An Android Dog's Tale

by David Morrese

  “Well, yeah. Field Ops is concerned because the people in Tallie’s village are building boats, and the one I just came from is using wheels and starting to experiment with copper.”

  “That’s in the report. What can you tell me that’s not?”

  He paused a moment, recollecting and analyzing what he noticed there. “They seem to be good people. I think the headman is well liked and he was doing a good job coordinating things after the storm. Everyone seemed to be working well together to get things repaired.” What else might be of official interest? “There might be some reduction in the grape harvest next year, but the potato crop should be fine.”

  “Where did the idea for wheels and copper come from?” Bea asked.

  “Mostly from a villager they call Thinker. I’m pretty sure he came up with them himself. He’s seems exceptionally intelligent—and curious.”

  “Thinker, huh?”

  “That’s what they all call him.”

  “Probably got tagged with the name when still a child, then. Let me guess. He’s fairly young, I suspect, since this is the first report we’ve received about innovations in that village. I expect he looks older, is not imposing physically, lives alone, and is a bit awkward socially?”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “No, but I’ve met the type. What do you think of him?”

  “I kind of liked him. He was nice to Tallie, and he thinks about everything. He really seems to want to understand it all. I guess that’s how he got the name.”

  “He likes the challenge, I imagine.”

  “What’s he challenging?”

  “Ignorance, I suppose. Humans need challenges. I’ve talked about this with some of the other NASH androids, and we suspect it’s genetic. Humans don’t seem to be happy unless they have something to be dissatisfied with. They seem to like to complain, in any case.”

  “Sounds insane to me,” the MO android temporarily going by the name of Helper said.

  “Me, too,” MO-193 said, still making distracting slurping noises as he pretended to groom himself.

  MO-126 admitted that it seemed odd, but he saw the survival benefit an instinct like that might provide. It could help prevent a species from stagnating, make them more adaptable. It could also make it difficult for the corporation to control them.

  “What do you think about this situation?” he asked Bea. “It’s not quite as serious as writing, I suppose, but it’s significant.”

  “It is, but we’ll do our best to mitigate the problem.”

  “How?”

  “In a few different ways. Both villages will be monitored closely, of course, and the trade goods we provide will be upgraded. My part is to, well, I guess you can say it’s mainly to distract them. Give them less dangerous things to occupy themselves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Team games often work. You would be amazed how much attention humans can devote to competitive sports. There are also various hobbies, fads—pretty much anything that can provide meaningless diversions to satiate the need for challenge and accomplishment.”

  MO-126 considered these. They might work for most people. They would help satisfy the human need to compete, and people would obtain satisfaction in the striving and a sense of accomplishment with success. But not all. Some would not see such things as meaningful. They would still want to accomplish something useful in their short lives. They would want to leave behind something that might make a difference.

  “That might not work on people like Thinker. I don’t think he’s easily distracted.”

  “True. Some people require more cerebral diversions. We use those, too. We think of them as ‘what if’ stories for thinkers, coincidently. The point is that we, well, imply that they might have some truth in them.”

  “You mean like religion or philosophy, right?”

  “Kind of. It gives them things to think about, but we have to be careful. Stories like these really can lead to new ideas that could undermine the project. Humans can surprise you. We might plant an idea about a god of rivers or lightning or something, thinking it’s totally harmless, and an especially clever human will run with it and come up with a plan for waterwheels or a theory of electricity.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” She turned and smiled at him.

  “So, how much longer?” he said.

  “A while yet, I think, but project termination is inevitable. Humans just can’t seem to be content with things the way they are for long.”

  ~*~

  The next morning, the parties split. Tallie went with Prett, the nursery android called Aunt Nettie, and her dog, Helper. Tam, MO-126, Bea, and MO-193 headed back toward the village of Stone Home where the latter two androids would attempt to delay the seemingly inevitable end of the corporation project on this planet. MO-126 found he no longer felt certain that this would be a bad thing.

  Six - Unacceptable Marks

  2,375 Years Later

  (Galactic Standard Year 238430)

  (Project Year 14877)

  In which things must not be written.

  The small, seaside village on the southern coast of the continent came as a surprise to Field Ops when one of the project’s orbiting satellites first noticed it fifty years ago. Despite all their efforts, bands of especially enterprising primitives sometimes ventured forth to start new settlements without corporate knowledge or approval. Less often, they succeeded. Those who came here had, and they called the village they built Riverplace, an appropriate if unimaginative name given its location. Field Ops immediately dispatched a surveillance team and periodically rotated replacements through ever since. The two androids currently on station reported the anomaly, initial signs of a type one scientific-discovery fault—the primitives here had developed a form of writing. Tam and MO-126 would attempt to mitigate the problem.

  MO-126 sniffed the air. “Smells like fish,” he commented to his partner as they approached the settlement with their gond-drawn wagon. The last two thousand years saw the spread of wheel technology, boats, and the use of copper, gold, and other metals. All of these remained sufficiently primitive to allow the project to continue, but its eventual termination grew more certain with each passing century.

