The Best of Bova

by Ben Bova

  “Maybe we should get the National Security Advisor in on this,” suggests Commerce, scratching at his beard.

  “By all means,” says Our Man.

  We can’t have the Security Advisor in the room, of course, but I call him up on the communications screen and presto! there he is, looking as baggy and sad-eyed as a hound.

  “What do you make of the situation in the Philippines, Doc?” Our Man, with his warmth and wit, and power, is the only man on Earth who can get away with calling this distinguished, dour, pompously pontifical scholar Doc.

  “Mr. President”—his voice sounds like the creaking of a heavy, ancient castle door—“it is just as I have outlined for you on many occasions in the past. The situation in the Philippines can no longer be ignored. The strategic value of this traditional ally of ours is vital to our interests throughout Asia and the Pacific.”

  As he gives his perfectly predictable little spiel, I call up the subroutine that presents the pertinent information about the Philippines: the screens throw up data on our military and naval bases there, the ocean trade routes that they affect, the number of American business firms that have factories in the Philippines and how losing those factories would affect the GNP, employment, the value of the dollar —that kind of stuff.

  I put all this information on the secondary screens that line the wall to one side of the President’s desk. His eyes ping-pong between them and the desktop display of the Security Advisor.

  “Thanks, Doc,” he says at last. “I appreciate your candor. Please stand by, in case I need more input from you.”

  He turns back to the little group by his desk. I freeze Doc’s image and fling it electronically to my farthest upper-right screen, a holding spot for him.

  “Much as I hate to say it,” Defense mutters around his pipe, “we’re going to have to make our presence felt in the Philippines.”

  “You mean militarily,” says the Vice President, her nose wrinkling with distaste. She has been an excellent vote-getter all through her political career: a Mexican-American from San Antonio who looks sexy enough to start rumors about her and Our Man.

  “Of course militarily,” Defense replies with illconcealed impatience. “Look at the data on the screens. We can’t let the Philippines slip away from us.”

  “Why does it always have to be troops and guns?” the Veep grumbles.

  “I was thinking more of ships and planes.”

  “A task force,” says the man behind the big desk. “A carrier group. That can be pretty impressive.”

  While they discuss the merits of a carrier group versus one of the old resurrected battleships, and whether or not they should throw in a battalion of Marines just in case, I do a little anticipating and flick my fingers in a way that brings up the projected costs for such a mission and how it will affect DOD’s budget.

  And, just as surely as gold is more precious than silver, the Secretary of the Treasury bestirs himself.

  “Hey, wait a minute. This is going to cost real heavy money.”

  He has a very practical attitude toward money: his, mine, or yours. He wants all of it for himself. The only black in Our Man’s Cabinet, Treasury is a hardheaded pragmatist who took the paltry few million his father left him (from a restaurant chain) and parlayed them into billions on the stock market. For years he belonged to the Other Party, but when the last president failed to name him to his Cabinet, he switched allegiance and devoted his life, his fortune, and what was left of his honor to Our Man.

  Now he calls for details on the cost projections and, thanks to the wizardry of binary electronics, I place before their eyes (on the wall screens) vividly colored graphs that show not only how much the carrier group’s mission will cost, but my program’s projections of what the Philippine rebels’ likely responses will be. These include—but are not limited to—a wave of assassinations throughout the 7,100 islands and islets of the archipelago, a coup d’état by their army, terrorist suicide attacks on our aircraft carrier, and armed intervention by the People’s Republic of China.

  Our Man is fascinated by these possibilities. The more awful they are, the more intrigued he is.

  “Let’s play these out and see where they lead,” he says. He doesn’t realize that he’s speaking to me. He’s just making a wish, like the prince in a fairy tale, and I, his digital godfather, must make the wish come true.

  For two hours we play out the various scenarios, using my programs and the White House mainframe’s stored memory banks to show where each move leads, what each countermove elicits. It is like following a grand master chess tournament on your home computer. Some of the scenarios lead to a nuclear engagement. One of them leads to a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union: Armageddon, followed by Nuclear Winter.

  Our Man, naturally, picks out the scenario that comes up best for our side.

  “Okay, then,” he says, looking exhilarated. He’s always enjoyed playing computer games. “We will forgo the naval task force and merely increase our garrisons at Subic Bay and Mindanao. Our best counter to the threat, apparently, is to withhold economic aid from the Philippine government until they open honest negotiations with their opposition.”

  “If you can believe the computer projections,” grumbles Commerce. He doesn’t trust any programs he can’t understand, and he’s so far out of date that he can’t understand my program. So he doesn’t trust me.

  The Vice President seems happy enough with me. “We can form a Cease-Fire Commission, made up of members from the neighboring nations.”

  “It’ll never work,” mutters Commerce from behind his beard.

  “The computer says it will,” Defense points out. He doesn’t look terribly happy about it, though.

  “What I want to know,” says Treasury, “is what this course of action is going to do to our employment problems.”

  And it goes on like that for the rest of the day. Every problem they face is linked with all the other problems. Every Marine sent overseas has an effect on employment. Every unemployed teenager in the land has an effect on the crime rate. Every unwed mother has an effect on the price of milk.

