Harry Harrison - The Turing Option

“Bring it in.”

Two white-coated attendants pushed in the trolley, followed by a Yeoman with electronic patches on his uniform.

“Delivered a little while ago, sirs. Taken apart and searched, put back together again and operating A-OK. Who’s going to sign for it?”

“Here,” Benicoff said.

“That’s not a terminal,” Brian said, tapping the square metal machine.

“No, sir. That’s a new-model printer for eternitree paper. Terminal is on its way up now. And initial here, please. Paper is in the box here.”

“Eternitree? That’s a new one to me.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Benicoff said when the printer and terminal had been plugged in and connected and they were alone again. He took out a sheet of paper and passed it to Brian. “It was developed at the University of Free Enterprise for the daily newspaper published there. In fact your father’s name — as well as yours — is on the original patent applications. I understand you both helped in developing the process.”

“Looks and feels like ordinary white paper.”

“Try folding or tearing it — see what I mean? It is tough plastic that has been textured to feel like paper, with a bonded thin-film surface. Which means it is almost indestructible and completely reusable. The perfect thing for the daily newspaper — also developed by one of the brightest boys at your university.”

“If I can sit down, with a glass of water — will you tell me about it?”

“I’ll get the water. Here. You know about selective TV news programming?”

“Sure. You punch in your own program, things that you are interested in. Baseball, stock market reports, beauty contests, whatever. Labeled news reports go out twenty-four hours a day. Your TV records those that interest you the most so when you come home and turn on the news, whammo, it’s only the stuff you care about.”

Benicoff nodded. “Well, your university newspaper is a high-powered version of the same thing. The editor there has signed up scientists right around the world as reporters… They send in reports all the time about every kind of scientific and technical news. These are tagged and stored in a data bank, along with all the news items from standard services. The subscription system has a learning scheme. When you touch the advance button to reject something, the computer notes this and avoids future related items. More important is the fact that it follows your eye movements with a tracking device. Then it does a content analysis and records descriptions of the subjects that interest you. It is a true learning process and the system gets better and better at profiling your interests. It is so good that unless there is a cutoff you would find yourself doing nothing else but watching news and views that you agree with and approve of.”

“Sort of turn you into an info junky. But what about browsing?”

“Built into the system. The retrieval operation is so efficient that there are always plenty of sidetracks even in the documents that are relevant to your subject.”

“Great! So it works out that every subscriber gets his own special newspaper. The hydraulics prof has nothing but pipes, pumps and splashes from around the world, along with Topeka, Kansas, obituaries, where he comes from, and chess news if he is into that as well. What a great idea.”

“Thousands think so. The subscriber pays a fixed fee, while the computer keeps track of how many times any single item is used and automatically pays the contributor.”

Brian rolled up the sheet of eternitree paper, real tight, but it instantly flattened out when he let go.

“A personalized newspaper waiting in the bin every morning. But still a tree’s worth of paper to be dumped every week.”

Benicoff nodded. “That’s what you and your father thought. The thin-film lab at the school was working on flat computer screens. Your father helped with the math and this was the end result. The layered film is changed internally and electronically from white to black. Any font or size of type is apparently printed on it — even large size for those with weak eyes. After reading it the sheets are dropped back into the printer. As the new newspaper is printed it clears away the old one. And even this technology is going to be redundant soon. There is a hyperbook coming onto the market that is about three-eighths of an inch thick and contains only ten pages. The edge binder contains a really powerful computer that controls a detailed display on each page, one that is even more detailed than the pages of printed books. When you finish reading page ten you turn back to the first page, which already contains new copy. With a hundred megabytes of memory this ten-page book will really contain a quite substantial library.”

“I’ll settle for this one for now — it’s really neat. I’ll set up a newspaper for myself.”

“You can — but that’s not why I brought the printer. You’ve been trying to order some books, the request got passed on to me. With the printer you can only store them in memory, but with eternitree you can print the book you want, slip the sheet into a spring binder and sit in the sun while you read.”

“And reuse the sheets again when I’m through! A lot has happened that I forgot about. Say, can’t you print out that report I asked for on this? I could have it right now.”

Benicoff turned to the terminal. “I don’t know. If this hospital has a cleared high-security network it might be possible. Only one way to find out.”

He punched in his own code, accessed base security and found the right menu. But before he had gone very much further the screen cleared and the lines of print were replaced by General Schorcht’s scowling image.

“What is the meaning of this breach of security?” His rasping voice rasping even worse through the terminal’s tiny speaker.

“Good morning, General. Just trying to get a copy of the classified Megalobe report for Brian.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No more than usual. Think, General. Brian was there. He is our only witness. We need his help. If I can’t get a copy now I will bring him one tomorrow. Does any of this make sense to you?”

General Schorcht stared in cold silence while he thought it through. “The hospital circuits are not secure. I’ll have the Pentagon transfer a one-off copy to CNBSC, the Security Central there. A messenger will deliver the copy.” The screen went blank as soon as he finished.

“Well good-bye then, sir, nice to chat with you. You heard.”

Brian nodded. “I don’t know if I can help — but at least I can find out what happened to me out there. Early on, Dr. Snaresbrook said that others had been killed. Very many?”

“We just don’t know — that is one of the infuriating things about this case. One man we can be fairly certain of, the Megalobe Chairman, J. J. Beckworth. We found a drop of his blood. But seventeen men in all are missing. How many were killed — and how many were in on the crime, we just have no idea. You’ll read it in the report.”

“What was taken?”

“Every record and every item of equipment relating to your work on artificial intelligence. They also moved out every piece of electronic equipment and record, every book and piece of paper from your home. The neighbors reported that a moving van was there for at least a half a day.”

“You’ve traced the van?”

“The plates were forgeries and the company doesn’t exist. Oh yes, the moving men were of oriental appearance.”

“Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Siamese, Vietnamese or any specific country?”

“The elderly witnesses can only identify them as oriental.”

“And the trail gets colder every day.”

Benicoff nodded reluctant agreement.

“I wish I could be of help — but as far as my memory goes I’m still living back in UFE. Maybe if I saw the house I might get some clues. Maybe they missed my computer backup. I lost two important files when I first started programming seriously and I swore it would never happen again. I wrote an automatic program that saved to an external disk drive as I worked.”