The Turing Option

11 October 1, 2023

The blinds had been pulled up by the nurse when she had brought Brian his breakfast. He had been awake since dawn, unable to sleep with the whir of thoughts in his head. Bandages covered it, he could feel them with his fingertips. What had happened to him that had made him lose all those years? Selective amnesia? It just wasn’t possible. He should ask the doctor to physically describe the damage — though maybe he better not. He really didn’t want to think about that now. Not yet. The same way he didn’t want to think about Dad being dead.

The TV controller — where was it? He was still amazed at the quality of the picture — if not the contents. Programs were just as bad as ever. Should he watch the news again? No, it was too confusing, full of references he did not understand. It depressed him when he tried to figure it out, since he was mixed up too much as it was. There, that was better — kiddie cartoons. They had some really fantastic computer animation now. But despite the incredible quality the animation was still being used to sell breakfast cereal drenched in sugar. Ten years was a long time. He ought to forget about that too. Or look forward to getting the years back. Or did he want to? Why live the same life twice? What’s done is done. Though it might be nice not to make the same mistakes twice. But he wasn’t going to relive those years, just get back his memories of them. It was a very strange situation and he wasn’t sure that he liked it. Not that he had any choice.

Breakfast was a welcome intrusion. A lot of the chemical taste was gone from his mouth now and he was hungry. The orange juice was cold — but so were the poached eggs. Still he finished them and used a bit of toast to wipe up the last bits. The nurse had just cleared the dishes away when Dr. Snaresbrook came in. There was a woman with her — and it took a long moment to recognize Dolly. If she noticed his startled expression she did not let on.

“You’re looking good, Brian,” she said. “I’m so happy that you are getting better.”

“Then you have seen me here before, here in the hospital?”

“Seen is the wrong word. You were hidden behind all those bandages, pipes and tubes. But that’s all in the past.”

So was he. In the past. This thin woman with the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and graying hair, was not the maternal Dolly he remembered. Memory had taken on a new meaning for him now, something to be raked over, examined, rebuilt. Remembrance of things past, mat was what old Proust had written about in such a long-winded way. He would see if he could do a better job of it than the Frenchman had done.

“Dolly has been of immense help,” the surgeon said. “We’ve talked about you and your recovery and she knows that your memories stop some years back. When you were fourteen.”

“Do you remember me, when I was fourteen years old?” Brian asked.

“A little hard to forget.” She smiled for the first time, looking far more attractive with the worry lines gone from around her eyes, the tension from her mouth. “You were going into graduate school the next year. We were very proud of you.”

“I’m really looking forward to it. Though I guess that is land of stupid to say now. I’ve gone and graduated already, the doctor has told me. But I remember all too clearly the trouble I’m having — had! — with the registrars. They know I have all the credits that I need and it is just the administration still standing in the way. Because I’m too young. But that’s all in the past, isn’t it? I guess it all worked out well in the end.”

It was odd hearing him talk like this. Dr. Snaresbrook had explained to her that Brian could remember nothing of the years since he had been fourteen, that it was her job to help him recover those years. She did not understand it — but the doctor had been right so far.

“They didn’t cause trouble for very long. Your father and some of the others got in touch with the companies funding the university. They couldn’t have cared less if you were five years old — or fifty. It was the search for talents like yours that had caused them to start the school in the first place. The word came down from on high and you were admitted. I’m sure that you made a success of it, but of course I wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dolly took a deep breath and glanced at the doctor. Her face was expressionless; there was no help there. Going through it the first time had been bad enough; reliving it for Brian’s benefit was not easy.

“Well, you know that your father and I had — have — our-difficulties. Or maybe you didn’t — don’t — know.”

“I do. Adults think kids, even teenagers, are dim when it comes to family matters. You keep your voices down but there have been a lot of fights. I don’t like it.”

“Neither did I.”

“Then why do you — why did you — fight with Dad? I have never understood.”

“I’m sorry it caused you pain, Brian. But we were two different kinds of people. Our marriage was as sound as most, sounder maybe since we didn’t expect too much of each other. But we had little in common intellectually. And once you joined us I began to feel a little like a fifth wheel.”

“Are you blaming me for something, Dolly?”

“No. Quite the opposite. I’m blaming me for not making everything work out for the best. Maybe I was jealous of all the attention he lavished on you, how close you two were and how left out I felt.”

“Dolly! I’ve always — loved you. You are the closest thing to a real mother I have ever had. I don’t remember my mother at all. They told me I was only a year old when she died.”

“Thanks for saying that, Brian,” she said with a slight smile. “It really is a little too late to assign blame. In any case I and your father separated, had a very amicable divorce a few years later. I went back to live with my family, got a new job and that is where I am now.” Sudden anger flared and she turned on Snaresbrook.

