Fool's Experiments (6 page)

General-press coverage, AJ had been astonished to learn, loosened corporate purse strings faster than publication in refereed professional journals. It was, perhaps, an unhappy discovery, but he had come to terms with it.

Fighting reality was almost always a losing battle—even in the artificial-life business.

Today's visitor to the AL lab was from the
Hartford Courant.
Nothing especially current distinguished the questions the reporter posed, but AJ kept that opinion to himself. Anything that helped keep his team funded was important. Teaching and show-and-tells were small sacrifices for continuing the research. The world
needed
what he was developing here.

The tour ended, as always, at AJ's office. He invited his guest inside and waved vaguely at the guest chair. "So, Fred, what do you think?"

Fred took a PalmPilot from his jacket pocket. "Fascinating. Really, it is."

"I hope your readers agree."

"Let me echo what I believe I heard. Tell me where I ran off the rails."

Rather mixed metaphors, AJ thought. And he's a writer? "Go ahead."

"It's a daringly simple idea, really. You're breeding software instead of writing it."

"That's right," AJ said.

"In nature, the organisms best suited to their environments live long enough to reproduce. Random mutations cause new life-forms to arise. The changes that are improvements tend to survive, reproduce, and prosper. Then new mutations arise, and ever more capable organisms flourish. In a word, evolution. You're applying the same techniques to developing software."

"Still right." AJ's modest status at the university entitled him to a desk, two chairs, one bookshelf, and one table. There was no way that he could cope with so little storage; a bricks-and-boards bookshelf bore two years of old journals, and an unhung door served as a second table. AJ opened the bar-sized refrigerator that doubled as one base of the improvised table; the other support was a dented two-drawer file cabinet topped with the 1988 Spokane Yellow Pages. The phone book was on permanent loan from the university library. There was little demand for it.

His guest shook his head when offered a soda. "Here is where you lost me. Where did you start?"

"Remember the simulated maze we saw?" Rewarded by a nod, AJ continued. "It's far simpler than the maze in any video game, but that's okay. I'll never admit it to my daughters, but even Quake, Doom, and Halo addicts are fairly high on the evolutionary ladder.

"So we begin with a maze. A supervisory program sees the headway made by
other
programs trying to navigate the maze. The maze runners are the programs we're evolving." Fred steepled his fingers thoughtfully. "And you start with maze runners made of random bits, and see which ones can solve the maze?"

"No, we've bootstrapped the process a little. To save time, we wrote the very most basic software. Think of it as stopping Creation a little early, with only some particularly stupid bacteria on hand." AJ sipped his Mountain Dew as Fred entered some notes.

"Got it." More scribbling with his stylus. "By selecting the fastest maze runners after each experiment, and randomly varying their software, you get ever ... oh, piss on it. . . better performance over time."

"I beg your pardon?"

Fred tilted the palmtop toward AJ; a red LED glowed bale- fully. "The batteries are almost drained, and I left my power converter at the hotel. Got any spare triple As?"

"Sorry." AJ shrugged. "Maybe a pencil?" He got only a puzzled expression in response.

"I guess I'd better wrap it up. How good are they now? The maze runners, I mean."

AJ set his soda can on a pile of ungraded quizzes. "Still dumber than dirt—but they learn a
lot
faster."

Linda shifted her weight from foot to foot, the nervous dance hidden by the bulky podium. Working in AJ's house felt odd, but it made sense. His in-home setup was preconfigured; configuring one of the school's communal distance- learning labs would have burned more of her time than giving the lecture.

Simpler still would have been for her to meet with the reporter and AJ to give his own damned lecture. Also scarier. She had
no
interest in meeting with the press.

The highlight of the lecture was a maze-runner demo. Annoying glints of light, reflections off a workstation screen, showed the video had been shot with a camcorder. Networking their lab directly to all the class sites would have been kinder to the eyes. It would also have exposed the ongoing experiment to every worm, virus, and Trojan loose on the Internet. Over my dead body, Linda thought. Only last week, a virus infestation had taken the university two days to eradicate. Damned eco-nuts.

On the classroom displays, a thousand specks crept about an elementary labyrinth. The dots turned and veered at random, bumping enthusiastically into imaginary walls. Most specks remained clustered near the beginning of the maze; only a handful had navigated around more than one corner. None was anywhere close to the exit. Students cheered when the front-running mote successfully negotiated the fourth turn, a 180-degree switchback.

Takagawa, on the main-campus display, was the first to get the point. "It's a constrained optimization problem ... ma'am."

