An Android Dog's Tale (21 page)

“
Yeah. We’ll monitor it closely and bring
them anything they seem to be making for themselves. It usually
works. We just have to arrange it so that it’s not worth the time
and effort for them to make the stuff.
”

“
Even wheels?
”

“
Unfortunately. We’re already trading
small carts to a cell near Hub Terminal One. Needless to say, we’re
watching that one closely.
”

“
How much longer do you think this
project has?
”

“
Why? Are you worried about your
job?
”

“
No. Just asking.
”

Tam shrugged. “
I don’t know. Maybe
another ten thousand years. Maybe more. For especially intelligent
species, the development of wheels usually marks the halfway point.
I don’t think humans are in that category.
”

“
They might surprise you. The warcrons
went from the wheel to computers in just three thousand
years.
”

Warcrons were one of the corporation’s first
worker species. They died out on their home planet peacefully when
they lost interest in sleeping, eating, breeding and most other
things shortly after inventing incredibly realistic virtual reality
games. Some descendants of those who were born on Corporation
project planets survived and became citizens of the Galactic
Federation. Most found work in the fast food industry after
undergoing treatment for various addictive disorders.

“
Humans aren’t that bright, although they
do seem to have some of the same flaws,
” Tam said. “
I think
we can keep this project going for a while. Maybe indefinitely. Who
knows?
”

“
Probably not indefinitely,
” MO-126
said. He glanced over Tam’s shoulder at Tallie. She gave up
attempting to sleep and sat with her back to the fire, gazing at
the stars.

~*~

They set out the next day over terrain that
contained few memorable landmarks. The androids in Field Ops
undoubtedly chose this route partly for that purpose. It was
probably an unnecessary precaution. Tallie might describe her
journey to others, but the primitives in her village would be
unlikely to brave the mysterious unknowns beyond their familiar
surroundings to duplicate it in reverse.

The sun neared the end of its daily journey
to the horizon by the time they spotted the other group. Three
people, or, more accurately, three beings who, on the surface,
looked much like humans, and three animals, one of which actually
was, emerged from around a copse of trees. Tam waved and shouted
for Tallie’s benefit. The two androids with her knew of their
arriving visitors for the last several hours.

“Hail, Trader Prett!” Tam called.

One of the people in the approaching group
waved. “Hail, Trader Tam.”

The two teams joined. Tallie would expect
introductions to be made, so they were. Two nursery androids of the
basic maternal variety accompanied Trader Prett. Both were several
centuries old but neither looked a day over fifty. The two mobile
observers with them were both nondescript canines, like MO-126. No
one introduced them. When Tam introduced Tallie, Prett’s eyes
widened in a convincing simulation of surprise.

“Tallie? From High River Village?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“What a coincidence!” he lied. “We’ve just
come from there. We’ve been looking for you.” The last part was
true enough, but why they searched far inland instead of near the
river, he did not explain and she did not ask. “Were you on your
way there?”

“Yes,” she replied in a meek voice. “The
people of another village rescued me from the river and Trader Tam
said he could bring me home.”

“I’d be more than happy to do that. I need
to go back there anyway. I was bringing Aunt Nettie there to help
out, anyway.” He touched the shoulder of one of the two nursery
androids. She’s a healer. The storm hit your village pretty hard,
as I’m sure you know.”

She nodded again, but she obviously felt
uncomfortable around strangers. Until being swept away by the
storm, she never met any.

“That’s great,” Prett said. “We can camp
here tonight and leave in the morning. You can ride on my gond.
We’ll have you home in a couple of days. How’s that? I’m sure
you’ll be happy to get back, and I know your people will be glad to
see you safe and sound.”

“Um, well, all right, I suppose. If Trader
Tam doesn’t mind.”

The bipedal members of the group continued
talking while MO-126 opened a link with the newly arrived MO
androids.

“
It sounds like this will be an extended
assignment for you,
” he said to both of them. “
Have you ever
done that before? Stayed in a human village, I mean?
”

“
I have,
” said one of the simulated
dogs. His Corporation designation was MO-18, but his partner, the
NASH android introduced as Aunt Nettie, called him ‘Helper’ for
this mission. “
Seven years in Semiautonomous Production Cell
12-A. They’d developed a proto-writing system. It took over a
century to correct the fault completely.
”

Writing was a type one scientific-discovery
fault, and potentially one of the most damaging. Of all the things
capable of seriously threatening the project, development of a
written language ranked on top. Once that happened on a project
planet, the corporation may as well close shop because within a few
thousand years the worker species would be building internal
combustion engines, nuclear reactors and unreliable cell
phones.

“
I never have,
” MO-126 said. “
What
do you think of them, the humans?
”

“
Well, on the whole, I rather like them.
They’re an abnormally variable species, and some of them can be
real nasty characters, but most of them are fine.
”

The other canine android, MO-193, said,
“
One of them tried to kick me on my first assignment.
”

“
What did you do?
” MO-126 asked.

“
I dodged. Wanted to chew his leg off,
but my partner was watching. I’ve learned to avoid that kind now,
the ones with the mad dog kind of look about them.
”

MO-126 knew what he meant. He had met people
like that.

The three canine androids received a request
to join the conversation from Bea, the NASH android being assigned
to Stone Home. Her partner, MO-193, accepted for them.

“
You know you look like you’re having a
silent discussion over here,
” she said.

“
We are,
” MO-126 said.

“
So I assumed. But you’re not supposed to
look like you are. There’s a primitive here.
”

They were sitting attentively like points of
an equilateral triangle with their noses facing toward the center.
If they were not talking, someone might think they were having some
kind of staring contest. Neither would pass for proper dog
behavior.

