"Boy," said Herb, "you're topnotch robots, if I do say so.”
Gary snarled at him across the table. "Pipe down," he warned.
"Maybe you aren't robots anymore," Caroline was saying. "Maybe through all these years you have become real entities. Your creators must have given you electrochemical brains, and that, after all, is what the human brain amounts to. In time those brains would become real, almost as efficient, probably in some instances even more efficient than a protoplasmic brain.
And brain power, the ability to think and reason, seems to be all that counts when everything is balanced out.”
"Thank you," said the Engineer. "Thank you very much. You are so kind to say so. That is what I have tried to tell myself.”
"Look here," said Gary. "It really doesn't matter, does it? I mean, whether you are robots or independent entities. You serve the same purpose, you follow the same dictates of conscience, you create the same destiny as things that move and act through the very gift of life. In many ways, to my mind, a robotic existence might be preferable to a human existence.”
"Perhaps it doesn't really matter," agreed the Engineer. "I told you once that we were a proud people, that we had inherited a great trust, that we had carried out that trust. Pride might have kept us from telling you what we were, but now I am glad I have, for the rest will be easier to understand.”
"The rest," said Tommy in surprise. "Is there more?”
"Much more," said the Engineer.
"Wait a second," rumbled Kingsley. "Do you mean that all you Engineers were created by a race that flourished three billion years ago, that you have lived through that space of time?”