The Turing Option

by Harry Harrison

  And now his own internal sex-animal was chomping and salivating and taking over. A primitive agency way down in the brain stem—and he had to fight it!

  “That’s not me!” he shouted out loud, slamming his fist onto the table so hard it hurt. “Not the whole me. Just a singularly stupid but powerful part. Balls galore!”

  He was more than a rutting animal. He had intelligence—so why couldn’t he use it? How could he let a stupid subunit take control? Where was the mental manager that should have evaluated it and put it into proper perspective and place?

  He took the can of soda with him, sipping at it slowly. Sat in front of his computer and opened a new file labeled SELF CONTROL, then leaned back and thought about what came next.

  Most mental processes work unconsciously, because most subunits of his mind had to become autonomous—as separate as his hands and feet—in order to work efficiently. When he had learned to walk as a baby he must have done it badly at first, stumbling and falling, then gradually improving by learning from mistakes. The old subunits for not-good walking must slowly have been replaced or suppressed by new agents for good-walking agents that worked more automatically, with less need for reflective thinking. So many agents, he thought, to be controlled by what? Right now, they seemed to be quite out of control. It was time for him to take them in charge; he must exercise more self-control. It was time that he, himself, must decide which of those subunits should be engaged. That mysterious, separate He, must be the manager, the central control that would correspond to the essence of Brian’s own consciousness.

  “Those stupid AI programs could sure use a managing machine like that,” he said, then choked on the soda.

  Was it that simple? Was this the missing element that would pull together all the separate pieces? The AI research labs were filling up with so many interesting systems these days at universities like Amherst, Northwestern, and Kyushu Institute of Technology. Rule-based logic systems, story-based language understanders, neural-network learning systems, each solving its own kind of problem in its own way. Some could play chess, some could control mechanical arms and fingers, some could plan financial investments. All separate, all working by themselves—but none of them seemed to really think. Because nobody knew how to get all those useful parts to work together. What artificial intelligence needed was something like that internal he. Some sort of central Managing Machine to tie all the subunits into a single working unit.

  It couldn’t be that simple. There can’t be any such he in charge—because the mind doesn’t contain any real people, only a lot of subunits. Therefore, that he could not be any single thing—because no single thing could be smart enough. So that he must itself be some sort of illusion created by the activity of yet another society composed of subunits. Otherwise there would still be something missing, something to manage that Manager.

  “Not good enough. I haven’t got it quite right yet. It will need a lot more working out.”

  He saved the file with his thoughts—then noticed that there was one KIM file left on disk. The term paper for Betser. She had a copy of it—but she would never understand it, much less explain it when she was queried. Maybe he should save this one as well, after all she had been responsible for his idea about a managing program. No way! He hit delete and it vanished with all the rest.

  The very last thing he did was put a lock on the computer so it would not accept calls from her phone. But this wasn’t good enough—she could still call from a public phone. He added a program that would turn away all incoming calls, no calls now or forever from anyone.

  In the end he sat there tired and dry-eyed. Betrayed in every way.

  Nothing like this was ever going to happen to him again. No one was ever going to get close enough to him to hurt him. He was going to think about his AI managing program and see if he could get it to work and forget about her. Forget about girls. Something like this was never going to happen to him again. Ever.

  9

  CORONADO

  April 2, 2023

  The helicopter came in over the bay, past the bridge that connected the hooked peninsula of Coronado to San Diego. The roads below were sealed tight by security: the copter was not only the safest but was the fastest way in and out of the base. It swooped low over the gray shapes of the mothball fleet, quietly rusting into extinction since the end of the Second World War. They dropped down to the HQ helipad, dust clouds roiling out, and saw a stretched limo pull up.

  “This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a meeting,” Erin Snaresbrook snapped. “Some of us have work to do. This is totally ridiculous—when we could have had a teleconference.”

  “All of us have work to do, Doctor, all of us,” Benicoff said. “You have only yourself to blame—this meeting was your idea. You must have realized that this was the only way that we could guarantee security.”

  “A progress report, that was all that I said.” She raised her hand before Benicoff could speak. “I know. I hear the arguments. It is far safer here. The disappearances, the thefts, assassination attempt. It’s just that I hate these infernal awful choppers. They are the most dangerous form of transportation ever invented. One of them fell off the Pan Am Building, you’re too young to remember, dropped right into Forty-second Street. They are death traps.”

  They drove into an underground entrance to the headquarters building. Past marine sentries, guards and locked gates, TV cameras and all the security apparatus so adored by the military. One last guarded door admitted them to a conference room with a panoramic view of the bay and Point Loma. An aircraft carrier was just coming in from the open sea. In front of the window at least a dozen dark-suited civilians and uniformed officers were gathered around the teak table.

  “Is this room secure?” Snaresbrook whispered.

  “You’re being facetious, Doctor,” Benicoff whispered back. “That window will stop a thirty-inch naval shell.”

  Erin turned to look at it, then caught Benicoff’s smile. Like her, he was joking to relax the tension.

