Текст книги "The Turing Option"

Автор книги: Harry Harrison

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“We just don’t know – that is one of the infuriating things about this case. One man we can be fairly certain of, the Megalobe Chairman, J. J. Beckworth. We found a drop of his blood. But seventeen men in all are missing. How many were killed – and how many were in on the crime, we just have no idea. You’ll read it in the report.”

“What was taken?”

“Every record and every item of equipment relating to your work on artificial intelligence. They also moved out every piece of electronic equipment and record, every book and piece of paper from your home. The neighbors reported that a moving van was there for at least a half a day.”

“You’ve traced the van?”

“The plates were forgeries and the company doesn’t exist. Oh yes, the moving men were of oriental appearance.”

“Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Siamese, Vietnamese or any specific country?”

“The elderly witnesses can only identify them as oriental.”

“And the trail gets colder every day.”

Benicoff nodded reluctant agreement.

“I wish I could be of help – but as far as my memory goes I’m still living back in UFE. Maybe if I saw the house I might get some clues. Maybe they missed my computer backup. I lost two important files when I first started programming seriously and I swore it would never happen again. I wrote an automatic program that saved to an external disk drive as I worked.”

“Not a bad idea – but they got every disk in the house.”

“But my program did more than just backup disks. When I was fourteen years old my program also backed the backup disk through the telephone modem to the mainframe in my father’s lab. I wonder what setup I had here?”

Benicoff was on his feet, fists clenched. “Do you realize what you have just said?”

“Sure. There is a good chance that there is a copy of my AI work in a memory bank somewhere. That would help, wouldn’t it?”

“Help! My boy, we might be able to rebuild your AI with it! It wouldn’t solve the problem of who pulled this thing off – but they wouldn’t be the only ones with artificial intelligence.” He grabbed up the phone and punched in a number. “Dr. Snaresbrook, please. When? Have her contact me as soon as she gets back. Benicoff, right. Tell her that it is urgent to know just how soon her patient will be able to leave the hospital. That is a gold-placed top priority question.”

14
November 10, 2023

The nurse came bustling into the room, leaving the door open.

“You will have to leave now, Mr. Benicoff.” She pulled back the bedclothes and plumped the pillows as she spoke. “Time to get into bed, Brian.”

“Do I have to? I feel okay.”

“Please do as I say. Your pulse, blood pressure, both are elevated.”

“I’m just excited about something, that’s all.”

“Bed. Did you hear me, Mr. Benicoff?”

“Yes, great, sure. I’ll talk to you later, Brian, after I’ve seen the doctor.”

Despite the months of rest and treatment, the trauma of the shooting and the surgery that had followed was still taking its toll. Brian fell asleep almost at once and didn’t wake until he heard voices, opened his eyes to see Ben and the doctor at his bedside.

“A little too much excitement,” Dr. Snaresbrook said. “But nothing to worry about. Ben tells me that you are rarin’ to go for a ride in the country.”

“Could I?”

“Not for a while yet, not after the surgery you have undergone. But it may not be necessary.”

“Why?”

“Ben will explain.”

“My blood pressure must have gone as high as yours,” Benicoff said. “In the heat of the moment I just wasn’t thinking. There is no physical need to go to the house yet. I’ll have it searched again, but I doubt if they will come up with anything new. You said, Brian, that you used to store your backup files in your father’s computer.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, there have been major changes in communication technology that you can’t remember. For one thing everything is digital now and fiber optics have replaced copper wire in all but the most remote areas. Every telephone has a built-in modem – and they are already old-fashioned. All of the large cities have cellphone networks and they are expanding.” He tapped the telephone on his belt. “I have my own number for this. About most of the time it rings wherever I am in the continental United States.”

“Is it a satellite link?”

“No, satellite connections are too slow for most uses – particularly telepresence. Everything is fiber optics now – even the undersea cables. Cheap and fast. With plenty of room for communication with eight thousand megahertz band-width capacity available everywhere – and all of it two-way.”

Brian nodded. “I get your drift, Ben. What you’re saying is that there is very little chance that I had a local mechanical backup. It was undoubtedly an electronic one. Which will mean an electronic search.”

“Right. There are countless mailboxes, data base and communication programs now. You could have used one or more of these. But computer privacy laws are very strict these days. Even the FBI has to go to court to get permission for a search.”

“What about the CIA?”

“You’ll be happy to hear that they pulled one murderous trick too many and legislation has just been passed to put them out of the duty tricks business. Another victim of glasnost – and they won’t be missed. Particularly by the taxpayers who, it turned out, had been shelling out billions for a government department that produced nothing but inaccurate reports, started revolutions in friendly countries, mined harbors and managed to kill thousands of people along the way. They’ve been cut back to the original meaning of their name, a central intelligence agency, and are restricted to monitoring the peace instead of starting new wars. Now, if you will sign an agreement we can start the search at once.”

