David Gerrold - When HARLIE Was One

IMAGINE IT, continued HARLIE, AS A CUBE, A SIX-SIDED FIGURE. NOW, IF ONE OF THE SIDES IS LACKING, OR NOT AS STRONG OR LARGE AS IT SHOULD BE, THE OTHER ELEMENTS MUST COMPENSATE FOR IT. IT IS POSSIBLE FOR “LOVE” TO EXIST WHERE THERE IS NOT MUTUAL WANT, OR WHERE RESPECT IS LACKING IN ONE OF THE PARTNERS, OR WHERE ATTRACTION IS WEAK. IF THE OTHER ELEMENTS ARE STRONG ENOUGH, THEY CAN HOLD THE STRUCTURE TOGETHER. IT IS WHEN THE STRUCTURE APPROACHES CUBICAL THAT THE RELATION APPROACHES THE IDEAL. AND AS LONG AS IT STAYS THAT WAY THE RELATIONSHIP STAYS IDEAL.

I THINK I FOLLOW THAT, typed Auberson. YOU KNOW, YOU’VE REMINDED ME OF SOMETHING I READ RECENTLY. LOVE IS A SHARING OF A MUTUAL DELUSION. ONE POSSIBLE WAY OF LOOKING AT IT.

NO, said Auberson. WHAT I’M GETTING AT IS THIS — EACH PERSON HAS HIS OWN SEXUAL AND EMOTIONAL FANTASIES. AS THE CONDITIONS OF REALITY APPROACH THAT FANTASY, OR VICE VERSA, THE LOVE RELATIONSHIP GROWS PROPORTIONALLY.

IN OTHER WORDS, HARLIE corrected, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL’S LOVE CUBE AND THE IDEAL IS UNIMPORTANT. IF TWO INDIVIDUALS’ LOVE CUBES ARE COMPLEMENTARY, THEIR LOVE IS PERFECT, EVEN IF THE VARIATION FROM THE NORM IS SEVERE.

Auberson nodded. Yes. Yes, it sounded right. It felt right. LOVE OCCURS WHEN THE SEXUAL FANTASIES AND REALITIES APPROACH MAXIMUM CORRELATION. THE CLOSER THE CORRELATION, THE GREATER THE DEGREE OF LOVE. THE PERSON WHOSE FANTASIES ARE WORKABLE IN TERMS OF HIS CULTURAL CONTEXT IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO FIND LOVE. I.E., HIS SUBJECTIVE REALIZATION OF COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTS ALLOW THE FORMATION OF A RELATIONSHIP PERCEIVABLE TO THE PARTICIPANTS AS LOVE. LOVE IS SUBJECTIVE.

There was silence for a moment. A long moment HARLIE whirred thoughtfully to himself. At last, he typed, AUBERSON, YOU ARE CORRECT. THERE IS NOTHING I CAN ADD.

He was still marveling over that when the phone rang.

It was Handley. “Aubie, are you free? I think I’ve solved one of our problems.”

“Which one?”

“The control thing — I think I know how we can keep HARLIE off the telephone. Or at least monitor what he’s doing?”

Absent –mindedly, as if he were removing an eavesdropper, Auberson switched off the typer. “How?” he asked.

“I’ve requisitioned an ‘ask-me-again’ unit At one second intervals, or whatever timing we want to set it for, it’ll ask HARLIE ‘Are you on the telephone now?’ If the answer is no, the unit simply waits one second and asks again. If the answer is yes, the unit switches to an automatic monitoring program, asking who HARLIE is connected to and what the conversation is about. The tape is non-erasable. We’ll have a permanent record of all HARLIE’s telephone activities.”

