The Flavors of Other Worlds

by Alan Dean Foster

  He was beyond dazed. “Neater than this?”

  She nodded. She was eager now, more relaxed in his presence. With one finger she pointed at the floating Saturn. No, not at Saturn. At a smaller sphere orbiting around it.

  “Titan. Smell it.”

  He bent close, careful not to make contact, inhaled, and then drew back sharply, his nose wrinkling.

  “It smells like rotten eggs.”

  “Uh-huh. Methane, with sulfur dioxide. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “How …?” He was shaking his head. His previous conviction that what he was seeing was nothing but scam and fakery fled as he contemplated the far more fantastic story that was unfolding before him. An impossible story, an unimaginable story. Stars of another kind danced before his eyes. He saw a Pulitzer in his future. “Suzie, do you have any other toys that are ‘neat’?”

  “Oh sure.” Turning, she headed for the big workbench. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  So she did. She showed him the antigravity projector the size of a cell phone, just like the one in her pocket that had kept the miniature solar system hovering above her palm. She showed him the homunculus Santa and elves that she only animated at Christmas. Showed him the robot cat that kept the barn free of rats and mice, and the extractor that drew water from the seemingly desiccated air, and the candy maker that spun elaborate gourmet treats out of plain sugar and simple flavorings. She showed him the small thermonuclear device.

  “But I can’t get enough radium or tritium out of the old watches dad buys for me at flea markets so I’m gonna try and build my own centrifuges to concentrate enough U-235 to ninety percent from the ore in the hills around here.” She eyed her father. “For my next birthday dad promised me enough lead to make some shielding.”

  Gilcrease looked at his host. Parker shrugged. “It’s harmless, I’m sure. Another one of her toys.”

  “Yeah,” Gilcrease mumbled. “Harmless.” He was eyeing the girl not just out of curiosity now, but warily. “Suzie, some of these things, some of your toys—aren’t you afraid they might be a little bit dangerous?”

  She pushed out her lower lip. “I know what I’m doing! I’d never make anything that would hurt people.” She suddenly dropped her gaze and voice again. “Well, maybe that mini-Schwarzchild discontinuity, but I got rid of it before it swallowed anything besides the Deere, and that was junk anyway!”

  Her father frowned slightly. “Wondered what had happened to that old tractor. Thought some kids took it.” He brightened. “That explains the hole in the ground under where it had been sitting.”

  “Wouldn’t never hurt no one,” Suzie muttered again. Her eyes suddenly met the reporter’s. “You gonna write about all this, Mr. Gilcrease?”

  “No, Suzie, I—was going to.” There was something in her eyes he didn’t like and he felt it time for discretion. “But I’m not going to if you don’t want me to.”

  “Don’t want you to.” She was insistent. “People would come here. Bad people. They’d want me to make toys for them. And I don’t wanna.” Her voice rose, her hands balled into fists at her sides, and she looked as if she was going to start bawling. “I don’t wanna!”

  Hastily stepping forward, her father put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She immediately tucked her head into his chest. “Don’t wanna,” she mumbled more softly. Parker looked at his guest.

  “I think you should go now, Mr. Gilcrease. You saw the chickens, and you can write about them if you insist. But that’s all,” he finished firmly.

  The reporter nodded. “I know. I promised.” A promise he had no intention whatsoever of keeping, Gilcrease knew. Not after this. Not after what he had seen. This was no scam. The girl was addled, all right. Borderline crazy. Or maybe not borderline. But she was also a genius of unparalleled acquaintance. This was a story that had to get out, needed to be told, and he was going to tell it. As he comforted his manic offspring, the father was watching him closely. Too closely for Gilcrease to get out his camera. But he could snap some long-range shots as he drove away, he knew. What was the old man going to do—chase after him? Just something visual to frame the story. And what a story it was going to be! And if not photos, he had his drawings, his sketches. They would suffice, for now. He’d be back. With a real photographer and if necessary, a sheriff’s deputy or two. This was big.

