Society of the Mind

Gray looked up at Laura, then surveyed her from the top of her clean head to her clean toes down below, taking in the mud covering all points in between. He looked like he was coming off a month-long vacation, but it had been less than six hours since he'd returned from the jungle. His eyes were a brilliant blue again.

'How goes it?' he asked, his mouth stuck together with peanut butter.

'You haven't thought through the Model Eight program well enough,' she said simply, 'and you should shut it down until you have. And you should call a big meeting and tell everybody what's going on so they can do their jobs more efficiently and safely.' With that, she headed for the door.

'You went down into the mountain?' he asked, and she turned and nodded. 'So you've seen what's going on there?' She nodded again. 'And you've experienced virtual reality — and talked, of course, to the computer.' It was not a question, more a recitation of the relevant facts. 'Three days ago, you were a different person. You lived in another world. Three days ago — when you were sitting back in your late-twentieth-century office — if someone had told you what was possible today, with today's technology, would you have believed it? Would you have believed what you've seen with your own eyes on this island?'

Laura shivered from the cold floor under her bare feet and from her damp, clinging clothes. If only he wouldn't look at me like that, she thought. She shook her head.

'Laura, you've been on a rocket sled into the next century. The real twenty-first century — the latter part of it, not the beginning has been growing for some time now from the small germs of ideas in research labs and think tanks all over the planet.' He twisted on his stool to face her — to seize her attention fully. 'Nowhere have those pockets spread more widely than on this island. But they will spread. The pockets will grow, interconnect, overlap, and the world will be changed… forever.'

Laura understood Gray's words but had no idea what he was really saying. 'So that's what's been happening?' she asked softly. 'That first night, when you walked me halfway to the assembly building and we saw the Model Six mowing the lawn, that was some sort of orientation course designed to… to bring me up to speed.'

He stared at her intently, but made no reply. 'You knew there would be a robot out there, and that we would see it. You were easing me into your world — your century.'

He nodded. 'But don't forget, you'd already seen the Model Threes. You don't even think about them anymore. They're passe. A minor appliance. You probably don't even think of them as robots, do you? But they are robots, every bit as much as the Model Eights you saw down in the mountain this morning.'

'Why?' Laura whispered. 'Why are you doing this with me?'

'You live in the world of the mind, and so do I. Only you view the mind — the brain — as a stunningly complex miracle, a challenging puzzle to be unraveled. All its mysteries to be explained in a lifelong quest of research and discovery. I, on the other hand, view it as a limitation — a handicap. You can't plug a new module into nature's computer and expand its memory capacity. You can't upgrade a processor and double its speed. It is what it is, and that's what it will be for tens of thousands of years until…'

He stopped right there.

'Until what?'

'Until nature takes its course. Until evolution does its magic and changes the basic architecture of the brain. Until it expands the hardware's capacity to run programs that think and reason and remember.'

'Are you saying there's some sort of 'consciousness program'?' Laura asked. 'That our brain is a computer and our intelligence is just software?'

'Not exactly.'

'Then what are you saying — exactly?'

'You're not ready yet.'

Laura instantly grew angry. 'Don't you realize how patronizing that is? I'm not a child, and I don't appreciate being treated like one!'

'What do you think is going on here?' Gray asked.

She was so agitated it took several starts for her to get her reply out. 'I think you've built some kind of… new robot — a 'Model Nine' or 'Ten' or whatever — that the little boy from the town meeting saw last night. And you're convinced that I'm not ready to know about them because the tour bus has only just made it to the Model Eights! And I think one of those new robots — the ones that run around in a crouch — had something to do with ripping the head off that Dutch soldier!'

His face was a total mask now. Not a twitch of his lips or a hint of a nod or shake of his head. He didn't even blink. 'I wish I could tell you,' he said softly.

His tone made her hesitate. 'But I'm not ready yet?'

'Apparently not.'

'Well… just when will I be ready — if ever?'

'When the computer says you are.'

Laura rocked her head back. 'When the computer says I'm ready?' she blurted out with a laugh, incredulous. He nodded. She took a deep breath to compose herself.

'You tell me that I'm here to analyze the computer, but you have the computer analyzing me.' She shook her head in disbelief, and pieces of caked mud fell to the floor. 'And Hoblenz thinks the computer is having me psychoanalyze you!'

Gray smiled broadly, his teeth and the whites of his eyes standing out starkly against his tanned face. 'I hadn't thought of that one,' he said. 'It's an interesting little triangle.'

'But why use the computer to judge me?' she asked. 'If you're trying to make some kind of highly subjective determination about my mental state, why rely on a machine?'

'The same reason I rely on a bulldozer to move earth and a car to traverse distances. I build tools that amplify my abilities. Tools that make me stronger, faster… smarter.'

'And the computer is one of your tools.'

'It's a symbiotic relationship. We aid each other.'

'It gives you mental horsepower,' she said. Gray nodded. 'And what do you give it?'

'Life.'

They stared at each other in the stillness of the great house. Laura could detect no deception, no artifice. He consistently told the truth, and yet his core was still shrouded in veils of secrecy. That was the way things were with Gray, and it only deepened the mystery surrounding him.

'Oh!' Janet exclaimed from the [unclear]. 'Mr. Gray!' She came rushing across the kitchen, setting aside the broom and dustpan with which she had apparently been tracking Laura. 'Why didn't you tell me you wanted lunch?'

'That's okay, Janet,' he said, not taking his eyes off Laura. 'I'm through here.'

Laura had gotten all she would get out of him, she realized. 'I'm going to spend the day in the computer center — working,' Laura said, as much to cajole herself into returning to her job as to inform Gray of her plan for the day. 'Will I see you… there, I mean?'

'I'm sure I'll stop by sometime. I'll be down at the Launch Center most of the day, though. We're putting three flights up tonight.'

'Three? I thought you had two in space already.'

'You really were out last night,' he said, casually jabbing at feelings bruised by his failure to invite her to the town meeting. He continued without taking notice. 'We landed them both during the middle of the night, and we're preparing all three vehicles for relaunch.'

Laura sighed. 'I would ask you what's on board…' Gray tilted his head and made a face. 'Never mind.' On her way out, she passed Janet, who was washing her hands at the sink. 'I'm sorry about the trail of mud,' Laura said.

Janet was smiling broadly. 'That's quite all right, Laura. It's quite all right.' She was positively glowing.

Laura headed out — baffled by Janet's beaming gaze, which followed her all the way to the pantry door.

34

The nearly empty computer center was quiet through the open door to Laura's office.