Star Song and Other Stories

The Broccoli Factor

"So," Tom Banning said, his voice muffled by the coffee cup hovering just below mustache level. "How's life in the hot lane?"

"Don't ask," Billy Hayes sighed, spooning the last few chunks of ice from his water glass into his own mug. The Institute's cafeteria invariably served their coffee at a temperature which, in his opinion, was just short of the melting point of lead. "The last confinement scheme officially went down the gutter this morning, and we're right back on square one."

Banning slurped some coffee and shook his head. "Remember the good old days when fusion power was going to be just around the corner?"

"Yeah," Hayes retorted. "That was maybe twenty years before artificial intelligence was going to be just around the corner."

Banning grimaced. "Talk about job security."

Hayes nodded, and for a minute they sat silently, each contemplating in his own way the perversity of the Universe. "So what's the trouble this time?"

Banning asked at last.

"Oh, the usual," Hayes shrugged. "We can get the plasma hot enough, but we can't figure out how to keep it confined long enough in the center of the vacuum chamber. Every time we reconfigure the fields to eliminate one instability—Blooie!—another one crops up, drives the plasma out to the wall, and that's that."

"Computer design doesn't help?"

"Not so far. I don't suppose you've got JUNIOR to the point of understanding plasma physics yet?"

"Don't rub it in," Banning growled.

"Sorry," Hayes apologized. "Still stuck at the two-year-old intelligence level, eh?"

Banning glared down into his coffee. "We got him to the level of a six-month-old exactly eight months after the breakthrough. Six months later he was a year old.

It took just two more months to get him where he is now... and we haven't gotten him to budge since." Hayes nodded. He'd heard the litany a hundred times in the past four years—just as Banning had spent endless lunch breaks listening to his litany. Just a couple of broken old men, he thought sourly. Flat up against the wall of the Universe, without an exit sign in sight. "At least you don't have to worry about funding," he offered.

"Not from congressional committees, no," Banning agreed darkly. "But on the other hand, you don't have the entire Japanese computer industry breathing down your neck."

Hayes sighed. "A pity you can't at least get him to the three-year-old level.

My grandson just turned three, and he loves to tinker with mechanical toys. Give a

three-year-old AI the magnetohydrodynamic equations and it might just come up with something."

"Be thankful JUNIOR's not still at the six month level," Banning said dryly.

"He'd take your equations and chew them to a pulp."

"Gum them to a pulp, you mean," Hayes corrected him. "Six-month-olds don't have any teeth."

"Just like sixty-year-olds," Banning said, snorting a chuckle as he readjusted his upper plate. "You suppose the secret of the Universe is that life is round?"

" 'Pi are round; cornbread are square,' " Hayes said, quoting the hairy old joke from his youth. It was one of the chestnuts he brought out periodically to try on ever-younger sets of new Institute employees, who were generally unanimous in failing to see any humor in it. "And on that note, I guess lunch is over," he added.

"Yeah," Banning agreed with a sigh. "Back to uselessly banging our heads."

"Six-month-olds do that a lot, too," Hayes said. "Mostly when they're crawling under coffee tables."

"Haven't programmed a coffee table into JUNIOR's environment," Banning said as they headed for the cafeteria door. "Maybe I ought to try it."

"Yeah—it'd be interesting to hear what a computer sounds like when it cries.

Well, happy hunting."

Four hours later Banning's private line rang. "Hello?"

"It's Billy," Hayes identified himself. "Listen, you said earlier that JUNIOR's environment can be programmed. "Can JUNIOR himself be programmed, too?"

"Sure," Banning said, frowning. "You can dump any peripheral stuff into him—"

"Without affecting his intelligence?"

"Such as it is, sure."

"Can you lend him to me? Say, for six hours?"

"Take all the time you want," Banning sniffed. "Adopt him, for all I care.

I'm thinking of quitting and joining a monastery, anyway."

"Yeah, well, don't invest in rosary beads just yet," Hayes told him. "Your idiot savant computer may just be good for something, after all." The red glow on the monitor faded, and Banning shook his head in wonderment.

"I'll be damned. You did it. You really and truly did it."

"We sure did," Hayes nodded. "Me and JUNIOR."

"I'll be damned," Banning repeated, reverently. "After all these years. Real, genuine fusion."

"It's the fluctuating confinement fields that broke the deadlock," Banning told him, tapping the printout still snaking its way out of the printer. "JUNIOR

has to alter them every ten microseconds or so to keep the plasma confined, but that appears to be well within his capabilities."

"Capabilities, yes. Sophistication, no." Banning fixed him with a puzzled and slightly ominous look. "Come on, Billy; I came to see your triumph, like you asked, and I agree you're a genius. So now level with me—because if you got JUNIOR past the two-year-old level last month and didn't tell me about it then, I swear I'm going to strangle you."

Hayes shook his head. "No such luck, I'm afraid. JUNIOR's no further along than he was when you loaned him to me."

"Then kindly explain that," Banning demanded, waving at the fusion test chamber.

"JUNIOR can't possibly have the intelligence or expertise that demonstration showed."

"Ah—but you underestimate two-year-olds," Hayes waggled a warning finger at him.

"All I had to do was find the proper age-specific behavior pattern and figure out how to adapt it."

Banning blinked. "You've lost me."

"Oh, come on, Tom, you've seen it yourself. What does a kid JUNIOR's age do when you make him eat something he doesn't like? He pushes it around with his teeth and the tip of his tongue, trying like the devil to swallow it without letting any of it touch the sides of his mouth."

Banning's eyes went wide. "Are you saying...?"

"That's right," Hayes nodded. "I tied JUNIOR into the test chamber... and then programmed him to hate the taste of plasma."

Banning looked at the printout. "When the Nobel committee phones you," he said,

"I want dibs on half the prize money."

"You got it."