24

February 22, 2024

"This is my responsibility now," General Schorcht said, a glint of grim determination in his eye, a touch of cold anger in his voice. "Toth. Alex Toth. An army pilot!"

"That is a very good idea," Ben agreed. "This is on your patch and you have the organization to do it. We will of course keep the investigation going at this end. I suggest that Colonel Davis and I liaise at least once a day, oftener if there are any dramatic developments. We must keep each other fully informed about our mutual progress. Is that satisfactory, General?"

"Satisfactory. Company dismissed."

The two Army officers jumped to their feet, stood at attention, followed the General out.

"And you have a good day too, General," Brian said to the stiff, vanishing backs. "Were you ever in the Army, Ben?"

"Happily, no."

"Do you understand the military mind?"

"Unhappily, yes. But I don't want to be rude in the presence of a serving officer." Ben saw Shelly's grim expression and softened his words with a smile. "A joke, Shelly, that's all. Probably in the worst possible taste—so I apologize.

"No need," she said, returning a slight smile. "I don't know why I should be defensive about the military. I joined rotsee to pay for college. Then I enlisted in the Air Force as the only way to get through graduate school. My parents had a vegetable stand in Farmers Market in L.A. Which for anyone else would have been a gold mine. My father is a great Talmudic scholar but a really lousy businessman. The Air Force enabled me to do the only thing I wanted to do."

"Which leads inexorably to the next generation," Brian said. "Where does the investigation go from here?"

"I'm going to follow up all the leads that the copter development opened," Ben said. "As to the Expert Program, our wizard detective Dick Tracy-—that is up to you, Shelly. What's next?"

She poured herself a glass of water from the carafe on the conference table; gave herself a moment to think.

"I'm still running the Dick Tracy program. But I don't expect it to find anything new until we get more data for it."

"Which leaves you with free time—and that means you can work full time on the AI with me," Brian said. "Because the work we do will eventually be fed into the Dick Tracy program."

Ben looked puzzled. "Say again."

"Think about it for a moment. Right now you are approaching the investigation from only the single point of view of the crime that was committed. Well and good—and I hope you succeed before they reach me again. Otherwise I'm for the knackers. But we should also be taking a second approach. Have you thought about just what it was that they stole?"

"Obviously, your AI machine."

"No—it was more than that. They tried to kill everyone who had any knowledge of the AI, to steal or destroy every existing record. And they are still trying to kill me. That makes one thing very clear."

"Of course!" Ben said. "I should have realized that. They not only wanted the AI—but they wanted a world monopoly on it. They might possibly be trying to market it now. They will want to use it commercially to turn a profit. But they have committed murder and theft and certainly don't want to be found out. They have to conceal the fact that they're using it, so they must exploit it in such a way that the AI cannot be traced back to them."

"I see what you mean," Shelly said. "Once they get it working, the stolen AI could be used for almost any purpose. To control mechanical processes, maybe to write software, follow new lines of research, aid product development—it could be used for almost anything."

Benicoff nodded solemn agreement. "And that makes it rather hard to catch them out. We have to be on the lookout, not for anything very specific, but for virtually any type of program or machine that seems peculiarly advanced."

"That's much too general for my program to be able to deal with," Shelly said. "Dick Tracy can only work with carefully structured data bases. It just doesn't have enough knowledge or common sense to help with a problem as broad as this."

"Then we will have to improve it," Brian said. "This is exactly what I'm driving at. It is now perfectly clear what we have to do. First we have to make Dick Tracy smarter, to equip it with more general knowledge."

"You mean to make it into a better AI?" Benicoff asked. "And then use it to find the other AIs. Like setting a thief to stop a thief."

"That's half of it. The other half is what I'm doing with the robot Robin. Making it more like the AI in the notes. If I can do that, then we'll know more about what the stolen machine is capable of. And that will help narrow the search."

"Especially if we can upload those same capabilities into Dick Tracy," Shelly said. "Then it could really know what to search for!"

They all looked at one another, but there seemed to be little more to say. It was clear what each of them had to do.

Ben stopped them as they rose to leave. "One last and important matter to discuss. Shelly's living quarters."

"I'm sorry you mentioned that," she said. "I thought I was getting a lovely little apartment. But at the very last moment the whole deal fell through."

Ben looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry but, well, that was my doing. I have been thinking about the attacks on Brian's life and I realized that you must also be a target now. Once you start developing AI, the murderous power out there will... it's not easy to say, will want to kill you as well as Brian. Do you agree?"

Shelly nodded a reluctant yes.

"Which means you will have to live with the same degree of security as Brian. Here in Megalobe."

"I'll get suicidal if I have to live in the businessmen's flophouse where I am staying now."

"No question of that! I speak with feeling because I have spent many a miserable night there myself. Now can I make a suggestion? There are WAC quarters in the barracks here with provision for female Army personnel. If we knocked a couple of rooms together and fitted them up as a small apartment—would you mind staying there?"

"I'll want a say in the decorating."

"You pick it out—we'll pick up the tab. Electronic kitchen, Jacuzzi bath—anything you want. The army engineers will install it."

"Offer accepted. When do I get the catalogs?"

"I have them in my office right now."

"Ben—you're terrible. How did you know I would go along with this plan?"

"I didn't know—just hoped. And when you look at it from all sides it really turns out to be the only safe thing to do."

"Can I see the catalogs now?"

"Of course. In this building, room 412. I'll call my assistant and have her dig them out."

Shelly started for the door—then spun about. "I'm sorry, Brian. I should have asked you first if you need me."

"I think it's a great idea. In any case I have some other things to do today away from the lab. What do we say we meet there at nine a.m. tomorrow?"

"Right"

Brian waited until the door had closed before he turned to Ben, chewed his lip in silence before he managed to speak. "I still haven't told her about the CPU implant in my brain. And she hasn't asked me about that session where it produced the clue about the theft. Has she mentioned it to you?"

"No—and I don't think she will. Shelly is a very private person and I think she extends the same privacy to others. Is it important?"

"Only to me. What I told you before about feeling like a freak— "

"You're not, and you know it. I doubt if the topic will come up again."

"I'll tell her about it, someday. Just not now. Particularly since I have arranged some lengthy sessions with Dr. Snaresbrook." He glanced at his watch. "The first one will be starting soon. The main reason I am doing this is that I am determined to speed up the AI work."

"How?"

"I want to improve my approach to the research. Right now all that I am doing is going through the material from the backup data bank we brought back from Mexico. But these are mostly notes and questions about work in progress. What I need to do is locate the real memories and the results of the research based upon them. At the present time it has been slow and infuriating work."

"In what way?"

"I was, am, are..." Brian smiled wryly. "I guess there is no correct syntax to express it. What I mean is the me that made those notes was a sloppy note maker. You know how, when you write a note to yourself, you mostly scribble a couple of words that will remind you of the whole idea. But that particular me no longer exists, so my old notes don't remind me of anything. So I've started working with Dr. Snaresbrook to see if we can use the CPU implant to link the notes to additional disconnected memories that are still in my brain. It took me ten years to develop AI the first time—and I'm afraid it will take that long again if I don't have some help. I must get those lost memories back."

"Are there any results of your accessing these memories?"

"Early days yet. We are still trying to find a way to make connections that I can reliably activate at will. The CPU is a machine—and I'm not—and we interface badly at the best of times. It is like a bad phone connection at other times. You know, both people talking at once and nothing coming across. Or I just simply cannot make sense of what is getting through. Have to stop all input and go back to square A. Frustrating, I can tell you. But I'm going to lick it. It can only improve. I hope."

Ben walked Brian over to the Megalobe clinic and left him outside Dr. Snaresbrook's office. He watched him enter, stood there for some time, deep in thought. There was plenty to think about.

The session went well. Brian could, access the CPU at will now, use it to extract specific memories. The system was functioning better—although sometimes he would retrieve fragments of knowledge that were hard to comprehend. It was as though they came as suggestions from someone else rather than from his own memories. Occasionally, when he accessed a memory of his earlier, adult self, he would find himself losing track of his own thoughts. When he regained control he found it hard to recall how it had felt. How strange, he thought to himself. Am I maintaining two personalities? Can a single mind have room for two personalities at once—one old, the other new?

The probing certainly was saving a great deal of time in his research and, as the novelty began to wear off, Brian's thoughts returned to the most serious problems that still beset him on the AI. All the different bugs that led to failures—to breakdowns in which the machine would end up at one extreme of behavior or another.

"Brian—are you there?"

"What—?"

"Welcome back. I asked you the same question three times. You were wandering, weren't you?"

"Sorry. It just seems so intractable and there is nothing in the notes to help me out. What I need is to have a part of my mind that is watching itself without the rest of the mind knowing what is happening. Something that would help keep the system's control circuitry in balance. That's not particularly hard when the system itself is stable, not changing or learning very much—but nothing seems to work when the system learns new ways to learn. What I need is some system, some sort of separate submind that can maintain a measure of control."

