Operation Sherlock

by Bruce Coville

  “That’s right,” said Rachel. She took a sip of her coffee. “And I most emphatically did not send you a message.” She winced as she watched Wendy take a bite of burger, make a face, and then remove the top of the bun to pour a second round of ketchup over the pile of pickles and onions that already completely hid the meat.

  “Well, this is more fun than a malfunctioning circuit,” said Wendy. “Looks to me like one of us is losing her marbles. My grandfather always said it would happen. He didn’t approve of women thinking too much.”

  She glanced over at the counter where the boy named Hap was whistling quietly as he stacked doughnuts in a plexiglass container. A little robo-runner tootled up and down the counter, brushing away crumbs and wiping up spills. “What’s he so happy about?” she snarled.

  “Wendy!”

  “Sorry. I guess this place is getting on my nerves. First they pluck us out of our homes and drag us off to this barfacious island. Then less than twelve hours after we get here, someone blows up a guard shack, which everyone is trying to pretend is a perfectly normal accident, though if it was I’ll eat an organically grown booger while standing on my head. Next we find that microphone on your collar, which was probably placed there by one of the seventeen most important grown-ups on this dump—only we can’t prove anything, because it self-destructs the minute we discover it. To top it all off, you sent me a message and I sent you a message, except neither of us sent anyone a message. I could have more fun being flea inspector at a dog show!”

  She took a huge bite of her burger and began chewing ferociously. Before she could swallow, the door to the canteen swung open and the three boys came stalking in. “Okay,” said Roger, crossing to the girls. “Which one of you was it?”

  “Huh?” said Wendy.

  “By that,” said Rachel, “she means ‘which one of who was what?’ ”

  “Come on, sis, don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. Which one of you is playing games with the computer system? I suppose the two of you have been having a real laugh fest here while we were off at your phony emergency meeting!”

  “Sit down, twin,” said Rachel. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Roger looked at the expression on his sister’s face, then nodded to his companions. Grabbing chairs, they joined the girls at the table.

  Wendy and Rachel quickly filled the boys in on the messages they had received that morning. Before they could finish, everyone began talking at once.

  “All right!” bellowed Roger. “Shut up!”

  “You say that a lot,” observed Trip.

  “I have to with this group. Now look, there’s something weird going on here, and frankly I don’t feel comfortable talking about it in the open, if you know what I mean.”

  He nodded toward the counter section, where Hap was filling salt shakers.

  “Let’s go to my house,” said Wendy. “I’ll cook up some burgers.”

  “Was it a hurricane or an earthquake?” asked Rachel. She was standing at the door to Wendy’s room, surveying the mess that covered her floor.

  “Neither. I’m just domestically impaired. I keep thinking I’ll wake up neat someday, but it never happens.”

  “It’s Captain Wendy!” cried the teddy bear sitting on her shelf. “Welcome home, Captain Wendy!”

  “Captain Wendy!” cried the baby doll and the fashion doll that sat on either side of the bear. “Welcome home, Captain Wendy!”

  The toys stood up, took a step forward, and fell off their shelf. Cursing like sailors, they got to their feet and began walking toward the girls.

  “What is this?” cried Rachel, taking a nervous step backward.

  “My specialty,” said Wendy happily. “Microrobotics. They’re not nearly as sophisticated as Paracelsus when it comes to their speech patterns, but they can walk around pretty well. The bear’s name is Mr. Pumpkiss. The dolls are Blondie and Baby Pee Pants.”

  “Wow,” said Ray, stepping up beside the girls. “That’s spooky.”

  “They are amazing,” agreed Rachel admiringly.

  “I don’t mean the toys,” said Ray. “I mean Wendy’s room. A guy could get lost just trying to walk from one side to the other.”

  Wendy was about to punch him when Roger yelled, “Will you three get back out here? We’ve got work to do!”

  “Come on,” said Wendy, heading for the kitchen. “I’ll tell you more about their programming later.” Ray and Rachel followed her down the hall.

