An Android Dog's Tale

by David Morrese

  “Well, it’s got poop in it. It’s supposed to stink.” The lad tentatively selected a stick, examined its sharpened end, and rejected it.

  “Yeah, but logs don’t, and that’s all I was really thinking at the time,” Utrek explained. “But he said I was stupid because logs don’t bend to get the round shape you need for a house, and I said, so don’t make it round. Then he told me I was stupid again because houses have to be round.”

  “So, what did you say?”

  “Nothing. Not then, anyway, but I started thinking about it, and I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t make a house out of nice, long logs, so I told him that the next day.”

  “Like I said, this is your fault.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess. Ostlark thinks it’s Omack’s idea, and I’m not about to tell him different.”

  “Why? He likes it. That’s why we’re building this.”

  The young men gathered their chosen tools and turned to leave.

  “He likes it being Omack’s idea. He wouldn’t like it if it were mine,” Utrek said as they ambled back toward the construction site.

  “So, tell him, and then we won’t have to do this.”

  “He wouldn’t believe me. He’d think I’m just causing trouble again.”

  “You think he’s still mad at you about getting lost last week?”

  “I wasn’t lost,” Utrek said. “I was exploring. There’s a difference.”

  “Did you know where you where?”

  “Of course not. If I did, it wouldn’t be exploring.”

  “Then you were lost. You’re just lucky you found your way back before the wild dogs or the demons got you.”

  “I wasn’t gone that long, and I didn’t go that far.”

  “You were out all night. That’s dangerous. When the sun goes down, the demons rise up. Everyone knows that.”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “Maybe, but the Master Traders travel between the villages, and nothing seems to bother them. They must be out after dark a lot.”

  “I bet half of them get eaten, too,” Utrek’s friend postulated. “Besides, everyone says they have some kind of magic.”

  Just then, the expected call from Omack came, and the two boys went to dig a hole.

  ~*~

  MO-126 watched them for a while, loosening the dirt with their sticks and then scooping it out with their hands, but their conversation seemed to have come to an end when their physical labors began. He hoped to hear more about what they thought about the traders. He knew that some primitives believed the traders possessed magic, which simply meant that they believed the traders could do something they could not and that they could not explain how they did it. In this case, the inexplicable ability involved traveling beyond and between villages. Most humans never went more than half a day’s journey from the place of their birth in their lifetime, and the corporation encouraged this. It made it easier to prevent the spread of new ideas, among other things. Communication between different human populations could lead to several different developments that could make the project manager’s job much more difficult.

  He left the two boys to their digging and made his way toward the river. He saw nothing out of the ordinary there and wandered around the rest of the village until Tam called to let him know he was ready to leave. One advantage of being a dog was that no one expected him to help load or unload trade goods. Without proper hands, he could be of little help in any event.

  “What did you find out,” Tam asked him.

  “They’re building a longhouse,” the android dog replied, “just as the headman told you. It wasn’t his son’s idea originally, not that I suppose it matters.”

  “Anything to be concerned about?”

  “Some clever use of ropes, but nothing suggesting any real appreciation for geometry, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t see any clear sign of technology-development or scientific-discover faults.”

  “Good.”

  The humanoid android made one last check of the pack animals, which were now loaded with grain, vegetables, and a few primitive bits of artwork. MO-126 turned at the sound of approaching bare feet slapping the dirt. Utrek, the young man he noticed earlier, approached them at a run, his hands still covered in dirt from his labors on the longhouse.

  “Master Trader,” he said, stopping before Tam. “I want to come with you. I want to join the Traders.”

  The trade android eyed the young man with bemusement. Such requests, usually from teenage humans of an adventurous of foolhardy nature, were not unprecedented, but they did not occur often.

  “This is not possible. One must be born a Master Trader,” Tam said, giving the prescribed reply for dealing with the subject.

  “Why?” the boy asked.

  The question seemed to catch the trader off guard, and he hesitated. Primitives were not supposed to ask why, and few ever did.

  “He’s waiting for an answer, Tam,” MO-126 teased his partner. “I’m curious as to what you’re going to tell him, too.”

  “Please,” the young man continued. “I’m not afraid, and I learn quickly. I can be useful to you.”

  “No, you can’t come with us,” Tam finally told him. “This is simply the way things are. Why do you want to leave here anyway? This is a good life for, um, people like you. Villagers, I mean. Villagers should stay in their villages, with their families and friends as they are meant to.”

  “But I want to see new places, visit different villages. I want to see how other people live and learn what they know.”

  The trade android shook his head. “They’re all pretty much the same. You’re not missing anything.”

  “I still want to see them.”

  “That’s simply not possible. You can’t come with us.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed with determination. “Then I’ll go by myself.”

