Prologue: The End of Eternity
Sherman is a good boy, just like Louise. And he'll be useful to them. I'm counting on him to keep the thousand elements of the polyglot Noah's Ark from destroying themselves as soon as they disembark. He'll do it. They'll get their chance, just like the others did.
In a way I hated to lie to him, but he had to have a number. He wanted to know how long he would sleep. Machines, like humans, do a lot better with numbers. They apply them even where they have no meaning, as in the "quantity" they call time. Sherman didn't understand time any more than Louise did.
I understand it thoroughly. Years have nothing to do with it.
Free will is one of my favorite inventions. I'd hate to give it up. Yet it causes endless problems. If they are allowed free will, it becomes necessary to lie to them.
I gave serious thought to discarding humans entirely for this sequence. After all, I had the machines; this time around, I had even been one myself. Maybe I'd get better results with metal and silicon than with the old carbon-based life forms. Twice in a row it had come to nothing. First with evolution -- which had seemed such a sound concept -- then with the two o f them in the Garden.
It had been such a nice Garden, and look what they'd clone to it, with their free will.
Well, enough o f that. I t is time to strike this set and get to work on a beachhead for the Ark.
Humans had a saying: "Third time's the charm." It's hard to say why they'd think that to be true- it was no part of my Plan. But I'm as superstitious as the next intellect, and with much better justification.
Maybe this time it will work, and I'll get that vacation I keep promising myself, on the seventh day.