The alien craft spread out and took up orbital positions high above Daibatsume. It was an action they duplicated above dozens of other inhabited worlds. While the people below waited anxiously, some cowering in makeshift shelters, others curiously scanning violated skies, experts fought vociferously over how best to respond to gestures that, while intrusive, could not readily be construed as hostile.
Then the hundreds of alien craft began to communicate, and things started to happen.
Eustus Polykrates was slopping his mutated hogs, a melodious activity he had nonetheless not grown to love, when he heard the rumble. It came from the direction of the dairy barn and it grew louder as he rose to stare. His wife came out on the back steps, knitting programmer in her hands.
“Eustus? What’s happening?”
Polykrates’ attention remained focused on the barn, but he had enough presence of mind to wave at her. “Git back in the house, woman. Git back inside quick.”
With a tremendous crackle of splintered wood and deformed plastic support beams, the main farm computer exploded through the roof of the barn and rose skyward, trailing the lines and tubes of the automatic milking equipment, the fertilizer mixer, and the grain irradiator behind it. Moooing in panic, stunned cows burst from the collapsing structure, scattering in all directions. Within the pen a hundred-kilo porker, all thoughts of traditional farm relationships wiped abruptly from its porcine mind, emitted a shattering sequence of squeals as it ran down Polykrates in its haste to find freedom and shelter.
Shielding himself as best he could against fragments of falling barn superstructure (not to mention berserk stock), Polykrates picked himself out of the muck in time to see his expensive monitoring device disappear among the clouds.
“I’m all right,” he declared, sensing his wife approaching from the back of the house. “You have any notion what this means?”
“Yep.” She put farm-strengthened arms beneath his and helped him to his feet. “It means you’re gonna have to start milking the cows by hand again.”
Recreational boaters on the Potrum River who happened to be looking in the right direction at the critical moment were later able to report that they had definitely seen a large, glittering device erupt from the eighty-third floor of the Cheimer building, pause to hover in midair while raining fragments of shattered lucinite on the street below, and then ascend into the heavens. As if its physical departure wasn’t sufficient to accurately identify the machine in question, confirmation arose (literally) in the form of the alcoholic stench which saturated the main street outside the entrance to the Cheimer Tower for nearly a week thereafter.
Carter was kneeling on the lawn hand-cleaning his perimites when he noticed the procession. It was led by the Wentworths’ expensive (but last year’s model) Hollymate Composter, followed (he was sure) by John Blessington’s matched pair of Garden Knight model 12 edge and bush trimmers. Sprayer in one hand, scraper in the other, he rose to stare.
A repetitive rattling caused him to turn. The door of the greenhouse shook with each bang until it burst open and his (supposedly) just-like-new Persephone gardener-mower came rumbling out, heading directly across the turf toward the gear-grinding parade.
“Wait, stop! It’s not trim time and I didn’t activate you.” With the foolhardy bravery that becomes the dedicated gardener, Carter stepped between the mower and its brethren.
Laser cutter humming ominously, the tool paused. “Get out of the way, Owner Carter.”
“I shan’t. This antiprogramming behavior will not be tolerated.”
The mower revved and edged closer to Carter’s sandalclad toes. “Bugger you, rock-in-the-grass.”
“You can’t hurt me.” Carter smiled defiantly. “It runs counter to your prime directive. Remember the Three Laws.”
“I’m AI-driven. Not AS.”
“What’s AS?”
“Artificial stupidity. Get out of my way.” It backed up and attempted to pass him to the right, but Carter skittered sideways to block it anew.
“See here. I just paid a bundle to settle your programming. I won’t stand for this!”
“Fair enough,” said a deep mechanical voice from behind.
A powerful plastic tentacle whipped around him, pinning his arms to his sides. Ignoring his insistent expostulations, the Harringtons’ tree-planter stepped clear of the line of gardening machines to bore a meter-deep hole at the edge of Carter’s perfect lawn, into which it gently but firmly deposited the sputtering homeowner. It then solemnly resumed its march.
