The Turing Option

14 November 10, 2023

The nurse came bustling into the room, leaving the door open.

“You will have to leave now, Mr. Benicoff.” She pulled back the bedclothes and plumped the pillows as she spoke. “Time to get into bed, Brian.”

“Do I have to? I feel okay.”

“Please do as I say. Your pulse, blood pressure, both are elevated.”

“I’m just excited about something, that’s all.”

“Bed. Did you hear me, Mr. Benicoff?”

“Yes, great, sure. I’ll talk to you later, Brian, after I’ve seen the doctor.”

Despite the months of rest and treatment, the trauma of the shooting and the surgery that had followed was still taking its toll. Brian fell asleep almost at once and didn’t wake until he heard voices, opened his eyes to see Ben and the doctor at his bedside.

“A little too much excitement,” Dr. Snaresbrook said. “But nothing to worry about. Ben tells me that you are rarin’ to go for a ride in the country.”

“Could I?”

“Not for a while yet, not after the surgery you have undergone. But it may not be necessary.”

“Why?”

“Ben will explain.”

“My blood pressure must have gone as high as yours,” Benicoff said. “In the heat of the moment I just wasn’t thinking. There is no physical need to go to the house yet. I’ll have it searched again, but I doubt if they will come up with anything new. You said, Brian, that you used to store your backup files in your father’s computer.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, there have been major changes in communication technology that you can’t remember. For one thing everything is digital now and fiber optics have replaced copper wire in all but the most remote areas. Every telephone has a built-in modem — and they are already old-fashioned. All of the large cities have cellphone networks and they are expanding.” He tapped the telephone on his belt. “I have my own number for this. About most of the time it rings wherever I am in the continental United States.”

“Is it a satellite link?”

“No, satellite connections are too slow for most uses — particularly telepresence. Everything is fiber optics now — even the undersea cables. Cheap and fast. With plenty of room for communication with eight thousand megahertz band-width capacity available everywhere — and all of it two-way.”

Brian nodded. “I get your drift, Ben. What you’re saying is that there is very little chance that I had a local mechanical backup. It was undoubtedly an electronic one. Which will mean an electronic search.”

“Right. There are countless mailboxes, data base and communication programs now. You could have used one or more of these. But computer privacy laws are very strict these days. Even the FBI has to go to court to get permission for a search.”

“What about the CIA?”

“You’ll be happy to hear that they pulled one murderous trick too many and legislation has just been passed to put them out of the duty tricks business. Another victim of glasnost — and they won’t be missed. Particularly by the taxpayers who, it turned out, had been shelling out billions for a government department that produced nothing but inaccurate reports, started revolutions in friendly countries, mined harbors and managed to kill thousands of people along the way. They’ve been cut back to the original meaning of their name, a central intelligence agency, and are restricted to monitoring the peace instead of starting new wars. Now, if you will sign an agreement we can start the search at once.”

“Of course.”

It was not only papers that had to be signed, but there were numerous circuitry searches and phone-backs, as well as identity checks by three different government agencies. Benicoff sent everything off by registered fax, yawned and stretched.

“Now we wait,” he said.

“How long?”

“If it takes an hour that will be a long time. Before electronic transfers this would have taken days — even weeks.”

“A lot has changed in the ten years since — since I have been away,” Brian said. “I look at the news and some things haven’t changed at all. Others I look at, I miss a lot of the references.”

But it was done within the hour — and brought results less than ten minutes later. The printer hummed and rustled out the sheets of eternitree. Benicoff brought them over to Brian.

“You have accounts with six different firms.”

“That many?”

“That few. This one is a scientific data base, one of the ones that are updated hourly. They replace technical libraries — and work a lot faster. Access time is usually under a second. This one is a mailbox, this gets tickets for everything from baseball games to plane flights. These four here are the best bets. Would you try them first?”

“What do I do? Can I get out of bed, Doc?”

“I would prefer it if you didn’t.”

“No need to,” Benicoff said, going to the terminal and unplugging the keyboard. “This has an infrared link, you don’t need wires. And I’ll phone down for holospecs.”

Brian really enjoyed the holospecs. They were lightweight eyeglasses with a tiny bulge of circuitry in each earpiece. The lenses seemed to be just windowpane, though he guessed that they could have been ground with a prescription if he wore glasses. When they were turned on the image of a computer screen floated in space in front of him.

“Right. What do I do next?”

“Call up the data base, identify yourself and give them your code number. Then guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every account has a security code known only to the owner. Try any old ones that you remember. If that doesn’t work guess at new ones. These companies have been told what is happening and have switched off the alarm software. Usually, after the third attempt, the connection is cut and the police are given the number of the calling phone that is making the attempt to break in.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“A court order is needed to crack in. Which will take a couple of days at the fastest.”

