by Paul Dueweke
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In 2042, four years before the Sherwood and Jenner team were assigned to Project Dagger, the computer’s development had been entrusted to Dr. Matthew I. Planck. Dr. Planck viewed the computer, not as a machine to be enslaved, but as an extension of himself to be liberated to share the task of human management. He’d spent a distinguished career at the Institute for Research on Artificial Life.
Dr. Planck’s artificial life forms were neural network packages that would propagate, mutate, colonize, and retreat, but not in a random way. They were driven by goals that were initially directed by humans, but evolved along with their tactics. He’d crafted many forms of life-like entities dividing and multiplying in his Petri dish of silicon and gallium arsenide.
Not only had he cultivated these replicating and evolving electronic entities, he had put them to work to develop inorganic judgment systems of unprecedented power. He’d headed teams that applied artificial life to a number of milestone intelligent systems. His greatest success was a disease diagnostic system that had been proven superior to the best teams of medical doctors in numerous and varied tests. His greatest failure was his inability to convince the medical establishment to use this lifesaving technology. Dr. Planck’s outspoken criticism of the medical community raised impediments to his continued effectiveness at the Institute.
