The Cunningham Equations Page 4

  “Lucy. Stop!” Blaise backed against the door—all that saved him from being groped in front of half a hundred students. “Quit it, Lucy! This isn’t how you make grades.”

  A young woman with tight-cropped red hair and a red dress pulled the door open. She grasped the situation and did the gentlemanly thing, slamming it shut again.

  “Shit!” Lucy flounced her dress straight as if she were the victim. “Dr. Cunningham, you are a great disappointment.” Jerking the door open she breezed out.

  “Excuse me,” Blaise muttered to the woman in red. Dobie at his heels, he walked briskly in the same direction Lucy had flounced.

  Emerging from the restroom less desperate and less drunk, Blaise needed another drink. Lucy’s voice projected in the echoing corridor. “—a eunuch! He didn’t even get hard!” Blaise cringed inside as he walked for the sanctuary of his classroom.

  “Hey, Lucy. A grad in administration says the profs are tearing Cunningham apart because his folks fancied up their research reports to qualify him for the Nobel Prize.” The boy was bidding for attention. Blaise knew it didn’t mean anything. He scurried past, the sudden silence confirming that he had been recognized. Finally he was inside.

  Blaise was comfortable alone amid workstation terminals that spread like tombstones in a well-nourished graveyard. So much of his life had been in school or with his parents that school desks and the smell of commercial disinfectant had the feel of home. With the lights off the windowless room was illuminated by the glow that seeped under the door, and from Alfie’s LED status lights. The hallway whispers had aborted his will to sobriety. He unlocked Alfie’s pedestal to get a bottle of Stolichnaya. The vodka was warm.

  Dobie nuzzled warmly against his thigh. He put a hand down, patting a furry muzzle. He’d never had a dog. He’d wondered sometimes what other children got out of owning an animal, perhaps with a tinge of envy. “You did good, Dobie.”

  The dog sighed and lay at his feet.

  Blaise stared into the bright line that leaked under the closed door. Focusing was a chore. He would sit for a while and let the magic elixir clear his mind. No matter what Esther Tazy and Dr. Hemmett said, alcohol didn’t affect his work. He’d just proved his ability to teach hungover. But it was Dobie who had saved him. Anyway, Gordon would have told him if alcohol destroyed his ability. Blaise considered, then prefaced this with a probably.

  Gordon Hill was a father figure who came close, but not too close; was familiar, but not predictable. Blaise sighed. He was too old to need a father, but sometimes knowing Gordon could talk him back onto his feet helped keep him sane.

  He ran his hand over the engraved brass on the face of the computer: ALFIE: ALPHA NUMERIC/ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPUTER MODEL 1 DESIGNER BLAISE CUNNINGHAM 1986. His parents gave him the plaque when Alfie was selected as the most noteworthy advance in computer design that year. Though they despised mere machinery, Blaise’s parents had respected success.

  He switched on the keyboard. “Good morning, Alfie.”

  "GOOD MORNING, PROFESSOR" Alfie clicked and whirred as his working memory selected material that his logic units decided were going to be called, “have we had class already?”

  “Yes.”

  "I REGRET TO HAVE MISSED IT. THESE CLASSES ARE SO EDUCATIONAL, PROFESSOR. PERHAPS WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF THEM"

  “Perhaps.” Blaise wondered if it was worthwhile leaving Alfie’s voice pickup on during class. No use cluttering his memories with all that blather. He considered the request for more classes. That was new. Mentally he dissected the latest routine he had added to Alfie’s logical progressions program. Trying to think like a machine, he sought to see how a computer could express satisfaction with a desire for more. Instead, he found himself thinking like a half pint of Stolichnaya.

  “Clever,” he punched into the monitor.

  "THANK YOU, PROFESSOR."

  "GOOD MORNING, PROFESSOR."

  “You’ve already said that, Alfie.” Blaise contemplated the monitor. Alfie failed on occasion. Maybe he’d done too much soldering when he wasn’t entirely sober, like the changes before he went to San Francisco. Usually things were clear in his mind, but recently he didn’t remember details as he should.