"Sounds very Freudian."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Like the theories of Sigmund Freud."

"I don't recall anyone with that name in any AI research."

"Easy enough to see why. He was a psychiatrist working in the 1890s, before there were any computers. When he first proposed his theories—about how the mind is made of a number of different agencies—he gave them names like id, ego, superego, censor and so on. It is understood that every normal person is constantly dealing, unconsciously, with all sorts of conflicts, contradictions, and incompatible goals. That's why I thought you might get some feedback if you were to study Freud's theories of mind."

"Sounds fine to me. Let's do it now, download all the Freudian theories into my memory banks."

Snaresbrook was concerned. As a scientist, she still regarded the use of the implant computer as an experimental study—but Brian had already absorbed it as a natural part of his lifestyle. No more poring over printed texts for him. Get it all into memory in an instant, then deal with it later.

He did not go back to his room, but paced the floor, while in his mind he dipped first into one part of the text, then another, making links and changing them—then gasped out loud.

"This has to be it—really it! A theory that fits my problem perfectly. The superego appears to be a sort of goal-learning mechanism that probably evolved on top of the imprinting mechanisms that evolved earlier. You know, the systems discovered by Konrad Lorenz, that are used to hold many infant animals within a safe sphere of nurture and protection. These produce a relatively permanent, stable goal system in the child. Once a child introjects a mother or father image, that structure can remain there for the rest of that child's life. But how can we provide my AI with a superego? Consider this—we should be able to download a functioning superego for my AI if we can find some way of downloading enough of the details of my own unconscious value structure. And why not? Activate each of my K-lines and nemes, sense and record the emotional values associated with them. Use that data to first build a representation of my conscious self-image. Then add my self-ideal—what the superego says I ought to be. If we can download that, we might be much further on the way toward being able to stabilize and regulate our machine intelligence."

"Let's do it," Snaresbrook said. "Even if no one has proven yet that the thing exists. We'll simply assume that you do indeed have a perfectly fine one inside your head. And we are perhaps the first people ever to be in a position to find it. Look at what we have been doing for months now, searching out and downloading your matrix of memories and thought processes. Now we may as well push a little further—only backward instead of forward in time. We can try to do more backtracking toward your infancy, and see if we can find some nenies and attached memories that might correspond to your earliest value systems."

"And you think that you can do this?"

"I don't see any reason why not—unless what we're seeking just doesn't exist. In any case the search will probably involve locating another few hundred thousand old K-lines and nemes. But cautiously. There might be some serious dangers here, in giving you access to such deeply buried activities. I'll first want to work up a way to do this by using an external computer, while disabling your own internal connection machine for a while. That way, we'll have a record of the structures we discover in external form, which might be used in improving Robin. This will prevent the experiments from affecting you until we're more sure of ourselves."

"Well, then—let's give it a try."

25

May 31, 2024

"Brian Delaney—have you been working here all night? You promised it would just be a few minutes more when I left you here last night. And that was at ten o'clock." Shelly stamped into the lab radiating displeasure.

Brian rubbed his fingers over rough revelatory whiskers, blinked through red-rimmed guilty eyes. Equivocated.

"What makes you think that?"

Shelly flared her nostrils. "Well, just looking at you reveals more than enough evidence. You look terrible. In addition to that I tried to phone you and there was no answer. As you imagine I was more than a little concerned."

Brian grabbed at his belt where he kept his phone—it was gone. "I must have put it down somewhere, didn't hear it ring."

She took out her own phone and hit the memory key to dial his number. There was a distant buzzing. She tracked it down beside the coffeemaker. Returned it to him in stony silence.

"Thanks."

"It should be near you at all times. I had to go looking for your bodyguards—they told me you were still here."

"Traitors," he muttered.

"They're as concerned as I am. Nothing is so important that you have to ruin your health for it."

"Something is, Shelly, that's just the point. You remember when you left last night, the trouble we were having with the new manager program? No matter what we did yesterday the system would simply curl up and die. So then I started it out with a very simple program of sorting out colored blocks, then complicated it with blocks of different shapes as well as colors. The next time I looked, the manager program was still running—but all the other parts of the program seemed to have shut down. So I recorded what happened when I tried it again, and this time installed a natural language trace program to record all the manager's commands to the other subunits. This slowed things down enough for me to discover what was going on. Let's look at what happened."

He turned on the recording he had made during the night. The screen showed the AI rapidly sorting colored blocks, then slowing—then barely moving until it finally stopped completely. The deep bass voice of Robin 3 poured rapidly from the speaker.

"...K-line 8997, response needed to input 10983—you are too slow—respond immediately—inhibiting. Selecting subproblem 384. Response accepted from K-4093, inhibiting slower responses from K-3724 and K-2314, Selecting subproblem 385. Responses from K-2615 and K-1488 are in conflict—inhibiting both. Selecting..."

Brian switched it off. "Did you understand that?"

"Not really. Except that the program was busy inhibiting things——"

"Yes, and that was its problem. It was supposed to learn from experience, by rewarding successful subunits and inhibiting the ones that failed. But the manager's threshold for success had been set so high that it would accept only perfect and instant compliance. So it was rewarding only the units that responded quickly, and disconnecting the slower ones—even if what they were trying to do might have been better in the end."

"I see. And that started a domino effect because as each subunit was inhibited, that weakened other units' connection to it?"

"Exactly. And then the responses of those other units became slower until they got inhibited in turn. Before long the manager program had killed off them all."

"What a horrible thought! You are saying, really, that it committed suicide."

"Not at all." His voice was hoarse, fatigue abraded his temper. "When you say that, you are just being anthropomorphic. A machine is not a person. What on earth is horrible about one circuit disconnecting another circuit? Christ—there's nothing here but a bunch of electronic components and software. Since there are no human beings involved nothing horrible can possibly occur, that's pretty obvious—"

"Don't speak to me that way or use that tone of voice!"

Brian's face reddened with anger, then he dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry, I take that back. I'm a little tired, I think."

"You think—I know. Apology accepted. And I agree, I was being anthropomorphic. It wasn't what you said to me—it was how you said it. Now let's stop snapping at each other and get some fresh air. And get you to bed."

"All right—but let me look at this first."

Brian went straight to the terminal and proceeded to retrace the robot's internal computations. Chart after chart appeared on the screen. Eventually he nodded gloomily. "Another bug of course. It only showed up after I fixed the last one. You remember, I set things up to suppress excessive inhibition, so that the robot would not spontaneously shut itself down. But now it goes to the opposite extreme. It doesn't know when it ought to stop.

"This AI seems to be pretty good at answering straightforward questions, but only when the answer can be found with a little shallow reasoning. But you saw what happened when it didn't know the answer. It began random searching, lost its way, didn't know when to stop. You might say that it didn't know what it didn't know."

"It seemed to me that it simply went mad."

"Yes, you could say that. We have lots of words for human-mind bugs—paranoias, catatonias, phobias, neuroses, irrationalities. I suppose we'll need new sets of words for all the new bugs that our robots will have. And we have no reason to expect that any new version should work the first time it's turned on. In this case, what happened was that it tried to use all of its Expert Systems together on the same problem. The manager wasn't strong enough to suppress the inappropriate ones. All those jumbles of words showed that it was grasping at any and every association that might conceivably have guided it toward the problem it needed to solve—no matter how unlikely on the face of it. It also showed that when one approach failed, the thing didn't know when to give up. Even if this AI worked there is no rule,that it had to be sane on our terms."

Brian rubbed his bristly jaw and looked at the now silent machine. "Let's look more closely here." He pointed to the chart on the machine. "You can see right here what happened this time. In Rob-3.1 there was too much inhibition, so everything shut down. So I changed these parameters and now there's not enough inhibition."

"So what's the solution?"

"The answer is that there is no answer. No, I don't mean anything mystical. I mean that the manager here has to have more knowledge. Precisely because there's no magic, no general answer. There's no simple fix that will work in all cases—because all cases are different. And once you recognize that, everything is much clearer! This manager must be knowledge-based. And then it can learn what to do!"

"Then you're saying that we must make a manager to learn which strategy to use in each situation, by remembering what worked in the past?"

"Exactly. Instead of trying to find a fixed formula that always works, let's make it learn from experience, case by case. Because we want a machine that's intelligent on its own, so that we don't have to hang around forever, fixing it whenever anything goes wrong. Instead we must give it some ways to learn to fix new bugs as soon as they come up. By itself, without our help."

"So now I know just what to do. Remember when it seemed stuck in a loop, repeating the same things about the color red? It was easy for us to see that it wasn't making any progress. It couldn't see that it was stuck, precisely because of being stuck. It couldn't jump out of that loop to see what it was doing on a larger scale. We can fix that by adding a recorder to remember the history of what it has been doing recently. And also a clock that interrupts the program frequently, so that it can look at that recording to see if it has been repeating itself."

