Society of the Mind

by Eric L. Harry

  Society of the Mind

  Eric L. Harry

  Harvard psychology professor Laura Aldrich is summoned to the estate of eccentric billionaire Joseph Gray. Her task is to diagnose possible mental illness in his supercomputer which, like Gray's robots, has been constructed from neural networks and patiently taught physical and mental skills. Is Gray a mad genius bent on ruling (or destroying) the world? Or will he advance civilization beyond our wildest dreams?…

  Eric L. Harry

  Society of the Mind

  " Like Michael Crichton and H. G. Wells, Eric L. Harry writes stories just this side of science fiction that entertain roundly while they explore questions of scientific and social import."

  — Publishers Weekly

  "Gripping, exciting and fast-paced, this Jurassic Park of the mind integrates plot and current scientific theories extremely well."

  — New Scientist

  "Informed, cutting-edge flair… refreshing… Harry has a first-rate speculative mind well grounded in current science."

  — Kirkus Reviews

  About the Author

  Eric L. Harry graduated from the Marine Military Academy and holds BA, MBA and JD degrees from Vanderbilt University. He has also studied at Moscow and Leningrad State Universities. A corporate securities attorney and expert on military affairs, he lives with his wife and two sons in Houston, Texas, USA. He is the author of the best-selling novels of future war Arc Light and Protect and Defend.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my parents to whom I owe far more than mere words could ever express.

  Great thanks and appreciation go to my wonderful wife, Marina, without whose editing and constant support and encouragement this novel could not have been written; to my tireless and loyal agent, Nancy Coffey, and to Bob Thixton, Dick Duane, Jean Free, and all the others at Jay Garon-Brooke Associates who have the patience to put up with me; and to my editors at Harper Collins: Vice President and Associate Publisher Gladys Justin Carr and Elissa Altman. They not only rendered invaluable editorial comments — they were a joy to work with.

  And my acknowledgments go also to the many great thinkers whose works I read with awe. To Daniel C. Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts, and author of Consciousness Explained, who has deciphered the seemingly indecipherable. To Marvin Minsky, a co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, whose seminal collection of essays titled The Society of Mind provided much more to this author than the obvious. And to the visionary Hans Morevae, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon, for the profound dreams and nightmares of Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence.

  Finally, in memory of Jay Garon, who had a habit of breathing life into the literary careers of the unpublished.

  Neural network: A web of densely interconnected processing elements, or "neurons," modeled on the architecture of an animal brain. Through interaction of individual neurons, a neural network is able to improve its performance through experience. Also called neurocomputer.

  1

  "Dr. Aldridge?" the messenger asked, holding an envelope in his hand.

  There was no postmark on the luxuriously thick paper, just—"Dr. Laura Aldridge, Harvard Psychology Department" — hand-printed in black.

  When she looked up, the man was gone, Laura's classroom buzzed in anticipation of the robotic surgery.

  But color test bars filled the high-definition screen, and Laura used the time to open the letter.

  "Dear Dr. Aldridge," it began — the script bold and black and sweeping. "I would like to engage you as a consultant for one week. Tonight at ten P.M., a plane will be waiting at the civil aviation terminal of Logan Airport to bring you to my corporate headquarters. The fee will be one million dollars (U.S.). Thank you for considering this offer."

  It was signed

  "Joseph Gray" — the letters of his name unrestrained by the "Very truly yours" written above.

  Joseph Gray — the richest man in the world.

  Laura read and reread the note, her mouth agape. A million dollars, she thought, struggling to comprehend what had just been handed her. Joseph Gray? It had to be a joke, of course. A million dollars for one week!

  She rubbed the paper between her fingers, marveling at the quality of the stationery. Marveling at the penmanship, each letter distinct and legible. There were no flaws to evidence an indecisive hand. All was perfect and controlled.

