The three laws of what? Give me a break! This pretty much sums up the philosopy, life and times of Tik-Tok, a
robot whose asimov circuits have failed spectacularly to compute.
The first law of Robotics (supposedly seared into every positronic robot brain) is that:
“A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm”. Tik-Tok can be described as a Renaissance robot. But really not in a good sense.
He sees himself as an artist (thereby providing us with our potential warning of his volatile temperament). We first meet him in the home of his absent owners, where he is busy painting a wall mural pending their return. Being a bit of a clean freak, he's not very happy when the little blind girl from next door comes over and tracks mud through the hallway. However thanks to her dropping by, he is able to enhance the red on his mural. That his owners actually dislike any change in their décor is a moot point; Tik-Tok overcomes this minor detail by inviting a famous art critic to review the mural before they get back.
Thus catapulted into fame, Tik-Tok is given his own studio. He wastes no time in creating a band of robot assistant artists who (assuming that his instructions come from a human owner) double as bank robbers, arsonists and terrorists at every opportunity. Along with his individual moon-lighting homicides, these acts are accompanied by Tik-Tok's financial, social, and political rise to power, culminating eventually in a nomination for Vice President.
It is difficult to decide whether Tik-Tok is immoral, psychotic or (perhaps more accurately) inhuman. His criminal acts seem to be based both on social experiments and on personal abhorrence of humans, whom he sees as biologically repulsive and requiring disposal of at every turn. In addition to this, his talent for wrongdoing spans both the robot and human range of misdemeanours as he is apprenticed to sadistic colonels, murderous space pirates, corrupt politicians and er, ahem, robotlovers.
The novel itself is full of laugh-out-loud moments. Despite the plot’s fast-forward flash-back structure, its underlying dark thread of humour helps the reader to keep pace. Tik-Tok’s character is also made sympathetic by the fact that he spends as much time in the role of victim as he does in the role of perpetrator.
Somewhat ironically, Tik-Tok is eventually brought down by the eyes of technology (caught on camera strangling his chess opponent). Still, we are very much left with the feeling that Tik-Tok’s incarceration for murder is but a brief hiatus, and that his career will no doubt soon resume at its peak. Not however before he gives walls of his prison cell a brand new lick of paint.