Copyright: Copyright © 1995, Michael Bate
Citation: Copyright 1995 by Michael Bate.  Published by Lighthouse Productions.


1. August
chapter 1. August

1. August

The riot was in the distance, blocks away.

Lying in the darkness with Linda Spencer, Carl Winchester heard sounds of suffering — tinkling glass, whistles and sirens, exploding gas canisters, the terrified screams of men and women and the mechanical barked orders of robot policemen.  Sometimes he winced when he thought he heard the thud of a plastic robot fist hitting a human stomach or skull.

The sounds came in through the single open window in his tiny one-room apartment, past the shade drawn down till it touched the dirty sill.  They were no different from what he heard every night from the slum outside: they were simply more compressed — a hundred nights of agony in a single hour.

The night was stiflingly hot.  The window shade that he always kept drawn for privacy, even though the room was dark, kept out whatever slight breeze they might have had.  Yet the filthy ghetto air crept in, carrying its faint stench of industrial waste, of uncollected garbage and befouled gutters.  Indoors it mingled with the smell of ancient plumbing and decayed plaster, and the vague traces of sweat and dirty diapers that seeped through the thin walls.  And tonight, overlaying it all, was the smell of tear gas.

This was where poor people had to live, Carl thought.  Here where he, a white man from a wealthy family, had chosen to live.

He shuddered and glanced over at Linda.  They lay beside each other, naked, perspiring in the heat — not touching.

He had wanted her like this for so long!  Why — now that she was here — did this riot have to be?

She was much younger than he.  He was fifty-five and looked much older.  She was twenty-two.  Just enough light filtered in so that he could see her long hair fall over her shoulders and down the pillow.  In the darkness he could not see how beautiful her hair was — pale orange-red, like a golden sunset.

A helicopter passed low overhead.  For a moment the fragile building shook and Carl's window rattled; then it was gone.  Police, or news media, were heading toward the riot.

Carl thought how the media had been drumming this up all day, well before the riot began.  The police had issued countless alerts and warnings.  Boston hadn't had a real riot in a year!

From somewhere in the distance came a scream almost like a moan.  Linda bit her lip.  Neither she nor Carl could speak.  Poor people were tearing out their souls in desperation, in a mad fury at the years of neglect and scorn by mainstream white America.  And the police were using this pretense to beat them down again.

Carl was responsible for the riot.  Everyone who was not poor and not oppressed was responsible.

Yet he had tried to fight the Bosses.  All his life, ever since he had dropped out of Harvard to choose a life of poverty, he had worked for Revolution.  He lived out of garbage cans and by handouts, because if he had money he would have had to pay taxes to support the system; all his finances — earnings and purchases — would go through the computerized bank, to be scrutinized by the National Computer Network and the Subversive Tracking Center; and his money would pay for oppression.

He lived here, in the ghetto of Roxbury, because, he believed, this was where the Revolution would begin.

But tonight, instead of Revolution, there was madness.  Eventually the poor in America would have to do as the peasants of South America — form a guerrilla army and declare war against the imperialists.  (At least the United States was not involved in the South American war!)  Though he hated violence, he would have to fight by their side, instead of lying in bed with a beautiful white woman while outside his brothers were being clubbed and gassed.

Soon Linda would leave him.  She would go back to Paul, whom she really loved.  His friend Paul, young and handsome and — so different from himself — not above selling out, who wrote software for the Subversive Tracking Center.  Paul, whose father, Louis Jackman, the greatest computer genius of modern times, had founded the Citizens for Automated Government.  Paul, who loved Linda so dearly that he accepted the pain her impulsive unfaithfulness caused him.

Carl reached toward Linda and timidly touched her breast.  He thought to himself that he loved her just as much as Paul did.

For two years he had loved her, ever since he met her at a rally called to protest the sharing of computerized public welfare records with the Drug Enforcement Agency.  Like himself, she was from a wealthy, social-climbing family, and she had spurned their values.  She wanted so much to set the world right again.  She was, in an age of flesh and blood automatons, a searcher for meaning and truth, and for the fullness of life's experiences.  Even if that included going to bed with a man old enough to be her father.

Carl was not handsome.  His face had the intent, aged look of years of ascetic self-denial in service of a cause.  Most of his hair was gone; what was left was gray and thin.  Very few of his teeth remained.  His body was emaciated from a lifetime of irregular eating.

Linda thought to herself how delicate he was, emotionally as well as physically.  He felt so many things so deeply.  He had a fire of youth, that other men half his age had lost.  In a very special way, she loved him.