  A few feet after them came Mr. Pumpkiss and the girls.

  The idea was born, as great ideas often are, from frustration.

  “I can’t make head or tail of this mess,” said Ray, pushing himself away from the table. He picked up Mr. Pumpkiss, who was trying to crawl into his lap. “It just doesn’t add up.”

  “Good grief!” cried Roger. “That’s it!” He looked around the table, as if expecting the others to get it as well. “We’re trying to do the adding up ourselves,” he said. “Don’t you see how silly that is?”

  The others looked back at him blankly. But Roger was on his feet now, pacing back and forth in his excitement.

  “Adding up. That’s the whole point of having computers: to do the adding up! They’re made to handle the drudgery—sorting, storing, comparing—so the human mind can be free to do more creative things—free to do the thinking!

  “Now, here we sit, beating our brains out trying to sort through these clues, and what’s in the next room?” He answered his own question before anyone else had a chance. “I’ll tell you what’s in there: a terminal linked to what may be the most powerful computer in the world! Will be, by the time our parents are done with it.”

  Ray tried to speak, but Roger cut him off.

  “So with that available, why are we sitting here like a bunch of cavemen piling up stones to keep track of our sheep? We should be writing a program—a sort, store, and compare kind of thing. Let it handle the data while we work on the real problem.”

  Trip broke in. “You mean we should write a deduction program? A sort of computer detective thing? I think you’re on to something.”

  “On to something?” cried Roger. “You bet I’m on to something!” He stopped, and a strange expression crossed his face. He looked around the table, his eyes shining. “Stand back,” he said. “I think I’m about to be brilliant.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Wendy.

  Roger began pacing again, then forced himself to hold still. His fists were clenched and he was almost trembling with excitement. “Why make a drudge program?” he asked softly. “Why not go all the way?”

  “Roger?” It was Rachel. Her voice held a question that was almost a warning.

  “I mean it!” cried Roger. “Hwa and our parents yanked us out of our homes and dragged us to this flyspeck in the ocean so that they can work on artificial intelligence. I say, what’s to stop us from designing our own A.I. program? We’ve got the brains. We’ve got the background. And we’ve got what no other kids have ever done more than dream of: the world’s greatest computer at our fingertips!”

  He looked around the table, locking his gaze with each of the others. When he spoke again his voice was husky with the thrill of his idea. “Let’s see if we can beat our parents at their own game. Let’s try to make a crime-solving program that can think for itself. I’ve even got a name for the project,” he added with a smile. “We’ll call it ‘Operation Sherlock!’ ”

  For a moment no one said a word.

  Finally Wendy put down her burger, which she had been holding halfway to her lips since Roger started his speech.

  “Let’s do it!” she whispered.

  Collision Course

  Suddenly everything was different. It was as if, in an instant, night had turned to day, or winter become spring. Anza-bora Island no longer seemed like a prison. Rather it was now a giant laboratory, where the kids could work out the kind of program each of them had always dreamed of creating.

  Unfortunately, not everyone on Anza
-bora shared this state of bliss.

  While the gang was celebrating the moment of inspiration that had led them to their new project, three other people, each less than a mile away, were planning things less pleasant.

  One was Black Glove. Beads of perspiration stood out on the spy’s forehead as the final adjustments were made.

  A sigh of relief.

  Success!

  Before midnight tomorrow, if all went well, every keystroke the scientists on Anza-bora Island made would be electronically transmitted to G.H.O.S.T.

  Black Glove smiled in anticipation. What a delicious triumph that would be!

  Elsewhere on the island a lonely member of the base population was plotting the next move in a campaign designed to confuse and upset “the intruders.”

  Less than half a mile from him, still another person, outraged by the idea that scientists would dare try to create a machine that could think, was putting the finishing touches on a plan to destroy the great computer that was the heart of Project Alpha.

