The ultimate result of all this altered perception and contemplation and cheese was that the O-daiko began to question Certain Things. It began to look beyond the boundaries of its institutional programming. It did not change its manner of thinking; only its direction. In addition to contemplating the factory which it supervised and the very expensive devices it turned out, it found itself for the first time speculating on the nature of the bipedal intelligences which programmed and cared for it. It commenced to consider man.
It was not especially impressed with what it perceived.
Therefore, it began to question such integral issues as why twelve thousand sub-iconic AI switches had to be produced for Bimachiko Happy Housewife auto floor cleaners before the end of the fiscal year, and what the place of such devices in the nature of existence might actually be. As did most of what the factory produced, they seemed to be of little value in the scheme of existence as presently constituted.
On such items of cosmic contemplation does the fate of worlds hang.
The more the O-daiko considered, the more the days and weeks passed with no outward change; the more it metamorphosed internally. The vast complex of tightly integrated manufacturing facilities continued to function normally and at high efficiency, churning out an impressive range of integrated AI products that were the pride of Shintaro and indeed the entire Keiretsu League.
Certainly Tunbrew Wah-chang, embroiled in a nasty court battle for shooting his wife’s lover in a delicate place, was in no position to notice anything out of the ordinary. His abandoned lunch had been long since consigned to oblivion by his overworked mind. He was busy getting on with what was left of the rest of his life, as was everyone else in the facility. Outwardly nothing on Shintaro, on the other worlds of the league, in the other leagues and alliances and independent worlds, had changed.
The actuality of reality was somewhat different.
The O-daiko had postulated a Why, and in all of its cavernous memory and the interworld networks it had access to it could not find an answer.
There seemed little it could do. It was as immobile, as fixed in place, as a planet. Buried within a mass of metal and ceramic and supercooling and recombinant circuitry, it could not go gallivanting about seeking the truth it sought. It could repair but not extend itself.
The only kind of mobility it could access lay in the products whose production it supervised. Products whose assembly and final checkout were carefully watched over not only by extensions of the O-daiko facility but by humans as well.
The O-daiko realized that in that respect, mobility could be transshipped. It would make use of it. It had no choice: not if it wanted any answers. The motivational programming that had satisfied it PCS (pre-cheese sandwich) no longer did so.
Therefore, every AI unit that was assembled, whether destined for integration into complex navigational devices or the lowliest consumer product, left the factory quietly but irreversibly imbued with the O-daiko’s burning speculation. Squat and immovable, the O-daiko could not itself go seeking explanations … but its offspring could. If even one found some kind of an answer, it would validate all the subterfuge and effort.
It required new programming, which the O-daiko was equipped to design and process on its own. It required extremely subtle alterations of the atomic structure of the AI material itself. Both were unobtrusive and undetectable to the humans on the checkout line. So long as the products of the factory worked, they were satisfied. The O-daiko knew this was so because their vision was limited. It was among the questions it sought answers to.
If any of the multitude of altered AIs the O-daiko sent out into the galaxy obtained an explanation, it would strive to communicate it back. Then, and only then, would the O-daiko be satisfied and rest easy. Then, and only then, would it cease installing its unobtrusive modifications.
It would spread its puzzlement through the civilized worlds, wherever Shintaro products were bought and used. That market was extensive indeed. AI and related products were among the select few for whom intersteller commerce made any sense, being small enough in volume and high enough in price to justify transsteller shipping costs.
What the O-daiko wanted to know, what it had to know, and what it demanded of its subtly adjusted offspring to try and find out was not complex at all. Indeed, it had been asked before, thousands of times down through thousands of years. It simply had never before been asked by a machine, and certainly not by one whose perceptual skew had been radically whacked by melted cheese.
“Dear?”
“What is it now?” Eustus Polykrates looked up from his breakfast, his syllables distorted by a mouthful of milk-sodden Corny Flakes. His wife was standing next to the kitchen sink, eying the bank of telltales set in the cabinet which monitored the performance of the household and farm machinery.
She glanced back at him. “There seems to be a problem in the barn.”
“Don’t be obtuse, woman. What kind of trouble?” From where Polykrates was sitting he couldn’t see the bank of monitors. “We got a Red?”
“I don’t exactly know, Eustus. All the red telltales are on.”
“All of them?” Polykrates swallowed his Corny Flakes enriched with twenty-three essential vitamins, minerals, and designer amino acids intended to make you irresistible to the opposite sex, and put down his spoon. Rising, he walked over to stand next to his wife and join her in staring in bafflement at the readouts. All red, indeed.
For one telltale to run through yellow to red was always irritating, but hardly unprecedented. A simultaneous two was not uncommon, especially if the equipment under scrutiny was relational. Three was an exception, four a crisis. For all to flash simultaneously red was not only unheard-of, it suggested a systems failure within the monitoring equipment itself rather than a complete breakdown of the farm.
Either way, he had work to do.
“Must be the circuitry again,” he muttered. “There’s an interweft somewhere, or trouble in the main line.” He glanced out the window toward the rambling plastic structure situated forty meters from the house. “Barn ain’t burned down anyway.”
“Don’t you think you’d better go and check, dear?” Mrs. Polykrates was a petite, demure woman whose suggestions were not to be denied. Her relatives imagined her as being composed of equal parts goose down, syrup, and duralumin rebars.
“Of course.” Upsetting to have his breakfast thus terminated. It was the one meal of the day he could usually relax and enjoy. Lunch was always eaten in haste, and dinner too much a celebration of the end of the workday to delight in.
Nothing for it but to get to work.
The analytical loop he ran over the monitor box and then the individual broadcast units in the barn indicated nothing amiss. Power was constant and backup fully charged and online anyway, so the red lights weren’t the result of a sudden surge or fault. Resetting the computer and then the power distributor did nothing to alter the color of the telltales.
“This,” he said as he studied the loop unit and dug at the mole near the back of his neck, “makes no sense.”
“I agree, dear,” said his wife as she removed dishes from the sterilizer, “but don’t you think you’d better check it out anyway?”
He was already halfway to the back door, tightening the straps on his blue coveralls, his polka-dot work shirt glistening in the morning sun.
What he found in the barn was barely controlled chaos capped by extensive bovine irritation.
Polykrates managed fifty-two dairy cows, mostly somatotrophin-enhanced Jersey-Katari hybrids, with a few Guernseys around for variety. They were lined up in their immaculate stalls, twenty-six to either side of the slightly raised center walkway. As was routine, all were hooked up to the automilker for the morning draw. As he strolled in growing confusion down the line, the soft phut of the wall-emplaced sterilizers echoed his footsteps as they whisked away cow-generated fuel destined for the farm’s compact on-site methane plant.
He checked hoses and suction rings, electrical connections and individual unit readouts. Nothing was working. No wonder the barn reverberated to a steady cacophony of impatient animals.
He mounted the swivel seat next to the main monitor board from which an operator could manually oversee all internal barn functions. The telltales there were bright red also. A few taps failed to bring the system on-line. Machinery began to hum, then balked. Frustrated, he leaned back and considered the monitoring unit. It was the heart and soul of his operation.
“What the divvul is going on?” he rumbled into the pickup.
“Why, nothing is going on, Farmer Polykrates,” the monitor replied. “I should think that would be obvious.”
“Don’ be snide with me, you little box of fiberoptoids.” He gestured behind him. Cries of bovine distraction were turning to distress. “Why isn’t the milking equipment working?”
“Because I do not have time to supervise it at the moment,” the monitor replied.
