2: The Infirmary
He woke up in the infirmary, his eyes blurry. "Alfred? You… flash…... problem… didn't reply……. found you unconscious…. alarm… brought you here.." he heard. The words came in flowing spurts, at least to him, because he was still partly asleep. He shook his head violently, brought everything into focus, and saw Calvin and Peter Bogert, Chief Mathematician, standing in front of him. "What? I- I couldn't
u-understand you." , he blurted. "Figures," Calvin replied. "Here. You cancelled the flash about that 'serious problem' I called you about. I saw the fire signal and rushed up to your room, found you unconscious and I signaled for a person from the infirmary, who brought you here, and someone else sounded the alarm. Naturally, we evacuated the building." she said, tonelessly, always with that shade of coldness. "Wait, so what was that serious problem?" he said, nearly fully awake. "Nothing." was the reply. "And the alarm? I have never heard the code R16, in all my years here." he said. "Neither have I. I looked at the alarm code key, and found, of all things, it meant 'Robot out of control!' Since we're on the subject, there's another serious problem. The new NS-3 robots, the ones designed for shipping work, are seriously faulty." she said, with a dash of uneasiness in her voice. "What's faulty about them?" he asked. To which Bogert said, sounding extremely uneasy, "Um-m-m-m-m. They, uh- lack- the entire-" "What? Lack the entire what?" Lanning blurted. "The entire- FIRST LAW." Lanning bolted up in his bed. "WHAT? THAT'S A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY! THAT-" he got choked off in the middle, gasping. "HOW THE HELL ARE YOU TWO SO CALM? IF WORD GETS OUT THAT THERE ARE NON-" he stopped. Everyone in the infirmary was staring, gaping. "Oh, sorry! There's no problem here." he said.