  The young primitive’s attitude could present a problem. He might be injured through some accident or even be attacked by wild dogs, although such cases were extremely rare. Those would not be problems from the PM’s perspective. The boy’s quick demise would actually prevent the real problem. Fortunately for him, Galactic Federation law prohibited the corporation from taking active steps to achieve this result. A more likely outcome would be that the lad would survive and eventually come across another human settlement where he might exchange information and, worse, encourage some people there to explore and find even more villages. The PM could not allow the primitives to wander all over the planet trading goods and information. They were already difficult enough to manage.

  “That would be a serious mistake,” Tam warned him. “You don’t know what’s out there.”

  “That’s why I need to go!” the boy insisted.

  “Humans,” Tam said silently. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand them. They are such a peculiar species. I think they look for problems.”

  “I think you may be right,” his partner replied, but unlike his companion, he no longer considered this a negative trait.

  The trader focused a cold, serious gaze on the boy before him. “The ways are dangerous. There are great distances between villages. You will have no shelter at night. No friends to help you. Your home spirits and ancestors cannot protect you if you leave them behind. You will be alone.”

  “If you can do it, I can do it,” the boy said.

  “Are you sure?” the trader asked suggestively.

  “I don’t see why not. I can bring food and a blanket, and I even know how to make fire if I have to. What else do I need?”

  “You won’t know until you need it, will you? And then it will be too late.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me. Some people say the Master Traders have protective magic, but I don’t think so. I think they just know stuff we don’t.”

  “He’s got you pegged, there,” MO-126 said.

  “You’re not helping,” the trade android transmitted.

  �
��You want help? Here’s help. The boy’s name is Utrek. Impress him with your magic.”

  The trader grinned. “Magic? What could possibly make anyone think we have magic…, Utrek?”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m sure I must have heard it somewhere. It certainly isn’t magic.”

  “Clever,” MO-126 said. “And you didn’t even lie to him.” Androids found outright lying difficult. They could do it, but it made them uncomfortable. Being intentionally incorrect upset their inherent need for accuracy and made them feel like they were about to develop an imagination or suffer some other malfunction. They could, however, bend truths into knots no primitive logician could find the ends to.

  “Thank you. I thought it was pretty good, too.”

  Tam continued to stare at Utrek as if the two were having a contest, which the trader eventually won when the boy turned and walked away.

  “That should do for now,” the trade android signaled as he took the leads of the pack animals, “but I think we should call for special surveillance just to be on the safe side.”

  “I’ll do it,” MO-126 said. He switched frequencies and sent a message to Field Operations. “Surveillance Drones requested to monitor Semiautonomous Production Cell 42-A. Adolescent male primitive known as Utrek poses an unsupervised migration risk. Mitigation actions may be required.”

  They left the village, plodding slowly over trackless terrain. In a way, he regretted the necessity of restricting the humans’ freedom of movement, but he understood that it really was for their own good. Allowing them to run free would be poor stewardship. Not only would it harm the corporation’s interests, it would harm the humans as well. If left unmanaged, their territorial instincts could surface and they might even harm one another.

  ~*~

  Two weeks later, MO-126 lay on a table in the maintenance bay of Hub Terminal Eleven undergoing a routine checkup. Lights blinked green, yellow, red, and blue on panels nearby, and musical pings and beeps sounded as the table ran diagnostics on his various subsystems. So far, he seemed in reasonably good shape, but then he was only a little over three thousand years old. With proper care, and a bit of luck, he could go ten times that without requiring any major repair.

  A signal not associated with the maintenance scans notified him of a message from Field Ops. He opened the file to find an update on the surveillance he requested. Utrek had left the village.

  MO-126 jumped from the maintenance table and contacted Field Operations to get additional details. Utrek and another primitive left the village the day before with improvised camping gear and failed to return by nightfall. A surveillance drone in the form of a large owl followed and continued to track them. The mitigation team being organized would be deployed shortly. The android dog sent a request to join it. This type of duty never interested him before, but this time felt different. He felt personally involved, and he wanted to see how the situation played out.

  Three hours later, their team assembled near a wooded area about thirty kilometers southeast of the village. The lusterless black flitter that brought them here lifted silently into the night from its landing site in an open field of grass partially obscured by trees and a low hill. They would be walking back.

  Their team leader, a trade interface android who, for this mission, went by the designation ‘Indigo One,’ got the primitives’ position from the surveillance drone. MO-126 carried the label ‘Indigo Eight.’ The renaming resulted from some obscure tradition dating back to a time when the predecessors of the civilizations comprising the Galactic Federation physically fought one another over resources and ideology. It was a simpler time then. Now, Federation members achieved their ends and resolved their conflicts through financial finagling, legal manipulation, political influence, and, in rare instances, even rational discussion. They couldn’t just beat their opponents over the head with a heavy object and take what they wanted. They must get them to provide it voluntarily. Some hard-line conservative members of especially aggressive species regarded this as less efficient because one often needed to give something in return. In the long run, it proved less costly than building weapons and war machines, not to mention rebuilding afterward—if they still possessed the ability, so the practice caught on with only a few carryovers from the old days, such as stylishly tailored jackets with epaulets and adopting silly names for mitigation teams.