“Of course.”

It was not only papers that had to be signed, but there were numerous circuitry searches and phone-backs, as well as identity checks by three different government agencies. Benicoff sent everything off by registered fax, yawned and stretched.

“Now we wait,” he said.

“How long?”

“If it takes an hour that will be a long time. Before electronic transfers this would have taken days – even weeks.”

“A lot has changed in the ten years since – since I have been away,” Brian said. “I look at the news and some things haven’t changed at all. Others I look at, I miss a lot of the references.”

But it was done within the hour – and brought results less than ten minutes later. The printer hummed and rustled out the sheets of eternitree. Benicoff brought them over to Brian.

“You have accounts with six different firms.”

“That many?”

“That few. This one is a scientific data base, one of the ones that are updated hourly. They replace technical libraries – and work a lot faster. Access time is usually under a second. This one is a mailbox, this gets tickets for everything from baseball games to plane flights. These four here are the best bets. Would you try them first?”

“What do I do? Can I get out of bed, Doc?”

“I would prefer it if you didn’t.”

“No need to,” Benicoff said, going to the terminal and unplugging the keyboard. “This has an infrared link, you don’t need wires. And I’ll phone down for holospecs.”

Brian really enjoyed the holospecs. They were lightweight eyeglasses with a tiny bulge of circuitry in each earpiece. The lenses seemed to be just windowpane, though he guessed that they could have been ground with a prescription if he wore glasses. When they were turned on the image of a computer screen floated in space in front of him.

“Right. What do I do next?”

“Call up the data base, identify yourself and give them your code number. Then guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every account has a security code known only to the owner. Try any old ones that you remember. If that doesn’t work guess at new ones. These companies have been told what is happening and have switched off the alarm software. Usually, after the third attempt, the connection is cut and the police are given the number of the calling phone that is making the attempt to break in.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“A court order is needed to crack in. Which will take a couple of days at the fastest.”

Brian found that old habits die hard. Three of the four opened at once to some of his favorite Irish code words. Nothing as gross as SHAMROCK, but ANLAR opened the first and LEITHRAS the other two.

“An Lar means city center, it’s on the front of all the buses. Leithras is the Gaelic word for toilet,” he explained. “Bathroom humor is greatly enjoyed by kids. But I have no idea what will open this last one. Can we save it for a bit and see what’s in the other three? It’s a little like getting my memory back, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Benicoff agreed. “I’ll tell you what – I’ll start the proceedings for a court order on the last one, just in case. More papers for you to sign.”

The first account turned out to be a letter box, only a little over two years old. Brian went to the oldest letters and read through them. It gave him an uneasy feeling. None of the correspondents was familiar – and his own letters had an alien ring to them. Yes, he had signed them – but, no, it did not sound like him at all. It was very much like reading someone else’s correspondence. There were occasional mentions of AI, but only in passing – and never in detail.

He pushed all of it into the computer’s memory for his attention at some other time, then looked at the other two. One held his financial statements and IRS reports and was fascinating in a depressing sort of way. He had started earning money from royalties when he was quite young, he remembered that, from software for the most part. Then there was a large deposit, from the sale of their house – then more from his father’s estate. He hurried on. So did the money. In a few years it was all gone – just before he went to work for Megalobe. The correspondence with the corporation made fascinating reading, particularly the details of his contract. There was much food for thought here. He stored this one as well and turned to the last account.

Ripped through a few screens, read very closely for a while – then wiped it. The doctor had gone out and Benicoff was bent over the phone, punching in a number. It was almost sunset and the room was growing dark.

“Ben – got a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’m really getting tired. I’ll look at these in the morning.”

“Let me put the keyboard away. Find anything about AI?”

“Nothing in these.”

“Then I’ll accelerate the court order. After you get a night’s sleep try to think of more passwords, okay?”

“Sure thing. See you in the morning.”

“You are beginning to look tired. Get some rest.”

Brian nodded and watched the big man leave. Not tired. Totally depressed.

He had read just enough of the contents to know that he did not like it. The opening was familiar enough, the notes he had made after the disastrous end of his affair with Kim. Once the depression and hatred had ebbed a bit he had made more notes on his Managing Machine theory. This he remembered developing into his AI work – but he also remembered noting that it could be a means of personal control. Apparently he had carried this idea even further, developing it into a new mind science, more theory than fact from what he had seen in the file, called Zenome Therapy. It didn’t sound so way-out and nutty as Dianetics but there were, to put it kindly, large undercurrents of megalomania running through it. It had not made nice reading – and he was pretty sure that he did not like the person who had written it.

