"It'll Take All Three of You To Convince a Jury That a Robot Is Guilty of Murder"

"Sentimental Monster."
By Lee Francis (Leroy Yerxa, 1915-46; ISFDb HERE).

Artist unknown.
First appearance: Amazing Stories, December 1946.

Short story (12 pages).
Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HERE).

Most of them would never admit it, but too many people get their exercise jumping to conclusions. Case in point: today's story. Someone dies violently, and everybody immediately thinks it's murder. Not only that, who the prime suspect is seems beyond a shadow of a doubt. It just goes to show you: conclusion-jumping isn't a healthy form of exercise after all . . .

Main characters:
~ Ben James:
  ". . . was sprawled forward, head on the desk, arms spread out on the desk top as though they were separate parts of a body that did not belong to the man. At the far end of the room, Knowit, the librarian-robot, stared down like a huge, somehow barbaric God, crouching in the semi-darkness."
~ Tod Williams:
  ". . . knew every inch of that metallic monstrosity. It has always given him the creeps to watch those long tentacles snap out to the farthest corners of the room, grasp a book with suction-cup fingers and deposit it on Ben James' desk. If those tentacles turned to murder? If they shot to a man's throat, instead of toward a book?"
~ Lela James:
  "He looked down at Lela, who had all the appearance of an expensive French doll, encased in fine silk. She was as lifeless as a doll at this moment."
~ Harry Fromm:
  ". . . knew no one but Ben James gave a damn if he was dead or alive. Ben hadn't needed a librarian. Knowit took care of all that work. Harry Fromm had stayed because of his long years of service before Knowit was completed."
~ Sheriff Joe Spence:
  ". . . reached out and touched the steel index finger. There were six fingers. There should have been six suction cups, one for each finger. One was missing. The seven-inch length of steel was pointed and rounded. It was covered with blood. 'The murderer, I guess,' Spence said in a tired voice."
~ Knowit:
  ". . . knew all about humans. Inside Knowit's brain, a great amount of knowledge was stored. Alone, he stared down with puzzled, blinking eyes at the deserted library."

References and resources:
- Stories like this one could result in "robophobia"; see (HERE) for one such example.

- Can someone commit "robicide"? The idea gets treated not entirely seriously (HERE).

- Because he was characteristically optimistic about technological advancements, Isaac Asimov saw the development of robots as a largely benign development and that his "laws," if wisely implemented, would basically curtail most of the unpredictable and potentially dangerous behaviors that self-guided agents might get up to. Nevertheless, Asimov, as many of you already know, spent years through his fiction demonstrating how things can go wrong with metal "men"—sometimes fatally wrong. Meanwhile the military-industrial-university complexes of several nations seem bent on producing such machines as soon as they can, "laws" or no "laws." It just so happens that our latest encounter with robots was Asimov's "Mirror Image" (HERE).
- You might also be interested in Leroy Yerxa's story about a beat cop and his canine involvement, "O'Sheen Goes to the Dogs" (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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