“Active,” a synthetic voice informed him from the audio grille.
“Data bank,” he replied. “Reports reference HESPER slash S.A.P. slash Stokes two-zero-nine slash D dot seven. Video only.” The screen presented him with the machine’s interpretation.
“Confirmed,” he said. A few seconds went by while computers elsewhere in the building relayed his request across the city to the local primary node of the North East Sector of the North American Region of the TITAN network.
“Females!” he muttered.
“Excuse me?” the console inquired politely.
He sighed.
“Delete.”
“Deleted,” the console advised.
Machines! he thought to himself.
CHAPTER TWO
“Okay, Ray. We agree on that one.” Kimberly Sinclair checked off an item from the list glowing on the view-pad balanced on her knee, and paused for a second to consider the next.
As he waited with his chin propped on the ball of his thumb, Dyer studied the soft cascade of fair-brown hair tumbling around her shoulders and the interesting undulations that pressed outward against the jacket and skirt of her expensively tailored pale-blue suit. The lines of her face were straight and firm, but rounded just sufficiently not to appear harsh. One of those fascinating women who exuded sexuality without in any way qualifying as beautiful, he thought. For an instant he felt a pang of envy for her lawyer husband, Tony, who seemed to spend most of his life airborne between one city and another. On second thought, he decided he wouldn’t stand the pace for a month. Maybe Tony had the same problem.
At thirty, Kim was the second oldest after Dyer among the unit’s technical staff, which included everybody except Betty and Pattie, and was generally acknowledged as unofficial second-in-command. Dyer often had the feeling that she shouldn’t have been in research at all. She operated in perpetual top gear, managing to combine a demanding career with an impossible private life that was jammed with citizens’ meetings, committees for this and associations for that, and eternal campaigning, usually against bureaucracy in some form or other. She assailed both with the fervor of an evangelist on doomsday’s eve with half the world still to be saved. Dyer thought she’d have been better placed managing a firm of stockbrokers on Wall Street, maybe a multinational or even the government. But computers had always been her passion and she held a long list of academic and innovative distinctions to prove it. And when a woman like that developed a passion like that, other people’s ideas on how she might otherwise be employing her talents ceased to matter very much.
Two main projects accounted for most of the HESPER Unit’s time. The first was FISE, which was concerned essentially with developing reliable methods of programming computers to exhibit common sense; Chris and Ron were handling that. The other project involved refining existing techniques for constructing self-modifying programming systems that were capable of evolving their own problem-solving strategies as ascending structures of goals and subgoals. In a way it was analogous to implanting basic “instinctive” drives which the machine could then develop progressively more effective ways of satisfying. The process mimicked natural evolution but at electronic speeds. This was Kim’s project, in which she was assisted by Allan Morrow, youngest of the team and one of the two postgraduate students assigned to the unit. The other, Judy Farlin, was also theoretically under Kim’s wing, but spent most of her time working on her doctoral thesis (“Evolution of Objective Hierarchies in Goal-Oriented Self-Extending Program Structures”) and consequently was not really involved actively.
“Oh yes,” Kim said, looking up. “Another thing I wanted to mention. We’re still having problems with Services about the graphics-room reservation system. Somebody really ought to talk to Hoestler about it and get somebody’s butt kicked good and hard over there. I tried getting some sense out of them this morning but it’s useless.”
“Screwed up the bookings again?” Dyer guessed. Kim nodded and tapped the screen of the viewpad emphatically.
“Exactly. Ray, I’m sick to death of them over there. Twice last week Judy was told she had a slot reserved for a room and then couldn’t get in because it’d been double-booked.”
“Aw Christ! Judy again, huh?”
“Yes, that’s the whole point,” Kim said with feeling. “The kid’s right in the middle of trying to get her thesis straight and she needs some time on mural graphics. Those buttheads in Services keep blaming it on the computer instead of learning how to do their jobs. If they don’t know how to run a system properly—here of all places—then they ought to be kicked out and replaced by people who do!”
“Okay, okay,” Dyer held up his hands to stem the tirade. “I agree. They’re doing a lousy job. I’ll talk to Hoestler about it. For the amount they’re charging out of our budget for when we do get in, we could almost set up our own graphics room here in the unit. What’s next?”
“It’s not as if there were anything difficult about it,” Kim went on. “All they have to do—”
“Okay,” Dyer said again, “It will be done. What’s next?” Kim glanced down automatically.
“I guess we’re about done,” she said, cutting the pad off and snapping it shut. She glanced at the clock behind Dyer’s head and uncrossed her legs to begin rising. “I wanted to call Eric before eleven. Anything else you want to add while I’m here?”
“No, but I thought you did,” Dyer looked mildly surprised, “Everything you’ve been talking about’s been University business. Betty said you wanted to see me about something personal.” Kim frowned for a second.
“Oh yes.” She sat down again. Her voice fell to a more confidential note. “It’s Allan.”
“What is?”
“Him messing around with Pattie all the time,” Kim said. “She showed up forty minutes late again today, with him slipping in the door five minutes later and looking furtive, purely by coincidence of course. I don’t want to get mixed up in anybody’s personal affairs, Ray, but there are such things as common sense and discretion.”
