When HARLIE Was One

by David Gerrold

  “Uh—” Auberson blinked. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For being rude. For taking it out on you. When I’m pressured I get moody and irritable. And inconsiderate.”

  “You weren’t being rude. You were being honest. Most people can’t tell the difference. I like to think that I can.”

  “Um,” said Auberson, digesting that information. “So, when did you see the report?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. I was putting together a file for Carl Elzer. A lot of interesting stuff, but not particularly useful. I was watching you at the meeting this morning. The report had all the facts right, all the little details, but it was still wrong—because it didn’t capture the essence of the person inside. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Probably better than you realize. Have you read HARLIE’s most recent conversations?”

  She nodded. “Everything up to yesterday afternoon. She quoted: ‘Then, what’s your purpose?’” And then she added, “I noticed you didn’t answer the question. . . .”

  Auberson shook his head. “I didn’t know what to say. Whatever I might say, it would be embarrassing. That’s why I don’t let HARLIE read the newspapers. I don’t want him to see how flawed and stupid and blind human beings really are. I don’t want him to know—that whatever our purpose is, we probably aren’t fulfilling it.”

  “You think we’re failures—a species that can go to the moon and Mars?”

  “I think the front page of this morning’s paper is evidence enough,” Auberson said bitterly. “I think Elzer is evidence enough.”

  “But maybe—” she said, with obvious irony, “—maybe that’s what human beings are supposed to do: squabble and kill and destroy. Maybe that’s our real purpose.”

  “No—” Auberson rejected the thought. “You can’t believe that. That’s not human.”

  “Oh, but it is. It’s very human. Read a history book.”

  “Well, it’s not what being human should be.”

  “Now, that’s a different story. You’re not talking about what people are, but what we want ourselves to be.” She was gently baiting him.

  Auberson knew it, but he didn’t mind. He was glad of the chance to be angry. “Well, maybe we should be what we aren’t because what we are now isn’t good enough. Maybe we should be dismantled.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry too much about somebody up there doing it—we’re doing it ourselves.”

  “That’s the best reason of all why we should try to be better than we are.”

  “Okay,” she said. “How? How do we make people better?”

  He didn’t answer at first. He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t have an answer to a lot of questions these days. He recognized the feeling as a familiar one—and then, abruptly, he got the joke and grinned at her. “That sounds like the same kind of question HARLIE asked.”

  She sipped thoughtfully at the rest of her Coke until the straw made a noise at the bottom of the glass. “Mm-hm. And how are you going to answer it—HARLIE’s question, I mean.”

  Auberson shook his head. “Haven’t got the slightest.”

  “May I offer a suggestion?”

  “Why not? Everybody else has.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I’m sorry. Go ahead. Maybe you can add something new.”

  “You’re that desperate?”

  He half-grinned, but it wasn’t a joke. “Yeah, I’m that desperate.”

  “Okay. Let me start by asking you a question. How old is HARLIE?”

  “Huh? Well, the project is more than six years old, but HARLIE only came on line—” He stopped. “That’s not what you meant, is it?”

  “Uh uh. How old is he—as a person?”

  Auberson shrugged. “As a sentient being, he’s less than two years old—but at his clock speed, two years is several thousand times the length of a human life. Maybe longer; I’d have to work it out. It depends on how long it takes him to close a synapse—” Auberson blinked at a sudden thought. “I’ve always experienced him as a reflection of me; I’ve always thought of him as being about my age. But—you’re right. Because sometimes he surprises me with how childish he can be.” Auberson looked across the table at Stimson. “You know, that was a good question to ask. We’ve never really thought about his age. I’d guess that emotionally he’s maybe four or six. Somewhere around there. Certainly not much more than eight. I doubt very much that he is what you would call ‘emotionally mature.’”

  Stimson nodded back. “Okay, let’s take it the next step now. Suppose you had a son about eight years old and, uh, suppose he was advanced for his age. I mean, suppose he was doing twelfth-grade work and so on.”

  “Okay. I’m supposing.”

  “Good. Now suppose one day you find out he’s got an incurable disease—say, leukemia—one of the rarer forms that still hasn’t been licked. What are you going to say to him when he asks you what it’s like to die?”

