"Even if it were possible at all," snapped another, "it would probably take so long to design so miniaturized a machine that we-or rather our successors-would reach a time two centuries hence without the necessity of using a machine at all. No, if an accident of some sort takes place, Archie simply won't return and we'll just have to try again."
This was said with Archie present, but that didn't matter, of course. Archie could contemplate being marooned in time, or even his own destruction, with equanimity, provided he were following orders. The Second Law of Robotics, which makes it necessary for a robot to follow orders, takes precedence over the Third, which makes it necessary for him to protect his own existence.
In the end, of course, all had been said, and no one could any longer think of a warning, or an objection, or a possibility that had not been thoroughly aired.
Archie repeated all he had been told with robotic calmness and precision, and the next step was to teach him how to use the machine. And he learned that, too, with robotic calmness and precision.
You must understand that the general public did not know, at that time, that time-travel was being investigated. It was not an expensive project as long as it was a matter of working on theory, but experimental work had punished the budget and was bound to punish it still more. This was most uncomfortable for scientists engaged in an endeavor that seemed totally "blue-sky."
If there was a large failure, given the state of the public purse, there would be a loud outcry on the part of the people, and the project might be doomed. The Temporalists all agreed, without even the necessity of debate, that only success could be reported, and that until such a success was recorded, the public would have to learn very little, if anything at all. And so this experiment, the crucial one, was heart-stopping for everyone.
We gathered at an isolated spot of the semi-desert, an artfully protected area given over to Project Four. (Even the name was intended to give no real hint of the nature of the work, but it always struck me that most people thought of time as a kind of fourth dimension and that someone ought therefore guess what we were doing. Yet no one ever did, to my knowledge.)
Then, at a certain moment, at which time there was a great deal of breath-holding, Archie, inside the machine, raised one hand to signify he was about to make his move. Half a breath later-if anyone had been breathing-the machine flickered.
It was a very rapid flicker. I wasn't sure that I had observed it. It seemed to me that I had merely assumed it ought to flicker, if it returned to nearly the instant at which it left-and I saw what I was convinced I ought to see. I meant to ask the others if they, too, had seen a flicker, but I always hesitated to address them unless they spoke to me first. They were very important people, and I was merely-but I've said that. Then, too, in the excitement of questioning Archie, I forgot the matter of the flicker. It wasn't at all important.
So brief an interval was there between leaving and returning that we might well have thought that he hadn't left at all, but there was no question of that. The machine had definitely deteriorated. It had simply faded.
Nor was Archie, on emerging from the machine, much better off. He was not the same Archie that had entered that machine. There was a shopworn look about him, a dullness to his finish, a slight unevenness to his surface where he might have undergone collisions, an odd manner in the way he looked about as though he were re-experiencing an almost forgotten scene. I doubt that there was a single person there who felt for one moment that Archie had not been absent, as far as his own sensation of time was concerned, for a long interval.
In fact, the first question he was asked was, "How long have you been away?"
Archie said, "Five years, sir. It was a time interval that had been mentioned in my instructions and I wished to do a thorough job."
"Come, that's a hopeful fact," said one Temporalist. "If the world were a mass of destruction, surely it would not have taken five years to gather that fact."
And yet not one of them dared say: well, Archie, was the Earth a mass of destruction?
They waited for him to speak, and for a while, he also waited, with robotic politeness, for them to ask. After a while, however, Archie's need to obey orders, by reporting his observations, overcame whatever there was in his positronic circuits that made it necessary for him to seem polite.
Archie said, " All was well on the Earth of the future. The social structure was intact and working well."
"Intact and working well?" said one Temporalist, acting as though he were shocked at so heretical a notion. "Everywhere?"
"The inhabitants of the world were most kind. They took me to every part of the globe. All was prosperous and peaceful."
The Temporalists looked at each other. It seemed easier for them to believe that Archie was wrong, or mistaken, than that the Earth of the future was prosperous and peaceful. It had seemed to me always that, despite all optimistic statements to the contrary, it was taken almost as an article of faith, that Earth was on the point of social, economic, and, perhaps, even physical destruction.
They began to question him thoroughly. One shouted, "What about the forests? They're almost gone."
"There was a huge project," said Archie, "for the reforestation of the land, sir. Wilderness has been restored where possible. Genetic engineering has been used imaginatively to restore wildlife where related species existed in zoos or as pets. Pollution is a thing of the past. The world of 2230 is a world of natural peace and beauty."
"You are sure of all this?" asked a Temporalist.
"No spot on Earth was kept secret. I was shown all I asked to see."