But she must not think of him as a selfless man of pure virtue.  Paul was just as good a man as he, just as dedicated to humanity, just as wise, only more realistic and more cynical, and perhaps less brave.

Then she wished she had been faithful to Paul.

She had come here today to talk to Carl, not to be seduced.  If it had not been for the riot outside, she would have stopped him before now.  But she could read his heart in  his face, as she so often could.  This riot was a personal defeat, a painful reminder that his lifetime of dedication to a better world had produced nothing.  Outside, the poor people to whom he had dedicated his life were tearing apart his dreams.  So she let him take her, clumsily and uncertainly, in the darkness.

And she wished she could do more than just take his body in her arms.  If only she could wrap her mind around his, and give him comfort; if only she could look into his innermost dreams with her inner eyes and try to satisfy his longings.

Carl felt beads of perspiration, that might almost have been milk from full breasts, trickle down her nipples onto him, down his chest.  He closed his eyes and imagined that it was really milk.  He dreamed that they were married, and they had a child — not simply another child to be exploited and used as cannon fodder by the imperialists, but a human life that their love had brought into the world.  For a moment, he wished that it could be.

A blaringly amplified voice boomed out of a loudspeaker outside:

"This is Professor Bradford Haley, Chief of the Subversive Tracking Center in Washington."

The sound came from a police car in the street below.

"I am speaking to the people of the Roxbury area of Boston.

"Please, go to your homes.  Please, stay in your homes.

"We have identified known subversives in this area."

The voice started to fade in the distance.

"We call upon you not to become a tool in their conspiracy against our nation.

"Please, go to your homes.  Please, stay in your homes."

"What about the people who have no homes," Carl sneered.

"That bastard!" whispered Linda.

Nervously Carl reached over to a bowl, by the bed, of slimy soaking freeze dried kelp chips.  He pulled one out and inserted it into his mouth.

Linda shook her head as he offered her one.  They were bad enough when they were dry and crisp.

"Supermarket food is full of chemicals," Carl said pathetically, trying to pretend that the riot wasn't happening.

Linda pressed against him.  His body was tense and hard, unyielding to her touch.

Through the paper thin walls came the sound of running feet in the outside hall, followed by an insistent knock on the door.

"Carl!" called a voice.  "The cops tried to kill me!"

The pretending was over.  He could not ignore the riot any more.  He wondered when he would ever be alone with Linda again.  He turned on the light and hurriedly put on some clothes as he longingly watched Linda pull her dress over her body.

A tall young black man stood in the gloom of the hallway.  His sharply etched, strikingly handsome features were bathed in sweat.  He was panting — he must have been running for blocks.  His hair was long, reaching almost to his shoulders.  He wore earrings that looked Colombian.

"Two of the bastards shot at me," he said angrily.  He was laboring to be calm.  His intelligent face was knotted with concern.

When he saw that Carl had a woman with him, he turned to Linda, with an appraising glance that made her blush.  He smiled at her and said, in a warm but still very shaky voice, "I am Abul."

Linda wondered if that was his real name, as she introduced herself.

"Let's go out and see what's going on," she said.

Abul looked at her as if she was crazy.  "I'm damn lucky I made it here!" he said.  "I'm not going back into that mess!"

Carl bobbed his head solemnly in agreement.  He had known that she would want to go.  But he could not go with her.  He could not face the men and women whom he had failed.

"Let's go to my place and watch it on the ICP," said Abul.

Linda grimaced at the thought of sitting and watching — on an Interactive Communications Processor — other people suffer.

Carl impatiently beckoned her to follow him up the treacherously rotted stairs to Abul's apartment.  He didn't want to go any more than she did.  Abul was a phony; he was like a white liberal.  But this was the only way to keep Linda with him, if only for a few minutes more.

Linda picked up the bowl of kelp chips — very carefully, lest her fingers come in contact with the contents — and took it for him.

As they entered Abul's apartment, Linda suppressed a gasp of surprise.  This was a rundown building in a slum, but the living room looked like something out of a luxury apartment on Beacon Hill.  Air conditioning made the room feel almost chilly; tightly fit windows shut out the sounds of riot.  A sprawling modern armchair was so big that she and Carl sat in it together, while Abul settled into a carved Spanish seat.  Instead of the simple little tube she had expected, the Interactive Communications Processor had a huge four meter screen, a light wand, a remote microphone, and an information buffer, as if it was used for some kind of research.