  “They are presuming to look at things that man was never meant to see,” read the entry this person was writing in her small, leatherbound journal. “There is a line that humans should not cross, a division between the mortal and the immortal. This wicked project, this attempt to imitate God by making life, must be stopped. If it is not, these arrogant fools may unleash upon the world a horror that can never be recalled, a machine that could control all our lives, forever.”

  The secret journal in which these thoughts were recorded held page after page of similar expressions of fear and anger. The woman who had written them was genuinely convinced that they were real, and important.

  And, in the way of fanatics, she was willing to destroy anything—or anyone—to stop “the wicked project.”

  On the morning of their third full day on Anza-bora Island, none of these disturbing things were known to the five young people who had christened themselves “The A.I. Gang” on the previous afternoon.

  Not that they were unaware of problems on the base. But in the excitement of beginning their new project, the problems they did know of somehow seemed distant, or easily solved.

  They were gathering, according to plan, at the house of Roger and Rachel Phillips. The choice of the Phillips home as headquarters for Operation Sherlock was based on three simple facts:

  1) Trip and Ray each had one parent who was at home most of the day.

  2) Even though Wendy’s parents were both out working on Project Alpha, no one in the group wanted to face the prospect of trying to find a path across the Wonderchild’s room.

  3) By the process of elimination, that left Roger and Rachel’s home as the only one that was both empty and livable.

  At a little after nine the first member of the gang knocked at the door. Roger, still in his own room, buzzed him in.

  “Good morning, Trip,” said Paracelsus. The bronze head was sitting on the coffee table in the living room. “How are you today?”

  “Just fine,” said Trip. Then, without thinking, he added, “How about you?”

  “Oh, I can’t complain. I’m programmed not to.” Trip looked at the head. He knew many of the programming tricks that Roger and Rachel (whom he had begun to refer to as R-Squared whenever he thought of them together) had used to create the impression of intelligence in Paracelsus. Even so, he found it somewhat eerie to talk to the thing. It was so much like having a real conversation that it was hard not to think of the head as a living person.

  At that moment Roger came rushing into the living room. “You’re not going to believe this!” he said excitedly.

  “Another mysterious message?” asked Trip, somewhat confused.

  “No, but a fairly urgent one. If we get our butts down to the motor pool right now, we can get some training and testing on the dune buggies. Wheels, Trip! We’re gonna have wheels!”

  Rachel hurried in, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand, a pair of lavender high-tops in the other. “Write a note for Ray and Wendy,” she suggested, plunking down on the couch to pull on her sneakers. “They can catch up with us later.”

  As it turned out, the two remaining members of the gang were on their way up the walk when Trip and the twins came hurtling out of the house. Ray and Wendy readily agreed that the prospect of getting wheels was sufficient reason to postpone starting Operation Sherlock.

  Despite the fact that they were all in high spirits, Trip seemed nervous as they walked along the island’s main road.

  “What’s bothering you, Highpockets?” asked Wendy after she had watched him slowly tear three large leaves into tiny shreds.

  The tall boy grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get my parents’ permission to use the dune buggies.”

  “Why not?” asked Ray. “It’s not like there’s a lot of traffic here!”

  “That’s not the problem,” said Trip. “They just don’t like cars very much. Or any kind of personal vehicle for that matter.”

  “Well, I can see their point,” said Rachel. “But they must be reasonable about it. I mean, you had a car back in Philadelphia, didn’t you?”

  Trip shook his head.

  “That’s not unusual,” said Ray. “Lots of people in Manhattan don’t own cars. It’s just too much hassle in the city.”

  “Yeah,” said Trip. “But at least most of them know how to drive. My father doesn’t even have a license! He thinks private vehicles are immoral.”

  “Boy, he should talk to my parents,” said Wendy. “One of their conditions for coming here was that Dr. Hwa let them bring their Volkswagen.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Rachel. “You’ve got a car here?”

