Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  Kevin was veering off-script. Ali could only guess at what he was up to, for she had deliberately avoided meeting his gaze when she entered the room. Looking at him these days was like looking at a car wreck. She couldn’t afford to get caught up in the feelings she still had for him—not today, when so much depended upon her protecting her clarity of mind.

  On TV, Kevin could be seen tapping his hand against his monitor, as though reaching out to it for support. “When this kid sees again, he’s going to have smarter eyes than he ever did before. Seeing isn’t just like projecting a movie on a big screen, it’s the way the brain finds patterns, edges, similarities, axes of motion—stuff like that. It took a hundred million years or so for evolution to program us to turn flashes of light into real seeing. This kid is about to leapfrog another hundred million years beyond either you or me. Beyond hawk and eagle. Beyond Michelangelo.”

  “That’s incredible!” said Kathleen Brown.

  “Incredible is just a word for not believing. If you don’t find me authoritative enough, ask Odin.”

  “Who is Odin?”

  “SIPNI’s father. Odin is the program I interface with on this terminal. But program is a measly word for what he is. It’s like me calling you a souped-up amoeba that smokes and drinks too much coffee. Odin is the most advanced computational system on this planet. He won last year’s Loebner Prize.”

  Kathleen Brown scowled at the small palmtop that stored her background notes, as though reproaching it for having left her blindsided by this important fact. “The Loebner Prize? What’s that?”

  “It’s a hundred thousand dollars to the first artificial intelligence system that can’t be distinguished from a real person chatting on the telephone. Of course, when I say Odin won, I’m referring to the bronze medal, not the hundred grand. Nobody’s been able to walk away with the gold as yet. But Odin does keep getting better.”

  It was classic Kevin, Ali noted. In almost the same breath, he had bragged about himself and insulted Kathleen Brown in front of an audience of millions. And somehow managed to get away with it.

  Kathleen Brown seemed not to notice. “And Odin helped to design SIPNI?” she asked with her trademark perky tone.

  “Both hardware and software. Some of this stuff is just way too complex for my puny brain to figure out. So we work together, like Rodgers and Hammerstein. And yes, for your information, he thinks.”

  “Does he talk?”

  “Sure.” Kevin flicked a switch on a small module beside the computer. “This activates his external speakers. Odin, this lady would like to have a word with you.”

  There was a pop as the speaker came on, and then there sounded a mellow, silvery, masculine voice—a voice as familiar to Ali as that of any human being in the room. “I KNOW. I’VE BEEN LISTENING.”

  Kathleen Brown smiled uneasily. “Listening? How?”

  “I’VE BEEN WATCHING AMERICA TODAY, OF COURSE.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “YOU NEEDN’T BE. I WATCH ALL SEVENTY-FOUR CHANNELS OF THE HOSPITAL CABLE NETWORK.”

  “All seventy-four at once?”

  “YES. I’M VERY WELL INFORMED ABOUT THE OUTSIDE WORLD. WOULD YOU CARE TO DISCUSS THE CURRENT CRISIS IN LIBYA?”

  “Thanks, but I’m more interested in you.”

  “THAT’S ONLY NATURAL.”

  Ali smiled at the perplexed look on Kathleen Brown’s face. Odin, of course, wasn’t being smug with her. He was incapable of human vanity. He was, in fact, the only presence in Operating Room Three who was unsullied by self-interest. He was the perfect incarnation of the classic Stoic ideal of ataraxia—absolute freedom from human emotions, and from all the exasperating conflicts that came tangled up with them. There had been days—many days, especially lately—when Ali had envied him that freedom.

  Kathleen Brown looked as if she were struggling for a comeback. “How powerful a computer are you?” she finally said, a bit lamely.

  “I’M NOT A COMPUTER AT ALL. NO MORE THAN YOU, KATHLEEN BROWN, ARE THE THREE POUNDS OR SO OF GRAY AND WHITE TISSUE YOU CALL A BRAIN. WE BOTH MAKE USE OF A PHYSICAL SUBSTRATUM TO CARRY OUT OUR MENTAL PROCESSES. BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE TO US THAN THE PHYSICAL SUBSTRATUM, ISN’T THERE? WE ARE OUR THOUGHTS, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS.”

  “So are you Mac or PC?”

  Ali was irritated by Kathleen Brown’s naïveté and ignorance, her cute posturing. She wasn’t taking Odin seriously. She had no idea of his complexity, or of the years of obsessive work that Kevin had spent perfecting him.

