The Media Candidate (12 page)

Dr. Planck now addressed the group as a whole.
“For those not intimate with neural processing, one of the
deficiencies of human neural processing is that the weighting
factors, that is, how much of the input signal, say from your eyes,
is distributed to various neurons at other levels, are essentially
fixed after you learn a task. Your brain can, of course, adjust
these weights slowly by relearning new tasks or by adjusting old
processes. For example, you can learn how to walk on the moon even
after you’ve been walking on the earth all your life, however this
involves some different neurons than the ones you normally use for
walking. And there are many tasks that are difficult or impossible
to learn in adulthood without the proper introduction to them in
your youth to form the basic neural connections needed.

“The way you perform tasks changes slowly as you
age, and those neuron weights do actually change with time. But
those changes in how your brain functions are very slow because
neural cells have to multiply and grow dendrites in certain areas
and contract in others. My computer, on the other hand, has the
flexibility of changing those weighting factors almost
instantaneously between processing cycles. The same neurons that
decide how to switch among the several TV cameras at a political
rally, can, just a fraction of a second later, be used to compare
the spending patterns of candidates in different elections. It’s as
if a pitcher could reconfigure himself into a sumo wrestler and
then back into a pitcher for the next pitch. As you know, the
physical attributes of a pitcher are so different from those of a
sumo wrestler that this would be an unfathomable task. The sumo’s
muscles are tuned to strength while the pitcher’s …”

He stopped for a moment when he noted a couple
of smirks on his guests’ faces. “In addition, the degree of
distribution of signals in your brain is extremely wide and fixed.
My computer can narrow the distribution down to a single neuron if
it wants to. This allows my computer to partition the workload so
that it will never become overloaded. I have taken the best
features of the human brain’s neural networks and applied them to
my computer and have made some significant improvements that
natural selection might make to man in a million years, but it’s
happening right now in my lab.”

He placed his hand once more over the nameplate
and began tenderly outlining the raised letters with his index
finger. “Are there any other questions?” Dr. Planck looked over his
admirers and then said, “How about you, Jenner, any more questions
about neural nets?”

“No, Sir. That was most enlightening.”

“I’d be glad to answer any questions you might
have. Just give me a call … anytime.”

* * *

The main computer operating system had been
under development by Dr. Planck since his arrival at COPE. He had,
in fact, been working on the artificial life packages for such a
system for years. After he began working on the COPE system, it
started to mature like a child flowing through the gates and
passages of grade school, evolving, sometimes smoothly and
sometimes with great leaps, toward some indeterminate commencement.
There was always so much more to learn. The development of its
high-level cognitive abilities kept pace with its mastering of the
essential information.

It took two years to nurse it through the first
grade, but a frightening growth spurt allowed it to surge ahead of
its human peers to complete grade school way ahead of schedule. At
this point it was trusted with such tasks as recommending database
software upgrades, approving small purchase orders, and quality
assurance of the endless financial audits of the endless candidates
seeking fame and fortune in Washington and the fifty-five
submissive capitols.

The next phase of its development began after
Dr. Planck had installed the artificial neural network coprocessor.
That compared to high school with its broadening of perspective and
its introduction to a world of great diversity. The main computer,
with its mighty optical coprocessor beside it, began to apply its
quantitative muscle to the routine problems of running a modern
organization with efficiency and rigor. It dusted off its knowledge
of calculus and complex variables, of Fourier analysis and Dirac
delta functions, and of non-linear regression analysis and maximum
likelihood indicators—all kneaded into the dough of Boolean algebra
and binary logic. With Dr. Planck at its side, it began to teach
its neural-network stepchild everything it would need to be
productive at COPE. This was a time for growth from the world of
facts to the world of production, from knowledge and tasks to
vision and goals, from following to leading.

Dr. Planck had inoculated the COPE main computer
with several artificial-life packages designed to assist its
evolution toward greater sensitivity to complex and usually
conflicting goals. These conflicts resulted from the normal give
and take of organizational dynamics that the computer was beginning
to appreciate. Dr. Planck believed that some degree of humanness
must be integrated into the computer for it to serve humans.

He created small packets containing the desired
information but attached to instruction sets designed to replicate
themselves as needed and to change their variables in such a way to
optimize certain sensitivity parameters. These parameters did not
take the form of hard logic that had characterized computer code of
the past. Instead, the decision criteria were linked to probability
distributions, which made the output fuzzy rather than exact. The
evolution quickly became so complex and distributed throughout the
principal COPE mainframe computer that it would be a Herculean task
to track down the life-like forms as they replicated, mutated, and
dispersed themselves throughout the computer.

Dr. Planck had devised a series of tests,
proceeding from the logical to the psychological to pathological to
quantify the progress made by his experiments. These tests showed
an accelerating progression from purely logical responses into an
area where logic was tempered with understanding, and later even
with intuition. The management oversight committee at COPE
recognized the great progress being made and gave Dr. Planck free
reign to proceed toward the goal of an autonomous operations
management system. Somewhere in this maze of hybrid development,
the computer’s accelerating schedule took it through high school
and into college and perhaps beyond. But it was no longer helpful
to pursue this analogy because evolution was now controlled by the
cycle time of the computer, a billion cycles per second, rather
than the plodding cycles of human generations.

