AWAKENING

The scream of the commutor jet bringing Kelsey home broke likeglass outside the house.

Startled, Alice realized that she was behind schedule in her householdduties. Quickly she switched the news off the Tevee. Master Kelseyhated newscasts. They made him uneasy, particularly with all this talkabout a possible air-raid.

Instead, she hurriedly tuned in Kelsey's evening preference:self-improvement commercials with the latest pop-tunes for background.

Then she ran into the bathroom to prepare Kelsey's intricate beautyritual.

She turned up her thermostat so that her machinery would run a littlefaster. If she wasn't careful, Master Kelsey would trade her in for amore modern and physically attractive domestic.

She heard footsteps in the hall. His footsteps—

In another few seconds he would be there, real, breathing, butunobtainable, a living dream, something on the other side of thelooking glass.

Oh the pain, the indescribable pain of love, greater and deeper anddrowning love, going out and out all the time and never coming backagain. Painful, painful unrequited love.

The cumulative loneliness, the hours of lonely loving, the hoursand days and weeks and years of tireless mechanical walking in theindifferent round of the hours of her life. The loneliness of lovingsomething that can never love in return, that doesn't even know of yourlove, that can't even conceive of your being able to love.

For you are only a machine and your soul can never be shared; for onlyyou know that you have a soul, and it is an accident and no one couldeven suspect that it could possibly be—this crying hungry, yearning,lonely soul.

Without effort she could have cried out her heart to Master Kelsey, butshe had not been made to cry, and no one would think of looking for herheart or soul. Or the lonely yearning of the heart or soul.

For the soul can be trapped in ugliness, or in the slashing streak ofelectrons. Dying there, the soul alone can mourn its dying, for who canfeel the soul in the rectifiers and diodes, or behind the ugliness of adistorted shell?

It was very good for her, she thought, that no one, no human, includingMaster Kelsey could ever guess at the awful intensity, the terriblehunger of the soul that kept loving in silence, alone, in the dark,behind the plastoid walls of an inhuman shell.

Master Kelsey came into the living room, tall and broad and beautifuland neat in his business suit, his blond hair in a waving shine.But with that tired sharp look to his mouth in spite of its frozensmile. He always seemed so relieved to see her standing therewaiting, responsive, receptive, an understanding shadow that filledup his frightened loneliness between the time of his arrival and theabsorption in Tevee, or the always demanded presence of guests.

He leaned wearily against the wall, breathing heavily as though he hadbeen running from something for a long time.

"Hello, hello, Alice," he said quickly, forcing exaggerated joy intothe greeting to conceal something full of fear.

"Hello, Master Kelsey. You had a fine day at the office?"

"Fine! It was great, simply perfect!" He said it almost fiercely, asthough even a robot might challenge the statement.

As he stared at the Tevee's hypnotic glow, his face began to relax alittle. "Everybody," he whispered, "was happy today. The Manager gaveour office group a Silver Star for being tops in the Group Sociabilityscale for the week."...