  Most of the team consisted of canine mobile observer androids like MO-126. They would do most of the actual mitigating, with Indigo One coordinating their actions.

  “Mitigation Team Indigo,” the team leader broadcast, “the wayward primitives are camped by the stream about three hundred meters south of us. Indigo Four through Seven, circle around south of them. Indigo Eight through Eleven, block them from the east. Stop one hundred meters from the target. Indigo Two and Three are with me.” The latter were the other humanoid team members. “Notify me when you are in position.”

  MO-126 scanned the area in infrared but did not see any humans. He requested a position update from the drone, which quickly responded with relative coordinates. It could do little else. Unlike the androids, the simulated owl possessed much less intelligence than the animal it resembled.

  The four artificial dogs comprising MO-126’s unit quietly made their way to where Indigo One said they should stop. The reason the android dog did not see the primitives before was because they were lying in a shallow depression sound asleep. He notified the team leader of their status and received updated instructions.

  They spread out into a line and began to howl. The noise should wake the two primitives without immediately sending them into a panic. That would come later.

  One of the humans woke and shook the other. It appeared to be Utrek. MO-126 could not be sure in the low light. His infrared vision blurred too many details. He assumed the other human was the boy he saw him talking with at the construction site. Somehow, Utrek must have convinced him to join him on his explorations.

  Now that the two boys were obviously awake, the second act of the show could begin.

  The three humanoid androids began a mournful wailing, which sounded, intentionally, like, “Who dares? Whooooooo darrrrrrrrrrres?”

  The boys stood and peered nervously into the night. With their limited night vision, they were unlikely to directly observe any of the members of the mitigation team. If the boys proved uncooperative, they would be allowed to see what they should take for a wild dog pack stalking them. If they did as the androids hoped, the boys would never catch more than a brief glimpse of them.

  They began howling louder, adding barks and growls as they slowly approached.

  One of the boys turned and ran roughly in the direction of their village. The other, paused just long enough to grab a blanket and some other belongings before following him. They did not scream or even yell at one another, which MO-126 considered quite brave. They did run for all they were worth, occasionally casting nervous glances behind them.

  The androids hounded them through the night, not allowing them more than a moment of rest, guiding them from a distance with howls and barks and moans. Their own fears and imaginations are what truly drove them. By the time the first light of dawn dusted the horizon, they were within sight of their village.

  The sun peeked over the horizon. The two fleeing boys could not know this resulted from the planet turning. The myths of their village said the land rested on the back of a giant turtle and the sun rose due to the efforts of the Great Cosmic Gond. Some of the villagers even took this seriously. Everyplace MO-126 visited told stories like these, and although all gravely lacked anything resembling technical accuracy, they were amazing for their creative inventiveness. The primitives did not need to know how the sun rose, but they wanted to, and knowing no way to find out, they created stories that made sense to them to explain the phenomenon. At first, he thought the myths were something like scientific hypotheses, but they weren’t. Most of them were cleve
rly contrived to be unverifiable. They put their gods where they could not find them. The stories could not be tested, which made them solid beliefs that could endure. They certainly supported the health and longevity of the project because they effectively stopped further questioning without providing dangerous answers. In some ways, he found this ingenious, but he could not help feeling that being cleverly wrong simply was not right. The PM encouraged its field operatives to support such beliefs, and he understood why. Whether he liked it or not made no difference. The policy made sense.

  “That was fun!” one of the other canine androids said as they stood just inside a tree line watching their retreating quarry. Some of the others agreed. MO-126 did not. He understood that humans could not be allowed to roam freely. There were good reasons for preventing it, and he knew he successfully performed his duty to the corporation. He simply did not enjoy it.

  They continued to look on from a distance to make sure the boys returned home. Then the mitigation team left. The surveillance drone would remain until the next step could be implemented.

  ~*~

  MO-126 and his humanoid partner returned to the village ten days later. This time, a surrogate human nursery android accompanied them. Aunt Nettie, a short, plump, NASH, appeared to be at least sixty years old. Her actual age was closer to four thousand. Sometimes, when the project manager considered a village might be a bit too innovative or harbor progressive ideas, a NASH unit would be assigned to gently encourage a respect for tradition, remind the primitives of what a fine life they had, and otherwise discourage curiosity and change. Traders normally introduced them as healers, teachers, minstrels, or, as in this case, as storytellers, and the villagers always invited them to stay. The nursery androids’ inherent congenial nature provided part of the reason why. The rest was the implied promise of better trade deals.