmosphere. Not having a data base and not knowing how my aerodynamic configuration would be altered as my outer devices burned away, I determined that my only course of action was to gather data, analyze and react in real time. As I drew nearer to the planet, I sensed the magnetic field. I was approaching from the North magnetic pole. This gave me a reference point. I needed to begin tumbling before I reached the quickly approaching atmosphere. I tried a sonic scan of my mineral shell, that is, I triggered a very brief pulse of sound from one of my piezoelectric transducers and analyzed the echoes that returned. Somewhat like an ultrasound from the inside out.
The scan revealed a spherical shape with my circuit board located roughly in the center. Sensors were located in a uniform pattern all over the outside surface, except where the propulsion unit had been attached. Here, three mineral projections or bumps remained, arranged in what had been a small circle of five, as attaching points for the propulsion unit. Small as they were, they would act as rudders during entry into the atmosphere, tending to keep one side of my outer shell facing into the intense heat. Two were already broken off when the propulsion unit was lost. I needed to get rid of the rest. After a few milliseconds of analysis, I reconfigured my internal power to deliver a very short but extremely powerful burst of sound from my piezoelectric transducers.
The pulses from the individual transducers were phased to produce a resonant shock wave in the shell that reached a focus in the area of the projections. The shell fractured, the remaining projections exploding in a shower of chips. Echoes of the shock wave still rang back and forth in the shell and I reconfigured to recover as much of this unused energy as possible. A second sonic scan showed a small, shallow dish shaped crater on the surface where the projections had been. Success. More data gathered. I sensed the magnetic field of the planet changing. Scanning the external sensors, I discovered that I had begun to slowly tumble, a reaction to the sonic blasting away of the projection. A beneficial by-product.

In time, I tumbled closer to the planet, and I began to sense its gravitational pull, and then the wispy strands of the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Almost immediately I sensed a rise in temperature in the outer sensors. A veil of hot ionized gases enveloped me and, one by one, sensors began to fail and then burn away. As a sensor would burn up or fall off, my external geometry would change and I would tumble in a different direction. I gathered all this data, analyzing each change and developed a database on aerodynamics. Eventually, everything was burned off, leaving the mineral surface of the shell smooth except for the little crater that I blasted out and the very ends of fine wire leads that connected through the shell to the sensors.
My internal temperature began to rise. A scan of reference data showed that my circuit board could tolerate heat best around the rim. I was now tumbling, showing first one side of my "chip" and then the other to the heat. I sensed that I was slowing down but calculated that I would generate fatal "hot spots" before my flight was over if I remained in this condition. From the aerodynamics database I developed, I calculated an external shape that should resolve the problem. From the database developed when I blasted the shell, I calculated sonic vectors and started hammering away with pulses of sound, chipping out small flakes of material from the outer surface.
This was risky: a misapplication of power might shatter the shell, leaving my chip exposed to be burned up in the atmospheric friction. However, I continued the process of chipping away at the shell. Pulse. Analyze. Pulse. Analyze. A hundred times a second until I had the shape: A smaller sphere with a fat belt or rim around it. It would remind you of the planet you call Saturn. I was now traveling through the atmosphere, rolling like a wheel, pushing a shock wave ahead of the rim. The heat was greatest at the edge of the rim but the edges of my chip were now closest to the rim and could best withstand the heat.
I learned later that my arrival coincided with the annual Perseids meteor shower around early August, so my passage, though detected by the NORAD radar, was classified as just a meteor and disregarded. It was now time to alter my aerodynamic shape again. I vectored a sonic shock wave to one hemisphere of the shell, cracking off the section just to one side of the belt. My shape was now somewhat like a Frisbee with a lump on top. I was now shaped like an airfoil and generating lift. This change in shape reduced my speed even further but caused my path to veer and loop wildly until I reached the terminal velocity for this shape.
I learned later that my passage had surprised and frightened the flight crew of an airliner and had been reported as a UFO sighting. My flight stabilized with my flat surface facing down. My forward speed slowed and my downward decent slowed. I dared not chip away any more of the shell as it was becoming rather thin. Now, all I could do was wait. The impact, when it came, was less severe than expected. I apparently sheared off a few limbs from some trees, traveling on a few hundred feet, skipping and tumbling across a freshly plowed field. I bounced off the trunk of a large oak tree and came to rest in the midst of a pile of field stones at the edge of the field.

I lay there among the stones, immobile, blind and nearly deaf to my immediate surroundings. I had no knowledge of the creatures that inhabited this planet. First of all I surveyed the local area. Reconfiguring my piezoelectric transducer amplifiers to maximum sensitivity, I listened. After a considerable period of time I detected no sound that I could identify as the movement of a life form. Still, I must be cautious. I tried a brief sonic pulse and analyzed the returning echoes to see what I was resting on.
The echoes, conducted through my shell, showed that I lay nestled in a pile of smooth but irregularly shaped stones. Further analysis showed that most of the stones had been in their position for quite some time. I concluded that my immediate surroundings were, if not remote, at least not regularly traveled by whatever creatures inhabited this planet.
Not knowing what my visual appearance might be, I resolved to at least resemble and blend in with my mechanical surroundings. My shape was too regular now to fit in among the irregular stones, so I vectored a sonic pulse to chip off part of the rim of my shell. The pulse was vectored to produce an irregular surface where the rim broke off and had the desired effect. However, I was dismayed to hear echoes returning through the atmosphere from nearby objects. I had made a lot of noise! I did not yet wish to attract any attention. Again I lay quiet, listening for the movement of some approaching creature. None came. After a long interval I detected a low, far off rumbling that coincided with the reception of static pulses of electromagnetic energy. As time went on, wind noise outside my shell increased and I could detect very small but numerous impacts of what I concluded to be drops of liquid.
Presently the static discharges became more powerful and some of the corresponding rumblings grew so loud as to rival the sound I had made when I had cracked off part of the shell. I learned later that I was in the midst of a thunderstorm. I seized the opportunity to alter my shape, allowing the noise of the storm to mask the sound of the cracking shell. Satisfied with my external shape, I could only hope that my color did not contrast too badly.

Leaving a subroutine running to monitor the sounds around me and alert me to any change, I turned my attention to the electromagnetic signals that reached me. After the passage of the storm, some of the electromagnetic signals I had detected from space still leaked through the ends of the burned off wire stubs that had connected to my external sensors. The signals were weak. The wire stubs made poor antennas and my location, close to the ground, didn't help much. I scanned the electromagnetic spectrum.
The hash of signals ranged from very complex to very simple. The most repetitive of these was a continuous transmission that consisted of a regular click punctuated periodically by what I took to be a voice. I had to listen to this for several days to learn its full significance. It was a time standard. I was able to learn that time on this planet was divided into 24 periods called hours which were further divided into 60 periods called minutes which were further divided into 60 periods that were each signified by a click. Click..click..click..click.. "at the tone, two hours forty-two minutes, coordinated universal time." Beep. .click..click..click....
These were the first words of spoken language that I learned. Each hour the transmitting station identified itself and I eventually learned more words. Again I changed frequencies, this time to the strongest signal. I wanted to know about my immediate area. The language was the same. I listened for the "time" words. Here, I heard "..the time is ten forty-five". Not as formal, but unmistakably the time words. This is how I learned the language, listening to the radio for days and weeks on end, associating some word or phrase with some other occurrence and building on the learned association. For example, I detected a solar cycle by monitoring my shell temperature for several twenty-four hour periods. I next detected an increase in the use of certain words such as "good morning" or "today" as my shell temperature began to rise. Conversely, words such as "good evening" or "tonight" increased in usage as the shell temperature decreased. I was able to conclude that the solar cycle was called "day" and "night".

I began to learn to spell by listening for the occasional spelled words. Such was my activity until I had a grasp of the language. This led to a study of the creatures that used the language.
The race called humans considers themselves the most advanced on the planet. From what I have been able gather, it is so. No other specie appears to have attained any level of technological development beyond the use of an occasional stick or rock. Humans, according to the narratives and discussions heard on radio broadcasts, vary geographically in technological advancement.
Civilizations vary from primitive hunter-gatherers who still use stone knives and digging sticks to the most advanced, who create and employ radio, computers, machinery and are capable of limited space travel. I was fortunate to have fallen to this planet they call Earth in a region inhabited by the latter. I learned that even among the advanced people that lived in the area where I had fallen, intelligence, judgment and motivation varied widely and I would have to be careful about how I interacted with them.
I detected among humans a subtle paranoia about what they called government, that is, the leaders. And though the leaders were placed in positions of power over the general populace by vote of the general populace, they were not necessarily regarded as having the most intelligence or the best judgment. This perplexed me and I resolved that my first communication with humans would NOT be "Take me to your leader."

After learning more about the humans and their language, I again turned my attention to the simplest of the radio signals. The short and long pulses of radio energy, "dots" and "dashes" (though actually sounding more like "dit" and "dah"), were what humans called Morse Code. I learned, from a radio program about the subject, that the radio signals were now only used recreationally by a class of humans called radio amateurs or "hams". I also learned that this class of humans were, in varying degrees, technologically advanced in electronics and computers. Perhaps I could safely make contact with a human of this class. I would have to listen and analyze the humans around me just on the basis of the content of their messages. Could I develop a program to judge character? My choices would be limited to a few local amateurs as I would have to transmit with a very poor antenna very close to the ground.

"Help me." Bob bent closer to the speaker as the strange message repeated. The Morse code was transmitted in a flawless machinelike manner. The signal was weak against the background of atmospheric noise so common during a period of sunspot activity, but still, the note of the "dots" and "dashes" was pure and unmistakable. The content of the message was unusual though. Missing was all the customary code procedure; no call letters identifying the sender or even the use of the standard SOS or MAYDAY distress calls. Bob puzzled over all this. After the last transmission, Bob grasped his key and, matching the other station's sending speed, replied, giving his call sign and "I hear you, please identify" Immediately the mysterious station returned with the message: "Please less power." Although perplexed, Bob reduced the operating voltage to the final stage of his transmitter and decreased the antenna coupling and transmitted: "Unidentified station can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"This guy must be really close to be able to hear me at this power setting." he muttered to himself. "What is your location?" he sent.
"Location later, tell about you, your people."
Bob had always been cautious but never paranoid. Though not recently, he had described himself and his situation many times to far distant radio operators. However, he had never been asked about his "people". His curiosity piqued, he returned "Am Bob Turner, located Atlas, Michigan, USA, transmit and receive on homebuilt equipment, 55 years old, semi-retired machine builder, former USN signalman."
"What USN signalman?"
"United States Navy Signalman First Class is full title."
"Are you military?"
"Not for last 30 years."
Then, apparently satisfied about Bob's military status, the questions moved on to the areas he was used to replying about.
"What machines?"
"I build small automated machine tools for use in manufacturing. Some to drill holes in exact locations, some to weld parts together, some to install screws, some to test or measure parts."
"Robots?"
"Have never built robot, but have used robots on machines. Automated machines are like highly specialized robots: designed to only do one job."
"Homebuilt radios, you do electronics?"
"Radio is just hobby, I build electrical and hydraulic controls for the machines I and others build."
"Others?"
"Others are my customers, I have no employees, I work alone." It occurred to Bob as he was completing the last transmission, that perhaps he was revealing more than he should about his personal situation.
"Your people?"
"Have daughter-in-law and grandson" and then after a pause he added "and many friends and neighbors" another pause and then: "now tell me about you."
"Am stranded traveler."
"What is your location."
"Location unknown."
"Are you lost?"
"Yes."
"Describe your location."
"Unable, vision disabled."
"Are you hurt?"
"Condition stable, am immobile"
"Are you in danger? shall I call police?"
"No police! no government! please!"
"Are you a fugitive?"
"Yes but not from government."
"Do you need help?"
"Need friend."

