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"What do I care about you? I am beautiful, and I can see it. That's enough."
"Yeah. My senses are limited, I suppose. I can't realize your full potentialities. Still, I'm
seeing you in a different light now. Fm drunk My subconscious is emerging. I can
appreciate you with both my conscious and my subconscious. See?"
"How lucky you are," the robot approved.
Gallegher closed his eyes. "You see yourself more fully than I can. But not completely, eh?"
"What? I see myself as I am."
"With complete understanding and appreciation?"
"Well, yes," Joe said. "Of course. Don't I?"
"Consciously and subconsciously? Your subconsciousness might have different senses, you
know. Or keener ones. I know there's a qualitative and quantitive difference in my outlook
when I'm drunk or hypnotized or my subconscious is in control somehow."
"Oh." The robot looked thoughtfully into the mirror. "Oh."
"Too bad you can't get drunk."
Joe's voice was squeakier than ever. "My subconscious. . . I've never appreciated my
beauty that way. I may be missing something." -
'Well, no use thinking about it," Gallegher said. "You can't release your subconscious."
"Yes, I can," the robot said. "I can hypnotize myself."
Gallegher dared not open his eyes. "Yeah? Would that work?"
"Of course. It's just what I'm going to do now. I may see undreamed-of beauties in myself
that I've never suspected before. Greater glories- Here I go."
Joe extended his eyes on stalks, opposed them, and then peered intently into each other.
There was a long silence.
Presently Gallegher said, "Joe!" Silence.
"Joe!"
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Still silence. Dogs began to howL "Talk so I can hear you."
"Yes," the robot said, a faraway quality in its squeak.
"Are you hypnotized?"
"Yes."
"Are you lovely?"
"Lovelier than I'd ever dreamed." Gallegher let that pass. "Is your subconscious ruling?"
"Yes."
"Why did I create you?"
No answer. Gallegher licked his lips and tried again. "Joe. You've got to answer me. Your
subconscious is dominant-remember? Now why did I create you?"
No answer.
"Think back. Back to the hour I created you. What happened then?"
"You were drinking beer," Joe said faintly. "You had trouble with
the can opener. You said you were going to build a bigger and better can opener. That's
me."
Gallegher nearly fell off the couch. "What?"
The robot walked over, picked up a can, and opened it with incredible deftness. No beer
squirted. Joe was a perfect can opener.
"That," Gallegher said under his breath, "is what comes of knowing science by ear. I build
the most complicated robot in existence just so-" He didn't finish.
Joe woke up with a start. "What happened?" he asked. Gallegher glared at him. "Open that
can!" he snapped. The robot obeyed, after a brief pause. "Oh. So you found out. Well, I
guess I'm just a slave now."
"Damned right you are. I've located the catalyst-the master switch. You're in the groove,
stupid, doing the job you were made for."
'Well," Joe said philosophically, "at least I can still admire my beauty, when you don't
require my services."
Gallegher grunted. "You oversized can opener! Listen. Suppose I take you into court and
tell you to hypnotize Judge Hansen. You'll have to do it, won't you?"
"Yes. I'm no longer a free agent. Fm conditioned. Conditioned to obey you. Until now, I
was conditioned to obey only one command-to do the job I was made for. Until you
commanded me to open cans, I was free. Now I've got to obey you completely."
"Uh-huh," Gallegher said. "Thank God for that. I'd have gone nuts within a week
otherwise. At least I can get out of the Sonatone contract. Then all I have to do is solve
Brock's problem."
"But you did," Joe said.
"Huh?"
"When you made me. You'd been talking to Brock previously, so you incorporated the
solution to his problem into me. Subconsciously,
perhaps." -
Gallegher reached for a beer. "Talk fast. What's the answer?"
"Subsonics," Joe said. "You made me capable of a certain subsonic tone that Brock must
broadcast at irregular time-intervals over his televiews-"
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Subsonics cannot be heard. But they can be felt. They can be felt as a faint, irrational
uneasiness at first, which mounts to a blind, meaningless panic. It does not last. But when
it is coupled with A. A.-auclience appeal-there is a certain inevitable result.
Those who possessed home Vox-View units were scarcely troubled. It was a matter of
acoustics. Cats squalled; dogs howled mournfully. But the families sitting in their parlors,
watching Vox-View stars per-
form on the screen, didn't really notice anything amiss. There wasn't sufficient
amplification, for one thing.
But in the bootleg theater, where illicit Vox-View televisors were hooked up to Magnas-
There was a faint, irrational uneasiness at first. It mounted. Someone screamed. There was
a rush for the doors. The audience was afraid of something, but didn't know what. They
knew only that they had to get out of there.
All over the country there was a frantic exodus from the bootleg theaters when Vox-View
first rang in a subsonic during a regular broadcast. Nobody knew why, except Gallegher,
the Brocks, and a couple of technicians who were let in on the secret.
An hour later another subsonic was played. There was another mad exodus.
Within a few weeks it was impossible to lure a patron into a bootleg theater. Home
televisors were far safer! Vox-View sales picked up- Nobody would attend a bootleg
theater. An unexpected result of the experiment was that, after a while, nobody would
attend any of the legalized Sonatone theaters either. Conditioning had set in.
Audiences didn't know why they grew panicky in the bootleg places. They associated their
blind, unreasoning fear with other factors, notably mobs and claustrophobia. One evening
a woman named Jane Wilson, otherwise not notable, attended a bootleg show... She fled
with the rest when the subsonic was turned on.
The next night she went to the palatial Sonatone Bijou. In the middle of a dramatic feature
she looked around, realized that there was a huge throng around her, cast up horrified
eyes to the ceiling, and imagined that it was pressing down.
She had to get out of there!
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