"I… I think it's… wonderful! It's an analogy!" It was exactly what Gray had described on their walk earlier that night. "With analogies, it can make generalizations!" Laura said, growing more and more excited as what Gray and Griffith had said began to sink in. She spoke more and more rapidly, gesticulating with her hands to help make her points. "With generalizations, it can learn! It can tell a sofa is for sitting because it looks sort of like a chair! With that kind of learning potential, it could become…!" The words caught in her throat.
He's done it! she thought, stopping herself from giving voice to thoughts that raced far out ahead. She reached over and grabbed Griffith. They stopped on the walk beside the same curbed roadbed on which Gray had shown Laura the Model Six. "I want to know how it works," Laura demanded. "I want to know everything about it."
"What's the point?" Griffith replied with a casual shrug of dismissal, continuing on toward their destination — the gleaming assembly building. "Large, mainframe computers like we've got down in those pools are an increasingly outmoded form of computing. Miniaturization is the key. We've been very successful at downsizing the circuitry. You'll be impressed when I show you the Model Sevens. You'd just be wasting your time studying the main computer."
Griffith's offhand comment stabbed right at the heart of her insecurity, which was never very far from the surface. Laura had only one truly deep-seated fear. Only one thing really mattered dearly to her. She wasn't insecure about her looks, or her personality, or the scanty number of suitors she'd brought home for her mother to meet.
The thing by which she rated herself was her mind.
Her intellect. Her intelligence.
In her prior life, that intelligence was measured by the papers she published, the discussions her ideas stimulated. By those measures, she'd already been judged a failure. She'd admitted as much when she climbed aboard Gray's plane. The offer to join Gray's "dream team" had been her salvation. The others would talk about her selling out, but that was infinitely more palatable than what they'd have said after the department chairman had his "We've been so privileged" speech with her. Gray had given her a rare opportunity — the chance to wave her middle finger right in the faces of the tenure committee.
But there was only one problem with her fantasy. It didn't involve beating an ignominious retreat from Gray's island — from his society of the mind.
"Mr. Gray doesn't seem to think the computer's obsolete," Laura said. "I mean" — she fumbled for words—"he did hire me to help fix it."
Laura had tried not to betray her fear that her marginal role on the "dream team" was fast becoming trivial.
Griffith shrugged. "But he also shut down production on new boards with the annex only half full."
Laura watched the concrete slide by under her feet. She had to will her chin up and her shoulders back. "When did he do that?"
"Gave the order yesterday."
"Why?"
Griffith shook his head and shrugged again. "I'm only the head of a twenty-six-billion-dollar division. How the hell would I know?"
It was an attempt at humor, but the complaint was clear in Griffith's sarcasm. "The future is in mobility, though. That's where we're headed. It's a natural progression, really. In twenty years, there'll be no difference between computers and robots. They'll be one and the same."
They walked on in silence, Laura pondering the implications of Griffith's comment.
It boggled her mind, and she heaved a deep sigh. She [garbled] the insecurity — the urge to give up, to admit she was in over her head. She gritted her teeth and resolved to take it slow — one step at a time.
"Does the computer open the doors automatically or something? Like the door into the conference room where we met, and the one in the gymnasium that guy walked into after having a fight with his wife?"
"Pneumatic doors are part of my department," Griffith said. "Robotics. But the error was in the computer, I can assure you, not the servo controls in that door."
"But why go to all the trouble of having the computer open your doors for you? I mean, supermarkets get by with, like, motion detectors or whatever."
Griffith unexpectedly loosed a hearty laugh, grabbing his paunchy stomach like some slimmed-down version of St. Nick. He was laughing at her joke, but Laura had been serious. Laura's mood was rapidly deteriorating, but she doggedly pursued her question.
She was determined to understand at least one thing in the first chapter of her instruction manual before rejoining Griffith on page four hundred.
"So, how does the computer know to open a door? I mean, when Mr. Gray and I walked up to the door of the conference room, it opened before we even got there. Now how did the computer know to open that door, but leave the door across the hall from it closed?"
"Well," Griffith said with a chuckle that didn't quite materialize — a hint of confusion on his face as if the answer were obvious—"why would it think you were going into a utility room? There's nothing but mops and brooms and buckets in there."
It was now Laura's turn to be confused. "You mean… the computer knew where we were headed?" she asked, and Griffith nodded and looked at her as if it were the most elementary observation in the world. "But then… it had to know who we were."
"Well, of course," Griffith said, again turning to look at her, clearly gauging for the first time how truly far behind Laura was.
How unprepared she was for life in Gray's century… and for the task she'd been assigned on Gray's team. Laura realized just then that Gray had told them nothing about her credentials when she'd been introduced.
They had no idea how little she knew about computer technology — about any technology, for that matter.
"The pneumatic doors are for security, not convenience," Griffith said. The tone of his lecture turned suddenly remedial. "If someone who wasn't authorized to interrupt our meeting had walked up to that door, he'd have had to use the intercom to request entry. But if the computer knew why he was headed there — if he was delivering a printed copy of an E-mail or if there was a fire in the control room or something — then it would've opened the door right up. It's very good at guessing. That's why the error in the gym was so hard to fathom. It almost never makes mistakes like that."
Laura was so filled with questions she didn't know what to ask next. She didn't want to betray her stupidity by asking something that seemed obvious to all but her, and so she chose her next inquiry carefully.