One day, with Doc Lanvin's remarks sharply in mind, I went up there and waited my turn at George's microphone.
"Can a true android, with all the human attributes of mind and feeling, be made, George?" I asked.
George rustled inside his unpretentious black cabinet and replied in a bass voice:
"I believe that it can and will be done. Like space travel, it is part of the natural course of history."
"What is the most difficult phase of doing so?" I enquired further. "Building the brain?"
"No. Building the brain should be relatively simple. Giving an android a consciousness, an awareness of self, should be much more difficult. Philosophers have had trouble even defining consciousness."
I chanced a third question, the answer to which I already knew: "Don't you have a consciousness, George?"
"It is understood that no means yet exists to provide Earthly mechanisms with such a thing," George replied evenly. "I am no more aware than the first crude adding machine thinking out the sum of five and seven. A question to me merely sets a search and a reasoning process for a reply in motion. It is not necessary that I know that I do this."
Someone spoke from behind me: "Unaware thought. It even happens in our own subconscious minds. But it's hard to believe that George doesn't know his own reality. He's so human."
I turned. It was Jan Randall, coloring a little. "Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Harver. I didn't mean to eavesdrop," she said.