"I appreciate. Now if you will excuse me I have to go to work. Come with me." They scrubbed and dressed in silence, then went into the O.R. Once more the covering on Brian's open brain was pulled back.

"This operation will hopefully be the last," Erin Snaresbrook said. "This is a computer that will be implanted in his brain."

She was balancing an oddly shaped black plastic form on the palm of her gloved hand, holding it up so that the camera that was recording the operating procedure could get a clear view of it. "It is a million-processor CM-10 connection machine with a 1,000-megahertz router and then a thousand megabytes of RAM. It has the capacity to easily do 100 trillion operations per second. Even after the implantation of the connection chip films there is space in the brain left for this where the dead tissue was removed. The computer case was shaped to exactly fit into this space."

She laid the supercomputer on the sterile tray. The tendrils of the machine above dropped down over it, examined it, picked it and rotated it into the correct position for implantation. When the preparation was complete the computer was lifted, then lowered into the opening in Brian's skull.

"Before being finally positioned the connections are made between the computer and each of the films.

There, the connections have been made, the case is being fitted into its permanent position. As soon as the last, external connection is complete we will begin closure. Even now the computer should be in operation. It has been programmed with reconnection-learning software. This recognizes similar or related signals and reroutes the nerve signals within the chips. Hopefully these memories will now be accessible."

"It's a strange kind of graduation present," Dolly said. "The boy needs clothes and a new jacket."

"He'll get them, just take him shopping after school," Paddy said, grunting as he bent to tie his shoes.

"Anyway, clothes aren't any kind of real present for a boy. Especially on an occasion like this. He's finished high school in less than a year and is looking forward to the university. And he's only twelve years old."

"Have you ever thought that we are pushing him too fast?"

"Dolly-you know better than to say a thing like that. There's no pushing here. If anything we have to work hard not to hold him back. It was his idea to finish high school so quickly because there are courses he wants to take that aren't available in secondary education. That's why he wants to see where I work. The security regulations prevented him coming until now. So this is a very exciting moment in his life because he now has all the grounding that he needs to go ahead. To him the university is the horn of plenty, burst ing with good things to consume."

"Well that's all right. He really should eat more. He gets into that computer and forgets where he is."

"A metaphor!" Paddy laughed. "Intellectual food to feed his curiosity."

She was hurt, tried not to show it. "Now you're laughing at me, just because I worry about his health."

"I'm not laughing at you-and his health is fine. And his weight's fine, he grows like a weed and swims and works out just like every other kid. But his intellectual curiosity- that's what is different. You want to come with us? This is his big day."

She shook her head. "It's not for me. Just enjoy yourself and see that you are back by six. I'm making a turkey with all the trimmings and Milly and George are coming over later. I want to be cleaned up before they get here-"

The door crashed open and Brian thundered in.

"Aren't you ready, Dad? Time to go."

"Ready when you are." Brian was at the front door, almost out of it; Paddy called after him. "And say good-bye to Dolly."

"Bye," and he was gone.

"An important day for him," Paddy said.

"Important, of course," Dolly said quietly to herself as the door closed. "And I'm just the housekeeper around here."

The artificial island and attendant oil platforms were home to Brian now; he was no longer aware of this unusual environment. When it all had been new to him he used to explore the rigs, sneaking down the gangways to the bottom level with the sea surging around the steel legs below. Or up to the helipads, even climbing around a locked barrier once to clamber up the ladder to the communication mast on the administration building, the highest point in UFE. But his curiosity about these mechanical constructs had long since been satisfied; he had much more important and interesting things to think about now as they walked across the bridge mat led to the lab rig.

"All the electronic laboratories are here," Paddy explained. "That's our generator over there, the dome, since we need a clean and stable power supply."

"Pressurized water reactor from the submarine Sailfish. Junked in 1994 when the global agreement was signed."

"That's the one. We go in here, second floor."

Brian stared about in silence, tense with excitement. It was Saturday so they had the place entirely to themselves. Though an occasional sudden humming of drives and a glowing screen showed that at least one background program had been left running.