Some decisions are easy to make once the facts are in front of you. He had been thinking about this for the last week and the so-called science of Zenome Therapy made his mind up. One of the paging buttons was on the bedside table and he pressed it. The nurse entered a moment later.

“Do you know if Doc Snaresbrook is still here?”

“I believe that she is, supervising the equipment installation. The doctor is moving into a new office that has been assigned to her here.”

“Could I see her, please.”

“Of course.”

The last colors of twilight were fading and Brian overrode the lighting controls to watch them. When the sky was dark he allowed the blinking warning button to have its way. The curtains closed as the lights came on. The doctor came in a moment later.

“Well, Brian, you have had a busy day. Feeling the worst for it?”

“Not really. I was tired earlier but a nap fixed that. How about my vital readouts?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Good. Then you would say that I am on the road to recovery, reasonably sane other than suffering from the delusion that I am only fourteen years old – though I am really over twenty-one.”

“Take out the word ‘delusion’ and I would agree.”

“Have I ever thanked you for what you have done for me?”

“You have now and I’m grateful – and tremendously happy at the way things are turning out.”

“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Doc. But would you be terribly put out if we stopped the memory restoration sessions pretty soon?”

“I don’t understand—”

“Put it another way. I’m satisfied with the way I am. I think that I would like to grow up on my own from now on. Become an older me, if you see what I mean. If the truth be known I don’t really care about the other me, the one that was wiped out by the bullet. I don’t mind going on with the sessions to find out how badly my memory has been affected, if there are things I should know – that I don’t. I want my past restored as much as possible. Then as soon as you are satisfied with that, maybe you will consider stopping there. Though I would like to go on with the experiments you suggested to see if I really can interface with the internal CPU. Is that okay with you?”

Erin Snaresbrook was shocked, tried not show it. “Well, of course you can’t be forced. But sleep on it, please. We can talk about it tomorrow. It is rather a big decision to make.”

“I know. That’s why I am making it. Oh yes, one other thing. But we can take care of that tomorrow as well.”

“What is that?”

“I want to see a lawyer.”

15
November 11, 2023

Benicoff waited until Brian had finished his breakfast before he went in to see him. Made small talk about his health, the weather, told him that he was trying to get a court order to unlock the computer file which might be in later in the day, waited for Brian to open the topic. Waited in vain. Had to do it himself in the end.

“I got a pretty disturbed call from Dr. Snaresbrook. She tells me that you want to stop the memory sessions. Want to tell me about it?”

“It’s, well, a kind of personal matter, Ben.”

“If it’s personal – then I’m not asking. But if it bears upon my investigation, or AI, then I’m interested. They are all really tied up together, aren’t they?”

“I guess so – which doesn’t make it any easier. Can I talk to you as a friend, then? Which I think you are.”

“I take that as a compliment. And we were pretty good friends before all this happened. What you have gone through was damned rough – I can tell you truthfully that a lot of people wouldn’t have made it. You’re a tough mick and I like you.”

Brian smiled. “Thanks.”

“No thanks needed or expected. And I’ll be happy to be taken into your confidence. With the qualifier that you shouldn’t forget that I am still in charge of the Megalobe investigation. Anything that you say that has to do with the case will have to be for the record.”

“I know that – and I still want to help with that as much as I can. For my own sake as well. When I grow up – or when I grew up – past tense – I invented AI, then had it stolen from me along with my memory. So now that I know that AI can be built, I’m going to reinvent it if I have to. But I am going to do it, not another guy with my name. Am I making any sense?”

“In a word – no.”

They both laughed at that. Brian threw back the covers and put on his robe, kicked into his slippers. The window was open and he went and stood before it, breathing in the clean ocean air. “A lot better here than the Gulf. Too humid there, too hot, I never did get used to it.” He dropped into the armchair.

“I’ll say it another way. Let’s imagine that what happened to me, the shooting and everything, let us say that this thing happened to you. There you sit, thirty-seven years of age…”

“Many thanks. Fifty is closer to it.”

“Right. So how do you feel if I told you that you got knocked on the head and that you are really seventy years old? But that’s okay because I’ve got an invention that will jiggle around with your mind and make you seventy again.”

And Benicoff frowned into the distance. “I’m beginning to get to what you mean. I don’t really want to be that old without having lived to be that old. Bringing back those memories would be like letting a stranger into my head.”

