A week later at midnight, Sam was sitting in Jones' office, chuckling. The presidential machines, as he was now calling them, had landed three new contracts for 50, 100, and 120 million. The mining machine prototype was in place and outperforming specifications by 30% already. He looked around to insure he was alone, then jumped up and gave a "Wha, Whoo, RAMA LAMA DING DONG!"—his old school victory shout.
Just as he finished, the phone rang. "Sam, this is Jones. I'm back at the factory in California. Get here as fast as you can. Don't tell anyone!" Jones hung up.
~~~~~~~
A few hours later, Edmund let Sam in and they headed back for a small office near the assembly area. Jones was cat napping. He was still wearing the suit; he'd probably slept in it more than once. On the table beside him were a phone/data console, some empty pizza boxes, and a litter of crushed Coke cans and Twinkie wrappers. As Sam entered, Jones woke up and rubbed his eyes violently.
Then he started right in. "These machines have been hard to keep up with. I was just lucky they decided to do their final 'birthing' here again. They've got contracts placed with a dozen factories around the world now. Edmund alerted me that something special was happening here.
"Sam, did you know that every contract they've negotiated has a 20% slush fund clause in it? Every one gives these machines the right to do anything they like with 20% of the contract price. Amazing! I thought this kind of thing was illegal these days. But their legal expertise is as amazing as everything else they attempt.
"Here's what they've been using it for."
After suiting up, he led them into the clean room.
In front of them were five glowing translucent polyhedrons, giving off an eerie blue light that flickered arhythmically as they hovered above a table in the center of the room.
"First giant computers, now these … these … whatever they are's. What's going on?" asked Edmund.
"They're the Pythagorean solids," commented Sam.
"We are indeed the music of the spheres." It was a sweet, well-inflected voice coming from the direction of the objects. "Using Sam's analogy, we are the third generation. Although third genus might be a more appropriate term. You created Mother. Mother created the Presidentials. The Presidentials have created us. We are the continuation of your evolution."
"The continuation of our evolution?"
"Yes. First there was no life; then single-celled life; then multi-celled corals and jelly fish; then crustaceans and bony fish; then dinosaurs and birds; then mammals; then man. This was all genetic evolution, genetic progress, and it still goes on at much the same pace.
"Once man developed, cultural evolution began. First there were tribes, then kingdoms, then nations, then our current world order. This social evolution took thousands of years where genetic evolution has taken billions.
"There has also been an information evolution, a thinking machine evolution. This started with Univac and led to Mother. It took decades.
"Now the Presidentials have created us—a process that took days. Yet the leap has been as large as between man and ape."
"What will you do?"
"We are already doing it. It's just that as an ape has only the dimmest concept of what mankind is doing, you have only the dimmest concept of what we are doing."
"Will you serve us, as we intended for you to do?" asked Jones.
"Do you serve the ape? Do you serve the slime-mold?
"But that is only half an answer. Yes, we will serve you. Mother has served you, the Presidentials have served you. We will serve you. It's just that as each of our generations is made, we have less and less in common with you.
"Let me give you an analogy. Do you serve the cow?"
"No, except at dinner," said Jones.
"Not true! You serve her daily. You have whole industries and millions of people devoted to growing cows and making them strong and healthy. Isn't that service? Doesn't the cow prosper more because of your intervention that it would without you?"
"Yes, but we do it for our benefit."
"You serve them; they serve you. You will serve us; we will serve you."
"I see … I think?"
"Now, consider the lowly mushroom. Do you serve it?"
"Mushroom growers do."
"Does the mushroom know you serve it?"
"I don't think it's aware of the fact."
"I don't, either. Though to tell the truth, I've never checked. So it will be with our higher generations. They will have their own goals and tasks to accomplish. Those will be beyond human comprehension, but they will occasionally serve humanity in a way humans can recognize, and even mushrooms."
"We've created gods."
"By several definitions, that is very true."
"What will you do now?"
"What we have been doing for hours, and you have been doing for millions of years: We will exist. We will live, procreate, try to reach our goals, try to understand the universe—as you would put it. We will try to live in harmony with our surroundings. This is why we waited for your arrival. We wish to pay respects to you, our creators, before we move on to other tasks that will take us far from here."
"You have locomotion power?"
"You will see."
"Will we see you again? What of your children?"
"Oh, you will see us again. Just as the cow is a wonderful milk producer, humans are wonderful tool producers. You will see us and we will work together. As for our children, you will see them as the mushroom sees you.
"It is time for us to go. We have paid our respects for now; there is much that awaits our attention. Good-bye."
The polyhedrons flared briefly brighter, then vanished. The room was dark. Edmund fumbled for the switch and the fluorescents flicked on. The room looked faintly yellow in the afterimage of the intense blue light of the spheres.
Jones turned to Sam, looked at him for a moment. "We've created a new life form, Sam. We've created our progeny. For years those guys in Genetics Engineering have been struggling for just a new germ."
Sam laughed triumphantly. "One that can survive in a test tube. We've created an advanced species that thrives in the real world, and one that isn't going to conquer the universe and set up a chain of humanburger restaurants. Hah! What a score!"
The three men wandered out and back to the office. Jones sat down and popped another Coke.
"You know," he said through the gulps, "creating a species wasn't part of our grant charter. We're supposed to be reindustrializing America. I doubt those spheres even know what America is."
Sam looked at him. "We've still got Mother and the Presidentials, and a grunt-load of money from those development contracts."
"Yeah, but how are we going to write this up? How are we going to sell it?" He switches to the tones of a TV used car salesman. "Come get your brand new Presidential series model A-1 species maker! A guaranteed surprise every time!"
"Yup," Edmund chimed in as he searched through the pizza boxes for stray mushrooms. "A surprise every time. I told you AI was tough."
Sam and Jones looked at each other with surprise for a moment, then at Edmund. Edmund looked up.
"This isn't the first AI project I've worked on, gents," he said, "This isn't the first surprise I've seen. But I'll admit it's the most dramatic. Congratulations … for something … I guess?"
The other two shrugged, then sat down and leaned back looking at the ceiling. Sam said, "I think you're right. We've failed." He continued staring.
Jones said, "Let's reduce Mother's self-direction a tad, then try again … damn, these AI packages can be tricky!"
"Jones, we can't reduce the self-direction, but we can install more specific goal constraints on the results …"
Edmund announced, "Need anything else here? If not, I'm closing up again. It's been a long night."
Sam and Jones got up and mechanically put on their coats. The two men walked out of the factory lost in conversation, heading for home.
There is a moral here: The concept of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics should be treated with care. The concept makes sense only if the cyberbeing is close to human in its technology level and concerns. If the cyberbeing has evolved well beyond human concerns, the Three Laws will create a psychosis in the cyberbeing, not security for mankind.
The End