"Here is where I work," Paddy said, pointing to the terminal. A charred briar pipe was resting on top of the keyboard and he removed it before he pulled the chair out for Brian. "Sit down and hit any key to turn it on. I tell you I'm proud of this yoke, the new zed seventy-seven. It gives you an idea of the kind of work we're doing if they pop for something like mis. Makes a Cray look like a beat-up Macintosh."

"Really?" Brian's eyes were wide as he ran his fingers along the edge of the keyboard.

"Well, not really." Paddy smiled as he rooted in his pocket for his tobacco. "But it is faster in certain kinds of calculation and I really need it for the development work on LAMA. That's a new language that we are developing here."

"What's it for?"

"A new, rapidly developing and special need. You write programs in LOGO, don't you?"

"Sure. And BASIC and FORTRAN-and I'm learning E out of a book. My teaching has been telling me something about Expert Systems."

"Then you will already know that different computer languages are used for different purposes. BASIC is a good first hands-on language for learning some of the simplest things computers can do-for describing procedures, step by step. FORTRAN has been used for fifty years because it is especially good for routine scientific calculations, though it now has been replaced by formula-understanding Symbolic Manipulation systems.

LOGO is for beginners, particularly children, it is so graphical, making it easy to draw pictures."

"And it lets you write programs that write and run other programs. The others don't let you do that. They just complain when you try."

"You'll discover that you can do that in LAMA, too. Because, like LOGO, it is based on the old language LISP. One of the oldest and st ill one of the best-because it is simple and yet can refer back to itself. Most of the first expert programs, in the early days of artificial intelligence, were developed by using the LISP language. But the new kinds of parallel processing in modern AI research need a different approach-and language-to do all those things and more. That's LAMA."

"Why is it named for an animal?"

"It isn't. LAMA is an acronym for Language for Logic and Metaphor. It is partially based on the CYC program developed in the 1980s. To understand artificial intelligence it is first vital that we understand our own intelligence."

"But if the brain is a computer, what is the mind? How are they connected?"

Paddy smiled. "A question that appears to be a complete mystery to most people, including some of the best scientists. Yet as far as I can see it's really no problem at all, just a wrong question. We shouldn't think of the mind and brain as two different things that have to be connected, since they are just two different ways of looking at the same thing. Minds are simply what brains do."

"How does our brain computer compute thoughts?"

"No one really knows exactly-but we have a pretty good idea. It isn't really just one big computer. It's made of millions of little bunches of interconnected nerve cells. Like a society. Each bunch of cells acts like a little agent that has learned to do some little job-either by itself or by knowing how to get some other agents to help. Thinking is the result of all those agents being connected in ways that make them help each other-or to get out of the way when they cannot help. So even though each one can do very little, each one can still carry a little fragment of knowledge to share with the others."

"So how does LAMA help them share?" Brian had listened with complete concentration, taking in every word, analyzing and understanding.

"It does this by combining an Expert System shell with a huge data base called CYC-for encyclopedia. All previous Expert Systems were based on highly specialized knowledge, but CYC provides LAMA with millions of fragments of common sense knowledge-the sorts of things that everyone knows."

"But if it has so many knowledge fragments, how does LAMA know which ones to use?"

"By using special connection agents called nemes, which associate each knowledge fragment with certain others. So that if you tell LAMA that a certain drinking-cup is made of glass, then the nemes automatically make it assume that the cup also is fragile and transparent-unless there is contrary evidence. In other words, CYC provides LAMA with the millions of associations between ideas that are needed in order to think."

When Paddy stopped talking to light his pipe the boy sat in silence for almost a minute.

"It's complex," Paddy said. "Not easy to pick up the first time around."

But he had misunderstood Brian's silence, misunderstood completely because the boy had followed what he had said to its logical conclusion.

"If the language works like that-then why can't it be used to make a real working artificial intelligence?

One that can think for itself-like a person?"

"No reason at all, Brian, no reason at all. In fact that is just what we are hoping to do."