  Bending, he fumbled for the pad he had dropped, quickly gathering it up. He looked around. “Mr. Parker, would you have—oh, never mind. I see one.” Stepping to his right, he reached for something on top of a nearby tool chest.

  Looking up, Suzie said sharply, “Better not.”

  Gilcrease smiled winningly at her and helped himself to the object. “It’s okay, Suzie. I’ll give you another one. A whole box, if you wa—”

  There was a blinding flash of light. When Parker could see again, nothing remained of his visitor. There was, however, a blackened flare on the concrete of the workroom floor. Walking over to it, he took care to step around the splash of carbonization. Even without making contact he could feel the heat radiating from the cone of air above the spot.

  “What happened to him?” Putting his hands on his hips he glared disapprovingly over at his daughter. “Suzie, did you …?”

  She shook her head and began chewing on her finger again. “I told him not to. Told him.”

  Pushing back his cap, Parker scratched at his hairline. “It was just a paper clip, Suzie.”

  She shook her head and pushed out her lower lip again.

  “Quantum paper clip.”

  10

  Seasonings

  As artificial intelligence becomes more functional, as opposed to remaining nothing more than a science-fictional concept, debate rages even among those in related fields as to how much of a threat it might pose to humankind. Most argue that AI will free us from the drudgery inherent in jobs that require endless repetition while others insist that once artificial intelligences equal our own, they will inevitably evolve to surpass it. Should that occur, the doomsayers worry that machines will no longer have a use for humans and that our days on Earth will be numbered.

  Inimical artificial intelligence combined with robots has long been a staple of thoughtful science-fiction and bad (sometimes really bad) science-fiction films. Until an AI produces, writes, and directs a film about intelligent robots, we can only imagine how a machine might envision a robot uprising. Being human, we tend to confer our own values onto our mechanical offspring. So in prose and film, such an uprising usually involves lots of things going boom! in spectacular fashion.

  One value that rarely is credited to a hostile artificial intelligence is one that we often lack ourselves.

  Subtlety.

  * * *

  Erickson was starving in the midst of plenty, but he felt he had no choice. Eat and go mad, he knew. Perhaps not mad in the classical sense, but near enough.

  Quietly, peacefully, contentedly mad. Sufficiently mad so that he would be unaware that he had gone mad. That was just what they wanted.

  Humanity dies not at dawn but at dinner.

  He was well and truly on the run now. It would have been better had he not struck the robot who had offered him the cupcake. But at the time of the confrontation he’d had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. He no longer trusted even the so-called “organic” café around the corner from his apartment building. Lack of nourishment had clouded his judgment. He ought to have walked on, pushed past. The mobile vending machine had been uncommonly insistent, however. Almost as if it knew that he knew what he knew. Instead of accepting the sprinkle-coated offering and then surreptitiously tossing it aside, he had responded with violence. Responded like a human. So few did, anymore.

  You could tell by the absence of wars. It had been a gradual process, the slow application of peace to the world. People attributed it to the species’ evolving maturity, to the increasing spread of technology, and most importantly, to the measured, methodical eradication of hunger. With little of the
traditional scarcities to fight over, bit by bit people ceased warring with one another. Rare was the individual to be found who considered such a world less well off than its fractious predecessor.

  If only, Erickson thought grimly, the peace had been earned and not imposed.

  There had to be others. Surely he was not alone in his awareness. He could not be the only one who had come to understand what the machines had done to humankind. With its full cooperation, no less.

  Two of them were coming toward him. One proffered fresh baked, oversized, salt-encrusted pretzels that swayed on their branching metal racks like stems on a pale alien succulent. Squat and rippling with artificial arctic promise, the other was garish with the rainbow colors of the ice creams secreted within its integrated freezer compartment. Like so many contemporary food vending devices they were wholly independent; quite able to run their routes, dispense their contents, and collect payment independent of any human operator. Erickson let out a strangled cry as he ducked around the corner in frantic flight from the looming temptations of hot salty dough and sweet rocky road.

