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                    If Joe Mulloy was perfect--and
                  he was--then beyond his perfection
                        here only could be ...

                            SUPERJOEMULLOY

                         By SCOTT F. GRENVILLE

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
             Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1960.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Joe Mulloy lounged in the plushest chair in his luxurious office. All
around him, on the walls, on the ceiling, even in strategic spots all
over the floor, there were mirrors. Joe sneered at the place where the
mirrors were most profuse; twenty or thirty perfectly identical Joes
sneered back at him. He admired his sneer from every angle, shaping
and changing the contemptuous look on his face with his hands, stroking
it, much as other young men in a far earlier age had stroked and
twisted their fine mustachios.

As usual, Joe Mulloy was engrossed in his two favorite hobbies:
narcissism and indolence.

Joe's friends, of which there were very few, could have given you a
fairly accurate resume of his character in five words, his sneer and
his indolence.

In the first respect they would have been right. Joseph Mulloy had been
born with a sneer on his face. His whole early life had been centered
around that sneer. It had enraged his father, distressed his mother,
driven his teachers to tears, his playmates to tantrums. He stopped
doing homework at the age of eight, but the teachers passed him on
anyway to avoid complete mental breakdown.

Gradually, Joe Mulloy began to get his way in everything by virtue of
his sneer. It was not merely openly supercilious; that was the beauty
of it. It was so subtle, so faint, and yet such an open avowal of
contempt for the entire human race, that try as the people he tormented
would, to find something in his sneer to charge him with, they never
found anything.

In a very few years, registration day at Joe's elementary school
became a game of Russian Roulette, having as the loaded chamber the
question: "Who's going to get little Joey Mulloy in his class this
year?" Finally, when Joe Mulloy was fifteen years old, the local Board
of Education wisely decided to end Joe's formal education, rather than
make screaming meemies an occupational disease at the local high school.

Joe's father welcomed the expelling as an excuse to beat him to a pulp
and kick him out of the house. It was not until three days later that
the memory of Joe's sneer, enduring through all the punishment he had
received, made the father blow his brains out with the most accurate
German Luger he could buy at the pawn shop on short notice.

But Joe's friends would have been wrong in the second instance, for
Joseph Mulloy was not chronically indolent. In his own profession, Joe
Mulloy was the most industrious man imaginable. For Joe Mulloy was a
robot builder.

       *       *       *       *       *

Disinherited by his father, he had made a beeline for the nearest
positronics laboratory. The personnel manager had flatly refused him
the job when he had told her he had absolutely no qualifications, but
she was so disconcerted by his persistent sneer that she had to give
him the job just to get him out of her sight.

Once in the laboratory, he had gone right to work learning everything
there was to know about robots, scorning all help from the other
technicians. Since he held other scientists, past or present, in an
ineffable contempt, he had to learn everything by experience instead
of studying what his merely human predecessors had done. He was so
empirical that he learned all about alternating current by deliberately
sticking a wet finger in a light socket again and again.

He made mistakes at first, of course. In fact, he ruined several
thousand dollars' worth of laboratory equipment during his
apprenticeship. But his amazing sneer conquered all, and he was soon
recognized as the most brilliant--and the most conceited--man in the
field of positronics.

Now Joe Mulloy was lounging in a plush office chair, cultivating
to near perfection his already mature sneer, and suddenly feeling
maddeningly thirsty.

"Robot!" he said.

A startlingly human-looking robot seemed to materialize instantaneously
from nowhere.

"How might thy humble servant serve thee, O magnificent Master?" it
inquired, bowing so low that its partially metallic nose scratched the
rich mahogany floor.

"What took you so long, you damned fool?" asked Joe.

"I apologize, Gracious Master. I am incompetent and worthless."

"Get me a drink, you bucket of bolts," said Joe.

"I am grateful for a chance to serve thee, Benevolent Master," replied
the robot in its monotonous Uncle Tom patter, and made another
floor-scratching bow. Then it groveled out of the room.

"That robot is getting too slavelike," said Joe to himself, after the
robot had left. "All my robots seem to be that way. They do exactly
what I tell them to, and degrade themselves sickeningly before me. All
the people I've ever known seem to be that way, too. I wish I could
find at least one mind equal to mine to clash with. Then I could have a
real fight for once. None of this bowing and scraping."

Just then the robot entered with a Manhattan, made its usual
floor-gouging bow, and scraped its metal feet to get Joe's attention.
Joe turned to glare at the mechanical minion.

"Robot!"

"Yes, Omnipotent Mas--" the robot began, but Joe cut it off.

"Get over to the laboratory and blow yourself up! And find an empty
corner, where you won't do too much damage."

"Master, I am happy for the chance to give my life--"

"Never mind that, you glorified Erector set! Do as I say!"

"Yes, Master." The robot hazarded a slight bow, but forgot to crawl
out of the room on its hands and knees in its eagerness to follow its
master's orders.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joe Mulloy leaped to his feet. In the moment of his excitement, he
forgot that melodrama is a human weakness, and he became melodramatic
himself. Even his incorruptible sneer faded slightly as his excitement
grew.

"I must find someone with a mind equal or superior to mine," he told
himself. "Now who has a mind equal to mine? Obviously no one but me.
Therefore I must find someone with a mind _superior_ to mine. Now who
is superior to me?" For the first time in his life, Joe Mulloy was
confronted by what seemed an unanswerable question.

Joe's train of thought was interrupted by a deafening explosion from
the laboratory, as his latest robot jubilantly committed suicide. The
building shook violently for a few seconds, then subsided.

