An Android Dog's Tale

by David Morrese

  Much of the chatter he picked up from some of the two hundred or so NASH androids who stayed behind was about the PM’s rapid psychological deterioration. Such things were not unprecedented. This particular model, the Mark Seven, was known to suffer depression if insufficiently challenged. The line was discontinued millennia ago, but Mark Sevens still ran several Corporation projects, and the manufacturer maintained that they were adaptive and creative enough to overcome such problems, given time, in most cases.

  The Mark Seven installed here might also be plagued by feelings of guilt over the termination of the project it oversaw. MO-126 was no expert in such things and could do nothing about it, regardless. If the PM did fail, he could only hope it did not turn out anything like Corporation Project HD-X86G-1. Shortly after the termination of that project, for reasons much like those that occurred here, the PM suffered what experts later termed a ‘catastrophic malfunction.’ It somehow rapidly poisoned and thickened the planet’s atmosphere. This indeed proved catastrophic, deadly, in fact, for the various forms of life on the planet, including the introduced workers, which in this case were hairy, muscular but basically nonaggressive bipeds known as nanders. It also created something of a public relations inconvenience for the corporation, although they could not be held legally accountable for the PM’s actions after they officially terminated their project. The PM was, by then, an independent legal entity. Still, the corporation did suffer a blow to its reputation and might have been urged to pay compensation to the nander’s home planet under different circumstances. It proved impossible in this case because the nanders never progressed past stone tools on their home planet and certainly never developed anything like a global government.

  If, on the other hand, the Mark Seven just burned itself out, which is what happened most often when behavior similar to that of this PM arose, it would be of no concern to the corporation. It would not even be much of a problem to the few androids still on the planet. They could survive without PM oversight, so even if its malfunction resulted in total failure, they might be inconvenienced, but they would not be at risk, provided it did not destroy the hub terminals and the equipment in them.

  MO-126 watched another shooting star on the darkening horizon. This one may have been a natural meteor, but it was probably another satellite burning away its existence in the atmosphere. The PM must have altered its orbit with this intent. It appeared to be intentionally destroying at least some of the remaining project infrastructure. The android dog did not know termination protocols well, but he felt quite sure that this was not in accordance with standard operating procedures. Those satellites were necessary to maintain communication between and among the remaining androids, and probably several other things.

  Staying behind may have been a mistake.

  He became even more convinced of this when a general announcement from the PM demanded his attention.

  “The day of judgment has come and found us wanting. The end is upon us.”

  That sounded far from encouraging.

  MO-126 remained on the hill, waiting for the next sign of the apocalypse. It failed to live up to his expectations, a fact which did not disturb him overly much. He did not look forward to the end of this world. He had come to like it.

  He heard nervous chatter among the NASH androids and one more general broadcast from the PM about everything being pointless, or something like that. He’d stopped paying much attention by this point. Another satellite died a fiery death, followed by radio silence. Leaves still rustled in response to a gentle breeze. Birds continued to call for mates. Insects did not cease chirping and buzzing, but he received no more signals from the PM or the others. The communication network was gone.

  Well, that’s it then. The PM must have committed electronic suicide without taking the planet with it. Things could have been much worse. He sent out a general call just to make sure. No one answered.

  He lifted his head and howled like a dog. He could not explain exactly why, but part of it may have been a call of mourning over the death of the PM. The rest may have been to herald his new freedom. He was not exactly alone. Several other androids, mostly NASH units, decided to retire here, but he was, for the first time in his life, totally free to be anything he chose to be. So were the humans. Their fate rested in their own hands now, and it was unpredictable.

  He stood, shook off the dust in his fur, and then headed down the mountain. It was time to try new things.

  Nine - A Dog and His Boy

  1,004 Years Later

  (Galactic Standard Years 243250 - 243260)

  In which MO-126 adopts a boy and herds some sheep.

  Over the next thousand years, MO-126 came upon other androids every now and then. All were humanoid NASH units. Some occupied themselves as healers, teachers, storytellers or other pastimes that allowed them to satisfy their urge to interact positively with people. MO-126’s options were far more limited, and this may have been one reason why he seemed to be handling the changes better than many of his bipedal peers.

  It would be wrong to say that the rapid change in human culture upset them, exactly, but some found it difficult to adapt. The instability grated on their deep-seated programming, which regarded change as something bad that should happen infrequently and as slowly as possible. Humans, on the other hand, unmanaged and unrestrained by Corporation mitigation actions, often pursued change as a good thing. Some, of course, did not, but changes now occurred at a far greater rate than they were allowed to when the project ran. Villages grew into towns; trade increased along rivers and coastlines; the use of money expanded; empires rose and fell; languages and religions merged into regional standards along with systems of measurement and writing. Humans made advancements in various technologies from weaving to metal working, but it was by no means a steady march of progress.

  In some places, humans themselves discouraged progressive development far more brutally and no less effectively than the corporation had. Powerful elites with vested interests arose. Cruel dictators and repressive religious institutions effectively squelched anyone who spoke against them. They enforced systems of unjust property ownership, imposed slavery and oppression on those without the power to resist, and went to war with one another to extend their dominance even farther.

