I shrugged. “I just sort of saw the answer in my head,” I said. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”
“Fascinating,” she said.
We talked for a few more minutes, but then she said our session was over. She went to the door and opened it, and the deputies came in and began shackling me once more.
“Mr. Jones,” Doctor Perkins said. “How would you feel about letting me do a study on you? I could come to visit you at the jail, would that be all right?”
I shrugged the best I could with all the chains hanging on me. “Fine by me,” I said, “I’m already pretty much the oddest guy in there.”
She smiled.
Chapter 18
INTERLUDE THREE
I was wasted.
Like most nights when my work is driving me crazy, I had gotten into the car and driven out to the tavern. I’d probably gotten there around nine or so, like usual, because that’s when the regulars started coming in. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s a whole lot easier to be invisible in a crowd than it is hiding off by yourself. With enough drunks around me, no one paid a lot of attention to a grumpy guy who just wanted to drink alone.
The bartender smiled when he saw me, but since all of the stools were taken, he pointed at a table over in the corner. I nodded, and a moment later he brought me a whiskey sour.
“The usual, right?”
“Ain’t it always?” I said. “You know me, just keep them coming.”
In reality, I guess drinking alone wasn’t really what I wanted. I could do that at home, but one thing I had discovered about myself was that I hated to sit there at my kitchen table and get plastered. Granted, it made it a lot easier to get to my bed, but it was such a lonely feeling. At least at the bar, I could hear the noise of other human beings around me, even if I didn’t want to socialize.
Now and then, one of the ladies who frequented the establishment would try to get my attention, but I always brushed them off. With Lizzie gone, I had lost all interest in women, even in sex. I won’t claim I didn’t have to take care of a problem now and then, but it was easier to handle it myself than get entangled with someone.
Even rarer was an attempt by another man to speak to me. I think us guys have some secret, unspoken code, a way to tell when another man just wants to be left alone. As long as I wasn’t irritating anyone, they rarely spoke to me at all. Unfortunately, I am capable of being irritating from time to time.
Luckily, I’m also good at talking my way out of situations like that. Usually, all it takes is to buy the other fellow a drink, or a round for him and his friends. That’s easy; all it takes is money, and if there was one thing I had more of than I could ever use, it was money.
On this particular evening, I had been there about three hours, so it was probably close to midnight. I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to the other people in the bar, because that invited them to pay attention to me, which I didn’t want. I had, however, noticed one big man who came in, simply because of the way he swaggered. You know, one of those guys who walk in like they own the joint, and I wondered if maybe he was a partner or something, because the bartender never seemed to take any money from him.
Oh well, that wasn’t my problem. The guy was only drinking beer, so it probably didn’t cost that much, anyway. I would’ve dismissed him completely if it hadn’t been for the fact that he suddenly came over and sat down at my table.
“I’ve seen you in here before,” he said. “Last time I was here, probably a few months ago. I noticed you because you just don’t look like the rest of this crowd.”
I tried to focus my eyes well enough to get a look at the guy’s face, but he was sitting with his back to the lights, so all I saw was a dark blur. Dark, because there weren’t any lights over in that corner, and blurry because I was just plain drunk.
“Well,” I said, “what would I—how would I have to look, to look like the rest of ‘em?”
He grinned, I think. “You have to look like a loser,” he said, “but you don’t. Your clothes are neat, you got a Rolex on your wrist, and you don’t look like you’ve ever done a hard day’s work in your life. All these others, they bust their asses all day long in some dead-end job, or they live on some retirement or disability income. You, on the other hand, you just smell like money.”
I raise my glass to him. “I shall do my best to take that as some kind of a compliment,” I mumbled. “Now, if you would be so kind as to go away, I can continue my efforts to drown myself in alcohol.”
The guy took a big swig of his beer, then set it on the table. “Now, don’t be so unfriendly,” he said. “I’m just real curious why a guy like you is sitting here pouring alcohol down his throat like water from a garden hose. Trying to drown some sorrows?”
I shrugged. “Tried that, it didn’t work. Sorrows don’t drown, they just float on top of your drunkenness until you sober up, then they slap you in the face again. No, I get drunk because it kills off a few brain cells, and hopefully it will be the ones in the way of figuring out the answer to my problems.”
“What kind of problem might that be?”
I tried again to focus on him, but he was still just that dark, blurry spot between me and the lights. “I, good sir, am a scientist. I am working on a project of my own devising, one that will one day make this world a much better place for everyone in it. My problem is that sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I can’t see the trees for the forest. Know what I mean?”
The guy laughed. “Boy, do I ever,” he said. “Sometimes, I have to get away from my work, too, just let my hair down and relax for a while, and then I can think my way through it a little better. You’d be amazed how many times that’s worked. Does it work for you?”
