Society of the Mind

by Eric L. Harry

  "And we didn't," Gray replied.

  "But we don't know why we didn't! How can the computer be doing everything on fifty-five percent capacity? It's impossible!"

  "I think I can answer that," Laura said, looking at Gray. When he returned her gaze but said nothing, she continued. "The computer is partitioned in half. The computer we all talk to is located in the main pool underneath us, and the Other is in the annex. The Other controls the Model Threes and most of the facilities around the island."

  "Not the assembly building," Gray interjected, and everybody looked his way. "The computer can't recognize it from the outside but it has managed to hang on to all of its operations inside." There was silence, and all his department heads wore looks of great astonishment. Gray turned back to Laura. "You can go on now."

  Laura had the complete attention of the table. "My guess is that the functions being performed flawlessly are all on the Other's virus-free side of the partition. Is the 'stampede' occurring in the main pool?" she asked Dorothy.

  The girl nodded. "We're not even getting any reports from the annex."

  Laura was strangely unexcited at having guessed correctly. She felt a sense of security and confidence in rendering her opinions that might have owed itself to the painkillers.

  "So what is the Other?" Margaret asked — her question directed not to Gray but to Laura.

  "I don't know. The best analogy that I've been able to come up with is that it's a second personality that inhabits the computer. That, of course, raises the possibility of multiple personality disorder, which in humans is totally debilitating."

  No one scoffed at Laura's theories this time. There wasn't even the obligatory snort from Margaret.

  "Any other questions?" Gray asked, as if he himself had conducted the briefing.

  "Yeah," Hoblenz replied in his gravelly voice. "What was on those rockets, Mr. Gray?" Everyone looked at the black-clad soldier in shock but then slowly, one by one, turned their eyes to Gray.

  "Were there weapons in those payload bays? Is that what those robots in the assembly building have been loading?"

  Gray's face was a mask.

  He said nothing.

  "I would also like to hear your answer to that question, Mr. Gray," Filatov joined in, not looking up from his clenched hands.

  "The media — the news broadcasts carried on our own programs are saying that you might have launched some sort of orbital weapon platform. Since none of us here knows what was on those flights — including even your own director of space operations, apparently" — Filatov nodded across the table at the silent man—"for all we know that report is accurate."

  Gray took a quick inventory of the faces around the table, ending with Filatov's. "I would tell you if you needed to know."

  The emotions registered on the faces Laura surveyed ranged from anxiety to outright anger. "What about the navy ships?" Hoblenz asked. "There's about two thousand marines offshore our island. They may be over the horizon, but their hovercraft and helicopters can be here inside an hour. What's your plan, Mr. Gray?"

  "My plan is for all of you to go about your jobs, and for me to go about mine. But since it seems to be of great interest" — his eyes panned the table and stopped on Laura—"let me assure you that I do not intend to engage in hostilities with anyone. If I've created the impression in the capitals of the world that I have an ace up my sleeve, then fine. But if I've created that impression in any of you, let me repeat one more time that there will be no bloodshed on this island or anywhere else."

  "What if the robots don't oblige?" Hoblenz asked.

  "That's another matter entirely."

  "I've got men out there patrolling dark streets and risking their lives. Or so it would seem to them and to me. I'd like to know so I can tell 'em whether or not any of those robots are of the dangerous variety."

  "You can tell them they are not."

  "Well I know I can tell them that, but is it true?"

  "If you mean true in the sense of whether any robots are homicidal, the answer is that they are not. They are, as we all know, dangerous machinery to be given a healthy measure of respect. But let me reassure you that none of the six Model Eights that are operational are homicidal in their intentions, goals, or plans."

  "What about the other forty-two or so down under that mountain?" Laura asked.

  "They aren't yet operational," Gray said as if that did away with her concern. "Now, I suggest you all return to your posts."

  No one said anything as they filed out.

  Laura pushed her chair back from the table. "Not you, please," Gray said.