"Or even better we could add a second processor that is always running at the same time, looking at the first one. A B-brain watching an A-brain."

"And perhaps even a C-brain to see if the B-brain has got stuck. Damn! I just remembered that one of my old notes said, 'Use the B-brain here to suppress looping.' I certainly wish I had written clearer notes the first time around. I better get started on designing that B-brain."

"But you'd better not do it now! In your present state, you'll just make it worse."

"You're right. Bedtime. I'll get there, don't worry—but I want to get something to eat first."

"I'll go with you, have a coffee."

Brian let them out and blinked at the bright sunshine. "That sounds as though you don't trust me."

"I don't. Not after last night!"

Shelly sipped at her coffee while Brian worked his way through a Texas breakfast—steak, eggs and flapjacks. He couldn't quite finish it all, sighed and pushed the plate away. Except for two guards just off duty, sitting at a table on the far wall, they were alone in the mess hall.

"I'm feeling slightly less inhuman," he said. "More coffee?"

"I've had more than enough, thank you. Do you think that you can fix your screw-loose AI?"

"No. I was getting so annoyed at the thing that I've wiped its memory. We will have to rewrite some of the program before we load it again. Which will take a couple of hours. Even LAMA-5's assembler takes a long time on a system this large. And this time I'm going to make a backup copy before we run the new version."

"A backup means a duplicate. When you do get a functioning humanoid artificial intelligence—do you think that you will be able to copy it as well?"

"Of course. Whatever it does—it will still just be a program. Every copy of a program is absolutely identical. Why do you ask?"

"It's a matter of identity, I guess. Will the second AI be the same as the first?"

"Yes—but only at the instant it is copied. As soon as it begins to run, to think for itself, it will start changing. Remember, we are our memories. When we forget something, or learn something new, we produce a new thought or make a new connection—we change. We are someone different. The same will apply to an AI."

"Can you be sure of that?" she asked doubtfully.

"Positive. Because that is how mind functions. Which means I have a lot of work to do in weighting memory. It's the same reason why so many earlier versions of Robin failed. The credit assignment problem that we talked about before. It is really not enough to learn just by short-term stimulus-response-reward methods—because this will solve only simple, short-term problems. Instead, there must be a larger scale reflective analysis, in which you think over your performance on a longer scale, to recognize which strategies really worked, and which of them led to sidetracks, moves that seemed to make progress but eventually led to dead ends."

"You make the mind sound like—well—an onion!"

"It is." He smiled at the thought. "A good analogy. Layer within layer and all interconnected. Human memory is not merely associative, connecting situations, responses and rewards. It is also prospective and reflective. The connections made must also be involved with long-range goals and plans. That is why there is this important separation between short-term and long-term memory. Why does it take about an hour to long-term memorize anything? Because there must be a buffer period to decide which behaviors actually were beneficial enough to record."

Sudden fatigue hit him. The coffee was cold; his head was beginning to ache; depression was closing in. Shelly saw this, lightly touched his hand.

"Time to retire," she said. He nodded sluggish agreement and struggled to push back the chair.

26

June 19, 2024

Shelly opened her apartment door when Benicoff knocked. "Brian just came in," she said, "and I'm getting him a beer. You too?"

"Please."

"Come in and take a look—after all you paid for it." She led the way into the living room where all traces of the army barracks had been carefully removed. The floor-to-ceiling curtains that framed the window were made from colorful handwoven fabric. The carpeting picked up the dark orange from the curtain pattern. The slim lines of the Danish teak furniture blended pleasantly with this, providing a contrast to the spectacular colors of the post-Cubist painting that covered most of one wall.

"Most impressive," Ben said. "I can see now why the accounts department was screaming."

"Not at this—the fabric and rugs are Israeli-designed but Arab-manufactured and not at all expensive. The painting is on loan from an artist friend of mine, to help her sell it. Most of the money went for the high-tech kitchen. Want to see it?"

"After the beer. I better brace myself for it."

"Going to explain the mystery of your invitation to a Thai lunch today?" Brian said, lolling back comfortably in the depths of a padded armchair. "You know that Shelly and I are prisoners of Megalobe until you run down the killers. So how do we get out to this Thai restaurant of yours?"

"If you can't get to Thailand, why Thailand will come to you. As soon as you told me you wanted to bring me up to date on your AI I thought we ought to make a party of it. Thanks, Shelly."

Ben took a deep swig of cold Tecate and sighed. "Good stuff. It all began with a security check last week. I sit in with Military Intelligence when they vet any soldiers to be transferred here. That was when I discovered that Private First Class Lat Phroa had joined the army to get away from his father's restaurant. He said he had enough of cooking and wanted some action. But after a year of army food he was more than happy to cook a real Thai meal in the kitchen here, if I could get the ingredients. Which I did. The cooks went along with it and the troops are looking forward to the change. We'll have the mess hall to ourselves after two. We'll be the guinea pigs and if we approve, Lat promised to feed everyone else tonight."

"I can't wait," Shelly said. "Not that the food here is bad—but I would love a change."

"How is the investigation going?" Brian asked. It was never far from his thoughts. Ben frowned into his beer.

"I wish I could bring some good news, but we seem to have hit a dead end. We have Alex Toth's military record. He was an outstanding pilot, plenty of recommendations for that. But he is also a borderline alcoholic and a troublemaker. After the war they threw him out as fast as they could. No trace of him at the address he gave at the time. The FBI has found some records of his employment through his pilot's license, kept up to date. But the man himself has vanished. The trail is ice cold. Dusty Rhodes' story checks out. He was conned into it and then left to hang out and dry in the wind. There is absolutely no way to trace the money that was paid into his account."

"What's going to happen to Rhodes?" Shelly asked.

"Nothing now. The remaining money they gave him has been sequestered for the crime victims' fund and he signed a complete statement of everything that happened, everything he did. He'll keep his nose clean in the future or will be hit with a number of charges. We want to keep this thing as quiet as we can while the investigation is still in progress."

Shelly nodded and turned to Brian. "You must bring me up to date. Did you ever get that B-brain to work?"

"Indeed I did, and sometimes it works amazingly well. But not often enough to trust very far. It keeps breaking down in fascinating and peculiar ways."

"Still? I thought that using LAMA-5 made debugging easier."

"It certainly does—but I think that this is more a problem of design. As you know, the B-brain is supposed to monitor the A-brain, make changes when needed to keep it out of various kinds of trouble. Theoretically this works best when the A-brain is unaware of what is happening. But it seems that as Robin's A-brain became smarter it learned to detect that tampering—then tried to find ways to change things back. This ended up in a struggle for power as the two brains fought for control."

"It sounds like human schizophrenia or multiple personalities!"

"Exactly so. Human insanity is mirrored in machine madness and vice versa. Why not? A malfunctioning brain will have the same symptoms from the same cause, machine or man."

"It must be depressing, being set back by lunatic brains in a box."

"Not really. In a way, it's actually encouraging! Because, the more the robot's foul-ups resemble human ones, the closer we are getting to humanlike machine intelligence."

"If it is going that well—why are you so upset?"

"Is it obvious? Well, it's probably because I've finally come to the end of the notes we retrieved. I've worked through just about everything that those notes described. So much so that now I am swimming out into uncharted seas."

"Is there any rule that the AI in your lab must be the same as the one that was stolen?"

"Yes, pretty much so, except for some minor details. And the trouble is that it has so many bugs that I am afraid that we're stuck on a local peak."

"What do you mean?" Ben said.

"Just a simple analogy. Think of a scientific researcher as a blind mountain climber. He keeps climbing up the mountain and eventually reaches a peak and can climb no higher. But because he can't see anything he has no way of knowing that he's not at the top of the mountain at all. It is merely the peak of a local hill—a dead end. Success is then not possible—unless he goes back down the mountain again and looks for another path."

"Makes sense," Ben said. "Are you telling me that the AI you have just built—which is probably almost the same as the one that was stolen—may be stuck on a local peak of intelligence and not on some much higher summit?"

"I'm afraid that's it."

Ben yodeled happily. "But that is the best news ever!"

"Have you gone around the twist?"

"Think for a second. This means that whoever stole your old model must also be stuck in about the same way—but he won't even know it. While you can go and perfect your machine. When that happens we'll have it—and they won't!"

As this sunk in a broad grin spread across Brian's face. "Of course you're right. This is the best news ever. Those crooks are stuck—while I'm going to push right ahead with the work."

"Not at this moment you're not—after lunch!" Shelly said, putting down her wineglass and pointing to the door. "Out. It's after two and I'm starving. Eat first, talk later."

After eating See Khrong Moo sam Rot—which despite its name was absolutely delicious—sweet, sour and salty spareribs— they even managed some custard steamed in pumpkin for dessert.