“There it is, Doctor. Is that what you want? Or a bit more guts spilled on the floor.”

“Brian has the physical age of twenty-four,” she said calmly. “But his memories stop at age fourteen.”

“Oh, Brian — I am so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t, Dolly. I suppose that everything you have just told me about was in the wind and I should have seen it coming. I don’t know. I guess kids think that nothing basic will ever change. It’s just that school is so busy, the AI work so exciting—” He broke off and turned to Dr. Snaresbrook. “Am I at least fifteen by now, Doctor? I’ve certainly learned a lot in the past few minutes.”

“It doesn’t quite work that way, Brian. You heard a lot — but you don’t have your own memories of the events. That’s what we must restore next.”

“How?”

“By using this machine. Which I am very proud to say you helped to develop. I am going to stimulate memories which you will identify. The computer will keep track of everything. When other memories have been matched on both sides of the lesion they will be reconnected.”

“There can’t be enough wires in the world to reconnect all the nerves in the brain. Aren’t there something like ten-to-the-twelfth hookups?”

“There are — but there are plenty of redundancies as well. Associations with one sector of memory will permit compatible reinforcement. The brain is very much like a computer and the opposite is true as well. But it is important to always be aware of the differences. Memory is static in a computer — but not in the human mind. Recalled memories get stronger, untouched memories weaken and vanish. My hope is mat when enough pathways have been reconnected, other interconnections will be reestablished as well. We will be looking for nemes.”

“What are nemes?”

“A neme is a bundle of nerve fibers that is connected to a variety of agents, each of whose output represents a fragment of an idea or a state of mind. For example, what is red and round, with a sweet taste and a crunchy texture, a fruit about the size of your fist and…”

“Apple!” Brian said happily.

“That’s exactly what I had in mind, but notice I never used that word.”

“But it’s the only thing that fits.”

“Yes, indeed — but you’d only know that if you had an ‘apple-agent’ that was connected so that it would automatically get activated when enough of the right other nemes are activated — like the ones for red, round, sweet and fruit.”

“And also cherries. I must have nemes for cherries too.”

“You do. That’s why I added ‘fist-sized.’ But you didn’t have those nemes two months ago. Or, rather, you certainly had some apple-nemes, but their inputs weren’t wired up right. So you didn’t recognize that description before, until we connected them up during therapy.”

“Strange. I don’t remember that at all. Wait. Of course I can’t remember that. It happened before you restored my memory. You can’t remember anything until you have some memory.”

Snaresbrook was becoming accustomed to that startling sharpness, but it still kept taking her by surprise. But she continued in the same manner. “So that is how nemes hook up. By making the right kinds of input and output connections. So far, we’ve been able to do this for the most common nemes — the ones that every child learns. But now we’ll be looking for more and more complex nemes and discover how they connect as well. I want to find higher and higher levels of your ideas, concepts and relationships. These will be increasingly harder to locate and describe, because we’ll be getting into more areas that are unique to your own development, ideas that were known to you and you alone, for which there are no common words. When we find them, it may be impossible for me — or anyone else — to understand what they mean to you. But that won’t matter because you will be learning more every day. Every time the correlation machine discovers ten new nemes, it will have to consider a thousand other possible agents to connect them to. And every twenty nemes could trigger a million such possibilities.”

“Exponential, that’s what you mean?”

“Perfectly correct.” She smiled with pleasure. “It would seem that we’re well on our way to restoring your mathematical ability.”

“What will I have to do?”

“Nothing for now, you’ve had a long enough day for the first session.”

“No, I haven’t. I feel fine. And don’t you want to work with my new information in case it slides away when I go to sleep? You were the one who told me that a given period of time must pass before my short-term memory becomes long-term memory.”

Erin Snaresbrook chewed her lip, chewed at this idea. Brian was right. They ought to get on with the process as soon as possible. She turned to Dolly.

“Can you be here tomorrow? Same time?”

“If you want me.” Her voice was very cold.

“I do, Dolly. Not only do I want you but I need you. I know you must feel upset about this — but I hope that you won’t forget the boy Brian once was. Brian the man is still Brian the child whom you took into your home. You can help me make him whole again.”

“Of course, Doctor, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t think of myself, should I? Until tomorrow, then.”

They were both silent until the door closed behind her.

“Guilt,” Brian said. “The priest was always talking about it, the nuns in school too. Expiation as well. You know, I don’t think that I ever called her Mother. Or Mom like the other kids — or even Mammy the way we do in Ireland.”

“No blame or remorse, Brian. You are not living in your past but are re-creating it. What’s done is done. Cold logic, as you always told me.”

“Did I say that?”

“All the time when we were working together on the machine — when my thought processes got woolly. You were very firm about it.”

