The little pool cleaner taught the young man a great deal about the fundamentals of robotics design. Those lessons were incorporated into the other household robots, until one of them —a simple household cleaner—became sufficiently robust and autonomous that the young man began to offer it as a kit, via mail-order. The kit sold well, and a year later the young man offered it as a pre-assembled domestic robot. The robot was a runaway success, and the young man's firm soon became the market leader in domestic robots.
Within ten years, the world swarmed with his bright, eager machines.
He never forgot the little pool cleaner. Time and again he used it as a test-bed for new hardware, new software. By turns it became the cleverest of all his creations, and the only one that he refused to strip down and cannibalise.
When he died, the pool cleaner passed to his daughter. She continued the family tradition, adding cleverness to the little machine. When she died, she passed it to the young man's grandson, who happened to live on Mars.
"This is the original pool," Zima said. "If you hadn't already guessed."
"After all this time?" I asked.
"It's very old. But ceramics endure. The hardest part was finding it in the first place. I had to dig through two metres of topsoil. It was in a place they used to call Silicon Valley."
"These tiles are coloured Zima Blue," I said.
制作这个游泳池清洁机器人的过程中，年轻人掌握了大量的机器人设计技术的原理。他运用这些原理，制作出了一系列其他的家用机器人，直到其中一个机器人——一个简单的家庭清洁机器人——变得十分强健，而且具有自主意识。这个年轻人就开了一家邮购公司，把这种机器人作为一种工具出售。机器人卖得很火。一年之后，年轻人又推出了预装配的家用机器人。这种机器人取得了巨大的成功，年轻人的公司逐渐成为了家用机器人市场的领先者。
在接下来的十年内，整个世界到处都有这些聪明的、热心的机器人的身影。
但是他从来都没有忘记当年那个小小的游泳池清洁机器人。他把这个清洁机器人作为试验机，一次又一次地给他增加新的软硬件。清洁机器人一直是他所有发明中最聪明的一个，也是唯一一个没有被遗弃或者淘汰的机器人。
当他去世的时候，他把游泳池清洁机器人传给了他的女儿。他的女儿继承了父亲的事业，继续提高这个小机器人的智力。当她去世的时候，年轻人的外孙继续传承家族的传统。这个时候外孙已经住到火星上了。
“如果你还没猜到的话，我来告诉你这就是当初的那个游泳池，我把它搬到了这里。”齐玛说。
“始终都没有变?”我问道。
“它确实非常古老，但是瓷砖经受住了岁月的考验。寻找游泳池的过程中，最困难的工作就是找到它最初的地方。我不得不挖掉了两米深的表层土壤，才把它挖掘出来。它所在的地方曾经有一个响当当的名字——硅谷。”
“这些瓷砖都配上了齐玛蓝。”
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