  The comment didn't go unnoticed by the others, nor did the fact that Gray waited in silence for them to leave. Hoblenz was the last one out, and he slapped the plate to close the door manually.

  Gray and Laura were left alone. Laura's last glimpse of Hoblenz was of his hard stare.

  "I thought maybe I would log on for a while longer," Laura said, "before turning in."

  "The computer's too sick to talk right now," Gray replied, staring off into space. "Are you ready for another dose of the truth?"

  This is it, Laura thought, bracing herself. It was either something mind-blowing or something truly bad. Whichever it was, Laura dreaded hearing it.

  "If you want," she said just above a whisper.

  Gray focused on the polished conference table as if reading from a TelePrompTer, but he read his lines too slowly and unnaturally. "I know how the soldier died last night. I've known it all along." He looked straight at her. "I killed him."

  She stared into his eyes, concentrating all her attention not on what she saw there but on what she thought the man to be. "I don't believe you." She shook her head. "You ripped his head off? What? With your bare hands?"

  "It might as well have been." He went back to his script, again not looking at her. "Last night I was working in Krantz's facility, trying through the terminals there to establish a link with the Other. The computer paged me, and I logged on to my cellular laptop. The computer told me it was having a nightmare. It happens sometimes — strange reports of fleeting perceptions — and it's been happening more frequently now that its world model is fragmented. This one was of strange animal noises from the jungle in the vicinity of the computer center. I got Hoblenz to send out a patrol. When the computer told me it'd heard the sound again, I started to get nervous."

  He paused to take a long gulp of coffee from his mug. "The computer couldn't see the area, because it's lost those cameras to the Other, so the fastest thing I could think to do was to climb into one of Krantz's VR workstations. They're connected to the Other and to its model of the world. When I powered up the workstation, the VR picture of the nuclear lab seemed complete so I took off running. I ran down the coastal road into the Village." He looked up at Laura. "I amplified the audio, and I could easily hear the screams and breaking branches. When I got into the Village I ran into a trash bin behind the grocery store."

  "Wait a minute," Laura said. "You're talking about where the kid at the town meeting said he saw something, right?" Gray nodded. "But this was virtual reality. I mean, you were really just in the workstation." He nodded again. "So how could that little boy have seen you? You weren't really there."

  "The boy was in virtual reality with me. After the town meeting, I took him and his parents into the basketball coach's office — just the four of us. His mother is in Filatov's virtual-reality section, and it turns out she'd taken one of the clunky old VR helmets home and wired it up for the boy to play games. The kid had hacked his way onto the main computer's world model and was going out exploring at night. Probably peeping in people's windows, things like that. With that helmet and a simple game joystick, he'd head out through his bedroom window. That led straight down into the grocery store's parking lot."

  "How'd you get him to admit all that?"

  "I didn't have to, really. I'd seen him in the parking lot — or at least a cartoonish picture of him carrying a ray gun. The comput
er represented his presence by an 'avatar'—an image chosen by the boy. It looked like a character from a game we're working on in new-product development—'Space Invaders.'"

  "I don't get it," Laura said. "He used a game program and that hardware to hack his way into the computer's world model?"

  Gray nodded.

  "On the Other's side of the partition?" Again a nod.

  "And you met by accident there in virtual reality?"

  Gray nodded a third time. "He could see me, and I could see him, just like you and I could see each other when we went for our walk through the computer center only at a distance. It didn't matter what equipment we used to get there. We were both in the same world. We were both in the computer's head — in cyberspace."

  Gray's eyes drifted off. "After I saw the boy, I ran off toward the sound of the screams. By getting down low — in a crouch — you can really get the treadmill moving and go fast. I found them easily. The thermal trail left by the man's body heat looked… phosphorescent."

  "You found who? The soldier?"

  "And a Model Eight. I ran right up to them. The soldier was exhausted and drooping. He was being carried by the robot. I was invisible to him, in a virtual world that the soldier couldn't see. But the Model Eight saw me. It looked right at me."