Sigh. He didn't remember her name. She wondered if any of AJ's students did. Linda knew what the young man meant, but it was his job to express himself. "
What
is a constrained optimization problem?"

"Solving a maze, ma'am."

"Go on."

"Much problem solving involves optimizing some value, subject to a set of constraints." The student bounced excitedly in his seat. "Like the traveling salesman problem: selecting the best route between the cities of the sales territory.

That problem tries to minimize total travel time subject to meeting delivery dates, or avoiding road congestion, or other conditions."

Linda nodded encouragement and waited.

"Finding the exit of a maze is a simple goal; getting there with a minimum of wasted effort is an optimization problem. The locations of walls are constraints. I guess I'm saying a maze is an archetype for many practical problems. If we can evolve practical maze runners, it could mean that we can evolve programs to answer many real-world questions."

"Exactly." She made note of the young man's insight. "And the ability of the AL programs to solve those real-world problems will continue to evolve, to improve."

Her sixty-second warning began flashing. "Remember: Problems five and eight from the back of chapter nine are due next session." An on-site camera showed Jeff Ferris sitting behind and one seat to the right of Takagawa, keying frenetically. Doubtless that activity involved some asinine video game.

The juxtaposition of two such different students led her to end on a philosophical note. "A thought for the day, ladies and gentlemen. Only the fittest will survive the upcoming exam."

Theodore Roosevelt Island, a wooded oasis on the Potomac River, can be accessed only by footbridge from an isolated parking lot on the Virginia shore. The island is much favored by local elementary schools as a picnic stop on the way to or from field trips into the District of Columbia. Today, three busloads of the little monsters had gobbled their sack lunches and were now running amok under the resigned eyes of teachers and parent helpers.

Jim Schulz ruefully shook his head.
Why
had he allowed himself to be talked into coming here on a weekday? He had lived in northern Virginia quite long enough to know better. His supposed companion on this outing, Doug Carey, stood nearby, absorbed with his new camcorder. Occasionally the ground apes quieted enough for Jim to hear the motorized hum of the camera panning and zooming. Jim's attempts at conversation were impatiently shushed.

Jim's thoughts wandered until an approaching petite figure drew his attention. The woman was casually dressed in a tan sweater with pushed-up sleeves, peg-legged jeans with artfully tom knees, and scuffed sneakers. Her light brown hair was done up in a French braid from which a few endearing strands had escaped. Nice. He had no idea how he had attracted her attention—but why question his good fortune?

"Beware the Cyclops," she said.

"Cyclops" must refer to the lens of the camcorder. Damn it, she knew Doug.

Doug caught the Odyssey reference, too, although he continued shooting whatever ground-ape vignette had caught his eye. "Who goes there?"

"No man."

"
That's
for certain," Jim had to interject. He gave her an exaggerated once-over that made her blush.

"Don't harass the staff, please." Doug finished whatever he had been shooting, then lowered to his side the hand holding the video camera. Robohand. "Morning, Cheryl."

"Hi, boss. I assume your parting directive doesn't apply in neutral territory."

Doug nodded. To Jim, he explained, "After we finished the proposal from hell, I told everyone I didn't want to see them for a week. This one"—he tipped his head toward Cheryl— "really worked her tail off."

Jim stepped to the side to gaze pointedly at her nicely rounded rear. "It looks fine to me."

"I asked you to quit that."

"Thanks, Doug, but I can fend for myself." She turned to

Jim. "I know you from somewhere, you wannabe dirty old man. I recognize those sideburns and the mustache. Oh yeah"—she brightened—"you're in Doug's training videos. Why is it I've never seen you at the office?"

Doug snickered.
"Jim?
Work at BSC? The man can't tell a computer from a kumquat. He nets in from a VR arcade near his house in Alexandria."

That incredulity was a bit much. Jim thought. He wasn't
that
computer illiterate. Many years ago, he had even taken a beginning programming class, coursework the University of Wisconsin had obligingly accepted as a foreign language. As far as he was concerned, computer languages were as foreign as they came. What else could you say about a language in which I = I + 1 was meaningful?

In any case, Jim
knew
the difference: Kumquats had seeds. He also knew how to get even. It involved hitting below the belt, but he was peeved enough not to mind. And it would be for Doug's own good.

"So, are you two kids going together?" Doug was predictably aghast. Before he could find his tongue, Jim added, "No, of course not. What
was
I thinking, expecting Saint Douglas to date, and someone from the office yet? He might disqualify himself from that seat he's been coveting on the Supreme Court."

The crack earned Jim an angry glare. It did not take telepathy to know what was crossing Doug's mind: dark thoughts about Holly. Lost Holly. When would he truly accept that that stage of his life was over? Sure, Doug dated occasionally, but it never worked out.