I nodded amiably. “Usually. Not always. Sometimes, the answer comes to me in a dream, or sometimes I find out that the way I was trying to do something was wrong, so I tackle it from a different direction and that solves it for me. Eventually, I always find the answer. Alcohol just sometimes helps me find it quicker.”
“Well, maybe you ought to talk to somebody about your problem. Maybe somebody else will have an idea you haven’t thought of.”
It was my turn to laugh, but I sounded like a cackling old witch, probably because of being so drunk. “I don’t talk about what I’m doing, not to nobody. Besides, nobody would understand it.”
He leaned on the table and took another swig. “Why not? Is it something so scientific that it takes a genius like Einstein? I’m a pretty smart guy, give it a try.”
Suddenly, it seemed like trying to explain it to this arrogant ass might be fun, or at least funny. I nodded. “Okay,” I said, “see if you can wrap your head around this. I’ve come up with a way, a way to make computers think like people. Well, not exactly like people, because they would do it so much faster that we have to put another computer between them and their operators just to slow everything down so us dumb humans could understand what they were telling us. Does that make any sense to you?”
The guy tilted his head to one side. “A way to make computers think like people? You mean, like robots?”
I shook my head. “No, no, no,” I said. “Robots have been around for decades. Hell, they use them in almost every factory in the world, now. Robots, though, all they can do is perform actions or calculations that are programmed into them. That isn’t thinking; that’s really no different than having a person pushing buttons to make the machine do its thing. The difference is that with robots, the human only has to push the buttons once. We record what the buttons tell the machine to do, then copy that into a bunch of other machines with the computer connected to it so it can do the same thing that the first machine did.”
“Well, isn’t that all a robot needs to do? Just do the same job over and over?”
“Yes!” I said. “You got that right. That’s all a robot ever needs to do, but what if you wanted a machine that could do other things, that could actually take a look at what’s goi
ng on around it, make a decision and do something it hadn’t been programmed to do, something that will fix the problem or make something better?”
“Then I guess you would just program it to do lots of different things. If it sees some particular thing happen, then it would know to do something else. Right?”
I shook my head again. “No, no, that’s the way computers work now. If this happens, then do that. You can program several different things into one computer that way, but in this world, a person encounters thousands of different situations every day. If we took your day, for example, and wanted to program a robot to do everything that you did today, it would take a team of a hundred programmers about ten years to get all the code written so that the computer controlling the robot could do just those things the way you did them. On the other hand, a computer that can think, all we have to do is feed it information and it can figure out what to do on its own. And even better, it can figure out what is the very best thing to do in any situation it encounters. All we need to do is give it some general parameters that define its concept of good and bad. Those can be hard coded into the computer, so that it can’t violate those concepts.”
The man sat there for a moment, as if thinking through what I had said. “Long time ago, Isaac Asimov wrote stories about robots that were governed by three robotic laws. I can’t remember them exactly, but basically what they said was that robots couldn’t hurt people or let people get hurt. You’re talking about something like that?”
I waggled a hand in the air. “Something like—something like that. We tell the robot that it can’t hurt people, and so it won’t. I mean, I mean, it’s like those cars that drive themselves that everyone’s talking about. Those are just programming, but all that programming says that if someone steps out in front of the car, it has to slam on the brakes or turn so that it won’t hit them. It can be programmed to recognize signs, stoplights, all that kind of stuff, and it uses GPS to know where it’s going. Sometime in the next few years, there will be thousands of those cars on the road, maybe millions. It’s interesting that in all the testing, not one of them has been in an accident where the car was at fault. That’s pretty good, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“But it’s not. The trouble is that computers can only be programmed to recognize so many situations. That’s partly because of limitations in the computer’s memory, but mostly because people can’t possibly imagine all of the potential situations that car could run into.” I finished my drink, and waved at the bartender to bring another. “On the other hand, if the computer in that car could think for itself, and think a gazillion times faster than any human or computer can now, then it would never, ever be able to make a mistake. Even if it ran into a new, unknown situation, it would do whatever it had to do to protect the people inside it and around it, and whatever it decided to do would be the right thing to do.”
The guy sat there again for another minute before speaking. “But even people get confused when they run into new situations. Why wouldn’t your computer get confused?”
“Oh, it would,” I said. “The very first time it ran into a situation, it would go, ‘holy shit, what the hell do I do now?’ The difference is that, by the time a human could recognize that there was a new situation, this computer would have already thought out every possible action it could take, and predicted accurately exactly what would happen in each case. Then, all it has to do is take the best solution and pass that on to the slower computer that controls the car. Think of it like this: what if you could think a minute’s worth of thoughts in a single second? Everything going on around you would seem to slow down by a factor of sixty. A minute would seem to you to be an hour long, so if your body was capable of moving fast enough, you could do as much in one minute as anyone else can do in an hour, right?”
“Yeah, okay, I see what you’re saying.”
