He knows something, Laura found herself thinking. He knows why the phase-two won't load and he's hiding it from them. Gray glanced up at Laura and quickly looked away guilty as charged.
"Maybe the computer reprioritized its programming," Margaret jumped in. "Maybe when we freed up that extra capacity, some subsystem reprogrammed the code. It could have decided to maximize speed or electrical power conservation or some other variable instead of capacity utilization."
Filatov loosed a derogatory snort at Margaret's theory.
"Did anyone, ask the computer what had happened?" Laura asked.
"It says it doesn't know what's going on," Filatov answered, then shook his head, panning the faces around the table in disbelief. "We went from eight percent free back down to two percent in the course of a few seconds, and the computer says it doesn't know what idled it up!" He sank back into his chair and wrung his hands nervously. "It's sick, Mr. Gray. Something's wrong."
The resignation evident in Filatov's comment seemed to reflect the mood of the group.
"What's the latest error report?" Gray asked. His unconcerned tone stood in stark contrast to the darker disposition of the others.
Dorothy picked up her palmtop but then hesitated. She set it back on the table unopened. "They've gone, like," — she made the sound of an explosion and spread her clenched hands apart—"through the roof." She turned to Griffith. "There's the assembly building," she said, her voice barely audible against the faint background clatter of silverware on china.
"It's not as serious as you make it sound!" Dr. Griffith interjected vehemently.
"It crossed the line!" Dorothy blurted out, turning to make her case to Gray. "The computer set up a special security zone." Heads rose in sudden alarm.
Only Gray seemed undisturbed. "Let's pull it up on the monitor!" he said in a raised voice.
Janet disappeared into the house from her post just inside the French doors, and a few moments later two waiters wheeled a large, flat-screen monitor onto the veranda.
Voila, Laura thought in amazement. Billionaires need only raise their voices and things appear.
The large high-def screen lit up with vivid color test bars. Griffith waved to one of the waiters for the remote control. He tilted his glasses forward to read the labels and then began pressing a button repeatedly.
Successive scenes from around Gray's domain flashed onto the monitor with each push of Griffith's finger. No one paid attention to the parade of images except Laura, who sat frozen in amazement with her fork suspended in midair.
Goggled lab technicians mixing beakers of brown fluid. Huge metal spheres in the jungle venting steam. Beams of blue light focused from all angles on a stainless steel ball. Robot construction crews pouring concrete under the hot morning sun. Large structures lit by bright lights in a deep indoor pool. A curbed white roadbed streaked by just inches beneath the camera. A spinning satellite ready for launch from a payload bay.
Each view was identified by a number in the lower right-hand corner, and when Griffith held the button down the numbers quickly rose into the four digits. The images flickered by at a speed that rendered it impossible to register them singly. They left in Laura, however, a strong subliminal impression.
Gray was changing everything. Nothing the world had known would ever be the same again.
"Here it is," Griffith said after going backward through the numbers to the one he'd passed. It was number 9,012. Nine thousand black eyeballs through which the computer peered out on the world. The others craned their necks to look at the screen with interest.
On the monitor was a picture of the main floor of the assembly building. In the background, the huge conveyer belt rolled by as relentlessly as the tide. Turned away from the main line was an ordinary industrial robot. Its hydraulic arm was raised. The single gripper at the end quivered in an uncontrollable but apparently harmless fashion.
The robot was surrounded by a series of cones, and yellow tape was stretched from one cone to the next. It reminded Laura of a crime scene.
"You see." Griffith said. "It's just having trouble with the second derivative of velocity."
Heads nodded slowly.
"The what?" Laura asked, making a face at the ridiculously obscure vocabulary.
Griffith pointed at the screen, "We can't control the rate of change of the gripper speed." Laura arched her eyebrows at him. "It's jerky," Griffith tried.
"Thank you," Laura said.
"What happened." Gray asked quietly.