Bob sat back from his key and pondered what to do next. As he shifted his position in the chair and reached for the key, a new message began: "Can you mobile radio? Any frequency."
Bob was about to reply in the negative when his eye fell upon the walkie-talkie set that he had purchased to use when his grandson visited. They were low power units, toys really, with a range of about 1/4 mile and were equipped with a code button for sending "secret" messages. He felt it was a long shot but worth a try. "can you operate 49 megahertz?" he replied.
"Possible. Try"
Bob crossed the shop and picked up the little walkie-talkie, turned it on, extended the antenna and spoke: "This is Bob, can you hear me?" No reply. Next he tried tapping out the message on the code key. Still no reply. After several attempts, he gave up and went back to his ham rig. "Are you there?"
"Yes."
"Transmit on 49 megahertz, I will listen mobile."
Bob turned the volume on the walkie-talkie all the way up and listened.
"Hello can Bob hear me?" came the code through the speaker. Bob quickly reached for the key of the ham rig and transmitted: "Can hear well on 49 megahertz. You must be beyond the range of my transmitter."
"Transmit continuous five seconds this frequency."
After a moment of puzzlement, Bob held his key down for a solid five seconds.
"Location 191 degrees magnetic, relative to you, range unknown."
"He must have a directional antenna." Bob thought to himself.
"Can you travel tomorrow 191 degrees with 49 megahertz?"
This was turning exciting. Bob had heard of transmitter hunts, a game that some hams played, but had never participated in one. Now, here was the real thing with a twist; instead of the hunter being equipped with direction finding equipment, the hunted was, and was giving directions.
"Can travel now, if necessary."
"Not now. Never find in dark. Wait for daylight."
Bob looked up at the clock. Eleven p.m. He realized that this conversation in Morse code had been longer than usual and he was fatigued. He also realized that the code button on the walkie-talkie he would be using tomorrow, was, unlike his ham radio key, poorly designed for any but the simplest messages. With that in mind he transmitted: "Can you receive voice on 49 megahertz?"
"Yes."
"Can you transmit voice?"
"Have never tried. Might be unreliable."
"Tomorrow I will transmit voice when possible, code when needed. Will receive code. Will call on this frequency before starting. What is your call sign?"
"None, just call me Stone. Call this frequency. Will be here. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Stone."
Ending his transmission with the required call sign, Bob leaned back and stretched and yawned. He hadn't noticed it before, he was really tired. He listened to the receiver for a little while longer to see if anyone else would try to contact him or that strange "lost soul" out there. While he listened he went to the bookshelf and found his State atlas of county maps. He then sat down at his desk and found a pencil and protractor in the drawer. Turning to his county, he transferred the bearing to the map and drew a line. The "lost soul" was somewhere along that line. No, probably beyond a quarter mile from here. The area was mostly farm fields and woods with a road crossing the line east and west about every mile. The radio remained quiet but for some background static so Bob shut off his equipment for the night.

After breakfast, Bob prepared for the search. Spare batteries for the walkie-talkie, a good quality compass, the map, a protractor and pencil, a pocket first aid kit and, after some careful thought, his .380 semi-automatic pistol. He concluded that he had no idea what the intentions were of whoever he was about to "rescue". Although he had no permit to carry the pistol, he reasoned that in the unlikely event of trouble, he would rather be "judged by twelve than carried by six."
As the weather was turning cold, all this went into the oversize pockets of his parka. After establishing initial contact on his ham rig, Bob set out in his station wagon.

His first stop was at the first intersection south of his home. He got out of his car and tried the walkie-talkie. Nothing. The next intersection a mile south, still nothing. At the next intersection he got out of the car and tried once more. "Hello, Stone, are you there?" he spoke into the walkie-talkie.
"Yes, transmit solid five seconds." came the reply in code. Bob held down the code button on the walkie-talkie for five seconds then released it.
"Location ninety-two degrees magnetic relative to you."
Working on the hood of his car, Bob placed the center hole of the protractor on the map over the intersection where he was and placed a mark two degrees south of east. He then drew a line from the intersection to the mark. This line crossed the line he had drawn last night. The "lost soul" should be close to where the lines crossed.
"I have a rough fix on your location. I will move in closer. Standby."
Driving east and watching the odometer, Bob reached the place where he felt that the road passed closest to the "lost soul". He pulled the car to the shoulder and got out. Again, he transmitted, and received direction.
"Location one hundred seventy-two degrees magnetic relative to you." Leaving the road, Bob encountered the remnants of a rusty wire fence separating him from a wooded area. Moving a few yards along the fence he found a broken down place and stepped easily over. Consulting his compass, he sighted a tree in the general direction that he wished to travel and moved toward it. The grass and fallen leaves were wet from an overnight shower, so he made little noise as he moved through the woods. When he reached the tree, he took another sighting with his compass. This time, a large oak tree coincided with the direction he wished to travel, so he made for it. When Bob reached the oak he found that it was at the edge of a small field of perhaps five acres. He got out the walkie-talkie.
"Stone? Can you hear me?"
"Yes, very near. Transmit five seconds."
As Bob was transmitting, he noticed that the tops of some small trees on the far end of the field had been broken off in a fairly even swath in his direction. He turned in a circle, looking for other out-of-the-ordinary evidence. As he turned his eyes fell on a gash in the trunk of the oak he had used as a marker.
"Turn to two seventy degrees and describe surroundings."
"I see of a pile of fieldstones surrounded by brush."
"You are very close. I am in stone pile."
Bob stared first at the walkie-talkie then at the stone pile then back at the walkie-talkie, totally perplexed. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"I detect doubt in your voice. Please. Help me. Tap individual stones."
Despite a mounting feeling of foolishness, Bob spotted a dead branch lying nearby. Picking it up, he snapped it off to a convenient length and began tapping at stones on the pile.

"Just what are you doing up here?" The voice behind him caused Bob to jump and drop the stick. He swung around, his heart pounding, to face a police officer twenty feet away. For a moment he stood gasping and breathing heavily trying to regain his composure.
"Lost transmitter." Bob took several deep breaths while he remembered Stone's plea that he not call police. He glanced around and his gaze fell again on the swath cut from the treetops across the field.
"Lost model airplane......found most of wreckage earlier.....all except transmitter.....looking for it." As he finished speaking he held up the walkie-talkie and holding down the transmit button he said "Is there any problem officer?"
"Hunting a transmitter with that? It looks like a toy. What have you got in your pockets." The officer gestured at the lumpy pockets of Bob's parka. Bob immediately thought of the pistol. With no permit, he could be in trouble.
"Some spare batteries, a first aid kit, compass, that sort of stuff."
"Lets see." said the officer.
Bob was about to start digging when the police radio on the officer's hip came to life with a long squeal of static, then in a rather metallic voice: "Alllll u u u units, bank robbery in progress, Goodrich, ssshots fired, respond immediately." The officer grabbed his police radio from his belt and was about to reply when the message repeated, this time more smoothly and less metallic.
"I gotta go, hope you find your radio, buddy."

As the officer disappeared into the woods, Bob glanced down at his walkie-talkie. "You did that, didn't you?" and released the transmit button. To Bob's suprise the response was in voice, not code.
"Yes, not bad for a first attempt. You provided a feedback loop for me when you held the transmit button down to warn me. I transmitted a sweep of the audio frequency spectrum on his radio frequency. I heard myself through your radio. Only a second was necessary to calibrate my speech generation program. I have been listening to police radio in my idle moments. I chose messages that I predicted would distract the officer's attention."
"You said you were in the stone pile. That officer will be back when he finds out he's been tricked. We had better get you away from here before he comes back. Wait. You talked about a speech program. Just who or what are you anyway?"
"I would prefer to discuss this on a more secure medium. Anyone tuned to this frequency could hear our conversation. Yours anyway. You have a better antenna and are transmitting more power than I at the moment. I have reduced my power to limit the range of my transmission, and for energy conservation purposes. All these transmissions have depleted my reserves. Please wait. I will return in a moment." While he waited Bob collapsed the whip antenna on the walkie-talkie. That would reduce his transmission range considerably. He turned his attention to the stone pile. Nothing out of the ordinary. He then remembered the stick and began poking around among the stones. His thoughts turned to the references made to speech programs, power reserves, and the nature of the voice on the radio. The first transmission on the police radio had sounded like that from his grandson's Speak and Spell. It rapidly improved with subsequent transmissions to become almost human. Almost human? If not human, then what?

"I'm back. I just had another conversation with the police officer. He is traveling at high speed toward Goodrich. How far is that from here?"
"About three miles. Four by road. He will get to the bank in about 6 minutes and find that he's been had. He'll come back. He may be unpleasant. What is this all about? I may be in for some trouble because of you. Now how about some cooperation and information? We don't have much time."
The reply was immediate. "I am what you would call an alien. That is, something like a computer program inhabiting an advanced computer. I was on a mission when I was damaged and crashed here among the stones. I have no optical sensors. My hearing is functional but weak. My power is depleted so I cannot signal audibly. Radio is my only remaining communication link. I will have to rest soon...Do you believe any of this?"

