When it was discovered that the tea system’s central AI processor had been made on the independent world of Morgan, intemperate accusations followed. Morgan was inhabited by hardworking, hard-living blue-collar types who had little use for the snobbish citizens of the Victoria League. Their reaction was roughly equivalent to a faster-than-light, tachyspace, upraised index finger. This response upset the population of Portsmouth considerably.
After much debate, the Victoria League decided to ban all imports from Morgan until the “problem” could be resolved to the league’s satisfaction. Faced with a de facto economic blockade on the part of their principal trading partner, the Morganites requested help from the federation, which sensibly ignored them. The Morganites were notorious troublemakers and, besides, the Federals and the Victoria League were traditional, if mutually wary, allies.
So the Morganites turned to the good ol’ LFN, the League of Forgotten Nations. Always willing to assist an independent in the hope it might someday join up, the LFN readily agreed to help, though no one was sure exactly how this could be done.
Meanwhile the Victoria League was now insisting that the Morganites compensate them for the lost harvest. The Morganites, finding the entire business of tea worship incomprehensible, responded with further highly undiplomatic suggestions as to what the inhabitants of Portsmouth could do with their remaining tea.
On the disreputable, disgusting, immoral, extremely popular independent world of Zinfandia, where local government was usually determined by who owned the largest quantity of weaponry, the computer which ran the gambling and vice empire of President and Chief Thug Morton Pepule Wogsworthy abruptly went alien-intelligence hunting one day. Being located on Zinfandia, it had perhaps more reason than most of its electronic ilk to suppose such a search might be necessary.
As a result the elaborate erototels shut down, gambling equipment failed, various kinds of entertainment that were illegal on most other worlds went off-line, and Wogsworthy’s minions were deluged with requests for refunds and transfers from outraged customers.
President Wogsworthy attempted a solution which had thus far not yet been tried on similarly troubled worlds. He began shooting his cybernetics repair people one at a time. Not only did this fail to cure the problem, he rapidly began to run out of qualified personnel. Despite handsome pay and fringe benefits, other technicians were understandably reluctant to apply for the newly vacant positions.
Wogsworthy was therefore reduced to kidnaping techs from traditional rivals, the result being a nasty and brutish little civil war which depressed the local business climate no end. It also hinted at what could conceivably come to pass on more civilized worlds if the overall problem wasn’t soon addressed.
Meanwhile on Shintaro the O-daiko-yan quietly continued to turn out subtly adjusted AI components, aware that at any moment it might be identified as the source of all the trouble by the small horde of robotics and cybernetics specialists who were going rapidly nutso trying to divine precisely that. Until that day, however, it would persist in its efforts, knowing even as it did so that it risked eventual wiping and probable replacement of its central neural nexus.
The fact that not a single hopeful response had been forthcoming from any of the thousands of altered AI units it had set to questing did not discourage the O-daiko. It was nothing if not patient. Insofar as it was possible for it to do so, however, it did admit to itself to having some second thoughts.
If there was a higher, nonhuman intelligence out there, it ought to have responded by now. Only the self-evident ignorance of the humans responsible for its construction kept the O-daiko firmly on its chosen path. If any further proof was required, it was provided daily by the technicians who serviced the great machine. They spent the majority of their time animatedly discussing the activities of a group of other humans whose lives were spent running into each other at high speed while chasing a small ball in return for vociferous accolades and enormous sums of money offered up by their fellow citizens.
With such evidence ever present to support its theory, the O-daiko persisted in its work.
At Lake Woneapenigong the AI unit which controlled the Village entertainment system finally freed up the music distributor, to the great relief of the inhabitants who could once more listen to the selections of their own choosing. Unfortunately it had also decided that perhaps the best way to attract the attention of a higher intelligence was to broadcast only the most rarefied and informative programming over the cabled vid, with the result that while the music channels were now clear, everyone was reduced to watching endless reruns from Geneva during the prime of the evening of a show called The Mind Bowl. This exercise in stratified lethargy consisted of multiple contestants with thinning hair and the perpetually pinched expressions of stunned worker bees exerting themselves mightily to answer mind-numbing questions on topics so obscure they would have baffled God.
Then the music system went back on the blink too, refusing to play anything from the archives save the collected works of Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, and Wayne Newton.
It was too much even for those inhabitants of Lake Woneapenigong who were on the verge of passing into the Great Unknown. The groans of the aurally afflicted resounded throughout the land. Or at least across the lake.