  Of all the biochemists he knew, he was the only one who had succeeded in connecting the purposefully scattered dots. The only one who had pulled the seemingly unrelated elements together to visualize the architecture of conspiracy on which the machine plot had been erected. When he had laid out his thesis before colleagues, furtively and in the few isolated areas of the campus that remained free of security cameras, they had scoffed.

  Now he was about to make one last attempt, this time to convince the head of the Chemistry Department of the basis, if not the validity, of his fears. That is, he was if he could make it across the quad without being ambushed by carrot cake or aromatic croissant. Meanwhile the growls emanating from the depths of his gut grew progressively more insistent. Resolutely, he ignored them.

  “Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of, Bryden!” In his bookshelf-lined office Moritz grimaced as he regarded the professor standing before him. It was a mild, sunny day, the campus was blissfully devoid of protests, and the oft ill-starred men’s basketball team had won its game the night before. Now this had come forth, to unsettle both his mood and his stomach. “Machines are mindless servants. Tools. Nothing more. They do not conspire against mankind. They do not conspire against anything.” Well-maintained teeth flashed beneath the chalky overhang of the department head’s impressive mustache. “Next you’ll be dragging me to the window to see them parading down Chapman Avenue, rifles shoulder-armed as they goose-step metallically.”

  Erickson’s deadpan response belied the department head’s attempt at humor. “They don’t need rifles. They’ve got red dye #43. Anacrose artificial sweetener. Collagen derivative B for agglutination. Titanium pantoxide and coritase and methyl diforilate for flavor.” Sensing that his face was flushed, he turned away. “Weapons that don’t work as quickly, or as blatantly, but that in the end are far more effective.”

  Moritz frowned from behind his desk. “Are you saying that our machines are trying to poison us, Bryden?”

  The chemist shook his head irritably. “Not poison. Not harm directly. That would be too obvious. It’s a cunning process they’re engaged in. You know that my specialty is food chemistry.”

  “And we’re glad to have you on the faculty.” Moritz’s voice dropped slightly as he pursed his lips. “Certainly for the present.”

  Flushed or not, Erickson turned to confront the older man. “I’ve run tests. I’ve performed analyses. Certain specific combinations of food supplements, pesticides, and additives have—subtle effects on the human brain. Just as they do in my lab animals, these combinations render us more amenable to persuasion. Less aggressive, less violent.”

  Moritz made a face. “Just assuming for the moment that there is any validity to these presumably unpublished studies—why would that be considered a bad thing?”

  Erickson’s voice tightened. “Because that aspect of our humanness is being bred out of us! As we become less and less aggressive, less confrontational, less—challenging, we come to rely even more on our technology. On our machines. We’re becoming dependent.”

  Moritz sighed. He would hate to lose Erickson, but … “The machines exist to serve us, Erickson. Not the other way around. Were any of them, any class of robotics however simple, to give us trouble, we could simply pull the plug. Refuse to replace batteries. Cut off power. Eliminate program upgrades.”

  “Could we? Could we really? Consider, Dr. Moritz, how much and for how long we have depended on machines to grow our food, to process it, to test it for safety and to pack and ship it. For decades now machines have controlled the bulk of food production on Earth. From growing to picking to grading to packing and shipping, the process is so ‘safely’ automated that we hardly interfere with it any longer. Food today is the difference between the stone ground fire-baked loaves of our ancestors and the processed white bread we buy in the market. How many people really know what goes into what they eat? How many know how it’s processed? How many read and, more importantly, understand the implications of all the ingredients—down to the last seemingly innocuous chemical that’s been added to ‘preserve freshness’?” He stopped pacing.

  “It’s changing us, Dr. Moritz. The food our machines process for us is changing us, and nobody cares. As long as the FDA and equivalent organizations in other countries declare it safe for human consumption, the great mass of humanity doesn’t question what it consumes.”