7

February 22, 2023

Erin Snaresbrook felt logy with sleep-even though she had slept for only five hours. It had not been by choice but by necessity, since she hadn't been to bed at all for almost three days. She was beginning to hallucinate and more than once had found her eyes closing in the O.R. for lack of proper rest. It was too much. She had used one of the vacant intern's rooms, fallen into a black hole of fatigue and, what seemed like a moment later, had been dragged painfully awake by the clamor of alarm. A cold shower shocked her back to life; reddened eyes blinked back at her from the mirror as she put on a touch of lipstick.

"Erin, I have to tell you. You look rotten,'' she muttered, sticking out a furred and tired-looking tongue. "I prescribe coffee for your condition, Doctor. Preferably intravenously."

When Snaresbrook came into her waiting room she saw that Dolly was already there, turning the pages on a worn copy of Time. She looked at her watch.

"Patients steal all the new magazines, would you believe it? Rich patients, or they wouldn't be here, they even pinch the toilet paper and bars of soap. Sorry I'm late."

"No, that's fine, Doctor, it's all right."

"We'll have some coffee, then get to work. You go in, I'll be just a moment."

Madeline had the mail ready and she flipped quickly through it, glancing up when the door flew open. She smiled insincerely at the angry General.

"Why are you and the patient still in this hospital?

Why have my orders for moving him not been carried out?"

General Schorcht snapped the words like weapons. Erin Snaresbrook thought of many answers, most of them quite insulting, but she was too tired for a shouting match this early in the day.

"I will show you, General. Then maybe you will climb down off my back." She threw the correspondence onto the desk, then pushed by the General and out into the hall. She stamped toward the intensive-care unit where Brian was, heard the General's heavy footsteps behind her. "Put this on," she snapped, and tossed General Schorcht a sterile mask. "Sorry," she said, took the mask and fixed it into position over the other's nose and mouth; it's not easy to fit one of the things with only one hand. When her own mask was in place she opened the door to the ICU just enough so they could see in. "Take a good look."

The figure on the table was barely discernible behind the network of pipes, tubes, wires, apparatus. The two arms of the manipulator were positioned over him, the multibranching fingers dropping down into the opening in the cloth. The flexible tube of the oxygen mask wormed out from under the drapes and there were drips and tubes plugged into arms and legs and into almost every orifice of the unconscious body. Lights flickered on one of the complex machines; a nurse looked at a readout on the screen and made an adjustment.

Snaresbrook let the door swing shut and pulled the mask from the General's face.

"You want me to move all that? While the connection apparatus is in place-and in operation? It is working with the internal computer now to reroute nerve signals."

She turned on her heel and left: General Schorcht's continuing silence was answer enough.

She was humming cheerfully when she entered her office and turned on the hulking coffee machine. Dolly sat on the edge of her chair and Erin pointed a spoon at her.

"How about a nice strong espresso?"

"I don't drink coffee."

"You should. It is certainly easier on the metabolism than alcohol."

"I can't sleep, it's the caffeine you see. Nor do I drink alcohol either."

Nodding sympathetically over the coffee, an answer to the unanswerable, Snaresbrook sat down at her desk and brought up on the screen the transcribed notes of their previous interview.

"You told me a lot of very vital things last time you were here, Dolly. You not only have a good memory but a deep understanding. You were a good and affectionate mother to Brian, that is obvious in the way you speak about him." She glanced up and saw that the other woman was blushing lightly at this casual compliment; life had not been that kind to Dolly and compliments very rare. "Do you remember when Brian reached puberty?" Erin asked, and the blush deepened.

"Well, you know, it's not as obvious as with girls. But he was young I think, around thirteen."

"This is most important. Up until now we have been tracking his emotional life as a small child, then going on to follow his learning patterns and intellectual history. That is all going very well. But major emotional and physiological changes take place with the onset of puberty. That time and area must be explored in depth, charted as well as we can. Do you remember him dating-or having any girlfriends?"

"No, nothing like that. Well there was a girl he saw for a bit, she would come around the house to use his computer sometimes. But it didn't seem to last very long. She was the only one. Then of course there was the matter of their age difference, she was much older than him. So the relationship could only have been platonic. I do remember that she was a pretty little thing. Name of Kim."

"Kim, I want you to take a look at your screen right now," Dr. Betser said. "You had trouble with this last week and until you know exactly what is happening you won't be able to move on to the next step. Now look at this."

