Compassion circuit.

Hey everybody,

Today my post will be about Compassion Circuit by John Wyndham. It was written in 1956. We were given the beginning of the story and our homework assignment was to finish the story in the way we though it would end. Well here is what I wrote. It's kind of long, so get ready. :}

Compassion Circuit.

[By John Wyndham]

By the time Janet had been five days in the hospital she had become converted to the idea of a domestic robot. It had taken her two days to find out Nurse James was a robot, one day to recover from the surprise, and two more to realise what a comfort an attendant robot can be. Nurse James was the first with which she had come into close personal contact with and it came as a revelation.
Janet told the doctor of her enlightenment and he looked relieved. She also told George when he visited in the afternoon: he was delighted. 'Excellent,' said the doctor. 'To tell you the truth I thought we were up against a real neurosis here.'
'I know,' George agreed. 'I tried hard to persuade her to get a robot during the first two years we were married, but it only led to trouble so I had to drop it. The trouble is that the newest robot any of our friends has is ten years old at least. She'd never considered anything as advanced as Nurse James. The question now is what sort of robot?'
'Frankly Mr Shand, your wife is going to need a lot of rest and looking after. What I really recommend is the Nurse James model. A specially developed high-sensibility job with a quite novel contrabalanced compassion circuit - a very tricky piece of work - that any direct order which a normal robot would obey immediately is evaluated by the circuit, and unless it is harmless to the patient, it is not obeyed. But there's a pretty big demand for them, and I'm afraid they're rather expensive.'
'How much?'
The doctor's price made George frown for a moment. Then he said: ' Where do I get one?'
'It's not as easy as that,' the doctor told him, ' but I expect I'll be able to make you a priority. Now you go and fix up the details of appearance and so on with your wife. Let me know how she wants it and I'll get busy.'
'A proper one, ' said Janet. ' One that'll look right in the house, I mean. As it's got to look after the house , let's have it looking like a housemaid. It can have a black silk dress and a frilly white apron and a cap. And I'd like it blonde, about five feet ten, and nice to look at but no too beautiful!'
It was delivered the day Janet got back from the hospital.
George went out to borrow the next-door robot to carry the case in. They laid it on the kitchen floor. George opened the lid. He pushed away the layer of soft packing material out of the way and there, ready dressed in a black dress and apron, lay the robot. Janet knelt down beside the box and touched the perfect complexion. It was quite, quite, cold...

[By me]

Janet shivered as she felt the robots cold face. She wondered if getting a robot was a good idea after all...
It had been a week since the robot, who they named Mary, started working in Janet's and George's home. To every body's delight, Janet started getting better under the efficient robots care. Everything seemed to be going fine, Janet was feeling better more and more every day. Pretty soon the patient was feeling so well that she could leave the house for a short amount of time. But the she was feeling better, Janet had gotten so used to being waited on, hand and foot, that she started changing. George noticed this change.
Since Janet couldn't possibly work because of her illness, and somehow they had to pay for the medical bills, George had to work two jobs which wasn't very easy. He was barely ever at home and when he was he practically never saw his wife, who would either be resting or taking medications. Even when they did see each other, Janet didn't pay much attention to what her poor husband said unless it was about her. So George started talking to Mary, who was usually working around the house. Pretty soon they got to know each other better. Even though he knew she was a robot, George started liking Mary more and more. Pretty soon he fell in love with her. Though the poor man tried telling himself that he was already married and that Mary was a robot, George couldn't stop thinking about her.
One day, when Janet was out on a walk, George told Mary about his feelings towards her. 'No!' the robot started shouting. ' That can't happen, I won't allow it!' And with that she took a sharp kitchen knife and started walking towards George, when Janet walked in. At the site of his wife, George ran out of the door saying ' I'm sorry Janet, so so sorry...' Janet stood there, not knowing what to do. Then all of a sudden she ran towards Mary and disconnected her.
'Wait Janet, I love him nooo......'
Till the end of her life Janet wondered about that day. Many people said that something had gone wrong when the robot was being made, and that's why it had gotten feelings. But the woman knew that it was all because of Mary's compassion circuit and nothing more.


Please tell me what you think. I know it's kind of sad. :( There should be another post tomorrow that has to do with a project I'm working on :)

Love Chocolate4ever.