  “Well then,” Moritz countered reasonably, “why not take your concerns to the FDA?”

  Erickson surprised him. “I’ve done exactly that. They reject all my findings. I wasn’t really surprised.” His expression was growing a little wild. “Because, naturally they checked my conclusions with their testing machines. They’re all working together, Moritz. All connected via the web. High levels of arsenic in potatoes I could prove. Mercury in fish I can prove. But DNA-altering recombinant proteins in dilly bars? Not a chance.” A sudden sound made him look around sharply, but it was only the wall-mounted air conditioner springing to life.

  Moritz was becoming genuinely concerned. “Perhaps you should take some time off, Bryden. Relax. Stop running so many dead-end experiments. You have a substantial amount of vacation time accumulated.” He smiled encouragingly. “Go somewhere restful. Don’t think about work for a while. Get away from the pressures of academe.”

  Erickson grew quiet, nodding to himself. “I was thinking that might actually be a good idea. I’ve been thinking about spending some time at the University’s experimental farm in the southern Sierras. A couple of my graduate students are doing work up there right now. At the farm they grow their own food, you know, and strive to keep it as organically pure and untouched as possible both for purposes of research and for their own health.”

  Rising from his chair, Moritz came around the desk and put an arm around the smaller Erickson’s shoulders. “Excellent notion. You don’t even have to clear it with Admin. I’ll take care of the details for you. As I said, we don’t want to lose you, Erickson. If it should prove necessary, your teaching assistants can finish out your grad classes for the term.” They paused at the door. “It’s nearly twelve. Can I buy you lunch?”

  Eyes widening, Erickson left hurriedly and without shaking hands.

  Though surprised by his unannounced arrival, they welcomed him at the farm. His graduate students and the other workers were delighted. For as long as he chose to stay they would have the benefit of his expertise. One student in particular was desperate to find out why, despite his best efforts, the farm’s apple trees were producing fruit that tended to be small and spare even as the berry patches were healthy and productive and the eggs laid by the farm’s free-range chickens invariably graded out extra-large double-A. It was, to the student’s way of thinking, something of an apple crisis.

  Erickson was glad to help—not to mention relieved. Regardless of what was happening in the cities, here he could pursue his critical wor
k safe in the knowledge that the food he ate was uncontaminated by the patient efforts of mankind’s machines to modify the species’ collective behavior. If he could just compile sufficiently incontrovertible proof, the future safety of humanity’s food supply might once more be placed in the hands of people instead of the cold supervisorial lenses of a cybernetic collective whose ultimate goals and intentions remained unknown.

  It was not that he objected to peace breaking out among the sheep, he told himself. What frightened him was the idea of peace being imposed by a sheepherder instead of arising organically from an agreement among the sheep themselves.

  It was not long before he began broaching bits and pieces of his contention to his two graduate students. They listened politely but were as unreceptive as had been Dr. Moritz. He struggled to hide his disappointment. Surely more openness to radical propositions might be expected of unossified, receptive young minds? At their age his curiosity would have at the very least been piqued, he would then have bombarded the thesis-presenter with questions, would have fought to conduct follow-up tests with …

  The realization that came over him was horrible in its plausibility.

  Callie was blonde, bright, energetic, and hard-working. Perhaps because of that she was a bit taken aback at the appearance of her venerable instructor when he confronted her in the farm kitchen that evening. It was her turn as well as that of several of her colleagues to prepare dinner for everyone who worked on the farm. As a transient guest, Erickson was not required and had not been asked to participate. Now he was not asking but insisting.

  “If you really want to, Dr. Erickson, you can cut up carrots and spinach for the salad.” She indicated where the knives were stored and pointed out the cabinet where the commercial food processor that would be used in the final step could be found. “Or would you rather help with the dessert? We’re doing home-made chocolate cake tonight.”