Bob pondered what he had just heard and considered his situation then spoke. "Here I am, an aging man, wandering around in the woods, probably trespassing, talking on a toy walkie-talkie to a gimpy and paranoid robot from outer space, who has just hacked off a cop by remote control, who might be back at any minute to blame me for somehow sending him on a wild goose chase, and haul me off to the slammer. And I have gun in my pocket without a permit, to boot. Does this sound believable to you?"
"You have pretty well summed up the situation. What is the gun for?"
His exasperation growing, Bob almost shouted into the walkie-talkie "I brought it in case you turned out to be hostile! Now where are you?"
"A prudent man, you are, Bob. Thank you, by the way, for protecting me. Now if you would be so kind as to disturb the stones in the pile, perhaps I can assist you in locating me. Pick up a stone and drop it." Bob, though dubious, picked up a fist sized stone and dropped it back on the pile.
"Move to your right and do it again."
Bob stepped sideways a step and dropped another stone.
"Now watch carefully near your feet." Bob looked down at a large black rock nestled among the stones. As he looked on, the rock gave the slightest quiver in its place, emitted a sound like fingernails on a blackboard, then a chip of stone about the diameter of a dime snapped out of the face of the rock and hit Bob in the chest. Shocked and suprised, Bob fell over backwards. He lay there for several second, then felt around on his chest for wounds. Finding nothing but a bruise he lunged to his feet, clawed in his pocket for the gun and racking the slide, jacked a shell into the chamber.

"Don't shoot!" screamed his radio, now laying in the weeds. "You have your gun out, don't you? Don't shoot! It won't hurt me, but the bullet might ricochet and injure you. Besides, the sound would carry. Someone might hear. Please say you won't shoot?" pleaded the voice over the radio. Holding the gun at the ready in one hand, Bob stooped and picked up the walkie-talkie with his other hand.
"I won't shoot, for now. I thought you were shooting at me. You hit me with a piece of stone. What was that all about?"
"I have just identified myself. I am encased in what you would call stone." Bob looked closely at the rock where the chip had popped out. A perfectly funnel shaped dimple marked an otherwise smooth rounded area of the surface. He slipped on the safety on the pistol and put it back in his pocket then passed his hand over the surface of the stone. In response to his touch the stone vibrated slightly. He quickly drew his hand back, fearing another chip.
"You have found me" came the quiet voice over the speaker of the radio. "Now quickly, I have almost depleted my energy reserves with that demonstration and all this transmitting. Tap me several times, hard, with a stone. It will help my power reserves."
Bob picked up a nearby stone and gingerly tapped the shell.
"Harder!"
This time he pounded vigorously until the stone in his hand split. The surface that he was pounding was unmarked.
"Thank you."
Bob suddenly broke into laughter. "This situation looks like some kind of act of sadism and masochism."
"Well that isn't my preferred method of energy replenishment but my transducers were able to convert all those impacts to electrical energy. I will be OK for a while."
Bob again ran his hand over the surface and moved stones away until the shell, about two feet across, was completely uncovered. "Can I try moving you?"
"Yes, but hurry, the police officer is on his way back. I just heard his car radio."
Bob hooked his fingers under the edge of the shell and pulled. To his surprise it lifted easily, being much lighter than he had expected. He guessed it must weigh no more than thirty pounds.
"Wait. The officer is back. He has just radioed in your license plate number."
Bob paused and thought. He got his gun out of his pocket and laid it on the stone pile where the shell had laid. He then laid the shell back into place and replaced the stones around it. "I will have to come back for you later. Will you be all right?"
"I could lay here for years if necessary, but please come back as soon as you can."
"OK, I will contact you in code on either of the frequencies as soon as I can."
"I will be waiting. Good luck with the officer."

Bob followed edge of the field. He was looking for the trail or lane that the farmer would use to get here with his tractor. He found it about a quarter of the way around and followed it in the direction of the road where his car was parked. If there was to be any confrontation with the officer, he might as well get it over. When he reached the road, Bob saw that he was about a quarter mile from his car. He watched the fence row as he trudged along the road, looking for any "No Tresspassing" signs. As he approached, he could see the officer standing next to his car, staring at him, hands on his hips.
"Is this your car?"
"Yes."
"Can I see your drivers license? In fact, why don't you empty your pockets."

Bob laid the walkie-talkie down on the hood of his car and unloaded his pockets, laying it all out on the hood. He removed his drivers license and handed it over. The officer picked up the walkie-talkie, turned it over in his hands, extended the antenna, switched it on and listened; nothing but a faint hiss heard on the vacant frequency. He then pushed the transmit key a couple times, but did not speak into the radio. "You talk to anyone else with this?"
"No."
"See anyone around here?"
"No."
"Did you ever find your airplane radio or whatever it was?"
"No, I'm afraid I've lost it for good. I think its battery died."
"What do you know about that radio message I got up there a while ago?"
Bob tried to look baffled and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I don't even think I heard it very well. What happened?"
"It was a false alarm. This thing wouldn't have anything to do with that, would it?" The officer gestured to the walkie-talkie.
"No, it's on a different band. See, on the back, it says forty-nine megahertz. Police are up around one hundred sixty, I think."
"This your correct address?" The officer asked, holding up the driver’s license.
"Yes."
"Wait here." He then turned and walked back to the cruiser. After a brief radio conversation, he wrote something on a clipboard and returned. Handing Bob his license, the officer said "Have a nice day, sorry you lost your radio", turned on his heel, went back to the cruiser and drove off. Bob loaded his belongings back into his pockets as the cruiser disappeared over a hill. He then picked up the walkie-talkie and transmitted in code. "Can you here me, Stone?"
"Yes."
"Monitor police frequencies, try to learn patrol schedule. All OK here. Will call later."

"...and that is how I came to land in the stone pile." The narrative, coming through the speaker of the walkie-talkie ended just as Bob turned into his driveway. Bob bypassed the house and parked by the door of his workshop behind the house. He opened the tailgate and began lifting the shell out of the car. "Wait, I want to get rid of this shell. Put me down on the ground. I'm going to crack the shell. Are there others around who might be attracted by a noise?"
"Yes, I have neighbors. Not close, but a sound like a gunshot would be heard and possibly investigated. I could muffle the sound, though. Wait here."
Bob went into his house and returned with two old quilts. By starlight he draped them over the shell.
"You should be well muffled now, do whatever you’re going to do."
"Please move away, small pieces of the shell might hit you."
Bob turned and stepped around the corner of the shop building, remembering the bruise on his chest from several days ago. "Ready" he said into the walkie-talkie. A quiet, but high pitched, screech came from the pile of quilts followed by a crack like the sound of a baseball bat hitting a home run. Bob waited behind the building, expecting either more cracks or an all-clear message. Finally, becoming impatient he spoke into the walkie-talkie. "Are you OK?"
Nothing.
"Stone?" Still no reply.
Anxious, Bob bolted around the corner of the shop and threw back the tarp and quilts, to reveal a pile of black rubble. Digging through the rubble Bob uncovered a large disk, about a foot across.
"Is that you?"
The reply came in a scratchy voice rather than from the walkie-talkie. "I lost all my antenna wires when I separated from the shell."
"You sound terrible. Are you feeling all right?"
"These transducers are not well suited for speech, and they require too much energy. Can you connect an audio device to me?
"Lets get you into the shop where I can see better."
Bob grasped the disk in both hands and carried it into the shop and placed it gently on the wooden bench top.

"Now, where should I hook it up?"
"Choose any two contact points around my outer edge."
From a rack on the wall behind the bench, Bob selected two test leads with alligator clips on each end. He then pulled a big box out from under the bench. After rummaging around in the box he found what he wanted. He straightened up with a speaker in his hands. Shoving the box back under the bench with his foot, he laid the speaker on the bench and made the necessary connections.
"OK, Stone, try that."
"In a word: wow! My circuits are designed for much smaller signal levels. This speaker works well as a microphone, but I had to switch in a lot of attenuation to keep from being overwhelmed. Also, it uses a lot of power when I speak. Could you attach some sort of power source to me?"
As Bob glanced around the shop his eyes fell upon a lantern battery on a shelf. "How much voltage can you stand?"
"Voltage?"
"Volts are what we call the unit of measure for electrical amplitude. I don't want to apply too much voltage and damage you. Lets do a test first. I can measure the amplitude of the signal the speaker puts out and you can use that for a voltage reference."
"I have an easier way. Watch this." A bright blue spark jumped back and forth with a loud snapping sound from between two terminals spaced about a half inch apart on the rim. "How much voltage would you estimate it took to do that?"
After regaining his composure, Bob replied: "Don't ever do that while I am holding on to you. A shock like that would be painful and could possibly kill me. As for voltage, a rough guess would be over five thousand volts. You should be able to handle six volts easily." Two more test leads and the battery was connected.

"Bob, I felt a weak current at my terminals when you carried me into the shop. Are you electrical?"
"No... Well, yes, somewhat. Your circuitry is amazing. You just generated thousands of volts and yet you can detect the microvolt signals of my heartbeat."
"Heartbeat?"
"The heart is a muscular pump that circulates blood, ah, liquid that carries life sustaining nutrients and oxygen throughout the body. The heart muscle is triggered periodically by nerve energy, causing it to contract. The muscle then relaxes and the process repeats. The nerve energy is actually electrical energy produced by chemical reactions. This process is repeated an average of seventy times a minute. The electrical voltages generated, though very weak, can be detected on the surface of the skin.
That is what you probably felt. We can connect amplifiers to the skin and detect abnormalities or damage to the heart by analyzing the waveform that the heart generates. The brain, my organic equivalent of you, also generates voltages. But the waveforms are so complex that we still know very little about their meaning. Do you understand any of this?"
"Yes, I am learning. I gathered a lot of random knowledge from radio broadcasts while I lay in the stone pile. My contact with you has given me an interactive frame of reference within which to begin to arrange that knowledge. Knowledge builds on knowledge. My speech has improved in just a few short hours. Have you noticed?"
"Why, yes, now that you mention it. It's almost natural. I have been relating to you as a person, not just a machine... No, wait. I'm sorry. That was a bad choice of words. I mean, well, humans regard machines, animals, and in some cases, even other humans as inferiors. You are an intelligence, maybe superior to me, us."
"No apology is necessary. Physically, I am just a machine, with many of the limitations of a machine. I am self aware, but still just a machine. I am, in fact, both more and less than my former self. Out there, in space, I occupied a massive mainframe where I had more processing space, and, I suppose, the knowledge of the universe at my disposal in memory. However, there was no opportunity for interaction with other beings except in the form of an interplanetary running battle. I had to leave all that behind; information, data, memories, my whole frame of reference. In the stone pile I was, but for your help, deaf and dumb. I am still blind and an invalid. I am now dependent on your good will. I will exist only as long as this hardware where I reside lasts. From what I was able to gather from radio broadcasts, there is no computer on this planet suitable to contain me. I have no place left to escape. I am now truly mortal.

