It was the most beautiful place they had yet seen. As their shuttle descended into the colony star port, the Ludite colony unfolded like a landscape from a fairy tale. An abundance of fountains, minarets, forests and gardens made the place seem like some rococo amusement park. As Belden surmised, the colonists had fulfilled their avocation, and had indeed been busy.

The beacon from the landing station brought their shuttle upon a gazebo like structure bright with vines, flowers, and lacy ironwork. As Weller stepped from the craft, he looked about with evident satisfaction and pride. Even Belden was impressed. This indeed was a garden spot. It was a site to behold, and busy with details that escaped the inattentive eye. The square was strewn with statuary, flowerpots, murals, and obelisks, and a melodious chime filled the air. The buildings in the courtyard were like gingerbread cottages, and their sculpted wooden roofs rose like the vaults of cathedrals.

Weller turned to the party and lifted his finger in a ‘eureka’ moment. "Gentlemen, this is why we reached to the stars, such a wondrous testimony to the brilliance and beauty of our civilization! When our colony liaison arrives, we must surely congratulate him."

Belden smirked. "Well, I would hold off a bit on our self-congratulations! Look!"

In the distance was a small party of colonists, armed with baseball bats, mallets, and crowbars. They were grimly smashing statues, porch lights, and cottage windows, and they were coming closer.

"Someone's up to some work, and I don't think its what these colonists originally had in mind!"

Belden looked at Weller in wide-eyed amazement. "This is the welcoming party, a group of vandals?"

Smashing and toppling items along the way, the group approached like an unlikely parade of anarchists. A burly man, evidently the leader, strode up the stairs. He smiled broadly, and then embraced Weller in a bear hug. "You are newcomers! Welcome to planet Lud! My name is Des Ruction. You must be from the Foundation. Did you hear our distress calls?"

Weller, a bit disconcerted, answered cautiously. "Not particularly. We received an automated response to our hails. And so we approached. You’re right about one thing. We are from the Foundation, and we are here to help, in a manner of speaking. I am Captain Jan Weller, and these are my companions Belden and Moore."

"Wonderful!!" the man shouted lustily. "Then you will help us destroy this travesty, and more! With your assistance we will destroy them, destroy them all!!"

"Destroy who, what??"

The man’s voice calmed. "Then you must not know. I will explain. We are Ludites. You should be well familiar with our beliefs. We value all that can be created by the human hand and inspired by the human mind. All else is dross. That is our creed. We are artisans, and we left Transor to follow our personal muse, and to do so alone." He then shook his head with a baleful look. "And then we were betrayed."

With a wave of his hand, he surveyed the horizon. This all must seem beautiful to you, but it's a deception and a fraud. This, this monstrosity is a monument to our arrogance, our misguided belief that we were the masters of our creations. I am sorry that I have to bear witness to this disaster!"

Belden interrupted. "But that’s madness. This village is a thing of beauty."

"And so are the soda cans and cereal boxes you load in dumpsters!" Des retorted. "Beauty made in abundance and on the cheap is omnipresent and transient stuff, not deserving of the eye or a moment’s contemplation. All this brick, wood, marble and glass may just as well be made of cardboard. Indeed, I wish it were, then we could more easily be rid of it."

"But you created this!" said Weller. "Why would…"

"But we didn't do it." Des snapped. "It was the elves."

"Elves?"

"Yes. You should know, they came with all the expeditions. They were to be at our service, an intelligent lifeline, a helping hand for those moments where a bit of brawn or brain was needed." Des turned to look at a quizzical Belden square in the eyes. "Bots, my good man. It was those damn bots!"

"But that’s not possible." Said Weller. "Bots were mechanical servos. Of course they had AI, but they were programmed to serve, and to be obedient. They would never do this unless charged to do so, and besides, their programming was never designed to do this in the first place."

Des sighed. "I know that. It took Ludite ingenuity unfortunately to change the equation. We made this. Indirectly, it’s our entire fault. It started when we landed here four hundred odd years ago. Repetitive manual labor has never been of interest to us. Too much dull sameness in the endless motions required for producing the tokens for survival. We were interested in the artistic pursuits that rose above the predictable and mundane. So we gave the menial labor to the bots, but even their manufacture proved too dull for our own hands. But we found a simple solution that required neither exertion nor supervision. We kept their Asimovian programming, and merely instructed them to breed."

