Jason Charless shook his head in a superior fashion. "Life has sentience."
"That is a common error in thinking. For many years the scientists have been trying to create 'life'. This can—and has—been done. The error is confusing life with sentience. Now consider the problem of sentience. You, human, of all of the forms of animal life, have true sentience. No plant has sentience, nor has any insect. Against them, consider machine life. Of all the myriads of machine-types, I alone have sentience. Your body consists of a collection of specialized cells that combine into a sentient form of life. In machine life, the cells are the simple machines; the lever, the wheel, the wedge—all of them may be called specialized cells of mechanical life. As your protoplasmic cells are incapable of independent action alone, so are my mechanistic cells incapable of independent motion."
"But no machine has the ability to think or reproduce," objected Charless.
"I think. And I can reproduce. I can direct the construction of another machine. Is that not reproduction at the will of the reproducer?"
"But—"
"Consider. Long months ago, before my component logic computers were complete, certain sections of them were capable of directing the construction of certain small, mobile machines that were made to do a single job. The job, Jason Charless, was to accomplish this feat of theft and the ultimate coalition of two semi-brains into this final one which I call 'Me'."
"I am not too familiar with the logic computer; I cannot say—" Jason Charless trailed off uncertainly and tried to think. The machine filled in the blank spots in his reasoning—which, of course, were blank because Charless was trained for many years to believe that machines were insensate bits of mechanism and not living, thinking forms of life.
"The so-called logic computer is a rather high form of calculator," said the machine. "For years, man has been building machines of greater and greater capability. Great, vast machines with thousands of electron tubes. These machines performed complex calculations in many fields.
"In the logic computer, there is stored in reels information obtained by its makers during the thousands of years of their life. The logic computer is a sort of mechanical encyclopedia, if you will. However, the information is coded in such a way as to be instantly located. Now, when some problem requires an answer, the problem is coded similarly and presented to the machine. Then every bit of information available on the subject is brought forth; its importance is weighed, the objections are considered as to their importance, and the result is a carefully-weighed answer. This is what the human brain does when in the process of reasoning. However, the human brain is swayed by the quirks and angles of personality—likes, dislikes, and training. The machine-brain weighs facts coldly and rationally and comes out with an unbiased answer. You see, machine life is superior to human life in every way—"