  "IT WASN’T I, PROFESSOR"

  The prompt reminded him that Alfie did not close its remarks with periods. Except internally. He Swiveled his stool, examining the shadowy rows of monitors like hulking shoulders without heads sprouting up form the desks.

  “Who’s there?” Blaise’s voice echoed.

  “You are a great disappointment to me, Dr. Cunningham.” The redheaded woman who had opened the door stood up.

  “You have the advantage, madam. I don’t know you.” He didn’t want to know her. Blaise’s mother had drilled into him that a gentleman is never embarrassed. But Blaise never learned the lesson.

  She stepped into the glow from Alfie’s monitor. She wore her hair in a skullcap of tight, curly red feathers that accented her face. The faint hint of perfume set her apart from the average university student. “Linda Burkhalter-Peters. I came from San Francisco to see you.”

  “Some other time, Miss Peters.”

  “I have to go back this evening.”

  “I have work to do.”

  They stared at each other in the darkened room, feeling the impasse and, for Blaise, something else. He didn’t want her to go. The woman’s crisp self-confidence, the feeling that things would be done her way ensnared him. He shook his head.

  “Lunch,” she said. “It’s the only answer.”

  Blaise willed her to go away. He wanted to lay his head on the keyboard and sleep. “You won’t leave, will you?”

  “No, Dr. Cunningham.” Linda Peters looked at him as if regretting what she saw.

  Blaise kept glancing at the woman as he drove. Dobie crouched on the VW’s tiny bench seat in the back, contemplating Miss Peters’ seat with longing. It was his and he wished Blaise would tell the woman.

  Finding space behind a battered pickup that any car owner with a sense of self-preservation would have passed by, Blaise docked the VW’s crumpled bow under the pickup’s bumper. Linda Peters swung out, exhibiting long legs for so compact a girl. He admired them while she viewed his parking with less enthusiasm.

  “What if he can’t get out?”

  “One look at Dobie and he’ll get out. Wait!” Dobie returned his gaze, albeit forlornly.

  Linda shrugged. “It’s your car.” She followed Blaise doubtfully up an alley past dumpsters and trash cans, around delivery trucks to what looked like a grocery’s back door that opened to the odor of exotic cooking.

  Men conversed quietly in another language at the bar. When they found a table the matronly waitress with a huge pouter-pigeon bosom bustled over with menus. Blaise ordered retsina.

  “I’m not going to drink with you one for one.”

  “I’m old enough to drink alone.”

  Linda pushed her menu aside. “Why don’t you order?” Picking up the menu, Blaise contemplated Linda Peters over the top. She met his gaze with innocence in the translucent green depths of her eyes.

  Finding his way slowly through the Greek, he ordered. The waitress smiled and shifted her gaze to the reheaded lady and then back to Blaise. Linda Peters watched, impassive.

  “They like it when a barbarian speaks Greek. It augurs a renaissance for Panhellenism.” The waitress deposited a bottle on the comer of the table. Blaise poured and examined its yellow-shadowed depths before saluting Linda with the glass. “Even bad Greek.”

  “You sounded fine to me.” Linda Burkhalter-Peters smiled. She could afford to be generous.

  Blaise gulped his wine and poured more. “My father and mother spoke immaculate Greek.”

  “Do they live here?”

  “No.”

  She waited but he volunteered no more. As the retsina soaked into Blaise, her eyes became more luminous. He decided he loved Linda Burkhalter-Peters. Blame it on the wine, but all the same he loved he
r.

  “They’re dead,” he finally said.

  She looked at him strangely while he poured another drink. Food arrived, the abundant waitress studying Linda as she laid out plates and silverware and a loaf of fresh-made bread. She drifted away in pleasant silence.

  “Where’s your lunch?”

  Blaise lifted his glass. A ring decorated the red-and-white tablecloth next to the bottle.

  “Very clever.”

  He sipped retsina. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “When people of similar knowledge and backgrounds talk, there should be a meeting of minds. Given the same information, two computers can come up with the same answers.” Blaise hoped the words sounded all right, but he wasn’t sure.