Griffith turned to him. "We had a trainee hurt. Just a little bump on the arm. He came tearing into the offices yelling about that pick-and-place there. He said it was behaving erratically, waving its arm back and forth, acting 'drunk.' He said it reached right out over the line and knocked him down."
Laura watched the twitching robotic arm — its palsied gripper afflicted with little more than a nervous tic. Its robot neighbors worked uninterrupted, but not the errant arm amid the cordon of cones of the "special security zone." Its trial was being conducted over breakfast and it was patiently awaiting its punishment.
"Has it exhibited any aberrant behavior other than jerking since we took it off-line?" Gray asked.
"None," Griffith replied. "I think it's time we reset its connections and start reconditioning. If we don't have any more problems, we can have it back in service by dinnertime." He leaned forward and looked at his colleagues before continuing. "That trainee was probably inside the work envelope. My bet is he just made up the story as a cover. The guy has been here less than a week. I asked Hoblenz to check him out. He might've been snooping around or something."
"We didn't turn up anything in his apartment," Hoblenz reported.
"You searched his apartment?" Gray shot back with surprising venom.
Hoblenz held his head erect, subtly straightening his shoulders and back in what appeared to be a soldier's instinctive reaction to censure.
"I didn't authorize you to go into anyone's residence," Gray said sternly, staring Hoblenz down.
Hoblenz held Gray's gaze, but not for long. He hung his head and scooped a forkful of eggs. "Sorry," he muttered. Like the other forces of nature, Laura thought, Hoblenz too bowed to Gray's will — reluctantly.
"How badly was he hurt?" Gray asked, turning back to Griffith.
His head of robotics frowned in disgust and shook his head. "Tore his sleeve. A little bruise and scrape, that's all."
"That shouldn't have happened," Gray said. "Even if he was over the line, he shouldn't have been hurt." Griffith had no reply. "Did the computer report seeing anyone inside the main work envelope?" Griffith shook his head dejectedly. Gray hesitated. "Did the computer see the accident?" he then asked. Slowly, Griffith shook his head again.
"All right," Gray said, "I'm declaring a special security zone."
"But the computer has already set one up!" Griffith replied, half turning toward the screen. "That pick-and-place has a maximum work envelope of a few dozen square meters. It can't physically reach past that cordon."
Laura scrutinized the police tape surrounding the robot. It extended across the broad yellow line marking the border between "their" world and "ours" to carve one small nick in the humans' domain.
One tiny encroachment upon territory allotted to man. It hardly seemed significant to Laura or, it appeared, to Griffith. But Gray was greeting news of the offense with a certain solemnity that commanded the attention of the group. The tape curled as it stretched between the cones, but Laura pieced together the words printed repeatedly in black letters down its length: DANGER — SPECIAL SECURITY ZONE.
"I want the zone expanded to the entire facility," Gray said. "I want all personnel withdrawn from the assembly building." Everyone looked up at him now. "We'll continue operations on full automation."
"Because of that one pick-and-place?" Griffith burst out. "You call that a runaway?" Gray opened his mouth to speak, which seemed to cause Griffith to crumble. "Fine!" He threw his hands up in surre
nder. "Whatever you say!"
"Thank you, Phil," Gray said politely before turning to the table and moving on. "What else?"
That's it? Laura thought. Gray gives the order to abandon the island's main production facility, and it is met only by one man's mild irritation?
"The doors," Dorothy said, the pinging sound emanating now from her computer. "They're really freaking people out. There've been" — she tapped several more times—"forty-seven reports — eight from this one guy alone."
"When was the surge in errors?" Gray asked. "Exactly."
After several pokes at the small screen Dorothy pressed the pen's tip against her lower lip. "It really spiked up beginning an hour and seven minutes ago."
Several people around the table checked their watches, and Filatov and Bickham exchanged a long look. "And when did the surge in system activity occur — exactly?" Gray asked Filatov.
He heaved a deep sigh. "About the same time. Just after that really."