  It was the signature, however, that broke the mold. The name—"Joseph Gray" — was slashed in upright spikes, the letters J and G soaring above the rest. It wasn't a name, Laura thought, but a mark, the bold strokes of a man with an ego to match his notoriety.

  A collective gasp rose up from her students. Many sat covering their mouths or cringing. Laura turned to the front of the small amphitheater to see that the large screen had split into two pictures, side by side. On the right, a surgeon was seated at a computer terminal. On the left, a robotic arm held an electro stimulator an inch above the shiny surface of the patient's cerebral cortex. The picture of the exposed brain switched to a close-up, and there were gasps and moans of "o-o-u" from the undergraduates.

  "There won't be any gore," Laura said to quiet the disturbance. "The surgeon is going to locate the correct entry point for the incision by testing the responses of the patient to stimulation of particular areas of the brain."

  "All right, Doug," the surgeon's voice came over the television speaker. "Johns Hopkins" appeared under the crystalline image of a man who was wearing a white lab coat and staring at his computer monitor.

  "Cedar Sinai, Los Angeles" was printed under the incredibly sharp picture of the wrinkled gray mass on the left side of the screen. Just beneath it the Internet address of the channel on which they viewed the procedure was printed.

  The human brain lay exposed under the waiting robotic arm and was surrounded by light green surgical cloth. "We're going to begin stimulation," the surgeon said from his office thousands of miles away.

  "Now I want you to report to me exactly what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, remember, whatever. Just relate to me as best you can the experience that the stimulation triggers."

  Laura put the letter onto the podium and tried to compose her thoughts for her lecture. "The surgeon on the right," she said, clearing her throat and then raising her voice to get the students' attention, "is located at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. The subject," she began, aiming her laser pointer at the picture of the patient, "is a nineteen-year-old male with severe epilepsy." An arrow-shaped cursor generated by the television's built-in microprocessors followed her laser pointer to the well-lit hole in the skull. "He's at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. The purpose of this tele-robotic surgery is to sever the corpus callosum, which is located at the base of the longitudinal fissure between the two hemispheres of the brain. Can anyone tell me what the corpus callosum does?"

  "It's the cable that carries data between the two halves of the brain," a girl answered.

  "The corpus callosum," Laura lectured from the center of the "bowl" of the steeply tiered rows of seats, "is the principal means of communication between the two cerebral hemispheres — between the left and right halves of the brain. There are numerous other interfaces as well, however."

  "Why're they doing that to the guy?" another student asked with a quiver in his voice. The freshman sounded as if he were being asked to witness a ritualistic mutilation.

  "In certain cases of severe epilepsy," Laura answered, "the radical procedure of severing the corpus callosum can prevent a seizure begun in one hemisphere from spreading to the other. As we've been discussing, the architecture of the human brain involves a high degree of interconnection.
The 'storm' of electrochemical disturbance caused by an epileptic seizure is quickly transmitted to other brain cells, sparking other pockets of disturbance there and resulting in a major seizure. This patient has spent his life going from one hospital to the next. He is willing to make the trade-off of a split brain for no seizures."

  The looks on her students' faces ranged from quiet nausea to outright revulsion. One young woman had piled up her books and turned to face completely away from the classroom's screen.

  "I know this wasn't in the syllabus for today's class," Laura reasoned, "and I apologize for not preparing you better, but we didn't know this offering was available over the Web until late yesterday. As gruesome as you may think this is, I'm sure you'll find it enlightening. I want you to watch the procedure because it's a rare opportunity to witness interaction directly with a human brain, not indirectly through a patient's normal senses. Nature's laboratory has given us this opportunity, and we as scientists must take what we're given."

  Someone murmured a crack that drew nervous giggles from the students.

  "All right, Doug, can you hear me okay?" the surgeon asked.

  "Yep," the boy replied — the scene on the left switching briefly to provide a broader perspective on the surgical theater. Groans rose from the class on sight of the boy's face and shaved head protruding from under the bright green cloth. The picture quickly shifted back to its close-up of the brain's surface.

