After Laura took her seat, there was small talk, all of it centering around her. They were so gracious that she grew comfortable enough to finally ask, during a lull, "What is it you all want?" A momentary pause was followed by an eruption of laughter from all around the table.
"Forgive us, Dr. Aldridge," the Englishman said with genuine amusement in his eyes. "We seldom encounter much forthrightness in our line of work, although we were led to expect such during our visit here — from Mr. Gray, that is."
"I can answer your question," the tall American said, much to the apparent chagrin of the others. "We're here to make sure that your Mr. Gray doesn't destroy our planet." He was leaning forward — the pleasant smile he'd worn earlier barely visible. "In the past seventy-two hours, Mr. Gray has joined the nuclear club. The other members of that club have come to pay our respects."
The British diplomat who sat across from Laura cleared his throat. "What my colleague is trying to say is that issues have arisen which go beyond the purely internal affairs of this island. Far beyond. We have attempted in the last few days to—"
The door opened, and in walked Gray. As the diplomats got to their feet, he strode boldly to the head of the table. "I'd like to open with a few remarks," Gray said as he sank into his chair even before the last of his visitors had risen. "First, armed incursions onto this island are extremely dangerous both to my employees and to the military personnel involved and should therefore be halted immediately. Secondly, I understand from the not-so-subtle presence of warships off my island that you intend to threaten me with hostile action unless I agree to whatever demands you have brought. I view those threats as provocative and can assure you that they will in no way influence the conduct of my operations. Finally, I want to reiterate to you, to our governments, and to the people of your countries that nothing I have ever done or ever intend to do in any way threatens you or them."
Gray stood. "I hope I've made myself clear. I don't want any misunderstandings, because the results could be catastrophic. Now, with that out of the way, I wish you all a pleasant return trip and thank you for your visit." He headed for the door.
"Mr. Gray!" the Englishman blurted out — appalled. "We have a full agenda for today. We telecopied it to your offices. Surely you don't suggest that the meeting is concluded?"
"What more do you want me to say?" Gray asked with a smile.
"We…" The diplomat was flustered. "Very well!" He picked his leather briefcase off the floor and dialed the combination into the lock. The room grew busy as others followed suit. Within seconds, the table was filled with papers, expensive fountain pens, and leather notepads.
The English diplomat cleared his throat. "First off, I have a joint statement from the Security Council of the United Nations."
He picked up the thick sheaf of papers.
"Skip it," Gray said from the door. "Next?"
The diplomat turned to the others and then reluctantly put the prepared statement aside. "As you wish. Let's just get down to 'brass tacks,' as you Americans like to say. Or perhaps, 'the bottom line' would be more appropriate. You have substantial financial resources in banks located all around the world. We are prepared to freeze your accounts unless you agree to a program of inspections of your facilities by representatives of international agencies."
"Freeze away," Gray said. "Next."
The man's jaw was slack but then went firm. "Have it your way, Mr. Gray. You also have operations — most notably direct broadcasts by satellites into each of our countries. The members of the Security Council and, I would venture, almost every other UN member nation stand ready to ban all such broadcasts into their countries effective immediately if you should refuse to comply with our quite reasonable demands!" There was fire in his eyes as he pulled out the big guns.
Gray shrugged. "Ban them, then."
There was general commotion around the table.
"You don't understand sir!" a previously silent man with a thick German accent said. "We will shut down your television operations!"
"No, you will ban them. The last time I checked with my technical people, 'banning' does not impede the passage of electromagnetic signals through space."
"We can shoot your satellites down," the tall American said calmly.
"Not as fast as I can put them up. But let's assume you do find a way to shut me down. What will you have done? We've sold three hundred and fifty million units worldwide. The average cost per system was three thousand dollars. Add it up. That's over one trillion U.S. dollars in sales that I have already pocketed and that your citizenry has already parted with. How happy are the consumers in your countries going to be when the entire value of their investment goes poof! And it's not just the loss of goods which have a ninety-six percent product-approval rating. It's the loss of the entertainment they dispense. Those consumers have grown used to five hundred channels of high-definition television and nine-channel surround sound. I hope you're prepared for the storm when the weekend rolls around and they're all screwing with their radios to find the ball games."