  No human being, no Cabinet full of human beings, can grasp all these interlinks without the aid of a very sophisticated computer program. Let them sit there and debate, let Our Man make his speeches to the public. The real work is done by the machine, by my program, by the software that can encompass all the data in the world and display it in all its interconnected complexity. They think they’re making decisions, charting the course for the nation to follow, leading the people. In reality, the decisions they make are the decisions that the computer allows them to make, based on the information presented to them. It’s my program that’s charting the course for the nation; those human beings sitting around the President’s desk are puppets, nothing more.

  And don’t think that I consider myself to be the puppet master, pulling their strings. Far from it. I’m just the guy who wrote the computer program. It’s the program that runs the show. The program, as alive as any creature of flesh and blood, an electronic person that feeds on data, a digital soul that aspires to know everything, everywhere. Even during this one day it has grown and matured, I can see it happening before my teary eyes. Like a proud father I watch my program learning from the White House’s giant mainframe, becoming more sure of itself, reaching out questioning tendrils all across the world, and learning, learning, learning.

  “Four o’clock,” announces the studio director. “Time to wrap it up.”

  The overhead lights turn off as abruptly as the end of the world. Our Man flinches, looks up, his face showing vast disappointment, irritation, even anger. The others exhale sighingly, wipe their brows, get up from their chairs, and stretch their weary bones. It’s been a long day.

  The TV camera crews shuffle out of the studio as the director, earphone still clamped to his head, comes over to Our Man and sticks out his hand.

  “You did an excellent job, si
r. You’ve got my vote in November.”

  Our Man gives him the old dazzling smile. “Thanks. I’ll need every vote I can get, I’m sure. And don’t forget the primary!”

  “April seventh.” The studio director smiles back. “Don’t worry, I’ll vote for you.”

  He must tell that to all the candidates.

  I remain at my post, hidden behind the computer consoles, and check the National Rating Service’s computer to see how well Our Man really did. The screen shows a rating of 0.54. Not bad. In fact, the best rating for any candidate who’s been tested so far. It will look really impressive in the media; should get a lot of votes for Our Man.

  He still has to go through the primaries, of course, but that’s done mainly by electronics. No more back-breaking campaigns through every state for month after month. The candidates appeal to the voters individually, through their TV screens and home computers, a personal message to each bloc of voters, tailored to each bloc’s innermost desires, thanks to the polished techniques of psychological polling and videotaping.

  But this test run in the simulated Oval Office is of crucial importance. Each candidate has got to show that he can handle the pressures of an average day in the White House, that he can make decisions that will be good, effective, and politically palatable. Excerpts from today’s simulation test will be on the evening news; tomorrow’s papers will carry the story on page one. And naturally, the entire day’s test will be available on PBS and even videotape for any voter who wants to see the whole day.

  Of course, what this day’s simulation really tested was my program. I feel a little like Cyrano de Bergerac, ghostwriting letters to the woman he loves for another man to woo her.

  Making sure that no one is watching, I tap out the code for the White House mainframe’s most secret subroutine. Only a handful of programmers know about this part of the White House’s machine. None of our candidates know of it.

  In the arcane language that only we dedicated programmers know, I ask the mainframe how well my program did. The answer glows brilliantly on the central screen: 0.96. Ninety-six! The highest score any program has ever received.

  I hug myself and double over to keep from laughing out loud. If my legs worked, I would jump up and dance around the studio. Ninety-six! The best ever!

  No matter which candidate gets elected, no matter who votes for whom, the White House mainframe is going to pick my program. My program will be the one the next president uses for the coming four years. Mine!

  With my heart thumping wildly in my chest, I shut down the consoles. All the screens go dark. I spin my chair around and go wheeling through the emptied, darkened studio, heading for the slice of light offered by the half-open door. Already my mind is churning with ideas for improving the program.

  After all, in another four years the primaries start all over again.

  THOSE WHO CAN

  Some stories go their own way, despite the conscious volition of the writer. This one was inspired by a funny incident at a meeting of a major corporation’s board of directors. But the story didn’t want to be funny. Not at all.

  We get all the kooks, William Ransom thought to himself as he watched the intent young man set up his equipment.

  They were in Ransom’s office, one of the smaller suites in the management level of Larrimore, Swain & Tucker, seventy-three stories above the crowded Wall Street sidewalk. As the firm’s least senior executive (a mere fifty-three years old) Ransom’s duties included interviewing intent young inventors who claimed to have new products that could revolutionize industries.

  The equipment that the intent young man was assembling looked like a junkpile of old stereo sets, computer consoles, and the insides of Tic-Tok of Oz. It spread across the splashy orange-brown carpet, climbed over the conversation corner’s genuine llama-hide couches, covered the coffee table between the couches and was now encroaching on the teak bar behind them.

  “I’ll be finished in a minute,” said the intent young inventor. He had said the same thing ten minutes earlier, and ten minutes before that. But he continued to pull strange-looking racks of printed circuits and oddly glowing metallic cylinders from the seemingly bottomless black trunk that he had dragged into the office with him.