“Okay, I know what you mean,” Dyer said, half-raising a hand. “I agree with you. He’s being a public ass and somebody ought to talk to him. Leave it to me. I’ll ask Betty to say wise words to Pattie too.”
“I’m not trying to pass the buck or anything,” Kim told him, “It’s just . . . well, you know how it is with young guys. I thought it might be better coming from you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll—” The chime sounded from his console. “Excuse me a sec.” He touched a key to accept the call and Betty’s face greeted him.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Laura Fenning’s here,” she announced. Dyer could see the familiar classically oval face and raven-black sweep of Cleopatra hair framed behind Betty’s shoulder. He uncovered his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a smile.
“One more minute, Betty. Good morning, Miss Fenning.” He cut the display and turned back toward Kim, who was already rising to her feet. “Where were we? Oh yeah . . . don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks,” Kim acknowledged, “Then I guess we’re about done. I’ll leave you to get on. See you later.”
“Sure.”
Kim vanished abruptly, leaving the door open in response to Dyer’s waved request not to close it. Dyer recalled Ron’s report to the screen and rapidly finished the comments he had been appending when Kim arrived. Part of his mind was vaguely aware of Laura Fenning’s precisely cultivated and seductive voice floating through the open doorway as she talked to Betty. It was one of the usual topics.
“But women were never meant to do men’s jobs, Betty. Why should they? Their place is in their home with their families, that’s all I’m saying. It’s their right.”
“Well now, I don’t know about that,” Betty replied, sounding dubious. “I just wasn’t brought up to think that way. Equal shares for both, they said in my day. That meant everybody. All these young girls today complaining about having to stand on their
own feet. Doesn’t sound right.”
“But that’s the point I’m trying to make. Betty,” Laura’s voice urged. “It is right. Fifty years ago it might have been necessary, but times have changed now. Why should we continue to perpetuate outmoded traditions just because men find it suits them?”
Dyer sighed as he added his final comment and tagged the report to be copied back under Ron’s mail code. She’d been in the place five minutes and was subverting the troops already. He snapped off the screen and continued to stare at it for a moment while he reoriented his thinking fully to immediate matters. He didn’t want to be cornered alone in here, he decided. He stood up, braced himself, and walked out of the office.
CHAPTER THREE
“Hi there,” Laura greeted him as he came out of his office. “I hope the change in plans hasn’t caused any problems. I wanted to go through some notes I made about how TITAN came about. It really needs to be done by Friday and I don’t think Wednesday would leave enough time. That okay?”
Dyer frowned as he avoided Betty’s half-concealed smirk. Laura was always doing things like this.
“Well, we’ve got a pretty full day on,” he replied, deliberately making his voice a trifle gruff. “You’ll have to bear with being squeezed in somewhere. Chris just got back from vacation today and I wanted to check up on how he and Ron are getting along before lunch.” Already he could feel his resolve beginning to melt. In the uncanny way that Laura had of speaking with her eyes, she was telling him that to go marching off and leave her standing there wouldn’t really be becoming and he’d only feel mean afterward if he went and made an issue out of it. He paused for a second as his mind went off on a tangent searching for a face-saving way out. “They should have FISE up and running this morning,” he said. “Why don’t you come and have a look at it instead of hanging around here.”
“Thanks. I’d like that,” she said brightly. “I’ve never had a chance to see it before. Every time I’ve been in, somebody’s always been fiddling around with some part of it or other.” She began walking around the partitions that formed Chris and Ron’s office and toward the lab area behind. “You’d really do yourself a favor if you’d just accept gracefully that you can’t win,” said the eyes.
As Dyer turned to follow, he caught a glimpse, through the half-open doorway next to Kim’s office, of Pattie sitting on the edge of Allan Morrow’s desk with her arm draped loosely on Al’s shoulder while they talked earnestly in lowered tones. Dyer turned back and muttered irascibly to Betty.
“How long’s she been in there?”
“Over half an hour,” Betty replied tonelessly.
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yes I did. She said she’d make a point of showing up on time in future.”
“What about this kind of thing?” Dyer asked, gesturing.
“I didn’t go into that. I was hoping she’d be capable of figuring the rest out for herself, Want me to spell it out when she gets back?”
“If you would, Betty.” Dyer nodded wearily. “Give it a try anyhow. If you find you need help, let me know.” Shaking his head, he turned and began following the direction that Laura had taken toward the lab area.
Laura Fenning worked for the Production Research Department of Klaus Zeegram Productions, Inc., one of the larger corporations that made movies and documentaries for the public sector of the TITAN general-purpose network. Zeegram’s productions covered the spectrum from soap opera to comedy to highly authentic historical epics, but the corporation tended to specialize in adventure and suspense with strongly scientific themes and backgrounds.
It was in this latter area that the ratings were beginning to reveal potential problems. Audiences were becoming more sophisticated and more demanding. In particular they were tiring of the familiar packaged versions of brilliant but mildly eccentric scientists, scientists’ antiseptic wives and scientifically naïve politicians, all of which were becoming as stereotyped as the veteran sheriff, novice deputy and drifting loner of the old-style Westerns. The viewers wanted something more plausible.