  "You mean they'll cut that guy's brain open with him awake like that?" one of the students asked — aghast.

  "They'll put him under after they've found their route in. But they had to keep him conscious so he could report what he experienced from the stimulation."

  "Okay, Doug," the doctor said, "the program is up and running."

  "I don't feel anything," the patient said in reply, his voice trembling as the robotic arm holding the stylus descended toward his brain's surface — slowing as it neared. The physician on the right side of the split screen sat back with a notepad and watched his monitor. "Oh, wow!" the boy shouted suddenly.

  "Six-oh-six-oh-eight-four-two!" he sang out. "I been waitin' for you! Dial the number… and call. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Get no… answer at all! Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dada-da."

  "Is that a song?" the surgeon interrupted, and the electro stimulator rose a few millimeters.

  "Yeah! The B-52s!" the boy said. "My dad used to listen to them all the time."

  "And you can hear it when we stimulate this area right here?"

  The surgeon tapped at the keyboard from his Maryland office, and the robotic arm in California lowered.

  "Wow! There it is again! Just like it's playin' in my head!"

  "You don't have to shout."

  "Sorry."

  "The patient is having a memory experience," Laura explained, "of listening to a song. If we can find an old CD of that song, we can later compare the recording of the patient singing to the CD's soundtrack. We'll probably find it as synchronized with the original as if he had headphones on and was singing along with the music."

  "Purple," the boy said from the surgical theater.

  "Do you see anything?" the doctor asked. "What do you see that's purple?"

  "Nothing. Just purple. That's all. The color purple."

  "We'll be getting to color later in the semester," Laura interjected. "For now, just remember the subject's reported experience. He 'sees' and reports 'purple,' but it's not something that's purple. It's just the color purple that he's experiencing. Your assignment for the next class is to imagine a purple cow. Close your eyes and imagine it in as much detail as possible. Imagine its eyes, its ears, its hooves, everything. Then, when you're done, think about this. Did you 'see' the color purple, or did you just 'think' purple? If you didn't 'see' the color, what was it that made the cow purple?"

  It was when Laura finished giving the assignment that she realized the satellite coverage of the surgery had grown silent. The tense doctor was leaning forward in his chair. In the other picture, the electro stimulator dull point rested lightly against the shiny surface of the cortex, but the patient said nothing.

  "Doug?" the doctor called out, adjusting his glasses and shifting anxiously in his seat. "What are you experiencing now, Doug? Anything?" There was no answer.

  "Doug, you've got to talk to me. What is it? Is it a memory of some kind?"

  "I don't wanna talk about it."

  "Son, you've got to…"

  "Get that thing off my head!" The cloth around the incision shook. The view shifted again to take in the operating room. Two nurses clad in bright green scrubs and face masks rushed to the patient's side as his hands jerked up against the black nylon restraints. "Stop it! Stop it!" Doug yelled, but when the picture shifted back to a close-up, the robot arm maintained the steady pressure of the stylus against his brain.

  "What's happening?" one of Laura's students asked in a trembling voice — a look of horror on her face.

  "The damn computer's making him remember something he doesn't want to!" another student answered.

  "Doug," the surgeon said calmly from the screen on the right, "if you want, I can try to get rid of whatever it is that's bothering you. A little stronger stimulation of the area and I can probably…"

  "Just leave me alone! I said quit it! And I mean right now!"

  "Okay, okay. Calm down." The physician began tapping at his terminal. Still, however, the robotic arm pressed the stimulator down. Still Doug screamed. "Stop! Please, sto-o-op!" he shrieked and began to cry. "Don't do that anymore! Please, please, don't make me…!"

  The bars of a color test pattern replaced the picture of the jerking, increasingly spasmodic motions of the epileptic boy and of the robotic arm, carefully holding the electro stimulator perfectly still in its programmed place.