It made Linda feel sick — even though Paul's apartment was no different.

Carl grunted with disapproval at this hated fabrication of technology — combination television, picture phone, and terminal to the National Computer Network — that was to be found in almost every home but his.

Abul quietly picked up the microphone and whispered into it: "Boston Globe."

On the screen, the Globe directory display listed the current headlines:

PRESIDENT CORCORAN CALLS FOR TOUGHER ANTI-SUBVERSIVE LAW

NEW FIGHTING IN ARGENTINA

Carl groaned audibly at each one.

SENATOR ELIOT "CERTAIN" TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT, SAYS AIDE

LOUIS JACKMAN CALLS FOR COMPUTER-REGULATED CONCEPTION

Carl stayed silent at this one, not because he approved of computer-regulated conception, which he did not, but because he was a lifetime friend of Louis Jackman, Paul Jackman's father.

RADICALS INVOLVED IN D.C. DRUG RING! CHARGES CIA

TINA TATTLES ON TOMMY

RIOT IN ROXBURY

"Riot in Roxbury," Abul spat the words into the microphone.

Carl popped a drooping kelp chip into his mouth.  "The Madison Avenue news channels," he said, sublimating his annoyance at having to be here, "are so full of news, especially trivial junk, that no one can absorb it all."

"Capsule or full coverage?" asked the ICP, with its natural-sounding computer voice.

"Full coverage," said Abul.

The screen showed — larger than life-size — a helmeted white human policeman beating a black pregnant woman.  She lay in the street, her clothes ripped, trying to protect her stomach.

Linda shuddered and tugged her skirt down over her knees.

"White racists actually enjoy watching this," said Carl in disgust.  "I've seen cops do things ten times worse."

Abul stared angrily at the policeman's thick hard rubber club as it smashed again and again into the woman's side.  Then he yelled into the microphone: "Shut it off!  Let's have a riot overview!"

"You're doing just what the Bosses want," Carl grumbled at him.  "They make this news coverage interactive so people can shut out the bad news that they don't want to hear.  People have been brainwashed to censor out for themselves anything that the Subversive Tracking Center doesn't want them to think about."

"Have a kelp chip," said Linda as she bravely dove her hand among the slick globules in the bowl, in order to extract one and put it in his mouth.  Carl didn't take his eyes off the screen even once during the procedure.

The ICP showed a still picture of a typical block in Roxbury — not very different from Carl's.  Wooden three-decker houses settled at odd angles and seemed about to collapse.  Rows of ripped open mailboxes flanked the entrances.  Broken light bulbs hung from frayed electric wires.  A huge black man seemed to be urinating inside one of the doorways.

Superimposed on the picture were riot arrest statistics: a total of 632 had been arrested (the number increased as they watched); 63% were black, 30% were Hispanic, 7% white.  83% were unemployed.  92% were suspected drug users.  A computerized voice — programmed to be soothing —read the numbers.

"They'll use these figures as a weapon against us, as an excuse to crack down," Abul snarled.

"These so-called news people fabricate these statistics to stir up hate against the poor," said Carl.

Linda wanted to argue that everyone knew that the National Computer Network was designed so that no computer could ever lie — the figures could not be fabrications, but then she thought better of it.

The scene changed to show black youths being chased down the street by robot policemen.  "79% of those arrested came from homes with no father," said the computerized voice.  Robot police shot paralyzing spray at the black youths, who fell almost immediately.  The scene changed again to show a marching phalanx of human policemen, each helmeted and visored and wearing a gas mask, wired to the police computer via an earphone, all marching together on command from the computer.  Only the sergeants had throat microphones so they could communicate back to the computer.

"Just like robots," said Carl.  "Stooges of imperialism."

"84% came from homes that were on welfare," said the computer.  Now the picture was of white men wearing swastikas on their shoulders.  They were a group of "Nazis" from an nearby poor white neighborhood, eager to fight the omnipresent terrorists, all of whom they were sure were black or Hispanic.

"93% came from homes with previous police records."

The screen showed robot policemen walking through heavy black clouds of tear gas.  Tear gas was stronger now than it was a decade ago.  People living in the cities had become adjusted to pollutants and irritants in the air.

Gasping people lay sick on the ground among the robot policemen, clutching at themselves and retching, while the robots marched through without pausing.

Abul grunted in disgust.

Along the bottom of the screen, the words flashed:  "Interview with Harry Torrance."

"He's a crackpot," said Carl derisively.

