Realtime Interrupt

by James P. Hogan

Pinder looked as if he wanted to believe it. But there was one more reality to be faced. "Children need years to grow up," he pointed out. "We don't have years. What prompted the decision to go for COSMOS was that it gives us something to go for now."

  And that was that last thing that Corrigan had been waiting for. He nodded. "Yes, I know. And that's where the other interesting thing that Hans's people have stumbled on comes in. You know how it is when you dream—sometimes you find that what seemed to last hours all took place in a few seconds while you were waking up? Well, it seems that the effect can be achieved artificially when you go in above the primary sensory level."

  "Artificially?" Pinder's eyebrows shot upward. "What are you saying? That it's possible to accelerate interaction rates?"

  Corrigan nodded. "Exactly that. Time in the simulated world could run faster. So you wouldn't have to wait years for your child to grow up."

  "What kind of an acceleration are we talking about?" Pinder asked, now definitely interested.

  "Somewhere in the hundreds, probably. That means that the equivalent of years of growing up would take a few weeks of machine time." Corrigan sat back and extended a hand, palm upward, like someone offering the world. "There it is—all the ingredients for a true AI. And you could have it in as much time as we're talking about now for COSMOS—which the customer says is just a toy."

  * * *

  Pinder put the proposal to Ken Endelmyer, the CLC president, later that week, with the endorsement that in his opinion it was worth looking into seriously. Certainly, it was bold and vigorous in concept—maybe just what the whole field needed. A high risk, yes; but the potential rewards were huge, too, as they well knew. Endelmyer called in Therese Loel for an opinion. She was as intrigued as Pinder and agreed that there might be something in it. She also thought that the potential return from COSMOS was paltry compared to the market that this could open up. Endelmyer put the prospect, along with tentative estimates of what it would take to make the project fly, to the Board. Visions grew of this being pushed as the lead corporate research project, and it became a major funding issue. A month after Corrigan's talk with Pinder, orders came down from corporate headquarters to put the present plans for COSMOS on hold.

  Corrigan and Evelyn had just moved to a house in Fox Chapel, a higher-income, professional residential area a few miles north of Blawnox. They threw a great housewarming party for their friends from CLC and elsewhere, and to add to the fun had one of the EVIE realscaping teams go through the house to capture the interior from all sides and angles for addition to the ever-growing database for the "simworld" of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. So now, Corrigan explained to everybody, they would be able to relive the party all over again by coupling into EVIE when they got back to work tomorrow morning.

  On the night of the announcement that COSMOS was on hold, Corrigan came home somewhat the worse after a celebratory drink or two in town. "Maybe Mister Tyron isn't so much of a big wheel after all," he said, sporting a cigar along with a satisfied smirk as he delivered the news. "It's like Vic Borth said: his field is just visual imagery. Toys. But this thing we're talking about now is going to need real know-how. It's getting out of his league."

  Evelyn was less sure of that, but wrote Corrigan's brashness off to the effects of the drink and the strain that he had been under. Anyway, she didn't want to spoil the party. "Sit down and I'll get you a coffee," she said, forcing a smile. "Have you eaten yet?"

  Corrigan stabbed his own chest with a thumb as he lowered himself heavily into an armchair. "If there's big money to be made out of all this, maybe I'll get to claim a share too now. Maybe we'll see who's who, eh?"

  Evelyn's smile faded as she went through into the kitchen. She wasn't sure that she liked the side of Corrigan that was beginning to show itself. And she was nervous. She didn't think that somebody like Tyron would give up so easily—nor the kind of people that he had behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Maurice came into the still room as Corrigan was changing out of his work jacket and into his street clothes. "Where are you going?" Maurice demanded. "You've got another two hours left yet."