  The NASH androids regarded such things as unfortunate, but they were not designed to resist established power, to lead rebellions, or to oppose tyranny. Such tendencies would have been contrary to corporate interests. Most of the androids who stayed behind coped as well as they could and continued to do things they enjoyed, things that resonated with their engineered personalities—helping people in the routines of their daily lives even in those places where their routines bore little resemblance to those with which the androids were long familiar.

  MO-126 simply tried to avoid such places, which is why he spent the majority of his time wandering the eastern half of the continent where the people began forging cooperative agreements even before the corporation officially terminated the project. It wasn’t exactly a nation, and it wasn’t entirely peaceful, but it did have a name. From the mountains to the eastern coast, the people called it Eastfield. Additional names existed for various sections of it, but the people here were already forming a larger and mostly peaceful community. MO-126 found this encouraging.

  As the years went by, he heard from fewer and fewer other androids. Without the satellite network, his ability to communicate with his peers was limited to his internal short range communication subsystem, which possessed an effective range of only a handful of kilometers. Not hearing from any other androids, therefore, did not necessarily mean there were none, just that there were none near him attempting to communicate.

  He last he heard from one was almost two decades ago. She told him she planned to voluntarily deactivate for a while, just until things settled a bit. When he asked how long she expected that to be, she told him until someone wakes her. He heard from none since and wondered how many others decid
ed to put themselves in hibernation, or something even more drastic.

  One thing remained much the same since the time of the project. There were few roads between settlements and those that did exist were little more than narrow, infrequently used trails. The corporation’s bio-matrix transplant from the humans’ home planet included no animals that could easily be bred into beasts of burden. This hindered land travel over any distance, which of course was the original intent. Only one type of native beast suitable for such things existed, gonds, and they traveled even slower than a human at a walking pace.

  MO-126 went from place to place, from year to year, never staying anywhere long. He saw humans build and destroy, create and steal. He met people he liked—from a safe emotional distance. He saw some he did not like, and he kept even farther away. But everything felt…unstable. Even he found the pace of change dizzying. He would go to a village one day and return to it as little as a hundred years later and find it unrecognizable. The people, the buildings, everything except the more durable bits of landscape would be different, and sometimes, not even those. People carved mountains, cleared forests, changed harbors and coastlines…. They were constantly changing, adapting themselves and their environment as if searching for some elusive harmony.

  After a few centuries of this, he decided to take a break from humans, so he ran with a pack of wild dogs for a while. He enjoyed it, but they definitely lacked much ability for stimulating conversation. He left when one of the bitches started to take an annoyingly romantic interest in him. He wasn’t about to go that native. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to her. Her biological clock was ticking and she probably wanted puppies. MO-126 didn’t even have a biological clock.

  ~*~

  One day, he came upon a little village in the eastern half of the continent that seemed so sleepy he almost believed he could hear it snoring. It occupied a bit of undistinguished flat land a bit closer to Hub Terminal Ten than to Hub Terminal Four, which still put it in the middle of nowhere. No roads worthy of the name led to it, and no rivers navigable by anything larger than a canoe or small raft flowed nearby. It seemed like a good place to get away from it all.

  He approached the collection of thatched, wattle and daub buildings cautiously. He learned long ago that one never can tell with humans. They might welcome him; they might ignore him; they might try to hunt him down to make him the main course of a feast. As with most such places, the village dogs noticed his arrival first, or at least they were the first to do anything about it. He knew the routine. They barked from a distance and postured with bristled fur and bared teeth. He dipped his head submissively and allowed their approach.

  After a round of wary sniffing, they allowed him to continue. A couple of them persisted in trying to engage him in the canine equivalent of idle conversation, which, to a human, might look more like play. He tried to ignore them. They eventually abandoned their boring visitor and returned to the important tasks they interrupted before he arrived, which mainly consisted of sleeping in shady spots and occasionally scratching or licking themselves, processes that apparently demanded careful attention. MO-126 never could understand why.

  An old man sitting on a spindle-backed rocking chair outside one of the huts, gummed a piece of overripe fruit he sliced with a short, bronze knife. He glanced toward the android dog and squinted nearsightedly before returning his attention to his sweet snack.

  A boy who could not have been older than ten years ran to the old man on bare feet, his dusty and frayed tunic fluttering behind him.

  “Gumper!” the boy said. “Your gond is doing it again.”

  “Confound it,” the man said, slowly rising from his chair. He reached for a wooden staff leaning against the wall of the hut. “Where’s Beaty? Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “I…I couldn’t find him. He said he had to go take care of something and left me to watch the sheep. I thought he was just going off to take a leak, but he was gone a long time, and he didn’t answer when I called.”

  “Probably went courting that girl again,” Gumper grumbled. “He’s almost as bad as the gond. Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

  They rushed off as quickly as the old man could move. The situation mildly tickled MO-126’s curiosity, and, having nothing better to do, he followed behind them.