"Let's see him," said Abul into the microphone, as if Carl had said nothing.

Harry Torrance looked like a caricature of someone's notion of a black radical: he wore battle fatigues, and a large LEGALIZE MARIJUANA button; he maintained a constant expression of barely suppressed rage.   He had been posed by newsmen in front of a faded poster depicting a huge diamond memory surrounded by robots with bayonets and labeled: THE BIG WHITEY.  His "interview" was really a speech:

"You Republican news people been tellin' us all day we were gonna have a riot, now we got one!" he shouted at the nervous reporter.  "Poor people are damn sick and tired of putting up with bullshit from the Bosses!"  He shook his fist menacingly at the camera, as if he were about to attack the viewers in their living rooms.  "We're tired of having Whitey program his computers to keep track of everything we do. We're tired of robot police jumping on us for every little infraction of some technicality in the law that some bastard in Congress thought up.  Robot police aren't programmed that way in the Yuppie suburbs."

Carl bobbed his  head in agreement.

In fact, everything controlled by the National Computer Network — including the police — had to obey the law.  But again Linda decided not to argue.

"Now just today the racist Citizens for Automated Government," continued Harry Torrance, and Carl turned pink with outrage at the mere mention of the despised organization's name, "come out and say that they want computers to tell poor people when they can have children and how many.  They say they want to protect the environment.  To them, it's a simple equation: Poor people equals pollution.  And you sons of bitches wonder why there's a riot."

"He's a clown," said Linda.

Along the bottom of the screen appeared the words: "Mayor Shay to meet reporters in 3.0 minutes."

"See how they keep you jumping from one thing to the next," said Carl.  "They don't want you to find out for yourself what's going on.  I bet they must be really brutalizing poor people, right now."

To oblige him, Abul said into the microphone: "Let's see the most violent riot scene available."

The screen showed poor black people setting fire to a tenement house.  A robot fire truck appeared, and stones were thrown at it.

"Anyone inside?" Carl asked.

"No," replied the Interactive Communications Processor.

"See how Madison Avenue always thinks violence against some slumlord's property is worse than against poor people."  He grabbed the microphone from Abul's hand.  "We mean violence against people!" he shouted into it.

The screen showed a picture of a black woman being sexually violated by a middle aged white man wearing a swastika.  Two other men with swastikas were holding her down.  "I told you so!" said Carl.  "You really had to squeeze it out of them.  They didn't want us to see that," he said triumphantly.

Abul took his microphone back.  He didn't like to let it out of his hand.  "Now let's see the Mayor," he said.

For a few seconds the screen showed the outside of City Hall, in the downtown business district filled with high rise towers of glass latticed with metal, gleaming in the lamplight.  Here even the gutters were clean; the streets were empty, as if human beings were not wanted outside of business hours.

Inside, correspondent Ellen Mitchell was at the riot control center, clutching a microphone to thrust at the Mayor as he appeared.  Behind her a row of human guards stood as stiffly as robots.  Each guard wore an earphone so that he could take instructions from the central computer program.   Each wore gas filters.

In fact, the riot was several kilometers away.

Behind the guards, through the glass windows, a computer-driven display was barely visible.  It seemed to show a map of the riot area, with deployment of police and locations of bands of rioters.

"Show close-up of the map," said Abul.

"Security regulations prohibit a more detailed view," said the ICP.

"Paranoid bastards!" muttered Abul.

On the screen, the Mayor of Boston came through the door.  He was a big man, and his body rolled ponderously as he walked.  He was frowning severely, like a high school principal come to admonish an unruly class.

As soon as he appeared, he was rushed by a reporter who got to him ahead of Miss Mitchell.  She managed to stick her microphone under the Mayor's nose.

"You people haven't been reporting the facts about this riot," said the Mayor angrily, ignoring whatever question the reporter had asked.  He puffed out his chest at the camera.  "I've been talking with Professor Haley at the Subversive Tracking Center.  Roxbury has been full of known subversives all day.  I wish you news people would tell the truth for a change!"

"This asshole looks funny if you take his picture from below," said Abul, and he instructed the ICP to prove his point.  The Mayor looked stout and stodgy from the new angle.  His hands, as he gestured with them, were foreshortened and appeared huge and meaty.

"Those people out there have total contempt for basic American values.  I say that we should show them no mercy!  This riot is a plot by organized urban terrorists," said the Mayor, trying to sound as gruff as possible.

"Fucking son of a bitch," said Abul.

