by Barry Rosemberg

One was short and round. The other was tall and lean. One was Prime Minister of Australia. The other was Minister for Defense. It wasn't hard to guess which was which.

Quint Hasid, Defense Minister, had come up through the ranks. He'd led the Australian battalion when the U.S had invaded Jamaica. He'd attacked East Timor when it proposed sole claim to its oilfields. It was even rumoured that he'd planned a pre-emptive strike on New Zealand. Definitely, in his early years, he'd been in hand-to-hand combat.

Wally Su, Prime Minister, had also been in the wars - though of a quite different sort. When US nuclear-powered ships had attempted to dock on Aussie shores, he'd been at the forefront of protesters. When Australian Aborigines in the Northern Territories had demanded back their land rights, he'd stood at their side. He, too, it was rumoured had come close to hand-to-hand combat. Only his tendency for self-preservation had prevented it. Quint called it cowardice. So did Wally. He didn't mince his words.

Following a successful military career, Quint had moved into politics. He'd first joined the I Shoot, I Vote party. They'd turned out to be too obviously right-wing and so he moved on to the Forests are for fuel party. His kids had urged him out of that one. Finally, he'd settled for the middle-of-the-road One Family party. He'd progressed well despite stories that he still maintained gun-fuel connections. But those rumours, he claimed, were just a media ¬¬beat up.

Wally had always been into politics. Since uni, and for the next twenty years, he'd been a member of Democratic Labor. Following the successful ban on nuclear visitations, he'd gone on to reduce guns in the community while increasing trees. As the climate had become more turbulent and the rich got richer while the poor got poorer, Wally's big success had been in uniting Democratic Labor, One Family and the milder Greens into the Green Welfare Alliance. Since this was popularly known as the Green Welf, Aussies called Wally The Green Elf. It was rumoured that he still had links with ultra Greens. This was never denied. The Green Elf had his fairies everywhere. When the Aussie battler finally became tired of being led into war by the Coalition, Wally was voted in as Prime Minister. In this uneasy alliance, it was inevitable, however, that Quint, The Tin Man in One Family, headed up Defense.

Six months after taking office, Wally arranged yet another meeting with Quint. He hefted a number of thick folders. "Robotics," he said. "Artificial intelligence. Pattern recognition. Do we need to continue these?"

"They provide enormous benefits."

"After…" Wally consulted the folders, "eighty years? And billions?"

"They provided smart systems during the recent, er, wars."

Wally rubbed his smooth cheeks. "Did we need those wars?"

Quint's face tightened. "There were peacetime spin-offs, too."

"Eighty years worth?"

"They're have been some advances."

Wally sighed. "Sure, if I write like a typewriter then a scanner can read it. If I speak like a synthesizer then a speech thingamajig will decode it."

"We have…"

"We have not made machines more intelligent. That's simply making people more like machines."

"But…"

Wally was on a roll. "If I say that's it out comes that shit."

"Sir!"

"If…" Wally paused. He wasn't used to sir. "Yes?"

"We have made advances."

"You have?"

"We can make robots."

"You can?"

"Their surface is indistinguishable from human skin."

"I thought something like that was achieved twenty years ago."

"Not from close up. We have also replicated all human muscle servomechanisms."

"That's good, very good." Wally twinkled. "Er, what's a servomecho-something?"

"It means that it moves like a man."

"Really? From close up?"

"Right down to the eye saccades."

"Sack what?"

"Eye tremors. Small eye movements."

"Really! Well, there's plenty of those after a hard day's night."

The Green Elf grinned. The Tin Man didn't. Nor did Wally expect him to. Their differences ran deep.

"So, these robots walk like a man and look like a man."

"Yes, sir."

"But they don't actually see nor speak."

"A few more years…"

"And a few more bullion." Wally leant back and folded his palms around his round stomach. "Robots that think and speak and see. Have you really considered the epistemological foundations of what you're doing?"

Quint had fought with all sorts of weapons. He wasn't going to be beaten by words. Not by epistemological, anyway. "There are various schools of thoughts, sir. One could spend a lifetime discussing them and never achieve a thing."

"My electorate," Wally began, managing to look both jovial and tough at the same time, "has Greenie beliefs. They don't like what you're doing. They prefer to think that a person is more than a mere machine. I don't think they'd ever vote robot."

"Yes, sir." The Defense Minister's face tightened even more. If ever there was a machine in human clothing, he was it. "Galileo faced the same attitude when he argued that the earth went around the sun."

Wally scratched his head. "It does?"

"Yes, of course."

"The earth moves?"

"Yes."