'To meet the computer.'
They stood facing each other for a moment before Laura finally shrugged and nodded. She followed Gray to the door. 'I still don't understand what I'm supposed to do,' Laura said to his back.
Gray didn't break stride, and the door slid into the wall uneventfully. 'I mean, if it's a virus or an intruder, what am I doing here?'
Filatov and Margaret were talking in low tones in the hallway, and they fell in behind Laura as the group headed for the control room.
'We're looking into every possibility,' Gray responded.
'And that includes human psychological disorders?' Laura asked, allowing her skepticism to creep into her voice. She eyed her two 'colleagues' now trailing quietly behind. Their faces revealed nothing, but they were listening. 'I mean, to be depressed the computer would have to be, you know…' The word stuck in her throat.
'It would have to maintain higher-order goals and ambitions.' Gray nodded.
'Are you telling me the computer is sentient?' Laura asked.
'That it has an intelligence comparable to a human being's?' Gray spun to face her, stopping the small entourage at the edge of the busy control room. 'No,' he said. 'I'm asking you to tell me.'
'She can use this office,' Filatov said, walking up to a closed door in a quiet corner of the control room. He lowered his glasses and stared into a black peephole, sending the door smoothly into the wall with a barely audible whoosh. Laura followed Margaret and Gray into the windowless underground office, but Filatov left without saying a word to the others. Margaret glanced over her shoulder a moment too late, catching Laura's eye instead of Filatov's and turning away.
The office contained a desk, a chair, and a credenza — all barren of the usual clutter of supplies. On the lustrous black top of the ultramodern desk sat an oversized computer monitor and a keyboard. The black leather chair was thickly padded. Like everything else in Gray's kingdom all was fresh and new and expensive.
'Let's get you logged on,' Margaret said, flicking a switch built right into the shiny black desktop. A whirring sound rose from deep inside the large desk. 'Mr. Gray,' Margaret said, 'this will require your authorization.'
Gray sat in the chair and waited as the terminal powered up. 'We have controlled access to the core functions,' Margaret said to Laura. 'You'll get a 'King-level' password — the same as all the department heads have.'
Margaret glanced down at Gray as if to give him a chance to rethink the decision, but he ignored her.
'Is that the highest level?' Laura asked.
'Yes,' Gray replied before Margaret got her answer out.
'Poor thing,' Margaret said, reading the words that scrolled down the monitor. Gray began to type, and Margaret watched over his shoulder, her smile growing sad. After Gray's brief interchange, Margaret said, 'Okay, Dr. Aldridge.' She waved Laura over to the terminal.
Gray rose and held the chair for Laura to sit. 'Look into the lens,' Margaret directed, pointing at the tip of the wand. 'Try, not to blink.' Laura sat down and stared into the dark hole. 'It identifies the user by the pattern of blood vessels on the retinal wall at the back of your eye. It's better than fingerprints. The pattern is impossible to alter, and every human's is unique.' There was a brief flash of light from the hole, and Laura blinked.
'Sorry,' she said, but the computer beeped.
'It's okay,' Margaret said. 'He got the print.'
Laura turned to the monitor.
<Dr. Aldridge,> she read at the bottom of the screen. The cursor flashed at the beginning of the blank line beneath — waiting.
'All right, then,' Gray said as he and Margaret headed for the door. 'Let Georgi know if you need anything. We've got a breakfast meeting at the house tomorrow at nine. It's your first night, so I wouldn't stay too late.'
'Wait!' Laura blurted out, and Gray and Margaret turned to her from the open doorway. 'Just what am I supposed to do?' As soon as she asked the question, Laura felt a wave of disappointment in herself.
Was it her? Was she too slow for Gray's army of geniuses?
But Gray showed no impatience. 'Dr. Aldridge, you're an expert in cognition — in matters of human consciousness. I have built an advanced neural network whose main task is to facilitate the interaction between humans and computers. I modeled its architecture on the human brain to try to bridge the gap that separates our two worlds.'
The deep concern etched on Gray's face was mirrored on Margaret's as she waited — her gaze falling to the floor.
'Along the way,' Gray continued, his voice now distant, 'the computer began exhibiting increasingly anthropomorphic, 'human' behavior. It didn't settle into that middle ground between humans and computers that I thought it would. It became more human than computer. At first, I was convinced the phenomenon was purely imitative. But as its domain of human knowledge expanded, its behavior grew more and more sophisticated.'
'And that's when the problems began?' Laura guessed.
Gray nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly, but Margaret quickly voiced her disagreement. 'There was a coincidence in the timing, yes, but…' Margaret began, then fell silent. Laura remain focused on the troubled Gray. 'You see,' Margaret finally continued, 'this system is unique. There has never been anything even remotely like it in history. We've spent years expanding its knowledge domain, which is absolutely the state of the art. It's priceless, so we've got to explore every possibility no matter how… remote,' Margaret concluded in an apologetic tone.
Laura willed herself to remain silent — to hold back the flood of questions that threatened to reveal her congenital ineptitude.
Margaret and Gray headed out, Gray's eyes lingering on Laura until the door closed behind him.
All was quiet then save the whirring under her desk. Laura stared at the closed door — then at the black eyeball on the wall beside it.
Only reluctantly did she turn to read the text on the screen.
<Mr. Gray! I hope you feel better than I do.>
'We'll all feel better as soon as you're up and about. We've got Dr. Aldridge here to see what she can do.'
<Let's log her on. I've really been looking forward to meeting her.>
'So I gathered.'
<What does that mean?>
'Never mind. Let's get started.'
LOGGING ON — ACCEPTED
<Dr. Aldridge?>
The exchange between Gray and his computer struck Laura as odd, but oddity seemed par for the course. Everything about her visit so far had been weird.
Laura swallowed to wet her dry mouth and moved the keyboard to a more comfortable position. She tilted and swiveled the monitor until it was just right. She wriggled in the chair and first straightened, then relaxed her shoulders. When all was ready — her fingers poised over the keyboard to begin typing — she pushed back from the desk and searched for the source of the noise underneath. Lights glowed and flickered from a large box that took up the [garbled] half of her desk beside her knee space.
When Laura sat up, she felt the first cool draft of air on her bare legs. It was coming from the off-white box with the blinking lights. She stared at the screen straight ahead. The cursor blinked insistently at the bottom.
'Hello,' she typed. 'This is Laura Aldridge.' She hit Enter with a loud clack of the key.
<There you are! How was your trip?>
The computer's reply was instantaneous. It unnerved Laura with its speed.
'Fine. How are you doing?' The moment she hit Enter, the answer printed out.
<Not so well. But we can get to that later. What do you think about the facilities?>
Laura felt overpowered by the immediacy of the response. It reminded her of her brief talk with Dorothy — of