"I'll never eat army chow again," Brian groaned happily and rubbed his midriff.

"Tell that to the cook—make his day," Shelly said. "That's what I'm going to do."

Lat Phroa took their praise as his due, nodding in agreement. "It was pretty good, wasn't it? If the rest of the troops like it I'm going to work hard to get this kind of chow in the regular menu. If only for my own sake."

Ben left them there and they walked off some of the lunch by strolling back to the lab.

"I'm enthusiastic—but apprehensive," Brian said. "Swimming out into uncharted seas. Up until now I have been following the charts, my own notes—but they have just run out. It's a little presumptuous of fourteen-year-old me to think that I can succeed where the twenty-four-year-old me pooped out."

"Don't be so sure. Dr. Snaresbrook maintains that you're smarter now than ever before—your implants have given you some outstanding abilities. And furthermore, in the work you've done with Snaresbrook—analyzing your own brain—you've probably discovered more about yourself than a squad of psychologists ever could. It's clear to me that you're getting there, Brian. Bringing something new into the world.

"A truly humanlike machine intelligence."

July 22, 2024

Ben found the message in his phone when he woke up. It was Brian's voice.

"Ben—it's four in the morning and we have it at last! The data in Robin was almost enough, and Dr. Snaresbrook finished the job by decoding some more material from my brain. It was an awful job, but we managed to get it done. So now, theoretically, Robin contains a copy of my superego and I've set the computer to reassembling all of Robin's programs to try to integrate the old stuff with the new. Need some sleep. If you can make it please come to the lab after lunch for a demo. Over and out—and good night."

"We've done it," Brian said when they met in the laboratory. "The data already downloaded into Robin was almost enough. It was Dr. Snaresbrook who finished the job, adding what might be called a template, a downloaded copy of my superego. You could say that it was a copy of how the highest-level control functions of my brain operate. All memory that was not associated with control was stripped away until we had what we hoped would be a template of a functioning intelligence. Then came the big job of integrating these programs with the AI programs that were already running. This was not easy but we prevailed. But along the way we had some spectacular failures—some of which you already know about."

"Like the lab wreck last week."

"And the one on Tuesday. But that is all in the past. Sven is now a real pussycat."

"Sven?"

"Really Robin number 7, after we found out that 6.9 couldn't access all the memory we needed."

"Blame Shelly for that," Brian said. "She claims that when I say 'seven' it sounds more like 'sven.' So when I wasn't looking she programmed in a Swedish accent. The name Sven stuck."

"I want to hear your Swedish AI talk!"

"Sorry. We had to take the accent out. Too much hysteria and not enough work getting done."

"Sounds good to me. When do I get to meet your AI?"

"Right now. But first I'll have to wake Sven up." Brain pointed to the motionless telerobot.

"Wake up or turn on?" Ben asked.

"The computer stays on all the time, of course. But the new memory management scheme turned out to be very much like human sleep. It sorts through a day's memories to resolve any conflicts and to delete redundancies. No point in wasting more memory on things that you already know." Brian raised his voice. "Sven, you can wake up now."

The three lens covers clicked open and the legs stirred as Sven turned toward them. "Good afternoon, Brian and Shelly. And stranger."

"This is Ben."

"A pleasure to meet you, Ben. Is that your given name or family name?"

"Nickname," Ben said. Robin had forgotten him again— for the third time—as its memory was changed. "Complete name, Alfred J. Benicoff."

"A pleasure to meet you, Ms. or Mr. Benicoff."

Ben raised his eyebrows and Brian laughed.

"Sven has still not integrated all the social knowledge involved with recognizing sexual distinctions. In fact, in many ways, it is starting from scratch, with entirely new priorities. The main thing is completeness first. I want Sven to have as well rounded an intelligence as that of a growing child. And right now, like a child, I want to teach him how to safely cross streets. We're going for a walk now—would you like to come?"

Ben looked at the clutter of electronic machinery and his eyebrows shot up. Brian laughed at his expression and pointed to the other end of the lab.

"Virtual reality. I can't believe how much it's improved in the last ten years. We'll get into those datasuits and Sven will join us electronically. Shelly will supervise the simulators."

The suits opened at the back; Brian and Ben took off their shoes and stepped in. They were suspended at the waist so they could turn and twist as they walked. The two-dimensional treadmill floor panels let their feet move in any direction, while other effectors inside the boots simulated the shapes and textures of whatever terrain was being simulated. The featherweight helmets turned with their heads, while the screens they looked into displayed the totally computer-generated scene. Ben looked up and saw the Washington Monument above the treetops.

"We're in Foggy Bottom," he said.

"Why not? Details of the city are in the computer's memory—and this gives Sven a chance to deal with the rotten District drivers."

The illusion was almost perfect. Sven stood erect next to him, swiveling its eyes to look around. Ben turned to the image of Brian—only it wasn't Brian.

"Brian—you're a girl—a black girl!"

"Why not? My image here in virtual reality is computer generated so I can be anything. This gives Sven an extra bonus of meeting new people, women, minority groups, anyone. Shall we go for a walk?"

They strolled through the park, hearing the sound of distant traffic, pigeons cooing in the trees above them. A couple came the other way, passed them, talking together and completely ignoring the shambling tree robot. Of course— they were computer-generated images as well.

"We haven't tried crossing any streets yet," Brian said, "so why don't we do that now? Make it easy the first time, will you Shelly?"

Shelly must have worked a control because the heavy traffic in the street ahead began to lighten up. Fewer and fewer cars passed and by the time they had reached the curb there were none in sight. Even the parked cars had driven away, all the pedestrians had turned corners and none had returned.

"Want to keep it as simple as possible. Later on we can try it with cars and people," Brian explained. "Sven, think you can step down off the curb all right?"

"Yes."

"Good. Shall we cross now?"

Ben and Brian stepped into the road.

"No," Sven said. Brian turned to look at the unmoving figure.

"Come on—it's all right."

"You explained that I was to cross the road only when I was sure a car was not coming."

"Well, look both ways, nothing in sight, let's go."

Sven did not move. "I'm still not sure."

"But you've already looked."

"Yes, there was no car then. But now is now."

Ben laughed. "You are very literal, Sven. There is really no problem. You can see both ways for a kilometer at least. Even if a car turned the corner doing one hundred kilometers an hour we could get across well before it reached us."

"It would hit us if it were going five hundred kilometers per hour."

"All right, Sven—that does it for today," Brian said. "Switching off."

The street vanished as the screen went dark; the backs of the suits swung open.

"Now, what was that about?" Ben asked as he backed out and bent to pick up his shoes.

"A problem that we've seen before. Sven still doesn't know when to stop reasoning, to stop being outlandishly logical. In the real world we can never be one hundred percent sure of anything, so we have to use only as much knowledge and reasoning as is appropriate to the situation. And in order to reach a decision there must be a point at which thinking has to stop. But doing that itself requires inhibition skills. I think the reason that Sven got stuck was because his new superego was inhibiting the use of those very skills."

"You mean it turned off the very process that was supposed to stop being turned off? Sounds suspiciously like a paradox. How long will it take to fix?"

"I hope we won't have to fix it at all. Sven should be able to do it on its own."

"You mean by learning from experience?"

"Exactly. After all, there's really nothing wrong with being too careful at first. You have to survive in order to learn. It may take a while, but by learning very carefully Sven can build a solid foundation for learning much more quickly in the future. However there's something more important than walking right now. Shelly merged Dick Tracy with Robin a few days ago. They are pretty well integrated and working on the problem. Sven, has your Dick Tracy agency added any more jobs to your AI occupation list?''

"It has."

"Give us a printout."

The laser printer hummed to life and sheet after sheet began to emerge. Brian took the first sheet and handed it to Ben; it was alphabetized of course.

"Abaca manufacture, abacaxi cultivator, abactinal definer, abaculus setter, abacucus operator, abaisse manufacture... and a lot more like that," Ben said. He looked at the sheets piling up and shook his head. "Could you tell me the reason for all this?"

"I thought that it was obvious. Your investigation of the crime here seems to be grinding to a halt—"

"I'm sorry if it looks that way, but the number of people working on this..."

"Ben, I know that! I'm not blaming you. This is a tough nut to crack and all we want to do is help you—for purely personal and selfish reasons if nothing else. Shelly has her Dick Tracy program still operating but it appears to have run out of steam. Now enter Sven to solve the crime!"

"I am already here so I cannot enter."

"A figure of speech, Sven. Data to come. You can stop the data printout now."

"I am only up to C in the alphabet. You do not wish a complete printout?"

"No. Just this sample to look at. Put the printed sheets back into the bin."

Sven rustled quickly across the room to the printer and lifted out the sheets of eternitree from the delivery tray. But not as a human would in a single pile. Instead it shifted its weight to one of the tree complexes and extended the other, then with a quick movement a myriad of the smallest fingers grasped each sheet individually. Carried them to the other side of the machine and slid them into the bin in a quick shuffle as though they were a large pack of cards.

