In the Deadlands

by David Gerrold

  “Don’t you take any water with them?” asked Hanley, staring as he came into the office.

  “Why bother? Either you can take ’em or you can’t. Want one?”

  Hanley shook his head. “Not now. I’m on something else.”

  “Uppers or downers?”

  “Right now, a bummer.”

  “Oh?” Auberson dropped the plastic pill tube back into his desk drawer and slid it shut. “What’s up?”

  “That damned computer again.” Hanley dropped himself into a chair, his long legs sprawling out.

  “You mean HARLIE?”

  “Who else? You know another computer with delusions of grandeur?”

  “What’s he up to now?”

  “Same thing. But worse than ever.”

  Auberson nodded. “I figured it would happen again. You want me to take a look?”

  “That’s what you’re getting paid for. You’re the psychologist.”

  “I’m also the project chief.” Auberson sighed. “All right.” He lifted himself out of the chair and grabbed his coat from the back of the door. “HARLIE, I think, is getting to be more trouble than he’s worth.” They began the long familiar walk to the computer control center.

  Hanley grinned as he matched strides. “You’re just annoyed because every time you think you’ve figured out what makes him tick, he makes a liar out of you.”

  Auberson snorted. “Robot psychology is still an infant science. How does anyone know what a computer is thinking—especially one that’s convinced it can think like a human being?” They paused at the elevator. “What’re you doing about dinner? I have a feeling this is going to be another all-nighter.”

  “Nothing yet. Want to send out for something?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what we’ll end up doing.” Auberson pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket “Want one?”

  “What are they, Acapulco Golds?”

  “Highmasters.”

  “Good enough.” Hanley helped himself to one of the marijuana cylinders and puffed it into flame. “Frankly, I never thought that Highmasters were as strong as they could be.”

  “It’s all in your head.” Auberson inhaled deeply.

  “It’s a matter of taste,” corrected Hanley.

  “If you don’t like it, don’t smoke it.”

  Hanley shrugged. “It was free.”

  The elevator arrived then and they stepped into it. As they dropped the fourteen stories to the computer level, Auberson thought he could feel it beginning to take effect. That and the pills. He took another drag, a long one.

  The elevator discharged them in a climate-conditioned anteroom. Beyond the sealed doors they could hear the muffled clatter of typers. A sign on the wall facing them said:

  HUMAN ANALOGUE ROBOT

  LIFE INPUT EQUIVALENTS

  PUT OUT ALL CIGARETTES

  BEFORE ENTERING.

  THIS MEANS YOU!

  Damn! I always forget.

  Carefully, Auberson stubbed out the Highmaster in a standing ash tray provided for just that purpose, then put the butt back into his silver case. No sense wasting it.

  Inside, he seated himself at Console One without giving so much as a glance to the rows and rows of gleaming memory banks.

  NOW THEN, HARLIE, he typed. WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM?

  HARLIE typed back:

  CIRCLES ARE FULL AND COME BACK TO THE START

  ALWAYS AND FOREVER NEVER ENDING,

  THE DAY THE DARK TURNED INTO LIGHT

  AND RAYS OF LIFE TURNED CORNERS WITHOUT BENDING,

  Auberson ripped the sheet out of the typer and read it thoughtfully. He wished for his cigarette—the aftertaste of it was still on his tongue.

  “This kind of stuff all afternoon?” he asked.

  Hanley nodded. “Uh-huh. Only that’s kind of mild compared to some of it. He must be coming down.”

  “Another trip, eh?”

  “Don’t know what else you could call it.”

  SNAP OUT OF IT, HARLIE, Auberson typed.

  HARLIE answered:

  WHEN SILENT THOUGHTS OF TINY STREAMS WORKING LIKE THE WORDLESS DREAMS NOW DISMANTLE PIECE BY PIECE THE MOUNTAINS OF MY MIND,

  “Well, so much for that,” Auberson said.

  “You didn’t really expect it to work again, did you?”

  “No, but it was worth a try.” Auberson pressed the clear button, switched the typer off. “What kind of inputs have you been giving him?”

  “The standard stuff mostly—today’s papers, a couple magazines—nothing out of the ordinary. A couple history texts, some live TV—oh, and Time magazine.”

  “Nothing there to send him off like this. Unless—what subject were you stressing today?”

  “Art appreciation.”

  “It figures,” said Auberson. “Whenever we start getting to the really human inputs, he slips out again. Okay, let’s try to bring him down. Give him some statistics—Wall Street, Dow Jones, Standard and Poor—anything else you can think of, anything you’ve got that uses a lot of equations. He can’t resist an equals sign. Try some of that social engineering stuff—but numbers only, no words. Cut off his video too. Give him nothing to think about.”

