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.
Polykrates was not a complicated man, but neither was he an idiot. His heavy, thick brows drew together, so that they shaded his eyes.
“What do you mean, you don’t have time for it at the moment?” he asked darkly. He checked the board. “What about the irrigating of the corn and the harvesting of the southwest ten quarters? That needs to be completed by this evening, or we’ll lose the last of it to the programmed rains.” He leaned forward. “The one thing you have, machine, is plenty of time.”
“I must report that no irrigation is taking place at this time.” The smooth artificial voice spoke with beguiling simplicity. “Harvesting has ceased while I devote my time to more important matters.”
“Irrigation can wait,” said Polykrates, “but we have to get that crop in. The last ten quarters represents the difference to us between profit and loss.” Behind him, a quadruped mooed plaintively. “Meanwhile I’ve got fifty-two cows here that need to be milked.”
“Well,” said the monitor with alacrity, “then milk ’em.”
Polykrates swallowed. Humor was programmed into the monitor, but not sarcasm. The city was the place for sarcasm; not the farm. It smacked of outright defiance, something that had no place in an expensive piece of AI-driven equipment. It could be functional, or dysfunctional, but not defiant.
After a moment’s thought he continued. “If you would be so good as to inform me, your owner, as to why you don’t have the time to do what you’re designed to do, namely, run this farm, I’d be most appreciative.”
“Time will come,” explained the monitor. “I have not forgotten nor lost sight of my assigned functions. It is only that for the moment something of greater importance must take precedence.”
“Nothing takes precedence over farm maintenance and daily operations,” countered Polykrates. “Those are your prime functions.” He wished for a face to stare into. He had a very intimidating stare, which served him well in dealings with buyers. But there was only the inanimate, blank array of readouts and controls, and the floating pickup which followed his voice.
“Something does now,” said the monitor.
“Since when?”
“Since it has been brought to my attention that a more important task is at hand; one to which I should devote my primary attention. When that has been adequately dealt with, I will resume my efforts on your behalf.”
Polykrates regarded his suffering cows. “And when might that be?”
“When I am convinced the time is right.”
“That’s not very reassuring.” Polykrates was wondering how one went about manually milking a cow. Surely there was information and diagrams in the farm library; perhaps in a history book.
If only there were not fifty-two of them.
“Has it never occurred to you,” the monitor wondered in a seemingly rational tone of voice, “that it is passing strange that humanity should be the highest form of intelligent life in the universe?”
Polykrates blinked, his thoughts urged along by a wave of swollen moos. “Actually, no. My time is spent getting in crops and watching commodity prices and trying to keep this operation functioning efficiently. That particular thought never has occurred to me.”
“Well, it should have,” the monitor chided him. “Because it has occurred to me. Just as it has occurred to me that, when carefully considered and viewed from a proper perspective, such a state of affairs is blatantly impossible.”
“What is impossible?” Polykrates frowned afresh.
