She sat on the base of the statue that dominated the central boulevard below. The location seemed a natural focal point of the Village, and Laura could see where its slab had been defaced. But the chips in the sharp edges of the granite were not the prank of some juvenile vandals, as Griffith had suggested. They were the result of the awkward missteps of thousand-pound robots, Laura felt sure.
"Why is there no artwork in the Village?" she typed. "Just the one statue?" Laura hit Enter and then craned her neck to look up at the marble figure of a woman. She wore pants, not the flowing toga of classic sculpture. Her head was raised to a globe that she held to the heavens in her hands. Laura couldn't see well in the darkness, but the orb seemed to be sculpted and was slightly irregular in shape.
Laura confirmed that the patient car still stood beside her, then looked back down at the glowing screen.
<Mr. Gray didn't want to impose his tastes on anybody. He commissioned a study of cultural and architectural preferences and designed the Village as a blend of the various motifs of human cultures by toning down or eliminating the salient exceptions.>
Laura looked at the buildings that lined the boulevard There were no Greek columns, no Victorian woodwork, no sleek chrome-and-glass façades of the late twentieth century. It contained elements of numerous styles without any one prevailing over the others.
"Well, how truly multicultural of him," Laura zyped. "What about his house? It's filled with the works of dead white European males."
<Gray's lineage and culture is European. When he decorates his own home, he's not imposing his tastes on others. But when it comes to Gray the public man, rather than celebrating the differences among his workers, he carefully molded a city in which their similarities were highlighted. Humans possess basically the same "hardware," if you'll allow an analogy from my world. It's their "software" that differs at collection of cultural, social, educational, and experiential conditioning that makes each human unique.>
"Are you saying it's all environment, not heredity?"
<I'm not saying that at all! You need look no further than Mr. Gray to disprove that idea. I've done studies I think you'd find interesting. Mr. Gray constructs long-term memories almost ten times as quickly as the human norm. No other examples of human genius have been measured to construct memories more quickly than three times the human average. It's in that processing speed that Mr. Gray has his greatest advantage. He doesn't have to think about something for as long before he knows the answer. And not only does he solve problems more quickly, he stores that knowledge without having to resort to humorous rhythms or rhymes, or endless repetition, or any of the other mnemonics employed by some humans to memorize things.>
"You sure seem to be in a talkative mood," Laura typed.
<"It's good to be alive!", as you humans say.>
Something was not quite right. "Has Mr. Gray done any more reprogramming today? Given you any more 'analgesics'?"
<Nope. But I found a couple of irritants myself and patched them over. I never realized how tiresome being sick could be. I mean, I had the Hong Kong 1085 last year, but it was over — quickly. This one, though — wow! You get tired of all the trillions of little problems that nag and nag. It's always something. "Where is that damn capacitor report? I was supposed to get it 10.4 cycles ago!" Or "Why am I getting this same Romanian lady every time I call to collect pay-per-view orders? That number is supposed to give me a modem's handshake protocol!" Or "What's that big building between the computer center and the launch pads? Must be new construction, but it doesn't show up on my master permit list!" Office work is just as dreary for me as for any human; the only difference is I don't get paper cuts. You get my joke?>
"You're as high as a kite," Laura mumbled, then squinted to reread the response. She looked up at the brightly lit walls of the assembly building rising over the dark jungle. "What was it you were saying about the 'big building' between the computer center and the launch pads?" Laura typed with growing concern. "Do you mean the assembly building?"
<And I'll tell you another thing, too. If I hadn't done my little reprogramming there is no way I'd be able to handle the loads that Dr. Filatov is sending my way. Everybody has banned rentals of computer time to the Gray Corporation. I'm having to purge things like my model of the shopping mall in Virginia and compress files in off-board processors — digitally! I hate digital memories. They're never the same when you decompress them. They're grainy and artificial. The compression routines don't bother with all the minor detail. If a single scanning line has two hundred blue pixels in a row, then three little reds, then two hundred greens, guess what gets saved? That's right! "200 x BLUE then 200 x GREEN." So what the hell happened to the three little reds? Not important enough? But they may have been the whole point of the image. "Just a dab of paint by Matisse on the canvas." Not worth sacrificing the gains in storage capacity from a forty-to-one compression ratio — oh no! I envy you sometimes, living in a fully analog world.>
After she finally finished reading, she typed, "You didn't answer my question about the assembly building."
<What about the assembly building?>
"I mean, that huge building that sits out there in between the computer center and the launch pads. What does it look like to you? What is that building?"
<I don't know what that building is! Didn't I already say that, Laura? Have you been paying attention? Some department forgot to file a permit for new construction. Now I've got to go all the way back to ground-breaking, compile all the costs, figure out the man hours of labor and the rates we apply for cost accounting to those hours… I could go on. And we've got to depreciate that thing — it's huge! Did you know that Mr. Gray pays taxes to the United States even though the Fijian government offered him citizenship at a vastly reduced tax rate?"
Laura took the notepad out and wrote, "Doesn't know what the assembly building is!" underlining it three times. "Visual agnosia," she wrote in the right-hand column — the column headed "Preliminary Diagnoses." There was nothing wrong with the primary visual cortex, or whatever the computer's equivalent was. The cameras that were its "eyes" and the portion of its "brain" that receives the initial video input seemed to function normally. It had simply lost its ability to recognize shapes, contours, and patterns just like visual agnosia in humans who suffer damage to the area in the back of their brain called the "visual association cortex."
She'd have to find Gray soon to make her report. The launches were just hours away, and her patient was getting worse.
Laura breathed deeply, looking up at the vastness of space. The woman with the orb stood profiled against a billion stars.
"Did Gray design the statue, too?" she typed.
<No, I designed it.>
"Really? Well, I can't see it very well in the dark, but it looks beautiful."
<I think so. You'll have to check it out in the daylight.>
Laura stretched her neck and rolled her stiff shoulders. She had so much to think about that she decided to log off and leave the portable in the car. She then went for a walk down the gentle grade of the boulevard.
There was a charming café on her left. It had street-side tables under colorful awnings, plants hanging from wrought-iron lampposts, and ivy clinging to white latticework. The tables were bare and the lights were out. The Village reminded her of an empty movie set.
Laura was being followed. She could feel its presence behind her, and she slowed. Slowly, she turned. It was just the car moving noiselessly down the curbed roadbed that ran parallel to the sidewalk.
Laura relaxed… but only for an instant.