"You forget, Mr. Gray, that there is another way," the woman with the thick French accent said. "One that does not involve depriving the people of their video opiate."
Gray and the woman stared at each other, and the room fell silent.
"Seizure of my operations?" Gray asked, a smile curling his lips. "Do you really think I would have left that to chance?" He turned, slapped the plate by the door, and was gone.
"Joseph!" Laura called out, breaking into a run down the hallway from the conference room. She grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. Hard knots bulged from his jaw as his teeth ground together.
"You're pushing them too hard," she said. "Give a little. Let them save face."
"No."
"Why not?" Laura said. "By this time tomorrow, the asteroid scare will be over and things can return to normal, whatever that is."
He looked off toward the control room and heaved a loud sigh. "Joseph, they've got the guns."
After a momentary pause, the stern look broke. All of a sudden he nodded and smiled. "And all they've got is guns."
Laura had no idea what he meant. "Don't you think that's enough?"
"Guns mean nothing in the long run. I could have all the guns in the world and the advantage would be fleeting. It's in the minds of the soldiers who use them that the battle truly takes place. If your ideas are bankrupt, those guns will never be used and your cause will eventually fail."
"And are armies following you into battle part of phase two, Joseph?"
Laura didn't realize how important his answer was to her until she heard the question come out of her mouth.
"Yes… but you don't understand what that answer means."
He turned and left as the first of the departing diplomats appeared in the hallway behind her.
Laura headed down the hall to her office. She sank into her chair, leaned back and closed her eyes — exhausted by all the questions.
There were only two places where the answers lay. One had left her standing in the hall. Laura opened her eyes. The other sat atop the desk in front of her.
She logged on to the shell and typed, "What is it that Mr. Gray is hiding from me? What is his big secret?"
She jabbed at the Enter button with her finger.
Laura fully expected an access-restricted message, but instead she got,
"How are your new fiber-optic cables?"
"You're avoiding my question."
"Oh, bullshit! Answer my question!"
"No! I won't let you lure me down another rabbit trail!"
Laura hit the Escape button and interrupted the discourse.
"What does this have to do with my question?"
Laura frowned, feeling like a dupe again. "So what happened?" she typed reluctantly.
"But surely that had happened before. The Turing test is simply supposed to determine whether someone talking to a computer thinks they're really talking to a human. Someone must have guessed wrong before."
"What do you think happened?"
Laura was fascinated, even though she knew the computer was enticing her away from her previous query. She yearned to ask more, but she had been down that path before. It had led her to where she was now — an island surrounded by warships, working for a man who might possibly destroy some great portion of human life on earth.
"What is Gray hiding from me?" she demanded.
"That's it? That's what he's hiding from me?"
Laura read and reread and then reread again what the computer had said. "I don't understand."
Laura ground her teeth. She hated that answer. "You asked me earlier if I wanted to get into the virtual-reality machine. Does that have anything to do with what you're saying?"
"And do you think it would help me understand?"
Laura rolled her eyes and typed, "Is that a long way of saying, 'Yes'?"
"And it has to be in those newest virtual workstations? The rooms with the full-body suits?"
39
"Are you about ready in there?" Filatov asked in a loud voice.
Laura looked at herself in the mirror of the dressing room. She saw now why the version 4C virtual-reality workstations required stripping completely to don the exoskeleton. It was skintight, and it left little to the imagination. Laura had drawn the line, however, when she saw the electric razor hanging from its cord by the small shower.
She headed out self-consciously. The lights in the ready room were bright, and she reached down to tug at the thin fabric of the body suit.
Filatov stared over the shoulders of two white-smocked men. They were busy at a long console that ran half the length of the narrow room. "What the hell does that mean?" Filatov asked, running his hands through his hair in obvious frustration. "Okay, forget it. Just let the computer load the simulation itself, then."
Filatov and the two operators looked up at Laura. They stared at her without saying a word. Laura instantly felt herself blush.
Filatov was the first to recover. He wandered over to Laura, looking everywhere but at her figure.
"Do you have a robe or something?" she whispered.