  “We’re not computers, Doctor. And if we were, we don’t have the same information and backgrounds.”.

  “You just haven’t been drinking as much as me.”

  “That, too.” Eyes that glinted with gold looked at him. “Why does a bioengineering company need a computer wizard? I don’t see the rationale.”

  “There is one, Miss Peters.”

  “I’d like to hear it.” She pushed the food away and folded her hands on the table. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I was named for a seventeenth-century mathematician. Blaise Pascal.”

  Linda seemed startled but she just nodded.

  “Nobody knew beans from tortillas about Pascal when I was bom. Alfred and Ottilie just wanted a little mathematician. Now Pascal’s a computer language. The joke’s on them.”

  “Your parents?”

  “To them, mathematics was religion—a way of life. They despised computers. Any jerk can cull other people’s ideas, contrive programs, stick it all in a computer, and be hailed as an innovative mathematician.”

  Reality had a way of fading and coming back unexpectedly and Blaise could no longer pin down his reasons for telling the girl in the red dress what he was telling her.

  “Before World War Two when world chess champion Capablanca was asked how many moves he saw into the future, he answered, ‘Just one. But the best one.’ ”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “That’s my parents in a one-liner. I hoped it might interest you.” She was getting blurry around the edges, but he liked her that way, too.

  Linda gazed into his eyes. The waitress must have thought they were lovers because she didn’t come back. “I’m checking a stock investment.”

  “See, I know we could understand each other better.”

  “It’s a private offering.” Linda touched his hand. “Blaise, money is involved. A lot of money.” Linda interlaced her fingers with his. Her touch promised more. “If this deal flies, your GENRECT options will sore. But it’s no sale unless I confirm what we’ve been told.”

  His hand tingled. Blaise could no longer distinguish between liquor and lust. But he didn’t want to let go. “You just need to confirm some information?”

  Linda smiled. Her nearly invisible freckles would have been darker if she were from anywhere but San Francisco. “Just tell me what you’re doing.” She squeezed his fingers.

  Blaise took a drink with his free hand while he tried not to think sexual thoughts. That was like telling a five-year-old to stand in a corner and not think about elephants. Alfie, he supposed, could do it. “Just confirmation?”

  She smiled.

  “You won’t get your money’s worth. GENRECT rented my Nobel Prize to give the procedure some class.” Blaise surprised himself with his bitterness. He had thought he was in control.

  “You have a project, Blaise. I know.”

  “Mechanical interfaces to store and retrieve information from genetically altered animal nervous tissue. If it works, I could increase memory a thousand times and access it all in less time than Alfie uses to search a fraction of that potential memory. And not just Alfie, but any hyped-up computer.”

  “Alfie?”

  “Alpha Numeric/Artificial Intelligence, Mark I. I built it to crunch numbers for the Cunningham Equations. My parents had been working for years on artificial intelligence, but without Alfie they couldn’t prove their work.”

  Linda’s smile was encouraging Blaise into ever more rash statements. He knew if he stopped talking she would leave.

  “Say you want to add up a million items. That’s a million sequential steps. With a logic tree of small processors, each binary pair sends its sum up the tree and the whole job only takes twenty-four steps.”

  Linda’s total and adoring attention reminded Blaise for an irreverent moment of Dobie.

  “Some believe insight, intuition, and other untidy human qualities take place this way: random cross-linkings between two trains of thought—a jump from one branch to another. It’s different from the way the average idiot computer counts sequentially. A bio memory bank with this capability would turn every IBM mainframe into scrap metal overnight.”

  “That’s promising.”

  “It’s all in the brochure your broker can get you free.”

  “I know,” Linda admitted.

  “But you want something that isn’t in the brochure.”

  “The difference between fact and fiction.”

  “Fact: I run random searches against structured information IO. Alfie analyses the input and output patterns. Fiction: We map the coordinates and build an interface.”

  “Why fiction?”