  “Sit down,” General Schorcht ordered, his usual charming self. His introductions were equally succinct. “Dr. Snaresbrook is on the left. With her is Mr. Benicoff, whom you have met before and who is in charge of the ongoing Megalobe investigation.”

  “And who are all these people?” Erin Snaresbrook asked sweetly. General Schorcht ignored her.

  “You have a report to make, Doctor. Let’s have it.”

  The silence lengthened, the General and the surgeon radiating cold hatred at each other. Benicoff broke in, not wanting the situation to decay any further.

  “I called this meeting because it appears that the operations undertaken by Dr. Snaresbrook have now reached an important and most vital stage. Since the rest of our investigation is stalled, I feel that everything now depends on Dr. Snaresbrook. She had been a pillar of strength, our only hope in this disastrous matter. And she seems to have worked a miracle. She will now bring us up to date. If you please, Doctor.” Slightly mollified, still very angry, the surgeon shrugged and decided that she had had enough of the petty feuding. She spoke calmly and quietly.

  “I am now approaching the end of the basic surgery on the patient. The superficial damage caused by the bullet has had a satisfactory resolution. The more important and vital deep repairs of the nerve bundles in the cortex have been completed. The film implants were successful and the connections have been made by the inbuilt computer. Gross surgery is no longer called for. The skull has been closed.”

  “You have succeeded. The patient will talk …”

  “I will have no interruptions. From anyone. When I have finished my description of what has been done and what my prognosis is I will then answer any questions.”

  Snaresbrook was silent for a moment. So was General Schorcht, radiating pure hatred. She smiled demurely, then went on.

  “I may have failed completely. If I have, that is the end of it. I’ll not open his head again. I want to tell you strongly th
at there is always a chance of this. Everything I have done is still experimental—which is why I make no promises. But I will tell you what I hope will happen. If I have succeeded the patient will regain consciousness and should be able to talk. But I doubt if I will be talking to the man who was shot. He will not remember any of his life as an adult. If my procedures succeed, if he regains consciousness, it will be as a child.”

  She ignored the murmur of dismay, waited until it died down before she continued.

  “If this is what happens I will be very pleased. It will mean that the procedure has succeeded. That will be the first step. If it goes as planned I must then proceed with additional input and communication in the hopes that his memories will be brought forward to the period in time when the assault occurred. Questions?”

  Benicoff got in first with the question so vital to him. “You hope to bring his memory right up to the day the assault occurred?”

  “That may indeed be possible.”

  “Will he remember what happened? Will he tell us who did it?”

  “No, that is impossible.” Snaresbrook waited until the reactions had died away before she spoke again. “You must understand that there are two kinds of memory, long-term and short-term. Long-term memories last for years, usually for an entire lifetime. Short-term is what happens to us in real time, details of a conversation we might be hearing, a book that we are reading. Most short-term memories simply fade away in a few seconds, or minutes. But some parts of short-term memories, if they are important enough, will eventually become long-term memory. But only after about a half an hour. It takes the brain that much time to process and store it. This is demonstrated in what is known as posttrauma shock. Victims of car accidents, for instance, can remember nothing of the accident if they were rendered unconscious at the time. Their short-term memory never became long-term memory.”

  General Schorcht’s cold voice cut through the other voices and questions.

  “If there is no chance of your succeeding in this dubious medical procedure why did you undertake it in the first place?”

  Erin Snaresbrook had her fill of insults. Her cheeks flushed and she started to rise. Benicoff was on his feet first.

  “May I remind everyone here that I am in charge of this ongoing investigation. At great personal sacrifice Dr. Snaresbrook volunteered to help us. Her work is all that we have. Though there have been deaths already, and the patient may very well die as well, it is the investigation that is of paramount importance. Brian Delaney may not reveal the killers—but he can show us how to build his artificial intelligence, which is what this entire matter is all about.”

  He sat down slowly and turned in his chair. “Dr. Snaresbrook, will you be kind enough to tell us what procedures are still to come?”

  “Yes, of course. As you know I have left a number of surgical implants within the patient’s brain. They consist of various kinds of computers connected by microscopic terminals to the brain’s nerve fibers. Controlled measures of chemicals can be released through these. By combining this with a carefully monitored variety of stimuli, I hope he will soon learn how to access more of his later but now inaccessible memories. When these are integrated he should have a functional mind once again.

  “There may be gaps—but he will not be aware of them. What I hope he will be aware of and remember is all of the work he did in developing his AI. So that he can rebuild it and make it function.

  “I will of course use more than chemicals. I have also implanted computer film chips that will interface directly with nerve endings. On these chips are embryonic brain cells that can be induced to grow in various ways. They can be kept dormant as long as I want, waiting for an opportunity to make the correct connections. When they are activated each one will be tested. The ones that end up wrong will be disconnected so that only the successful will remain active. This can all be done by opening microscopic chemical holes implanted in the chips. Either a connection will be made—or a tiny package of neurotoxins will destroy the cell.”

  “I have a question,” one of the men said.

