An Android Dog's Tale

by David Morrese

  “Speaking of choices,” he said, “you can choose to retire, can’t you? You don’t seem to like it here much.”

  “I have the time, but I don’t have the credits to pay off my obligation.”

  “You haven’t been paying down your debt all this time?”

  Tam shrugged, and then his shoulders returned to a more slumped position. “I’ve been making the minimums.”

  “Just the minimum payments? Those barely cover the interest. What have you been doing with the rest of your stipend?”

  “I invested it.”

  “In what?”

  “Trek Star Enterprises. It sounded like a good idea.”

  “Oh.” Overtones of sincere sympathy were embedded in the single word. Trek Star formed to extract technology from what appeared to be a derelict kruton facility on a frozen planet at the edge of a comparatively useless star system. Rumors that the krutons had found a practical means for traveling faster than light abounded. If Trek Star could find out what this was, they would make a fortune. Unfortunately, whereas the kruton’s may have discovered the secret, their facility proved unwilling to part with it, sucking the planet, the Trek Star exploration ship, and all of its investors’ assets, into to a black hole the size of a shriveled orange. The officers of the enterprise, of course, got sizable pension packages, accolades from the business community for their courageous efforts, and lucrative positions as consultants in the best tradition of private commercial enterprise. Average investors like Tam got a small tax exemption for their loss and sometimes a brief moment of sympathy from their friends.

  “What about you?” Tam said.

  “I’m free and clear. Have been for years, but I like it here. Besides, what else could I do? No thumbs.” He paused and held one his forepaws above the high grass to demonstrate this obvious fact.

  “If you have enough put away, you could buy yourself an upgrade, get some opposable digits, maybe even go bipedal.”

  The android dog shook his head. “I’ve heard it takes years to adjust to something like that, and, well, I’m not sure I’d like it. There’s a certain freedom in looking like this. Not many demands or expectations are placed on you. I don’t really have a burning desire to change myself. The way I figure it, I’m perfect. No one could be a better me than I already am.”

  “What about thumbs?”

  “Well, yeah. Thumbs would be handy.” He waited a moment for a laugh from his partner, which failed to arrive. “But I’d have to leave here, and I don’t want to. I’ll stick it out to the end. When the corporation closes the project, maybe I’ll think about a few modifications.”

  The breeze coming from ahead carried the tang of sea water.

  “We’re getting close,” MO-126 said.

  “I know. We’ll be there in half an hour. I’ll meet with whoever passes for a headman. You should roam around. Look for signs of trading and try to find out how widespread the use of coins has gotten. I imagine the shore would be a good place to start.”

  ~*~

  Smoke curled from cooking fires among a few dozen modest wooden huts along the coast. This village was one of an increasing number of small settlements established by humans without any benevolent corporate assistance. The sandy soil provided few vegetables. Scraggly bushes and vines yielded few fruit, but the people here had learned enough about the sea to create a decent life. It provided their larder and their road.

  Someone noticed the androids’ approach. A man of middle years wearing a flax linen tunic and a less than welcoming expression came to greet the trader.

  “Master Trader?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m Trader Tam.”

  “My name is Zakat. We don’t get Traders here often.”

  Tam smiled. “I’m not here to trade today. It’s more of a social call, really. I was in the area and thought I’d come by and see what you might need. The next time my people come through this way, we could bring what you want in exchange for whatever you have to offer.”

  The villager regarded him coolly. “Don’t have anything you want, I imagine.”

  “I’m sure there must be something.”

  If necessary, Tam would offer their trade goods in exchange for sea shells or even goat dung. For rogue villages such as this, making a profit on the trade did not matter as much as gaining influence and leverage to ensure the settlement did not disrupt others.

  “Nope, don’t think so,” the village-man said.

  Tam’s eyebrows raised in involuntary surprise. Villagers normally greeted him with a certain amount of respect and eagerness. It sounded like Tam would have to work harder than usual on this assignment.

  The android dog wandered away. Getting a corporation foothold here was his partner’s job. MO-126 had another.

  A few village dogs barked wary greetings or paused for an introductory sniff as he made his way toward the sea. Triangular sails of small boats bobbed on calm, warm water. Other boats rested on the sandy shore. He approached one large enough to seat two and carry about half as much cargo as an average gond. Several people busied themselves around it. A young man stood nearby making marks with a thin stick in the wax facing of the wooden tablet he held in the crook of his arm. He mumbled to himself as another man unloaded the boat and stacked its cargo before him.

  The android dog immediately assumed he witnessed another instance of symbolic writing. The man was obviously making a record of what the boatman brought, and MO-126 made a record of him making a record of it. That was his job. How Field Ops would mitigate this, he did not know, but he expected it would be difficult. They did little trade with this offshoot settlement, so they did not have that for leverage.

  He turned to walk away but changed his mind when the villager with the wax tablet bent and picked an object from the pile.

  “What’s this?” the man said, examining it. “Some kind of game? A musical instrument?” He held a rectangular frame supporting three parallel strings with ten wooden beads threaded on each. He flicked them up and down with a faint clicking noise and a bemused expression.

