"Yes," Gray replied before Margaret got her answer out.
Then why does my logging on require your authorization? Laura wondered. After a beep, Gray stared into the tip of a flexible wand that rose like a microphone from beside the keyboard. The computer beeped again, and Gray looked from the wand to the screen. Both he and Bickham sniffled.
"Poor thing," Margaret said, reading the words that scrolled down the monitor. Gray began to type, and Margaret watched over his shoulder, her smile growing sad. After Gray's brief interchange, Margaret said, "Okay, Dr. Aldridge." She waved Laura over to the terminal.
Gray rose and held the chair for Laura to sit. "Look into the lens," Margaret directed, pointing at the tip of the wand. "Try, not to blink." Laura sat down and stared into the dark hole. "It identifies the user by the pattern of blood vessels on the retinal wall at the back of your eye. It's better than fingerprints. The pattern is impossible to alter, and every human's is unique." There was a brief flash of light from the hole, and Laura blinked.
"Sorry," she said, but the computer beeped.
"It's okay," Margaret said. "He got the print."
Laura turned to the monitor.
<Dr. Aldridge,> she read at the bottom of the screen. The cursor flashed at the beginning of the blank line beneath — waiting.
"All right, then," Gray said as he and Margaret headed for the door. "Let Georgi know if you need anything. We've got a breakfast meeting at the house tomorrow at nine. It's your first night, so I wouldn't stay too late."
"Wait!" Laura blurted out, and Gray and Margaret turned to her from the open doorway. "Just what am I supposed to do?" As soon as she asked the question, Laura felt a wave of disappointment in herself.
Was it her? Was she too slow for Gray's army of geniuses?
But Gray showed no impatience. "Dr. Aldridge, you're an expert in cognition — in matters of human consciousness. I have built an advanced neural network whose main task is to facilitate the interaction between humans and computers. I modeled its architecture on the human brain to try to bridge the gap that separates our two worlds."
The deep concern etched on Gray's face was mirrored on Margaret's as she waited — her gaze falling to the floor.
"Along the way," Gray continued, his voice now distant, "the computer began exhibiting increasingly anthropomorphic, 'human' behavior. It didn't settle into that middle ground between humans and computers that I thought it would. It became more human than computer. At first, I was convinced the phenomenon was purely imitative. But as its domain of human knowledge expanded, its behavior grew more and more sophisticated."
"And that's when the problems began?" Laura guessed.
Gray nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly, but Margaret quickly voiced her disagreement. "There was a coincidence in the timing, yes, but…" Margaret began, then fell silent. Laura remain focused on the troubled Gray. "You see," Margaret finally continued, "this system is unique. There has never been anything even remotely like it in history. We've spent years expanding its knowledge domain, which is absolutely the state of the art. It's priceless, so we've got to explore every possibility no matter how… remote," Margaret concluded in an apologetic tone.
Laura willed herself to remain silent — to hold back the flood of questions that threatened to reveal her congenital ineptitude.
Margaret and Gray headed out, Gray's eyes lingering on Laura until the door closed behind him.
All was quiet then save the whirring under her desk. Laura stared at the closed door — then at the black eyeball on the wall beside it.
Only reluctantly did she turn to read the text on the screen.
<Mr. Gray! I hope you feel better than I do.>
"We'll all feel better as soon as you're up and about. We've got Dr. Aldridge here to see what she can do."
<Let's log her on. I've really been looking forward to meeting her.>
"So I gathered."
<What does that mean?>
"Never mind. Let's get started."
LOGGING ON — ACCEPTED
<Dr. Aldridge?>
The exchange between Gray and his computer struck Laura as odd, but oddity seemed par for the course. Everything about her visit so far had been weird.
Laura swallowed to wet her dry mouth and moved the keyboard to a more comfortable position. She tilted and swiveled the monitor until it was just right. She wriggled in the chair and first straightened, then relaxed her shoulders. When all was ready — her fingers poised over the keyboard to begin typing — she pushed back from the desk and searched for the source of the noise underneath. Lights glowed and flickered from a large box that took up the [garbled] half of her desk beside her knee space.
When Laura sat up, she felt the first cool draft of air on her bare legs. It was coming from the off-white box with the blinking lights. She stared at the screen straight ahead. The cursor blinked insistently at the bottom.
"Hello," she typed. "This is Laura Aldridge." She hit Enter with a loud clack of the key.
<There you are! How was your trip?>
The computer's reply was instantaneous. It unnerved Laura with its speed.
"Fine. How are you doing?" The moment she hit Enter, the answer printed out.
<Not so well. But we can get to that later. What do you think about the facilities?>
Laura felt overpowered by the immediacy of the response. It reminded her of her brief talk with Dorothy — of a conversation with someone long denied the simple pleasure of companionship.
"The facilities are very impressive," she typed. "I went down the elevator to see the nitrogen pool, and then took a tour of the assembly building."
<I know. I'm sorry if the Model Seven scared you.>
Laura replayed the scene in her head, trying to imagine how much the computer might have observed. "Do you know everything about my visit?" she typed. "Where I've been? What I've done?"
<No. Only those things I can see.>
"And what do you 'see'?"
<There's no need to use "quotes." I really can see. I know you've noticed the lenses. Dr. Griffith made faces into one in the assembly building duster.>
Laura looked up and found the black eye beside the door. "And you see everything that every one of those cameras picks up?"
<Sort of. I have a model of everything in my world. A picture in my "head" of where everything is and what's going on. Lots of things are changing constantly, while other things aren't changing at all. I tend to notice the changes, and I tend to notice some changes more than others.>
A sentry system, Laura thought, but she typed, "Can you explain that?"
<Sure! Say I had only two cameras. One is a security camera at a propellant storage tank. The other is a security camera in a parking lot. Suppose someone is smoking a cigarette right in front of both cameras. If you were to ask me whether I saw anyone smoking, I would answer yes, there's one person smoking a cigarette at the fuel storage facility. I would not see anyone smoking in the parking lot because I'm not programmed to care about smoking in a parking lot. But I am programmed to care about smoking around rocket fuel! Do you understand now?>
Laura finished reading the answer and nodded. "Yes. But you could check the camera in the parking lot for people smoking if I asked you to, couldn't you?"
<Of course! All I need is a desire to know whether anyone is smoking there, and the reprogramming is automatic. I just look, and then I see.>
Laura glanced at the black lens by the door. "And can you see me here now?" she typed.
<Yes. You're very pretty.>
Laura felt herself blush, glancing back and forth between the screen and the dark lens — not knowing where to look.
"Thank you," she typed. She hesitated but then asked, "Are you watching me?"