  2

  Laura closed her office door and headed straight for her chair with Gray's letter.

  The door burst open behind her, and she jumped with a start.

  "You look like you've seen a ghost," Jonathan Sanders, her office neighbor and closest friend, said as he sauntered in and slumped into the sofa opposite her desk. Laura sank into her chair, drawing a ragged breath and trying to settle her pounding heart.

  "Listen," Jonathan began in an apologetic tone, "your secretary told me about the flood of E-mails you got over the weekend from lovesick academics all around our fine institution. I'm sorry about doing that profile thing. Were there any keepers?"

  She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Laura," Jonathan continued.

  "It was just a joke. I thought you'd get a kick out of it. The program had such a catchy title—"Rate Your Mate." Some grad student over at MIT uploaded it onto the university network. It's all the rage, you know, but I am sorry."

  Laura looked up at him and nodded, wishing he'd leave her alone to think.

  "But who knows," Jonathan said, returning to his typical banter. "Maybe you'll find your soul mate somewhere out there in cyber. Or, more precisely I guess, he'll find you some lonely evening while browsing about the Web."

  "Jonathan, I'm not in the mood for this right now, okay?"

  "Really? I thought you'd be tickled pink. You really should look your scopes up. They're pretty good, actually. But I'm still somewhat conflicted about the name I used for you—"Blond Bomber." What do you think? I thought about "Skinny Minnie," but I decided to emphasize your hair instead, since some straight guys still seem to be hung up on the whole breast thing. Personally, of course, I don't get it. A large bosom makes a woman look so matronly."

  Laura looked up from the letter, but not at Jonathan. Could this be for real? she wondered.

  "… but when I put in your particulars — five seven slim and athletic, blond hair, blue eyes, perfect complexion, et cetera — the program rated you in the very top category. "Most Excellent Babe, I believe it was. If only your personality wasn't so scary — your academic credentials, turn-ons and turnoffs, things like that — and perhaps sligh
tly larger breasts, I'm sure you'd have beaten out that cosmetician from Brookline for the top score."

  "Jonathan! This isn't a good time."

  "Look, I just filled out your profile! And I thought the 'Personality' thing would come out better than it did. I said you were 'nurturing,' and when it asked what type of man you wanted, I picked 'lost soul.'"

  Laura glared at him. "I had nothing to do with the 'castrating bitch' part, Laura! I just input the data! I didn't program it to draw conclusions!" She heaved a sigh of frustration.

  What Jonathan didn't know is that the previous Friday after he'd told her about filling out the electronic questionnaire she closed her office door and found her profile on the network. Over the weekend, thousands of E-mails had poured into her computer mailbox. Some large percentage of the sample she'd reviewed before deleting them en masse had graphically detailed sexual acts ranging from the harmlessly disgusting to the truly pathetic. Some had even attached pictures or movies and a plea that she return the favor with a nude photo or video clip of her own.

  The whole episode had unsettled Laura, and as the weekend wore on she'd tried but failed to shake the mood. She had thought at first it was simply the unclean feeling of being the target of so much smut, of brushing so close by the sick, groping hands of the on-line. On Sunday night, however, as she deleted hundreds of new E-mails that had come in during the day, she returned to the profile Jonathan had composed and realized the true cause of her upset.

  Everything he'd said about her was true. Tears had welled up as she sat at the computer in her home. One of the things that had drawn Laura into her friendship with Jonathan was his prodigious power of perception and understanding. It was that same power, however, that had painfully dissected her soul for all the world to see. She didn't care that a program written by some pimply-faced grad student had declared her a "castrating bitch." What bothered Laura was that, when she read Jonathan's description of who Laura really was, she liked the person she saw in the profile. It was exactly who Laura wanted to be — who in fact she was. The problem was there seemed to be no one else out there — in her life or in any of the hundreds of E-mails through which she had waded with an ever growing sense of despair — who seemed to like the person they saw.