“Good, good. Now, the computer I’m building can think more than a million times faster than the human brain. That means that for this computer, one second seems to be a million seconds long. That means that, in one second, that computer can do as much thinking as a human could do in eleven-and-a-half days. That’s why it can think through every possible solution to a problem.”
He just stared at me, as the bartender brought me another whiskey sour and set another bottle of beer in front of him.
“Okay, I see what you’re getting at. And you can really build this computer?”
I nodded. “Yep! I’ve already built some prototypes, but they aren’t quite fast enough to start really thinking, yet. I’m close, though, and if I can just solve one or two more calculations, I’ll know how to make it happen.”
He laughed again. “Then, you’re about to be one rich sonofabitch, aren’t you? Something like that ought to be worth billions.”
I waved a hand in dismissal. “I don’t need money,” I said. “These computers won’t cost a lot to make, and they can do so many things so much better than people can, that they’ll probably end up replacing a lot of our most skilled workers, but I’ve figured out a way to keep that from ruining people’s lives. You know, when a robot gets put into a factory, it puts three or four people out of work. I’ve figured out a way to make it so my computers do all the work, but people still get the paycheck.”
My drinking partner laughed even louder than before. “If you can do that, then I know you’re going to make a lot of money.”
“Nope. I won’t make a dime, and that’s perfectly fine by me. I’ve already got more money than I could ever spend, so I’m not worried about it. No, I’m going to just about give this away. I’m going to create a factory that’s run by one of my computers, that will turn out more computers, thousands of them every day. They’ll be cheap enough that anyone can buy one, but the license agreement will say that they can only buy one, not lots of them. One for each person, and then they can hire the computers out to all the businesses to do the jobs that they used to do.” I waggled a hand again. “It’ll be a little tricky to set it up that way, but I know lawyers in every country. I know how to get it done. Businesses won’t be able to buy them, so they can’t replace workers with them unless they rent them from people, from individuals.”
“But the reason companies buy robots is because it’s cheaper than paying people. Won’t they just keep using regular robots?”
“I thought about that, but here’s the thing. My computers will do every job so much faster and better than even a regular robot can do that every company will make more money than they ever did before. They’ll actually make more money by renting these computers from the people who own them then they would by hiring human workers or even installing robots. Oh, sure, there will still be a place for regular robots in the world, I’m sure, but imagine this. Every one of these computers that people buy can do any job. Anything. You might buy one and rent it to a construction company to run a mechanical roofer, but your neighbor might buy one and rent it to a hospital to operate a mechanical surgeon. This will completely revolutionize every industry, and bring down costs on everything from toilet paper to brain surgery. I’m sure that the governments will all get together pretty quick and set a flat rate on what people can charge to rent out the computers, but it should be enough that everyone can live comfortably.”
His head was cocked to the side again. “But there aren’t enough jobs to go around now, even for just the people. How could there be enough places to rent computers to that everyone would make money?”
“Simple economics,” I said. “Because everything will cost less to make this way, and every skilled profession will be less expensive, there will be a lot more money that people can spend. That means that more products must be made, which results in more places to put computers. More computers means more money, which means even more jobs that have to be done, so that eventually, probably within just a couple of years, everyone in the world will have income.”
“But if the government sets a flat rate on how
much you can charge for your computer’s work, then everyone would be making the same amount of money, right? No more poor people, but no more rich people, either?”
I shook my head again. “No, no, no, aren’t you listening. The businesses are still owned by people, who will be getting rich. Hospitals are owned by people, and factories are owned by people, and everything else is owned by people. Sure, some people will be content to just get the rent for their computer, like getting a paycheck, but if they want to make more money all they have to do is invest it. Everything on earth will benefit from this idea, everything from fast food restaurants to the stock market. There will be billions and trillions of dollars to go around, so anybody who wants to make more money can find ways to do it. Start their own businesses, and hire other people’s computers to do the work, all while their own computer is getting them rent money every month. See how simple it is?”
The guy sat there for a long minute, then slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, I do. And I gotta hand it to you, cause most people would want to just sell this idea to the highest bidders and make themselves rich, or richer. You must be quite a guy, to want to make it so it does good for everyone.”
“Me? No, I just want to do something good for the world. That’s all. Kind of like leaving a good legacy behind me, when I die. That’s all I want to do.”
He picked up his bottle of beer. “Well, all I can say is, here’s to you!” We clinked and drank.
A few moments later, he got up and walked away. I hadn’t even gotten his name.
Chapter 19
I had gone back to Selkirk after leaving Sal, and visited the two barbershops in town, but no one recognized the photo of him. He was an anomaly, an unknown factor. His neighbors had already told me that he wasn’t a friendly sort, though no one had particularly thought him rude, either. He had merely kept to himself, which isn’t all that uncommon in our modern age. Some people just want to be left alone, and that seemed to be the case with him.
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 11