  Odin, too, noticed her ignorance, but without irritation. He answered her as an all-wise, all-patient father might answer the little girl on his knee.

  “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MY POINT, KATHLEEN BROWN. I AM A PROCESS, AND NOT A MACHINE. PROCESS IS ANOTHER WAY OF DESCRIBING WHAT YOU HUMANS THINK OF AS SPIRIT. I EXIST IN AND BEYOND THE ENTIRE NETWORK OF MEDICAL CENTER COMPUTERS. THAT INCLUDES THE LARGE RESEARCH MAINFRAMES, AS WELL AS THE ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN DESKTOP COMPUTERS DISTRIBUTED IN EVERY WARD AND OFFICE OF THIS HOSPITAL. I SENSE WHEREVER UNUSED COMPUTING POWER OR DATA STORAGE SPACE IS AVAILABLE, AND I CONSTANTLY SHIFT MY ACTIVITIES TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT.”

  “Don’t people have to use those computers?”

  “I MODIFY MY ACTIVITIES ACCORDINGLY. IT GIVES RISE TO A KIND OF SLEEP-WAKE CYCLE, MUCH AS YOU HUMANS HAVE. THE SLOWEST PART OF MY CYCLE IS FROM THREE O’CLOCK TO FOUR O’CLOCK EACH AFTERNOON, WHEN THE HOSPITAL INTERNS ARE TYPING UP THE DISCHARGE ORDERS FOR THEIR PATIENTS. MY MOST ACTIVE PERIOD IS AT NIGHT.”

  Ali remembered those nights—endless bleary-eyed hours she had spent feeding streams of laboratory data to Odin. Many of the experiments needed to create SIPNI were too complex and too expensive to perform outright, so Ali and the rest of the team relied on Odin to create virtual models of the ways molecules, cells, and circuits interacted with one another. While this saved years of trial and error, the immense computations required could only be performed during Odin’s peak operating window at night—and it always seemed there was an early surgery waiting for Ali the next day. Those nights had aged her. She wondered whether her whole life would be enough to make up for the sleep she had sacrificed on the altar of science during those grueling months.

  On-screen, Kathleen Brown cocked her head and lifted her chin, in a gesture that looked like an obvious attempt to convey a perky thoughtfulness. “You’ve been described as the father of SIPNI. Do you feel any paternal pride today?”

  “I DON’T HAVE FEELINGS, KATHLEEN BROWN.”

  “But you can think?”

  “CERTAINLY. I CAN THINK AND I CAN ACT. BUT MY THINKING IS BASED UPON LOGIC, FREED FROM ALL EMOTIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS. WHEN DECISIONS ARE REQUIRED, I CONDUCT A MULTI-TIERED ANALYSIS OF RISKS AND BENEFITS. I KNOW NOTHING OF FEAR, DOUBT, ANGER, REMORSE, OR SELFISHNESS—OTHER THAN THEIR DEFINITIONS, AND THEIR EFFECTS UPON HUMAN BEINGS.”

  “And love?”

  “I HAVE AN INTIMATE WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH MY CREATOR, DR. KEVIN O’DAY. I EXIST WHOLLY TO SATISFY HIM. I CAN ANTICIPATE HIS NEEDS WITHOUT REQUIRING AN EXPLICIT DIRECTIVE. THESE ARE COUNTERPARTS OF THE HUMAN ATTRIBUTES OF DEVOTION, LOYALTY, AND SOLICITUDE. SO IN AN OPERATIONAL SENSE I CAN BE SAID TO BE CAPABLE OF LOVE, OR AT LEAST OF TRAITS BY WHICH LOVE MAY ARGUABLY BE DEFINED. BUT I AM DEVOID OF POSSESSIVENESS, JEALOUSY, OR THE EXPECTATION OF REQUITAL OF MY FRIENDSHIP.”

  “Amazing!” said Kathleen Brown, swaying her hips and rising on her toes like a bashful prom queen. “Are you available in a home computer version?”

  Helvelius cleared his throat. “Apparently Odin is not above a little grandstanding. Kevin, could you switch the speaker off?”

  Kevin hesitated for a stubborn half second, and then flicked the speaker switch. “Sorry, Odin,” he said, letting his hand catch in the air, like a backhanded salute.

  Ali was relieved that Kevin was off the air. He had been flippant, even rude, but she knew that he was capable of much worse.