"Maybe he'd look better sideways," said Linda.

With the picture turned on its side, the Mayor seemed to be floating in air, his inflated chest making him look like a human balloon.  "It just takes a few dedicated socialists and their liberal friends to stir up a whole lot of trouble," he declared.

"Mr. Mayor," Miss Mitchell finally got a question in, "is everyone who is considered subversive by the Tracking Center being automatically arrested on sight?"

Abul restored the normal camera angle.

"You know better than to ask a question like that," said Mayor Shay, his face seeming to lunge at the viewers as the camera adjusted itself.  "The bleeding heart courts would lock up our policemen if we tried that.  But everyone who sets foot on the streets of Roxbury tonight is being identified by the robot police, and the information is being sent to the Subversive Tracking Center.  The American people are fed up with liberals who want to reward rioting."

"Mr. Mayor, is it true that you may not support Senator Eliot for President?" another newsman asked.

"Senator Eliot hasn't announced yet what his plans are," said the Mayor, happily reciting  his response to a familiar query.  "Dan Eliot is a good friend of mine; he and I agree far more than the press makes out..."

The words "Statement from the White House" flashed across the center of the ICP screen, and immediately, without waiting for Mayor Shay to finish, the screen changed to show John Pembroke, President Corcoran's press secretary, standing in front of a massive desk.

"The Office of the President of the United States has just issued the following statement," he said solemnly.  He started reading:

"Tonight, a handful of trouble makers have once again set fire to a major city.  Poor people are suffering at their hands.

"America is the most advanced nation on earth," he continued, "and today the most advanced nations are also the most vulnerable to subversion.  Means of mass destruction and of inciting mobs to riot are available to everyone as they have never been before.  As we become more and more a nation of specialists dependent on one another, our way of life becomes easier and easier for radicals and terrorists to disrupt.

"Tonight I call once again on the Congress to pass my anti-subversive bill."  The press aide had come to the part of the statement he cared about.  "Our law enforcement officers do all they can, but their hands are tied.  Professor Haley and the Subversive Tracking Center could have stopped this riot before it started, if they had only had the power.  To those bleeding hearts whose sole concern seems to be protecting the rights of criminals, I say we must be concerned for the poor people left homeless tonight, and that in these troubled times we must all be willing to give up some of our privileges, or we will all perish together."

"He wants to do away with the Bill of Rights, that's what he wants," shouted Carl.  "He says that we can't have freedom anymore, with all the computers."

"Isn't that exactly what you and your crackpot friends say?" said Abul angrily.

"But we want to do away with the computers, not the freedom," said Carl.

"The Citizens for Automated Government doesn't think that's the choice at all," said Abul, become surprisingly emotional about it.  "They feel we can have full freedom while computers govern."

Linda shuddered visibly at the idea, but decided not to be a part of their disagreement.

The press agent vanished from the screen, to be replaced by Senator Eliot, who was sitting in a TV studio.

Carl was incensed by the appearance of this new villain.  "Boy do they play up that jerk!"

The junior Senator from Massachusetts looked very young to be a United States Senator, even younger to be a Presidential candidate.  With his neatly coifed hair and clear complexion, he almost looked like a student.  Tonight his shirt was soaked with perspiration and he had slight bruise on his face.  Apparently he had been out in the riot.

"Makeup man did a good job fabricating that bruise," said Carl grumpily as he observed that Linda looked on the Senator with favor.

"You've been in Roxbury tonight?" the newsman asked Senator Eliot.

"Yes," said Eliot wearily.

"How do you feel the Mayor is handling this crisis?"

"This is a terrible situation," said Eliot.  "I don't approve of how Mayor Shay is reacting, but I don't think that tonight is the proper time to engage in debate with him about it."

"That bastard — he's the worst of them all!" exploded Carl.

"We must remember that the victims of this violence are poor people," said Eliot.  "People who are so desperate they turn to cocaine and Quaalude to ease their misery.  And, when there seems to be no hope at all, they explode in anger."

"I bet he wasn't anywhere near here," said Carl.  "Did you see him?" he demanded of Abul.

"We can find out," said Abul, anxious to prove him wrong.  He spoke into the microphone: "Keep audio.  Display video replay of Eliot at scene of riot."

"I don't think we can blame this riot on a few agitators," said Senator Eliot.

The words:

REQUESTED VIDEO NOT AVAILABLE

showed on the screen.

"I told you so!" shrieked Carl with delight.