"The printout," Brian said, "was just to give you an idea of the kind of data base we are assembling. The idea is to make a list of all conceivable human occupations, then consider what an AI might do to make each of them more practical, and then trimming away the improbables. When this list is reduced to a feasible size Sven will examine every available data base for any trace of evidence. Looking for traces of any new kind of manufacturing process, programming system, or other kind of new product that could only be made by a new, more advanced AI."

"But all these occupations and applications on the list seem so impractical—even impossible. I don't even know what an abacaxi cultivator is!"

"Of course a lot of them are way out. But this AI does not think as we do—yet. We have intuition, which is a learned process and not one that can be memorized. Right now Sven is better at making a list of everything that an AI could do. When the list is complete it will begin trimming away the impossibles and the improbables. When the list is finally reduced to manageable size Sven will then begin to examine for any traces or matches."

"That's quite a task."

"Sven is quite a machine," Shelly said proudly. "With its new Dick Tracy agency it should be more than up to the job. If the stolen AI is working somewhere we are going to track it down by finding out just what it has done."

"I'm sure of it," Ben said. "And you will let me know the instant you have any leads."

"They might be just clues, there is no way to be certain."

"There certainly is—I'll have them checked out. I have a big team out there who aren't accomplishing very much at the moment. I'll put them to work. In all truth I think that putting Sven on the job is the only way that we are going to find the people who did this."

28

September 4, 2024

Benicoff was sure that this conference would not take too long. He had read through all the paperwork on the flight to Seattle, made his final notes on the monorail to Tacoma. This was the first assignment he had had in some months, in fact the very first since he began devoting full time to the Megalobe case; he could think of no real reason to turn down the request. Just before the meeting began his phone beeped and he answered it.

"Ben, Brian here. Sven seems to have come up with some leads."

"Your electronic wizard seems to be working pretty fast."

"Once the list was complete and all the long shots eliminated Sven sorted through for the most likely items. It has come up with three possibilities now. One is a certain software system that is suspicious. A microcode compiler that writes impossibly efficient code. Then there is a certain shoe repair machine that might plausibly be an AI since it can resole any kind of shoe. Then there is an agricultural machine which is rated as almost surely an AI."

"Plausibly? Almost surely? Can't this thing give a straight answer, a yes or no—or a fifty-fifty chance?"

"It cannot. Sven uses an agency based on knowledge about qualitative plausibility. It doesn't use any numbers at all. In fact, I asked it to and it refused.''

"Who runs that place—you or the machine? In any case—what did it come up with?"

"A machine called Bug-Off, would you believe?"

"I believe—and I'll contact the FBI here and get some action on your Bug-Off today. A meeting that I planned to be brief just got a lot briefer. I've canceled it. I'll get back to you."

The head of the Seattle FBI office, Agent Antonio Perdomo, was a tall man, as solidly built as Benicoff, still in his forties but going rapidly bald. He glanced at Benicoff's ID and got right down to business.

"Washington ran a corporate check on this manufacturing company, DigitTech Products of Austin, Texas. I have the file here. They manufacture and sell wholesale electronic components for the most part, with an occasional individual product. But they usually make items for own-brand retailers. This machine you asked about, Bug-Off, has been on the market for only a few weeks. They are marketing it themselves."

"How do we get hold of one?"

"I've arranged that as well. It is not for sale but is leased to greenhouses to be used—or so their prospectus says—in the place of chemicals. I know you wanted to keep this investigation completely under cover so I made all my inquiries through an associate in the Bureau of Commerce. He contacted all the greenhouses in this area and has come up with a winner. A greenhouse owner named Nisiumi—a retired traffic policeman."

"That's the best news ever. You've contacted him?"

"He's in his office, waiting for us. He only knows that this is a high-level investigation and that he is to mention it to no one."

"This is very good work."

Perdomo smiled. "Just doing my job."

The sun had disappeared and Seattle was running true to winter form. The windshield wipers were on high speed to clear a patch in the torrential rain. They parked as close to the entrance as they could, were still drenched by the time they got to the greenhouse door.

Nisiumi, a stocky Japanese-American, led them to his office in silence, didn't speak until he had closed the door. He wiped the soil from his fingers onto his white coat before he shook hands. He looked very closely at Agent Perdomo's identification.

"These Bug-Off people are making a big sales pitch, probably contacted every greenhouse in the country. I even had this brochure for their machine, right here on my desk."

"This is Mr. Benicoff, who originated this investigation," Perdomo said. "He's the one in charge."

"Thanks for your cooperation," Ben said. "This is a high-priority case right out of Washington—and there are deaths involved. That's all I can tell you now. When we wind the thing up I promise that I'll let you know what it is all about."

"Suits me. It's a big change from cucumbers. I was interested by this Bug-Off when I read about it in the trade magazine. That's why I asked for this information. But it's too expensive for me."

"You have just obtained an interest-free loan for as much as you need for as long as you need."

"It's good to be back in harness! While you were on your way here I called DigitTech Products' 800 number. They have a salesman in this area—and he is going to give a demonstration here at nine tomorrow morning."

"Perfect. Your accountant, that is me, will join you at that time. Call me Benck, though, not Benicoff."

The rain was lashing loudly against the hotel room window. Benicoff closed the curtains and turned on the radio in the hopes that the music might drown it out. He was well into the company report before the rare steak, no potatoes and a green salad, pot of coffee arrived. He ate slowly, reading, digesting meal and report at the same time.

The salesman was late next morning; it was almost ten before the van stopped in the greenhouse drive.

"Sorry about that, traffic and fog. The name is Joseph Ashley but everyone calls me Joe. You're the owner, Mr. Nisiumi?"

While the introductions were being made the van driver was loading a large carton onto the hand truck; he wheeled it into the greenhouse. Joe himself pulled off the cover to proudly reveal—"Bug-Off. And that's what this little baby is. The mechanical answer to all your biological problems."

The machine looked very much like a fat fire extinguisher. It was a squat red canister slung between six spiderlike legs. From its top sprouted two jointed metal arms, each ending in a cluster of metal fingers. Benicoff hid his sudden great interest behind an accountant's suspicious scowl. The redivided fingers, although larger, bore a distant resemblance to the branching manipulators of the AI.

"I'll just take the travel locks off these arms and we will be ready to go." Joe pulled free the restraining foam blocks, then took a red canister the size of a cigar box out of the carton and held it up. "Power supply. This plugs into any socket and is secured at ground level. Bug-Off is completely self-powered and self-contained. Right now his battery is charged and he's raring to go. Night and day if needs be. And when his power gets low—why, he just trundles him-self over to this charger and gets a fix."

"Sounds expensive," Benicoff grunted.

"Looks expensive, Mr. Benck, and it is expensive. But not to you. You will find that our lease rates are more than reasonable. And I'll bet my bippy that this bug-blasting Bug-Off will pay for himself from the word go."

"Do you program it, or do I follow it around or what?" Nisiumi asked.

"It is so easy to use that you will just not believe it until you see this bug-plucking little guy in action. All that you do is just turn it on—and step back!" Joe did just that, throwing the power switch and stepping back. Motors whirred and the two arms extended to both sides, long metal fingers waving gracefully in the air. "This is the search program. Detectors in the tips of the fingers are looking for plant life. Day or night, as I said, see how they glow with their own light source?"

Drive motors hummed, the legs lifted and lowered gracefully as the machine picked its way in a very dainty manner toward the walkway between the plants. It stopped at the first vine and both arms slapped out, picked their way over the soil to the stems beyond. They moved quickly now, flicking over the leaves and stems, apparently caressing the green lengths of the cucumbers, running lightly over the yellow flowers on their tips. There was a quick click as the lid on the arm flicked open then shut again.

"No chemicals, no poisons, no pollution—wholly organic. Even though you are watching this happen before your very own eyes I'll wager that you can't believe it. I don't blame you—for this is something entirely new in the universe. Before your very eyes there are almost invisible eyes at work, the optic cells on those fingertips which are now seeking out aphids, spiders, mites—bugs of any kind. When one is found it is plucked off the plant—just like that. Picked off and whisked away. Bug-Off's arms are hollow and they will soon be filled with bugs. A treat for your pet bird or lizard—or use it as fertilizer. There it is, gentlemen— the mechanical miracle of our age!"

"Looks dangerous," Benicoff said sourly.

"Never! Built-in protection. Won't touch anything except a plant and if you or anyone else gets in the way it stops automatically."

The salesman walked over and grabbed onto a cucumber just ahead of the flashing fingers. The moving hand withdrew and the machine beeped unhappily until he let go.

"I don't know," Benicoff said. "What do you think, Mr. Nisiumi?"

"If it works the way Joe says it does—well then maybe there is a possibility. We both know that organically grown vegetables fetch a better price."