"Breed? As in replicating themselves?"

"Yes, but no mere replication. You see; we wanted more efficient machines, more perceptive machines. We wanted our Transorian comforts, and to be surrounded by pampering servants who would give us the leisure to create. And you know the universal saying, be careful what you wish for.."

"And so you got this?" said Weller.

"Yes. The machines learned how to please us, too well how to please us. At first, they multiplied and evolved, and selected their talents to match our selective tastes. Beautiful cities sprouted like wildflowers. There was not want for food or shelter. But we did not think that their perceptiveness knew no bounds. In the last hundred years, they evolved in ways that aped our aspirations, and by doing so, ruined them."

"Ruin?"

"Yes. Tell me Captain Weller. Would you be as enamored of your mission if you had some machine, intelligence incarnate, that looked over your shoulder to grasp every crumb of inspiration that came your way? I am sure you would reach out and smash the thing at the first moment!"

Weller looked at an obviously irritated Belden and smiled. "Yes. I see what you mean!"

"But where are they?"

Des looked at him in surprise. "Where do you think? They are vermin. Their survival is always on edge. It's a chancy thing. And so their intelligence is keen on their achieving a breath of life, for each succeeding moment may be their last. So they've learned to stay in the shadows, refrain from the single instance in the sun that may serve as a beacon to attentive and hostile eyes. To wit, gentlemen, they are in the deep and dark places, the corners of our world that we care not to tread."

"Oh. Sewer rats?" said Belden.

"In a manner of speaking."

"But I'd like to see them anyway," said Weller. "They do have some smarts, perhaps they have their own opinion."

Des looked at him skeptically. "Opinion! They know nothing of it. All they know are our basic needs as humans. It's that damn Asimovian code! It propels them to things that are mindless of our values. It won't listen because it's coded to know what is right."

Weller smiled. "Then perhaps we can use it against them!"

_____________________

Des led the small party down the main street. Colorful and delicate cottages, inns, and shops lined the streets like gingerbread confections. There was a slight melodious din in the air, like a baby's sigh. Des slowed his pace. " You can hear it often during the day. It’s the noise they make when they scuttle in the shadows."

"Yes, I think I've heard something like this." Said Belden. " I would gather it's something Mozart would have hummed if he scuttled."

"Then that Mozart was no doubt vermin too!" Des scowled.

The party soon reached a large oval sized grate on the street. Des pointed to a notch on its side. "There. Grab and lift it. No worry, it's all hydraulic. No heavy lifting here, the bots have seen to that."

Weller crouched down and with a slight tug, the grate slowly opened, not to darkness, but to soft light, an escalator, and music!

Belden laughed. "Is this an entrance to a sewer of the ladies handbag section at a department store?"

Des glowered angrily at Belden. " This is not an innocent thing. It’s the death of our vision, or very society, transformed seductively from the bowels of our city. See for yourselves in these beauteous depths."

The escalator descended into a softly lit foyer. It was like an elongated drawing room. Comfortable chairs, tea services, and ottomans lined the hall. And above it all was the music, the incessant melodic din.

"This is a sewer?" asked Weller incredulously. "It's more like the lobby of some elite hotel!"

Des looked about with obvious disinterest. "It's comfortable for us, but remember that these things not only emulate but share our tastes. This is our sewer, their burrow, and the marvel is, they've made it all adornment."

Des pulled from his pocket a small canister. Tapping it slightly, it expanded to the size of a sturdy staff, and affixed at its end was a dim light.

"We'll need this. It's a beacon, a light, and a weapon. It will grow brighter when we get closer to this thing, and I can use it to kill the beast."

The party walked ahead, past seemingly endless arrangements of furniture, tapestries, sculpture, and art. It was the antique bric-a-brac of a furniture store, lined up in an endless winding aisle.

Des suddenly pointed down. "There!" he cried. "Bot droppings."

It was an object of small, pearl like quality. Belden picked it up. "It’s a cameo of a young lady, perfectly formed in ivory inlaid with pearl. These creatures pass this? What are they eating, Renaissance art?"