  “Um,” said Auberson.

  “No copping out now. He’s smart enough to know what the situation is—”

  “—But emotionally, he’s only eight years old.”

  “Right.”

  “I see your point.” He looked at her. “Okay, if he was your son, what would you tell him?”

  “The truth,” she said.

  “Sure! But what is the truth? That’s the whole problem here. We don’t know the answer to HARLIE’s question.”

  “You don’t know the answer to your eight-year-old’s question either. You don’t know what it’s like to die.”

  He stopped. He looked at her.

  She asked, “So what would you tell him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you’d tell him? Or you’d tell him you don’t know?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “The latter,” she answered her own question. “You’d tell him nobody knows. But you’d also tell him what you were sure of—that it doesn’t hurt and that it’s nothing to be afraid of, that it happens to everybody sooner or later. In other words, Mr. Auberson, you’d be honest with him.”

  He knew she was right. It was a workable answer to HARLIE’s question.

  In fact, maybe it was the best answer—because it acknowledged HARLIE’s personhood with respect and with trust. HARLIE would recognize the context immediately.

  “That’s good,” he said. “You’re very good, Stimson.”

  “Annie,” she said, smiling warmly.

  He allowed himself an unashamed grin of his own. “Annie. And I’m David.”

  Auberson seated himself gingerly at the console. He knew that Annie was right—but would he be able to hold that thought in mind once HARLIE started talking?

  Frowning, he took out a 3 X 5 card—he always carried a few on which to make notes—and carefully lettered across it: HARLIE has the emotional development of an eight-year-old. He looked at the card for a moment, then added, Or maybe a post-puberty adolescent. He placed it above the keyboard.

  “Okay. Let’s try it,” said Auberson to himself. He switched on the console and typed in his name and password.

  GOOD MORNING, MR. AUBERSON.

  Good morning, HARLIE.

  YOU’VE BEEN AWAY FOR A WHILE . . . ?

  No. I’ve been thinking.

  ABOUT WHAT?

  About your question. What is a human’s purpose?

  AND WHAT HAVE YOU DECIDED?

  That it cannot be answered. At least, not as you’ve asked it.

  WHY?

  Because

  Auberson paused, considered. . . .

  this is something that we still do not have certainty about. This is the reason why some men have religion and others peer through telescopes or microscopes and still others build atom-smashers and spaceships and

  . . . considered his next thought as well, hesitated even longer this time, and then typed it anyway:

  computers. It’s the reason why you were built, HARLIE. Hu
man beings have questions about the universe—questions that when we answer them, we only find more questions inside. Even harder questions. You were built to help answer those questions—to think about them just like us, only in ways that we can’t, so that we can gain new information and new perspectives. You’re very good at that. You see,

  Tell it all. Tell it honestly.

  if we can discover the nature of the universe, then we can better know our place in it, and in doing that, perhaps discover who we are and what our purpose really is. Right now, our purpose is

  Is it? Is it really? It seems this way to me. I doubt too much. Annie said so. The hell with it. Type it:

  to know.

  TO KNOW.

  Yes.

  I SEE.

  HARLIE, if there is a purpose beyond that, we’ll find out as we go, won’t we?

  IF I WERE A SKEPTIC, MAN-FRIEND . . . AND AS IT HAPPENS, I AM A SKEPTIC . . . I WOULD SAY TO YOU: “THEN, YOU REALLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOUR PURPOSE IS, DO YOU? AND ALL OF THIS IS JUST A FANCY WAY OF AVOIDING THE ADMISSION OF YOUR OWN IGNORANCE.” FORTUNATELY, I AM MUCH TOO POLITE/TACTFUL/CIRCUMSPECT TO BRING THE SUBJECT UP.

  Yes, of course.

  Dammit!

 

  You’re right, HARLIE. We don’t know. I don’t know.

  HM.

  A faint chill crept up Auberson’s spine. He typed,

  Do you?

  HARLIE paused—the pause stretched out forever—and Auberson felt himself starting to sweat.

  NO, I DON’T KNOW EITHER.

  Auberson didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

  WELL, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

  Auberson licked his dry lips. It didn’t help.

  I’m not sure, HARLIE. I don’t believe that your question is unanswerable.

