1: Evacuate

Alfred Lanning rubbed his weary eyes, staring at the numerous sheets on his desk for the development of a new positronic brain. "Aw, damn! I need sleep." he exclaimed.

The signal on the visiplate on his desk flashed. He pressed the button on it to activate it. The picture of Susan Calvin, robopsychologist, flickered to life on the screen. "What?" he said. "Alfred, there's a serious problem with-" before letting her finish her sentence, he grabbed the electron gun on his desk. The electron gun was a creation of his own, possible to charge so much electricity into a positronic brain so as to fuse it into an inert ingot of metal. Luckily, all the visiplates at United States Robots and Mechanical Men were equipped with positronic brains. He simply shot it, and the picture disappeared at once. An unseen lick of smoke drifted up to the ceiling, where, it came into contact with a smoke detector. Instantly, the sprinkler system bursted to life. "Argh!" he shouted. He slid backward on his chair and it fell down. Suddenly, an alarm blared loudly, with the words "R16! R16! Evacuate the building immediately!". "What?" he thought. "R16 isn't the code for fire, it's the code for…." he fell unconscious due to the fact that he was sleepy but he also hit the ground hard.