The Model Three was following her. It was a robot, and it was following her. Its headlights were dark. She looked all around. They were alone. A creepy feeling slithered its way up her chest, squeezing her lungs and sending her heart rate higher. She tried to swallow the stricture that pinched her throat closed but found her mouth too dry.
What's so frightening? she reasoned. This was a robot, sure, but it was also just an electric car no scarier than a golf cart. It couldn't even leave its curbed lane… probably.
But Laura's anxiety caused her stomach to churn. It wasn't fear of any danger posed by the car. It was fear of a different kind. A fear of being in the presence of the unknown — another force, another entity, another being. It was there with her; she could feel it. It had no form, but there was a consciousness clearly manifested in the actions of the car.
"Are you following me?" she asked softly.
The headlights blinked once, and Laura jumped back. The car inched forward to follow her.
She tried to settle her nerves. This wasn't a Model Eight, after all, or a Seven or even a Six. It was a lowly Model Three that couldn't possibly have the processing power to form thoughts. It couldn't even drive around the curbed roads without being under the nearly constant control of… the Other!
Laura gasped, clenching both arms tightly to her chest and her hands to her chin. "Do you know who I am?" she asked. The headlights flashed — just once.
It was some sort of rudimentary code.
"Does one flash mean 'yes'?" she asked, and the headlights again flashed once. "Is it daytime on the island?" The headlights flashed twice. "Is… the earth the third planet from the sun?" The lights flashed once.
Everything suddenly seemed alien to Laura. It was as if a veil had been lifted, revealing a different dimension parallel to her own, one that occupied the same space and time like the virtual world of the computer's mind. Like Laura's trips into virtual reality, whatever dwelled in that dimension would be invisible to her eyes. But someone — something — was there. It was reaching through the veil into Laura's world.
"Have… have we ever spoken before?" Laura asked in a trembling voice.
The headlights flashed twice—"no" — and Laura tore across the boulevard at a dead run.
36
Laura's hand shook as she waited for Gray to come to the phone.
Her ear hurt from the receiver — she was pressing hard against it. She paced back and forth the length of the telephone's cord.
She had been directed to an empty office in the astronaut training facility. It had a glass wall that overlooked a huge swimming pool.
The pool was deep, and submerged in it were large structures lit by powerful lights. She could see movement under the water, and bubbles constantly broke the surface as scuba divers in wet suits worked here and there. They were training to build things in weightlessness.
"Gray here," she heard over the phone, and she was riveted by the deep timbre of his voice. Her eyes were closed tight and she felt herself calm slowly, steadily, by degrees. "Hello." Gray said.
"Joseph?"
"Laura? What's the matter?"
She felt a rush of the jitters as the words she was about to speak formed in her head. "I think…" Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. "There are multiple personalities living inside the computer; I'm certain of it." Laura closed her eyes and concentrated on the phone. She waited, but Gray said nothing. He didn't believe her, or her discovery was so unimportant that he didn't have time for it now.
She settled firmly to the earth in a heap, and from the wreckage the embers of anger began to glow. "I just made contact with one of the other personalities! I spoke to it, and it spoke to me!"
"How many personalities do you think there are?"
She slowly grew more and more offended by his question. "What?" she burst out, but Gray didn't elaborate. "How many personalities? How the hell should I know?"
"Calm down, Laura."
"Jesus I call you up with this astounding conclusion that the computer may be suffering from multiple personality disorder — a prospect you seemed very interested in having me explore yesterday — and you ask me to detail the case histories of the different personalities?"
"I didn't ask you for their histories, Laura."
"Well, let me ask you a question. You're getting ready to launch three rockets into space with nuclear devices or death rays or supplies of Tang for your future kingdom in space, but doesn't the computer seem to be acting a little stoned to you?"
"What do you mean, 'stoned'?"
"I mean like, 'Hey, wow, man!' stoned."
"No, of course not. The preflight run-ups have been completely normal."
"That's because we're talking to two different computers, don't you see."
"Yes, I see."
"You're talking to the normal one. The one that runs the Krantz labs and the Model Eight facilities and whatever else with no misbehavior — at least that we know of. Don't you get it?"
"Yes, I get it. I understand."
"You understand what?"
"I understand your diagnosis."
That was it? It was a diagnosis, not the big "breakthrough" to which he'd said she was so close? Not "I'm so proud of you," as he'd said to Dorothy?
"When you say you understand, are you saying that you agree, or that you think I've gone off my rocker and am an embarrassment to my profession?"
"Where did that come from?" he asked.
Laura didn't answer. "Joseph, the computer I've been talking to since I first got here doesn't even know what the assembly building is. It can see that there's a building but doesn't recognize it and can't see inside the Model Eight facilities, or Krantz's labs, or God knows what else. It's not running the Model Three cars, and I bet it's not running the space launches if they're going so smooth?"
"I know."
"You know?" she exploded. "You know all that?" He was always out ahead by one step or ten, and it made Laura feel useless. "What the hell do you have me doing here if you know everything already? Why don't you just tell me the answers so I can pack up and go home?"
He said nothing. "Oh! Excuse me! Let me rephrase my goddamn question! Is there anything more I need to know solely for the purpose of doing my job… please?"
To her surprise, Gray answered her question calmly. "Only one personality — let's call it 'the computer'—has achieved a level of consciousness sufficient to communicate through use of higher-order language programs like the shell. I don't know how many other personalities currently inhabit the machine. There may be only one other, or there may be billions of smaller, cooperative subagencies, some of which have grown so complex as to achieve what we might arbitrarily define to be rudimentary, animal-like 'consciousness.' I've had no way of knowing… until you came."
Laura felt drained. "How long have you known there was another personality inside the computer?"
"With certainty, only since yesterday afternoon."
Now Laura had a yardstick with which to measure how far behind she was. Gray had just handed it to her. "Did you know that the computer was starting to give itself opiates?" she asked. "That it's starting to program itself to quit worrying about its mistakes?" He said nothing. "When the time comes to decelerate that asteroid, Joseph, we could have a drooling crack head on our hands."
"Let's not get carried away with analogies to human experiences."
"You turned it on to those highs, Joseph. If the computer gets addicted and self-abusive, it could up the dosage. Patch over every bothersome little error report so that it can lie back in its peaceful oblivion and just enjoy the day. The only problem for the rest of us is that little business with the asteroid."
He took his time before answering. "The computer that you're talking about is down to sixty percent of total system capacity. Those missing resources are being absorbed by the 'Other.' Those two personalities seem to be physically dividing up the hardware, with the Other well on its way to control of the annex. That leaves the computer with only the main pool under the computer center."