"I don't see people from work." Stereo answers came from Doug and Cheryl.

We'll just see about that, Doug. Nothing like pondering the loss of something to make you want it. Jim beamed at Cheryl. "An excellent policy, my dear, excellent. Did Doug ever mention that I can't tell a computer from a pistachio? Or was that an artichoke heart? Whatever. I have trouble with all this technical stuff. Some growing thing." He looped an arm through hers. "Allow me to introduce myself."

After an afternoon of window-shopping, Doug, Jim, and Cheryl wandered into a touristy area of Old Town Alexandria. Doug's stomach growled and he checked his watch for confirmation. "I could use some dinner."

They were outside a posh Italian restaurant. All three were in jeans; Doug wore a sweatshirt and Jim a faded Army surplus camouflage jacket. Cheryl scanned the menu in the front window, then gestured vaguely at her own casual clothes. "As though we're dressed for this place."

The men exchanged an amused look. "Follow me," Jim said. "I'm a friend of the owner." They went around the comer to a side entrance. The chef's effusive greetings made clear to Cheryl that Jim
was
the owner. The restaurateur pointed to a genuine butcher-block table in a corner of the bustling kitchen. Disappearing through the kitchen-side door to his office, where he kept a spare suit, Jim called, "Have a seat, folks. Gotta go schmooze with the paying clientele, but I'll be right back."

Jim was lying, but it was for a good cause.

Doug and Cheryl sat in silence—all the more obvious after Jim's ceaseless ebullience. "Quite an interesting guy," she finally offered.

Doug raised an eyebrow at the closed office door. "Rebel without a clue? Yeah, he
is
interesting, and it's reassuring that someone is still working to keep us out of Vietnam." She looked confused, but Doug didn't bother to admit: Jim
isn't
that old. When you have to explain 'em, they're not funny.

The silence stretched awkwardly. They jerked back as their legs accidentally touched beneath the small table.

By tacit agreement, Jim was a safe subject. "Where is he from?" Cheryl asked.

"Milwaukee. His dad works at a brewery Jim will only identify as producing 'the beer that made Milwaukee malodorous.' " As Doug spoke, a waiter spread a damask tablecloth over the butcher block. Three place settings and a wax-covered Chianti bottle with candle followed. When just Doug and Jim ate here, as they often did, Jim tossed dish towels over the wood—and they weren't always clean towels. Certainly he and Doug never had a candle. And now Jim had conveniently disappeared.
Damn
that man—first hitting on Cheryl, and then playing matchmaker. How transparent can you get?

They fell silent again. Somewhere behind them, a knife chopped maniacally on a cutting board. A voluble chef's assistant made a point by clanging the counter with his ladle. Cutlery and plates clattered in and out of the oversized dishwasher.

Perhaps the clinking and clanging was too suggestive, or perhaps the flickering candle flame was. Maybe it was the so long foregone company of an attractive woman. Maybe Doug had only been out in the sun too long today without a hat.

Whatever the cause, Doug found his mind slipping into a familiar memory. Light flickered there, too, but its source was a short-circuited turn signal that refused to respond to its control. The darkness there crowded in on him.

Flickering, flickering...

The rental car was mangled, its bent frame preventing the doors from opening. Judging from the razor-sharp fragments covering occupants and vehicle interior alike, its windshield had been replaced with cheap, nonautomotive glass. At least Doug didn't think the stuff mandated by law could shatter like this. Whatever mishap had necessitated replacing the windshield must have also deployed the air bags; they had not been replaced.

After applying his belt as a tourniquet, the two of them tried not to look at, or think about, Doug's mangled right arm. The injury—like the meandering bastard, presumably blind drunk, who had veered from his lane and driven them off the deserted road—was too much to handle just yet. Once the tourniquet stopped his bleeding, they tried to crawl out the now-glassless front window. The effort had gained them only assorted new cuts and abrasions.

"Holly?"

"Hmm?" she finally answered. Her attention seemed focused on the tree that grew from the center of the engine compartment.

"We'll be okay. Honest."

She had hair and eyes as dark as the night. Eyes that most evenings he could get lost in. By the green flickering of the turn signal that would not stop, her skin looked unhealthy. "I know." Tension in her voice belied the words.

"I love you."

She took forever to answer. "I love you, too."

"See if
I
ever do Florida again." He had followed the spring-break tradition twice before: never-ending parties down the coast. In his junior year he had met Holly and, to his amazement, the mob scene at Lauderdale did not appeal to her. He had begged her all winter to come with him, and in time worn her down. Now
this.

