All Shall Fade

Like people regularly pilgrimage out to try and get it to calculate something for them despite the fact that it's widely known that this machine is dumb as bricks. People just refuse to believe that something this big and impression and that takes so much energy to run can actually just be stupid. There are whole entire cults on other worlds that are dedicated to puzzling out the secret actually "smart" interpretations of it's conclusions, widespread disagreements about what the culture of its creators was (if they existed) and how they might impact things like the translation of data submitted or received, there have been historical teams who have worked night and day to understand the planet brain's language and workings and solve this riddle of how it's secretly smart, but prevailing wisdom remains that it just actually, factually gets everything wrong like 99% of the time.

Some people are convinced there's some fundamental flaw to how the planet brain works, and that if this flaw could be fixed then it would become an invaluable resource. So yet more resources and genius have been poured into figuring out what it could be and trying to secure the necessary grants and access privileges to attempt repairs. The few times anyone has actually gotten in to try and change the brain, though, the effect on its output has been negligible, and the brain has gradually reversed those changes and reset itself over time.

It's estimated that multiple billions of resources have been poured into figuring out the planet brain over the years. Experts have dedicated their lives to trying to understand it. Impassioned devotees have ruined themselves and their communities attempting to follow its advice. Even people who agree that it's stupid tend to agree that it should still be preserved and studied, even though trying to recreate some of its systems or apply the super advanced technology involved in its creation to other tech has yielded negative results (it makes everything else dumber too).

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

can talk and keeps asking you

to make it vodka.

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

…relic…

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.