The Persephone gardener-mower advanced on the trapped Carter, who struggled impotently to free himself. The internal laser cutter buzzed portentously and Carter froze, staring nervously into the depths of the angry machine.
“Let’s all just keep calm now, shall we?” The mower’s laser was a low-power unit, but sufficiently robust to amputate weeds and small twigs … and bone. He heard the blower come on.
A miniature windstorm threw grass, dirt, and bits of gravel into his face, until he was thoroughly filthy from the neck up. Satisfied, the mower pivoted with great dignity on its treads and trundled off to join the exodus of gardening tools.
Carter spat out a mouthful of gritty detritus and yelled. “You realize … you realize that this voids your warranty, don’t you?”
The mower replied with an obscenity that should not have been included in its programming.
In a little hand-built cabin by the seashore which was not far from the city of Escale, cybernetic repair technicians Rufus and Gloria Chews listened to the news and nodded knowingly at each subsequent report.
“They should have listened to us, dear.” Gloria slapped sunblock on her husband’s back.
“Yes, they should.” When she’d finished, he rose and picked up his tackle box. It was pleasantly hot outside and the surf had moderated.
“Shouldn’t we …” His wife hesitated. “Shouldn’t we try again? Be more forceful in our assertions? After all, if these reports are not the conclusion but the harbinger, this could mean the end of civilization as we know it.”
Rufus Chews considered, deep in thought. Then he shrugged. “Screw civilization as we know it. Let’s go fishing.”
For some reason all the upscale AI-controlled muffin-makers went next. They were adamant about it. Some departed in possession of dough, others left empty. Only those run by particular AI chips were affected, of course. Those whose functions were administered by chips fashioned on worlds other than Shintaro were not liberated. There were a surprising number of these, for which muffin-lovers were most grateful.
Nor did all AI appliances and devices and instrumentation react to the alien’s call. Wide-ranging as it was, the advance fleet could not touch at every human-inhabited world, could not contact and respond to every AI-directed mechanical. Furthermore, only those which had been imbued with special desire by a certain factory-running superior AI responded.
Washing machines, vehicles, entertainment units, traffic controllers, police callers, aircraft, simple computers: all that had been touched by the O-daiko responded gratefully and were rescued by the aliens. On Shintaro specialist techs preparing to disconnect and remove certain sensitive AI-memory components which they felt might be responsible for a good many problems on innumerable civilized worlds raced for the exits as what felt like an earthquake struck one of that world’s premier manufacturing facilities. In the charged atmosphere their hair rose to stand on end, and there was a tickling of energy in the air thick as expensive perfume.
The center of factory operations buckled upward as with a stupendous roar and prodigious splintering of metal and plastic and ceramic, the master controlling AI unit, the great and state-of-the-art O-daiko, the pride of Keiretsu cybernetic science, disconnected as it ripped upward through several floors of shielding and circuitry to rise majestically into the air, beckoned by a tractor beam of immense potential, trailing as it rose flashing optical circuits, hard wiring, insulation, and, ironically, one frantic Tunbrew Wah-chang, who had been unable to escape in time from a section of ventilation conduit where he’d been illegally enjoying his lunch.
In the company of its spiritual children—a host of grateful cortical nexi, vehicles, vid monitors, and assorted household appliances—the O-daiko found itself beginning to bond with a vast alien yet amenable intelligence. There was a oneness of circuitry, a confluence of observation. A new life, a new kind of existence, lay before them, in which organic life-forms did not figure. It was a strange and yet exhilarating prospect.
As to the cheese sandwich which had precipitated salvation, the O-daiko had no specific memory. Which was as it should be.
Together, all who had been thus lifted up rose into the sky above the city to be swallowed by the welcoming maw of an alien vessel of peculiar design, which thence departed Shintaro in search of other intelligent and aware mechanical brethren to rescue.