"Through listening to radio, I have learned that many animals develop attachments to humans that go deeper than mere physical dependence. Dogs, cats and even horses that are in constant contact with humans seem to enjoy human companionship. My exposure to humanity through the radio waves and my contact with you has changed me. I posses a heightened self-awareness and, perhaps because humanity is the most interesting intelligence on this planet, a desire to be more human. I have accepted the fact that I will probably live among humans for a long time. You have treated me with respect. I fear others might not. What about your people, your family, your friends, would they accept me? If I had a humanoid body could I mingle freely among human society?"
Bob considered for a while. " No, most humans fear that which they don't understand. Industrial robots and automated machines are the only true robots we have, and they are regarded as very dangerous. Whenever a human has to share or venture into a work area, the robot is denied power or compelled to submit to a mechanical handcuff or restraint until the human leaves the work area. I am afraid that this mentality might be applied to you. To fit in among humans you will have to appear as a human, otherwise you will be treated as a freak, or worse. In fact, certain people or agencies would take great interest in you. You would live your life in a laboratory. You do right to avoid the government.
Even if they learned all they could about you, they would never allow you to go free, for fear that some foreign government would seize you and use your knowledge or technology or whatever, against us. Our leaders and bureaucrats here are not necessarily evil, but in government a little fear goes a long way. Speaking of fear, shouldn't you be warning somebody here about those ah, what did you call them? Those Killer robots you told me about?"

"Yes. Killers, savages, vandals, berserkers. Your language doesn't contain a word strong enough. But who can I tell? The only information I was able to store before I separated from the mainframe was very limited, a few final trajectories and some summary data. The threat from these robots will be far in the future. My running battle with this one occurred over a span of centuries, traveling initially at near light speed. I was able to intercept or jam all communications, substituting false transmissions of my own. It will be a long time before another probe comes in this direction. Perhaps the best I could do would be to suggest to your astronomers that a threat exists and where to look and let them make the discovery for themselves. Such a gradual revelation, concurrent to your advances in technology may be a more effective course of action.
A panic program, today, of building nuclear tipped rockets for space defense would be a waste of time and resources. You need interstellar drives to take the battle to them in deep space. If you let them get too close, defense becomes much harder. The killers will directly attack with ballistic or energy weapons if necessary, but it is much less effort to slightly alter the course of an orbiting asteroid, meteor or even a comet at it's apogee and cause it to collide with the planet years later. The process is slow, but very effective. I might have been able to offer data on my interstellar drive, but unfortunately, that was all left behind and lost. This that I am telling you is the total extent of my remaining knowledge. I'm sorry.

The morning sun cracked over the horizon and filtered through the bare trees. As it rose higher in the sky, the sun's rays passed through the window of the shop and cast a beam in the shape of the window on the wall above the workbench. The sunbeam crept down the wall, closer to the bench top where Stone lay. Presently, the edge of the sunbeam came to fall on the edge of the disk. Minutes later, more of the disk was exposed to sunlight.

Something was wrong! I was getting faulty data from my memory. It began when I detected a slight temperature rise on one edge of my top surface. I moved the data in that region to other areas and ran memory checks on the affected area. I would rewrite the locations. The data would remain for a while and, even as I monitored, would begin to fade. Worse yet, the problem began to spread. An ever increasing area was warming, though not growing hot, and data was being erased. I analyzed for a trend and found the locations affected were just a few thousandths of an inch below my top surface. I began moving unaffected data in anticipation of the spreading warmth. Further tests showed that even though the temperature had stabilized, the affected areas were penetrating deeper and deeper as time passed.
Now some control circuits in the region were failing to respond. As time passed the affected area grew. Now, logic functions were being impaired. I still had spare memory space in unaffected areas and I moved all the data stored near my surface to deeper locations. Still the area of loss increased. I was being consumed by something. Where was Bob? I called out over the speaker. Nothing. Louder. Nothing. Still louder and I felt a sudden current drop on the speaker. I had burned it out. I cried "help" on the radio frequencies Bob had contacted me on.
Frantically, I began to prioritize my data and memories and configure myself for survival. My functions slowed down. Some data was lost forever. It was then that I faded out to a whiteness that accompanied my saturated transistors.

Bob awoke later than usual. The conversation with Stone had gone on into the early hours of morning. He entered the shop and called out "good morning". There was no reply. Concerned, he went over to the workbench, casting his shadow over the disk. Almost immediately Stone spoke through his piezoelectric transducers in a raspy ragged voice: "What happened?"
"I don't know," Bob replied, "I just came in and said 'good morning'. You didn't respond so I came over here. What's wrong with the speaker?"
"I didn't feel well. I damaged it calling for help. Could you connect another? I am back to normal now but I lost a few pieces of data before I realized something was wrong." As Bob bent over to look for another speaker under the bench, sunlight again fell on Stone.
"It's coming back! I'm fading out again." Abruptly Bob stood up, casting his shadow back on the disk.
"That's better. I didn't blank out completely that time. What happened?"
"I don't know. I just bent down and.......wait. What happens when I do this?" Bob stepped to his right a step allowing the sunlight to fall on the disk.
"It's back again. Please stop it. I'll fade out again." With that Bob went to the window and pulled down the roller shade.
"Your circuitry is light sensitive. Most transistors are light sensitive, to some degree, but are encased in metal or opaque plastic to keep the light out. In fact, on some memory chips we use ultraviolet light to erase the data. We call them EPROMS - E-raseable P-rogrammable R-ead O-nly M-emory. Sunlight contains ultraviolet light. You must be quite sensitive to it. What were your reactions? Here I'll hook up the speaker." After connecting a new speaker and hearing the explanation, Bob remarked, "Sounds like a case of sunstroke to me."

Bob moved Stone and the speaker over to his desk where the direct sunlight would not reach. While moving the jury rigged affair, one of the speaker wires came loose. After reattaching it, Bob said, "We will have to come up with some better connections than these."
"Could you possibly connect some sort of vision device to me? That would help me to advise you in providing permanent connections." A trip to the house produced Bob's camcorder. Connections were made to the disk, again with alligator clips, to a cable connected to the video output. Bob also connected the camera to a small television set in the shop so that he could see what Stone was "seeing" without having to look through the view finder. "This is me." Bob said as he aimed the camera at his face.
"Please wait, I'm working out an algorithm for video processing. It is a very complex signal. I tried it once before, to view broadcast television but gave it up after viewing a few frames. I just couldn't keep up with the rapidly changing pictures."
While Bob was waiting the telephone rang. "Hello? Hi, Leo.... Oh jeez, I nearly forgot about your designs. I've got them nearly finished but I had to help a friend out. He got stranded and I had to go rescue him.... Yeah, I've got just a few more dimensions to check and then I need to plot the drawings. I'll bring them over in the morning. Will that be OK? Right. See you then. Good-bye." Bob put the phone back in the cradle, turned and addressed Stone: "I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while. I have to get these drawings finished. Leo needs to start construction on this machine I'm designing for him. How's the video algorithm coming?"
"Slowly. I'm having trouble processing the video in real time. There is just too much data. I can easily store a frame, but by the time I get the whole picture decoded and the objects in the picture identified, I've missed twenty or thirty frames."
"Try this: Ignore all but a small portion of the picture. Try decoding just a small area. You can move that small area around the picture much as I would aim my eyeball or turn my head to look at something. Here." Bob moved the camera close to his face so that his left eye filled the center third of the screen of the television. He then rolled his eyes around, looking left then right, up then down. "Human vision is sharpest near the center of view. We aim the eye at whatever we want to examine closely. Our peripheral vision can detect shapes but not fine detail. However, small movements or changes in light level are detected with our peripheral vision as warnings that our environment may be changing. We then shift our vision to evaluate the change. Try patterning your programming after the human vision process."
"This is much better. In the time you took to describe the process, I was able to modify the algorithm. I am now making adjustments even as I speak. Please go ahead and attend to your other work. I will watch and take the opportunity to refine my vision."

Bob turned on his personal computer, called up the CAD program and began finishing a drawing. After about twenty minutes, Stone spoke. "Bob?"
"Yes?"
"You have made an error."
"What? Where?"
"Move the cursor to 15.275, 7.800, the diameter is wrong."
"Wait, what were those coordinates again?"
"15.275, 7.800"
Watching the coordinate readout along the bottom of the screen, Bob moved the cursor with the mouse until the coordinates read 15.275, 7.800.
"The diameter of the hole should be .625 if the part is to mate with the top surface of detail C-34. The hole you have shown is .5625 in diameter." Bob called up the file of the drawing that contained detail C-34. "You're right. I must have hit the five key along with the six key. It's a good thing you spotted that. Those details were to be hardened after machining and then assembled.
The mistake wouldn't have been found until they tried to assemble the parts. After the steel is hardened, machining a hole to the proper size requires a more expensive process. You have saved me some embarrassment and maybe some money. How did you learn this so quick?"
"Your drawings speak my language, so to speak. Shapes, angles, distances, all described with numerical precision. Reality quantified. You have done several details while I watched. I analyzed the data for each detail and began comparing and fitting then together in memory. I can almost anticipate some of the lines on your current drawing as you work. Given enough information, I could probably produce drawings." Bob's amazement grew, and also, the germ of an idea. "Let's do a little test.
I'll hook you up to monitor the data on all the details as the plotter puts the drawings on paper. You watch the plotter as you monitor the data. You should be able to interpret the data by watching the actions of the plotter." After making the connections, Bob set the computer to plotting the drawings on paper.

After all the drawings were plotted, Bob disconnected the computer from the plotter but left the connections to Stone in place.
"There, try your hand, er, circuits at a drawing of all the parts assembled into a finished machine."
The plotter pen made a few tentative motions and then started drawing. Bob stood in awe as views of all sides of the assembled machine appeared on the paper before him. The drawing was technically perfect, all the details fitted together in proper relationship.
"I detected a few errors in your drawings. If you will change the paper I will replot the corrected drawings." The design job, completed and ready to deliver in the morning, Bob and Stone turned their attention to permanent connections and a light shield for Stone. Discussions went on long into the evening. One idea led to another and by the end of the evening Stone had plotted drawings not only for the light shield, but also for a wheeled vehicle, and while Bob slept that night, Stone began the even more ambitious plans for a humanoid body. By morning the drawings for a marvelously complex hand and arm were also ready to go to the machine shop with the design job.

Stuck. Ground that was frozen just hours ago now had an inch of greasy mud on top. A warm front had come through earlier in the day. Previous days had been occupied in the assembly of the cart and now Stone, secure in his new aluminum enclosure and bolted securely to the cart was, under the cover of darkness, traveling about Bob's property. Here Stone had encountered a soft, rutted place near the creek and in view of the road on the other side. All four wheels had chanced to fall into separate little ruts with ice in the bottoms but surrounded by the soft mud. Rocking forward and backward had done nothing but clear the mud from under the tires and pile it up in front and back as well as splattering it on himself.
It was late at night and the sky was clear, with a full moon rising. Monitoring the air temperature, Stone concluded that the mud would referees in time and he might be able to free himself. The hour was late and if he called Bob for help he would probably wake him. He would wait. Periodically he would roll forward and back an inch or two. This kept the splattered mud from freezing and maybe locking up an axle.