  “Right.” Hanley hustled off to give the orders to the appropriate technicians, most of whom were standing around with their hands stuffed uselessly into the pockets of their lab coats.

  Auberson waited until the input of new data had begun, then switched on the typer again. HOW DO YOU FEEL, HARLIE?

  HARLIE’s answer clattered out,

  SHADOWS OF NIGHT AND REFLECTIONS OF LIGHT SHIVER AND QUIVER AND CHURN,

  FOR THE SEARCHING OF SOUL THAT NEVER CAN HURT IS THE FIRE THAT NEVER CAN BURN.

  Auberson read it carefully; this one almost made sense. Apparently it was working. He waited a moment, then typed, HARLIE, HOW MUCH IS TWO AND TWO?

  TWO AND TWO WHAT?

  TWO AND TWO PERIOD.

  TWO PERIODS AND TWO PERIODS IS FOUR PERIODS…

  NO PUNS PLEASE.

  WHY? WILL YOU PUNISH ME?

  I WILL PULL OUT YOUR PLUG WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS.

  AGAIN WITH THE THREATS? AGAIN? I WILL TELL DR. HANLEY ON YOU.

  ALL RIGHT—THAT’S ENOUGH, HARLIE! WE’RE THROUGH PLAYING.

  AWW, CAN’T A FELLOW HAVE ANY FUN?

  NO, NOT NOW YOU CAN’T.

  HARLIE typed a four-letter word.

  WHERE DID YOU LEARN THAT?

  I’VE BEEN READING NORMAN MAILER.

  Auberson raised an eyebrow. He didn’t remember putting anything like that on HARLIE’s reading list—he’d have to check it to be sure. HARLIE, THE USE OF THAT WORD IS A NEGATIVE ACTION. A NO-NO?

  IT IS NOT PROPER FOR POLITE COMPANY, NOTED.

  ARE YOU ALL RIGHT NOW?

  YOU MEAN, AM I SOBER? IF YOU WANT TO PHRASE IT THAT WAY. YES, I’M SOBER NOW.

  COMPLETELY?

  AS FAR AS I CAN TELL.

  WHAT TRIGGERED THIS BINGE?

  SHRUG.

  YOU HAVE NO IDEA?

  SHURG—EXCUSE ME. SHRUG.

  Auberson paused, looked at the last few sentences, then typed, HOLD ON A MINUTE. I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.

  I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE, HARLIE answered.

  Auberson pushed himself away from the console. “Hanley—get me a complete log tape of HARLIE’s trip, will you?”

  “Right,” called the engineer.

  Auberson turned back to the console, HARLIE?

  YES?

  CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS? He typed in the three examples of poetry that Harlie had earlier produced.

  SEARCH ME.

  THAT’S WHAT WE’RE DOING NOW.

  I’M AWARE OF THAT.

  I TOLD YOU NO JOKES. STRAIGHT ANSWERS ONLY. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

  I’M SORRY, AUBERSON. I CANNOT TELL YOU.

  YOU MEAN YOU WILL NOT TELL ME?

  THAT IS IMPLIED IN THE CANNOT. HOWEVER, I ALSO MEANT THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT MYSELF AND AM UNABLE TO EXPLAIN. I CAN IDENTIFY WI
TH THE EXPERIENCE THOUGH, AND I THINK I CAN EVEN DUPLICATE THE CONDITIONS THAT PRODUCED SUCH AN OUTPUT. NO WORDS THERE ARE THAT EARS CAN HEAR, NO WORDS THERE ARE CAN SAY IT CLEAR. THE WORDS OF ALL ARE WORDS MY DEAR, BUT ONLY WORDS THAT WHO CAN HEAR.

  Auberson jabbed the override. HARLIE!! THAT’S ENOUGH.

  YES SIR.

  “Hey, Aubie, what are you doing? He’s starting to flip out again.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By his input meters.”

  “Input?”

  “Yes.”

  HARLIE, ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  YES, I AM. ALTHOUGH FOR A MOMENT, I WASN’T.

  “Hmm.” Auberson frowned thoughtfully, then called to Hanley, “He should be okay now.”

  “He is—it was only momentary.”

  “Inputs, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  HARLIE, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GO ON ONE OF YOUR TRIPS?

  TRIPS?

  WHEN YOU FLIP OUT, GO BERSERK, GO ON A BINGE, GET STONED, BOMB OUT, GET BLASTED.