  There were times when it was fitting for Corrigan to carry on taking orders from, and working for, a computer animation, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to ask permissions or have to make excuses. "Not tonight," he said, pulling on his topcoat. "There's too much to explain, and you probably wouldn't believe it anyway. It's quiet, and Sherri can handle it. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

  Far from satisfied, Maurice followed Corrigan out into the corridor. "There is such a thing as proper procedures, Joe. You might show the courtesy of clearing it with me first." Lilly was waiting by the door from the Galahad Lounge, and moved across to join Corrigan as he appeared. "Oh, so it's like that, is it?" Maurice went on behind him. "You can't just walk off the job for a date, Joe. I mean, hey, what is this? This isn't gonna go away in the morning, you know. Just who in hell do you think you are?"

  They came out onto the street, with its usual assortment of caricatures, crazies, and zombies. "I've been looking for you all over," Corrigan muttered as soon as they were away from the doors. "You've had me worried, I can tell you."

  "You know where I am. What was so difficult?" Lilly's voice was clipped and bitter. Clearly, she was not over her indignation—at the deception, and him as the only accessible target representing those responsible. The latter was compounded by his defending the situation, which she interpreted as bland acceptance. He got the feeling that she had come to him only as a last resort.

  "I tried to, a few times. But I couldn't find the place again. They've changed parts of the city that weren't scaped. I tried to get you at work, but I couldn't find it listed."

  "Why all the trouble? What worried you so much?"

  "I didn't know what might come into your head to try next."

  "Did you think I might try suicide or something as a way out?"

  As a matter of fact, Corrigan had. After all, no physical harm could come to an external operator from causing an internal surrogate to permanently deactivate itself. But for all anyone knew, the knowledge and the trauma of the event might leave some adverse psychological imprint. It was something that the system designers had talked about, but in the end been forced to leave as one of the many unknowns that the experiment would entail.

  "Somehow it didn't seem like you," Corrigan replied. Lilly didn't respond. He went on. "I was concerned that you might try to disrupt the experiment. Oh, I don't know how, exactly. . . . Set fire to the city, start a riot, preach revolution from street corners—mess the whole thing up somehow. And that would have been a shame, because it's all doing so incredibly well—despite the flaws."

  Lilly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at him incredulously. "I can't believe I'm hearing this." She shook her head. "I've heard of loyal servants of the System, but this is unreal. I mean, they've stolen twelve years of your life, and all you can do is stand there defending them like Horatius on his bridge and say—"

  Corrigan raised his hands protestingly. "No. Look, it's not the way you think. We haven't really lost twelve years."

  "Not lost? What would you call it, then?"

  "I didn't mean like that. It hasn't—"

  "Do you call being surrounded by this lunacy every day living a life?"

  "Let me finish. . . ." Corrigan looked around. There was a small coffee shop, not too crowded, a short distance from where they were standing. He took Lilly's elbow and began steering her in that direction. "We can't talk like this. Come on, let's take the weight off our feet in there. A cup of something might calm you down before you break a spring or something, too."

  * * *

  ". . . and we finally settled on a factor of 200. A day to us is only seven minutes outside. A whole week is less than an hour. So the twelve years that you're so hyped up about works out at about three weeks. . . . Hell, Lilly, you're a scientist. What we're going through is a unique experience. Thre
e weeks isn't a lot to exchange for it."

  Lilly, hunched over the opposite side of the small corner-table, sipped her coffee and sighed. Corrigan's words had had some effect. At least she was listening. She indicated their surroundings with a glance and a motion of her head. "So this is all an accelerated dream. We can afford to sit here and talk about it. It isn't losing us much."

  "If we sat here for the next hour, it would be a whole eighteen seconds out of your life," Corrigan said.

  Lilly fell quiet for a moment, reflecting on that. "You people might have told us," she said.

  "Tyron didn't mention it when you were interviewed in California?"

  Lilly shook her head. "They didn't tell us a great deal about it at all."

  "Maybe they did tell you after you got to Pittsburgh," Corrigan said. "But then somebody sprung this memory suppression, and it got lost with the rest."