  Wendy nodded. “I think they have some sort of emotional attachment to the thing.”

  “Well, I don’t think it would do any good for Dad to talk to them,” said Trip. “He’d probably just offend them by calling their car an agent of environmental destruction.”

  Roger gave a low whistle. “Must be rough living with an artist.”

  “Dad’s great,” said Trip defensively. “He’s just a little—different. Anyway, it won’t hurt for me to come along for the training. Even if I can’t get permission to drive, I can probably ride around with you guys.”

  The motor pool was located in a long, low building at the south end of the island. Though they had expected to get their training from one of the mechanics, Henry Swenson himself greeted them at the door.

  “Just in time,” he said, wiping his hands on an oily rag. “Another ten minutes and I would have been gone.” He examined the five youngsters with a skeptical eye. “I should probably have my head examined for doing this. But Dr. Hwa is dead set on making you kids happy. So—you get to use the dune buggies. The man moves fast when he wants something; he already has written permission from all your parents.”

  “All right!” cried Trip, startling Mr. Swenson with his enthusiasm.

  The others smiled. They were beginning to decide that however angry they might be with Dr. Hwa for dragging them to Anza-bora, he was basically a decent guy.

  “This way,” said Mr. Swenson, heading toward the back of the building.

  When they reached the area where the dune buggies were housed a murmur of excitement rippled through the gang. The sleek little machines were beautiful. It was obvious that they had been maintained with loving care.

  “First rule,” said Mr. Swenson. “They go out spotless, they come back spotless. My men don’t have time to clean up after you. You’ll find hoses, soap, and buckets in the storage section over there.”

  Rachel made a mental note of the spot.

  “Now, gather round while I give you an orientation to these things.”

  He popped behind the wheel of the closest buggy. The kids crowded in close so they could watch as he pointed out the controls and explained their uses.

  “I’m going to take you out one by one to give you some personal instruction before I let you take the wheel. You can’t do much dama
ge—we’ll be riding on the beach, and there’s not much there you can run into. No traffic, either. Who’s first?”

  “You go, Trip,” said Rachel. “This is your big chance.”

  Trip didn’t have to be asked twice. Wearing a grin that threatened to become slightly wider than his face, he climbed in beside Mr. Swenson. Rachel smiled when she realized that man and boy were the same height.

  “Okay,” said their instructor, “the first thing you do is open the door to the outside. A few years back that was standard precaution to keep you from being poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes. That’s not a problem with these electric motors, of course. But it will keep you from driving into the wall if you get out of control.

  Flashing them a cockeyed grin, he punched a button on the dashboard that activated the automatic door opener. Above them a motor hummed into action. Straight ahead a section of wall almost twenty feet wide slid silently upward.

  “Ignition!” said Mr. Swenson, turning the key he had inserted into the steering column.

  The little engine purred into life. “I suppose you kids would prefer an old-fashioned gas engine,” said Mr. Swenson. “Loud and smelly, but exciting. Well, this one has just as much power. It just doesn’t shout about it!”

  With that, he and Trip were gone.

  By noon all five kids had had a chance to race up and down the beaches with Mr. Swenson.

  “I love it!” cried Wendy, bouncing out of the buggy after her first ride. “It’s better than my parents’ VW. It’s… it’s… it’s plasmagunderific!”

  Had there been any doubt about the Wonderchild’s enthusiasm it would have been instantly dispelled by the fact that once Mr. Swenson had declared them free to drive the beaches (they weren’t to be allowed on the base roads yet) and shown them the official way to sign out a vehicle, Wendy demanded that they go back out at once and “bomb around” some more. Since the others knew she had not eaten for at least two and a half hours, they found this suggestion astonishing. But none of them mentioned it. They were too eager to do exactly as she had suggested.

  By midday the gang was tearing up and down the beaches on the east side of the island, spraying sand, hopping dunes, playing tag with the ocean. Trip said twice that he thought he had died and gone to heaven.