- The play starts in the central office at Rossum's Universal Robots.
- Harry Domin, central director, is in the office dictating to Sulla. He dictates one letter about how he's not responsible for damages on a delivery, then another confirming an order. He's a bureaucrat, and business seems to be good.
- Marius says a lady is waiting; she is Helena Glory, the daughter of President Glory.
- She wants to see the factory and production, which is supposed to be prohibited, but Domin says she can, in part because she's the president's daughter, in part because (it seems like) he's smitten with her.
- Domin is also condescending and keeps interrupting Helena. He's kind of a domineering jerk (thus his name, get it?).
- Domin does in fact know what she's going to say before she says it; he offers to let her see more than people usually do. He also holds onto her hand longer than he needs to. He's pushy and kind of unpleasant.
- Domin tells Helena about the history of the robotic process, which was invented by a guy named Rossum.
- Rossum figured out some way to make life. It sounds more like cloning than what we think of as robotics, actually. We get lots of talk about jellies and worms and squishy things, rather than nuts and bolts.
- Rossum decided to try to create a human being with his new process.
- Domin says this is a secret, but Helena says it's already in the papers, so it's not much of a secret after all.
- Domin says the real, real, no-kidding secret is that Rossum was insane, and wanted to destroy God, or prove that you didn't need God.
- Rossum was a materialist; he believed everything is matter, so there's no need for or place for spiritual forces.
- That's why he created robots as perfect replicas of humans, even down to sexual organs. He wanted to prove he could do it.
- But it took a long time to make up a human being exactly (ten years or so), so it wasn't very profitable. Rossum's son, young Rossum, streamlined the process and turned it into a profitable factory business.
- The papers say the two Rossums collaborated, but really they hated each other. Young Rossum cared nothing for old Rossum's atheism; old Rossum cursed young Rossum. There was a generation gap.
- Young Rossum just chucked all the bits about being human that relate to anything other than just working, and so created the robot, which is boring and can't engage in philosophical discussions. On the bright side: it is able to work quickly.
- Young Rossum tried to build non-human robots (like fifty-foot tall ones) but that didn't work very well either.
- Helena talks about robots she's seen at home; she's reluctant to see them as things, rather than as people.
- Domin introduces Sulla; Helena thinks she's a person, and is horrified to be told she's a robot.
- Helena refuses to believe Sulla is a robot. To prove it, Domin offers to have Sulla dissected to prove he isn't lying—which is pretty gross. (You're a jerk, Domin.)
- Sulla doesn't care though. She says she's not afraid of death because she doesn't know about it.
- Helena thinks that it's horrible that the robots don't care about death. She also thinks Domin is maybe an idiot for naming Sulla after a Roman general, even though Domin doesn't seem to know who that general actually was.
- Anyway, Sulla and Marius are sent off, and Domin burbles on about the vats for making robots. It all sounds kind of icky.
- Robots after they're made have to be taught (sort of like programming a computer, we suppose—though computers weren't in common use until decades after this play was written).
- But Domin wants to stop talking about robots and get down to the business of romantically courting Helena. There aren't any women in the factory, possibly because Domin is a sexist jerk (though he doesn't really consider that possibility).
- Farby, Busman, Dr. Gall, and Alquist all come in. Helena thinks they're robots and tries to get them to see that they are oppressed.
- But of course they aren't robots at all. Helena is a silly, confused do-gooder. (The play seems to be vacillating between condemning the sexist way Helena is treated and presenting her as a sexist stereotype of a vapid, overly sentimental woman.)
- Eventually they get it all sorted out. Helena thinks they'll send her away for being stupid and trying to cause the robots to rebel, but they don't care.
- Lots of people are always trooping through, trying to get the robots to rebel, but they never do, because they're just machines.
- (This is uncomfortably similar to ideas around before the Civil War that the slaves were happy and didn't want to rebel; the robots are basically fantasies of the perfect slaves.)
- Helena tries to convince the staff to sign on to liberate the robots, but they explain that robots have no will of their own. Occasionally they have seizures, they say, but that's just a breakdown. Robots don't even feel pain, though the staff is going to try to make them feel pain, because otherwise they carelessly hurt themselves.
- Helena asks why they don't give the robots souls, and they say they don't know how. Plus, it wouldn't be cost-effective. Souls get in the way of industrial production.
- Domin describes his dream of the future, in which robots make everything so cheap that there's no need for anyone else to work, and everyone just has to sit around perfecting themselves.
- Helena says that sounds nice. They invite her to lunch.
- She asks them why they make female robots, and they tell her that people like having female robots for traditionally female jobs (i.e., challenging sexist stereotypes is bad for business).
- They also say male and female robots feel nothing for each other. (Note that the possibility that male robots and male robots, or female and females might feel love isn't even a possibility, though Čapek would certainly have been aware of homosexual intellectuals like Oscar Wilde.)
- Then there's a bizarre scene where Domin gives Helena five minutes to agree to marry him or one of the other supervisors.
- They don't really treat Helena as any more human than the robots.
- She tells Domin he's a brute, he basically says, yeah, isn't it cool? Then she agrees to marry him.
- So, our takeaway here is that Domin is a jerk and a bully.