The philosopher, the man of words, could not be restrained. Before the Grandfather could speak, the philosopher asked incredulously, "Do you mean to say that we have been obeying the dictates of a machine?"
Nodding, Comstock said nonchalantly. "Yep."
Then The Grandfather spoke.
"I was made to be your servant, and it has been my sorry task to be your master. I have not enjoyed it and I must say that I am glad at long last to be rid of an onerous task."
Then he went on to describe the way he had tried, in his feeble, mechanical way to do that which he had been ordered to do. When he had finished his apologetic summary, he said, "But time grows ever shorter and I fear that even my carefully made cortex is beginning to go bad. Listen closely for I have no idea when I will cease to function.
"The mistakes I have made, have been errors of commission not omission. When I have failed it was because not even the scientists who made me could foretell what was to be, as no man can.
"I was told, just before the death of the scientist who finished me, that the reason all our people were driven from earth was because they were vestigial hangovers from what he called an inner-directed culture. An inner-directed culture is always the result of an historical period when the death rate is higher than the birth rate. This kind of culture possesses certain attributes which serve pioneers well, because these inner-directed people have a strong sense of right and wrong, they believe implicitly in black and white evils and virtues. But in our world the birth rate is now, because of my machinations, about equal to the death rate, our people live longer, few children are lost at birth, there is enough food to go around, and so it is time to evolve from an inner-directed culture to a more sophisticated one which has been called an other-directed culture.
"Such a culture is hesitant to make value judgments, it can no longer appraise the foibles of other human beings; the righteousness of the inner-directed person gives way to the more adult approach that right and wrong are after all purely subjective concepts.
"These people can be more objective and since they can, they must inevitably be less prone to throw the first stone.
"There are many concommittants of such a culture, but to you will be the wonder and the glory of discovering them. This is your next step.