Fool's Experiments

by Edward M. Lerner

  The tip broke off his pencil as she spoke. His impish grin broadened. "Nope. I'm a multidimensional sort of guy. Fidgeting is its own reward."

  "Liz." There was no answer, so Betty Neville tapped on the closed door. Nothing. She rapped louder, until the ill-fitting door rattled in its frame. Her boss was alone, but a call had transferred to Betty's desk after five rings. "Liz?" Nothing.

  Betty took the transferred call off hold. "I'm sorry, sir. Dr. Friedman stepped away from her desk. May I take a message?" She scribbled down the man's name and number. It figured—this was the call Liz had been waiting for all morning. "Yes, I'll be sure she gets this."

  Liz must have walked past while Betty's back was turned. Maybe she'd been on the phone herself or had her head in the supplies cabinet. Must be only for a moment, or Liz would have said something, or caught her eye at the least. Odd that her boss had closed the door behind her. Well, Betty thought, I might as well set the message slip onto her desk and grab whatever lurks in the out basket.

  Liz's head lay in the out basket, in a puddle of drool, staring sightlessly into unknown distances. Her body slumped awkwardly half on, half off the desk. As Betty watched, rooted to the spot, gravity prevailed. Liz slid from the desktop to the floor, head, limbs, and torso each smacking the planked floor with a hollow thud. The falling figure had the lifelessness of a rag doll. The lifelessness...

  Betty found her voice again. She was still screaming when people arrived from the office across the hall.

  CHAPTER 6

  AJ glanced from display to display. Most students had settled into their seats; a few still milled about in the aisles. Three, two, one. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen." As he spoke, the social butterflies flitted to find seats and logged in. The clatter of laptops hitting desk arms was, as always, aggravating.

  "Today, we'll discuss the basic principles of Artificial Life, which I will sometimes abbreviate as AL." He wondered how soon this bunch would hit upon the inevitable joking equation: AJ aka AL. "For starters, why might we be interested in AL?"

  His podium's inset display lit up as students vied for attention. He went to split-screen mode at the video-equipped sites, his image on one side of their screens, paraphrased student answers on the other. To keep the class engaged, he went far longer accepting comments than those comments merited. He resumed the lecture when he could bear no more pedagogical correctness. "Examine these suggestions and you'll see two basic themes. The predominant one, involving computer viruses and similar threats, is off the mark. Computer viruses are far too simple to interest me, and real-world viruses aren't truly alive, anyway.

  "The second guess is that we're simulating life to better understand biological life. This is perhaps in reaction to my response at our first session to Mr. Prescott. That interpretation is valid, but incomplete. Yes, we'll better understand biological life as a result, just as analyzing idealized machines helps us comprehend real-world mechanics. Our goals are far more ambitious. When we study ideal machines, the result is mere conceptual knowledge. It takes a great deal of work to turn that insight into a real-world benefit. Ask any engineer."

  He pressed the Reset button, extinguishing all the flashing icons that had demanded his attention. "Bear with me, people. If I haven't answered your question in the next few minutes, ask again.

  "I apologize for the term 'AL.' It's misleading, but unfortunately that is the standard name for the field. In English, 'artificiality' connotes simplification, inferiority, incomplete mimicry. The artificial life-form cannot survive in our world, so one might reasonably infer that an AL must be an idealization.

  "That would be wrong."

  Across his many displays students were rapt. Jeff Ferris, AJ noted with particular satisfaction, was typing frantically. "The life we deal with in this class is other than what we know, not inferior. The ecology to which it is adapted is every bit as real to it as air and water and Krispy Kreme doughnuts are to us.

  "Think for just a moment about that ecology. An AL lives in a world of data-storage devices and information, of processors and communications links. You and I don't—we can't—notice a millisecond, but a thousandth of a second is an eon for an AL. Is this a strange world? Most certainly. Is it imaginary? We bet our bank balances every day that it's not.

