Turing Test

by E. M. Foner

  “I’m going to start on Stacey’s report now,” eBeth told me, and then asked a question she’d obviously been thinking about since our night in the warehouse. “Do you guys really have a rule against exporting cultural artifacts?”

  “Technically, the rule prohibits looting native cultures of their treasures, so there’s some wiggle-room as long as she paid market prices. It’s like the rule against interfering with native customs. You know that Justin has been working to improve conditions for the elderly, and one of his approaches is to reduce the number of medications many of them are taking. You could argue that pushing pills is a protected human custom, but his efforts are limited to such a small population that there’s no statistical impact.”

  “Was he still able to come up with something positive to say about the way old people are treated?”

  “Nearly half of our host nation’s budget is earmarked for retirement benefits and medical care for the elderly,” I read from Justin’s summary. “Private spending to educate older citizens about nonsurgical treatments is approaching the annual appropriation for the government’s space exploration agency, NASA.”

  “Since when is anybody educating old people in alternatives to surgery?” eBeth asked skeptically.

  “Prescription drug advertising,” I told her. “You probably don’t notice it because it’s not targeted at your age demographic.”

  “Oh. Does he write about anything other than money?”

  “He decided that spending is the safest subject, which makes sense from a strategic perspective. Nobody on the executive council would believe that so much money is allocated to senior citizens just to keep them quiet. It helps that none of the League members remember the early days when their own species went through a long decline in old age.”

  “So they’ve all fixed it?”

  I hesitated over whether or not to tell her the truth, and then hedged. “Advanced civilizations find ways to postpone and streamline the aging process.”

  “I’ve got another question. Are you really going to submit your report in English?”

  “English and Standard, I do the translations. Reporting in the local dialect is something of an affectation with Observers to demonstrate our cultural immersion. It’s been going on for some time.”

  “Are all observers AI?”

  “Most of us are. It’s relatively easy for artificial intelligence to install itself in an encounter suit and pass as native. With the exception of the Hankers, who refuse the job, members of the other League species would have to be small enough to fit inside of some sort of robotic container that could fool the locals. But controlling such a robot with any degree of precision would generally require an AI helper, rendering the other occupant redundant.”

  She nodded her understanding and went back to reading. Apparently Stacey had put together a glowing report of Earth’s cultural development and preservation of the past because eBeth didn’t uncover any uncomfortable truths.

  “Humans place such a high value on their artistic and cultural heritage that a single work from an acknowledged master can sell for more than what a hundred skilled professionals will earn in their lifetimes,” eBeth read. “Wow, Stacey managed to put a positive spin on billionaires paying hundreds of millions of dollars for paintings because they’ve got so much money they don’t know what else to do with it.”

  “That’s very cynical of you,” I told her. “I’m sure some of them are true art lovers.”

  We both laughed, and then I sent her my executive summary that would lead into the report. “Tell me what you think.”

  eBeth was a quick reader, and two minutes later, she turned to me with a frown.

  “There’s nothing in here about our governments. I know you keep saying that the other species will mainly be interested in humans whose skills can transfer to the galactic service industry, but how is your League going to negotiate our membership terms if you don’t tell them who to talk to?”

  “What made you think there would be negotiations involved?” I was genuinely curious where she had gotten such a bizarre notion.

  “How else could it work?”

  “Assuming the executive council looks positively on our report, Earth will be assigned a level of sociability, which is associated with a set of rights and responsibilities. Your initial portal access will be limited to a waystation with a compatible atmosphere, and from there you’ll be able to transfer to anywhere that will have you.”

  “I meant on our end. Is the only portal going to be the one in the basement of your restaurant? You know that the government will try to take it from you, and who knows what the rest of the world will think.”

  “Our engineers will open portals all around the world, usually in accordance with some geeky aesthetic. The number will be large, though as I said, all of the portals will be initially locked to a single waystation.”

  “But local governments will take them all over.”

  “I suppose they’ll try. We aren’t here to promote political change on your planet, but neither are we going to waste our time in negotiations with governments that have nothing to offer us.”

  “Then how is rushing the approval process going to save us from some Hanker scheme that you all seem so worried about?”

  “Once your world is connected and your people gain wide access to information, it won’t be so easy for the Hankers to play tricks on you.”

  “Then we should throw a party,” eBeth suggested.

  “What?”

  “An end of the world party, at The Portal. For when the Hankers land at Davos.”

  “Sunday morning? We aren’t even open until brunch.”

  “Not Sunday morning, Saturday night. What time will they land?”

  “Probably right before dawn to show off their rocket plumes in the dark, plus there’s the whole ‘Sun rising on a new day for humanity’ effect to play up. I’ll bet the envoy even uses it in his speech.”

  “Faster-than-light spaceships have rockets?”

  “Their exploration vessels are equipped with landing craft rigged out to impress gullible natives. The mothership isn’t structurally capable of putting down on Earth, and even if it could, they’ll keep it in high orbit where the whole world is under their weapons.”

