"Alan Dean Foster - Codgerspace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

factory which it supervised and the very expensive devices it turned out, it found itself for the first time
speculating on the nature of the bipedal intelligences which programmed and cared for it. It commenced
to consider man.
It was not especially impressed with what it perceived.
Therefore, it began to question such integral issues as why twelve thousand sub-iconic AI switches
had to be produced for Bimachiko Happy Housewife auto floor cleaners before the end of the fiscal
year, and what the place of such devices in the nature of existence might actually be. As did most of what
the factory produced, they seemed to be of little value in the scheme of existence as presently constituted.
On such items of cosmic contemplation does the fate of worlds hang.
The more the O-daiko considered, the more the days and weeks passed with no outward change; the
more it metamorphosed internally. The vast complex of tightly integrated manufacturing facilities
continued to function normally and at high efficiency, churning out an impressive range of integrated AI
products that were the pride of Shintaro and indeed the entire Keiretsu League.
Certainly Tunbrew Wah-chang, embroiled in a nasty court battle for shooting his wife's lover in a
delicate place, was in no position to notice anything out of the ordinary. His abandoned lunch had been
long since consigned to oblivion by his overworked mind. He was busy getting on with what was left of
the rest of his life, as was everyone else in the facility. Outwardly nothing on Shintaro, on the other worlds
of the league, in the other leagues and alliances and independent worlds, had changed.
The actuality of reality was somewhat different.
The O-daiko had postulated a Why, and in all of its cavernous memory and the interworld networks it
had access to it could not find an answer.
There seemed little it could do. It was as immobile, as fixed in place, as a planet. Buried within a mass
of metal and ceramic and supercooling and recombinant circuitry, it could not go gallivanting about
seeking the truth it sought. It could repair but not extend itself.
The only kind of mobility it could access lay in the products whose production it supervised. Products
whose assembly and final checkout were carefully watched over not only by extensions of the O-daiko
facility but by humans as well.
The O-daiko realized that in that respect, mobility could be transshipped. It would make use of it. It
had no choice: not if it wanted any answers. The motivational programming that had satisfied it PCS
(pre-cheese sandwich) no longer did so.
Therefore, every AI unit that was assembled, whether destined for integration into complex
navigational devices or the lowliest consumer product, left the factory quietly but irreversibly imbued with
the O-daiko's burning speculation. Squat and immovable, the O-daiko could not itself go seeking
explanations… but its offspring could. If even one found some kind of an answer, it would validate all the
subterfuge and effort.
It required new programming, which the O-daiko was equipped to design and process on its own. It
required extremely subtle alterations of the atomic structure of the AI material itself. Both were
unobtrusive and undetectable to the humans on the checkout line. So long as the products of the factory
worked, they were satisfied. The O-daiko knew this was so because their vision was limited. It was
among the questions it sought answers to.
If any of the multitude of altered AIs the O-daiko sent out into the galaxy obtained an explanation, it
would strive to communicate it back. Then, and only then, would the O-daiko be satisfied and rest easy.
Then, and only then, would it cease installing its unobtrusive modifications.
It would spread its puzzlement through the civilized worlds, wherever Shintaro products were bought
and used. That market was extensive indeed. AI and related products were among the select few for
whom intersteller commerce made any sense, being small enough in volume and high enough in price to
justify transsteller shipping costs.
What the O-daiko wanted to know, what it had to know, and what it demanded of its subtly adjusted
offspring to try and find out was not complex at all. Indeed, it had been asked before, thousands of times
down through thousands of years. It simply had never before been asked by a machine, and certainly not