"What's the minimum lease period?" Benicoff asked.

"One year—"

"Too long. We gotta talk. In the office."

Benicoff squeezed the contract terms as far as he could. Got a few concessions, made none of his own. Joe sweated a bit and his smile faded but in the end they reached agreement. The contracts were signed, hands shook, Joe's smile returned.

"You got a great machine there, a great machine."

"I hope so. What if it breaks down?"

"It won't—but we have a mechanic on call twenty-four hours a day just to give our customers peace of mind."

"Do you come around to inspect it?"

"Only if you ask us to. There is a check every six months, you will be called first for an appointment, but that is just routine maintenance. Other than that all you have to do is unleash that bug-picking little devil and step back! You gentlemen will never regret this decision for an instant." Benicoff grunted suspiciously and read through the contract again. Nisiumi showed Joe and the driver out while Benicoff looked over the top of the contract and watched them through the office window. The second the van was out of sight he grabbed up his phone and called the FBI office, then Brian.

"I don't know how Sven spotted this Bug-Off—but I think that we are onto a winner. Everything about this machine smells of Brian's AI research." There was a grate of tires outside as a Federal Express delivery van pulled up. "The FBI is here now. They are going to crate this thing and get it on a plane. It will be there in the morning—and so will I!"

The truck driver, wearing a Federal Express uniform, was Agent Perdomo.

"Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Nisiumi," Perdomo said. "We couldn't have got anywhere without your help. We'll take the machine off your hands now."

"What do I say if that salesman or any of his people want to see it?"

"Stall them," Benicoff said. "And get in touch with Agent Perdomo here at once. The chances are that they won't bother you as long as you pay your lease fees on time. Send the bills to Perdomo as well—you'll be reimbursed at once. The salesman said they wouldn't want to service the machine for six months. Our investigation should be completed long before that."

"Whatever you say. Anything else I can do let me know."

"Will do. Thanks again."

They shut down the Bug-Off and put it and its charger back into the carton, then wrapped it completely in brown paper. Benicoff rode in the back of the truck with the machine to the empty warehouse in the outskirts of Seattle. The FBI team were waiting there.

"Torres, bomb squad," their leader said. "You Mr. Benicoff?"

"That's right. I appreciate the quick response."

"That's our job. Tell me about this thing. Do you think there's explosive in there?"

"I doubt it very much. From what I have discovered there are at least a hundred more of these around the country. I doubt if they would all have bombs in them—-just one of them going off and there would be unwanted attention, big trouble. No, what I'm concerned about is any internal defenses the thing might have as protection against industrial espionage—what some people call reverse engineering. I am sure that the manufacturers don't want their invention revealed. I have a strong suspicion that the technology this thing might be based on was stolen only last year. There are no patents on it yet. There is also a chance that this machine may relate to a criminal investigation now under way. If those people are involved they won't want anyone to know what makes this thing tick."

"So it might be booby-trapped to prevent anyone finding out what makes it tick? Maybe do itself some injury if someone gets nosy?"

"That's it. Its internal computer might be set to destroy itself, its program or memories. It could use a standard self-immolation module. Seen a lot of them since they shortened the patent-life time. Neutralizing it should be pretty straightforward. But I'll have to ask you both to leave. SOP. We're onto most of their tricks so it shouldn't take long."

It took almost five hours.

"Bigger job than I thought," Torres admitted. "Some cute stuff there. The inspection panel looked too obvious so we went in through the bottom. Found four different switches, one on the hatch opening, another under a bolt that had to be removed to gain access. Still, it was nothing we couldn't handle."

"Would there have been an explosion?" Benicoff asked.

"No, it wasn't wired to do that. You would have had a flash and some smoke maybe. All the switches were hooked up to short the battery through the central processor. It would have melted nicely. It's all yours now—and it's a neat bit of work. Picks off bugs, I understand?"

"That's just what it does."

"The world's full of surprises these days."

The Bug-Off was now packed into a larger crate, tape-wrapped and sealed. Benicoff had considered special shipping arrangements but in the end decided that less attention would be drawn to a normal delivery.

The Federal Express track trundled off into the rain with its cargo.

Promised for delivery in California in the morning.

29

September 5, 2024

Benicoff came around the turn on the Montezuma Grade and saw the express truck trundling down the hill before him. He phoned Brian.

"I'm just coming into Borrego Springs—and the truck with your you-know-what is just in front of me."

"Tell him to speed it up!"

"Patience—this is best done at a leisurely pace. We'll be there in a few minutes."

He pulled out and passed the truck where the road flattened out, got to the gate of Megalobe before it. Major Wood looked on suspiciously as the crate was pushed onto the loading dock.

"You sure you know the contents?"

"I watched them clamp on the seals myself—and the numbers match."

"Easy enough to seal a ringer. I want this thing through the SQUID imager and the explosive sniffer before anyone tries to open it."

"You're not thinking that someone got to it in transit, opened it and planted a bomb—then resealed it?"

"Stranger things have happened. I like to be suspicious. Gives me something to do and keeps the troops on their toes. There might be anything in this box—including what you put in it. I still want a check."

The sniffer machine sniffed and found nothing suspicious, as did the proton counter. Benicoff used a crowbar to verify the contents, resealed it so Bug-Off could not be seen, then drove it to the lab himself.

"Let me at it," Brian said when he opened the door. "I've read that brochure you faxed me at least a hundred times. I think it's mighty suspicious that it was wired to burn its brains out."

"Would have been more suspicious if it wasn't. Without a patent anyone could copy it. There's nothing suspicious about a normal industrial espionage ploy. ARE—that is anti-reverse engineering. You can just unbolt it now. It should come apart with no trouble. The bomb squad have disabled all the booby-trap switches."

"Let's see it work first," Brian said. "Does it have to be programmed?"

"No, just turn it on."

The metal arms hummed up and out, the many-fingered hands extended. The machine rotated slowly in a circle, beeped unhappily and shut itself off.

"That didn't take long," Shelly said.

Brian looked closely at one of the fingertips. "I'll bet it was looking for a specific wavelength—probably that of chlorophyll. Anyone got a potted plant?"

"No," Shelly said, "but I have a vase of flowers in my office."

"Perfect. I want to see Bug-Off off a few bugs before we strip it down."

This time the machine was more cooperative. It rolled toward the vase, started at the base and quickly worked its way up the stems to the flowers. Once it was finished it bleeped with satisfaction and shut down.

"How do we get to see the bugs?" Brian asked.

"I'll show you." Ben twisted the lower segment of each arm and removed the containers built into them. "I'll shake these onto a sheet of paper and we'll take a look at the catch."

He clicked open the lids and carefully tilted the contents out onto the paper.

"All those were on my flowers!" Shelly was horrified. "Spiders, flies—even some ants."

"All dead too," Brian said with admiration. "This spider has had her head neatly cut off! That takes great precision and discrimination. Let me get a magnifying glass and look at the rest of the debris." He bent close and poked the dead bugs around with a pencil point. "There are very small aphids here, and some kind of insect that is even smaller, like powder, parasites or mites of some kind." He straightened up and smiled. "I don't think you could do all this with anything less than my AI techniques—though I could be wrong. Let's look inside the thing and see what we have."

The metal canister came off easily, obviously designed only for protection of the working parts. Brian used a screwdriver as a pointer to trace the circuitry.

"Here's the power line, coded red, a five-volt power pair. Standard. And a single two-way fiber-optic signal pipe. Everything looks right off the shelf—so far. Standard voltage-to-voltage converters along with interface chips. They've been disconnected."

"The FBI must have done that," Ben said. "I bet you'll find the matching plug on whatever passes for a central processor."

"There it is," Shelly said, pointing to a square metal box mounted on the side of the frame.

Ben examined the canister from all sides, using a minor and light to see behind and under it. "Since I've been involved with industrial security I've seen this kind of thing pretty often. Sealed shut and meant to be kept that way. Whatever is inside generates heat—see the heatsink there. But the fan blows over these ribs on the heatsink so there is no need for an opening into the thing. See this seam? Welded shut with one of the super-adhesives that end up stronger than the metal. We're not going to get into it easily—so let's not try. There is a lot we can find out without taking a hacksaw to it. But you'll have to go in eventually," Ben said.

"Maybe—but I'll try not to. There has to be a backup battery inside to hold whatever is programmed in DRAM whenever the main battery is disconnected. Considering all the other booby-trap switches in this thing, there is bound to be another one to detect any attempt to open it."

"Which will short the battery through the circuitry inside?" Shelly said.

"Exactly. But you don't determine intelligence by dissecting the brain! Let's map all the circuitry and find out exactly how it works first. Then we can run some controlled tests..."

Brian felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to see that the AI was standing behind him.

"Is this machine the Bug-Off machine?"

"It is, Sven. You want to take a look at it?"

"Yes."