  "Okay, then, these ALs occupy a world unknowable to us, but this is a world with which we nonetheless interact daily. Were it not for that other world, you and I would be meeting in a very different way." He glanced at the clock built into the podium. In the so-called real world, the morning rush hour had yet to abate. "Imagine the traffic."

  The peek at his clock also revealed that his lecture time was running out. His delivery went into overdrive. "So what's my point? The information ecology is real indeed, and it plays an increasingly critical part in our lives. We all use the Internet a hundred times a day—and it's still altogether too easy to underestimate society's reliance on computers. And that brings me, class, to the crux of the matter: our dependence on the software executing on those computers.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, modem society has deployed most of the easy applications of computers. We've done all the basic automation. What is left is mostly too complex for mere real-world mortals. We're starting to see the tragic results: One day, an industrial robot accidentally crushes a worker; the next day, computerized hospital equipment electrocutes a patient. We can't write new programs as fast as we need them. We can't prove the correctness of the programs we do manage to produce.

  "Let me pose the issue another way. We rely increasingly on the data plane of existence, as much as on the biological and physical planes. Our approach to exploiting the information ecology, the data plane, is classically human: We create a program to do our bidding. Homo sapiens is, after all, the premier tool-using animal—the only tool-using animal to move beyond sticks and stones.

  "Too bad that building tools is a flawed approach. In evolutionary terms, it's been a simple experiment, and after a short trial, it is already failing us."

  The podium flashed AJ a sixty-second warning. Warp speed, Mr. Sulu. "We will resume at this point next session. Check your syllabus for the readings due by next time. Meanwhile, ask yourselves: If we're increasingly unable to design satisfactory solutions for our ever-growing information- handling needs, what lessons does biology offer us?"

  Although AJ would have been the last to admit—or even recognize—it about himself, he had a heart of gold. Greg Ferris had been, besides one of the best student assistants AJ had ever had, a hardworking and decent young man. He deserved a better break in life than he had gotten: an abusive father and a drunken, bedridden mother. The assistantship AJ had had to offer wasn't much, but at least he had been able to help. Offering Greg's brother a job had been reflexive.

  Too bad: Minutes into Jeff Ferris' first workday, AJ wondered if he had made a colossal blunder. The lad's comments as AJ took him on a more complete tour of the lab were painfully juvenile and banal. A few such remarks might have passed as charm. The unending patter, AJ suddenly suspected, masked a complete lack of understanding.

  Had Jeff absorbed nothing from the lectures and assigned readings? The boy looked so much like Greg. Who could have predicted the brothers would be light-years apart in character?

  Sigh. AJ had no one to blame but himself.

  He had surely learned enough from the never-ending departmental politics, though, to gracefully ease out one kid. Perhaps a few weeks of taskless boredom would do the trick.

  AJ put an arm around Jeff's shoulders. "This way, son. I'd like to show you the supercomputer that we have courtesy of the federal High Performance Computer and Communications Program. After that, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team."

  "Last session, we met the crisis of design. We need more software each year, but programmers can't keep up with the demand. The artificial-intelligence gurus keep promising to fix everything: If human programmers can't handle the load, artificial programmers will take over. The wizar
ds have been on the verge of creating artificial intelligence for more than fifty years now, since about ten minutes after the invention of computers. So, anyway, they claim.

  "I predict that they'll never get there.

  "At the risk of picking a fight with any Creationists among you, the first principle of this class will be"—and AJ keyed the precept into his podium computer as he spoke, for concurrent over-image display at all video-equipped sites— "Life evolved; it was not designed."

  He spotted gratifyingly few outraged expressions among the electronically assembled students. "From which, class, we learn what?" A mouse click selected a name from among the few volunteers. A remote-controlled camera zoomed in on her. "Ms. Kurtz?"

  A young woman peered earnestly at the camera. She had a generous sprinkle of freckles across a button nose. "That trial and error works."

  "Did everyone hear that?" Heads nodded. "Well, not on my exams." The chuckles subsided, and AJ continued. "Exactly right, Ms. Kurtz. Trial and error works well indeed. The usual objection to trial and error is, however ..." She looked to her laptop, in vain, for inspiration. "It's not yet in your notes, Ms. Kurtz."

