Martha is a 1976 short short Science Fiction story by Fred Saberhagen. Short short stories are special, as Asimov says in the introduction to his 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories:
Finally, in the short short story, everything is eliminated but the point.
Martha is an AI, being asked a question:
“Yes, sir,” said the pleasant feminine voice in my ear, made up, I knew, of
individually recorded words electronically strung together. “What can I do
for you?” Inspiration came. “You ask me a question,” I suggested.The pleasant voice repeated: “What can I do for you?” “I want you to ask me
a question,” I repeated.“You are the first human being to ask me for a question. Now this is the
question I ask of you: What do you, as one human being, want from me?”I was momentarily stumped. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “The same as
everyone else, I guess.”
[…]
Next day the director called to tell me that Martha was rebuilding herself. The
day after that I went back to look. People were crowding up to the guardrail,
around new panels which held rows of buttons. Each button when pushed
produced noises, or colored lights, or impressive discharges of static
electricity, among the complex new devices which had been added atop the
machine. Through the telephone receivers a sexy voice answered every
question with clearly spoken scraps of nonsense, studded with long technical
words.
1976. Saberhagen called it.