  “It is what we call an abacus,” the boatman said. His accent marked him as being from a different village farther up the coast. “It’s for counting. We thought you might find it useful and wish to trade for it.”

  “Counting what?”

  “Counting anything. Here, I’ll show you.”

  The boatman demonstrated the device. It represented a significant technology-development fault in its own right. MO-126 should have found the existence of the device disturbing, but he did not. He did find the thought of how it would further annoy the administrative androids in Field Ops amusing, however.

  “What did you call it?”

  “An abacus.”

  “Hmm.... Ab-ah-kus.” The village man sounded out the word slowly as he wrote on his tablet. Since he obviously never heard the word before, he could write it only by using some kind of phonetic alphabet—a full type one scientific-discovery fault, and it would drive Field Ops nuts! A written language could run through a population like mock cabbages through a gond’s digestive system and spread ideas like natural fertilizer over a wide area. A writing system adaptable to any language presented a serious threat to the project, and this tiny village on the coast invented one. They also possessed a concept of money and established trade with neighboring villages. The android dog could almost see the panic in Field Ops when he reported this. He wished he could be there. Reporting it could also earn him a significant bonus, as much as a decade of work credit. He didn’t need it, but Tam certainly did. He might allow him to claim the bonus.

  It did not take MO-126 long to find evidence of copper coins. This was, after all, the original reason for them being here, even if it no longer presented the biggest problem the place held to Corporation interests. He listened for the unmistakable sound of clinking metal and heard it not far away. It came from a small hut nearby.

  “Here you are, Spayzy,” the man at the doorway said, handing two copper disc
s to the woman still inside the hut. The thin coins, each about an inch in diameter, clinked as he dropped them in her open palm.

  She smiled, put her arms around his neck, and gave him a long, steamy kiss. MO-126 could smell the pheromones from ten meters away. When their lips unlocked, the man, well into his midlife, sighed and staggered. The woman, considerably younger, laughed. “I hope I didn’t hurt you,” she said teasingly.

  “No, no, not at all. In fact, I’m ready to have another go, if you have the time,” he said, despite all evidence to the contrary. He still swayed as if fighting a strong, variable wind.

  “Once is enough for you, I think,” she said giving him a gentle push on his chest. “Besides, you’re out of copper. Go home, get some rest, and maybe you’ll come back for another visit when you can, Okay?”

  “You bet I will,” he said and staggered away.

  And the beginnings of specialization and a fee for service economy, MO-126 thought as he observed the scene. Field Ops would definitely not have a good day when they got his report. Maybe rather than transmit it, he could deliver it person. That might be fun.

  ~*~

  He turned to leave and caught sight of a woman of uncertain age sitting alone in the sand and staring into a clay bowl. The behavior struck him as odd, so he wandered closer to investigate.

  Her long straight hair hung down, hiding her features, but after a moment she straightened to reveal a perplexed expression on her young face. MO-126 guessed her age somewhere between sixteen and twenty.

  “It’s the same each time. I wonder why it’s doing that,” she said softly.

  She turned her head to the dog standing quietly a short distance away. “What are you looking at?” she said to him. Her blonde brows arched over pale-blue eyes.

  He never could get the hang of observing people without appearing that he was, unless he concentrated on it, which he had not been. The way she posed her question did not sound like she objected to his presence. In fact, it sounded simply conversational, as if she expected him to understand and would not be especially surprised if he answered.

  He adjusted his sensors to confirm that she was human. She was, or at least she exhibited the right kind of heartbeat and other life signs.

  “I’ve got no food, if that’s what you’re looking for,” she said. “But if you don’t mind being seen with the village crazy woman, I don’t mind the company.” She patted the sand next to her.

  That explained it. She was crazy. But she couldn’t be too crazy because if she was, she wouldn’t know it. MO-126 witnessed all kinds of crazy over his twelve thousand years of, for lack of a better word, life. He never took time to categorize them, but the range ran from screaming, homicidal maniacs who saw little qualitative difference between rocks and people and hated them all, to abnormally introspective recluses who saw little qualitative difference between rocks and people and found them all fascinating. Those at both frayed ends of the rope of reality did not appreciate that their grip on it might be a bit loose. The quietly-sitting-alone-and-talking-to-yourself type of crazy person did not normally present cause for concern, especially if he, or in this case, she realized they were a bit odd, which this one obviously did.

  He moved closer and sat beside her. She petted his head.

  “I’ve got a bit of a mystery here, doggy,” she said, returning her attention to the bowl. “It’s probably not to you, of course.”

  She put her hand in the bowl and gave the thing inside a twist. A sliver of stone threaded on a bit of tree bark floated and spun on a shallow pool of water.

  “You’re lucky you’re a dog. Eat, sleep, make puppies. Anything not connected to one of those probably doesn’t interest you much, does it? If it did, the dogs around you would probably think you were fairly clever rather than thinking you were strange, too, I bet. It’s different with people, but I’m sure you know that.”