It reached up to the tabletop with one of its treelike manipulators and pulled itself up onto the surface in a single flowing movement. The eyestalks extended and moved down the motion-less machine. It was a quick examination, over in a few moments.

"Hypothesis of AI circuitry and processor now beyond any reasonable doubt."

"That's what we want to hear," Brian said. "Stay there, Sven—you are going to run this examination."

"I'll get out of your way," Ben said. "Let me know as soon as you find anything out. I'll be in my office. I have a lot of calls to make."

"Will do. Let me lock you out."

The investigation of DigitTech was well under way. Benicoff phoned Agent Dave Manias, who had been in charge of the FBI end of the investigation from the first. A different agent answered the phone.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Benicoff, but he's not here. He said when you rang to tell you he was on the way to see you."

"Thanks." He hung up. It could be important if Manias didn't want to use the phone. Patience, he would just have to be patient.

He was finishing his second cup of coffee and pacing the length of the office when Manias came in.

"Speak," Ben said. "I have been wearing out the carpet here ever since I got your message."

"Everything is going fine. I'll tell you all about it while you pour me a large black coffee. You may have slept last night but yours truly never even saw a bed."

"My heart bleeds for you," Ben said with total lack of sympathy. "Come on, Dave, stop the stalling. What's happened? Here."

"Thanks." Manias dropped onto the sofa and sipped the coffee. "We had the DigitTech corporation under surveillance as soon as we got your report. It's not too big an operation, a hundred and twenty employees about. We've got an agent inside."

"So fast? I'm impressed."

"It was luck, mainly. One of the secretaries got the flu. We had a tap in first thing, so we heard their call for a temp. One of our agents filled it. She is a software programmer with plenty of office experience, and has done this kind of thing before. Insider dealing, business crime. Everything is in the records if you know how and where to look—and she knows. There is a lot of money invested in this Bug-Off machine. An entire new wing to the original factory building was put up, plenty of expensive machinery involved."

"Has she gotten into the company records yet?"

"All of them. As always the locks were the usual simple codes, phone numbers, the wife's name, you know the kind of thing. This was made simpler by the fact that the head bookkeeper has his access codes written on a card taped inside a drawer of his desk. I mean—really!"

"A good—or maybe a bad sign. If they have something to hide they would surely hide it a lot better than that."

"You never can tell. Most crooks aren't very smart." He put a GRAM block on the desk. "In any case—here is everything we have up to now. Company records going back to the day they opened. We're getting bio material on all the company's principal executives now. You'll have that as soon as we do."

"Any conclusions yet?"

"Too early times, Ben. I'll take another cup if you're pouring. They seemed to be getting into financial trouble a while back, but they went public and raised more than they needed."

"I'll want to know who owns the stock."

"Will do. Do you think these are the people we are looking for?"

"We'll know pretty soon. If they are selling a commercial AI they had better have plenty of records of whoever did the research and how it was developed. If they don't have that—then we are in luck and they are in trouble."

When Brian hadn't called by five o'clock Ben walked over to the lab. The front door was almost hidden behind a jungle of small plants and trees in tubs; he had to climb over them to get to the door. It looked like all of the local nurseries had been cleaned out. He reached up and snapped his fingers in front of the pickup lens above the door.

"Anyone there?"

"Hi, Ben. I was just going to call you. Interesting things happening in here. Just a second."

There were plants inside and around the workbench. The first thing Ben saw was that Bug-Off and the AI were apparently locked in tender embrace. The AI was standing close to the partially dismembered machine with its multibranching digits closely entwined in its innards.

"Love at first sight?" Ben asked.

"Hardly! We're just tracing input and feedback. If you look at all those finger extensions under a glass you will see they are clustered in regular bundles. Each bundle contains a tripartite subbundle made up of two optical pickups and a single light source. The pickups are mounted at fixed distances from each other. Does that give you any ideas?"

"Yes—binocular vision."

"Bang on. In addition to what you might call the eyes in every bundle there are four mechanical manipulators. Three blunt-ended ones for grabbing, the fourth with a knife edge for dismembering. This carves off the insect's head just before the thing is dropped into the hopper. The bundles work independently—almost."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me run a film for you and you'll see for yourself."

Brian put a cassette into the video, ran it forward to the right spot. "We shot this at very high speed, then slowed it down. Take a look."

The image was sharp and clear and magnified many times. Rounded metal bars reached out slowly to embrace a foot-long fly. Its wings flapped slowly and ineffectively as it was drawn out of sight off the screen. The same process was happening to an aphid located off to one side.

"I'll run it again," Brian said. "This time keep your eye on the second bug. Watch. See the bundle above it? First it's motionless—there, now it is operating. But the fly didn't move until it had been grabbed. Do you see what that means?"

"I saw it—but I'm being dumb today. What's the significance?"

"The hand didn't try to use brute force and speed to try to catch the fly in flight. Instead, this robot uses real knowledge to anticipate the behavior of each particular kind of insect! When it goes for the housefly, Bug-Off contracts its grasping-bundle as it approaches the fly, making it look to the housefly as though it were moving away from it—until it's too late for the insect to escape. And we're sure that was no accident. Bug-Off seems to know the behavior of every insect described in this book."

Brian handed Ben a large volume entitled Handbook of Insect Ethology, 2018 Edition.

"But how can Bug-Off tell which insect it is dealing with? They all look the same to me."

"A good question—since pattern recognition has been the bane of AI from the very first day that research began. Industrial robots were never very good at recognizing and assembling parts if they weren't presented in a certain way. There are thousands of different signals involved in seeing a human face, then recognizing who it is. If you wrote a program for picking bugs off bushes you would have to program in every bug in the world, and size and rotation position and everything else. A very big and difficult program—"

"And hard to debug?"

"Funny—but too true! But you or I—or a really humanlike AI would be very good at bug grabbing. All the identification and reaching out and grabbing operations are hideously complex—but invisible to us. They are one of the attributes, one of the functions of intelligence. Just reach out and grab. Without putting in any complex program. And that's what is happening here—we think. If there is an AI in there it is reaching out one bundle at a time and grabbing a bug. As soon as the insect is held it turns the grabbing bundle over to a subprogram that plucks it off, brings it to the container, chops it dead and dumps it, then returns to operating position ready to be controlled again. Meanwhile the AI has controlled another bundle to make a grab, another and then another, changing control faster than we can see at normal speeds. You or I could do that just as well."

"Speak for yourself, Brian. Sounds pretty boring to me."

"Machines don't get bored—at least not yet. But so far this is all inferred evidence. Now I'm going to show you something a good deal better. Do you see how Sven is plugged into Bug-Off's operating system? It is reading every bit of input from the detectors as well as getting all the return control messages. I am sure that you know that the society of the mind, human or artificial, is made of very small subunits, none of them intelligent in themselves. The aggregate of their operation is what we call intelligence. If we could pull out one of the subunits and look at it we might be able to understand just how it operates."

"In a human brain?"

"Pretty impossible. But in an AI, at an early stage of construction, these subunits can be identified. After analyzing some of the feedback loops in Bug-Off we found a pattern, a bit of a program that could be identified. Here it is—let me show it to you."

Brian punched up the program on the screen, a series of instructions. Brian rubbed his hands together and smiled happily.

"Next I want to show you another bit of programming. This was retrieved from the data bank in Mexico. A chunk of instructions that I don't even remember—but I was the only one who could have possibly written it. Here, let me split the screen and put this one up there as well."

The two programs were side by side on the screen. Brian scrolled them slowly forward together. Ben looked from one to the other—then gasped.

"My God—they're exactly the same."

"They are. One I wrote over two years ago. The other is inside this machine here. Identical."

Ben was suddenly very grim. "Do you mean that there are no other records of this bit of programming anywhere in the world? That it doesn't have any commercial use in another program?"

"I mean just that. I wrote it and backed it up in Mexico. The original was stolen. The thieves probably didn't understand it enough to rewrite it so just used it as is. And whoever stole it—built it into this bug-plucker. We have them!"

"Yes," Ben said, very quietly. "I think that we do."

30

September 12, 2024

"Do you realize that it has been all of a week?" Brian said. "An entire bloody week has gone by since I proved to everyone's satisfaction that the bug-plucking metal bastard was built by the same people who stole my AI. And, perhaps not important to you, but damn important to me, also the same people who shot half my head away at the time. And in that week absolutely nothing has been done."

"That's not quite true," Ben said, as quietly and gently as he could. "The investigation is continuing. There must be over eighty agents working on this one way or another—"

"I don't care if the entire FBI and CIA put together is on the job. When will something be done?"