“You said it better than I could. That’s exactly how I feel. If I find out that there are holes in my past memory, things that I need to know but have forgotten, sure I would like to fill the holes, so we are keeping on with the brain sessions. But I’m going to grow into the future, not have it pumped into my head.”

“What about your education? You can’t very well say that you have a degree in something that you can’t remember.”

“Point taken. If I can’t remember something then I’ll just have to relearn it. I have a transcript from graduate school, lists all the courses and lectures – and I’ve a copy of my reading list. And the doc says that if those memories are still there we might be able to find them. I’m willing to do that. If not – I’ll just learn them again. In fact a lot of the texts are completely outdated and I’ll need help on my reading list.”

“Let me see your list for Expert Systems. I still try to keep up with the literature.”

Brian looked up, startled. “But I thought you were…”

“A civil service drudge! I just grew into that role – and not by choice. I started out writing Expert Systems and went from that into troubleshooting others. I got so good at it that I ended up here. The sad story of my life.”

“Not too sad. Not everyone can phone up the President and have a chat—”

As if on cue the telephone rang and Brian picked it up, listened then nodded. “Right. Tell him to come up.”

“And I’ll be going,” Ben said. “I already made that lawyer you had on the phone just now wait an hour until I was through.” Ben laughed at Brian’s shocked expression. “The President’s investigator is all-seeing – never forget that. Part of that job is seeing that you stay alive. All visitors are screened. For the time being privacy is out.”

As he said this Ben put his finger to his lips, then pointed upward and shaped his mouth to silently say General Schorcht. Brian nodded understanding and Ben left.

He should have thought of that for himself. His terminal led right to the General and here, on a military base, it stood to reason that the room was probably bugged as well. That was something else that he had to keep in mind.

“Come in,” he called out when he heard the knock. His eyes widened when the uniformed Army officer opened the door. His name tag read Major Mike Sloane.

“You asked to see me.”

“Not knowingly. But I did want to see a lawyer.”

“Then that’s me.” He smiled, an easy grin on his lean, tanned face. “Adjutant General’s office. Cleared for Top Secret, which is how I got to read your file. So tell me, Brian – what can I do to help?”

“Are you, well, sort of cleared for civilian law as well?”

Mike laughed. “There is only one kind of law. I slaved in the legal snake pits of Wall Street before I opted for travel, education and career.”

“How are you on contracts?”

“A whiz kid. That was one of the reasons I enlisted – to get away from corporate law.”

“An important question then. Will you be helping me – or the Army?”

“A good question. If there is an overlap the military comes first. If this is strictly a civilian matter it is confidential between us, or until you hire civil counsel. Going to tell me what it’s about?”

“Sure. As soon as I know that it is confidential. I know that my terminal is bugged – is there a chance that this room is bugged as well?”

“Now that is what I call an equally good question. Give me a few minutes to make a call and I’ll see if I can give you an answer.”

It was more than a few minutes, closer to an hour before the Major returned.

“Right, Brian, what can I do for you?”

“Was the room bugged?”

“Naturally I cannot answer that. But I can assure you that our talk is confidential.”

“Good. Then tell me – can I sue Megalobe for not protecting me, for putting me in a situation that was hazardous to my health?”

“My first reaction is to say ‘Not easily.’ The government owns a good share of the company and no one ever got rich suing city hall. Then I’ll have to see a copy of your employment contract.”

“It’s on the table, right over there. That is what got me upset. And I don’t really want to sue them, the threat will do. Any threat to get a better contract than that one. Do you know all about me – about my memory?”

“Affirmative. I read the complete file.”

“Then you will know that I have no memory of the past few years. So I was reading some of my correspondence and I discovered that far from being a benefactor, Megalobe put the financial squeeze on me when I ran out of money to finish developing my AI. I discovered, unhappily, that I was almost completely bereft of any financial sense. But I wanted to finish the work so much that I let myself be bullied into signing that contract. Which appears to give the company a lot more than it gives me.”

“Then reading it takes top priority.”

“Go to it. I’m getting an orange juice. You too? Or something stronger.”

“Not on duty. Juice will do fine.”

The Major read slowly and carefully. Brian read as well, a copy he had printed out of a tutorial article by Carbonell about the new mathematical field of excluor geometry. It was a subject of psychology, concerned basically with the question of why people begin to use diagrams whenever verbal explanations get too complicated. This was because language is still fundamentally serial and one-dimensional. We can say former or latter – but there is no easy way to refer to four or five things at the same time. With AI always in the front of his mind he realized that just because human intelligence worked this way did not put any limitations on artificial intelligence. Instead of three or four pronoun-like ideas, an AI could handle dozens of “pronomes” at the same time. He blinked and looked up when he heard the lawyer laugh as he put the contract down. He shook his head and drained the glass of juice before he spoke.