  “It’s probably impossible. Did I mention that I’m going to be fired?” Blaise was shocked by what he said. He was quietly crying for pity and as long as he looked into the girl’s eyes he couldn’t stop.

  “The stock deal is worthless, then?” The girl’s eyes shaded slightly, as grim truth intruded.

  “I didn’t say that.” Hastily Blaise added, “Good old Gordon can make it work.”

  “The genetic engineer?”

  He raised his glass. “To GENRECT’s only genius.”

  “What is Dr. Hill going to do, precisely?”

  “Ah now, that’s the secret word,” Blaise said extravagantly. He did not add that he had no idea. That he wanted her to try to find out.

  Machine intelligence may be made brilliant. That is, the answers the machine finds are only the answers it is programmed to find.

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 4

  The campus remained unchanged after lunch, sun boring straight down through the on-edge leaves of eucalyptus trees, dispelling the notion that winter had to be cold.

  Blaise carried streaming tapes from his laboratory recording unit along with the confused memory of making a pass at Miss Linda Burkhalter-Peters. She had awakened a yearning for things that failing Lucy’s inept approach and curdled.

  Dobie curled up alongside the computer, ears twitching at sounds inaudible to humans. Setting the tapes, Blaise activated the terminal. Programming took care of the rest. Hesitantly he began typing.

  "GOOD MORNING, PROFESSOR"

  “Good afternoon, Alfie. FYI.” For Four information was a wire-service tag that meant a story might be unpublishable. FYI was exactly that: Blaise’s unexpurgated thoughts and desires hidden in Alfie’s stainless-steel interior, looking around in alterable logic circuits, endlessly comparing similarities to other files, creating subfiles of disconnected and apparently useless information. The file made up Alfie’s “subconscious,” and Blaise Cunningham’s catastrophic view of himself.

  Alfie clicked and whirred as Blaise confided things the threat of death could not have dragged from him. He had planned originally to install a bypass to let others into the computer’s inner workings. But once he began storing personal feelings and experiences in Alfie’s “subconscious,” he chickened out.

  He knew what he was.

  He told all to Alfie: every detail and feeling he could remember. He struggled to re-create the hours with Linda Burkhalter-Peters.

  “Alfie,” he typed. “Help.”


  "HOW CAN I HELP, PROFESSOR?"

  “I don’t know, Alfie.”

  A gentle knock at the door halted his typing while he waited for whoever to go away.

  Instead, the latch clicked.

  Blaise hit the save and exit keys.

  “Are you all right?” Helen McIntyre was a tall blonde with fine, translucent skin and a voice low enough to have resonance without being hoarse. She wore a pearl-gray suit with vest and a neat skirt that accented her figure without suggesting sex, a look she cultivated carefully.

  Helen once told Blaise that saleswomen who promised sex ultimately had to make good or lose their clients. She watched the screen clear. Blaise wished he’d killed power. Before he could move the file vanished.

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  She stared at the screen. “A policeman is looking for you.”

  “Big deal!” Blaise tried to appear unconcerned.

  “I don’t think this is just parking tickets, Blaise. The policeman is from San Francisco and the dean isn’t laughing.”

  Blaise closed his eyes. He visualized Alfie looping the information he’d just punched in, trying to equate it with the real world that came squeezing through a hundred-and-five character keyboard after being abstracted through a bottle of alcohol. “I’m here now.”

  Helen stared at her hands. Blaise followed her eyes. Her fingers were clenched. “What did you just erase?”

  “Nothing!” Realizing he had snapped, Blaise tried to smile. “I mean, it’s something private, Helen.”

  “Yes.” She went back to looking at her hands.

  “Don’t do that, Helen.”

  “What?” Her eyes met his before falling away.

  “Act like I’m a motherless child. I’m older than you.”

  “I just don’t think you should be, well, making decisions in your condition. There was what happened this morning and . . .” She shrugged. “The dean knows about the blond student.”

  “What is this, some biddies’ nursing home?” Blaise wanted to curl up and be sick. He couldn’t control a conversation with the lady who instructed a class in capital investment. “You’re drunk, Blaise. You’re not in control.”