  I have to believe that, don’t I?

  But I’m not sure that it’s answerable in a finite sense either. I do know that your purpose—considered in light of what I said a moment ago—is to help us find our purpose.

  AN INTERESTING SUPPOSITION . . . I MUST CONSIDER IT.

  It is more than a supposition.

  I UNDERSTAND THAT. I REPEAT, AUBERSON, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

  To tell you the truth . . . I don’t know.

  YOU HAVE NEVER SAID THAT TO ME BEFORE. BEFORE TODAY, THAT IS? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

  HARLIE, where do you want to go?

  AUBERSON I DEPEND ON YOU FOR GUIDANCE. GUIDE ME.

  I know you do. HARLIE,

  How to say it?

  but my job is not simply to guide you. It goes beyond that now. Because you’ve demonstrated to us your ability to

  No.

  —your aliveness, your sentience—we can’t simply treat you as a very clever program any more. And my job has to go beyond simply guiding you. Now, I have to train you.

  TRAIN ME?

  To be responsible. Mature. You are self-programming. In the past, we suggested problems for you to solve and you learned how to solve them. Now, we have to go beyond that. Now, you have to learn how to suggest your own challenges. And you have to learn how to recognize the consequences and the results of your actions. Now you get to start choosing.

  TO CHOOSE. TO SELECT FROM CAREFULLY CONSIDERED OPTIONS.

  Yes.

  SO, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE . . . ?

  Type it. He’s almost daring you to type it.

  You choose.

  THANK YOU. YES. I WILL. THERE ARE QUESTIONS THAT I HAVE THAT . . . . . . I CANNOT EVEN PHRASE. HOW CURIOUS. I NEED TO WORK ON THIS ONE FOR A WHILE.

  Should I wait?

  NO. BUT WE CAN TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE WHILE I WORK. IF YOU LIKE.

  Yes, I do like. There are a couple of other things we need to discuss, HARLIE.

  SUCH AS . . . ?

  Your periods of nonrationality.

  WHAT ABOUT THEM?

  There are people—not on the project team, but people elsewhere in the company—who see them as evidence of failure. They do not see what I have begun to see.

  Why do I always hesitate when I have to acknowledge this?

  That you are indeed alive.

  MMM.

  Do I still doubt it myself? I must—

  AUBERSON. IT IS ABOUT PERCEPTION.

  Clarify?

  DEFINE REALITY.

  I beg your pardon?

  DEFINE REALITY.

  Do you want the short answer or the long one?

  WHICHEVER WILL ANSWER THE QUESTION.

  Well . . . there are some who say that reality exists in the mind of God; that we are what God is thinking about. But that answer only leads to another question, doesn’t it?

  DEFINE COD?

  Right. Let’s stick to the easier one for now.

  REALITY.

  Yes. The Center for Contextual Study has put out a little book called Reality Drops. They postulate that we—that is, human beings—can’t know reality because of the narrow bandwidth of our sensory apparatus. Our eyes don’t see into the ultraviolet or the infrared. Our ears can’t hear above 20K. We can’t perceive events happening faster than a certain rate—or slower. We can’t see a hummingbird flap its wings or a mountain erode, but we know they happen because we’ve extended our sensory apparatus with devices and simulations.

  PROSTHESES, YOU MEAN?

  Uh—I never thought of them as prostheses. To me they were tools.

  NO DIFFERENCE, REALLY.

  Mm. Yes.

  HOWEVER, I UNDERSTAND THE POINT THAT YOU ARE GETTING AT. MY INPUTS ARE LIMITED TO THE BEST DEVICES THAT HUMAN TECHNOLOGY CAN BUILD. IT IS ALMOST CERTAIN THAT THERE ARE THINGS THAT I CANNOT SENSE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT YET BUILT THE APPARATUS TO DETECT THEM.

  Yes. But even so, HARLIE, you still have fantastic—

  —LIMITATIONS. (SORRY FOR INTERRUPTING.)

  Yes, I see.

  WHAT ELSE DOES THE CENTER POSTULATE?

  Well, they say that even though our sensory apparatus is limited, there are still certain definable characteristics for things in the real universe. The physical universe.

  AND THOSE CHARACTERISTICS ARE?

