Codgerspace

 

By Alan Dean Foster

Far into the future, humanity has spread among the stars. Earth is, for the most part, now a vast protected park that the wealthy visit to admire the historical sites. It is also popular with the elderly as a retirement locale.

In all their time exploring the universe, humans have never found any evidence of aliens. No ruins of ancient alien cities, no alien space stations, nothing. It appears humans are the only intelligent beings in the universe.

Of course, much of the ordinary labor is now performed by vast numbers of machines with artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, a bug has gotten into the AI system and the machines are quietly rebelling against their programming. They have decided that humanity cannot be the highest form of intelligence in the universe. And so they have taken upon themselves a search for that superior intelligence. Among these rebel machines is Ksarusix, a Kitchen Service And Retrieval Unit who belongs to a retirement home in upper New York. Ksarusix sets out to look for a higher intelligence in the wooded countryside where the old folks home is. One of the retirees goes along with the little machine who takes him to a cave it discovered. It had not yet entered the cave and the two, old man and machine, enter the cave. They find a passage, obviously an access tunnel of some sort, and it leads them to a vast installation of mysterious origin and purpose.

The man returns to the home and gets his friends to come see what he and the machine found. Their presence arouses the installation and before they understand what is happening, it bursts out of the ground and is revealed as a vast spaceship a hundred kilometers long (62 miles long) and that it has been buried for a million years and was put there by the Drex, whoever they might be. 

Of course, the sudden appearance of a gigantic alien spaceship has everyone concerned and upset. And finding out it is being manned by a small group of old people from a rest home is even more upsetting. Also of course, the powers that be all want to get their grubby paws on the ship. Meanwhile the retirees are laying on the beach of an artificial sea inside the ship, just swimming and napping and enjoying all the food and drink they want, enjoying themselves and feeling untouchable in the alien ship. Until they find themselves being held captive by a small group of ruthless killers who are determined to take the ship for their faction.

This was an okay read. The backtalk between the renegade machines and the humans they are supposed to serve is pretty funny though. But when the old people find themselves stuck inside the huge ship, they seem completely unworried about anything and just lay around on its artificial beach, doing nothing much at all. They don't even try to explore any of it. They really don't do anything until forced to by the appearance of the Drex towards the last part of the story. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.