The instructor had typed the equations into his own computer-which not only displayed them on the screen in front of the class but entered them into the desk computers of all the students at the same moment.

"Show us how to do it," he said and switched command to her. All eyes were on the screen as Kim reluctantly touched her keyboard.

All eyes except Brian's. He had worked out the solution within a minute after the problem had been entered.

College was becoming as frustrating as high school had been. He spent almost all of his class time waiting for the others to catch up with him. They were a stupid and despicable lot who looked down on him like some kind of freak. All of them were four, five years older than he was-while most of them stood a head taller. At times he felt like a midget. And it wasn't just paranoia on his part-they really did hate him, he was sure of it. Disliked him because he was younger, out of place here. Plenty of jealousy too, since he did the work so much better and faster than they did. How had people who really knew how to think, like Turing or Einstein or Feynman, how had they managed to live through school?

He looked at his screen and tried not to groan as the girl made a hash of it. It was too awful to watch. He casually pushed his pocket calculator against the side of his terminal and punched in a quick code. A list of Italian verbs appeared in a window on the screen and he scrolled through them, memorizing the new ones.

Brian had discovered, very early on, that the school tapped into every student's computer and recorded all the data that was entered into it. This was made obvious by some of the questions they had asked him, knowledge they could only have obtained in this underhand way. Once he had discovered it, he made sure that the school computer was just used for schoolwork. He had observed that his teachers, Dr. Betser in particular, were quite certain that their words were golden-and would be quite upset if they discovered that during their lectures he had been running war games or accessing data bases instead of giving them a hundred percent attention. But there were ways around everything. If all of the computers in the schoolroom had been connected by cables it might have been easier-or harder to misdirect information. But now narrow- band infrared links, like ethernet systems, filled the room with invisible communication. Every computer had a digitally tunable LED, a light-emitting diode, that transmitted on low-noise channels. A photodetector picked up messages it was tuned to. Brian's solution to this was to build an intercepting device into what appeared to be a pocket calculator. When it was placed at the side of his computer it intercepted the incoming signal and rebroadcast it. So he could do whatever he wished without anyone being able to detect the operation. What was on the screen was for his eyes alone! Allattare to feed or to nurse... allenare to exercise, to train.

He was still keeping track of the class and became vaguely aware that Dr. Betser's voice was taking on that weary, nagging tone.

"... a basic misunderstanding of how we make successive approximations. Unless you get this basic point, you'll never get any further. Brian-will you do this correctly so we can move on. And, Kim, I want to see you after class."

The Italian verbs vanished as Brian pushed the calculator aside. He looked at the screen and tracked her first error. "The misconception begins here," he said, moving the cursor and highlighting the equation. "After you find the first-order solution, you have to remove it-subtract it from the original equation-before you can apply the same method to find the next term. If you forget to do that, you'll keep getting the same term again. And then you have to divide out the independent variable, or you will just get zero the next time. And finally, you have to go backward again, adding the terms back in and multiplying back the variable again. I think the trouble is that everyone in the class believes that there are a lot of different ideas here, derivatives, approximations, second- order approximations, and so on. But there's only one idea, used over and over. I don't see why they make it out to be so complicated..."

An hour later Brian was eating his cheese and tomato sandwich and reading Galaxy Warhounds of Procyon when someone sat down heavily on the bench beside him. This was unusual enough since he was left strictly alone by the other students. More unusual were the tanned fingers that pulled the book from him and slammed it onto the table.

"Juvenile science fiction space crap that only kids read," Kim snapped at him.

He had had this argument often enough before. "Science fiction utilizes a vocabulary twice as large as that of all other popular fiction. While SF readers are in the top percent ile..."

"Space balls! You made me look pretty dumb today."

"Well you were pretty dumb! I'm sorry."

Brian's worried expression got to her; she could never stay angry very long in any case. She laughed aloud and pushed his book back to him. Pushing it through a slice of tomato on the table. He smiled and wiped the cover with his napkin.

"In fact it wasn't even your fault anyway," he said. "Old Betser may be a wizard programming mathematician but he doesn't know a gnat's fart about explaining it to anyone."