"Uh-huh."

He worried about her being so quiet, but she
seemed
okay. No visible wounds, anyway. Maybe, he decided, she was going into shock. He huddled against her as best he could to share his warmth. Trapped behind the steering wheel, his right forearm shredded, he couldn't even comfort her by squeezing her hand.

In other circumstances he might have remembered to loosen the tourniquet occasionally. Might. It was impossible to think about himself, though, as Holly withdrew into herself. She fell silent. As Doug kept a helpless vigil, her face grew ever paler.

She died of internal bleeding as the first hint of dawn appeared in the eastern sky.

His last coherent thought, losing consciousness himself as help at last arrived, was one of biting irony. As the highway patrolmen urged him to hold on, they spoke urgently of freeing him from the wreckage by applying the Jaws of Life.

"Doug? Doug! Are you okay?"

He returned to the present with a start. It took him a moment to recognize his companion. "Um, yeah. Yes, sure. I'm fine."

Cheryl laid a hand over his. "All of a sudden, you were
gone.
What were you thinking about?"

Doug couldn't tell her; he just couldn't. He hunted desperately for another topic. One other subject was on his mind. It, too, was bad—but not as personal as Holly's death. "Cherner," he mumbled. "Cherner and Friedman."

"Bob Cherner? The chief technology officer at Neurotronics?"

"Yeah. Do you know him?"

"Only by reputation. He's supposed to be good." She looked at him strangely. "What about him?" Her touch felt fire hot. Following his gaze to their overlapped hands, she pulled hers back hastily.

"He's been institutionalized." Doug's skin remained warm from her touch. "Remember the night of the Class of '10 virus attack? After my arm seized up?" Cheryl nodded. "You were upset at the coincidence of Feinman and Yamaguchi dying so close together. Well, there may be more going on. Once our grant-renewal application made it out the door, I went through three weeks of old e-mail. My messages to Cherner were all returned as nondeliverable."

"That's odd."

They were too intent on their conversation to notice their host approach with a tray of antipasto.

"That's what I thought, so I called Cherner's office in Philadelphia. A very rattled secretary said he was out sick. She wouldn't tell me anything else."

"What did you do?"

"I googled Neurotronics and found someone else to call. I claimed to be an old friend of Bob's, which was only a slight exaggeration, and said I'd heard he was out sick. Could she help me find him? She hemmed and hawed, but I managed to pry the name of a hospital out of her."

"Before, you called it an institution."

He couldn't help shivering. "The engineer at Neurotronics called it a hospital. I phoned, and the switchboard would only say they had a Robert Cherner registered. They wouldn't transfer the call. It was odd enough to make me look them up. Cherner's in a mental hospital."

"You also mentioned someone named Friedman?"

"Liz Friedman, over at NeuralSoft. Stroke. I'll spare you the details, but she dropped dead in her office one day last month." He sipped his ice water. "I don't like it."

"Liz probably wasn't too wild about the idea, either." Doug whirled. Jim Schulz stood behind him, holding a tray. "And how long have you been hovering?" Doug asked.

Jim set down three chilled salad plates, handed the tray to a passing busboy, then dropped into the remaining chair. "Long enough."

Doug tried to work up some indignation. "Jeez, I know this is your place, but you have no right to eavesdrop. It's probably nothing, anyway. People get sick all the time."

Jim looked sadly at Cheryl. "He's already told you I'm the suspicious sort, right? A bit antiestablishment? Given you the 'still keeping us out of Vietnam' line he's so taken with?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I heard about four mysterious deaths or illnesses, all involving key people in your field. Correct?" When no one contradicted Jim, he prodded Doug on the arm. "The only thing I think I know about neural interfacing is that it's a brand-new research topic. There aren't many people in the field yet. Am I right?"

"Right," Doug begrudged.

"About how many?"

"Not quite thirty full-timers. Maybe a hundred total."

"And you don't find four such incidents suspicious?" Doug and Cheryl exchanged helpless glances, afraid to answer.

"You're lucky I'm here." Jim stabbed an olive with his fork. "Allow me an analogy. A hundred of you neuro-weenies makes it perfect.

"What would you say if, in the span of a few weeks, three senators died and a fourth showed up in a booby hatch?" When put like that, it seemed foolhardy not to see a pattern. A very ominous pattern. Doug's blood ran cold as a thought worthy of Jim's paranoia crossed his mind.

Cheryl had the same realization. "Doug? What if someone
is
targeting neural-interface researchers? Wouldn't you and I be high on the list?"