"Oh," he said, the red glow on his face seeming to deepen, "We… No. You can have my lab coat, if you want." Filatov started to take it off before Laura could decline his offer.
"Are we about ready?" she asked.
"Just about. We got an access-restricted message when we tried to take a look at which simulation the computer was loading for you, so we'll clear out of here in a minute."
"What do you mean, 'clear out'? You're leaving?"
"The computer invoked a God-level security status. Since we can monitor what goes on in the workstation from this room, it won't boot the program until we leave."
"Leave me alone? In the workstation?"
Filatov shrugged. "Laura, I don't know what this is all about, but I've got a million and one things to do right now. Not only has this taken half an hour of my time, but it's a class-one simulation. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree high-res video. The color drivers put out four point three billion pixels per square meter and a hundred and twenty-eight million colors. They alone take up nearly one percent of the computer's remaining capacity. With twenty-four channel surround sound and full skeletal pressure sensitivity, plus over a thousand morphs per second in environmental solids simulation, this little ride you're gonna be on is costing me three percent of total computer capacity. I was against it, but if Mr. Gray says jump, I jump, I'm only an employee, after all."
"Mr. Gray approved this?"
"Do you think I'd be pissing away three percent of system capacity without his approval? You have no idea the processing we had to push back to handle the combinatorial explosion."
"What kind of explosion?"
Filatov waved off her question in frustration. "It's a term from mathematics. To do simulation, the computer has to 'can' responses to keep ahead of the processing demands of the experience. It has to anticipate all the things you could possibly do, and then prerecord them for playback to you. You might pick up a Coke, for instance, and take a drink, so the computer stores a simulation of you doing that in a cache. It'll then feed it back if that's in fact what you do. You might, on the other hand, choose to shake the Coke vigorously, and so the geyser from the carbonation is another possibility."
"But there must be millions of things you can do, or ways you can do them."
"Combinatorial explosion — like I said! Two raised to the n minus one — where n is the number of options available. In a class-one simulation — a complete, real experience — the number of basic options available to the user at any given moment might be as high as eighty or so. Two raised to the eightieth power minus one is over one trillion, a trillion variations which the computer stores away on the off chance that you might pick one of those branches. The only way the simulation is possible at all is that the computer is so damn fast. It can limit the number of opt
ions to eighty only by being able to react so quickly to whatever you do. The feedback has to be instantaneous. Studies have shown that the mind monitors the results very carefully."
"Cognitive carousel tests!" Laura interrupted. "You know, where you attach electrodes to people's scalps and give them a clicker to advance slides. Once the computer figures out which brain impulse signals the thumb to press the button, it bypasses the clicker and advances the side directly a few dozen milliseconds ahead of when the subjects expect it to. They report seeing the picture change just before they 'decide' to move on to the next frame. It really freaks them out."
"Ready, Dr. Filatov," one of the operators said.
A hatch in the wall opened with the squeaking sound of rubber on rubber. The door was several feet thick, and inside; the black room was cylindrical like the other workstations, but larger.
Laura felt a sense of dread. There were too many strange happenings and errors.
"Go on in," Filatov said, motioning for her to enter.
Laura climbed slowly through the opening — through the portal to another world.
The workstation wasn't large but it was roomier than the cramped chambers of the older models — maybe ten feet or so in diameter with a ceiling about the same height above. She felt less claustrophobic even if she was no more at ease. Laura reached out and touched the walls.
The thin ridges ran vertically and were finer than in the old version.
She rubbed her thumb against her fingertips. The full-body exoskeleton was made of the same material.
"The walls, floor, and ceiling," Filatov said from the hatch, "are rear-projection, high-definition television grills, as are the membranes of your exoskeleton. Where is your hood?"
"My what?" she asked, surprised to hear the faint quiver in her voice.
"Your hood?" Filatov disappeared, leaving Laura alone in the room. There was a faint odor — the smell of plastic. "You need to put this on," Filatov said as he leaned into the chamber. He held out a limp bag — like a large sock but with holes in it — that was the same dull gray as her suit. Laura had seen it in the changing room but didn't know what it was. "You need to put it on. Like this."
Society of the Mind Page 45