Ben sat in silence, sipping at his beer. They had been in Brian's quarters for over an hour, waiting for the promised call. Everyone was on edge over the delay. Ben had explained this slowly and carefully more than once. But Brian's patience was gone—and that was understandable. The tension had been building ever since the discovery that DigitTech was manufacturing AIs using his design. He kept waiting for something to happen, some breakthrough to occur. No work was being done in his lab—and he wasn't helping the situation either by mixing himself a third lethal-looking margarita. Since one of the corporals in the club had shown him how to make these he had never looked back. He raised the glass and was taking a good-sized gulp when his phone rang. He swallowed too fast, slammed the glass down and groped the phone from his belt. Coughing and gasping as he answered.

"Yes—" He coughed heavily. "Would you say that again? —Right." He dabbed his eyes and lips with his handkerchief, finally got his breath back. "Conference call in ten minutes, I have that."

"Let's go," Ben said with great relief, putting down his glass and climbing to his feet. When they went out of the front door of the barracks they found that Major Wood and a squad were waiting for them.

"I don't like this public exposure," the Major said sharply.

"It's not as if we were going very far," Ben said. "Just to the administration building, which as you can see is right down the drive."

"And damn close to the front gate and almost in sight of the public road."

"Major, I've explained this before. There is no other way that this can be done. We need to use the conference room. Everyone is cooperating. Following your instructions, all the Megalobe employees were sent home at noon. The techs have swept the room and the entire building. What more could you possibly ask for? An antiaircraft battery?"

"We've got that already. SAMs on four buildings. Come on."

There were heavily armed soldiers everywhere—even the cooks had been pulled out of the kitchen for this operation and formed part of the guard. Although it was only a few hundred yards to the building the Major insisted that they drive there in an armored personnel carrier.

Brian had never been in the Megalobe conference room before and looked around with interest. It was decorated with quiet luxury; the Van Gogh on the wall might possibly be real. Subdued lighting, thick carpeting, mahogany conference table with chairs along one side of it. The table itself was drawn up against the picture window that stretched the length of the wall. Here on the fifth floor they had a perfect view across the desert to the mountains beyond.

"Just about time," Ben said, looking at his watch. Even as he spoke the desert view vanished and was replaced by another conference room. Only then did Brian realize that the entire wall was a high-resolution TV screen scanned by 3-D eye tracking cameras, just now coming into production.

Although everyone was apparently in the same room, the conference was taking place across the entire width of the country from the nation's Capital. The table that the others were sitting behind was also placed flush with the screen, the two tables apparently forming a single table for all of them to sit around. There was obviously a standard height and length for all tables used in teleconferencing, Brian thought. They sat down.

"Brian, I don't think you've met Agent Manias, who has been heading the FBI end of this investigation from the first day."

"Pleased to meet you at last, Brian."

"Hello," was all that Brian could think of to say. They weren't really meeting—or were they? The agent was obviously more used to this kind of thing than he was.

"Going to bring us up to date, Dave?" Ben asked.

"That's what this is all about. You have received copies of all our information as it was processed. Are there any questions?"

"There certainly are," Brian snapped, still angry. "Isn't the time long past to take some action, pull in these criminals?"

"Yes, sir, the time has certainly come. That is what this meeting is about."

"Good," Brian said, sinking back into his chair as some of the tension of the past days drained away.

"Let me bring you up to date where we stand at this moment. We now have in our possession the complete company records of DigitTech, as well as up-to-date files on every employee. The time has now come when we can't get anything more from public—or private—records. We also feel that it is counterproductive to continue the surveillance much longer. Our people are very good and very professional, but with each day that passes the chance of accidental discovery grows. Therefore it was decided that four P.M. mountain time today would be optimum, to conduct this operation." Brian looked at his watch—forty-five minutes to go. "Agent Vorsky will explain what will be taking place."

Vorsky nodded at them, a lean man with an upright military bearing. He glanced at the notes on the table before him.

"At the present moment there are four agents employed inside the plant."

"That many?" Ben said. "There are sure to be suspicions."

"Yes, sir, there would be if there were any delay. That's one of the reasons that we are going in today. There is the one agent in the office that you know about. Two days ago there were three cases of mild food poisoning, inadequate refrigeration in one of the roach-coaches that service the plant. The employment agency that is used by DigitTech already had our agents on their books."

No one else wanted to ask how these fortuitous cases of food poisoning had happened, so Brian kept his mouth shut as well.

"The plan is a very simple one that has proven effective in the past. Precisely at four the fire alarm will sound and everyone will be asked to evacuate the buildings. As soon as that happens two agents will secure the office, allowing no access to any files or records, while the other two agents will occupy the research premises. The team that goes in will be wearing these helmets so we will all be able to watch every phase of the operation." Agent Vorsky reached down and picked up a helmet that he placed on the table. It looked like a black-plastic baseball cap with a light mounted on top.

"This is made of very tough plastic and protects the wearer's head. More important to us is this omnidirectional pickup on top. This device works completely independent of the wearer. The image is stabilized by a laser-gyroscope and is controlled by our operators here. No matter which way the wearer walks—or turns his head—we will pick up the image that we choose."

He twisted the helmet up and down, turned it around quickly—but the lens always remained facing at the screen.

"There are six separate hit teams and these units will be worn by one man on each team. These six images will all appear on our screens. Our mixers here will enlarge the most relevant one and you will hear the sound from that one. All of the images will of course be recorded for later study. What we will be doing now is letting you follow the operation in real time."

"Any questions?" Manias asked. "There is just enough time left for me to tell you what we will do. Firstly we secure all equipment and records so that nothing can be sabotaged. Then everyone working there—as well as the four employees off sick today—will be taken into custody and interrogated. We have a lot of questions to ask and I know that we will get answers to all of them. Countdown has now begun at minus ten minutes."

The other conference room vanished and was replaced by six very uninteresting pictures. Two must have been located inside darkened trucks because the harsh black-and-white pictures were obviously being taken with infrared light. The picture on the upper right was of shrubbery and tree leaves; the other three were black. Brain pointed.

"Burned out?"

"Probably turned off. Agents in cars or visible to the public. Don't want to attract attention yet by putting on those Mickey Mouse hats. Six minutes to go."

At zero minus two things got busier. All the screens were on now, two of them showing the view through the windshields of moving cars. All of the hit teams were now converging on the plant.

When the countdown hit zero things began to happen very fast. The hooting of fire alarms sounded. The images on the screen stayed pointed straight ahead under the operators' remote control, but some of them bobbed up and down as the agents wearing the devices ran forward. Doors were forced open, there were shouts of surprise, firm orders to remain calm.

Then one of the images enlarged suddenly to show an armed agent forcing open a door. Inside was a group of men standing against the wall, hands raised. A man with a gun faced them, obviously an agent since the others hurried past him.

"That's an electronic lab," Brian said.

As the lab scene shrank to its original size a scene of men hurrying through an office door expanded to take its place. A shocked woman just going out tried to stop them.

"What's this? You can't go in there—who are you?"

"FBI. Stand aside, please."

A hand reached out and opened the inner door. Which must have been soundproof because the gray-haired man sitting at the large desk was punching a number into his phone and did not even look up. The scene moved into the room before he heard something and looked their way, putting the phone down.

"Where is the fire? And what are you doing in my office?"

"There is no fire, Mr. Thomsen."

"Then get out of here—now!"

"Are you Mr. Thomsen, Managing Director of DigitTech?"

"I'm calling the police," Thomsen said, grabbing up the telephone.

"We are the police, sir. Here is my identification."

Thomsen looked at the badge, then slowly lowered the phone.

"All right, you're FBI. Now tell me just what the hell you think you are doing here."

He dropped back into his chair and had gone very pale. He did not look well.

"You are Mr. Thomsen?"

"My name is on the goddamned door. Are you going to tell me what you are doing here?"

"I am going to caution you now so that you know your rights." Thomsen was silent as the agent read him his rights from the card. Only when he was done did he repeat the question.

"Your firm and you are under investigation..."

"That's damn obvious! You had better tell me what you are playing at."

"We have reason to believe that a person or persons employed with this firm was directly involved with criminal acts in California on February 8 of this year at Megalobe Industries."

"I don't know what you're—"

It happened with horrifying speed. There was a thunderous explosion, a sheet of flame, smoke.

Loud cries, someone screaming.

The picture on the screen swung dizzily, showed floor, wall, spun about.

Another screen expanded to prominence, the shouting continued, the displayed picture moved quickly into the room through the doorway.

The office was a gutted shambles, men coughed in the smoke that filled it. "Medic!" someone shouted. Agents were climbing to their feet. The view swung about the room, moved back and zoomed in on the white wall.

"Blood," Benicoff said. "What in hell happened in there?"

Other voices shouted the same thing. The camera was jostled to one side as two medics ran in, bent over the figures on the floor. A moment later an agent with smoke-blackened face, a trickle of blood on his forehead, turned to face the camera.

"Bombs. In the telephones. The one on the desk was close to us, I have two men badly injured. But the suspect—he was wearing his personal phone on his belt." The agent hesitated, took a grim, deep breath.

"He was practically blown in half. He is really but dead."