Then somebody at Zeegram who was paid to be creative had come up with the revolutionary idea of putting some effort into finding out what scientists were really like instead of making them what everybody thought they were like. The idea was to assign a few people to spend six months getting to know real-life scientists solving real-life problems in a number of selected environments covering pure research, government, medical and industrial scientific activities. The wealth of information thus obtained on how scientists really worked, how they lived, what they talked about, and so on would be enough to create a whole “character bank” that script writers would be able to draw upon for years to come.
Implementation of the scheme duly became the responsibility of the Production Research Department, which succeeded in persuading a number of organizations to agree to the proposal of allowing outside observers to spend a few days a week in their laboratories. Laura was selected as an ideal candidate for the job, having learned all the tricks of asking the right questions and ferreting out the answers during her three years with Zeegram. Furthermore she had written scripts herself for her previous employer and knew exactly the kinds of things that writers would be looking for.
Her assignments included certain groups in IBM’s molecular circuit research facility in upstate New York and the International Space Administration’s orbital construction design center on Long Island as well as a list of departments at CUNY. At around the time that Zeegram was making approaches to their prospective hosts, Professor Vincent Lewis, Dean of the Faculty of Information Processing Sciences at CUNY, was engaged in a fund-raising battle with the Mayor’s Department and the Mayor just happened to have strong connections with a consortium of media companies which included Zeegram. Lewis thus turned out to be very approachable and cooperative indeed, and wasted no time in directing his senior staff members to “have a look round and see if you can come up with something that might interest them.” Professor Edward Richter, who ran the Shannon School of Systems Programming, singled out Dr. Sigmund Hoestler, head of the Department of Self-Adaptive Programming, to pass the buck on to and Hoestler threw it at the HESPER Unit. Thus it eventually came to rest on the desk marked Dr. Raymond E. Dyer.
Dyer thought that in principle the whole thing was probably a good idea. After all, anything that contributed toward improving the general level of awareness of why people like himself existed couldn’t be a bad thing. He had been prepared to devote a generous portion of his time to whomever Zeegram ended up sending and in fact had quite looked forward to the exercise as promising something different. But when it turned out to be hours of patiently attempting to explain why the notion of living organisms evolving from inorganic matter was not absurd because teapots didn’t sprout legs and walk, or why believing in invisible psychic emanations and in equally invisible quarks was not the same thing, enough rapidly became enough. He bitched repeatedly to Hoestler; Hoestler respectfully drew Richter’s attention to the matter a couple of times; Richter mentioned it to Lewis once over lunch; Lewis didn’t want to know. So Dyer was stuck for the duration.
When Dyer caught up with her, Laura was standing with Ron in front of a row of electronics racks and cubicles, staring down into what at first sight looked like a large, shallow, tabletop fishtank that measured about two feet square and was somewhere just under a foot in depth. One pair of opposite sides were of glass while the other two were formed by arrays of miniature laser tubes and optical control equipment, all connected by a mess of electrical cables and flexible tubes to a confusion of technology that filled the space underneath. Chris was sitting at a console in front of one of the tank’s see-through sides, thoughtfully contemplating the rows of hieroglyphics glowing on one of its display screens.
“What we’re doing is programming a learning computer to build up its own generalized conceptual framework with experience,” Ron was saying. “The idea is to get it to be able to recognize and apply
reasonable constraints when it attempts to develop a problem-solving strategy. That make sense?” Laura frowned and shook her head reproachfully.
“Sorry, Ron, I don’t speak computerese. You’ll have to put that into English.”
“It means we’re finding out how to give machines common sense,” Dyer supplied, moving forward to join them. “When a baby’s born, it doesn’t know anything about the basic properties of the universe that it finds itself in or the other objects that exist there along with it. What it does have is a basic programming that enables it to form general concepts from a few specific lessons. So it can learn by experience as it gets older. What we’re doing is developing ways of providing that kind of basic programming for a machine.”‘
“It’s called an IQ transplant,” Chris murmured from his console without looking up.
“You mean like a kid doesn’t need to go round burning itself on everything in the house to get the message that hot things hurt?” Laura offered after a moment’s reflection.
Dyer nodded. “That kind of thing and more basic stuff too.”
“How do you mean, more basic stuff?” Laura asked.
“The kind of thing that you have to know before you can even stretch your hand out to touch something,” Dyer said. “All the things that are so obvious that you don’t even realize you had to learn them once. But to a computer they’re not obvious at all. We’re finding out how to teach it.” Laura was staring at him suspiciously. He went on, “Even a child of two has a mental model of objects occupying a three-dimensional space, and of itself being one of them. It can interpret visual patterns on its retina in terms of that space. It knows that objects fall if they’re unsupported, that two of them can’t be in the same place at the same time, that they continue to exist when you can’t see them . . . that hard things can break and soft things can bend . . . things like that. Those things go together to set up a child’s pattern of basic knowledge of the world around it. When it’s given a problem to solve or when it sets out to perform some task, it automatically applies constraints, based on what it’s learned, that enables it to separate the possible approaches that make sense from the ones that don’t.”
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