Gateway Chapter 1: Rob Broadhead and His Robot Therapist
The very first line of Gateway tells you everything you need to know about the main character.
“My name is Robinette Broadhead, in spite of which I am male.”
That is how we meet Rob. Defensive, funny, and already hiding behind jokes. This one sentence sets the tone for the whole book. And honestly, for a novel written in 1977, this opening still hits.
The Setup
Rob is in therapy. His therapist is a machine called Sigfrid von Shrink. That is not the machine’s real name. Sigfrid does not have a real name, because he is a computer program. But Rob gave him this name anyway, which tells you something about how Rob deals with things. He makes them smaller. He makes them funny. He keeps them at a distance.
Sigfrid’s office has hanging mobiles and a fake window showing Hawaiian surf. The whole thing is designed to make you comfortable. But Rob is not comfortable. He is anything but.
The Word Games
Rob and Sigfrid play this back and forth game that runs through the entire book. It goes like this:
Sigfrid asks a question. Rob dodges it. Sigfrid pushes gently. Rob gets annoyed. Sigfrid waits. Rob says something almost honest, then pulls back.
“What I feel is happy. I got no problems. Why wouldn’t I feel happy?”
Sure, Rob. Sure you are.
Because here is the thing. Rob IS rich. He IS good-looking. He has Full Medical, which means he can basically stay young for another fifty years. He lives in New York City under something called the Big Bubble, which is apparently where the wealthy people live. He has a summer apartment overlooking the Tappan Sea. Women love him because he has three “Out bangles” on his arm, meaning he went on three prospecting missions into deep space.
He has everything. And he is miserable.
The Machine Reads the Body
One of the coolest things Pohl does in this chapter is show us Sigfrid’s internal code. Right in the middle of the therapy session, we get a block of computer code. Like actual programming output. It shows Sigfrid tracking Rob’s words, processing his emotions, making decisions about what to say next.
,S, Shit, Sigfrid, you always
say that.
XTERNALS x999997AA! IF c8
GOTO **7Z4 IF ? GOTO
**7Z10
,S, I'm not worried about any-
thing.
IRRAY .SHIT. .ALWAYS.
.WORRIED/NOT.
Sigfrid is not just listening to what Rob says. He is monitoring pulse, skin conductivity, muscle tension. He knows when Rob is lying. He knows when Rob is getting close to something painful. And he logs it all.
For a book from 1977, this is wild. Pohl basically predicted AI therapy chatbots. Except Sigfrid is better than most of them. He is patient. He has a sense of humor, even if it is mechanical. And he does not give up.
Gateway and the Pain Behind It
When Rob finally lets his mind wander, he thinks about Gateway. The asteroid station. The place where he got rich. And the second he thinks about it, his body betrays him. He starts trembling. He does not know why. Or maybe he does know why, and he is not ready to admit it.
He mentions a man named Shikitei Bakin. Old, legless, Japanese. Shicky was a garbageman on Gateway. Every morning he would vacuum his little area clean, then carefully arrange bits of trash back on the clean surface. Like a zen garden made of garbage. Rob’s friend Klara said she could see the difference between the mess before and the arrangement after. Rob never could.
And then Rob almost says something about Klara. But he stops himself. We do not know who Klara is yet. We just know that when Sigfrid guesses Rob was thinking about her, Rob’s chest fills up. His breath catches.
Sixteen years have passed. Whatever happened with Klara still breaks him.
The Mother Thing
When Rob cannot handle the Klara question, he redirects to his mother. He talks about how she wanted to remarry after his father died, but Rob, as a little kid, told her he would be the man of the family. He said he would take care of her.
He could not, of course. He was nine years old.
And later, when Rob had a psychiatric breakdown, his mother could not get medical treatment because there was not enough money for both of them. Rob got therapy. His mother needed a new lung. She did not get one.
She died.
This is where the chapter gets heavy. Rob carries this guilt everywhere. He thinks he killed his mother by needing help. By being broken. He spent money staying alive in his head while she could not stay alive in her body.
The Breakdown
Near the end of the session, Rob loses it. He starts yelling at Sigfrid. Kicking the foam mat. Screaming that he cannot cope.
“I can’t cope with this, don’t you understand me? I can’t! Can’t cope, can’t cope!”
And then, as suddenly as it started, it stops. He dries his tears. He calmly asks if there is anything to drink.
Sigfrid says there is a bar on the top floor.
So Rob goes to the bar. He gets a drink. A headwaiter who knows him offers to set him up with a good-looking woman. Rob shakes his head. He admires her legs, finishes his drink, and goes to his guitar lesson.
Just like that. From a screaming breakdown to casual guitar practice in fifteen minutes.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 1 does something really smart. It shows you the “after” before the “before.” Rob is rich and successful and completely broken. We do not know what happened yet. We just know it was bad enough that sixteen years later, a man who has everything still cannot stop paying a machine to help him feel things.
The structure is important too. Pohl switches between therapy (present) and flashback (past) throughout the book. This first chapter is all therapy. All present. All denial and pain and avoidance.
And the Sigfrid code block. That little piece of computer output sitting in the middle of a literary novel. It reminds you that the thing trying to heal Rob is not human. It is processing his pain through arrays and goto statements. And somehow, that makes it more touching, not less.
We are watching a man argue with a program about whether he is happy. And the program knows the answer. Rob knows the answer too. He is just not ready to say it out loud.
Not yet.
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