  Their wagon, laden with trade goods, rumbled along the bank of the wide, flowing river to their left. To their right, not far in the distance, people picked ripe fruit from squat citrus trees.

  “Fish and citrus,” Tam said. “That’s what the primitives have here. Those and chickens. They trade with another village further along the coast for vegetables other things. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to mitigate this problem as soon as possible. If we don’t, it will spread.”

  Keep the project going. This remained the ultimate objective of everything they did and the criteria by which all their actions were measured. The corporation incorporated this goal into every android produced here. It formed part of their identities, an intricate component no less than fingers or fur. It should be enough, but sometimes MO-126 questioned. He wondered if he could choose a different meaning for his existence, his life. He did not know what that might be. Without thumbs, most kinds of creative efforts were unavailable to him, but there must be something other than maximizing corporate profits he could strive to accomplish.

  A scattering of outlying beam and stucco cottages marked the edge of the settlement. A few humans paused to regard the travelers as they passed by with their laden wagon. A boy at a well dropped the bucket he was filling and ran toward the village.

  “He’s probably going to tell the headman about us,” Tam said.

  “I’ll notify the team stationed here,” the android dog said.

  The reply came immediately. “They’re at the shore,” MO-126 relayed. “Ned’s telling stories to some of the villagers right now. They’ll meet us later. The resident NASH android posed as an elderly storyteller. Ned and his partner, a canine mobile observer he called Moby, were stationed here six
years already. “He says you should use Trade Negotiation Contingency Protocol 1D until he has a chance to explain the situation.”

  “That’s standard in these situations, but you can acknowledge. It looks like the headman’s heard of our arrival. Here he comes now.”

  The old man who came to meet them smelled of fish. But then, many things here did to some extent. Fish hung drying on racks in the sun; they provided a major staple of their diet, and they played significantly in such industry as they possessed. Fish oil was their medicine of choice for just about any ailment, and it was a component of the glue and paint they used on their boats. Anything not smelling of fish smelled of citrus, or a nose-wrinkling combination of the two.

  “Master Trader, welcome. My name is Sydon. I’m the trade negotiator and arbiter for our village.”

  “Tam,” the trader said, introducing himself.

  “We can offer good trade to you, Trader Tam, fruit, dried fish, pickled fish, fish sauce, fish oil, fish paste, fish sausage, and various arts and crafts.”

  “Made from fish?” Tam speculated.

  The village elder raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “Fish? No. Shells, mostly. Many lovely and sometimes even useful things can be made with shells, although we also have some fine things made with fish leather. The other traders who visited us didn’t seem much interested in them. Perhaps you would like to see some?” he said hopefully.

  Sydon stepped aside to make way for a goat cart filled with orange fruit. The man leading it nodded a greeting and continued on toward a cluster of clapboard buildings.

  “No, whatever you normally trade will be fine,” Tam said. “Can we see what you have?”

  “Certainly. Just this way.”

  He turned and followed the course the goat cart took moments earlier. It angled off to one of the smaller buildings while Sydon led them to the largest. It was filled with baskets of fruit on wooden shelves that went from the stone floor to the three meter high rafters. If this amount of fresh, natural, organic fruit were for sale just a few dozen lightyears away, it would be worth as much as the ship that brought it there. Admittedly, that would be a small, automated transport, but it was still reasonably expensive because of its temporal stasis field generator. Those did not come cheap. Lockweed Intergalactic still held the patent on the design.

  The heavy scent of sweet citrus almost overwhelmed the android dog’s olfactory subsystem. Dogs are not natural fruit eaters and most find the odor—distracting, rather the way a human might regard the odor of a well-aged dead rat, which dogs tend to find compelling in a ‘let’s roll around on this because it’s so nice’ kind of way.

  Tam lifted an orange sphere from one of the baskets and examined it closely. He squeezed. He sniffed. He held it at arm’s length, eyed it suspiciously, and said, “Hmmm.”

  “Is there something wrong?” Sydon asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Tam replied. “May I borrow this? If we choose not to trade, I’ll make sure to return it to you.”

  “If you choose not to…. But these are fine fruit, I assure you.”

  Tam dropped the orange in his shoulder bag. “Yes. They may be. For now, I’d like to see some more of your charming village.” Which it was in a rustic sort of way, if one overlooked the pervasive odor of fish, the incontinent livestock, and the open sewage ditches. It did have a nice view of the ocean.

  “Um, sure. I can show you—”

  “Oh, I don’t want to trouble you. I’m sure you have much to do. If I can leave my wagon here, I’ll just wander around on my own for a while.”

  “If that is what you wish.” He seemed nervous and regarded Tam with a look of uncomfortable resignation. MO-126 took this as a normal reaction. Traders never hesitated to trade for his fruit before.

  “For now,” Tam said. “I’ll come find you later, if that would be all right.”

  Sydon nodded his agreement and left them outside by the trader’s wagon. When he disappeared around the corner of the building, they contacted Ned.

  “I’m on my way there. See you in a few minutes,” the resident android storyteller said.