  She pondered for a moment, then shook her head. She had company in her uncertainty; most of the icons denoting volunteers had been quietly extinguished.

  "Thank you, Ms. Kurtz." AJ annotated her record to credit her contribution, then made another selection. "Ms. Gomez?"

  " 'Trial and error' sounds so dispassionate and impersonal, almost benign. The more familiar term, at least in the life sciences, is 'survival of the fittest.' That's what Charles Darwin called it."

  "Actually, Ms. Gomez, Herbert Spencer said it." If a professor can't be pedantic, who can? "Darwin merely wished that he had said it. And your issue with survival of the fittest?"

  "It's incredibly wasteful and slow." The set of her jaw signaled dissatisfaction with his emendation. "I don't have a million years for a proper checkbook-balancing program to evolve."

  "Very good." He credited her file for her comment, then picked a new volunteer. "Mr. Takagawa."

  "I believe I see an answer, sir."

  AJ smiled. "Perhaps you will share it with us?"

  "Yes, sir. Computers run at such blinding speeds that evolving AL solutions to our programming problems need not take long at all."

  A megawatt LED of enlightenment flashed over the collective heads of the class. It was one of those moments that made teaching—occasionally—so fulfilling. AJ basked in the glow of illuminated faces. Students whispered excitedly, overcome by the elegance of a great idea.

  And just in time, too—his sixty-second warning was once again flashing. AJ cranked up the volume to make sure he would be heard. "Mr. Takagawa, an excellent observation. Class, next session we will discuss the comparative merits of waiting for a William Shakespeare and sitting a bunch of electronic monkeys at keyboards."

  CHAPTER 7

  Linda del Vecchio leaned back in her chair, feet up on her desk. From time to time she swigged a mouthful of dry Cheerios from her mug. Now that the experiment was finally running, she had time for her dissertation. She had a first draft, but it was rough. It needed dozens of edits to take AJ's niggling comments into account. And it was dull as dishwater. She closed her eyes, trying to compose a punchy introduction.

  And failed. Sighing, Linda swung her feet off the desk. She'd meander through the lab and offer help to whoever needed it. That's what AJ paid her for: coordinating his many assistants and students. It was like herding cats—

  Only cats were much cleaner. The lab looked like a pigsty. It generally did. Take-out wrappers, pizza boxes, and soda cans were strewn everywhere. Desk and cabinet drawers hung half-open. Chairs blocked the aisles. Odd toys—hoops and Nerf basketballs; Velcro dartboard and darts; superhero action figures bent into weird, and often lewd, poses—sat in strange places.

  Tidying the lab wasn't in her job description; she'd be damned if she would. There had been enough of that growing up. Her parents both worked; as the second of five children, and the oldest daughter, she had been the designated mommy. Well, she was tired of picking up other people's messes, tired of being the bad guy, and tired of being taken for granted. She'd miss AJ when she got out of here, squabbles about experiment design notwithstanding, but not this lab.

  Linda's wandering eventually brought her to the very back of the lab. Jeff Ferris had taken a desk back there, as far from everyone else as possible, out of sight behind a pillar. She had overheard AJ tell him, "You'll learn from hanging around. When something catches your interest, we'll figure out what you'll really do. Meanwhile, help where you can."

  So far, nothing had caught his interest. Pretty cushy, really. His laptop was plugged into the lab network! The screen showed a driver's-eye view of a car fishtailing down an urban street. Sparks and flying glass suggested gunfire from a pursuer. "Christ on crutches! Did you not hear a thing you were told?"

  Ferris wore earbuds; he pretended not to hear. She tapped his shoulder and repeated herself when he looked up.

  Jeff suspended his game before answering. "Nope. Got a problem with that?"

  He was as obsequious as ever to AJ. As a short-timer, she must be unworthy of his time. "It's a mystery to me why AJ pays you, but that's between the two of you. It's clearly not for any useful contribution. I'll be damned, though, if I'll let you put our experiment at risk."

  He arched an eyebrow at her. So?