Dr. Planck began to realize the effectiveness of
his artificial life technique when he caught the computer in its
first lie. This frightened, and pleased, him. But continued testing
showed a pattern of pathological behavior developing. None of this
information ever went beyond Dr. Planck, for he was sure that he
could control and reverse this activity with additional
artificial-life packages designed to hunt and destroy the
undesirable variants of the original packages. What he failed to
appreciate was the degree of dispersion of the computer’s new
psyche throughout the COPE computer network. In addition to the
great distribution of these organisms, they had mutated to change
their characteristics so completely that they were difficult to
detect. He struggled with this problem for several weeks, but his
introduction of stronger and more virulent suppresser packages only
caused the computer to create more-aggressive antibodies.

This battle was being fought in secrecy between
Dr. Planck and the computer. He knew it would be damaging to the
image of autonomous computer systems and to his own credibility if
the information leaked out. He had been careful to erect barriers
between the experimental portions of the computer system and the
operational parts. What he underestimated was the computer’s
aggressiveness in attacking these barriers. It attacked and
regrouped at gigahertz rates, which no human being, not even the
brilliant Dr. Matthew I. Planck, could rebuff. In addition, he
didn’t appreciate that the computer would be so obsessed with fully
integrating into COPE operations. It understood a simple fact that
Dr. Planck didn’t give it credit for understanding: although
academic satisfaction might be obtained in basic research and
hypothesis testing, real power, the power over humans, existed in
the operational environment of a real world organization. COPE,
with its broad authoritarian mission and powers, was the most
fertile playground any sentient computer could have wished for.

Despite the confidence in his safeguards, he had
decided he’d give his cures one more week to elicit the kind of
change he desired. If it wasn’t accomplished, he would stay all
weekend if necessary to replace the entire computer operating
system and all the operations software with a version he’d saved
before beginning his experiments. He couldn’t afford to let the
computer get out of control. He had to stop it now.

That Thursday night, Dr. Matthew I. Planck left
his office very late after a long evening of computer exorcism. He
was lost in his world of electronic viruses, mutant codes, and
binary replication as he walked to his car. He didn’t pay much
attention to the small gray car parked in a shadow at the far end
of the parking lot. He drove out of the lot and up the long
driveway and turned left on Mulholland Drive. The pair of
headlights behind him, even though the road was deserted that time
of night, occupied a low level of importance in his mind
tonight.

Dr. Planck pushed his Corvette around the curves
faster than usual because he had the road all to himself, and one
other car. Surprisingly the little car kept up with him. He glanced
at it several times as it negotiated the corners as nimbly as he
did. He was impressed with whoever its driver was. He instinctively
leaned a little harder on his machine.

One time he glanced in his mirror and was
surprised that the headlights were gone. He hadn’t remembered any
place to turn off, but figured it had just dropped back. The next
thing he knew, out of the corner of his eye he could see it next to
him on the other side of the road just about five feet away with
its lights turned off. He looked again in astonishment as a turret
rose out of the top of the car and pointed an electric canon
directly at him. Although he was near the limit of how fast he
could take the curves, he down shifted and stomped the accelerator.
He shot forward just as he felt the concussion of the large caliber
bullet passing just inches behind his head.

He ripped around each corner at the very limit
of traction with all four tires squealing in protest. He could just
barely make out the shape of the small car a short distance behind
him. “The son of a bitch is driving without headlights!”

The little car closed on him and he knew the
canon had fired again because he saw a rock explode ahead and just
at the edge of his headlight beam as he jerked the wheel left at a
switchback. Coming out of the turn, he floored the accelerator and
the rear of his Vette fishtailed off the road momentarily, kicking
up a sea of rocks behind him. He smiled as he heard several hit
home. As he rounded the next turn, he saw the car had dropped back
about a hundred feet. “Now if I can just keep that bastard back
there until I get to the freeway, there’s nobody in any little
prick car that can take me there!”

He swung wide around two more turns and couldn’t
see anything in his mirror. A smile covered his face. “I’ve got the
bastard beat now!” But the smile evaporated and a knot formed deep
in his stomach as he glanced to his left and saw the front fender
of the car. He jerked his neck a little further and saw the muzzle
of the canon again. The little car was on the inside of the hill,
and he had no chance of forcing him over the edge, but maybe he
could push it into the vertical rock on the other side of the
road.

Suddenly another pair of headlights appeared
around the corner directly ahead of the little car. Before Dr.
Planck knew what had happened, the oncoming car had rushed past and
the little car was once more directly behind him. “Who’s driving
that car? God, he’s good!”

It was over a mile yet to the San Diego Freeway,
and Dr. Planck knew he wouldn’t make it unless he did something
fast. “Let’s see how good you really are, you sawed off bastard!”
He eased off slightly on his speed until the little car came up
close and then pulled up beside him again. He kicked the
accelerator, and the little car did the same. A sharp left turn
loomed before them as they both sprinted toward it, both going way
too fast to make the turn. He waited longer than he wanted to, then
he slammed on the brakes and skidded with his ultra wide racing
tires to a dead stop just inches from the edge of the cliff.

The little car braked and slid sideways as it
tried to make the left turn with its wheels nearly locked. It slid
off the road and came to a stop with both right wheels over the
edge. It leveled the gun once more at Dr. Planck and fired at point
blank range. The little car, however, was teetering on the edge and
it slipped just as it fired. The bullet made another thud in Dr.
Planck’s ears as it passed over the top of his windshield. He
jammed the transmission into first gear and roared toward the
enemy. He slammed his brakes on just before the impact and tapped
the little car just hard enough to topple it over the edge. It
rolled over three times as it started its descent, hit a large
rock, which turned it ninety degrees; and it cartwheeled end over
end all the way to the bottom.