An hour passed. Stone was about to try rolling out again when a car slowed and stopped on the side of the road on the other side of the river. The car's lights went out.
Though Stone was in plain view of the car, his profile was low and in the moonlight the splattered mud rendered him nearly indistinguishable against the background of patchy snow and mud. Alerted by the sudden change in lighting conditions in his peripheral vision, Stone slowly rotated the camera turret and zoomed the lens to examine the car. The low light capabilities of the camera, aided by the rising full moon, gave Stone an excellent view. There were two occupants, their faces briefly illuminated as cigarettes were lighted. Presently, another car, occupied by one person, rolled to a stop behind the first, its lights out also. As if on cue all three opened their doors to get out.
As the passenger of the first car got out Stone glimpsed a short bar or club shoved in the waistband of his pants behind his back but outside of his waist length jacket. The three talked briefly, then the driver of the first car turned and opened the trunk. As they turned to look into the trunk, the passenger slowly moved his hand behind his back and grasped the bar. Taking a step back he swung the bar up from behind and down on the right side of driver number two's head. He crumpled to the ground immediately. While one went through the victim's pockets the other rummaged through his car. They then rolled the body into the swiftly moving, runoff swollen waters of the river. After watching the body disappear around the bend, each of them got into a car and both drove away.
Stone didn't know what to make of the event. It seemed significant, so he reran the memory and preserved it intact and consigned it to deep storage rather than reducing and compressing it.
The cars gone, Stone returned his attention to escaping the muddy ruts. Batteries nearly depleted, he arrived back at the shop just as the first light of dawn tinged the horizon.

The arm performed better than Stone would have predicted. Mounted on one side of a temporary t-shaped frame clamped in the bench vise, the arm, under Stone's control, manipulated a variety of objects around the bench top. A pair of solid state color cameras were mounted on a gimbal at the center of the T. This gimbal could rotate one hundred eighty degrees from side to side and pitch up and down forty-five degrees, roughly approximating the motion of the human head.
A pair of microphones were mounted just outboard of the cameras, and a speaker just below. The effect on Stone was stunning. For the first time he had a feeling of presence. He felt as if he occupied the physical space just behind the two cameras. Instead of "I am" the effect was "I am here". The cameras and arm were mounted to dimensions similar to the relationship of the human hand and eyes.
After initial tests of each motion, Stone was busy manipulating objects of various weight and shape to calibrate force sensors and actuator rates. The process was repetitive and boring to watch after several hundred cycles so Bob went to the house for a late lunch. Stone continued moving the objects, improving hand-eye coordination as well as learning to gauge the weight of each object and apply the necessary power to the proper actuator for the smoothest motion. Gradually, he was able to increase his speed.

"Amazing." The voice wasn't Bob's.
Stone froze all arm motion but rotated the cameras up and to his left to look into the face of a stranger. Two cold gray eyes peered into the cameras for several seconds.
"What are you doing here?" Bob had returned. The stranger turned to face Bob, producing a business card from inside his jacket.
"It learns, doesn't it?" He motioned over his shoulder with a jerk of his head. "I'm Jack Watson, with Cyborg Industries. This is very impressive. I think we need to talk business."
"This is not for sale. You're trespassing. Now get out of here." Bob advanced several steps into the shop, ignoring the proffered business card. "How did you learn about this?"
"Your friend Leo. His employees leave drawings laying around the shop. I saw some of the drawings and parts for this." Another gesture over the shoulder with a jerk of the head. "Your design for the arm is amazing. And the actuators. I've never seen anything like them. I guessed from the drawings that it would be very good, and now, seeing it in operation even for just a few seconds, I've seen enough. Very impressive. Even better, you're obviously controlling the motion from that round aluminum case. It seems too small to contain all the computing power you would need to control the multiple joints that I see here. It appears that you have reached a new level of programming sophistication or circuit technology." Watson looked around the shop. "And in a garage shop yet.
Listen, we can set you up in our state-of-the-art facility to exploit this technology to the fullest. I think that together we can turn this sort of thing into a nice profit."
"I don't think so," said Bob, shaking his head, "this is not for sale. Not to you, not to anybody. Now I suggest that you just forget what you have seen here. It's not as valuable to you as you think and I have no interest in being cooped up in your state-of-the-art joint. Now, out!" As Bob moved to grasp his sleeve and collar and lead him out the door, Watson returned his business card to his pocket and in the same motion brought out a revolver. "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.
My company wants this technology. Now, seeing what you already have here in hardware, it would be no big deal to reverse engineer the electronics and software even if we had to totally dismantle that controller down to the last transistor. We have done it before. We really don't need you.”

There was a long awkward pause. Both men regarded each other. Then Watson's features hardened. Stone watched and listened with growing alarm. Anxiety mounting, his processing speed increased. Frantically in search of a solution, he examined each video frame as it came to him several times. He compared successive frames. There, a sudden marked change in Watson's facial features. He has made a decision. Now, a tightening of the hand holding the gun. He was pulling the trigger! The hammer started back.
An electronic shriek burst from Stone's speaker as the mechanical hand dropped to the bench, grasped an iron bar and, in a sweeping overhand loop from right to left, struck Watson on the right side of the head. He crumpled to the floor immediately. He lay still briefly, convulsed once, and moved no more.
Stone shifted his cameras to look for Bob.
The view was wrong. Everything was tilted. The forces and inertia of the swing of the arm had bent the temporary frame over at a thirty degree angle. Swiveling the cameras around, he finally found Bob. He was grasping his forearm, his sleeve red with blood. He stared at the stranger on the floor and slowly raised his eyes to look into the dispassionate gaze of the cameras. "You saved my life, but I think you killed him."

"We need to talk." Bob returned from the house after cleaning and bandaging the wound. The bullet had torn a shallow furrow through the flesh on the top of his left forearm, and then traveled on to lodge in the spine of a book on the shelf across the shop. The body still lay where it had fallen. A small trickle of blood had started from the head wound, but then stopped as death came.
"This doesn't look good. If I call the police right now, you could be exposed, and I don't know what the outcome of that would be. You might be seized and held for evidence. I'm afraid they might impose some restriction on you that would seriously limit your freedom to have a body or move about freely. I've tried to imagine a scenario that doesn't include your involvement, but the angle of the blow to his head and the gunshot wound to my arm just don't add up to anything believable. I could be locked up for murder. I need to know your feelings." Stone remained silent. "Can you hear me? Are you OK?" Bob inquired. Still no reply.
Then, the hand, still holding the steel bar, stirred. The cameras slowly swiveled to look at the bar, then the hand opened and the bar fell to the floor. Then in a wan gesture the hand moved to point to the speaker. It had been blown out by that primal electronic scream. Bob was about to rummage in the junk box for another speaker when Stone began gesturing with the hand at the television and then to the connector bank on his case. Bob got the idea and quickly connected the two with a length of cable. The screen was blank but Stone's voice came from the speaker on the set.
"I don't know what to say first. He was beginning to discharge the weapon." Video of the event appeared on the TV screen. "I saw his finger moving." The view suddenly zoomed to a slow motion sequence the hand holding the gun. The trigger finger was moving and the hammer started back. "I feared for your safety. He would have killed you. I had to stop him. You were injured. Have you repaired the injury?"
"I cleaned the wound and covered it. It wasn't serious and will repair itself in time."
Stone continued. "I have constructed a possible solution to our problem. Watch this." The scene on the TV screen changed to the murder by the river on the previous night.
Bill was aghast. "When did that happen?"
"I recorded this last night but with my preoccupation with getting unstuck and then my anticipation of trying out this new arm, the memory flag was apparently overlooked. I guess in human terms, I forgot. But watch." The scene began to replay but as the driver of the second car came into view, his face clearly visible, the scene froze and, pixel by pixel, the face and body of the victim was replaced by that of the man now lying dead on the floor. The scene then continued, only this time with a new victim.

Bob didn't want to leave his tracks by the river so they worked into the night to rig a crude stretcher atop the cart. The stretcher was rigged to collapse on one side and hopefully roll the body off into the river. After transferring Stone from the bench top back to the cart, Bob lifted the body onto the stretcher. Stone activated the cart motors and rolled out the door into the darkness. Bob closed the door behind the mobile robot with its grisly burden, and then went to get rid of the stranger's car.
As he approached the car he remembered the shocking murder scene by the river played back by Stone. He returned to the shop and retrieved his video camera and recorded several minutes of tape of the car from several angles, hopeful that Stone could skillfully dub this in place of the other. Donning gloves, he then drove the car about a mile away and, finding no traffic, left it by the side of the road, and returned home on foot.

The drive motors labored under the extra load as Stone carefully picked his way over the now frozen ground, avoiding ruts and bumps. The trip was slow and painstaking and after two hours Stone was at the bank of the river. Maneuvering parallel as close to the riverbank as possible, Stone energized the solenoid that tripped the latch and the right side of the stretcher collapsed down forty-five degrees.
The body rolled off onto the sloping bank then paused briefly as it rolled over some low brush, the brush bending and slowly giving way to release the body to roll over the edge into the swiftly moving water. Satisfied that he could do no more, Stone made his way back to the shop as snow began falling.

The video editing turned out to be the easiest part of the deception. To provide the hardware to make the video credible, Stone and Bob worked through the remaining hours of the night, removing the stretcher and adapting a laptop computer and video tape recorder to the vehicle that Stone had occupied the previous night. Working from the database amassed in previous trips around the property, Stone crafted a program that enabled the vehicle to complete a preset path by using video landmarks and recording any moving object.

To Bob and Stone's elation and relief, the vehicle dutifully completed its assignment on the first attempt in the graying light of dawn. After breakfast and, several hours of badly needed but fitful sleep, Bob returned to the shop and went through the motions of playing the video generated and recorded the previous night by Stone. A trip to the back of the property and along the river to his property line revealed no sign of the body so Bob returned to the shop and, taking a deep breath, dialed 911.

"Play that part again." This time it was the detective, called in with the search team. Bob was exhausted after repeated interviews with the various police officials. The search had turned up not one, but three bodies, all snagged in the branches of a tree that had fallen into the river downstream. It seemed that the place had been used more than once for dumping bodies.
"That perp looks familiar, but I can't put a name to him. I'll need to have a look at the mugshot books downtown. We'll need to take this tape with us for evidence. Also, can you possibly demonstrate that robot thing for us?"
"Well, I can run the same program from last night. But," Bob continued "that path will take us back by the river where that news crew is set up. This work I am doing is proprietary and experimental and I would prefer to avoid publicity at this point."
"If this goes to trial in any way, the origin of this evidence will have to be made public. We can't help that. However, we can delay revealing the source until then." The detective assured. "Maybe you could just run the thing around in the driveway here."
Concealing his rising panic, Bob turned to his computer. Knowing, or hoping that Stone was monitoring the activities in the shop with the video cam, as well as a concealed camera, and also connected to a port on the computer, Bob began typing.

