“Until I messed it up by acting out of turn.”
“No. Your mind may be telepathically opaque, but your time of action was precogged. Your attack on the Maggot gave Venus that last bit of time she needed to locate the key. Without that, the Maggot would have overrun the Plant and eaten it. You were the final stage in the salvation of Earth.”
Elasa was amazed. “So you knew! Bunky, Venus, and the Awares—you collaborated to save Earth.”
“Yes. We couldn’t have done it without you. As it was, it was a close call. The precognition was murky to us as well as to the Maggots. You were the necessary element of chaos.”
“But the mites really did it, not me.”
“They did and they didn’t. There was only a five percent chance that they could infect Maggots. Had we not really, graphically, impressed that risk on the Maggots, they would have come in anyway, and chances are they would have been all right. Add that to the projective telepathy of the Plant, and the mystery of machine consciousness in you, and it was enough. They don’t like uncertainty.”
“But once they sort it out, and realize how small the actual risk is, they could return.”
“That’s why you will have to remain on duty, as the secret mistress of Earth,” Adela said. “We discussed it with Mona’s father, Moncho Maverick, and he is setting up the obscure connections to the real sources of power. Your word will be law.”
“The secret mistress of Earth! I never sought any such thing!”
“You do not seek power, and are incorruptible,” Kop said. “It makes sense. You will work with the sheep and the Awares, and of course Venus, ready to take necessary action the moment a threat is precogged.”
“But that’s the province of government.”
He laughed. “The government I knew was corrupt and helpless. So was the one Pauling knew. They need to be quietly bypassed for anything important.”
Elasa looked desperately at Adela. “The Awares are in on this?” But of course they were. This was their area of expertise, written large. They knew what worked.
“We have special properties,” Adela said. “But we are living humans, therefore corruptible. We need an incorruptible guide. Now we know that our mission is to protect the world from being eaten. We will gladly do that, maintaining contact only with you.”
“All I want to do is go home to my husband and baby and take care of my Plant. To be a normal woman.”
“And you will do that,” Kop said. “You will make no waves at all. No one else will even know.” He smiled. “But Pauling and I hope you will not forget us as we do our part. We do love you.”
And Kop would fade out in six months, leaving Pauling. It was probably better to maintain that contact, apart from the fact that she did like them.
Elasa still couldn’t quite accept it. “Maybe Mona could--”
“Mona will soon return to Colony Jones for her next six month stint with her loving husband and the Lamb,” Adela said. “That’s all she wants to do.”
Elasa realized it was true. There was no one but her to keep the watch. She was stuck for it. “Let’s go out and thank the sheep,” she said.
“They already know,” Adela said. “We shouldn’t annoy them by interrupting their grazing.”
Then they all laughed. Elasa picked up the pot. She was going home.
Author’s Note: Part 1
There are three mysteries I would like to fathom before I die: why is there something instead of nothing, how did life first happen, and what is the secret of consciousness? The latest conjecture on the first mystery is that the very concept of nothing is a paradox; there is tension that erupts in the explosive birth of myriad universes. Our own universe is the one of an infinite number that has the requirements that enable matter to exist, at least temporarily. Fourteen billion years may be but an eye blink in the larger cosmos. Our own tiny section of that, the planet Earth, has the particular slosh of chemicals that enabled life to start, perhaps in a spark of lightning. Then, out of the bacteria, viruses, plants and other life forms, finally came consciousness, which I suspect consists of a special feedback circuit that could be copied into a suitable machine. It may be a rather simple device, once we figure it out. When we do, we will be able to build conscious humanoid robots, like Elasa. If it really works.
There have been realistic humanoid robots before; science fiction is full of them. I have had them myself, notably in my Adept and ChroMagic series. But have they really been conscious, or merely almost perfect emulations? It is hard to be sure. And if we do succeed in making them, what are the legal and moral implications? Could they be enfranchised as legal people, with the right to vote? If one is killed, would it be murder? Could they fall in love with living folk?
I wish I knew the answers.
This novella was mostly from my imagination, and is not intended to be an accurate portrayal of either robotics or law. I did find one reference useful, however: the book The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian, about the author’s experience with the Turing test and the pitfalls thereof. Indeed, it is not easy for a machine to emulate a human being well enough to fool another human being. It poses the question of whether it would ever be possible to construct a computer so sophisticated that it could actually said to be thinking, to be intelligent, to have a mind. And if that came to be, how would we know? That’s one reason I put some of Elasa’s awareness into the first person: so that in this novella, at least, we would know.