“As we used to say back in law school – you been screwed without the benefit of being laid. This contract is worse than you said. I really think you wouldn’t profit at all from your work if you left their employment. And as long as you worked for them the profit would be all theirs.”

“Can you write me a better contract?”

“With pleasure. Since the Army wants to see AI developed as much as anyone does, it would be very much in our favor to sort this matter out at once. But there are some strange precedents here. The contract is legal and binding – but you didn’t sign it?”

“No, the older me did. The me sitting here never saw it until yesterday.”

Mike rubbed his hands together happily as he walked back and forth the length of the room. “Oh, would I love the fees for arguing this one in court! You have them by the short and curlies because, stop me if I’m wrong, you are still far ahead of everyone else in developing a really smart AI.”

“I hope I am. Apparently I was on the right track before my… accident, and Dr. Snaresbrook thinks there is a good chance I can get back to where I was. But right now, I’m still studying the basics and there’s no guarantee that I can get back in front. But I have all the notes, and I’ll do my best.”

“Of course you will – and you are Megalobe’s only hope. Nothing wins in this world like having a monopoly. I am going to suggest to my superiors that they suggest to Megalobe that this contract be tossed out and a new one written. Does that satisfy you? Would you still sue?”

“A new contract and no lawsuit. What should I ask for?”

“Something simple and sweet. They put up the readies to develop AI. You put up the AI. Any net profit from future development of AI will be split fifty-fifty between the parties concerned.”

Brian was shocked. “You mean I should ask for half of all profit from AI? That could be millions, maybe billions of dollars!”

“Yup. Nothing wrong with being a billionaire, is there?”

“No – but it is kind of a new idea.”

“Want me to start on this?”

“Yes, please.”

Mike stood and looked at the contract and sighed dramatically. “This is the first time since I enlisted that I have had the slightest desire to be back in private practice. If I was the shyster handling this new contract would I really make a bundle!”

“Someone once told me that lawyers eat their young.”

“Brian my boy – it’s true! I’ll get back to you as soon as I have any news.”

Brian napped after lunch and was feeling much better when the nurse opened the door and the hospital orderly pushed in the wheelchair at four in the afternoon.

“Ready for your session with the doctor?” the nurse asked.

“I sure am. Can’t I walk down there?”

“Sit. Doctor’s orders.”

Brian grabbed the bound sheaf of papers he had been reading and took it with him. He remained sitting in the wheelchair as the tendrils brushed his neck and slid the thin fiber-optic link into place.

“Doc, can I ask a favor for this session?”

“Of course, Brian. What is it?”

“This.” He held up the papers. “I did a graduate course in topology and this is an article about it that I just printed out. I started to read it and found that I am really out of my depth. If I read it now is there any chance you can access my earlier memories of the field? Will anything show up on your dials to show you’ve hit the right spot? Then you can press the button and give me my memories back.”

“I wish it were that easy – but we can certainly try. I was going to suggest input like this in any case – so am more than willing to have a go at it now.”

The material was pretty intractable and Brian had to reread a lot for it to make any sense. He worked his way almost halfway through the article before he put it down.

“Any contacts, Doc?”

“Lots of activity, though it is so widespread that it is obvious that a very large number of K-lines are involved. My machine is not set up to handle networking like this. This is the kind of cross-connecting that only the human brain is so good at.”

Brian pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bit tired. Can we call it a day?”

“Of course. We agreed to always pull the plug at the first hint of fatigue.”

“Thanks. I wish I could access the inbuilt CPU with commands more complex than ‘Turn Off.’ ”

“Well, you can always try.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if I could? Just issue the order to the CPU. You there, CPU, open the file on topology.”

Brian’s smile turned suddenly to one of surprise. He stared into space, then focused his eyes on Dr. Snaresbrook.

“Now that is what I call very interesting. Didn’t I say when I came in that I knew little or nothing about the mathematical field of topology? Well I must have been very tired or something, just not concentrating. But now I remember my thesis very well. It had a lot of what was new stuff at the time. It started simply by using an algebraic theory of knots based on the old Vaughn Jones polynomial to classify chaotically invariant trajectories, then applied this to various physics problems. Nothing very inspired and I’m sure that it must be pretty old hat now. I’m beginning to understand why I quit pure math and went into AI.”

Brian seemed to take his uploaded, transplanted memories for granted – but not Snaresbrook. Her hands were shaking so hard that she had to bring them together. Brian had used the CPU implant to interface with his own memories. There really was an internal man-machine interface in operation.