'But the Hong Kong virus was man-made, right?' Laura asked.
'Yes,' Gray said, 'but it doesn't matter. A virus is a virus whether it's written by a hacker or it arose naturally from mutations while inside the system. In the case of the latter, it's a definition thing. It becomes a 'virus' when it loses its competition with a fitter program but then eludes or resists termination by the genetic algorithm.'
'We call it the 'flora and fauna' of the system,' Dorothy said.
'The 'wildlife,'' Filatov contributed.
'The point is,' Gray said, 'the connections are all constantly evolving. The amount of information contained in the computer's main code was initially equivalent to the amount of data stored in the DNA of a small rodent. It has grown, however, to a complexity approaching that of the human brain. And the viruses running loose in the system have evolved right along with it. The information content of their code used to be roughly the same as biological viruses' DNA. Now, some have codes similar in information content to the DNA of insects.'
'They're ingenious,' Margaret said. 'Some of the naturally evolving viruses are 'nesters.' They infest whole racks in the nitrogen pools. When one member of the community is attacked, it sends out an alarm and the rest flee. And then other viruses are loners and scurry when attacked.'
'We build traps for the slippery ones,' an excited Dorothy chimed in. 'We analyze their habitat preferences and lure them onto a board that has been inoculated with a customized antiviral program. The nesters we try to leave alone. They tend to max out at three or four columns of infestation. If we go in there too quickly, there's a chance they'll scatter all over the place, and then we're talking, like, massive infection. Instead, every so often we'll just quietly unplug the columns and reinitialize their connections.'
Laura was dumbfounded. Computer operations in her mind were crisp and clear and above all else orderly. What they were describing were none of those things.
'The viruses are mostly benign, surprisingly,' Gray picked up. 'Many are predators that feed off other viruses.'
'Like the Venus flytrap!' Dorothy said, smiling with evident enjoyment at the discussion of her specialty. 'It was the coolest one we ever found. We didn't even know we had a problem. Our error rate was actually falling. But the virus grew voracious, eating its way through the system's flora and ultimately its fauna over a two-week period until it got to be too large. You see, it didn't delete the other viruses, it added them to its own code. By the end of the second week, it had grown like a tumor to a full percentage point of our total capacity, and excising it was tricky. If we broke it up, we potentially released all the viruses that had stuck to it. That would've wreaked havoc on the system.' Dorothy heaved a clearly audible sigh. 'I still think we could've caught it. We could have lured it into one of the [unclear] processors and shut it in there.'
'And then what?' Filatov asked in an incredulous tone.
'Should we have rehabilitated your 'flytrap' so it could become a responsible member of our community? Used an entire Cray or a connection machine as an aquarium for your pet piranha?'
Dorothy looked up, shrugging. 'But it was beautiful.'
A silence descended on the room.
'What we're saying, Dr. Aldridge,' Gray resumed, 'is that the computer is an ecosystem. Dorothy has to maintain a balance. She can't thin the predators without risking a massive infection by their prey. The computer even has a symbiosis of sorts with its viruses, just as humans have coevolved with certain biological microorganisms. Today, without the benign bacteria in your stomach that aid in digestion, you'd die. In return for humans providing a host, those bacteria reproduce just rapidly enough to maintain healthy digestion. It's good for them, and it's good for us. If however, there's a perforation of the stomach wall, then all bets are off. The normally benign bacteria assume the host is a goner and begin to reproduce massively. That way, some of them may make it into a new host and perpetuate the species. But that massive infection is almost certain to kill the old host. That's why stomach wounds are so dangerous, and it's the same danger we deal with in the computer. We have to be careful to avoid stampeding the wildlife.'
Laura again checked her colleagues around the table. They all wore serious looks on their faces.
'But all of those concerns,' Gray said slowly in the stillness, 'bow to one immutable law. The fittest program must survive. The less fit program dies. That's Darwin's law… and mine.'
After lunch, Laura continued the analysis in her office.
<Don't play games with me, Dr. Aldridge. You're too brilliant not to have figured out what really happened when Filatov and Bickham tried to load the phase-two. I know you well enough to tell when you're just playing dumb.>
'If you think I know why the phase-two didn't load, you obviously don't know anything about me,' Laura typed and hit Enter.
<I know a lot about you. I know your favorite movie is A Room with a View.>
Laura stared at the line. She was unnerved by the sudden shift in the discussion. But she was even more thrown by the fact the computer was correct. It was her favorite movie.
'What makes you think that?' Laura replied.
<What's your favorite scene?> the computer asked.
'You didn't answer my question.'
<I bet I know! It's near the end, when Lucy Honeychurch is told that the boy everyone thought she didn't like is going away. Do you remember? His father asks her if she loves him, and she blurts out — completely out of the blue—'But of course I do! What did you all think?' It's my favorite movie too, although I haven't watched it nearly as many times as you.>
Laura was floored. She'd ordered the movie on Gray's pay-per-view system — but only twice. The computer said it hadn't watched the movie nearly as many times as she had. How could it know that she'd made rental of that videodisc a regular Saturday-evening ritual for months at a time?
It dawned on her just then.
'You broke into the computer records at my video store, didn't you?' she typed.
There was no response.
'And that means you must have broken into my bank records, too!!!!! And maybe the university network at Harvard?'
Still there was no response.
The break-ins at the video store and bank would have been long before Gray's offer to her. What reason could the computer have had to follow her?
<I need to talk to you, Laura. Off the record, okay?> the computer finally said.
'There is no record. I'm not a cop.'
<But what I say to you goes straight to Mr. Gray, right? I want you to promise not to tell him what I'm about to say. I trust you, so I'll accept a simple 'I promise.'>
Laura hesitated. It would've been an entirely proper request from a human patient, but the ethics of a therapist-computer relationship were somewhat less certain.
<Please!> the computer printed out before Laura had a chance to respond.
'Okay. I promise.'
<I did all those things because I thought you'd be my friend. I thought you'd be able to help me with my problems.>
'So you spied on me? You violated my privacy?'
<Please don't be mad! You just seemed so perfect! I didn't touch anything! I just looked! Please, you've got to understand! I wanted to know more about you. What you think. How you feel. What kind of clothes you wear. What kind of food you like. What would you expect me to do? Just turn a blind eye to all that data? Miss out on possibly finding a perfect friend?>
'And you think breaking into someone's personal records is the way to find a friend?!!'
<I don't KNOW how to find a friend! I don't HAVE any friends.>
Laura felt her anger drain from her. It was replaced by a rising tide of sympathy. She wanted to reach out and… what? Touch its hand? Pat its head? Put her arms around it? All Laura had was words.
'I'm sorry,' Laura typed. 'I'm your friend. What can I do?'
<You can make Mr. Gray understand that I have needs.>
