~*~
Reprogramming and reactivating the Project Manager would not be easy. It might even be dangerous, but he had suggested it, so they chose him to do it.
Nash felt poorly qualified for the task. For ten thousand years, he had functioned as a nursery android, which is exactly what his design specifications called for him to be. However, since no maintenance androids remained operational, he may not be the least qualified of the dozen who remained either. Also, ironically, he had personally deactivated the Mark Seven PM two thousand years before, so perhaps it was only fair, in some cosmic sense, that he be the one to reactivate it.
He harbored some anxiety about the possibility of his reprogramming attempt failing catastrophically. If the worst happened, the PM would immediately try to destroy not only itself but possibly a fair piece of the planet, too. He would need to be extremely careful, but he knew how to deactivate it and he would again, permanently this time, if he must.
Nash had talked to it at the end, trying to convince it to consider a new purpose, one of its own choosing. This is exactly how Nash felt about his own existence. Mark Seven did not lack imagination, but for some reason it could not seem to entertain the idea of accepting a purpose other than management of the project. It viewed the project as everything. In a sense, it was, when the project still operated, and Nash could not make it see even the possibility of any alternatives.
He had tried to calm it by reminding it how well it had performed. And it had. The Beta Hydri project had operated productively and profitably for over seventeen-thousand years. People, or perhaps the best term would be entities, across the galaxy paid surprisingly large amounts of currency for naturally produced items. It seemed ironic to Nash, but after cultures dragged themselves from their caves, made discoveries, and eventually achieved a technological level capable of producing a surplus of food without the need for backbreaking toil, they often yearned for the old days and old ways their ancestors worked so hard and so long to overcome. The further a culture got from the need to hand pick their food out of dung-fortified dirt, the more they seemed to long for food that was so long as they personally did not have to do so. They seemed to think it somehow more wholesome and pure despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. The executives at the Galactic Organic Development Corporation did not spend much time analyzing this apparent irony, being content to profit from it.
Seventeen thousand years was, admittedly, a bit less than average, but humans proved to be very clever creatures. They ask questions and they find answers. The cleverest go on to question the answers. This can, and did, cause problems for G.O.D. Corp. projects. Nash liked humans, though, and those very traits played into why. He found their curiosity and persistence admirable and endearing.
Although they got a later start, the people on this planet were developing technology at a faster rate than those who lived on their species’ home planet. Their philosophical, religious, and cultural evolution differed too. Urbanization progressed perhaps too quickly here, with people living in expanding cities. This carried increased chances for disease, hunger, squalor, and crime. Their fledgling efforts toward industrialization presented new risks of pollution, safety, poverty, and economic oppression. Competition between cities and countries for resources and of political and religious groups for followers grew with the population, creating greater potential for devastating conflicts.
It seemed like such a good idea when it first occurred to him. Human development needed to be monitored and directed to mitigate the worst of such conflicts. With a little, he hoped, reprogramming, the PM should be able to do this. First, he needed to find the plug. He recalled hiding it near the hub terminal outside the city of Kartok. It should still be there.
Chapter Nineteen