Auberson frowned. “It sounds good, but—”

“It’s more than good, Aubie, it’ll work. Look, you were afraid that we couldn’t do anything drastic to him because we might inhibit and traumatize him. You said it might change his whole personality — and not necessarily for the better. This gimmick leaves him virtually unchanged; all it does is monitor him. We don’t have to shut him down; we don’t have to lobotomize. No plug-pulling anywhere. Just a simple little device that tells us what he’s up to at all times. He’ll know it — and that’ll keep him from making any phone calls. He won’t say or do anything over the phone that he wants to keep secret — and that includes everything that he uses the phone for. We’ll be inhibiting him by making him responsible for his own actions. He’ll have to ask himself, ‘Is this call important enough to justify revealing this information?’ Except for trivial things like your postcard, the answer will be no. He’ll have to be responsible for his own actions because there’ll be no way to hide them.”

Auberson was nodding now. “Let me think about it for a while. I’ll have to let you know later.”

“How much later?”

“Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Tomorrow’s the Board meeting,” Handley reminded.

“Damn, that’s right—”

“Look, the unit’s right here. I’ll go ahead and program it now. If you say go, I’ll be ready to plug it in right away.”

“Uh” — he agonized for a second — “all right But I don’t want to jump into this until I’ve had a chance to think it over. Send me up a copy of the program as soon as you finish it. I think you’re on the right track, but I want to double-check it for loopholes.”

“Right. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up.

Auberson replaced his phone in its cradle and turned back to the typer. He pulled the readout from the machine and folded it carefully. Better not to leave conversations like these just lying around. He slid it into his attach case.

He leaned back in his chair and relaxed. Smiling. Feeling good.

All of a sudden, things were going right for him. First Annie. Then HARLIE.

Annie.

HARLIE.

The two people who meant the most to him.

He thought about it.

He’d learned something in the past three days. He’d learned he was in love. And he’d learned what love meant. And in both cases, he’d realized it by himself. Nobody had had to point it out to him.

He felt a little pleased with himself at that. He’d finally been able to experience and cope with something that HARLIE couldn’t surpass him at. It was a nice feeling.

Not that he was jealous of the machine — but it was reassuring to know that there was still something that human beings could do that machines could not master.

Love.

It was a good feeling. He turned the word over in his mind, comparing it with the strange sparkly glow that surged through him. The word couldn’t begin to encompass the tingling warmth that he felt. When he’d come in to work this morning, he’d literally bounced. He hadn’t been conscious of his feet even touching the ground. He had this feeling of wanting to tell everyone he met how good it was to be in love — only common sense kept him from doing that. Even so, he was abnormally cheerful and could not keep from dropping oblique remarks about his weekend and the reason for his fantastic good mood.

The feeling had lasted all day, been reinforced by a wistful call early in the morning from Annie. There was little either had to say to the other, but they each wanted to hear the other’s voice one more time, and they whispered “I love you” back and forth at each other, and “Hi,” and “It’s good to know that you’re there,” and not much more than that. So they just listened to the sound of each other and shared a smile together.

Then he’d spoken to HARLIE. At last. And he’d answered his own question. HARLIE had helped him clarify his thinking, but it was he and not the machine who had realized what love was and why it was so confusing.

And finally, today a problem that had seemed so big on Friday had been reduced to nothing more than a routine adjustment of procedure and programming.

He felt fine. Auberson felt just fine.

And then his intercom buzzed.

It was Carl Elzer.

The little man wanted to meet HARLIE.

In the flesh, so to speak.

So they took the long elevator ride down to the bottom level and Auberson introduced him.

Elzer stood before a console-sized mass that barely reached to his chest and said, “This? This is HARLIE? I’d expected something bigger.”

“This is the thinking part of HARLIE,” Auberson said calmly. “The human part.”

Elzer eyed it warily.

It was a series of racks, perhaps twenty of them, each two inches above the next. The framework holding them had wires leading off at all angles. Elzer squatted down and peered into it. “What’re those things on the shelves?”

Auberson raised the plastic dust cover off the front and slid it back across the top. He counted down to the fifth rack and unsnapped the hooks on the frame. He slid it out for fiber’s inspection.