"That doesn't mean he wasn't there," said Abul.  "They don't get pictures of everything."

Eliot was saying, "Neither can we blame the riot on the Mayor or the police.  Instead we should redouble our efforts to make this city a better place for all our people to live in.  We should fight our problems at their source, instead of vainly struggling with the symptoms."

"This is a police riot!" Carl cried, pointing a shaking finger at the ICP.  "Ruling class bigots running wild and terrorizing poor people!"

"Eliot knows that," said Abul, "but he can't say those things in public."

"No, he's running for President," said Carl.  "And he's just the kind that Madison Avenue wants.  Why have an idiot like President Corcoran, who everyone knows is a Nazi, when you can have someone like Eliot who can fool people into thinking that he cares about them.  Then they're kept in their place much better.  I'd rather have an honest Fascist — at least they tell the truth."

"I'm tired of listening to you argue," Linda interrupted him.  "Let's go outside and see the riot."  She knew that Carl wouldn't go with her.  She hoped that Abul wouldn't; somehow he disturbed her, perhaps because he seemed educated and almost affluent.  She wondered if he lived here out of some sort of conviction, the way Carl did.

She wanted to get away from him.

"It's not an entertainment out there," Abul snapped at her.  "It's a riot."

"You'll be arrested," Carl said feebly, lowering his voice considerably, as if to say that he'd stop arguing if only she would stay with him.

Linda didn't want to hurt him, but she wanted to see for herself what happened to people caught in the turmoil.  "I'll keep ahead of them," she said.  She turned toward the door.

Abul had turned back to the ICP.  There was an ad on now, showing a naked female cyborgram — a humanoid image created entirely by computer — slinking through a thick mist, wailing a paean to the virtues of Maximam, the hormone for larger bosoms.  The cyborgram was sexy but not really human, the way a girl in a comic strip can be sexy.  Abul seemed to be brooding, impatient for the riot to come back on, ignoring Carl and Linda, letting them know that what she did was none of his concern.

Carl faced Linda in the doorway, disappointment written on his aged face.  He wished that they could be together in bed again, pretending that there was no riot.

"They'll identify you," he argued.  "They'll record it in a dossier.  You could be classified subversive."  His eyes pleaded with her.

"I don't care," she said.  She pulled Carl to her and kissed him very tenderly on the mouth, as if to reassure him that he would see her again.  Then she walked quietly out, shuddering as she was struck anew by the grotesque contrast between Abul's plush apartment and the peeling paint of the hallway.

Carl's eyes filled with tears.


10.
chapter 10.

10.

The people waited eagerly, expectantly.  The small lecture hall was full.  There must have been three hundred there.  In place of the usual ambiance of sophisticated detachment, there was a hush of anticipation in the room.  Whispered rumors spread that Louis Jackman was on his way.

Linda had come early and found a seat in the second row.  Abul appeared a moment later and sat next to her.  She was on the edge of her chair, as anxious as anyone else to hear what Louis Jackman was going to say.  Abul looked at her quietly, coolly waiting for her answer to his invitation to go swimming after lunch.  He was hard to resist and she knew she shouldn't try, if she wanted to learn all she could about the CAG.  But she stiffened and shook her head.  She decided then and there that this time, for once, she was going to be faithful to Paul.

Louis Jackman entered the room.  The people of the CAG rose to their feet and applauded him.  He was their hero and they were his people.  He came in eagerly, welcoming proudly their thunderous applause.  He walked in rapid strides, his gray hair bouncing at each step.  He smiled at Linda when he saw her.

Linda looked behind her.  A sea of excited faces turned toward Professor Jackman.

It did her heart good to see them cheer him.  He was a wonderful man, one whom she was going to be proud to have as her father in law.  She was sorry that they were extolling him for his ideology instead of for the kind of person he was.

Then she observed that while everyone else was applauding, Abul sat with his arms at his sides.

She whispered "Why don't you like him?" as she applauded all the more loudly.

"He's too goddamn soft to be a revolutionary," Abul shot back at her.

At the front of the room, Louis Jackman laid out some papers on the lecture stand and waited, smiling, but with an air of impatience, for silence.  The diamond at his chest seemed less conspicuous than usual in this light.

A male anthropoid robot which looked like a mechanized mannequin walked into the room and stood silently in the right front corner.