“I should have been. It saved my life once.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Nope. It’s part of my past, remembered in all too clear embarrassment. The time when I let a bit of stupid emotion get a hold of me. Can we move on, please? What’s next?”

“I’m going to plug you into the computer again. Ask you questions, establish connections, stimulate areas of your brain near the trauma and record your reactions.”

“Then let’s go then — hook them up.”

“Not at once, not until we have established a bigger data base.”

“Get things rolling then, Doctor. Please. I am looking forward to growing up again. You said we worked together before?”

“For almost three years. You told me that my brain research helped you with your AI. You certainly helped me develop the machine. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Three years. Since I was twenty-one. What did I call you then?”

“Erin. That’s my first name.”

“A little too presumptuous for a teenager. I think I’ll settle for Doc.”

Snaresbrook’s beeper signaled and she looked at the message on its screen. “You rest for a few minutes, Brian. I’ll be right back.”

Benicoff was waiting for her outside — and looking most unhappy.

“I have just been informed that General Schorcht is on his way over here. He wants to talk to Brian.”

“No, that’s impossible. It would interfere too much with what we are doing. How could he have known that Brian is conscious? You didn’t tell him—”

“No way! But he has his spies everywhere. Maybe even your office bugged. I should have thought of that — no, a complete waste of time. What he wants to know, he finds out. As soon as I heard he was coming here I got on the phone, went right to the top. No answer yet so you will have to help me. If he gets this far we need a holding action.”

“I’ll get my scalpels!”

“Nothing quite that drastic. I want you to stall. Keep him talking as long as possible.”

“I’ll do better than that,” Erin Snaresbrook said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll use the same trick he pulled, send him to the wrong room…”

“No you won’t. I’m in the right room now.”

General Schorcht stood in the open doorway. The slightest smile touched his grim features, then instantly vanished. A Colonel was holding the door open and there was another Colonel at the General’s side. Snaresbrook spoke without emotion, the tone of the surgeon in the operating room.

“I’ll ask you to leave, General. This is a hospital and I have a severely ill patient close by. Kindly get out.”

General Schorcht marched up to the woman and stared down at her coldly. “This has long ceased to be humorous. Stand aside or I will have you removed.”

“You have no authority in this hospital. None whatsoever. Mr. Benicoff, use that phone, get the nurse’s station. This is an emergency. I want six orderlies.”

But when Benicoff reached for the phone the Colonel placed his hand over it. “No phone calls,” he said.

Dr. Snaresbrook stood firmly with her back against the door. “I will place criminal charges against you for these actions, General. You are in a civilian hospital now, not on a military base—”

“Move her aside,” General Schorcht ordered. “Use force if you have to.”

The second Colonel stepped forward. “That would be unwise,” Benicoff said.

“I’m removing you from this investigation as well, Benicoff,” the General said. “You have been uncooperative and disruptive. Get them both out of here.”

Benicoff made no attempt to stop the officer when he stepped by him and reached for the doctor. Only then did he clasp his hands together into a joined fist — that he swung hard into the small of the Colonel’s back over his kidneys, knocking him gasping to the floor.

In the silence that followed this sudden action the sound of the telephone ringing was sharp and clear. The Colonel who had his hand over it started to pick it up — then turned to General Schorcht for instructions.

“This is still a hospital,” Dr. Snaresbrook said. “Where telephones are always answered.”

The General, radiating cold menace, stood motionless for long seconds — then nodded his head.

“Yes,” the Colonel said into the phone, then stiffened, almost coming to attention.

“For you, General,” he said, and held out the phone.

“Who is it?” General Schorcht asked, but the Colonel did not answer. After an even briefer hesitation the General took it.

“General Schorcht here. Who?” There was a long silence as he listened, before he spoke again. “Yes, sir, but this is a military emergency and I must decide that. Yes I do remember General Douglas MacArthur. And I do remember that he overstepped his orders and was removed from command. The message is clear. Yes, Mr. President, I understand.”

He handed the phone back, turned and walked from the room. The officer on the floor climbed painfully to his feet, shook his fist at Benicoff, who smiled back happily, before he went after the others.

Only when the door had closed behind them did Erin Snaresbrook permit herself to speak.

“You pulled some long strings, Mr. Benicoff.”

“The President’s Commission is making this investigation — not that military fossil. I think he had to be reminded who was his commander in chief. I liked that reference to MacArthur and the expression on General Schorcht’s face when he remembered that President Truman fired the General.”

“You have made an enemy for life.”

“That happened a long time ago. So now — can you tell me what is happening? How is Brian progressing?”

“I will in just a moment. If you will wait in my office, I’ll finish up with him. I won’t be long.”

Brian looked up when the door opened and the doctor came in.

“I heard voices. Something important?”

“Nothing, my boy, nothing important at all.”