- This is set in one of the factory's labs. Alquist is lamenting the fact that he can't figure out how to make robots.
- "Why didn't anyone write down the formula?" he wonders. Good question—it's almost like Čapek needed amped-up melodrama, so made his characters unaccountably stupid.
- Alquist goes into a long soliloquy of lament. He's got a lot of soliloquies. It's like everybody died and he was exiled to a Shakespeare play.
- Robot servants come in and tell Alquist there's a committee to see him.
- He demands that they find him humans, but they say all the humans are dead.
- The robots threaten Alquist if he doesn't give them the formula, but of course he can't.
- They explained they killed all people because they wanted to be like people, and killing people is what people do. Well, they have a point there.
- Damon—one of the robot leaders—wants Alquist to perform experiments on robots.
- So Alquist says he'll dissect Damon. Damon doesn't like the idea, but he agrees to it.
- So Alquist cuts him open—ick.
- Two robots, Primus and Helena, are disturbed as they hear the sounds of the dissection.
- We get more agonized soliloquizing from Alquist, the king of agonized soliloquizing.
- Helena and Primus find some pages with math. Helena can't understand them because the play is sexist and thinks robots must not be able to do math if they're female robots.
- But Primus figures out that they're the secret of life. So maybe Alquist figured out how to make robots? It's really not clear.
- Helena talks about wanting to be a bird; Primus talks about dreaming.
- They're sort of getting souls.
- Primus says she's beautiful; she isn't sure whether to believe him.
- They start combing each other's hair and laughing.
- Alquist comes back into the room; he thinks that they're humans at first, but Primus explains that they're robots.
- He also says that they were made by Dr. Gall, so they're some of the robots who maybe have souls.
- Alquist says that he has to perform experiments, and tells Primus to take Helena off for dissection.
- Primus basically says: no way, I love her—cut me up instead! (Aww… robots in love—aren't they cute?)
- Helena won't let them cut Primus up either, so Alquist determines that they're in love, and tells them to go off and make baby robots.
- How will they make baby robots though? It's not exactly clear; Alquist seems a little confused about biology.
- Or maybe he discovered the secret of life coincidentally at the same time as the robots got souls?
- At any rate, he does another soliloquy at the end about how God is cool and everything is going to live and happiness is restored now that the robots can love and create life.
- Again, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but that's the end.