  Corrigan felt more at ease for the first time in days. It seemed that he had saved the project and would have good news to report the next time Zehl contacted him. The thing now was to get Lilly back into playing her role normally. He made a conscious effort to discharge the atmosphere by being casual, resting an elbow on the edge of the table and draping his other arm along the back of an empty chair next to him.

  "Out of curiosity, what gave it away?" he asked her.

  "You mean how did I see through the simulation?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, not because of any one thing that you could put a finger on. Lots of little things."

  "But there must have been something that clinched it."

  Lilly stared into the distance and tried to think back. "I think it was cracks in a sidewalk," she replied at last.

  "You're joking."

  "No. . . . I do remember a couple of days in Pittsburgh before it all goes blank—when the group from California that I was with first arrived. There was a briefing and some preliminary tests."

  "Okay."

  "Well, I spent some of my free time wandering around, taking in the sights. I like the older, East Coast cities—they're all so much alike in California. Anyway, I was standing watching something in one particular small street—it's not all that far from here—that had lots of old, cracked paving stones in the sidewalk, and I noticed that the pattern of the cracks near the base of a lamp outside an antiques store looked like the coastline of Labrador."

  Corrigan shrugged. "What about it?"

  Lilly drank from her mug, frowning with the effort of trying to keep clear what had happened around that time. "Soon after that it all gets lost. That was when the intensive tests began, and we were supposed to have had the breakdown and the rest of it. . . ."

  "Yes. Go on."

  "Much later, after all the therapy and rehabilitation, when I was out and about again, I ended up one day in that same street. The stones were still old and cracked, so they hadn't been replaced—but the pattern wasn't there." She raised her eyes and looked across at Corrigan. "And that was when a lot of other strange things that I'd been noticing started making more sense. It was a simulation. The system had the data to create realistic views of that street; it knew that the street had old paving stones, and that old paving stones would have cracks. So it put cracks in them. But it didn't put in the right cracks."

  Corrigan looked at her, astonished. "And that was it?"

  "That was it."

  He sat back, nodding. All for the want of a nail . . . "I noticed similar things from time to time, too. I put it down to my own faulty memories." He shrugged, as if accepting the need for some kind of explanation. "That was what all the authority figures in my life had been telling me for years."

  Lilly looked at him doubtfully over her mug. "You know, for someone who was involved from the start, there seems to be a hell of a lot that you don't know," she remarked.

  "I'm not really in any better situation than you," Corrigan said. "We talked a lot about the pros and cons of suppressing the surrogates' memories, but as far as I was always aware, the decision was not to go with it. So what must have happened is that top management of the project set up another group to implement it secretly. . . ."

  "But I thought you were project top management," Lilly interrupted.

  Corrigan waved a hand. "Okay, maybe I should have said company top management. There were all kinds of people involved in Oz, both inside CLC and out—it was a hugely complicated undertaking. . . . Anyway, the idea was to make reactions to the simulation valid. But I always thought it was the wrong decision. Things work better if you know what's going on."

  Lilly stopped him again. "Wait a minute. Are you saying that you didn't know about it—that there was going to be any memory suppression?"

  Corrigan shook his head and showed his hands appealingly. "I couldn't be allowed to, could I? Think about it. If a surrogate knew in advance what the intention was, he'd see straight through any attempt at a cover story. If it was going to be done, that part had to be done by other people—without my knowing. Sneaky, yes. But what other way was there?"

  Lilly tapped her spoon absently against the side of the mug, frowning to herself and watching it in a distracted kind of way. Corrigan realized that she was far from appeased. She had let herself be led into a diversion about the project's early days and cracks in paving stones to give herself time to mull over the things he had said earlier.

  Finally she shook her head and said, "It still doesn't add up, Joe. You said you were one of the principal architects of this experiment, right? It practically grew from a proposal of yours in the first place."

  Corrigan had a premonition then of where she was leading. Suddenly he felt less comfortable. "Right," he agreed.