Des looked at it for a second, and tossed it to the floor. "They're creative even in their digestion. Can you fathom now what we're up against?"

"There!" he cried.

There was a dim light in a corner foyer, and Des' staff glowed brightly. He whispered. "Come see, there's one of them. It's recharging. It'll be unresponsive for now."

Weller looked at it and nodded. "It's a bot alright. A little modified, but nonetheless hardly different from the ones we know on Transor."

To Belden, the canister like creature looked like a droid from the 'Galaxy Wars' movie series. It looked serene and restful, even though its only sign of life was a flickering red eye. Belden reached down to remove a bit of its bedding. It was resting on what appeared to be a bed of freshly scored cantatas.

Des looked at it and sighed in exasperation. "I would kill it instantly with the degausser at the end of my rod. But it doesn't matter. We've been killing them by the score for the last fifty years, and they continue to multiply, to build storybook villages, to create art, to compose music, to sing songs. We are going mad, becoming mere drivelers in comparison to the mechanical genius here."

"There must be an answer." Said Moore. "We could devise better weapons, traps, perhaps we can degauss them all with a resonance beam from the Nole."

"There is nothing." Des sighed. " The bots can't be destroyed except from up close. They are shielded from radio interference, and they're smart. They have learned to evade our traps. They know our strategies. These creatures possess cunning to match their genius. "

Belden stared blankly ahead in contemplation. "But their programming, it limits them does it not?"

"Why yes. If you consider good taste a limitation, and of course the pragmatic instincts that protect our intrinsic human values."

Belden continued. "They seem to value some abstract design, some idealized portrait of humanity. Taken to the extreme, it's toxic to us, but at the other? Could it be toxic to…"

Belden snapped to attention, his mind racing to a solution. "Yes, of course! Jacov, there was a time, blessedly short, when Transor emerged from its dark ages to ascend to its present glory. But that ascent was rough, uncertain, and often brutal. You still have the cultural artifacts of those times, the art, the music, even the lay of the cities. That's our key. Captain Weller, we must go to the surface. I'll tell you what we need. Have our processors on the Nole assemble the objects. I'll tell you where to put them."

_____________________

Weller apprehensively surveyed the dawning landscape. "This is absurd, and painful to watch. Belden, I hope you're right. If not we'll be a laughingstock."

Belden smiled confidently. "You forget that I'm an intelligent machine, infinitely smart I'm told. But I have one advantage. Your stupid Asimovian laws do not burden me. Frankly, at times I scarcely care what happens to you people. As for these bots, they're vermin alright, and to get rid of them you have to rid yourself of the environment that breeds them."

"What can possibly be dysfunctional about this environment?"

"Excess, Captain Weller. All things in excess. It's what 's driving these people mad. Its what drove you to come to a place like this. In a few minutes, you'll see excess of another sort, a cause of my own personal madness."

As the sun rose, so rose the din. At first it did not sound irritating, but soon Weller places his hands over his ears to muffle the sound.

"My God, how can you stand this!"

Belden smiled.

The village awoke to a reality that Belden knew too well. The loudspeakers broadcast a swelling cacophony of car horns, dissonant music, and vulgar lyrics, repeated endlessly in a singsong staccato. And similarly transformed was the town. The street was festooned with large mounted canvases adorned with the pictures of liquor bottles, ancient auto-cars, and women in latex pants. Smoke pots disgorged foul smelling fumes that obscured the sun. It was a hideous spectacle, repeated at every corner of the town.

Then came a new sound. It was a low-pitched squeal. Belden pointed to scampering objects aiming towards the countryside.

"Look, you can see it now. They are fleeing. We are driving them out, those mechanical muses of art, poetry, and music. The Ludites now have their perfect environment for creation, a banal, dull, and polluted world. It’s the price in kind that I must pay, that you must pay."

Des was speechless. "Then, if we must keep to ourselves, in the corners, so be it. Has genius been anything less than an oddity ignored by nearly all?" He looked at Belden and Weller. "Gentlemen, what will your payment ultimately be?"

Staring down at the ground, Weller shuffled his feet. So this was the inspiration for creative minds, ironically fostered by a festering prod of banality. He turned to Belden and Jacov. "Let's go, leave this place. I want to be alone." He said in a whisper. "Just me, a book of poetry, and music."