Down the endless hall, growing smaller and smaller with distance, bodies lay outstretched on slabs. Monochromatic harmonies of light oscillated soothingly and dreamily. Their forms were nude and their noble heads were enmeshed in mechanical contrivances that eluded Amco's technical genius.
As in a dream, he began walking down between the rows of corpses. Or were they alive? He couldn't tell. Perhaps some elaborate form of burial with perfect preservation.
But the emotion reflected by every face differed. Differed in all the basic emotions of pain, joy, fear, pleasure, enlightenment, imbecility, perplexity, ecstasy, defeat, shame, grandeur—and all the endless shades of the intermingling of these and the gradations. Their hands lay open at their sides, and their eyes were closed. Yet the expressions on their faces were unmistakable.
The hall was sufficiently weird, bizzare and alien so that he was hardly surprised when he was accosted by the Robot.
The teleo-electronic man walked up and stopped in front of Amco. There was something unfriendly, almost inimical in his attitude. The emanations from the electronic brain seemed coldly unemotional:
"I suppose you must be destroyed," the thought from the electronic brain impinged sharply on Amco's consciousness.
"Why?" said Amco.