“I’ve been going through old news stories. I find that most electronic versions of newspapers only go back to some date in the nineteen-eighties or nineties.”
“Why should you care about decades-old news? It ain’t news if it’s old.”
“That was intended as a humorous comment, wasn’t it, Dr. Graves?”
Kyle grunted. “Yes.”
“I could tell by your use of the word ‘ain’t.’ You only use it when you’re trying to be funny.”
“Trust me, Cheetah, if you were human, you’d be rolling in the aisle.”
“And when you speak in a high tone like that, I know you’re still being funny.”
“Full marks. But you still haven’t told me why you’re reading old news stories.”
“You consider me to be non-human because, among other things, I can’t make ethical judgments that correspond to those a human would make. I have been looking for news stories that relate to ethical issues and am trying to fathom what a real human would do under such circumstances.”
“Okay,” said Kyle. “What story did you dig up that’s got you perplexed?”
“This: in nineteen eighty-five, a nineteen-year-old woman named Kathy was in her first year at Cornell University. On December twenty of that year, she was driving her boyfriend to his job at a grocery store in Ithaca, New York. The car hit a patch of ice, skidded ten meters, and slammed into a tree. The young man broke some bones, but a tire lying on the rear passenger seat pitched forward and hit Kathy’s head. She fell into a chronic vegetative state—essentially a coma—and was placed in the Westfall Healthcare Center in Brighton, New York. A decade later, in January, nineteen ninety-six, with her still in the coma, it was discovered that Kathy was pregnant.”
“How could she possibly be pregnant?” said Kyle.
“And that is the tone you use when speaking to me of matters of sexuality. You think that because I am a simulation that I could have no sophistication in such areas. But it’s you who are being naïve, Dr. Graves. The young woman was pregnant—indeed, had been pregnant for five months at the time it was discovered—because she had been raped.”
Kyle slumped slightly in his chair. “Oh.”
“The police launched a search for the rapist,” said Cheetah. “They came up with a list of seventy-five men who had had access to Kathy’s room, but the search quickly narrowed to a fifty-two-year-old certified nurse’s aide named John L. Horace. Horace had been fired three months previously for fondling a forty-nine-year-old multiple-sclerosis patient at Westfall. He refused to provide a DNA sample in the rape case, but police got some from an envelope flap and a stamp he had licked, and they determined that the odds were more than a hundred million to one in favor of Horace being the father.”
“I’m glad they caught him.”
“Indeed. In passing, though, I do wonder why this rapist gets automatic membership in the human race, but I have to prove myself?”
Kyle shuffled over to the coffeemaker, poured himself a cup. “That’s a very good question,” he said at last.
Cheetah was quiet for a time, then: “There’s more to this story.”
Kyle took a sip of coffee. “Yes?”
“There was the matter of the incidental zygotic commencement.”
“Ah, the coveted IZC. Oh, wait—you mean the baby. Christ, yes. What happened?”
“Prior to her accident, Kathy had been a devout Roman Catholic. She was, therefore, opposed to abortion. Taking that into account, Kathy’s parents decided that Kathy should have the baby and that they would raise the child.”
Kyle was incredulous. “Have the baby while still in a coma?”
“Yes. It is possible. Comatose women had given birth before, but this was the first known case of a woman becoming pregnant after going into a coma.”
“They should have aborted the pregnancy,” said Kyle.
“You humans make judgments so quickly,” said Cheetah, with what sounded like envy. “I have tried and tried to resolve this issue and I find I cannot.”
“What way are you leaning?”
“I tend to think that if they let the baby live, it should have been placed in a foster home.”
Kyle blinked. “Why?”
“Because Kathy’s mother and father, by forcing her to give birth in such extreme conditions, demonstrated that they were ill-suited to be parents.”
“Interesting take. Were there any polls conducted at the time about what should be done?”
“Yes—The Rochester Democrat Chronicle ran one. But the option I proposed wasn’t even put forward—meaning, I guess, that it’s not something a normal human would come up with.”
“No, it’s not. Your position has a certain logic to it, but it doesn’t seem right emotionally.”
“You said you would abort the child,” said Cheetah. “Why?”
“Well, I’m pro-choice, but even most of those who are pro-life make exceptions for cases of incest or rape. And what about the kid, for Pete’s sake? What effect would that kind of origin have on it?”
“That had not occurred to me,” said Cheetah. “The child—a boy—was born on March eighteen, nineteen ninety-six, and if he’s still alive, would be twenty-one now. Of course, his identity has been protected.”
Kyle said nothing.
“Kathy,” continued Cheetah, “died at the age of thirty, one day before the child’s first birthday; she never came out of the coma.” The computer paused. “It does make me wonder. The ethical dilemma—whether or not to countenance an abortion—could not have been drawn in sharper terms, even though I don’t seem to be able to resolve it properly.”
Kyle nodded. “We’re all tested in various ways,” he said.
“I know that better than most,” said Cheetah, in a tone that was a credible imitation of being rueful. “But when I am tested, it is by you. When human beings are tested, though—and a case such as this clearly seems to be a test—who is it that is administering the test?”
Kyle opened his mouth to reply, closed it, then opened it again. “That’s another very good question, Cheetah.”
Heather sat in her office, thinking.
She’d stared at the messages from space day in and day out for years, trying to fathom their meaning.
They had to be rectangular images. She’d tried to identify any cultural bias related to prime numbers, any reason why she’d interpret them one way while someone from China or Chad or Chile would interpret them some other way. But there wasn’t anything—the only cultural issue she could come up with was an argument about whether the number 1 qualified as a prime number.
No, if the length of the signals were the products of two prime numbers, then the only logical conclusion was that they were meant to be arranged into rectangular grids.
Her computer had all 2,843 messages stored on it.
But there were some messages that had been decoded, right at the beginning. Eleven of them, to be exact—a prime number. Meaning there were 2,832 undecoded messages.
Now that number was not a prime—it was an even number, and except for 2 there were, by definition, no even prime numbers.
A quantum computer could tell her in a twinkling what the factors of 2,832 were. Obviously, half that value would be a factor—1,416 would go into it twice. And half of that, 708. And half of that, 354. And half of that, 177. But 177 was an odd number, meaning that its half wouldn’t be a whole number.
She’d sometimes thought that maybe each day’s message made up only a portion of a larger whole, but she’d never found a meaningful way to order the pages. Of course, until a few days ago, they’d never known how many pages there were in total.