When it was quiet, Louis Jackman spoke, not like an acclaimed hero and leader, but as if he were lecturing a college classroom.  "Today I will discuss emotion in computers," he said.  "Or more specifically, attempts to program computers to understand human emotions.  This is basic to any concept of computer government.  Man is ruled by his emotions and passions.  If computers are to govern him, or even to deal with him effectively on any sort of equal footing, they must understand his feelings.

"First of all, we must have a precise idea of what emotions are.  Psychologists have never defined emotions very well; scientists cannot measure inner feelings, but only the outer aspects of emotion, such as facial expressions, pulse rate, and behavior.  They can ask their human subjects, often with the aid of psychological tests, what they are feeling, but the subjects' responses are obviously highly subjective and difficult to measure with precision."

Except for Louis Jackman's scholarly voice, the hall was silent, like a void.

"The modern psychologist, working with computers, attempts to devise working models of human behavior.  He tries to produce within the computer a model of the human emotional processes, so that the computer can accurately simulate human behavior.  The test of the validity of such a model is whether, given the same external situation as a human subject, it produces the same behavior — the same simulated facial expressions and heart beat and all the rest, and the same general responses about how it feels.

"Once he has constructed such a model, the psychologist of today has a great advantage over his predecessors.  He can look inside and observe with precision what is happening inside the simulated mind of his computerized model.  He can command the model to slow down its thought processes, or to retrace them any number of times, or to display a detailed analysis of itself at any instant.  Thus he has the tools to learn, for the first time, precisely what emotions are."

Linda loved this man, but what he was saying filled her with a sense of deep disquiet, just as she had felt at his home when she had learned that men could computerize emotions so well.

"Unfortunately," continued Louis Jackman, "all models of human emotion that have so far been devised have been flat and two dimensional.  Each has only dealt with a small area of human behavior.  Worse still, they have been static.  Only a very few of them have been able to learn or mature.  And almost all of human behavior is learned behavior.

"So I want to tell you now of a radically different approach that I am taking.  When I began, I feared that it might be too ambitious ever to succeed."

The room was quiet except for the light rustle of whispering speculation about what was coming.  Abul was sitting bolt upright, as if he had forgotten about Linda.  Linda could feel the audience's sense of pride, even of arrogance, at being here while Louis Jackman unveiled his work.  But in Louis Jackman's face there was not so much pride as humility, like a scientist who feels his greatest accomplishment pale before the vastness of the unknown.

"My idea," said Professor Jackman, "is that we cannot just simulate part of a man.  We must simulate him in his entirety.  Mind and body form an integrated system, with all the various parts intimately related to one another.  Beyond that, the environment, the life's experiences from which man learns, are so essential that they too must be simulated, or at least somehow approximated.  We must simulate a person being born, growing, and maturing in our computers."

His words, coming from this gentle man that Linda knew and loved as a father, made her shudder.

"It is ambitious, but it is not impossible.  Computer simulation can compress time, and simulate in a few hours or days processes that in the real world require years."

Abul grunted in amazement under his breath.

"Let us look at my program," continued Professor Jackman.  "It is still in the rudimentary stage."  He spoke softly into the microphone.  The large ICP screen in the front of the hall lit up.  The program title:

Pre-Adolescent Human Model

appeared across the screen, then was replaced by:

Program Logic

which in turn was replaced by a block diagram:

Professor Jackman picked up a light wand from the lecture stand.  He pointed it at the ICP screen, and highlighted each of the blocks in turn as he described it.

"Everything within the dotted line comprises the simulated man.  Everything outside makes up the outside world.  The two blocks on the border — perception and behavior — describe the mechanisms, actually part of the simulated man, that he uses to relate to the outside world.

"The biological model borrows heavily from existing simulators, such as Professor Hammer's model brain."

Now he was no longer giving a technical lecture, but talking about his own project that he had been working on for years.  He moved the light wand down the display excitedly.  "Physical maturation simulates all the physical changes that happen to our bodies as we grow up.

"Inborn drives include the obvious bodily tissue needs such as hunger and sex.  They are really part of the biological model.  Most such inborn drives operate internally, without our awareness.

"Instinctive behavior is any behavior that is both complex and unlearned.  The human infant's sucking as soon as it is born is instinctive.  In animals, instinctive behavior is much more obvious than in humans, especially in some elaborate mating and breeding patterns."

He moved the light wand down.

"An acquired drive is any drive that is not inborn.  We are not born wanting money, for example.  We learn to want it.

"The learning and forgetting mechanism builds up the contents of the acquired drives, knowledge, and attitudes and beliefs modules.  It is the most central part of the whole simulation.  It modifies the modules of perception, thinking mechanism, and behavior."