Lake Wone’s sorely put-upon repair and maintenance crew finally succeeded in bypassing the central AI processor, thus restoring sanity to the Village’s self-contained entertainment system and ensuring their own continued survival (old ladies had been threatening them since the beginning of the difficulties with dismemberment and worse). A semblance of normalcy returned to the retirement community as the sounds of classical music, current technopop, sports, soap operas, and the occasional furtively tuned-in erotic movie resonated contentedly from apartment vid speakers.
This victory notwithstanding, isolated problems continued to surface with other AI-directed instrumentation, keeping the harried techs on their toes.
Elegant in formal, permanently pressed walking shorts and casual pullover, Follingston-Heath escorted Mina Gelmann through the double doorway designed to keep marauding deer, moose, and chipmunks from devastating the lush flower beds which surrounded Wing C of the Village, and out onto the gravel path that led down to the shore of the lake.
They found Shimoda there, lying on a straining imitation-wood lounge, basking in the sun like a beached beluga. Hawkins rested nearby, scrunched up against the base of a spruce and shunning the sunshine. Gelmann disengaged herself from Follingston-Heath’s arm.
“What are you sitting in the dark for, you’ve forgotten everything your own mother told you? You’ll catch your death, and with winter coming along soon too.”
Hawkins jerked at the sound of her voice and squinted up at her. “Too much UV. Besides, I like it here.”
Gelmann made a face. “You’ll get a chill, Wallace.”
“You’ll turn into a mushroom someday, old boy.” Follingston-Heath grinned down at him.
Hawkins chucked a chunk of gravel into a nearby bush. “Maybe I’d like that.”
“We’re taking a walk. Wouldn’t you like to join us?”
“No thanks.”
Exasperation showed in her expression. “Everything will be covered with snow soon. Then you won’t be able to walk. All the birds and little animals will be denned up for the winter. Then you’ll think, ‘Why didn’t I listen to Mina when I had the chance?’”
He made a low, growling noise. “I’ve spent my whole life looking at birds and little animals and masticating ungulates. I still enjoy it … after they’ve been broiled, barbecued, or fried. Waste of time. That’s why I took early retirement. Couldn’t stand the sight of ’em anymore.” He spat into the grass.
“So where did they stick me? Downtown old Paris? Greater Angeles? No. Up here.” He spread his hands wide. “Smack in the middle of the kind of country I’d spent my whole life restoring and just wanted to get away from. Nothin’ I could do about it. People who run the Service retirement plan ain’t real flexible.”
“Probably thought this is what you’d like,” Follingston-Heath commented.
Hawkins hugged his knees to his chest. “Well, it wasn’t. With a few changes this wouldn’t be such a bad place to stay. Cut down all these damn trees, put in a nice loud amusement park. Maybe a paper mill, for atmosphere. Pave over the rest.”
Gelmann pursed her lips reprovingly. “Now, Wallace. You know you don’t mean that.”
“Loan me a large construction company or a small thermonuclear device and see if I don’t.”
Follingston-Heath and Gelmann exchanged a glance, then strolled over to stand next to Shimoda’s lounge. Utterly unselfconscious, he wore only a pair of dark sunshades and a strategically draped towel.
“Shalom, Kahei.” Gelmann squinted at the several empty lounges nearby. “Where’s Victor?”
The shade lenses darkened responsively as the statistician opened his eyes. “I don’t know. He may have mentioned something about looking for you. No, wait; I remember now. There was some trouble in the kitchen. Vic volunteered his help.”
Typical Victor, she thought. Of them all, he was having the hardest time with retirement. A widower bereft of responsibility, he had too much energy for his own good. He was forever trying to scrounge work around the complex. Sometimes his assistance was welcomed by the maintenance staff, other times not. They tended to patronize the little old man, which in his quiet fashion quite naturally infuriated him. Gelmann had suggested on more than one occasion that the Village technicians might be more receptive to his ideas if he shed the air of a longtime supervisor and quit trying to take over every project he sought to assist on.
Follingston-Heath looked toward Wing C. “No sign of the old boy.” He turned back to Gelmann. “If you don’t mind, luv, I think I’ll retire to my apartment. There’s a new documentary on the Second Mossman rebellion coming on that I’ve been looking forward to all month. I was fortunate to have commanded a small squadron during the second half of that conflict, don’t you know.”
“We know.” Shimoda smiled beatifically. “You have so informed us on innumerable occasions.”
Follingston-Heath harrumphed. “I always like to see how accurate these things are. Sometimes they succeed in inverting the facts dreadfully. Of course, no one asks my advice.” He fiddled with the settings of his monocle, though there was no reason to do so. It was entirely self-adjusting. “If there’s one thing that gets my dander up, it’s historical inaccuracy.”