  "But wait! The Model Eight was real, right? He was there in the real world."

  "Yes, but his mind was in the virtual model. It was dark. The robot was out where it shouldn't be and maybe hadn't ever been before. It had an open socket right into the same model I was plugged into, and when I came up he saw me immediately. I thought for a second he'd drop the soldier, but he didn't. He took off running — heading straight into the swamp and carrying the screaming man with him."

  Everything Gray was saying swirled in Laura's head. She couldn't force herself to think straight, and she gave up — settling back to let Gray's story sweep her along.

  "I followed them into the jungle. It's like running through a generic jungle repeated over and over. I had to go on the sounds of breaking branches and the man's shouts up ahead. When the robot stopped, it did what we call a refresh scan. It gathered data about its immediate surroundings through its own sensors and then uploaded that data to the main computer. When I caught up with them" — he looked up in pain—"the place where we found the body was completely scanned. It was an accurate picture of… everything. The soldier was lying on the ground."

  "Was he still alive?"

  Gray nodded, then took a deep breath and went on. "I had no way of communicating with the robot, so I positioned myself between it and the soldier. The Model Eight was standing down in the water. It must have learned how not to make tracks. It made a wide circle around the whole area to try to get to the man and I tried to scare it off as best I could."

  "What does that mean? How could you scare the robot?"

  "It didn't know I wasn't real. It saw me waving my arms like a madman and didn't know what I was. The only problem was that I wasn't strong or big enough. What it saw and thought was that there was a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound human trying to keep it from its toy. It wasn't enough. Maybe if I'd had time to reprogram the computer to give me a different representation." He heaved another deep sigh. "So, it grabbed the soldier. That's when it happened." Gray fell silent.

  "What? Joseph, listen. You weren't even there, no matter what you think about cyberspace."

  Gray ignored Laura's remark and pressed on. "I pretended to grab onto the soldier's legs. The robot saw me do it. The whole point of me doing it was for the robot to see that I wouldn't let him take the soldier off. You're right that I wasn't there in the real world, but the distinction is meaningless. My actions had consequences. The robot reacted to them. And I should've known!" he burst out, slamming his fist onto the table.

  Laura jumped with a start at the sound. "Known what?" she asked softly, frightened by the tortured look on his face.

  "I don't know how many tactile room sessions I've watched — a hundred, two hundred. I should've known! The juveniles are possessive. You can't try to take their favorite toy away!" He shook his head. "The Model Eight had been dragging the soldier by his head, Laura, by his head. When I grabbed the soldier's legs, the robot paused, gathering itself. I saw it coming and even let go, but…"

  Gray covered his face with his hands, then rubbed his eyes and temples. "The soldier's feet slung around like a rag doll. The body landed on the raised muddy clearing. The robot still held the man's head in his hands."

  Gray fell silent — reliving the ghastly scene, Laura imagined, in the vivid color images of his mind. "What happened then?" she asked.

  "The robot was distraught. It started waggling its head from side to side and stamping its feet like it was marching in place. The head it was holding seemed too awful either to put down or to hold onto. Finally, it tossed the head toward the body and disappeared."

  Laura felt vicariously the weight that was crushing Gray.

  "Joseph, that wasn't your fault. You didn't kill that man."

  "I built the robot," he said, holding Laura's gaze. She had no ready reply. "I don't want you going out by yourself anymore. It's not safe."

  "What's not safe?"

  "This whole island's not safe. Look at you!"

  "I'll be okay."

  "It's not safe, Laura."

  She tucked her chin to her chest and allowed the narcotic calm of her medication to wash over her. After a few moments of silence, she asked, "Was the robot in the jungle the one they call Auguste?"

  Gray's face rose to meet hers. "Yes."

  "But they all look alike. How could you tell which one it was?"

  Gray looked down at his clasped hands. "Hightop told me it was Auguste, and that he would be punished."

