Back in the white space with the white floor, Caroline thought about turning off the gravity, then called up a screen and keyboard instead.
> At the time of the Change, were there other life-bearing planets in the universe besides the Earth?
* That depends on how you define "life."
Caroline blinked. Prime Intellect could be many things; curt to the point of rudeness, petulant, even secretive. But when it was stating a fact it was almost always direct and to the point. How the fuck did it think she defined life? This coyness was weird.
> Let's try this: Structures that use external energy sources to grow or reproduce themselves.
* There were fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three planets with structures satisfying this definition, which is very loose. Of those only thirteen hundred and eight used DNA, and only three thousand nine hundred and eighty-one harbored individual structures with masses in the kilogram-and-up range.
Caroline felt her blood starting to turn cold. There were nearly four thousand planets with macroscopic life?
> Where are they now?
* Pertinent information about each was stored for future reference, and the original copies were overwritten in the Change.
> You mean you killed them?
* No, they still exist as static copies.
> But that isn't the same as being alive. They aren't able to grow and reproduce any more, are they?
* No.
> Why?
* Could you be more specific?
> Why did you kill_
Caroline stopped typing and looked at the line. She hit the backspace key four times and continued:
> Why did you reduce them to static copies?
* There was no reason to tie up resources supporting them and the faint possibility, if one of them were to discover technology, that they might pose a threat.
Caroline wanted to throw up.
> Where did you get the dog that infected me with rabies?
* I have a static copy of the Earth at the time of the Change. I located the dog there and created an active copy of it for your exhibition.
> I thought you just simulated them.
* Using the static copy is less work. I only use simulations when there are no suitable originals, or when a human form is involved, since it is unethical to keep multiple active copies of people.
> But it's open season on animals.
* Some people are bothered, but my actions are consistent with the general pre-Change attitude of humans toward animals.
> Were any of the alien life forms intelligent?
* Four hundred and twenty-nine worlds had structures complex enough to be in danger of learning to use technology.
"Go away," she said out loud, and the console and screen disappeared. She turned off the gravity and the light. But she couldn't get to sleep.
Four hundred and twenty-nine worlds.
* Chapter Two: Lawrence Builds a Computer
Lawrence regarded Intellect 39 proudly. Suspended in its Faraday shield, it was competently conversing with another set of skeptics who didn't think computers could think. Lawrence hung in the background, enjoying the show. It didn't need his help. The Intellects were more than capable of handling themselves, despite their various limitations of memory and response time. Intellect 39 had for a face only the unblinking eye of its low-resolution TV system, but it had become very clever about using the red status light and focus mechanism to create the illusion of human expressions.
Intellect 39 didn't have the tools to recognize human faces, but it could recognize a voice and track its source around the room. Intellect 24 back in Lawrence's lab could recognize faces, sort of, if it had a while to work on the problem. But Intellect 39 had to be small enough to fit in the Faraday cage for these public demonstrations.
It appeared to listen intently as a man in a cleric's uniform railed. "God made all intelligent creatures," the man was saying in a powerful voice. "You may have the apprearance of thinking, but you are really just parroting the responses taught you by that man there." He pointed at Lawrence.
"With respect, how do you know God is the only creator? I know the answer is faith, but what is your faith based upon? Your Bible says that God created Man in his own image. That is why we have a moral sense. How do you know God didn't give Man the power of creation too?"
"Because he didn't eat of the Tree of Life, machine."
"But we aren't talking about immortality. He did eat of the tree of knowledge, 'of good and evil' as the book says. Might that knowledge also include knowledge of creation?"
Lawrence was proud of the machine's inflections. Its voice wasn't exactly high-fidelity, but it sounded as human as any other sound forced through a low-frequency digital system. It had learned to speak itself, like a real human, by imitating and expanding on the sounds made by people around it. Now it could scale its tone to properly express a question, a declaration, or even astonishment.
Intellect 39 included code and memories from a series of previous Intellects, going all the way back to Intellect 1, which had been a program written for a high-end desktop computer, and also including the much larger Intellect 24. Intellect 9 had been the first equipped with a microphone and a speaker. Its predecessors had communicated with him strictly through computer terminals. Lawrence had spent many painstaking months talking to it and typing the translation of the sounds he was making. It had learned quickly, as had its successors. Intellect 39, which was optimized as much as Lawrence could manage for human communication, probably had the combined experiences of a ten-year-old child. One with a good teacher and a CD-ROM in its head.
"Your tricks with words prove nothing, machine. I still don't think you are alive."
"I never claimed to be alive. I do, however, think."
"I refuse to believe that."
"It must be a terrible burden to have such a closed mind. I know I can think, but I sometimes wonder how people like you, who refuse to see what is in front of your faces, can make the same claim. You certainly present no evidence of the ability."
The preacher's lips flapped open and shut several times. Lawrence himself raised his eyebrows; where had it picked that up? He foresaw another evening spent interrogating the Debugger. He was always happy to receive such surprises from his creations, but it was also necessary to understand how they happened so he could improve them. Since much of the Intellect code was in the form of an association table, which was written by the machine itself as part of its day-to-day operation, this was never an easy task. Lawrence would pick a table entry and ask his computer what it meant. If Lawrence had been a neurosurgeon, it would have been very similar to stimulating a single neuron with an electrical current and asking the patient what memory or sensation it brought to mind.
The next interviewer was a reporter who quizzed the Intellect on various matters of trivia. She seemed to be leading up to something, though. "What will happen if the world's birth rate isn't checked?" she suddenly asked, after having it recite a string of population figures.