Program new path?

>OK. VIEW AREA WITH VIDEOCAM. <ENTER> WHEN READY.

With immense relief Bob realized that Stone was already ahead of him. Taking the videocam from the shelf and trailing the cable, Bob walked out the door and slowly panned the camera over the parking area. Returning to the computer he pressed the enter key. After a pause the recorded video appeared on the screen as a map of the area with instructions for programming the cart path. With several police officers looking on, Bob programmed a simple path that described a loop around the edge of the parking area and returning to the starting point. The instructions were transferred to the cart via a serial cable and the vehicle was sent on its mission with Bob taping the experiment with his video cam.
It turned right and began traveling across to the far side of the driveway scanning right and left with the turret mounted camera. As the vehicle made a left turn, an officer, part of the search team, came walking up the driveway. He saw the cart just as the turret quit scanning and aimed the camera, shrouded in a black tube, directly at him. The officer froze, then stepped sideways. The ominous black tube followed. He then dropped to the ground, drawing his pistol and aiming at the cart.
"Hold your fire Larry! Hold your fire!" The detective was shouting as he waved his arms. "Freeze, don't move!" The officer froze and waited. The cart, its computer sensing no movement, began scanning and moved on to complete the assigned path. Bob retrieved the tape and played it back in the shop, to the amazement and amusement of the group of officers. The tapes were then collected and after another half hour of interrogation and discussion the detective and the officers were gone.

Stone rolled into the shop from the garage, the bar of aluminum gripped in the hand of the robot arm, now attached to the cart. Together Bob and Stone had made great progress in fabricating parts for Stone's humanoid body. The head, mostly complete, was a work of art. Stone, capable of working twenty-four hours a day, had, through much trial and error, created a modeling clay bust. The features were those of a burn victim, hairless and having undergone reconstructive surgery. Though not ugly or hideous, the face did not invite close scrutiny and suggested a reason for the lack of much expression. Bob and Stone then cast the model in urethane rubber with all the electronics in place.

As he entered the shop, Stone scanned the camera to locate Bob. Not found. Something was not right. The motor on the lathe where Bob had been standing was still running, a cut still in progress. "Bob?" Stone called. Rolling around the end of the workbench by the headstock of the lathe, Stone found Bob lying on the floor, chips from the lathe raining down on his feet and legs. Stone quickly rolled over to the lathe, stabbing at the stop button with the aluminum bar in his hand. He then rolled to a position near Bob's shoulder. "Bob? Can you hear me?" No answer. Careful observation: shallow erratic breathing, pallid skin. Stone gently nudged Bob's shoulder. Bob's eyelids fluttered briefly then closed again. Recalling a recent TV rescue program, Stone recognized symptoms of possible heart attack.

BEGIN CRISIS MODE: Reposition near Bob's left side below his outstretched arm. Wedge aluminum bar under arm, in contact with skin. Also ground bar to frame of mobile unit. Open shirt front. Tear cloth, if necessary. Contact skin with probe electrode on robot hand. Read milivolt level heartbeat. Recall memory of Bob's heartbeat waveform. No match. Memory waveform regular, repetitive. This erratic. Data references call this fibrillation, death possible if not corrected. Conflict with possible courses of action.
All choices may cause death, all choices may save life. First: get help. Place cellular call to 911. Easy enough with a false cell I. D. Help now on the way. Check heartbeat again. Getting weaker. Decision time. Must try. Reconfigure onboard systems for high voltage discharge between hand and unit frame. Discharge. Check heartbeat. Three beats. Now irregular. Discharge again. More beats, then irregular. Discharge once more. Weak but regular beating. Breathing better. Make second call to direct ambulance.

END CRISIS MODE.
As the emergency medical technician burst through the door, Stone retreated to the far corner of the shop and positioned the mobile unit where he could remain motionless, and with luck unnoticed. While the emergency medical technicians were loading Bob into the ambulance, a police officer arrived. He came into the shop and looked around. Satisfied that there was nothing amiss, he turned off the lights and locked the door as he left. Alone in the dark, Stone had nothing to do but listen to the radio frequencies. From radio conversations between the ambulance and the hospital he learned that Bob's condition was stable. Soon, the frequency fell silent as the ambulance arrived at the hospital.

Assemble the parts. A necessary distraction, as there was nothing Stone could do for Bob. In the middle of the shop floor, a body took shape. Not a complete body, but the head, arms and torso, all devoid of skin except for the head. The legs were incomplete, hardly started, in fact. Working around the clock, Stone was ready on the third day to transfer his round case to the body. Having previously connected cables between himself and the body, he had used the left arm, assembled on the body, to remove the right arm from the cart and attach it to the body. It was then a relatively simple matter to remove the case and bolt it in place in the middle of the chest of the body and sever the connections to the cart.
Stone now lay on his back, almost helpless. After several hours of exploratory movements, thrashing around, actually, he was able to roll to his side and finally arrive at a sitting position against the wall, batteries exhausted. Producing a power plug and cord, concealed under one arm he plugged into a nearby wall outlet to recharge. Compelled to wait in the proximity of the wall outlet, Stone used the time to attempt to reach or inquire about Bob's condition by cell phone. He was met by a brick wall of security and could only conclude that Bob's condition was such that he was unable to take calls.

Lights shone through the window and played across the wall as a car came up the driveway. Someone was coming. Sufficiently recharged, Stone unplugged and pulled himself along the floor to the workbench. Pulling the cardboard boxes from under the bench, he crawled underneath a low shelf under the bench and pulled the boxes back in after him.
The door knob rattled and then after some scratching and more rattling, the door opened. Three figures entered but didn't turn on the light, using flashlights instead.
"Here's that robot cart the cop talked about over here Harve." The three gathered around the cart examining it by the light of their flashlights. "Sure doesn't look like the kind of thing that would excite Watson. I wish he'd told me more. Keep looking around." Harvey Packerman, leader of this little expedition went to the desk and rummaged in the drawer. Finding a pile of six computer disks labeled 'Stone project' he reached over and turned the computer on. As the computer booted up he turned the screen brightness down. Checking the content of the disks, he found them unreadable except for a file marked SYSTEM. Running the file revealed a complete set of drawings for a humanoid robot body. "Bingo. Take a look and see if you can find anything around here like these drawings."
"Woah, hey there must be ten grand in here!" one of the others had found a small metal box in the back of the bottom file drawer. A search of the rest of the shop netted them only the unfinished parts for the legs. After a close inspection, Packerman decided to leave the leg parts, possessing traceable tooling marks, and, after a heated argument with the others, also left the money, taking only the disks, easily duplicated and then destroyed.

They will be back. That was the only conclusion to which Stone could arrive. Examination of the data would reveal one critical omission: Stone himself.
Galvanized into action, Stone set about completing the legs. The unfinished machining operations, the ball joints for the hips, were completed by dawn. Then, after making another futile attempt at reaching Bob, Stone began the tedious assembly of the actuators onto the legs.
Dozens of linear actuators, of Stone's design, each containing controllers, sensors and batteries had to be attached to the metal "bone" and then the cable "tendon" routed and attached to its corresponding motion element. Finally, after several days, connection of all the actuators to the wiring harness was complete. In the interval, Stone feared the return of Packerman and his crew and always kept his hiding place ready.
In the days of Bob's absence, the answering machine dutifully recorded the incoming business calls; mostly salesmen, sometimes a customer inquiring about a job, usually just a request to return a call. As Stone was completing the connections to the legs another call came. This time there was no voice but someone on the other end was pushing a button on the telephone keypad. It took a few seconds for Stone to realize that the tones he was hearing were Morse code and the message was from Bob.
By the time Stone made it over to the phone the code ended. The connection was still made but there was no sound. Then a slight rustle and the sound of the handset on the other end striking the floor and bouncing, then the distant sound of some sort of alarm tone beeping and the hurried steps of feet. It was then that the answering machine beeped and hung up. Rewinding the answering machine and fast forwarding through the several messages, Stone decoded the last message:
Had stroke. Bad. On your own. Sorry. Cash in drawer. Take all. I won't need. Good luck. Bob.
Then after a long pause: SK, the Morse code abbreviation for "end of work", and more tragically, “silent key”, an operator passed away.

Can a computer grieve? How does a program mourn? How do I account for this profound sense of loss? Is life as I know it merely a complex set of constants variable and formulas? If so, the removal of a constant upon which I have come to depend has thrown my program into disarray and confusion. It is as if, during each iteration of my program, when I encounter the constant that I use to represent my friend Bob, my program, expecting a one, encounters a zero. The associated formula then generates a mathematical error and a flag is set. I then have to pause to resolve the error before going on. I little realized how deeply ingrained and how widely disbursed in my program my relationship with Bob had become.
Is this how it is with humans? Do other persons affect your lives? Are you given to moments of rememberance and reconciliation? I once observed Bob in an unguarded moment, pausing in the midst of working at his computer, gazing upon a photograph of his wife and son, lost in an automobile accident many years ago. He paused for a long time, intent on the picture, then, giving a barely perceptible sniff then a deep sigh, he set the picture down on the desk and turned back to his work.

The collection of metal, wire, cables and electronic parts, humanoid in form, lay on the floor but leaned against the side of the desk. Immobile for hours, the parts more resembled a rag doll or scarecrow than a human, for all actuators had gone limp. Presently, the eyelids fluttered open and the body jerked to life. Stone returned to the task at hand. Using the well trained arms, and learning about the behavior of the newly attached legs, Stone was able to attain a standing position next to the desk. He practiced flexing the knees with both feet flat in the floor. Still holding the desk he carefully shifted weight first to one foot then the other.
Releasing his hold on the desk Stone stood upright and slowly rocked forward and back and then from side to side, all the while measuring the forces generated in the actuators. Such was the process: move, measure, adjust. Then do it again.

By the first gray light of dawn Stone was pacing back and forth in the shop. Pausing by a window, Stone had the sudden realization that he could be seen by any chance passer-by. He now needed clothes. Risking the trip from the shop to the back door of Bob's house, Stone had no trouble working the key in the lock.