  "And yet, twelve years into it, you could still be taken in?" Lilly stared at him disbelievingly. "If this was anything at all like the experiment you expected, you'd have to have recognized it. Even if your memories of actually commencing it were suppressed, you'd know enough to figure out what all that business early on had been about. The only explanation has to be that the possibility of a simulation that would keep running for years never entered your head. Therefore, it must have gone way past anything envisaged in the plans that you knew about. Maybe the reason I saw through it first was that I didn't know what the simulation was supposed to be."

  Corrigan had to nod—he had said as much himself when they talked before at Lilly's place. The first phase was supposed to have consisted just of progressively more elaborate tests. A comprehensive, extended simulation of the kind they were in wouldn't follow until much later. "Nothing like this was even scheduled," he admitted.

  "Well, it seems somebody scheduled it," Lilly said pointedly.

  In short, had he ever been as in control of things as he imagined? And if he had not, then who had been in control?

  And still was?

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The CLC Board decided to go with the proposal to attempt evolving an Artificial Intelligence by means of machine-directed animations learning to mimic human surrogates in a virtual world. The project was designated "Oz," and to begin with, half a floor was allocated to accommodate it in the IE Block at Blawnox. This did not mean abandoning COSMOS, however, since an all-neural interface as envisaged from COSMOS would be essential for coupling in the human surrogates for Oz. Hence, COSMOS was recast as a subsidiary goal in the greater plan.

  The COSMOS part of the program was left under Tyron's management, as had been the original intention, and the overall direction of Oz entrusted to Pinder, with Corrigan heading up the groups responsible for developing the animation-driver software. Peter Quell, Pinder's deputy, stood in as acting head of the rest of the R & D division. The most obvious aspect of this arrangement was the temporary nature of Pinder's overseeing role in getting Oz off the ground. When he returned to his regular job as R & D chief, an opening would be left for a permanent technical director for the Oz project. And just as clearly, the only two real candidates for the position would be Corrigan and Tyron.

  Corri
gan remained undaunted and cockily confident. "He's just an interface man," he said to Evelyn on one of the evenings that were becoming rarer when they both got away early enough to have dinner in. "We're into big systems now. Complex, adaptive systems. And that's my territory."

  Evelyn was less sanguine. "Tyron's got people behind him, here and outside CLC, who've staked a lot on seeing their man in control," she reminded him. "They're not going to go away, Joe. I mean, who are we talking about that we know? Velucci was there at the first meeting with SDC, wasn't he?—he has to be involved. Probably others from corporate, above Pinder. Maybe even Endelmyer. Certainly Harry Morgen and the others who followed Tyron. And others outside CLC, who must have had a hand in keeping the work on DIVAC in the public domain and nonlicensable. They're not just interface people. And they're not people who are going to sit back and watch while somebody throws a wrench in."

  Corrigan speared a piece of steak with his fork and held it in a so-what pose. "They need what I've got," he said. "I'm the only one who can deliver Oz in the time they're committed to, and they know it. So what can they do?"

  "I don't know, Joe. But be careful," Evelyn said.

  * * *

  The months that followed saw a lot of activity to extend the funding and support for Oz onto a wider base beyond CLC. Corrigan was too preoccupied with technical issues to pay much attention to background politics, but one day the company announced that Feller & Faber were coming in as cosponsors of Oz, which would be set up and run under a new, jointly owned corporation, "Xylog," dedicated to the project. F & F in turn were able to channel further funding from their lucrative client base, and very soon the original scheme that was to have been housed on a half-floor at the existing Blawnox facility gave way to a greatly expanded vision using more, bigger, and better machines, many more people, and occupying a site of its own elsewhere. F & F and its associates would manage the financial side of the joint venture, with somebody from CLC—yet to be designated—directing the technical operations. So in essence nothing changed as far as Corrigan and Tyron were concerned; it had all just shifted to a higher level.