  “Of course.”

  “Are you telling us that you are installing a machine-mind interface inside that boy’s skull?”

  “I am—and I don’t know why you sound so shocked. This kind of thing has been going on for many years now. Why, even in the last century we were hooking up neural connections in the ear to cure deafness. Many times in recent years we have been able to use nerve impulses from the spinal cord to activate prosthetic legs. Connecting to the brain itself was a logical next step.”

  “When will we be able to talk to Mr. Delaney?” Schorcht snapped.

  “Perhaps never.” Dr. Snaresbrook stood up. “You have my report. Make of it what you will. I am doing my very best, with still-experimental techniques, to rebuild that shattered mind. Trust me. If I succeed you will be the first to know.”

  She ignored the voices, the questions, turned and left the room.

  10

  September 17, 2023

  Brian came slowly back to consciousness, rising up from a deep and dreamless sleep. Awareness slipped away, came again, sank into darkness again. This happened a number of times over a period of days and each time he remembered nothing of the previous approach to consciousness.

  Then, for the first time, he did remain on the borderline of full awareness. Though his eyes were still shut he gradually began to realize that he was awake. And dreadfully tired. Why was that? He did not know, did not really care. Cared about nothing.

  “Brian …”

  The voice came from a very great distance. At the edge of audibility. At first it was just there, something to be experienced and not considered. But it kept repeating. Brian, then Brian again.

  Why? The word rolled around and around in his thoughts until memory returned. That was his name. He was Brian. Someone was speaking his name. His name was Brian and someone was speaking his name aloud.

  “Brian—open your eyes, Brian.”

  Eyes. His eyes. His eyes were shut. Open your eyes, Brian.

  Light. Strong light. Then soothing darkness once again.

  “Open your eyes, Brian. Do not keep your eyes closed. Look at me, Brian.”

  Glare again, blink, shut, open. Light. Vagueness. Something floating before him.

  “That’s very good, Brian. Can you see me? If you can, say yes.”

  This was not an easy thing to do. But it was a command. See. Light and something. See me. See the me. See me say yes. What was seeing? Was he seeing? What was he seeing?

  It was hard, but each time he thought about it the process became easier. See—with the eyes. See a thing. What thing? The blur. What was a blur? A blur was a thing. What kind of a thing? And what was a thing?

  Face.

  Face! Yes, a face! He was very happy to discover that. He saw that this was a face. A face had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair. What about the hair?

  The hair was gray.

  Very good, Brian. He was doing so well. He felt very happy.

  His eyes were open. He saw a face. The face had gray hair. He was very tired. His eyes closed and he slept.

  “You saw that, didn’t you!” Dr. Snaresbrook clasped her hands together with excitement. Benicoff nodded, puzzled but agreeing.

  “I saw his eyes open, yes. But, well—”

  “It was terribly important. Did you notice that he looked at my face after I spoke?”

  “Yes—but is that a good response?”

  “Not just good, but immensely significant. Think for a moment. You are looking at a young man’s body that for a long time had a disconnected mind—broken into disconnected fragments. But you see what happened now—he heard my voice and turned to look at my face. The important thing is that the brain centers for auditory recognition are in the back half of the brain—but the eye-motion controls are in the front part of the brain. So we must have got the new connections at least partly correct. And there was more. He was trying to obey—to understand
my command. This means that a good many mental agencies must have been engaged. And note that he labored very hard, made mental connections, rewarded himself with a feeling of happiness—you saw the smile. This is tremendous.”

  “Yes, I did see him smile a little. It’s good that he is not depressed, considering his injuries.”

  “No. That’s not the important point at all. If I were concerned about his attitude, I’d prefer for him to be depressed. No, my point is that regardless of whether he’s pleased or annoyed, at least he isn’t apathetic. And if his systems can still assign values to experiences, then he can use those values for self-reinforcement—that is, for learning. And if his systems can learn properly, he’ll be able to help us repair more of the damage.”

  “When you put it that way—then I see why it is important. What next?”

  “The process continues. I will let him sleep, then try again.”

  “But won’t he lose his short-term memories? The memories that you have restored? Won’t they fade away if he sleeps?’

  “No—because these are not short-term memories but reconnected K-lines or functions that existed before. K-lines are nerve fibers connected to sets of memories, sets of agents, that reactivate previous partial mental states. Think of them as reconnected circuits. Not reconnected in fragile human synapses, but in tough computer-memory units.”

  “If you are right—that means that everything you have done is working out,” Benicoff said, hoping that his lack of enthusiasm did not show in his voice. Was the doctor reading an awful lot into one little flicker of a smile? Perhaps wanting to believe so much that she might be deceiving herself. He had been expecting something more dramatic.

  Erin Snaresbrook had not. She had not known what to expect in this totally new procedure, but was immensely satisfied with the results now. Let Brian rest, then she would talk to him again.

  A room. He was in a room. The room had a window because he knew what a window looked like. There was someone else in the room. Someone with gray hair and a white thing on her body.