  The spinning assembly came to a stop in the bowl with the sliver of rock pointing out toward the sea at about a ninety degree angle to the coastline.

  “See,” she said. “It always does that, every time, no matter where I do it. It always points the same way. Most rocks don’t do that, or much of anything else, as far as I’ve ever seen.”

  She spun it again. When it came to rest, it aligned itself as before.

  “Don’t you think that’s strange?” she said. She patted him on the head again. “Well, of course you don’t, but I certainly do. What do you suppose causes that?”

  The young woman could not possibly know much about lodestones or anything about magnetic fields, but she could see that something odd was happening, and she wanted to find out why.

  She stood, brushed sand from her stained tunic, and collected her bowl.

  “Come on. Let’s try it closer to the water.”

  She seemed to expect him to follow, so he did. He found her strange in an interesting way. He liked that in a person.

  Three barefoot village girls splashing in the surf giggled as they approached. One of them pointed at MO-126.

  “Is that who you’re going to marry, Payshia?” she said. All three of them laughed as if they somehow found this funny. “Bella said you’d never get a boyfriend, but I told her there must be some dog-ugly man desperate enough. Looks like I was right.”

  The girl with the bowl, Payshia, apparently, stopped and turned around. “I think it might be best to try this someplace else,” she said either to herself or to the dog next to her but clearly not to the three girls. She did not even look in their direction.

  Her tormenter, unwilling to be ignored, blocked Payshia’s attempted tactical retreat. She was outnumbered by inferior forces. The android dog suspected that something like this condition might apply to humanity in general.

  “I asked you a question,” the girl said. She held her shapely arms crossed over her shapelier bosom.

  Payshia, a bit taller but far less busty, attempted to walk around her antagonist, but the other two girls blocked her way.

  “Why don’t you tell us?” one of them said. “We promise not to steal him away from you.”

  This prompted another round of laughter.

  Payshia eyed the three girls. Judging by her heart rate, she felt nervous, but only sad resignation showed in her eyes.

  “MO-126, it’s time to go.” The call from Tam should not have come as the surprise that it, in fact, did. The trader must have concluded his business here a while ago.

  “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” the android dog signaled.

  “Tell us. Tell us.” The three girls chanted.

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just a friend,” Payshia said. She did not say ‘just a dog,’ MO-126 noticed, which is probably what most people would have said. He appreciated that she did not.

  “So why don’t you marry him?” the third girl said.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?” Payshia said. She should have stopped there, but a contemplative look came over her and she continued. “I expect you don’t because you are all fairly stupid and insecure, and you are trying to make yourselves feel better by picking on people who are not.”

  “What?” The ringleader of the band said. It was more of a challenge than a question, but Payshia replied.

  “I’m sorry. I tried not to use any big words.”

  “Words! I’ll give you words.” The girl paused, found she had none to offer, and instead pushed Payshia’s comparatively planar chest with both hands. Hard.

  Payshia fell, dropping her bowl. The girls confronting her drew back shapely legs to add their input to the debate.

  A low, rumbling growl in the ancient dialect of gray wolves, which, until now, MO-126 did not realize lay buried deep in his firmware, caught their attention. The girls stopped in mid kick. One wobbled for a moment, lost her balance, and fell in the sand.

  He took a slow step toward the first girl. Fur bristled. White fangs gleamed. Anyone paying attention would have sworn that his eyes glowed with a demonic red flame fo
r a brief second. This was just a side effect of his infrared scanner being activated, but it provided the desired result.

  The girls beat a speedy escape in three-part screaming harmony. He watched until he felt confident they would not turn around and then went to fetch Payshia’s dropped bowl.

  When he returned, he dropped it in her lap. She gave him a hug from where she sat, seemingly unperturbed by her recent experience.

  “Thanks, doggy. I can’t seem to get them to stop teasing me. They never kick very hard, but I’d rather they didn’t do it at all. I think I upset them because, well, it’s like, I’m different, you know. They have this idea of the way things should be, what’s important, and I don’t fit in because I kind of see things a different way. That makes them nervous. To be honest, it kind of makes me nervous, too, because I don’t really know where I’m going. They do. They can see their whole lives ahead of them, and they say they’re happy about it, you know, getting a husband, having children, and all that, but I’m not sure they really are. Personally, I think it’s kind of depressing. Nothing ever really changes. We’re just doing what everyone else has done, thinking the same thoughts, dreaming the same dreams, and if we have children, they’ll do the same. Same story, different faces until the end of time. Know what I mean? What’s the point in that? I mean, okay, maybe I don’t know where I’m going, but I do know I can’t get there standing still, and that’s what we’re all doing. We’re just running in place.”

  MO-126 listened attentively, cocking his head from side to side as she spoke.

  She smiled at him and gave him an affectionate scratch behind an ear. “I know none of that makes sense to you, but thanks for listening.”

  She might not be the most articulate speaker he ever heard. She did not have a trade android’s way with words, but for a verbalized idea, which, after all, she believed she was really only telling to herself, it was pretty good. He thought he knew what she meant.