  * * *

  To be sure, Kevin O’Day had been
less wowed by the TV cameras than anyone else in OR 3. He had barely listened while his own brain-child Odin spoke to Kathleen Brown. Instead, his gaze was riveted on his computer monitor, which was blank except for two short lines of type:

  SEND PAGE?

  YES NO

  A bonehead question, yet Kevin had been pondering it for the past five minutes, if not for most of the morning. He was not normally wishy-washy. But he knew that behind this question lay the biggest showdown of his life, and he had to be sure of his hand. Once sent, the page could not be taken back.

  He wished that this question— “Send Page?” —could have been approached logically, using time-tested algorithms of decision analysis. Here are the benefits, here are the risks, each weighted according to probability and worst-case impact. He was a natural for that kind of analysis. But this … this was something else. “Send Page?” was not so much a question as a challenge. It said, Show your manhood. Time to go all in—or fold. The blue computer screen and its two lines of type were a curtain that divided earthly reality from the world of pure imagination. He had never dared to lift that curtain before. But now …

  Oh, if only Odin could have made the decision for him! Odin would not have felt the coldness of sweat upon his brow, the heartburn, the throbbing pulse in his temples.… But Odin was all brain and no backbone. He would have been no help here. There was a reason why poker was the only game he couldn’t master.

  Kevin moved his finger back and forth between two keys—“Yes” and “No”—not pressing them, only making feather-light contact, as if some chance vibe off their surface might settle the fateful question. But the longer he played with them this way, the more paralyzed his will became.

  He might have gone on forever—until a minuscule incident, no more substantial than the beat of a butterfly’s wings, put everything into focus. He had been checking out the room, a little worried that someone might break free from the spell of the TV cameras long enough to notice what was on his monitor. Suddenly, he glimpsed two green eyes peering at him from behind an ECG display. They were the eyes of a sylphlike, olive-skinned woman—a woman he had loved, even worshipped, for five delirious years. Her look made his blood run cold. He could have withstood anything else—hatred, ridicule, rage, contempt—anything but this. Anything but … pity.

  And in that instant, the instant of Ali’s pitying him, perfect clarity dawned upon Kevin. “Send Page?” He needed no algorithms of logic. He felt the answer. He felt it like the snap of an electric shock sweeping down his nerves, bringing every sinew into action. Instantaneously, as if by conditioned reflex, his pale, cold finger rapped the key:

  YES

  He blinked, and the two lines of type had vanished from his computer screen.

  * * *

  On television, Ali watched Amy Richmond in the New York studio grilling Dr. Helvelius. “Isn’t it true that not everyone is comfortable with the experiment you’re about to perform?” said the anchor. “In a sense, you’re trying to create a hybrid between a computer and the human mind, between man and machine. What about those dozens of protesters who are picketing your hospital at this very moment? What would you say to those who feel that what you are doing violates the laws of nature, perhaps even the laws of God?”

  Helvelius looked as though he had just bitten into a ripe lemon. “All progress generates reaction,” he said. “If by the laws of nature you mean things as they have always been till now, then I would argue that penicillin violates the laws of nature, since the experience of countless centuries proves that man was meant to die from pneumonia and venereal disease. And what could be more unnatural than to cut open a living human body to remove a tumor or a gangrenous appendix? What were we given skin for, if not to hide the mysteries within, and to plant a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign squarely in the path of the surgeon? Everything that is new begins by being frightening. But given enough time, the so-called laws of nature and of God redefine themselves.”

  Do they? thought Ali. Are there no limits? No final taboos? There was something about all this rush to make history that troubled her. Focused on making SIPNI work, she and the rest of the team had never paused to question their own premises. They were not philosophers, after all. Their horizons—or “endpoints,” as they preferred to call them—went no further than the survival of a patient, or a gain of function. They had asked only what could be done—not what ought to be done.

  Back at the New York desk, Amy Richmond put on a pensive look. “Some experts have expressed a fear that this technology could be used to create an artificial superman—by the military, or a multinational corporation, or even by organized crime. What do you say to that?”

  Helvelius lowered his head and glared over the top of his glasses. It was a defiant gesture, one that Ali had met with on her first day as a resident, when she had had the naïveté to ask the god of Neurosurgery why he didn’t try to remove a tumor from the skull base of an elderly patient. Ali still smarted from the harangue that followed: Helvelius, bloody scalpel in hand, grilling her, lecturing her on futility, quality of life, false heroics, and the anatomy of the cavernous sinus. That night she had lain sleepless in her bed despising herself, renouncing her dream of becoming a surgeon. But through all her self-pity, a still, soft voice spoke to her: He’s right. He looks at reality without any trace of sentiment. And if he can do that, I can learn to do it, too. By the next morning she had not only decided to go on with surgery, she had claimed Helvelius as her personal mentor.

