Harry Harrison - The Turing Option

The first account turned out to be a letter box, only a little over two years old. Brian went to the oldest letters and read through them. It gave him an uneasy feeling. None of the correspondents was familiar — and his own letters had an alien ring to them. Yes, he had signed them — but, no, it did not sound like him at all. It was very much like reading someone else’s correspondence. There were occasional mentions of AI, but only in passing — and never in detail.

He pushed all of it into the computer’s memory for his attention at some other time, then looked at the other two. One held his financial statements and IRS reports and was fascinating in a depressing sort of way. He had started earning money from royalties when he was quite young, he remembered that, from software for the most part. Then there was a large deposit, from the sale of their house — then more from his father’s estate. He hurried on. So did the money. In a few years it was all gone — just before he went to work for Megalobe. The correspondence with the corporation made fascinating reading, particularly the details of his contract. There was much food for thought here. He stored this one as well and turned to the last account.

Ripped through a few screens, read very closely for a while — then wiped it. The doctor had gone out and Benicoff was bent over the phone, punching in a number. It was almost sunset and the room was growing dark.

“Ben — got a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’m really getting tired. I’ll look at these in the morning.”

“Let me put the keyboard away. Find anything about AI?”

“Nothing in these.”

“Then I’ll accelerate the court order. After you get a night’s sleep try to think of more passwords, okay?”

“Sure thing. See you in the morning.”

“You are beginning to look tired. Get some rest.”

Brian nodded and watched the big man leave. Not tired. Totally depressed.

He had read just enough of the contents to know that he did not like it. The opening was familiar enough, the notes he had made after the disastrous end of his affair with Kim. Once the depression and hatred had ebbed a bit he had made more notes on his Managing Machine theory. This he remembered developing into his AI work — but he also remembered noting that it could be a means of personal control. Apparently he had carried this idea even further, developing it into a new mind science, more theory than fact from what he had seen in the file, called Zenome Therapy. It didn’t sound so way-out and nutty as Dianetics but there were, to put it kindly, large undercurrents of megalomania running through it. It had not made nice reading — and he was pretty sure that he did not like the person who had written it.

Some decisions are easy to make once the facts are in front of you. He had been thinking about this for the last week and the so-called science of Zenome Therapy made his mind up. One of the paging buttons was on the bedside table and he pressed it. The nurse entered a moment later.

“Do you know if Doc Snaresbrook is still here?”

“I believe that she is, supervising the equipment installation. The doctor is moving into a new office that has been assigned to her here.”

“Could I see her, please.”

“Of course.”

The last colors of twilight were fading and Brian overrode the lighting controls to watch them. When the sky was dark he allowed the blinking warning button to have its way. The curtains closed as the lights came on. The doctor came in a moment later.

“Well, Brian, you have had a busy day. Feeling the worst for it?”

“Not really. I was tired earlier but a nap fixed that. How about my vital readouts?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Good. Then you would say that I am on the road to recovery, reasonably sane other than suffering from the delusion that I am only fourteen years old — though I am really over twenty-one.”

“Take out the word ‘delusion’ and I would agree.”

“Have I ever thanked you for what you have done for me?”

“You have now and I’m grateful — and tremendously happy at the way things are turning out.”

“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Doc. But would you be terribly put out if we stopped the memory restoration sessions pretty soon?”

“I don’t understand—”

“Put it another way. I’m satisfied with the way I am. I think that I would like to grow up on my own from now on. Become an older me, if you see what I mean. If the truth be known I don’t really care about the other me, the one that was wiped out by the bullet. I don’t mind going on with the sessions to find out how badly my memory has been affected, if there are things I should know — that I don’t. I want my past restored as much as possible. Then as soon as you are satisfied with that, maybe you will consider stopping there. Though I would like to go on with the experiments you suggested to see if I really can interface with the internal CPU. Is that okay with you?”

Erin Snaresbrook was shocked, tried not show it. “Well, of course you can’t be forced. But sleep on it, please. We can talk about it tomorrow. It is rather a big decision to make.”

“I know. That’s why I am making it. Oh yes, one other thing. But we can take care of that tomorrow as well.”

“What is that?”

“I want to see a lawyer.”

Benicoff waited until Brian had finished his breakfast before he went in to see him. Made small talk about his health, the weather, told him that he was trying to get a court order to unlock the computer file which might be in later in the day, waited for Brian to open the topic. Waited in vain. Had to do it himself in the end.

“I got a pretty disturbed call from Dr. Snaresbrook. She tells me that you want to stop the memory sessions. Want to tell me about it?”

“It’s, well, a kind of personal matter, Ben.”

“If it’s personal — then I’m not asking. But if it bears upon my investigation, or AI, then I’m interested. They are all really tied up together, aren’t they?”

“I guess so — which doesn’t make it any easier. Can I talk to you as a friend, then? Which I think you are.”

“I take that as a compliment. And we were pretty good friends before all this happened. What you have gone through was damned rough — I can tell you truthfully that a lot of people wouldn’t have made it. You’re a tough mick and I like you.”

Brian smiled. “Thanks.”

“No thanks needed or expected. And I’ll be happy to be taken into your confidence. With the qualifier that you shouldn’t forget that I am still in charge of the Megalobe investigation. Anything that you say that has to do with the case will have to be for the record.”

“I know that — and I still want to help with that as much as I can. For my own sake as well. When I grow up — or when I grew up — past tense — I invented AI, then had it stolen from me along with my memory. So now that I know that AI can be built, I’m going to reinvent it if I have to. But I am going to do it, not another guy with my name. Am I making any sense?”

“In a word — no.”

They both laughed at that. Brian threw back the covers and put on his robe, kicked into his slippers. The window was open and he went and stood before it, breathing in the clean ocean air. “A lot better here than the Gulf. Too humid there, too hot, I never did get used to it.” He dropped into the armchair.

“I’ll say it another way. Let’s imagine that what happened to me, the shooting and everything, let us say that this thing happened to you. There you sit, thirty-seven years of age…”

“Many thanks. Fifty is closer to it.”