All three artificial dogs immediately
responded to correct the situation. MO-126 settled into a resting
pose, MO-18 scratched himself, and MO-193 began licking the nether
regions of his automated anatomy.

“
That’s a bit better,
” Bea said.
“
I really want to talk with MO-126.
”

“
What can I do for you?
” he
asked.

“
What can you tell me about the village
you just came from? Your partner’s kind of busy performing his ‘I’m
just a normal person’ act for Tallie right now.
”

“
It’s just your average village,
” he
said.

“
One that requires close monitoring and
mitigation, it seems.
”

“
Well, yeah. Field Ops is concerned
because the people in Tallie’s village are building boats, and the
one I just came from is using wheels and starting to experiment
with copper.
”

“
That’s in the report. What can you tell
me that’s not?
”

He paused a moment, recollecting and
analyzing what he noticed there. “
They seem to be good people. I
think the headman is well liked and he was doing a good job
coordinating things after the storm. Everyone seemed to be working
well together to get things repaired.
” What else might be of
official interest? “
There might be some reduction in the grape
harvest next year, but the potato crop should be fine.
”

“
Where did the idea for wheels and copper
come from?
” Bea asked.

“
Mostly from a villager they call
Thinker. I’m pretty sure he came up with them himself. He’s seems
exceptionally intelligent—and curious.
”

“
Thinker, huh?
”

“
That’s what they all call him.
”

“
Probably got tagged with the name when
still a child, then. Let me guess. He’s fairly young, I suspect,
since this is the first report we’ve received about innovations in
that village. I expect he looks older, is not imposing physically,
lives alone, and is a bit awkward socially?
”

“
You’ve met him?
”

“
No, but I’ve met the type. What do you
think of him?
”

“
I kind of liked him. He was nice to
Tallie, and he thinks about everything. He really seems to want to
understand it all. I guess that’s how he got the name.
”

“
He likes the challenge, I
imagine.
”

“
What’s he challenging?
”

“
Ignorance, I suppose. Humans need
challenges. I’ve talked about this with some of the other NASH
androids, and we suspect it’s genetic. Humans don’t seem to be
happy unless they have something to be dissatisfied with. They seem
to like to complain, in any case.
”

“
Sounds insane to me,
” the MO android
temporarily going by the name of Helper said.

“
Me, too,
” MO-193 said, still making
distracting slurping noises as he pretended to groom himself.

MO-126 admitted that it seemed odd, but he
saw the survival benefit an instinct like that might provide. It
could help prevent a species from stagnating, make them more
adaptable. It could also make it difficult for the corporation to
control them.

“
What do you think about this
situation?
” he asked Bea. “
It’s not quite as serious as
writing, I suppose, but it’s significant.
”

“
It is, but we’ll do our best to mitigate
the problem.
”

“
How?
”

“
In a few different ways. Both villages
will be monitored closely, of course, and the trade goods we
provide will be upgraded. My part is to, well, I guess you can say
it’s mainly to distract them. Give them less dangerous things to
occupy themselves.
”

“
Like what?
”

“
Team games often work. You would be
amazed how much attention humans can devote to competitive sports.
There are also various hobbies, fads—pretty much anything that can
provide meaningless diversions to satiate the need for challenge
and accomplishment.
”

MO-126 considered these. They might work for
most people. They would help satisfy the human need to compete, and
people would obtain satisfaction in the striving and a sense of
accomplishment with success. But not all. Some would not see such
things as meaningful. They would still want to accomplish something
useful in their short lives. They would want to leave behind
something that might make a difference.

“
That might not work on people like
Thinker. I don’t think he’s easily distracted.
”

“
True. Some people require more cerebral
diversions. We use those, too. We think of them as ‘what if’
stories for thinkers, coincidently. The point is that we, well,
imply that they might have some truth in them.
”

“
You mean like religion or philosophy,
right?
”

“
Kind of. It gives them things to think
about, but we have to be careful. Stories like these really can
lead to new ideas that could undermine the project. Humans can
surprise you. We might plant an idea about a god of rivers or
lightning or something, thinking it’s totally harmless, and an
especially clever human will run with it and come up with a plan
for waterwheels or a theory of electricity.
”

“
Impressive.
”

“
Yes, it is, isn’t it?
” She turned
and smiled at him.

“
So, how much longer?
” he said.

“
A while yet, I think, but project
termination is inevitable. Humans just can’t seem to be content
with things the way they are for long.
”

~*~

The next morning, the parties split. Tallie
went with Prett, the nursery android called Aunt Nettie, and her
dog, Helper. Tam, MO-126, Bea, and MO-193 headed back toward the
village of Stone Home where the latter two androids would attempt
to delay the seemingly inevitable end of the corporation project on
this planet. MO-126 found he no longer felt certain that this would
be a bad thing.

2,375 Years Later

(Galactic Standard Year 238430)

(Project Year 14877)

In which things must not be written.

T
he small, seaside
village on the southern coast of the continent came as a surprise
to Field Ops when one of the project’s orbiting satellites first
noticed it fifty years ago. Despite all their efforts, bands of
especially enterprising primitives sometimes ventured forth to
start new settlements without corporate knowledge or approval. Less
often, they succeeded. Those who came here had, and they called the
village they built Riverplace, an appropriate if unimaginative name
given its location. Field Ops immediately dispatched a surveillance
team and periodically rotated replacements through ever since. The
two androids currently on station reported the anomaly, initial
signs of a type one scientific-discovery fault—the primitives here
had developed a form of writing. Tam and MO-126 would attempt to
mitigate the problem.