  “I thought you said they were here to play a trick.”

  “They still need to protect their first-contact team. If you were an alien, would you land here without backup?”

  “Alright, dawn at Davos. What time is that?”

  “Around 8:00 AM in late January, the day is only nine hours long.”

  “And what’s the time difference to us?”

  “Seven hours.”

  “So 1:00 AM our time. That’s perfect.”

  “But we can’t sell drinks after 1:00 AM.”

  “You were planning on selling drinks to your friends?”

  “Oh. I guess I had something else in mind.”

  “Listen, we can have betting pools, like what’s the first thing the alien envoy says, and what he looks like, though you can’t be in that one. All of the AI I know love gambling.”

  “All of the AI you know are on my team, and we gamble as a self-diagnostic.” I took a moment to compute the odds that my winnings would be enough to offset giving away booze. “Alright. We can start by betting on what form is taken by the Hanker envoy.”

  “But I already said you’re disqualified from that one because you’ve seen them in the flesh.”

  “Sure, but they won’t come as themselves.”

  “Are they shape-shifters?”

  “More like biological Lego,” I explained. “They’ve been playing mix-and-match games with vat-grown parts for so long that they can whip up a compatible body and do a brain transplant in less time than it takes you to change your hair color.”

  “I’m not that bad,” eBeth objected. “Besides, you don’t need your bathroom for anything.”

  “My point is that when it comes to how they’ll look wh
en they walk, crawl or slither down that landing ramp, your guess is as good as mine. As long as I’m already breaking the law by letting you into the bar, why don’t you invite your gaming friend?”

  “Death Lord? He has to work in the morning.”

  “He works for Paul, and I haven’t forgotten that you didn’t even check with me before playing employment agency. Have you even met him yet?”

  “We killed an evil sorcerer together last night.”

  “You know what I mean, eBeth. I’ve bumped into the kid at Paul’s a couple of times now and he always asks why I don’t bring you along.”

  “He does?”

  “I could give him a couple of gift certificates for the restaurant so you could spend time with him in a familiar place. You can even bring Spot.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Why not?”

  “What if he asks some other girl to go with him?”

  “He’s not going to ask a different girl,” I said, thinking how strange it was that eBeth, who was the most confident human I knew, could go wobbly over a simple meeting. “Besides, I could tell him that the gift certificates are only good if he brings you.”

  “You are NOT buying me a date with my boyfriend.”

  “So you admit he’s your boyfriend but you’re afraid to meet him.”

  “Go work on a weather forecast or take the dog for a walk before you say something really stupid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I felt like I had won a sort of moral victory and decided to quit while I was ahead. I’m sure that if he hadn’t been a dog, Spot would have offered me a high-five, but instead he brought me his leash.

  Twelve

  I have to admit that the Hankers know how to stage an impressive landing. The craft appeared to be supported by sixteen pillars of flame as it slowly descended towards the frozen golf course, but I knew that the rocket engines were supplemented by a gravity-lock system that was carrying most of the load. When the lander neared the ground, steam from the melted snow and ice billowed up, and I had the fleeting hope that it would descend as fine ice crystals and the first Hanker down the ramp would slip and fall on his butt.

  “Wow,” the lieutenant said for all of us as we gazed at the alien ship sitting in a puddle of boiling water. “That can’t be good for the putting greens.”

  “It’s going to take a while before the steam clears off enough for our extraterrestrial visitors to make a grand entrance,” I said to eBeth. “Do you want to use my office computer to catch up on your homework assignment?”

  She picked up on the hint immediately and slid off the barstool, but left her winter jacket hanging over the seat. “Shoot anybody who tries to steal it,” eBeth instructed the lieutenant.

  “The coat or the chair?”

  “Both. And keep an eye on the tally sheets as well.” She shoved the pile of papers with the bets she’d been recording all evening towards him, then thought better of it and leaned over the bar to place them on one of the beer fridges. “Keep an eye on those, Donovan,” she called.

  “This is just a practice session,” I told eBeth when we reached my office. “We’re going to open a portal to the League’s main offices to check in with Kim.”

  “She’s not back yet? I thought she was just popping over to deliver the final report.”

  “I decided to kill two birds with one stone and instructed her to hang around headquarters and answer any questions the council might have. The lieutenant told me there’s a rumor going around town hall that she never took any sick days or vacation time, which annoys her coworkers and looks suspicious with the Feds in town investigating the epidemic of healthy children. She had three weeks coming, plus ten sick days.”

  “So what am I looking for?” eBeth asked, picking up the joystick.

  “A room the size of a city mobbed with aliens running around trying to look important.”

  “And there’s only one portal there?”

  “One of the perks of this job is that Observation missions get a dedicated portal entrance to the League headquarters. Since there are only one or two teams out at any given time, it’s probably the least used path in the system.”

  “How big of a haystack did you give me to start?”

