I looked at Arthur. "What gives?"
Arthur shrugged, grinning. "He's having a dandy time."
"How the hell did he figure out how to work the equipment?"
"Oh, it's not as hard as you might expect." Arthur rose, walked over, and peered over Carl's shoulder. "In this plant, in its day, engineers were looked upon as artists. They really didn't need to know much about engineering. Here, machine intelligences supply all the data, all the formulae, all the know-how. They do all the dirty work. The only thing that organic brains can supply is creativity. That's what Carl's doing. He's telling the machines what he wants and what he wants it to do, and the machines are helping him design it. And if the design is judged a worthy work of art, they just might build a prototype model."
"That's really something," I said. And it was, it was.
"No! Not that way," Carl said sharply. "It opens from the left. Yeah."
"Satisfactory?" a soft voice asked.
"Satisfactory."
I looked at Arthur, who said, "I think Bruce is responsible for the plant learning English."
I nodded.
"Now the engine is all yours, pal," Carl was saying, eyes still riveted to the drafting board. "I don't have a clue how that works."
"Very well. Requires advanced propulsion principle-high efficiency, low maintenance… "
"How about no maintenance? Can you do that? I'll never find someone to fix it."
"A challenge for time periods longer than quarter revolution of average galaxy."
"Huh? Quarter revolution of a- That's millions of years. Hey, I'm not going to live anywhere near that long."
"Then no maintenance is no challenge."
"All ri-i-ght!"
"Weapons systems?"
This went on for another hour. Carl eventually acknowledged our presence, then insisted that he had to finish. I didn't ask what he was doing. Lori woke out of a troubled sleep, and needed some attention. She had had the dream too. Afterward, we hung about and looked around. We were extremely hungry. At last, Carl was done.
"Very unusual, extremely idiosyncratic," the design chief pronounced. "But of surpassing elegance and simplicity. May we go ahead with fabrication of prototype?"
"Sure!" Carl said, getting up. He swayed slightly, and put a hand to his forehead. "Man, am I bushed. Terrific headache, too. But it was a hell of a lot of fun."
"Lunch time!" Arthur said.
"Lunch?" I was ready to gnaw on some lab equipment.
A detail of robots brought us lunch. The food was very good, not quite the haute cuisine of Emerald City, but far more than adequate. Bruce had done a good job feeding biochemical information to the plant's protein synthesizers. The flavorings were top-notch. Textures were a little off here and there, especially in the steak. A little too mushy. But the bread was terrific. You'd never know there wasn't one grain of wheat in it.
After lunch, the plant foreman spoke to us. "We have begun production of prototype. Would you like to observe?" He sounded a lot like the design chief, and I suspected that the latter was merely a subsystem of the former.
Would like to observe, yes.
We all boarded another robocart and swung out into the plant.
The place had come to life. We rode for an hour through the throbbing heart of technological wizardry. What had been hulks of dead machinery now flashed and sparked, whirred and hummed, chimed and beeped and thrummed and sang, while pink and violet electrical discharges leaped between giant coils, translucent tubing glowed and pulsed, luminescent motes swam inside huge transparent spheres, and veils of energy fluttered in the air overhead like aurora] displays. "Goddamn Frankenstein movie," was Carl's reaction.
At last we came to a large, quiet empty chamber. We got off and waited. Before long, the far wall retracted, and two robots hauled the prototype out onto the showroom floor.
It was Carl's 1957 Chevrolet Impala, chrome glinting in the track lighting, a lambent sheen soft upon its coat of candy-apple red, metal-flake paint.
"My car!" Carl shouted ecstatically, throwing open the driver's door and hopping in. He sniffed. "Hey, they got that new car smell just right!"
"Satisfactory?" the plant foreman asked hopefully.
"Satisfactory!" Carl enthused.
There was a note of pride in the foreman's voice. "May we then begin field testing and evaluation?"
"Uh-yeah. Well, maybe not. I know it's gonna work!"
"Intuitive evaluation? Perhaps empirical data are needed as well?"
"Huh? Um…
I was smiling at Carl. He noticed and returned a sheepish grin. "Hell, I couldn't resist."
"What're you going to do when they present you with the bill?"
"The bill. Oh."
I chuckled.
The foreman spoke delicately. "Remuneration can be forgone. We compliment designer on high esthetic factor of overall concept. Inspired, and truly beautiful in result. Congratulations. When may we begin production?"
"Yeah, Carl," I said. "When can these nice people turn out fifty million units for you?"
"Jesus. I don't know."
"Production is not contemplated?" the foreman asked sadly.
"Well… Jake, what do I tell them?"
I said, "The artist would like time to ponder the philosophical ramifications of his creation before considering sharing it with the universe at large."
"Of course. Commendable. Please contact us when time is proper."
"Oh, yeah," Carl said, nodding emphatically. "Sure. And thanks a lot."
"Extreme pleasure has been taken in assisting a consummate artist such as yourself." Carl looked embarrassed.
We got back to the receiving bay as the robots were delivering the Chevy. We had taken the long route-the foreman had insisted that we see the Submicron Fractionating Assembly. Whatever it was, it was pretty.
I didn't see Prime's arrival. I was inspecting what was left of the starboard stabilizer foil when I happened to glance up at Darla, who was staring open-mouthed at something out on the floor. I straightened up, walked around her…
And there was Prime, standing near our miniature spaceship, conversing with Arthur.
He turned a smiled at me. "Hello, Jake," he called.
"You're hard to get hold of," I said, walking over. "But you seem to get around."
Prime glanced around. "Wonderful facility. Have you toured the place?"
"Endlessly."
He laughed. "Odd that you should wind up here."
"Actually, we never intended to leave Emerald City."
"Really?" He seemed pleased to hear it. "I assumed that you were on your way home."
"Without Sam? Hardly."
"No, I suppose not. But it was my intention to give your father some voice in the matter."
"He's not my father. He's an Artificial Intelligence program."
Prime nodded. "And a remarkable one. His Entelechy Matrix was manufactured by the Vlathu, was it not?"
"Yes."
"We know of the Vlathu. They possessed techniques unknown even in the time of the Culmination. The Vlathu attained a very high degree of spirituality for a primitive race."
I thought about that for a moment before saying, "If you consider the Vlathu primitive, what does that make us? We humans, I mean?"
"Humans are one of the ancestral races of the Culmination itself. One of the tributary races. I have told you many times that I am partly human. I meant by that, that the Culmination is in some part composed of human elements."
"I'm not sure I understand," I said. "You may be descended from human beings, but after ten billion years of evolution…"
He laughed. "Evolution. Odd concept. The process isn't automatic, you know. If there is no good reason for a species to evolve, it won't. But let's set that aside. The elements I referred to aren't genetic remnants, but the minds of actual living human beings. Their very soul and substance. They are a vital part of the Culmination. Some of them are your friends."