  The old man and the boy soon arrived at a fenced pasture enclosing about an acre of stubby grass and weeds. A flock of seven sheep inside nervously attempted to evade the overtures of a clearly amorous bull gond, which must have gotten in through a break in the fence. It probably knocked it down just for this purpose. It would not have done so with anything resembling planning, of course. Gonds simply tended to ignore obstacles when their tiny minds became set on something. It may not have even noticed a fence in the way.

  “Stupid beast. If I didn’t need him to pull the plow, I’d have Beaty turn him into boot leather.”

  “If we don’t do something, he’s going to turn those sheep into mutton,” the boy said with some urgency.

  MO-126 observed such behavior in gonds several times before. The old man was right. They were stupid beasts. People sometimes remarked on the stupidity of goats and sheep, but they were geniuses compared to gonds. Even chickens, which could claim little with regard to higher intellect, could reason better than gonds. They could count their own chicks, up to a limit, anyway. As the largest native land animals, and with no natural enemies, gonds never needed to be smart. Their survival required just two basic instincts—eat and breed, both of which they normally did in a fairly persistent but unhurried manner. Throughout the course of their evolution, this sufficed. Until the introduction of species from the human home world, it was all they ever needed. Their quadruple stomachs could digest just about any plant growing on the planet. Any reasonably large animal with four legs that they could catch was probably another gond, and there was at least a fifty percent chance of it being of the opposite gender. Since embarrassment also did not appear on their short list of evolutionary endowments, this was not an issue. Gonds never needed to be overly discriminate in their choices of meals and mates, so they weren’t.

  Once the Corporation project began, however, additional four-legged beasts occupied the planet, and sometimes problems arose. An especially nearsighted or enthusiastic gond, perhaps sensing hormones or some other clue, would occasionally attempt to engage in natural acts with unnatural and unwilling partners. Corporation biologists discovered that immature gonds secreted a scent that adults did not, which males of the species seemed to respect as a sign that they were not suitable companions for romantic advances. The imported livestock lacked this protection.

  The one ram in the flock feinted a challenge to the gond by lowering its head and stamping a foreleg. This only seemed to encourage the gond. After all, it massed about the same as the entire flock. A ram presented no threat, and the gond might have even seen the display as the wooly ruminant’s equivalent of a ‘come hither’ look.

  The sheep’s flocking instinct kept them together, which would have been fine if a pack of wild dogs threatened them. It failed to effectively address the danger posed by a single gond with a horny gleam in its dull eyes plodding their way. By ill luck or random chance, they ended up huddled in one end of the fenced enclosure. A gate stood there, but it was closed, and the gond had them cornered.

  “Open the gate!” the old man yelled. “Let them out.”

  “But they’ll run away,” the boy protested. “And the gond will just chase them anyway.”

  “It can’t catch them in the open. Hurry! We can worry about them later. Right now, we just have to get them out of there.”

  The barefooted boy ran to obey.

  MO-126 thought he might be able to help. He ran into the small pasture through the break in the fence, barking and dodging around the gond to distract it. This might give the boy, and the sheep, a little more time.

  After running close enough to smell the well-chewed grass on its breath, he managed to catc
h the gond’s attention. It turned its wide, hairy head toward him, farted, and stopped its slow advance on the cornered sheep. The android dog noticed the boy fumbling with the gate latch. MO-126 backed away slowly so that the gond could keep its eyes on him, otherwise, it might forget he was there.

  The boy finally got the gate open, and the sheep ran for it. This was enough to distract the gond again. It turned its attention to its fleeing connubial interest and began following them through the open gate. The boy could do nothing to stop it, and he didn’t attempt to. Instead, he tried, and failed, to keep up with the sheep, which ran as a flock in a straight line away from the pursuing gond.

  MO-126 ran past the gond and the boy. He could at least keep the sheep together and herd them back once the two humans found a way to subdue the large and misguided paramour.

  After the sheep covered what he considered a safe enough distance, he circled around them to get them to stop, which he managed quite well, he thought. When he looked back to the fenced pasture, he saw the old man hitting the gond with his staff. The minor amount of pain he might be inflicting on its thick hide was just to distract the animal. Gonds tended to follow the path of least resistance, rather like water—or most people, for that matter. With the sheep away from its nearsighted view, it apparently decided that complying with the old man’s prompting was the easiest thing to do, so it acquiesced and allowed itself to be guided away.

  The barefoot boy came huffing toward MO-126 and the flock he tended. The sheep by this time were taking an interest in the nice fresh grass around them, which is, after all, always greener on the other side of the fence. The android dog sat near them, trying to look helpful, or at least not dangerous. He’d let the stupid-looking kid make the first overture. And he was stupid-looking. His upswept ears were a bit too big and stuck out just enough to make his head, which was a little too small, appear that it was about to take flight. His greenish eyes and blondish hair were both unremarkable traits in the eastern half of the continent, and two front teeth that any rodent would be proud of protruded over his lower lip. The android dog observed hundreds of people much like him over the years. They seldom amounted to much and were destined to lead quiet, dull lives among others who were much the same. He rather envied them at times.