  Laura suddenly felt exhausted. She slumped into her chair, laid her head on the padded seat back, and looked up at the ceiling. She let her eyes close. The codeine made everything seem all right and she was too tired to give Gray much more comfort.

  "I cabled up to Hightop in the Model Eight facility," Gray went on in the quiet voice of a confession. "No microwave transmissions, no computer interface, just a cable between my notebook and Hightop. He didn't want to tell me. They're emulating my penchant for privacy with a vengeance. But he finally admitted they've been getting out of the yard. All of them, not just a few bad seeds like Auguste. The jungle canopy is thick and runs right up the hillside to the yard. The jungle has been their little playground — the place where they could break the rules and rebel. Apparently, they hate being watched, and we watch them constantly."

  Laura opened her eyes and looked over at him. "Everything is happening so fast. It's… unpredictable. The Model Eights aren't just bright, they're brilliant, but in a… primitive way. And some are apparently excellent programmers. They developed a virtual patch that tricked the computer into accepting reruns of old observation recordings so that it looked like they were in the facility all night."

  "The computer told me it doesn't trust the Model Eights," Laura said, trying not to slur her words. "I can see why."

  "Well, the feeling is mutual. The Model Eights would rather deal with the Other." Gray filled his lungs noisily, rocking all the way back in his chair and resting his head in his cupped hands. His feet rose to the conference table.

  "Joseph, you can't create life — living, thinking organisms — and then control them like they were marionettes in a children's show."

  "I know. I just thought it would take them a while longer," he said, rubbing his face and moaning with fatigue. "I thought I could get further along before it started."

  "Before what started?" she asked, but he just shrugged and shook his head with a frown. She tried a different tack. "What were those flights you launched tonight?" she asked.

  "Part of the plan."

  "Part of phase two?" she asked, and he nodded. "So how many phases are there?"

  He gazed blankly at the far wall. "I wish I knew. Where it all ends, I mean. It may end
tomorrow for all I know." He looked at his watch. "Excuse me. It twelve-fifteen. I guess it's today."

  "What's today? The deceleration?"

  "I wish I knew the answer to that, too."

  Suddenly, Laura longed for a return of the man who had no limits. Who needed no sleep. Who was always ten steps ahead. Who made things happen according to some well-scripted plan. "Joseph, you're scaring me."

  He looked over at her, suddenly more alert. "It'll be all right, Laura."

  She rolled her eyes. "Don't patronize me. I hate that!"

  "So I hear."

  Laura cocked her head, knitting her brow in confusion. "What does that mean?"

  "Your 'turnoffs.' Being patronized was number one as I recall."

  At first she didn't understand, but then it hit her. Her jaw dropped in shock and at the burgeoning anger to which Gray seemed oblivious. "How dare you!" she shouted, and his face registered the force of her words immediately. She struggled to her feet, the aches from her body only distantly felt now. "I can't believe you… You… you read that moronic piece-of-shit Rate Your Mate profile? O-o-oh!" The words were barely forced through clenched teeth as she shoved the chair into the table and turned away. "I've never been more insulted in my entire life!" The next words caught in her throat, but she forced them out. "That's it. I'm leaving."

  There was no sound or movement from behind Laura, just the plea of "Don't" spoken earnestly.

  "Why not?" she shouted, wheeling on him in total disregard of her injuries. "You lied to me about the computer picking me. You read that stupid profile and picked me out thinking… I don't know what! You give me one good reason not to walk out of here and never speak to you again! And it had better be one helluva reason, because that's all you get! One!"

  He sat at the edge of his seat, both hands gripping the edge of the table. "Because I don't have even the vaguest idea what you're talking about."

  She stared down at the look of complete innocence he wore. "Oh, come on! I'm talking about the 'Rate Your Mate' program that the MIT grad student uploaded onto the network! Turn-ons, turnoffs, measurements… Was it Hoblenz who found it during my security check? I bet you had a good laugh with him over it. Over me!" Gray slowly shook his head, lost in thought. "Oh bullshit! I know that turnoff crack came straight off that profile!"