David Gerrold: When HARLIE Was One

Consequently, he could not understand why he continually found himself in conflict with Carl Elzer. Elzer had only recently joined the board, but he wielded considerable power. His interest was less in the company’s products and more in its profits, and he had taken it upon himself to streamline the finances. He had little concept of the difficulties of assembling and maintaining a research and technology team, and he wondered aloud why it was necessary for so many men and so much equipment to be standing idle for so long.

Auberson sighed in exasperation. “Listen, Elzer, it’s not necessary at all for any of those men or machines to be idle — you only have to reactivate HARLIE to put them back to work.”

Elzer looked calmly back at Auberson through thick-lensed glasses. The little man, with his thick sheaves of efficiency reports, seemed like a beaver. Or a weasel. “I would like to see them go back to work, yes — but the reason we’re here is to decide if the HARLIE project is the most useful work they could be doing.”

“One little setback and you want to discontinue the whole program?”

“This is not just ‘one little setback’ — it’s one more in a long series of them. I voted for this stoppage because I think we should reevaluate this whole thing.”

“Well, we’re not going to get an answer to this question unless we reactivate HARLIE and ask him what he meant.”

Elzer bunked behind his glasses. “I fail to understand your problem, Auberson. Why do you keep calling it ‘he’? It’s only a machine. What could it have possibly mean? A machine’s only a machine — isn’t it?”

“This one isn’t,” Auberson said. “This one’s human.”

“Oh?” Elzer raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you exaggerating just a bit?”

Auberson sagged back into his chair. He looked around the mahogany-lined room at the other members of the Board. “Would somebody please tell this… this high-priced bookkeeper just what the HARLIE project is all about?”

The other Directors stared back, impassive. Auberson had committed a serious breach of courtesy — he had insulted one of them. White-haired Griff, the oldest member of the Board, coughed and looked at the ceiling. Hudson-Smith, down the table, made a show of refilling his pipe. Next to him, young Clintwood took off his glasses and examined them for dust If Aubie was going down the tubes, he was going to go alone. The only one in the room not appreciably cool to Auberson was Miss Stimson, the executive secretary.

After a bit, after he had let the silence make its point, Dome, the Chairman of the Board, took his thick cigar out of his mouth and grunted, “I’m sure you can do it, Auberson. You know more about this piece of hardware than any of the rest of us.” He replaced his cigar and settled himself in his chair.

Auberson didn’t like the emphasis on “piece of hardware.” Didn’t they understand? HARLIE was more than that, much more. “All right,” he said. “I will. The HARLIE project is the logical extension of Digby’s work with the variable brain path—”

“The variable brain path?” asked one.

“The Mark IV judgment unit. Instead of base two, it uses base twelve. With compaction we can increase its precision by a power of twelve for each stage. First stage compaction is twelve squared, second stage is twelve cubed. Third stage compaction gives us twelve to the fourth power, or 20,736 possible choices.”

“You’ve lost me,” said Elzer. “Now tell it in English.”

Auberson suppressed an impulse. He forced himself to be calm. “I assume you mean one-syllable words?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Binary code means your machine can make only two possible decisions — on or off, ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There’s no possibility for ‘mostly yes,’ ‘somewhat yes,’ ‘slightly yes,’ ‘maybe yes,’ ‘maybe yes and maybe no,’ ‘maybe no,’ ‘slightly no,’ ‘somewhat no,’ ‘mostly no’ — there’s no selectivity. It’s either/or. By increasing the number of choices you increase the range of the machine’s judgment. Base three gives you ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘maybe.’ Base five adds ‘slightly yes’ and ‘slightly no.’ Give it base ten to work with and it’s a pretty selective system. Base ten,” he explained, “is the system most people use.” He held up his hands, spread his fingers and wiggled them. “See? Ten fingers. That’s if you count on them.” Elzer ignored it.

He continued. “We use base twelve in the judgment units for mathematical reasons. It eliminates some of the problems inherent in using tens. The nearest way I can explain it is that twelve divides into neater pieces. Ask a mathematician sometime about the advantages of base twelve over base ten.”

“Got that,” said Clintwood. “How do you do it with computers?”

“You mean the circuitry? I’m not sure I can answer that. I don’t know enough about it.”

“Can you give me an idea?” the younger man asked.

“Well, are you familiar with fluidics?”

“Sort of.”

For the rest of the Board, Auberson explained: “ Fluidics is a term used to describe computers or computer circuits based on the flow of a liquid or gas, rather than on the flow of electricity. Just as a transistor uses a small current to modify a large one, a fluidic circuit can use a small flow of liquid to modify a bigger one. There’s an important difference, though. An electric circuit is either/or; either the circuit is on or it’s off . With fluidics, however, you can vary the force of the modifying flow and vary the modification of the bigger. You can push the ‘current’ to be modified all the way over to the ‘yes’ side or to any notch in between. Because your major flow responds in proportion to the force of the modifying flow, you can have your full range of ‘yes’ to ‘no’ responses.”

“How does it do that?”

“It’s the simplest thing. The major flow, the one to be modified, is forced down a channel, which splits into several different directions. The modifying flow is directed into or against the major flow and deflects it into the desired channel. The pressure of the modifying flow is the variable thing. The harder it pushes at the major flow, the farther over it’s deflected. If the major flow is fast enough, you can vary its response several hundred times a second. What you have is a system that responds with surprising accuracy to the pressure of a fluid in a pipe. They’ve been using fluidics arrangements in industry for several years now, and also in the fuel feed systems of jets.

“The judgment circuit is the electronic equivalent of a fluidic unit. It measures the voltage, or pressure, of an electrical current and responds in degree to it. It’s very much like the way the human nervous system works. If a nerve cell releases a strong enough charge, it’s enough to set off the nerve cell next to it. Our judgment units do the same kind of thing; that’s how we can duplicate the action of a fluidic unit — or more importantly, of the human brain. With hyper-state layering, we can compress the circuitry into a size comparable to that of an equivalent piece of brain tissue.”

There were one or two nods around the table. Clintwood looked up from his notepad. “You used another term. Compaction?”

“Right,” said Auberson. “ Compaction is the term we use for giving the unit a second level of judgment circuits. It increases the number of choices by one power of the base number — twelve times twelve gives one hundred and forty-four choices in any given situation. One hundred and forty-four degrees between ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Want more precision, increase the number of levels. Each level increases the number of choices by twelve times.”