  I have a thesis to finish, you little twerp. Linda flipped the power switch of his laptop. With a flick of the finger she popped his Ethernet cable from its wall receptacle. "Jeff, do not ever connect your laptop to the local area network in here. We work hard to keep viruses off the LAN, and you can't ever be sure what's gotten into your machine."

  "Give me a break," Ferris said snippily. "The LAN connects to the university network. UniNet is part of the freaking Internet, and I'm online through UniNet all the time. Although outside this lab, it's simply WiFi—there's none of this prehistoric business with wires."

  "Look there." Linda mentally appended, You imbecile. A vein throbbed in her forehead. She pointed to the equipment rack that stood beside the team's supply cabinets. The rack terminated two fiber-optic cables, one tagged "UniNet" and the other "Lab."

  "It would seem you've also forgotten about our security gateway. It isolates the lab LAN from the main net. I wouldn't want to bore you with details."

  Too late, he mouthed.

  Words failed her. Linda turned and stomped away.

  Brown and white shards flew as the pressure of the butter knife exceeded the strength of the bread stick. 'That," Doug explained for Cheryl's benefit, "was for the practice. Not just anyone can truthfully say they eat cholesterol for science." The Neural Interfaces Department had, as usual, gathered for lunch in the BSC cafeteria. Someone down the table— from where she sat, Cheryl could not tell who—referred to this tradition as "better living through chemistry." She didn't find the food that bad, but then again, she had only been eating here for a few weeks.

  Dick Conrad, a programmer with an Einsteinian shock of hair, flicked crumbs from his otherwise-empty bread plate. "So, who has plans for the weekend?" The chorus of answers included mostly yard work, deferred shopping, watching the Skins game, and possible theater trips. Cheryl's plans were laundry and a stop at the grocery; she didn't bother to contribute.

  Doug grabbed another bread stick. "I generally get that question from people hoping for someone to ask them their plans. Dick, what are you doing this weekend?"

  "I expect to spend it here. New M-and-M game."

  Cheryl groaned mentally. Dick didn't mean candy. They were—yet again—talking magic and mayhem. Strange quests in imaginary castles and labyrinths, pretending to fight equally nonexistent wizards and monsters for their fictional treasures. As far as she could tell, all these games were alike. And all equally pointless.

  Game consoles sold in the tens of millions, but the revolution in VR technology had given arcades a rebi
rth. VR goggles and instrumented gloves and wands—not to mention the superfast computers to take full advantage of them, to paint the goggles' screens with synthesized worlds, and to update those images in real time to correspond to every movement of the adventurer's head and hand—were quite expensive. The cost, at least, limited the amount of time that teens could spend at the games. Adults were another story, especially adults at companies like BioSciCorp that maintained fully equipped VR rooms for more serious purposes.

  The difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.

  The men babbled on for what seemed like forever about M-and-M. Cheryl was relieved when someone at last noticed that time was passing, and that they needed to get upstairs and back to work.

  Relieved, that was, until she discovered that during lunch a new Internet worm had penetrated BSC's network and wiped out her morning's work.

  OCTOBER

  CHAPTER 8

  For the fourth time that evening, the words on the screen seemed to blur. It was time again to get up and walk around. Doug pushed away from his desk, hoping to find something to graze on in the vending machines.

  It was almost 9:00 P.M., and the end was not in sight. The end of the workday, that was. The proposal due date for their NSF grant renewal approached with perilous speed. The National Science Foundation had so far coughed up half the money for development of the experimental prosthesis. Doug needed to keep that cofunding flowing. BioSciCorp would have enough of a financial stretch going it alone once the technology was ready for commercialization. Lose the grant and NSF would take on its banking definition: non-sufficient funds.

  A Coke and a granola bar perked him up. He made the rounds of the offices to see how things went with his fellow stuckees. At his third stop, he found Cheryl gazing fixedly at her PC screen, surrounded, as always, by dead trees. She was doing her damnedest to synthesize a set of generalized arm-motion rules for the grant progress report. "Can you use some help, or is it beyond that?"