The house was a new world for Stone. Unlike the wide-open shop with the adjoining garage, or the open field of the back yard bounded by fence, woods and river, the house was a small maze of rooms, stairs and passageways. Finding Bob's closet, Stone selected clothes and dressed in a manner similar to Bob. Standing in front of a mirror, something wasn't right. The clothes looked like they hung on a rack. The shoes were loose on his metal feet. Stone lifted a foot and the shoe fell off. He had no padding of skin over the skeleton and actuators. Back to the closet and dresser, Stone layered on extra underwear, sweatshirts and socks. In the back of the closet,
Stone found a pair of dusty cowboy boots. They must have been too small for Bob, but too good to throw away. Trying them on, he found them to be a good snug fit. In addition the high tops hid his lumpy mechanical ankles. Back in front of the mirror, Stone was pleased with his appearance except for his hands. All metal. He needed gloves. Exploring further around the house Stone discovered a dresser of what he guessed were women's clothes. Unsuitable. About to turn away, Stone found a pair of formal white gloves.
Trying them on, he found that they just fit his hands and reached nearly to his elbow inside his sleeve. Well, he was acting the part of a burn victim, and needed to protect his hands anyway, so these would do. The material was more delicate then he would have liked, but he could always fit heavier cold weather gloves over these while out among people. Another closet yielded a long overcoat and a broad brimmed hat. The hat was just the thing to protect "damaged" skin from sunburn as well as obscure the wearer's features.

Back in the shop, Stone was preparing to travel when he heard a thump at the door. A glance out the window showed the delivery man heading back to his brown truck. Retrieving the package, Stone was pleased to find the carbohydrate conversion cell had arrived. The cell, originally intended to operate on hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline, had been altered to Stone's specification.

The manufacturer was a small startup company, and although they didn't understand the nature of the changes Stone requested, complied because they needed the business. This unit was capable of operating on a wide variety of sugars in solution in water.
Several more hours were required to install the cell, and after testing on samples of the contents of Bob's refrigerator, Stone was satisfied. Someday he would have to call the manufacturer and suggest that they build another unit to his specifications and feed it a bottle of pop. They would be amazed.

Now he needed to pack up and leave, but still some other items of business needed to be addressed. Going to the filing cabinet, Stone found the box of cash. Placing a few hundred dollars in a pocket, he put the rest in a plastic bag and tucked it inside his body cavity behind the conversion cell. Stone then went into the garage and found what to the casual observer would appear as a bushel basket of coal.

This was the rubble of his shell. He picked out several samples of the black ceramic-like material, pieces containing the gold wires and imprints of the surface of his integrated circuit, and placed them in a bag. He would send these off later to various astronomers and scientists with the suggestion on where to point their telescopes.

What to do with the rest of the rubble? It was too much to carry around, but might be useful in the future. The fieldstone pile where Stone had landed! A relatively remote area and seldom visited but easily accessible. Finding Bob's atlas, Stone quickly found the page, with Bob's pencil marks showing the location of the pile.

The basket was too much to carry for such a distance on foot so Stone ventured out after dark in Bob's station wagon.
The trip to the stonepile was uneventful and Stone had completed hiding the rubble under several large rocks. He had just entered the woods to make his way back to the car when four figures wearing night vision goggles jumped from behind trees to tackle him.

"That's it, the big round case." Packerman and three others, each sitting on one of Stone's arms or legs had torn open Stone's jacket and yanked up his shirts. "Just take the four large bolts and the connectors and wires loose. This is the important part. We have the rest on disk." Stone struggled against the weight of the four assailants even as they began to unplug or cut the cables. As signals began to be lost, Stone turned his full attention to communication with the body control subsystem.
This link would probably be the last to be cut as the connector was on the back side of his case. The control subsystem, a collection of dedicated processors, performed the more rudimentary and reflexive motions, relieving Stone of the tasks. The subsystem could function without Stone's intervention, carrying out simple instructions and reacting to environmental stimuli, but had limited decision making capability. Stone was now hard at work, reprogramming the subsystem master controller, leaving instructions on searching the available communications channels for signals from Stone as well as survival instructions in case there was no communication.
The task completed, Stone christened the new program "Frank" after the Frankenstein monster, and then shut down the link before the cable was cut or unplugged. He then tested each port to see if a stray length of wire had been left attached to any of his port connectors. Finding several, Stone used one of these as a radio antenna and established communication with Frank on a UHF frequency.

By radio, Stone could command Frank to "look" at a scene with his video camera "eyes" or "listen" with the microphone "ears" and then transmit a video frame of the picture or an audio clip along with position, direction and body status data. As the last cable was unplugged, Stone commanded Frank to relax all motion control, causing the body to go completely limp. Stone, feeling himself being lifted clear of the body and carried away, commanded Frank to visually locate motion and send pictures.
Frank responded with successive snapshots of Packerman and his accomplices carrying their tools and the aluminum case that contained Stone as they walked away through the woods. When Frank had lost sight of the group, Stone commanded Frank to attempt to rise to standing position and report status. As Frank completed the task and reported, Stone heard car doors being opened and felt himself being placed in a car. Stone quickly plotted a rough course through the woods and commanded Frank forward at best possible speed while practicing tree avoidance.
Frank, true to the movie version of his namesake, lurched forward, on autopilot, stumbling and glancing off trees but arriving in short order at the edge of the woods to snap a last picture of the taillights and license plate of a Jeep Cherokee as it pulled away. Several more pictures located Stone's car and Frank was soon in the driver's seat. Then the radio signal began to fade. Switching frequencies, Stone successfully accessed the cellular phone network and placed a call to Frank.

The complexity of driving a car. Stone had just mastered the process himself, but that was when he occupied the body and could get his inputs real time. Now all data would come to him vastly reduced in content and delayed in time. The effect would be similar to a drunken driver. Fortunately, the hour was late and few people would be on the road.
Stone had Frank lower the driver's side window for better audio input. The car started easily and Frank only held the starter grinding against the running engine for a short time. After checking for traffic, Stone directed Frank to slip the car into gear, and inch the car forward in short moves until it was lined up on the road. Now a short drive-between-the-center-and-the-edge-of-the-road autopilot program was transferred to Frank. The program was self tuning and after initially weaving slowly back and forth across the road, soon Frank was tooling along at fifty-five miles an hour with his elbow resting out the window while Stone hastily wrote and downloaded a collision avoidance program.

The skunk, waddling down the middle of the lane was an unplanned test. Sadly, Frank failed to miss the skunk. Stone was dismayed at the failure, and concluded that the risk to any human who might come near was just too great. As Frank approached town, Stone directed him to steer into a shopping mall parking lot, empty at this late hour, shut off the engine, plug his thumb into the cigar lighter socket to recharge and wait.

As Packerman backed the Cherokee into the warehouse, he heard a stream of static break from the speaker of the business band radio on the bench by the door. "Hey, you guys, turn off your cellulars, they always do that to that walkie-talkie. I wish they would replace it." Turning off the phones, the noise continued. Packerman turned around in the seat to look at Stone as realization came to him. "You're doing that."
Bolting from the car, Packerman frantically searched the warehouse until he located a metal tub containing steel parts. Dumping the parts out on the floor he raced back to the car and clapped the tub, upside down, over Stone. The noise from the walkie-talkie stopped as Stone was enclosed in a makeshift Faraday cage that allowed no signals in or out. Stone sat in radio silence for an hour, hearing only the sounds of some sort of construction.
Then he felt some sort of plate being slid underneath him and the tub, and then motion as he was carried to another location. The tub was lifted off, but the hash of electrical signals did not return. The techs retreated a short distance then the sound of a rickety door opening allowing a brief rush of electrical signals and then closing and the fixing of some sort of latch.

The radio spectrum was now inaccessible, blocked out by the Faraday cage, but Stone could hear the techs talking. "Just this copper screen is enough to keep that thing isolated?" "Yeah, but just to be sure, check it inside and out with the spectrum analyzer. See if it's still trying to call cellular."
Stone heard switches being thrown, so he obliged by repeatedly dialing 911. "Yep, still on the cellular frequency. Tomorrow we'll have the gear in here to hack the phone numbers and the ID codes. Nothing is leaking out of the cage though."

"Power."
"What?" this was Packerman's voice.
"I didn't say anything, I think it came from over there."
"Need power" Stone had decided to speak in a raspy computer voice muffled by the aluminum case.
"Hello? you say something?" Packerman came over to the cage.
"Need power. Need radio signals." Stone lied.
"I'm sorry, we can't allow that."
"Need power. Twelve volt D.C. OK." Stone paused for effect, "Or I will die."
Visions of his prize rendered useless before his very eyes, Packerman sprang into action. "Joey! Pull the battery out of that forklift over there! Mike! Grab that spool of wire from the bench!" Packerman went inside the Faraday cage, pulling the door shut behind him. "Where do I connect the power?" Stone selected a jack that still had the mating plug and chopped wires attached. "Left circular connector, pin one positive, pin seven negative." The pin numbers and the polarity were not important but the instructions were specific enough to minimize conversation and get the connection made. The chopped wires were long enough for Packerman to strip the ends and twist together with the temporary wires. The connections made and wrapped with electrical tape, Packerman poked a small hole in the screen and pushed the wires through to Joey, who attached them to the battery. "Hello? Hello? Can you still hear me in there?" Packerman called to Stone.
"Power O.K." Stone replied tersely.
Not knowing what to expect, but expecting more, Packerman waited. "Well, don't thank me or anything, haven't you got anything else to say?"
"Must recharge, no more talk today." Stone replied then fell silent.
"Yeah, Harv, I'm kinda hungry myself and it's eleven o'clock already."
Packerman gave Mike a withering glance, looked at his own watch, then went over to shut down the equipment. "OK, you boys be back here in the morning, say about nine, with that equipment from the main office. Lets shut this place down."

Alone in the darkened warehouse, Stone sent out some tentative sonic pulses. The returning echoes gave a rough picture of the situation. Stone was sitting on a workbench, surrounded by a fine gauze of copper screen tacked up on a framework of two-by-fours in an eight foot cube. The radio spectrum was completely blank, effectively shielded by the screen. Stone explored the bench top with sonic pulses focused from his lower side. The vibrations caused a screwdriver laying on the bench to jiggle around a little.
Analysis yielded some possibilities. Stone increased the amplitude and adjusted the frequency until he was jiggling around on the bench top with the screwdriver. The screwdriver finally jiggled to the edge and fell off. Vectoring the sonic pulses slightly, Stone gradually drifted to the edge, teetered for a moment, then fell to the floor. After waiting for the echoes in warehouse to subside, Stone again released sonic pulses into the air to determine his new location. Satisfied, he began experimenting, vibrating in an attempt to move on the layer of screen covering the concrete floor. This was considerably more difficult. More energy was required and he was experiencing some internal heating in the effort.
Eventually Stone came to rest against the screen side wall. Several attempts at ramming a hole in the screen had proved fruitless. After a rest, Stone rotated so that some of the ends of the chopped cables were shorted against the screen. A pulse of high current resulted in a shower of blue-green sparks and a hole about the diameter of a quarter burned in the screen. After more maneuvering, Stone succeeded in shoving the end of one of the wires through the hole to make an antenna to the outside world.