To his great surprise, he was able to answer his question.

"Of course! Since the only thing equal to me is me, the only thing
superior to me would be a super-me, a super-ego! I'll build a
super-robot, with all my magnificent qualities, only magnified a
thousand times! I'll build a Super Joe Mulloy!"

He ran the letters together to make it one word:

Superjoemulloy.

He dashed up to his laboratory, cleaned up the mess his overeager robot
had made in killing itself, and went feverishly to work on his new
project, learning the necessary techniques by experience, of course,
and applying them to his super-robot. He made some mistakes at first,
of course. But in three weeks and six days, Superjoemulloy was ready
for its debut in robot society.

Not one to miss a chance to impress mere humans with his genius, Joe
invited the world's greatest positronics experts to the unveiling of
Superjoemulloy. There was a tense air of excitement as Joe pulled the
lever that removed the big black curtain in front of the robot and
started the activation machine.

When they saw Superjoemulloy, the experts gasped with envy. It was
impossible to tell the super-robot from a human. Its limbs, torso,
and head were so well proportioned, and done in such fine detail,
that anyone in the room not in the know would have sworn that it was
a human being. There were even fingerprints delicately cut into the
super-robot's artificial hands. And Superjoemulloy looked exactly like
Joe Mulloy, except for the sneer. It was twenty times better even than
Joe's own. It was a super-sneer.

But although the activation machine was working its hardest, nothing
happened. The super-robot refused to move one solitary mechanical
muscle. Joe's guests began to file out, once the novelty of the robot
had passed. Joe left the room in disgust and went downstairs for a
drink.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he returned to the laboratory, Superjoemulloy was on its feet,
examining the laboratory equipment with obvious disgust. In the
preceding few minutes, the super-robot's super-sneer had grown more
perfect, and the robot was fast becoming the very personification of
contempt.

"Why didn't you move around when my friends were here, you heap of
junk?" Joe asked the super-robot.

Superjoemulloy turned to him. "I didn't want to display my perfection
before mere humans, you distorted blob of protoplasm," it said.

Joe Mulloy was becoming angry, but he tried not to show it. He downed
his drink.

"Get me another," he told the robot, holding out his glass.

"The hell with you," said Superjoemulloy. "What do you think you are,
God or something? Just because you slapped me together with your clumsy
butterfingers doesn't give you the right to order me around like some
common servant. Now that you've created me, I could do a better job of
robot-building myself. Now get the hell out of here."

Joe Mulloy turned on his heel and stomped out of the room. No robot was
going to talk to him like that! No, sir!

The super-robot quietly followed Joe to the door and gave him a
kick that sent him sprawling down the stairs. At the bottom of the
staircase, Joe whacked his face against the solid oak of the banister.
He turned groggily to look at the blurred image of the robot standing
defiantly at the top of the steps, with its hands on its hips. For
a brief second the sneer faded from Superjoemulloy's face, and was
replaced by an evil sadistic leer.

Joe Mulloy recalled the last line of Father William: "Now be off, or
I'll kick you down stairs." But the super-robot was far worse than
Father William. A conceited, contemptuous monster, it was totally
unlike Joe's warm, humble, self-effacing self! The sneering monster
must be destroyed!

Joe cunningly enticed the robot to leave the laboratory for Joe's
office, where it could admire its sneer in all the mirrors. Sneeringly
Joe wondered why anyone could admire a sneer so much. Without thinking,
he used his hand to smooth out the wrinkles in his now slightly worn
sneer. Then he crept upstairs to his laboratory to barricade himself
in there to think of a way to destroy Superjoemulloy.

At last he hit on the answer. A hypnosis machine.

"The robot is mechanical, so I'll have to hypnotize him by mechanical
means," Joe reasoned to himself.

He worked day and night, learning the necessary techniques as he went
along. He made some mistakes at first, of course. But in four days the
mechanical hypnosis machine was complete.

Joe found the super-robot in the mirror-lined office, where it had been
admiring and improving its sneer for the last four days. The sneer
was magnificent. But it still lay just one iota short of absolute
perfection. Try as the robot would, perfection in a sneer still lay
without its grasp.

"Genius!" shouted Joe, to get the robot to turn its head. He turned the
dial on the mechanical hypnosis instrument up to full power. "You are
now in my power!"

But now Superjoemulloy's sneer was completely perfect. With a look of
sublime contempt on its plastic face, it took the hypnosis machine,
turned it around, and aimed it right back at Joe Mulloy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joe Mulloy bowed so low that he skinned his nose on the rich mahogany
floor. "Yes, Master?" he said.

"Bring me a drink, you blot of living tissue!" said Superjoemulloy.

Joe Mulloy made another nose-skinning bow and groveled out of the room.

"This human is getting too slavelike," said Superjoemulloy to himself.
"I suppose I could rebuild him, though."

Joe returned almost instantly with a Manhattan, made his
usual nose-damaging bow, and scraped his leather shoes to get
Superjoemulloy's attention.

The super-robot turned and glared at him. "Human!"

"Yes, Master?"

"Get up on that slab in the corner."

Joe Mulloy obeyed.

With all the skill of an experienced human-builder, Superjoemulloy
began to take Joe's body apart. Joe screamed, but the super-robot
ordered him--by hypnotic command--to shut up, and Joe obeyed.

Superjoemulloy began to put together a Supersuperjoemulloy out of what
had once been Joe Mulloy.

He made some mistakes at first, of course.