Catch That Rabbit - I, Robot "Catch That Rabbit" Summary | I, Robot by Isaac Asimov- Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Originally published in 1944.

• Half a year after "Reason," Powell and Donovan are still on the job, this time testing out a multiple robot for asteroid mining. The multiple robot is made up of a supervisor robot named DV-5 (or Dave) and six worker robots who are like Dave's hands or fingers. In other words, Dave tells the fingers what to do (though a "positronic field" (11)) and they do the real work—like a regular human office.
• Dave's operation isn't supposed to need human supervision (2). Except when no humans are around to watch, he doesn't work right (6).
• Dave doesn't know why he goes haywire occasionally, and he's upset by it. Which is definitely one of those moments where you might go, "wait, how human are these robots? Because when my stapler jams, it doesn't feel bad about it." (Actually, your stapler does feel terrible about jamming and you should be nicer to it.)
• Powell and Donovan run Dave through some tests—the usual math and ethics problems—and he seems to be fine (43). (Check how Asimov works up from math problems and reflex tests to testing Dave's moral reasoning. We love it because he works up to something that seems ridiculous in other science fiction works—robots don't understand morals!—but because he worked up to it, it seems reasonable here.)
• Donovan thinks Dave might be planning a robot rebellion. Powell thinks Donovan is an idiot who reads too many stupid adventure novels (50). (Powell and Donovan are old partners, and they fight playfully.)
• They set up some security cameras to see when Dave goes haywire. They want to find out what he's doing and when he's doing it.
• What he's doing: it turns out that Dave and the robots are mostly marching or dancing around (68).
• When he's doing it: when there's a cave-in or other type of emergency.
• Powell and Donovan interview one of the worker robots, one of Dave's "fingers." But fingers don't know a lot, so that doesn't help much.
• So Powell and Donovan decide to go cause a cave-in in order to see what Dave does (which shows that they might be as smart as your average finger).
• Of course, they get caught in the cave-in. And they're running out of oxygen in their space suits (because, remember, this is all happening on an asteroid). And Dave has gone haywire, of course (218).
• Luckily there's a small hole between where the humans are trapped and where the robots are dancing. So Powell does what anyone would do in that situation: he shoots one of the worker robots.
• That snaps Dave out of the trance and he saves them.
• Powell explains to Donovan that Dave was going haywire when he had to control all six worker robots at once (265). Like, during an emergency. It would be like walking, chewing gum, counting to ten, reading this guide, and doing two other things at the same time.
• And when Dave was overloaded by trying to control all six worker robots—his fingers—then they would start to dance or march because that was Dave's version of "twiddling his fingers" (273).
• With that terrible joke, the story is over.
• And we're back with Susan Calvin and the interviewer. The interviewer notes that Calvin warms up when the subject is robots (274). So he asks her to tell him about an experience she had with robots.
• So she starts to tell him the story of Herbie, the mind-reading robot.