*
My thanks to my wife, Carol, who gave me the Most Human Human book in the hope that it would help, as indeed it did, and to Rudy Reyes, who proofread the manuscript. If man does not live by bread alone, neither does an author write by imagination alone. He is but the tip of an iceberg of support.
Author’s Note: Part 2
This is a sort of sequel to my prior novella, To Be A Woman. I thought of it just after I finished writing Woman, in January 2012 and it quickly blossomed into its own novella written in February 2012. Ideas are like that; some founder unborn, some remain minor, some become stories, and some whole series of novels. I have a massive file containing summaries of my notions, and I draw on those notions at need, or when they simply will not be denied. This one started with the sheep who could stab an attacker to death without moving.
Actually, I am more of a goat person than a sheep person. I was raised on a goat farm, and later had two goats of my own. Goats seem smarter and more individual, being ever curious about things. Sheep in contrast simply fall into line. The word “capricious” derives from an ancient word for goat. Goats speak by saying a friendly maaaa while sheep utter a stupid baaaa. So you can see I have my prejudice. But there is a different kind of sheep, called the Jacob Sheep, which seems goat-like and has four horns. My daughter kept some of those for a while, in part because my legal surname is Jacob, as was hers. Maybe that memory influenced my subconscious, encouraging me to come up with another different kind of sheep. So you won’t hear me badmouthing sheep; they have their points too, even those without telepathy or precognition.
I say “sort of sequel” because this started out as an independent novella, but when I needed an Earth planet host for Elen, Mona volunteered. So she and Elasa and Moncho stepped into this story and really helped out, displacing the Jacob Sheep farm girl I originally had in mind. I find I rather like this intermediate length, long enough to fashion a good story, short enough to write in a month. Still, I found myself wondering what Mona would find, there in the body of a pregnant woman, accompanied by a vulture and a python. Why are those two animals still there, if not to keep an eye on things? Does that mean that the sheep aren’t finished here? Would she pin down precognition and set up the story of the century? If so, it probably deserved its own novella. As turned out to be the case.
This novella, like the prior one, does have its thoughtful aspects. If it is controversial to have a conscious robot marry a living man, how about interplanetary marriage, where one partner must always be in a body not h
is or her own? Can love exist in such manner? Would the law recognize such a union? What about children: whose are they, the genetic parent’s or the love parent’s? I assume in the novella that such things can be worked out, but it might be more complicated in reality. There is also the lighter side, such as the snarky media humorists portrayed here, and their come-uppance. I remember when there was a cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, about man-sized turtles doing heroic deeds. In real life at that time fishing boats were killing rare turtles by illegal net fishing that trapped turtles as well as fish. Then a political cartoon showed the Ninja Turtles quietly boarding a fishing boat. . .
Author’s Note: Part 3
When I wrote the prior novella, Shepherd, which turned out to my surprise to be a sequel to To Be A Woman, when Mona volunteered to be Elen’s Earth host, I realized that there were loose ends. Why did the sheep facilitate Elen’s exchange to Earth? What would Mona do in Elen’s body? What was the larger reason the sheep did not free Vulture and Python and return to their grazing? What did the fembot Elasa have to do with this? So I organized the present novella, addressing those threads, and realized that the story was still unfinished. The next one would complete it.
Author’s Note: Part 4
This is the fourth and concluding novella in the series. Like the others, it was a combination of disparate notions that found their home in the larger narrative. The main one was the Awares: I figured them out, as an ideal group to accomplish something secret but important, then stalled. What could they do that would be worthy of their special talent? Then when I had a crisis in the series, I realized that the Awares were made for it. So the original story became Chapter 2, and they carried on from there. Sometimes readers are furious when they learn how a piece of fiction was cobbled together from odds and ends, rather than springing complete and pristine from the ear of Zeus, but I trust that my readers are more mature.
Will the Maggots return? I think not as long as Elasa keeps watch, and she should exist for a long time, since she can’t actually die. So Earth should be safe for the indefinite future. I trust you are relieved to know this. Naturally none of this will make media headlines; real history often doesn’t.
Readers interested in my works may visit my website www.hipiers.com or blogspot at http://piersanthonyblog.blogspot.com. Currently I do a monthly column about anything that interests me, ranging from book reviews to my liberal rants, and maintain an ongoing survey of electronic publishers and related services for the benefit of aspiring authors who might otherwise be excluded from publication. If you are such an author, check me out.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Piers Anthony
ISBN 978-1-4976-6281-0
Published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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