  Tam shooed away a chicken perched on his wagon. It fluttered to the ground with an annoyed squawk. Some unspoken agreement seemed to apply in most villages, which allowed chickens, dogs, goats, and other domestic beasts to enjoy an interspecies truce and freedom to roam unmolested among the huts and hovels of their ostensible owners. It even applied to cats—as long as anyone was watching them.

  The trade android made a pretense of examining the contents of his wagon so as not to appear to be waiting for someone he could not possibly be expecting.

  When Ned arrived with his faithful canine companion, he and Tam exchanged greetings verbally, in case anyone might be watching, and then continued with more important matters via radio transmissions.

  “I’ve been in the fruit warehouse,” Tam said. “I saw no signs of writing.”

  “They’re not using it there, yet. They’re still a bit wary of the idea, I think. Change, you know. It scares some people.”

  “That should help. How are they using it?”

  “Record keeping, believe it or not. It’s simple and clever. A fisherman or farmer or whatever comes in, and a clerk makes a mark on a soft clay tablet identifying who it is, what he brought, and how much. Then, when the stuff is traded, the recording clerk marks what it was traded for and keeps a tally for each person. It’s more like accounting than writing, but it will lead to that, and to money. It pretty much has to. It will become too unwieldy otherwise.”

  “Where did they get the idea?”

  “A young primitive came up with it. He’s the clerk. They’ve started calling him the Numbers-Keeper. They used to call him Ronny.”

  “Okay. Let’s meet this wonder boy and see what he’s up to.”

  ~*~

  They found Ronny in a small building nearby, busy counting oranges from the newly arrived cart. The sparseness of whiskers on his face showed him to be a young man, barely out of his teens, if that. He glanced up from his efforts when the androids, led by Ned, entered through the open doorway.

  “Master Storyteller, is something wrong? You look worried.”

  “No, nothing. Um, just a touch of illness, I suppose. Must have been those clams last night. It’ll pass soon enough, if you know what I mean.” He followed his hasty explanation with a weak, joking smile. MO-126 was impressed. Ned mimicked human behavior well. Tam always seemed a bit too stiff. Most of the trade androids did. The nursery androids definitely possessed a more human quality.

  “This is Master Trader Tam,” Ned continued. “He’s interested in the tally thing you’ve come up with.”

  “Master Trader Tam,” Ronny said. “I’m honored. I’m more than happy to show you. It might be useful to you as a way to help you keep track of your trades. That’s really all it is.” He motioned to a clay tablet on one of the tables. Other tablets lay in stacks on tables and shelves nearby.

  “Every time someone brings something in, I make a mark on one of these tablets. Each person has a different one, a mark, that is. Then, I make a mark for what it is he brought. Different kinds of fruit and fish and stuff all have their own marks, too. Then, I just make marks for how many. I’m doing oranges now for Ernie. That’s his mark there, and next to it is the mark for oranges, and each line after that means ten of them. For anything less than ten, I make a dot for each one. Simple, huh?”

  Tam scowled. “And you came up with this yourself, did you?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to help. It was real confusing before and not really fair. This way, if you bring in a lot to trade, you can get more—”

  “Are you saying the traders don’t bring enough for everyone?” Tam said accusingly.

  “Um, no. Not that. The traders have always been more than generous. It’s just that, well, it seemed right, you know?”

  “No. I don’t think I do. Villages provide things the traders want and the traders provide things the villagers need. We don
’t count and nitpick about it. We see what is of value and we trade what has value. There is an underlying trust that adds to the purity of the things traded. This is how it’s always been and the way it should remain. Goods tainted by these—marks are stripped of their essence. They hold no value.”

  “Is there something wrong, Master Trader Tam?” Sydon, the village headman entered the hut, which provided too little space for everyone among the shelves of clay tablets. Since Tam was already uncomfortably close to the unfortunate Ronny, Ned and the two android dogs shuffled to make room.

  “I was walking by and I heard you talking in here. You sounded displeased about something,” the headman added.

  Tam spun to face Sydon. “Displeased? Yes. And disappointed. You have tainted your fruit, Headman. The goodness of them has been stolen by lying marks.”

  “I…I…I don’t understand.”

  “These…things take meaning from the things they count. They mark down words that people don’t say. I sensed something wrong before, and now I know why.”

  “But this is just a better way to count oranges,” Ronny protested. “It doesn’t harm anything. It just helps us remember—”

  “And if someone eats the orange, does the mark that counts it disappear?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Aha! That means that something of it is still there. If it’s not the fruit itself, it must be something else. The essence of the orange has been taken from it and captured in the mark. And then, I suppose, you plan to use those marks to decide who gets the things traded for them. That gives them power over your village leaders who should be deciding such things using the wisdom of their years, not marks on clay. You’re giving these little scratches life and power over people. That is simply wrong.”

  Before either of the two humans could object to this less than rational argument, Tam pulled the orange from his bag and tossed it to Sydon.

  “You may have this back. It is worthless to us.”