“Quiet!” Habib shouted. “He’ll cut us off again if we don’t stay quiet.”
Von Helmholtz added calmly, “It is difficult enough for him down there without hearing all our voices in his ears. I suggest we allow Mr. Habib to do all the communicating with Gaeta.”
One of the computer engineers said, “Tell him to have the program go through the decision tree at human-normal speed.”
“That could take hours,” said Habib.
“He could squirt the program’s response to us at compressed speed and we could go through it, line by line,” suggested another engineer.
“That would take days,” Habib replied dourly.
“Then what are we going to do?”
Habib kept his thumb firmly on the OUTGOING key. “We will listen. And say nothing unless we come up with a better idea.”
Gaeta saw that the storm of black snow was inching closer all the time. Wonder what it’ll do to my comm link? he asked himself.
Never mind that. You’ve got to get this stupid computer to talk to you in a language you can understand.
He sat there, thinking hard, watching the sheet of black snow as it approached. It looked like a curtain of darkness. Better get out of here before it reaches me, he thought.
From his briefings he remembered that Alpha went dead at the same time that it cut off the uplink antenna. Maybe the key to its decision is there, he said to himself.
“Computer, display all the commands made when the uplink antenna was deactivated.”
Date, 29 December 142819 hours: Deactivate downlink antennas. Deactivate tracking beacon. Deactivate telemetry uplink. Maintain sensor inputs. Store sensor inputs. Change course forty-five degrees. Maintain forward speed.
“All sensor inputs are stored?” Gaeta asked, surprised.
Yes.
“Why was the telemetry uplink deactivated, then?”
Conflict of commands.
¡Mierda! Gaeta said to himself. We’re back to that again.
Habib’s voice came through, “All the sensor data is stored? We haven’t lost any data?”
“That’s what the computer says,” Gaeta replied. “It’s all stashed away in its memory somewhere.”
A jumble of voices in the background. Gaeta tuned them out and asked the computer, “Why store the data if you’re not uplinking it?”
Conflict of commands.
“Gesoo Christo,” he growled. “Is that all you can say?”
Habib was almost shouting, “Ask it under what conditions it will uplink the data!”
Gaeta took a breath, then rephrased, “Under what conditions can the stored data be uplinked?”
Under no conditions.
“Why not?”
No response, although Gaeta heard a muted hubbub of voices from the command center.
Think, he said to himself. This is like talking to a very smart two-year-old. You’ve got to get around him.
“Computer, can you display the commands that are in conflict?”
The computer remained silent.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Gaeta tried to concentrate. Maybe I oughtta shut off the command center again, he thought. They’re nothing but a distraction.
Then Habib’s voice came through clearly, “Ask the computer to display each one of the commands that are in conflict individually.”
Worth a shot, Gaeta agreed. “Computer, display the command that controls the sensor data uplink.”
Immediately the computer’s flat, synthesized voice replied:
Command: All sensor data to be uplinked in real time.
“Okay, fine. Now, what command is in conflict with that one?”
Insufficient information.
“Insufficient?” Gaeta echoed. “What do you mean?”
Your question contains insufficient information to produce a meaningful answer.
Gaeta felt like pounding both fists on the vehicle’s roof. What the hell does he mean by that? What did I say that’s insufficient …? He thought about it for several moments, then decided to rephrase his question.
“Okay, look. Tell me what command is in conflict with the command to uplink all sensor data in real time.”
Primary restriction.
“Primary restriction? What the hell’s that?”
28 May 2096: Mission control center
“Primary restriction?” Habib echoed. “What primary restriction?”
He looked up at the faces gathered around him. They all looked as puzzled as he.
“I know the master program,” he said. Gesturing to the programmers in the group he went on, “We wrote it. Do any of you know of a primary restriction?”
They glanced uneasily at each other, shaking their heads.
Von Helmholtz, still sitting ramrod straight in the chair beside Habib’s, said, “The clock is running. We will have to extract Gaeta from down there in twenty-nine minutes or less. I don’t like the looks of that black storm.”
Habib barely heard him. “A primary restriction. The master program believes it contains a primary restriction that is preventing it from uplinking data from the sensors.”
“There isn’t any primary restriction,” said one of the women.
“But the program believes there is,” Habib pointed out.
“There are learning routines,” one of the other program engineers said slowly, as if piecing together his thoughts as he spoke. “Maybe the program has modified itself.”
“What could make it do that?”
Habib replied, “It could learn from the conditions it encountered once it was activated on Titan’s surface.”
The woman said, “What could it possibly learn from Titan’s surface that would make it refuse to uplink data to us?”
No one had an answer for that.
Still sitting on Alpha’s roof, Gaeta listened to the engineers’ musings with growing discomfort. He checked the temperature inside his suit: it had dropped four degrees below optimal. Okay, he thought as he turned up the thermostat to bring the temperature up, it’s pretty damned cold out there. Heater must be working overtime with me just sitting here, not generating much body heat.
The engineers were batting around ideas about why the stupid computer turned off the uplink antenna. It was like listening to a gaggle of high school class presidents trying to solve the problem of world hunger.
I’ve got get out of here, Gaeta told himself. But he realized that he didn’t want to leave his job unfinished. I can’t let this pile of chips beat me. I’m smarter than a goddamned computer, no matter what kind of learning programs they put into it.
“Computer,” he snapped, “what is this primary restriction?”
No response.
Grimacing, he rephrased, “Display the primary restriction.”
A burst of electronic noise assailed his earphones. Before Gaeta could blink, it was over. But his ears started ringing again.
Well, he thought, at least the guys in the control center have something to work on. Maybe in a week or two they’ll figure it out. But I can’t wait that long.
The chingado computer won’t uplink data from the sensors because it thinks there’s some primary restriction that’s telling it not to. Gaeta pondered that for several moments, while the engineers’ arguing voices continued to clutter up his communications frequency.
Something it’s learned while it’s been here on the surface of Titan, Gaeta thought. Maybe …
“Computer, what is the single most important piece of data your sensors have detected?”
Silence. Nothing but crackling static. Gaeta was about to give up in disgust when the computer’s inhuman voice replied:
LIFE-FORMS EXIST IN THE GROUND.
“But we knew that from earlier probes.”