  If I had known it would take him this long, Ransom thought, I would have told him to set up after I’d gone for the day, and let me see it tomorrow morning.

  But it was a half hour too late for that decision.

  Ransom glanced at the neatly typed note his secretary had efficiently placed on his immaculate desktop. James Brightcloud, it said. Inventor. From Santa Fe, New Mexico. Representing self.

  Ransom shook his head and suppressed a sigh. He was going to be stuck with this madman for the rest of the afternoon, he knew it, while Mr. Larrimore and other executives repaired to the rooftop sauna and the comforts of soothing ministrations by this week’s bevy of masseuses. It was a fine accomplishment to be the youngest member of the executive board, career-wise. But it also meant that you were low man on the executive totem pole. Ransom had been dreaming about deaths in high places lately. Two nights ago, he had found himself reading Julius Caesar and enjoying it.

  “Just about done,” James Brightcloud muttered. He pulled a slim rod from the trunk and touched it to the last piece of equipment he had set up, atop the bar. Sparks leaped, hissing. Ransom almost jumped out of his seat.

  “There,” Brightcloud said. “Ready to go.”

  The inventor looked Hispanic, but without the easygoing smile that Ransom always associated with Latins. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. Darkish skin, much darker eyes that brooded. Straight black hair. Stocky build, almost burly. Lots of muscles under that plain denim leisure suit. Ransom thought briefly about the Puerto Rico Libre movement that had been bombing banks and office buildings. He laid his hands on the edge of his very solid teak desk and pictured himself ducking under it at the first sign of a detonation.

  “I can demonstrate it for you now,” James Brightcloud said. He neither smiled nor frowned. His face was a mask of stoic impassivity.

  “Er. . .before you do,” Ransom said, stroking the smooth solid wood of his desk unobtrusively, wondering just how much shrapnel it would stop, “just what is it? I mean, what does your invention do?”

  “It’s a therapeutic device.”

  Ransom blinked at the young inventor. “A what?”

  Brightcloud stepped around the machinery he had assembled and walked toward Ransom’s desk. Pulling up a chair, he said, “Therapeutic. It makes you feel better. It heals soreness in the muscles, stiffness caused by tension. It can even get rid of stomach ulcers for you.”

  Ransom’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling, and he thought of the sauna on the top floor. He could feel the steam and hear the giggling, almost.

  “I suppose,” he said, “it also cures cancer.”

  “We’ve had a couple of remissions in the field tests,” Brightcloud answered straightfaced, “but we don’t like to emphasize them. They might have been spontaneous, and it wouldn’t be right for us to get peoples’ hopes up.”

  “Of course.” Ransom made a mental note to fire his secretary. The woman must be getting soft in the head. “Er. . .how does this device of yours work? Or are the operating principles a secret?”

  “No secret. . .if you understand enough biochemistry and radiation therapy principles.”

  “I don’t.”

  The inventor nodded. “Well, to put it simply, the device emits a beam of radiant energy that interacts with the parasympathetic nervous system. It has a variety of effects, and by controlling the frequency of the emitted radiation we can achieve somatic effects in the patient: muscular relaxation, easing of tension, of headaches. That sort of thing.”

  “Radiation?” Ransom was suddenly alert. “You mean like microwaves? The stuff the Russians have been beaming at our embassy in Moscow?”

  Unruffled, Brightcloud said, “The same principle, yes. But entirely different wavelengths an
d entirely different somatic effects.”

  “Somatic. . .?”

  “Microwave radiation can be harmful,” the inventor explained. “The radiation from my device is beneficial. It can even be curative.” He hesitated a moment, then, in a lowered voice, added, “Our first sale has been to the government. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be installed in our Moscow embassy.”

  Ransom felt his eyebrows climb. “Really?”

  “To counteract the Russian machine’s effects.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s unofficial, but that’s what I’ve been led to believe.”

  “But, if your device is curative—”

  “Therapeutic,” Brightcloud corrected. “Therapeutic is the proper term.”

  “All right, therapeutic. If it’s good for your health, why aren’t you dealing with a medical organization? Or one of the ethical pharmaceutical houses?”

  A trace of disappointment crossed Brightcloud’s features. “Two reasons. First, as soon as we get into a medical or pharmaceutical situation, the Federal government gets involved in a major way. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, HEW, the Surgeon General. It would be a long, costly mess.”

  “I see.”

  “Secondly, this device is not inexpensive. The drug companies are geared to mass marketing. Even the medical technology outfits want to be able to sell their products to all the hospitals and clinics. This device is too costly for that kind of marketing. It can only be sold to the highest levels of corporate management. Nobody else could afford it.”

  “Really?”

  “And no one else needs it so badly,” Brightcloud quickly added. “Secretaries and street cleaners can take aspirin for their headaches and pains. It’s good enough for them. But top-level executives, such as yourself, have different problems, different kinds of tensions, constant pressure and strain. That’s where this device works best.”