Brian found that old habits die hard. Three of the four opened at once to some of his favorite Irish code words. Nothing as gross as SHAMROCK, but ANLAR opened the first and LEITHRAS the other two.

“An Lar means city center, it’s on the front of all the buses. Leithras is the Gaelic word for toilet,” he explained. “Bathroom humor is greatly enjoyed by kids. But I have no idea what will open this last one. Can we save it for a bit and see what’s in the other three? It’s a little like getting my memory back, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Benicoff agreed. “I’ll tell you what — I’ll start the proceedings for a court order on the last one, just in case. More papers for you to sign.”

The first account turned out to be a letter box, only a little over two years old. Brian went to the oldest letters and read through them. It gave him an uneasy feeling. None of the correspondents was familiar — and his own letters had an alien ring to them. Yes, he had signed them — but, no, it did not sound like him at all. It was very much like reading someone else’s correspondence. There were occasional mentions of AI, but only in passing — and never in detail.

He pushed all of it into the computer’s memory for his attention at some other time, then looked at the other two. One held his financial statements and IRS reports and was fascinating in a depressing sort of way. He had started earning money from royalties when he was quite young, he remembered that, from software for the most part. Then there was a large deposit, from the sale of their house — then more from his father’s estate. He hurried on. So did the money. In a few years it was all gone — just before he went to work for Megalobe. The correspondence with the corporation made fascinating reading, particularly the details of his contract. There was much food for thought here. He stored this one as well and turned to the last account.

Ripped through a few screens, read very closely for a while — then wiped it. The doctor had gone out and Benicoff was bent over the phone, punching in a number. It was almost sunset and the room was growing dark.

“Ben — got a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’m really getting tired. I’ll look at these in the morning.”

“Let me put the keyboard away. Find anything about AI?”

“Nothing in these.”

“Then I’ll accelerate the court order. After you get a night’s sleep try to think of more passwords, okay?”

“Sure thing. See you in the morning.”

“You are beginning to look tired. Get some rest.”

Brian nodded and watched the big man leave. Not tired. Totally depressed.

He had read just enough of the contents to know that he did not like it. The opening was familiar enough, the notes he had made after the disastrous end of his affair with Kim. Once the depression and hatred had ebbed a bit he had made more notes on his Managing Machine theory. This he remembered developing into his AI work — but he also remembered noting that it could be a means of personal control. Apparently he had carried this idea even further, developing it into a new mind science, more theory than fact from what he had seen in the file, called Zenome Therapy. It didn’t sound so way-out and nutty as Dianetics but there were, to put it kindly, large undercurrents of megalomania running through it. It had not made nice reading — and he was pretty sure that he did not like the person who had written it.

Some decisions are easy to make once the facts are in front of you. He had been thinking about this for the last week and the so-called science of Zenome Therapy made his mind up. One of the paging buttons was on the bedside table and he pressed it. The nurse entered a moment later.

“Do you know if Doc Snaresbrook is still here?”

“I believe that she is, supervising the equipment installation. The doctor is moving into a new office that has been assigned to her here.”

“Could I see her, please.”

“Of course.”

The last colors of twilight were fading and Brian overrode the lighting controls to watch them. When the sky was dark he allowed the blinking warning button to have its way. The curtains closed as the lights came on. The doctor came in a moment later.

“Well, Brian, you have had a busy day. Feeling the worst for it?”

“Not really. I was tired earlier but a nap fixed that. How about my vital readouts?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“Good. Then you would say that I am on the road to recovery, reasonably sane other than suffering from the delusion that I am only fourteen years old — though I am really over twenty-one.”

“Take out the word ‘delusion’ and I would agree.”

“Have I ever thanked you for what you have done for me?”

“You have now and I’m grateful — and tremendously happy at the way things are turning out.”

“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Doc. But would you be terribly put out if we stopped the memory restoration sessions pretty soon?”

“I don’t understand—”

“Put it another way. I’m satisfied with the way I am. I think that I would like to grow up on my own from now on. Become an older me, if you see what I mean. If the truth be known I don’t really care about the other me, the one that was wiped out by the bullet. I don’t mind going on with the sessions to find out how badly my memory has been affected, if there are things I should know — that I don’t. I want my past restored as much as possible. Then as soon as you are satisfied with that, maybe you will consider stopping there. Though I would like to go on with the experiments you suggested to see if I really can interface with the internal CPU. Is that okay with you?”

Erin Snaresbrook was shocked, tried not show it. “Well, of course you can’t be forced. But sleep on it, please. We can talk about it tomorrow. It is rather a big decision to make.”

“I know. That’s why I am making it. Oh yes, one other thing. But we can take care of that tomorrow as well.”

“What is that?”

“I want to see a lawyer.”