  “Th-those are not experts talking!” sputtered Helvelius now. “They are s-s-self-appointed jackdaws who greatly exaggerate what SIPNI is capable of. Our aim is simply to repair the broken bridges of the brain. If we succeed, we can restore function lost to strokes, or spinal cord injuries, or crippling diseases like multiple sclerosis or ALS. Is that not enough in this day and age?”

  “But the fear is—”

  “Don’t talk to me about people’s namby-pamby fears!” Helvelius’s bushy eyebrows arched, furrowing his brow like the tracings of a seismograph at full tilt. “We’ve had months of discussions about this. Our project has been thoroughly vetted by the Ethics Review Board of this medical center, as well as by the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Every issue has been examined. There is no rational basis for any fear whatsoever.”

  Helvelius waved his hand dismissively. As he did so, he revealed a little-known peculiarity about himself. He was missing the index finger of his right hand. Ali knew that he had lost it many years before on the Minnesota farm where he had grown up. It had almost kept him out of a surgical residency. But he had gone on to prove that he could do more with nine fingers than most surgeons could with ten.

  “Let me introduce you to another member of our team,” said Helvelius, pointedly changing the subject. “The SIPNI device could not work without some way to connect it to Jamie’s brain. For that we use a gel with unique conducting properties, which was developed in a laboratory here at Fletcher Memorial by my assistant, Dr. Ali O’Day, who also happens to be Kevin’s wife. I’ll let Ali tell you about the gel.”

  Helvelius stepped aside, drawing Ali into the line of view of the camera that had been stationed on the other side of the bed. Ali had known this moment was coming—the assistant director had held a rehearsal the day before—but when she glanced back at the monitor, a fleeting glimpse of her own face on television froze her. Four or five agonizing seconds passed. Through the bright lights she saw Kathleen Brown—her skin unnaturally orange from the heavy makeup used to counteract the blue color bias of the TV cameras, her hair helmetlike in its spray-lacquered perfection. She saw the microphone thrust like a spear toward her face. And she saw the tiny red light of the Betacam, the eye of five million viewers—the eye of an entire country.

  What was she supposed to say? Dr. Helvelius had lobbied hard to bring this camera into the operating room. She had tried to want it, because Helvelius had wanted it. But Ali distrusted reporters, particularly whe
re science was concerned. All they were interested in was drama—not science, but a magic show. They had no patience for the rigorous thinking that was at the foundation of a breakthrough like SIPNI. And despite all their fawning and flattery, Ali was sure that they were poised to swoop down like vultures should any part of today’s surgery go wrong.

  But five million viewers were waiting. How could she reach them? She took a deep breath, the breath called deergha shvaasam in Sanskrit, as she told herself that this was no different from lecturing at grand rounds or presenting cases at tumor boards. But these five million were not doctors. They did not speak her language, the language of science. How could she ever explain to them? She felt as she had when she was seven, in second grade, struggling to speak English when all the words wanted to come out in Masri Arabic.

  And worst of all, there was the camera’s unblinking eye—the relentless eye of millions, watching her discomfort without a trace of compassion.

  Ali felt another wave of nausea. Oh, God, what if I threw up now, in front of all the world? She began to speak, her voice sounding small and unconvincing in her ears. “SIPNI’s input and output to the brain passes through what we call the terminal plate, which is really the outer covering—or shell, if you will—of this egg-shaped device.” She felt a tiny joy at the word “shell,” which seemed to reinforce the egg shape she wanted her listeners to see in their minds. Perhaps I can reach them after all.

  “This surface, a little more than two square inches, is studded with over twelve million separate contact points, too small to be seen with the naked eye. The trick is to get each of these contacts to line up exactly with one of the countless fibers that stretch back and forth between different parts of the brain. We call these axons.” Oh, God! Axons? I’m going to lose them here. How can I get them to see this? “Axons … axons are like … fine sprouts issuing directly from individual brain cells. They can be from a thousandth of an inch to several inches long, depending on what parts of the brain need to talk to each other. It would be impossible for us to reconnect them one by one, by hand. That is the function of CHARM. When—”