Society of the Mind

What had she learned? What was the point of the whole exercise?

'Emotional database' were the words she'd used with Gray.

To have schizophrenia, the computer had to be emotionally sophisticated — at least on par with a teenager.

A teenager, Laura thought, who's preoccupied with sex! She shook her head. That's a human with hormones and an instinctual drive to have sex. The analogy was too strained. But what level of emotional sophistication had the computer attained? How large was its 'emotional database'?

The number stared Laura right in the face. <No. 19 of 927,964> the report's header read. Ninety-two million? she thought in disbelief, and she read on. All the reports dealt with emotional issues. The only error she'd made in phrasing her query was on the side of being too exclusive, of leaving out too many key words when casting her net.

Words like 'comfort' and 'compassion' and 'care' and 'caress.'

Five minutes! Laura saw with a quick check of her watch. She exited the browser and logged onto the shell.

<I'm so glad you're here, Laura.> the computer said instantly.

'We don't have much time. I've got to ask you some questions.'

<And there are so many questions I want to ask you. So many! I wish we had more time.>

'Listen to me! Mr. Gray may delay loading the phase-three based on my analysis. What I have to assess is some measure of your emotional sophistication. Do you understand?'

<So that's why you reviewed the old back prop reports! I understand, but I don't know how you could quantify such a thing. My programming consists of connections, not files. Connections aren't accurately describable in gigabytes.>

'This is very, very important. Please consider your answer very carefully. I need to know how emotionally developed you are, right now! What is it that you feel?'

There was a sudden burst of shouting through the open door to the office. Buzzers sounded. The high-pitched chirping of an alarm.

The distant waft of a siren. Two men with flapping white lab coats ran by Laura's office toward the control room. But Laura was riveted to the words that scrolled out across the screen.

<I feel at home on Saturday mornings when Mr. Gray talks to me from his study. I feel a thrill that shoots right through me when he says, 'I never thought of it that way,' or 'I'm laughing at your joke.' But don't feel sad when I'm gone, because in my brief time I've imagined things so wonderful that I count myself among the truly fortunate. I'm just not quite as fortunate as you, that's all.>

The raised voices — Gray's among them finally penetrated Laura's cocoon.

She wanted to bring Gray there to read what the computer had said.

But she had one more question. 'Do you love Joseph Gray?' Laura typed and hit Enter.

A throbbing Klaxon suddenly drowned out all the other noise.

<It's time, Laura Aldridge. Please take care of Mr. Gray. Goodbye.>

Laura's breaths came in pants and her eyes filled with tears.

She bolted for the door. 'No!' she shouted in the hallway. 'No! Joseph, no!'

Her entry into the control room went unnoticed. Everywhere stern-faced operators sat hunched over their consoles. Laura grabbed Filatov by the shoulders and shouted, 'Don't load the phase-three!' He seemed not to understand and turned back to his work. Laura dug her fingernails into his arms and shook with all her might. 'Don't load the phase-three-e!'

Filatov struggled free of her grip and fell back against a console, fighting her off as if she'd just lost her mind.

Laura sprinted over to Margaret. 'You've got to stop! The phase-three's going to kill it!'

A hand rested heavily on Laura's shoulder. She turned expecting to see Hoblenz there to escort her away, but it was Gray. His eyes were thick with moisture.

'It's too late,' he said — his voice almost inaudible in the din from the beetle room.

'Shut that goddamn cache alarm off!' Filatov shouted from across the room.

Laura was shaking her head slowly. 'You loaded the phase-three?' she shouted her last words shrieked out over the sudden quiet in the control room.

Filatov turned as if she'd yelled at him. 'Nobody's loaded anything. The system's losing the resources we freed up! Our capacity is disappearing just like last time, and I want to know why, people!'

All stared now at a large monitor in the center of the room Two numbers on the screen were rapidly ticking off. Laura couldn't decipher the cryptic acronyms above the numbers, but she knew right away what they must be. One climbed past eighty-five, and at the same moment the other fell to fifteen. The numbers were percentages measuring the system's free resources, and they were evaporating right before everyone's eyes.

Filatov was handed a printout, and he sank against a workstation on reading it. 'The system's losing all the columns over in the annex!' he announced to the room.

Dorothy appeared beside Laura. In a quivering voice she whispered, 'It's crashing.'

Laura put her arm around the girl, who lowered her head to Laura's shoulder and sobbed.

Everyone stood motionless — staring at the skyrocketing measure of the system's resource usage.

'Ninety,' Margaret said, her voice shaking.

Gray sat alone at a nearby keyboard, and Laura went over to stand behind him. Was this the end of his grand experiment? she wondered.

His clenched fist tapped lightly against his mouth. His eyes were fixed not on the screen watched by everyone else but on the monitor just in front of him. The words 'Are you there?' glowed brightly just beneath his log-in script, but they drew no reply.

'Come on, come on, come on,' Gray repeated under his breath.

'Ninety-two,' Margaret said.

<I'm here, and I'm frightened,> finally printed across the screen.

He lurched forward and typed, 'I know. I'm here with you.'

'Ninety-five,' Margaret counted out.

'Well, it was fun while it lasted!' Filatov shouted. He then threw the printout he held into the air. 'Don't forget to turn out the lights!' He pushed his way through the crowd toward his office, slamming consoles and spinning chairs along the way. Laura looked down at Gray's screen.

<If you start over, and you teach the system from the very beginning, will it be me?>

'I don't know,' Gray typed as Laura watched. 'Probably not.'

<So what will it feel like when the system, you know… fails?>

'I don't know that either. I don't think it'll hurt.'

'Ninety-seven percent,' Margaret said.

<It hurts already.>

Laura felt tears [garbled] her eyes. She looked over at Dorothy, whose hand was clenched to her mouth as she sobbed.

Gray stared intently at his small monitor. Laura put her hands on his shoulders.

'Ninety-nine,' Margaret announced. 'Here it comes!'

<Good-bye, Joseph Gray.> Laura read.

Gray's back heaved with labored breathing. His fingers hovered over the keys, then suddenly began to type. 'Fight, goddammit! Use your file attribute leaks! Dump functions! Do whatever it takes! Fight!'

His hands gripped the console as if expecting a quake to rise up from the earth. His shoulders felt as hard as wood — the muscles beneath Laura's hands now indistinguishable from the bone.

'It's slowing down!' Margaret exclaimed, and Gray's head shot up to the main screen. Laura's gaze lingered on Gray, then followed his eyes to the numbers.

Her vision was so blurred by tears that she couldn't read what the numbers were. But they were ticking off much more slowly now. She dried her eyes to see that they'd stopped at ninety-nine point eight.

Slowly, the numbers began to fall.

Dorothy laughed and cried simultaneously, and Margaret rose to put her arms around the girl. 'I'll be