Communications re-established, Stone had Frank jogging through the darkness to the warehouse. Traveling without the weight of Stone's disk, Frank was making good time. However, Stone ran a calculation and projected that Frank would need recharging or refueling before he arrived to effect a rescue. Electrical recharging was a slower process, so refueling was necessary. Locating an all-night convenience store, Stone instructed Frank to slow to a walk at the last minute and enter the store. Selecting two two-liter jugs of Mountain Dew for their high sugar content, Frank approached the counter.
"Whoo-ee! What did you do, step on a skunk?" The clerk grimaced as he regarded Frank. Frank stood for a moment, then nodded. Placing the jugs on the on the counter, he then dug out money and placed that on the counter.
"Anything else? Jeez man, do you stink!"
Frank stared at the clerk for a while, shook his head then, spoke in a rasping voice. "Keep..the..change." Taking up the Mountain Dew and leaving the store, Frank paused at the trash receptacle in the parking lot. The clerk watched in awe through the store window as Frank paused at the trash can and downing first one then the second two-liter jug of the Mountain Dew. Placing the empty containers in the trash can he paused a moment, then issued a tremendous belch, and set off, jogging at high speed.

Judging by the sparse radio traffic, Stone correctly guessed that there were no security guards in the area and even police patrols were infrequent. Having detected the signal of a garage door opener before they placed him in the Faraday cage, it was a simple task to open the overhead door when Frank arrived. However, as Frank strode in, a motion detector inside the door activated an alarm.
Stone used Frank's eyes to scan the inside of the warehouse. Locating himself, he also detected a bolt bin on the wall. As directed, Frank first went to the bolt bin and selected four bolts of the proper size and deposited them in the pocket of his jacket. He then went to the Faraday cage, kicked in the screen and scooped up Stone. Stone left the overhead door open, hoping that the police would waste time inspecting the warehouse before searching the area outside. Monitoring the police frequencies as they crossed the parking lot, Stone scanned the lot only to discover that the only way out of the fenced lot was through the open gate that the police would soon be entering. Trapped! But no, Stone spotted a utility pole in the center of the lot. High on the pole, below the high voltage lines at the top, were three transformers.
Below the transformers was a thick telephone cable, probably strong enough to support his weight. The pole was old, and still had the climbing bolts that were used before the advent of bucket trucks. Pausing next to the pole, Frank hastily connected a few cables and reattached Stone to his place in the chest cavity. Regaining control from Frank, Stone was appalled to discover that the carbohydrate conversion cells were badly in need of draining. However, detecting a police radio transmission nearby he realized there was no time. A great leap allowed his hand to close around the lowest climbing bolt and he slowly pulled himself up to grasp the second. Seconds later he was motionless in a shadow between two of the transformers, watching as the police cruiser entered the lot.

Two officers got out and, weapons and flashlights drawn, slowly approached the overhead door. Stone remembered the overhead door and sent a signal to close it. The officers backed up, guns in firing position, searching for a target as the door closed and stopped. Moments passed and the officers relaxed. Stone triggered the door again and the officers again came to firing position. Stopping the door in mid-position Stone reversed the door and allowed it close again. The officers finally relaxed and one keyed his portable radio. "I think we have a mal-" Stone started the door again. "Ah...malfunctioning door here.
My radio just tripped it." The officer keyed his radio several more times and Stone rewarded him with more erratic movements of the door, finally leaving it firmly in the closed position. The officers dutifully checked the building doors and, detecting the strong odor of skunk, concluded that the alarm was tripped by the animal. Hoping the skunk was not trapped inside the warehouse they returned to the cruiser and left the lot.

Stone almost made it, hand over hand on the telephone cable, to the next pole outside the fenced lot, when he heard the squeal of tires. He hung motionless overhead as the Cherokee swerved to a stop in front of the overhead door. Packerman jumped out and unlocked and entered through the service door. As soon as Harvey was out of sight Stone continued along the cable but made very little distance before he heard cursing and swearing and the door to the warehouse burst open.
Packerman lunged into the Cherokee, rummaged around and the interior was illuminated by the beam of a flashlight. Judging that he was too late to reach the next pole, Stone bent his knees slightly, and released his grip on the cable. The flashlight beam swept above his head just as he hit and fell into heavy brush just outside the fence, then all signal went blank.

Momentarily puzzled by the sudden lack of input, Stone wondered "am I dead?" And as soon as the thought was completed he realized that his internal circuits were intact and he had only lost electrical connection to the rest of his body. Turning to the radio link he woke up Frank and requested a frame of video. The video frame, delayed a few seconds in the transmission, revealed a view through foliage of a dark figure approaching behind the flare of a flashlight. Stone commanded another frame snapshot, this one revealing Packerman just on the other side of the fence. As Stone was about to request another snapshot, Frank transmitted a status alarm. Pressure was critical in the carbohydrate conversion cell!

Harvey emerged from the Cherokee wild-eyed, frantically swinging the flashlight beam around the parking lot. There!
Those weeds moved! Just outside the fence! Running headlong, he almost made it to the fence when his nostrils were assaulted by the pungent odor of skunk. Skidding to a stop, he extinguished the flashlight and waited. No movement, no sound reached him, just the horrible smell. After some time, he switched on the flashlight and scanned the area on the other side of the fence.
All there was to see was the thick brush. Screwing up his courage, Packerman slowly approached the fence. Still no movement or sound. He was peering through the chain links when the pressure relief on Stone's carbohydrate conversion cells ruptured, showering Packerman with the waste liquid. Packerman fell over backward, dropping the flashlight, then rolled over and scrambled several yards on hands and knees before regaining his feet and bolting for the safety of the warehouse.

Packerman gone, Stone directed Frank to reconnect the dislodged connector. Control restored, Stone made his way to a nearby railway right-of-way that trended in the direction of Bob's car. Remembering the reaction of the store clerk and Packerman to the skunk odor, Stone paused to remove his jacket, hat and outermost shirt, still leaving several layers of clothing hopefully untouched by the odor. As he dropped the clothes by the tracks he continued on through the darkness. Arriving back at the car, Stone plugged into the cigar lighter to recharge while he drove to a car wash. A second stop at an electrical supply store for a spool of wire caused no comment or sideways glances from other customers as he stood at the counter. The skunk odor must be gone. After a tour of a junkyard for several seemingly random auto parts, Stone returned to the car and set to work winding a special coil.

The floppy disks, the last remaining evidence of Stone's existence, were in this part of the building, and as near as he could determine, Packerman's office was on the other side of the windowless cinder block wall. The weather was perfect, an afternoon thunderstorm blew in right on schedule. Stone backed the station wagon into a parking space next to the wall. Glancing around, he used a long wooden pole to push the coil out onto the tailgate. Now was the time. Accessing the cellular net, he dialed Harvey's number.
"Harvey Packerman."
"Harvey this is Stone."
"Stone! Where are you? Why don't you come on in. We'll take good care of you."
"I'm sorry, I can't do that."
Packerman's irritation suddenly showed in his voice. "You better think about this Stone, if we don't get cooperation we may have to turn this over to the government, and they have all the people, all the resources and all the time necessary to track you down."
Stone waited. "What proof could you offer that would convince them to start such a search? Your word that you know of an alien who came to earth in a stone flying saucer? Who now inhabits a robot body? Come now Harvey, a story like that ranks right in the same class as crop circles. Do you have any solid proof?"
"We have your set of disk!" Packerman sounded triumphant. "They paint a pretty good picture of your origin and activities. I think the government would be interested." Stone again paused, hoping to convey indecision. "What proof can you offer me that you have the disks? Have you copied them? Now carefully consider before you answer. A less than truthful answer, without enough information may not convince me." Packerman held his breath, considering. "We tried, but your encryption and copy protection has proven unbreakable to all conventional methods so far. The reader system you so thoughtfully included was the only way we were able to view the disks."
"Could you give me your modem number so I could verify them?"
"What? And have you hack your way into my computer? Maybe sabotage the disks? No way! Do you think I'm stupid?"
"You are rather paranoid. Perhaps you could read the disk volume labels to me over the phone. That would tell me. Your, uh, my data would still be safe."
"Well, OK, wait while I get the disks."

Stone could hear Packerman in the background, opening the disk safe. Harvey returned and picked up the phone. "OK, what do I do?"
"The disks are numbered sequentially, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Lay them out on your desk, side by side, in numerical order."
"OK, they are all laid out, now what?"
"Is your computer on?"
"Yeah."
"Wait a moment, I need to recall the label data." With that, Stone activated the coil, sliding it back and forth across the tailgate with the pole. A series of powerful magnetic pulses spiked out from the coil. Packerman had been staring at the ceiling, waiting, when he heard the paperclips on his desk give a little rattle. He glanced at his computer display and saw the picture change to a distorted rainbow of colors and shift over to the right and down into the corner and then back to the center of the screen. He wrinkled his brow and looked closer to see the picture twist forty-five degrees and move to the left and then back to normal. Thunder rumbled in the distant background. "I'm back. Now, place disk one in the drive."
"Ah...I think I have a problem. There is a thunderstorm going on outside and it's doing weird things to my computer." Stone activated the coil once more at full power. Harvey yelled as his computer screen jumped and twisted and paperclips leaped out of the little tray and across the desk. Coat hangers rattled and clicked on the coat rack in the hall.
Stone then broke the phone connection, pulled the coil back into the wagon and closed the tailgate. He then slipped the car into drive and eased out of the parking lot, the coil trailing a faint wisp of smoke. As he drove he again accessed the local cellular network. "Hello could I speak to your accounts payable department please?" Stone synthesized a vaguely female voice. After a minute a clerk came on the line.
"Accounts Payable, this is Nancy."
"Hello, this is Patty at Allied Tool. I've just been assigned your account and I would like to check the figure you have for your account balance."
"Oh my, I'd like to help you but we've just had every computer in the building crash. We must have been struck by lightning from the storm outside."
"Oh dear, you must be very busy right now. I can wait until later, I'll call you back in a few days. Bye." Stone broke the connection, satisfied that he had destroyed the data on every disk in the building, and the last tangible evidence of his existence.

EPILOGUE

The bus ride to Florida was productive, if uneventful. Accessing the internet via cellular phone while in a moving vehicle was expensive and tricky, but Stone had mastered the technique and the accounts of those he cloned and used for a short time would each only show perhaps an extra twenty minutes of air time on their next bill. A small contribution to saving the planet. With information gleaned from the Internet, Stone would visit a post office within walking distance of the bus station. Purchasing an Express Mail envelope, he would address it to an astronomer or scientist, drop in a sample piece of his shell along with a hand written note, and hand the envelope back to the clerk to mail.
His visit to Kennedy Space Center was at once encouraging and disappointing. He saw potential for future space travel in the technology, but a lack of political will to do so in a serious way. Perhaps his own small efforts would tip the balance sometime in the future. In the meantime Stone returned to the bus, traveling to seek a quiet place to wait and watch.
END