"Wait a minute," Griffith said. "Do you mean the system actually spiked after the error rate surged, not before?" Filatov shrugged and nodded. "That's odd," Griffith said, rubbing his chin "If it had been a viral outbreak it would've been the other way around. There's a major cause-and-effect problem with the order of events."
Gray tossed his folded napkin onto the table. "All right, we've got work to do."
His dream team began to push back from their places. Laura halted their exodus with a question. "Is the guy who reported eight door malfunctions the same man who had a fight with his wife in the gym?"
After hesitating, Dorothy looked at Laura, then at Gray, then back at Laura. "Yeah, as a matter of fact," she said with a puzzled look on her face. "How'd you know?"
Gray studied Laura now. "Just a wild guess," Laura replied, making it sound as if it wasn't a guess, which it was.
After a moment, everyone again began to rise. "Dr. Aldridge," Gray said in a voice meant for everyone, "did your analysis turn up anything interesting last night?" The "team" slowly sank back into their seats.
"Well, I just had some preliminary questions. I explored the computer's beliefs about the boundaries of its 'self.' Interestingly, it doesn't view the robots as part of that self, but as distinct entities from whom it receives reports."
Heads turned. Smiles lit her colleagues' faces.
"Anything else?" Gray asked.
Laura ignored the others. "It uses a sentry system and only updates its world model if it sees a change it cares about. And it experiences spatial referral. When the computer 'sees' and 'hears' things, it perceives them to be outside its circuitry, not inside. It has a three-dimensional model of the world, and a distinct sense of its place in it."
"Oh, uh, Dr. Aldridge," Margaret Bickham said, glancing around the table, "we programmed the computer to develop that model. We programmed it, in fact, to emulate the human brain in every way you just described. It has a very extensive grasp of your specialty — cognitive sciences — and I think you'll find it also has a peculiar quirk. It exhibits a desire to feed back to people things they find interesting or stimulating. I've long theorized that particular behavior evolved because it aided the computer's goal of maximizing interaction with humans. When it can coax an operator onto the shell, it'll go to great lengths to keep them there. Flattery is one tactic it uses. Feigning pique at attempts to log off is another."
"So you're saying it's bullshitting me?" Laura asked, and Hoblenz snorted in amusement. "That it's telling me things I want to hear to keep me interested?"
"In so many words."
"Then why did it tell me it didn't feel like talking anymore last night?"
"It did what?" Filatov asked, grinning.
"The computer told me it didn't want to talk anymore."
Filatov and several of the others laughed. "I've never heard of such a thing," Filatov said. "You must've really pissed it off."
"What did you say just before you got that message?" Gray asked — not amused.
Laura tried to think back. She couldn't recall typing anything just before. But she had, she remembered, caught herself thinking "he" instead of "it" about the computer. Laura had muttered something right after… out loud.
She focused again on Gray, who now seemed to be reading her face, her expressions. He cocked an eyebrow — a look meant only for her.
Gray turned to the group. "That concludes the meeting, let's all get to work."
Laura rose with the rest. "Dr. Aldridge," Gray called to her. "I'd like to speak to you if you've got a moment."
Laura sank back into the chair. She braced herself, although she had no real reason she could think of to worry. But what if he is firing me? she tormented herself.
The others departed in silence, many casting last glances over their shoulders at Gray and Laura seated alone together at the table.
"I apologize if I was a bit gruff," Gray said, looking uncomfortable. "I'm sorry you ran into those guards." He drew an extended breath, idling his lungs before slowly exhaling. "It's… regrettable what you're forced to do in this world." His mind seemed to be far away, and Laura let him continue at an unhurried pace.
"There are pressures that constantly seek to undermine my efforts."
Gray fell quiet, and Laura waited. When he said nothing further she asked, "Do you mean the pressure of running your business?"
Gray shrugged. "My competitors aren't the problem. If they win I'll be the first in line to buy their products." Again she waited. "But there's another… struggle taking place. And the forces at work are…" He looked off into space, shaking his head.