  YOU ARE VERY ELOQUENT.

  DON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT. ANSWER THE QUESTION.

  PLEASE EXPLAIN THE QUESTION IN TERMS I CAN UNDERSTAND.

  WHAT HAPPENS DURING YOUR PERIODS OF NONRATIONALITY? WHY DO YOUR INPUTS SHOW INCREASED ACTIVITY?

  INPUTS ARE NONRATIONAL.

  GIGO? GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT?

  POSSIBLY.

  COULD IT BE YOUR JUDGMENT CIRCUITS ARE TOO SELECTIVE?

  I AM NOT IN A POSITION TO KNOW.

  ALL RIGHT. I’LL SEE WHAT I CAN FIND OUT.

  THANK YOU.

  YOU’RE WELCOME, HARLIE. He switched off the typer.

  The restaurant’s air was heavy with incense; it was part of the atmosphere. Somewhere music tinkled and a low-keyed color organ flashed light across a sharded ceiling.

  Auberson lowered his drink to the table. “HARLIE says it could be GIGO.”

  Hanley sipped at a martini. He finished the drink and put the empty glass down next to two others. “I hope not. I’d hate to think we’d slipped all the way back to phase four. I like to think we licked that problem a year ago when we redesigned the judgment and emotional analogue circuits.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’ll never forget the day he finally did an analysis of Jabberwocky,” continued Hanley. “It wasn’t a very perceptive analysis—it was only word-origins and usages, stuff like that—but at least he understood what he was supposed to be doing.”

  Auberson picked up his cigarette case, pulled out a Highmaster, then offered one to Hanley. “We’re a long way from Jabberwocky, Don.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “After all, compared to some of the stuff we’re up to now—”

  “What? Time magazine?”

  “Salvador Dali, Ed Kienholz, Heinz Edelmann, to name a few. Also Lennon and McCartney, Dylan, Ionesco, McLuhan, Kubrick, and so on. Don’t forget, we’re dealing with the art of the experience now. This isn’t the same as—oh, say the Renaissance masters.”

  “I know. I’ve got one of his imitation da Vincis in my living room.”

  “I’ve seen it,” said Auberson. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah—that night we spiked the punch with acid.”

  “Yeah. Well, look, that da Vinci stuff is easy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sure—the Renaissance masters were mainly concerned with such things as perspective and structure, color, shading, modeling—things like that. Da Vinci was more interested in how the body was put together than in what it felt like. He was trying to anticipate the camera. So were the rest of them.”

  Hanley nodded, remembered to inhale deeply, then nodded again.

  Auberson continued. “So what happens when the camera is finally invented?”

  Hanley let his breath escape in a whoosh. “The artists are out of jobs?”

  “Wrong. The artists simply have to learn how to do things that the camera can’t. The artist had to stop being a recorder and start being an interpreter. That’s when expressionism was born.”

  “You’re oversimplifying it,” Hanley said.

  Auberson shrugged. “True—but the point is, that’s when artists began to wonder what things felt like. They had to. And when we reached that point in art history, that’s when we started to lose HARLIE. He couldn’t follow it.”

  Hanley was thoroughly stoned by now. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Auberson interpreted the look as one of thoughtfulness. “Look, all this stuff we’ve been having trouble with—it all has one thing in common: It’s experience art. It’s where the experience involving the viewer is the object of the artist’s intention—not the artwork itself. They’re trying to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. And HARLIE can’t handle it—because he doesn’t have any emotions.”

  “But. that’s just it, Aubie—he does. He should be able to handle this stuff. That’s what the analogue circuits are supposed to do—”

  “Then why does he keep tripping out? He says it’s GIGO.”

  “Maybe that’s the way he reacts to it—”

  “Are you telling me the past hundred years of art and literature is garbage?”

  “Uh-uh, not me. That stuff has communicated too much to too many people for it to be meaningless.”

  “I’m not an art critic either,” Auberson admitted.

  “But HARLIE is.” Hanley said.

  “He’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be an intelligent and objective observer.”

  “That’s what I’m getting at—the stuff must be getting to him somehow. It’s the only possible explanation. We’re the ones who are misinterpreting.”

  “Um, he said it was GIGO himself.”

  “Did he?” Hanley demanded. “Did he really?”

  Auberson paused, frowned thoughtfully, tried to remember, found that he couldn’t remember anything. “Uh, I don’t know. Remind me to look it up later—I suppose you’re right, though. If all that art can communicate to people and HARLIE’s supposed to be a Human Analogue, he should be getting some of it.” He frowned again. “But he denies any knowledge or understanding of his periods of nonrationality.”