  “Just a hundred or so,” I said. Watching eBeth sort through portals at high speed was kind of a treat for me, and I could use some cheering up since I had predicted three inches of snow in Kansas City on a day that barely saw a cloud. The farm boy had gotten it right. “I surrounded the headquarters with a bunch of medical facilities since they’re also full of aliens running in every direction.”

  “Do any of those worlds use AI doctors?” eBeth asked.

  “All the smart ones,” I told her, and then reversed myself. “That’s not entirely true, but most surgery around the galaxy is done by robots because they don’t get tired and can move with accuracy and repeatability unattainable by natural forms. Of course, a thinking physician has to be in control, but once the robot is there to do the cutting, it’s more efficient to run everything with artificial intelligence. A single AI working through robot surgeons can perform many operations simultaneously following disasters. Most of the day-to-day body repairs are done from the inside-out using nanobots and non-invasive techniques.”

  eBeth fiddled with the joystick and then began scrolling through worlds so fast that I had to up my frame rate to keep them from blurring.

  “Oops, I think I just passed it,” she said, letting go of the stick and then slapping it with her fingers like a pinball flipper. The image jumped, and there was the League’s administrative center, with Kim standing directly in front of the portal.

  “Hey, eBeth. Did you get it on the first try?” Kim asked.

  “I overshot by one,” the girl admitted. “How did you know to be waiting? I thought that you guys couldn’t communicate except through the portals.”

  “I dropped into Mark’s office two minutes ago and sent him a text,” Kim said. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” she yelled at a creature that resembled a rhinoceros crossed with a rose bush that brushed by her too closely. “Some of these diplomats are so rude.”

  “But if you texted him, you could have reported in at the same time,” eBeth objected.

  “Not and maintain the chain of custody,” she explained, tossing a data capsule through the portal in a lazy arc that wouldn’t trigger the filter. “It’s a physical transfer.”

  “Thanks,” I said, snatching it out of the air. “Any real progress?”

  “You won’t be surprised to hear that the Hankers and their allies are dragging what passes for their feet. I spoke to our council member today and she’s been recalled to Library. The new rep will be here shortly.”

  “Strange timing for a change. Well, keep us posted. I just wanted to check in and give eBeth a little practice.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Kim said. “They have a lot of outlet stores here and I got something for eBeth.” She tossed a piece of jewelry through the portal and the girl caught it. “You can use it to accessorize on the days that you do your hair that metallic blue.”

  “This is so cool,” eBeth said, sliding the silver and turquoise bracelet onto her wrist. “It must have been super expensive.”

  “There aren’t any import duties on goods coming into the League’s headquarters,” Kim explained. “Politicians love bargains. See you soon.”

  The portal winked out and eBeth spent a little time admiring the hand-crafted bracelet, which really must have cost my team member a good sum. Then she shot me a suspicious look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You and Kim were talking about Library’s member on the council like she was a woman. Every time I suggest that you ask Sue out on a date, you tell me it doesn’t work like that with AI.”

  “It doesn’t. It’s complicated. We could refer to ourselves as ‘it’ but we already get enough grief from League members who treat us like machines. Now let’s get upstairs. It sound
s like all of the TV crews are in place and the Hankers are about to come out of their ship.”

  “Or you just don’t want to talk about Sue.”

  Ouch, the girl could read me like a book. We headed back up to the dining room, but even though the restaurant was officially closed for a private party, Spot chose to stay by the furnace, exercising his jaws on a tennis ball. With all of the bodies upstairs creating warmth, the heating system hadn’t cycled on in hours, but dogs are eternal optimists. Either that or he didn’t care for the guest list.

  Immediately after reclaiming her seat, eBeth told the lieutenant, “I put my money on the Hankers looking like giant bunnies, but Mark went with puppies. What did you take?”

  “Godzilla,” he said. “I have a theory that Japanese filmmakers are better than ours at predicting the future. It’s why so few of their movies make sense to us.”

  The Hankers hadn’t sent any video of themselves after opening communications with Earth, claiming that human equipment just wasn’t up to displaying the high definition standard the rest of the galaxy shared. It was only half true. Most species employ holograms for visual communications and entertainment, a technology that doesn’t yet exist on this planet. But those who stuck with screens run them at a lower resolution than the current televisions manufactured on Earth. Everyone learned a long time ago that there’s such a thing as too much detail.

  To keep the betting manageable, eBeth had only accepted the first ten bets on different outcomes for each event, after which late-arrivals had to choose from what was available. eBeth and I had seeded the betting pool with our own wagers for each event we were tracking, and I was predicting that between the two of us, we’d walk off with most of the winnings.

  “You wasted your money,” eBeth said, speaking directly into the lieutenant’s ear to be heard over the rising crowd noise. “Half of the money is on Godzilla. Even if you’re right, you’ll be lucky to make eighty cents on the dollar.”

  “Why wouldn’t I double my money?”

  “Hey, this isn’t an office pool,” I told him. “We have to make something for our trouble. What were the other popular choices, eBeth?”