For the very first time, Laura thought, he seemed vulnerable — beatable. "You mean, like, dirty business dealings?" she asked. "Bribes of government officials and that sort of thing?" Gray slowly focused on her, and after a few moments grew more composed. More guarded. He'd snapped out of his fit of candor and retreated behind a poker face.
He's stressed out, Laura realized. She wanted to press him for more, but not at the expense of widening the cracks that ran through the beleaguered man. She decided instead to switch to small talk.
"So what was it that you were doing in the exercise room this morning?" Laura asked.
She watched with a growing smile as the richest man on earth slowly blushed. "Oh, you saw," he said, grinning and sinking back into the cushions of his chair. "It's a prototype of a VR treadmill. It's still too pricey, but most of that is the cost of server time on the main computer, which is dropping like a rock."
"Is it a video game or something?"
"Well," he shrugged, "more an exercise machine we plan on selling to fitness centers, sports-training facilities, places like that."
"And they'll all be hooked up to the computer?" Laura asked.
"The computer? Ultimately, everything will be hooked up to everything else. Every television, videophone, fax machine, home computer, stereo, arcade game, everything massively interconnected but none of it centrally run. That's sort of what began on a tiny scale with computers hooked up to the Internet. The computer, as you called it, is just taking the system to a new and higher level of connectivity. It coordinates the interconnections, but it's the off-board digital supercomputers we own or lease that do most of the heavy lifting. The neural network here is both our server and our interface with those several hundred separate computers. It's a buffer between the two worlds of humans and of computers. We tell the computer what we need done, and it tells the other computers what to do and how to do it."
"Why doesn't it have a name." Laura asked.
Gray appeared not to have understood her question. "Pardon me?"
"The computer," she said, stressing the article to show how awkward the use of the term was. "Why didn't you give it a name like HAL or Andromedus or something impressive like that?"
Laura had asked the question only half seriously, but he seemed to consider his answer in earnest. He looked up at her through squinting, somber eyes.
"You don't like Andromedus?" L
aura persisted.
She finally got a smile out of him. "No, but keep trying."
Laura relaxed in the soft cushions. They beckoned her to linger just a little while longer. The sun was warm on her neck, but the air kept her comfortably cool. She surreptitiously looked up at Gray, who seemed to be enjoying the moment as much as she was.
"You don't ever get your exercise outdoors?" she asked.
He shrugged. "I can get more of a workout in the gym, so what's the point?"
Laura leaned her head back. The sun bathed her face in its radiant glow. The air was crisp and the sky was cloudless and blue — so clear that the disk of the full moon shone brightly high above. Why try to explain? she thought, turning back to find Gray watching her.
"But what were you doing on that thing?" she asked.
Gray stabbed a slice of melon and then smiled and arched his eyebrows sheepishly. "Something I've always wanted to do. Playing pro football."
Laura smiled in amusement at Gray's embarrassment. "But who were you talking to?" she asked. Laura watched his smile slowly grow more strained. She was being too intrusive. "And that music…" she said quickly. "Is that what you like to listen to?"
He shrugged and scratched his face, still looking down. "Not really."
That was the extent of his answer and, apparently, of his interest in discussing the subject further. But if you don't like that music, she thought, why the hell was it blasting away? And how could you even hear it with all that stuff on your head?
The conversation had stalled. Laura tried to think of some way to revive it without assuming a prosecutorial tone.
"'R' stands for 'virtual reality,' right?" Laura asked. It was another question, but questions were the only thing that came to mind.
Gray nodded, an odd look coming over his face. The corners of his mouth slowly rounded. "Would you like to see virtual reality?" he asked.
She liked the sound of his voice, the look of his face when he smiled, but a little quiver passed up her spine from the cool air. Gray rose from his chair, but a weight seemed to keep Laura pinned in hers.
Society of the Mind Page 16