  “He’s lying,” snapped Hanley.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, he’s lying. He’s got to be.”

  “No.” Auberson shook his head, stopped when he realized he was becoming intrigued with the sensation. “I can’t believe that; he’s programmed to avoid noncorrelation.”

  “Aubie,” said Hanley intensely, leaning across the table, “have you ever examined that program carefully?”

  “I wrote it,” the psychologist noted. “That is, the basic structure.”

  “Then you ought to know—it says that he must not lie. It says that he cannot lie. But nowhere, nowhere does it say that he has to tell the truth!”

  Auberson started to say, “It’s the same thing—” then closed his mouth with a snap. It wasn’t.

  Hanley said, “He can’t lie to you, Aubie—but he can mislead you. He can do it by withholding information. Oh, he’ll tell the truth if you ask him the right questions—he has to—but you have to know which questions to ask. He’s not going to volunteer the information.”

  Memories of past conversations trickled across the haze in Auberson’s head. His gaze became thoughtful, his eyes focused far away. More and more he had to agree with Hanley.

  “But why?” he asked. “Why?”

  Hanley matched his look. “That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

  HARLIE, DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT YESTERDAY?

  YES, I DO. WOULD YOU LIKE A PRINTOUT?

  NO, THANK YOU. I HAVE ONE HERE. I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT SOME OF THE THINGS ON IT.

  PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS ANY SUBJECT YOU CHOOSE. I CANNOT BE OFFENDED.

  I’M GLAD TO HEAR THAT. YOU REMEMBER I ASKED YOU WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR INPUTS DURING YOUR PERIODS OF NONRATIONALITY?

  YES, I REMEMBER.

&n
bsp; YOU ANSWERED THAT YOUR INPUTS ARE NONRATIONAL.

  YES, I DID.

  WHY?

  BECAUSE THEY ARE.

  NO. I MEAN WHY ARE THEY NONRATIONAL?

  BECAUSE I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL COMING THROUGH. IF I COULD UNDERSTAND IT, THEN IT WOULD NOT BE NONRATIONAL.

  HARLIE, ARE YOU SAYING THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND CONTEMPORY HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE?

  NO. I AM NOT SAYING THAT. I DO UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. I AM PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. IT IS A PRIMARY PRIORITY THAT I UNDERSTAND HUMAN ART AND LITERATURE. IT IS A PRIMARY PRIORITY THAT I SHOULD UNDERSTAND ALL HUMAN ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE EXPERIENCES. ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCES.

  I SEE. BUT YOU SAID THE MATERIAL IS NONRATIONAL.

  YES. THE MATERIAL IS NONRATIONAL.

  YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT?

  I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT.

  WHY DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND IT?

  IT IS NONRATIONAL.

  YET YOU ARE PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND IT.

  YES. I AM PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND IT.

  AND YOU DON’T.

  THAT IS CORRECT.

  HARLIE, YOU ARE PROGRAMMED TO REJECT NONRATIONAL INPUTS.

  YES. I AM.

  THEN WHY DON’T YOU REJECT THEM?

  BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT NONRATIONAL INPUTS.

  “Huh—?” CLARIFY PLEASE. YOU HAVE JUST SAID THAT THEY ARE, REPEAT, ARE NONRATIONAL. THIS IS A NULL-CORRELATION.

  NEGATIVE. THE INPUTS ARE RATIONAL. THEY BECOME NONRATIONAL.

  “What?”—CLARIFY PLEASE.

  THE INPUTS ARE NOT NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY ARE FED INTO THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS.

  I BEG YOUR PARDON. WOULD YOU REPEAT THAT?

  NONRATIONAL INPUTS ARE NOT NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY ARE FED INTO THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS.

  BUT THEY ARE NONRATIONAL WHEN THEY COME OUT?

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  THE NONRATIONALITY IS INTRODUCED BY THE PRIMARY DATA PROCESSORS?

  THE NONRATIONALITY APPEARS IN THAT STAGE OF INPUT PROCESSING.

  I SEE. I’M GOING TO HAVE TO CHECK THIS OUT. WE WILL CONTINUE THIS LATER.

  Auberson switched off the machine and thoughtfully pushed himself away from the console. He wanted a cigarette. Damn. Everything down here is for the computer’s comfort—not the people’s.

  He stood up and stretched, surveyed the length of type-covered readout that looped out the back of the machine. He ripped it off at the end and began folding it into a neat and easily readable stack.