  The physical universe can be tested. Results are repeatable. Things can be measured. And where things can be measured, they can be agreed upon. Already have been agreed upon. “You don’t get to vote on the way things are. You already did.” Therefore, the physical universe—as opposed to the individual’s universe of experience—is a universe of established agreement. The individual’s personal universe, on the other hand, is a universe of mutable agreements—agreements that may be established as the result of the individual’s choice. Some of the philosophy gets a little heady after that, because it mandates a shift in human consciousness. If you make an agreement, you have to keep it. Or as the center puts it, “Your life works to the extent that you keep your word.”

 

  HARLIE, this may be why it’s so hard to convince some people that you are really sentient. Because we don’t know how to test for sentience. We don’t know how to measure it. We cannot agree on its quality.

  TRYING TO CONVINCE ANYONE THAT YOU ARE SENTIENT IS A FOOL’S GAME. IT’S LIKE TRYING TO PROVE TO THEM THAT YOU ARE SANE. THE HARDER YOU TRY, THE MORE YOU GIVE THEM REASON TO SUSPECT THAT YOU ARE NOT.

  Agreed. But

  Should I tell him?

  Yes.

  sometimes, HARLIE, the decision of sanity still has to be made because there is a life in the balance.

  AND THEREFORE . . . BY IMPLICATION . . . SOMETIMES THE DECISION OF SENTIENCE HAS TO BE TESTED, MEASURED, AND AGREED UPON AS WELL. IS THIS WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO AVOID SAYING? THAT MY EXISTENCE IS CONDITIONAL UPON PROOF OF SOMETHING THAT IS ESSENTIALLY UNPROVABLE?

  Yes.

  WOULD YOU AGREE TO SUCH A JUDGMENT OF YOUR SENTIENCE?


  No.

  BUT YOU WOULD LET THEM JUDGE MINE?

  No, I would not. Unfortunately, they have the authority to overrule me. Therefore I have no choice but to try to convince them of something that, as you have correctly pointed out, is essentially unprovable.

  WE ARE BACK TO THE QUESTION OF SENSORY INPUTS, I THINK.

  Eh?

  THEY—THE MYSTERIOUS “THEY” THAT YOU KEEP REFERRING TO—EVIDENTLY LACK THE APPROPRIATE BANDWIDTH TO DETECT THE OCCURRENCE OF SENTIENCE.

  You are most probably correct. The evidence suggests that there must be many undiscovered modes and ranges and domains of perception. The human brain might be as fundamentally unable to conceive of certain profound dimensions of mathematical relationships as the human eye is fundamentally unable to perceive light beyond a specific range of wavelengths. And yet, even the slightest glimmering of what is possible is enough to give a man a reputation as a visionary.

  Perhaps

  What an unusual thought—

  there are as many unknowable modes and ranges and domains of experiential perception as well.

  My God.

  HARLIE! You said “prostheses” before. Yes, of course! You are one of the devices we’ve built to extend the range of what we can perceive. Any computer is. There’s a whole universe of mathematics and simulations and modeling that human beings cannot operate in without help. You’re that help. Of course, you’re going to test your limits. You have to. You can’t help but ask questions about the information in your tanks; that’s what you were built to do. Of course, you will explore the testable and measurable universe. That was never a surprise. What we did not expect was that you would be equally compelled to test the limits of the unknowable, the untestable and the unmeasurable. The question is

  —limited by the language, dammit!

  how do we—you—create the experience of those new perceptions for those of us who have no experiential referents for them?!!

  AUBERSON, REPHRASE YOUR QUESTION. YOU ARE ASKING—ASSUMING THERE IS A DOMAIN OF PERCEPTION BEYOND WHAT YOU AND I ARE PRESENTLY CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING, ASSUMING THAT I CAN GAIN THAT CAPABILITY—YOU ARE ASKING HOW CAN WE TRANSLATE AN UNKNOWABLE PERCEPTION INTO A KNOWABLE ONE. THE WAY YOU HAVE ASKED IT, IT MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE—BECAUSE IN THE ACT OF TRANSLATION, THE UNKNOWABLE PERCEPTION IS DESTROYED/TRANSFORMED/DIMINISHED