Louis Jackman moved the light wand outside the dotted line, over to the blocks that described the outside world.

"The weakest part of this program is the block entitled 'other people.'  Here we have the problem of the chicken and the egg.  I developed this program because I believed that the only way to really simulate a human being satisfactorily is to simulate his growth from birth, and all his life experiences.  Now the question arises, how can I provide other simulated people for him to relate to during his growing and maturing process?  Will not these other people also have to be simulated from birth?  In that case, how can I ever get a good simulation started?

"You will see, as you watch my model operate, how serious this problem is."

Again Linda felt the sick feeling coming over her.  She wanted to run out of the room and not hear any more.  But she had to stay and see how well this man had made computers human.  Abul, as if he sensed her mood, turned and smiled at her in a way that was curiously comforting.

Louis Jackman spoke into the microphone: "Model Henry."  The ICP screen went blank.  The male mannequin in the corner of the room slumped onto the floor with a soft thud.

"The male mannequin will provide a body for Henry, one of the model people that I have grown in my computer.  The ICP screen will present what Henry perceives."

Dr. Jackman walked over to where the mannequin lay crumpled on the floor and clapped his hands in the robot's face.

The robot stirred.  "Notice how well Henry simulates the human awakening process," said Dr. Jackman.  The ICP brightened slightly.  It showed a picture of a diamond memory, hard and gleaming, like a huge block of ice.  A flickering laser beam reflected off its surface.

"Awakening is often accompanied by short dreams," said Dr. Jackman.

In front of the diamond were two robot policemen.  Their faces were cruel, unlike any American robot.  They looked like the robots used in the concentration camps in Singapore.  Their fingers were serrated, so that when they grasped a person, his flesh would be cut and he would be caught in a grip of stainless steel teeth.

The robots were dragging between them a naked girl — a cyborgram — young and physically immature. She had long red hair.  The nipples of her flat breasts were painted red.  She was quaking in artificial terror.

Linda gasped audibly in fright.  The girl looked like her!

"Common pre-adolescent sexual fantasy," said Dr. Jackman.  "We have created a lifelike model of pre-pubic sexuality."

The screen went blank.  In the hall, the humanoid male robot was rising slowly, awkwardly.  Now there was an image on the screen again.  It showed rows and rows of people, seated in a vast hall.  They were staring out of the screen.  They were whispering to each other.  They were cyborgram faces, odd and grotesque.

"Henry is now fully awake," said Louis Jackman.

The robot stood upright, turning its human-shaped epoxy head.  The people on the screen changed.  They were looking with scorn and half-concealed hatred.  There was a black person sitting near the front, prominent on the screen.  He looked deformed, as if his blackness were the stamp of the devil.

"Notice how Henry's paranoia colors his perceptions," said Louis Jackman.  "It took you a while to realize that you were looking at yourselves."

The robot head stopped turning.  It looked straight at Linda.  The artificial eyes stared at her.  On the screen, her image grew.  Linda shrank in her chair.  She fought to control her sense of growing panic.  Why had it singled her out, among all the people in the room?

On the screen, Linda's image looked calculating, alluring.

Another voice broke in.  It was the computer voice, from the loudspeaker on the wall.  "Henry is fascinated by this woman," it warned.  "His heartbeat is increasing.  Simulation may have to be aborted."

"You see that Henry is fully under the control of the computer," said Dr. Jackman, with a reassuring smile at Linda.

The robot moved towards her.  The picture changed.  Now only she was there.  Everything else was blurred, like the background in the portrait of Paul.  On the screen, she looked like a lewd painted prostitute, her blouse clinging to her breasts.

"Sexual fascination getting the upper hand," warned the computer.

Abul whispered to her that the mannequin was fully under control of the computer and that it couldn't possibly hurt her.

Linda knew that he was right, but still she was terrified.  Her eyes darted from the advancing robot, to her own image on the ICP screen, to the diamond on Louis Jackman's chest.  She could feel the rows of people behind her staring at her in rapt fascination.  She tried to push her chair back, but it was fastened down.

This thing, and the thought of how it had been created, made her feel sick, the way operating rooms and mangled bodies can make people sick.

The robot reached for her.  The fingers of soft plastic, that looked and felt and acted almost like real human flesh, were only centimeters from her breast.  "Note the timid advance.  It feels affection," said the computer.  Linda grabbed for the robot hand, trying to push it away.  On the ICP screen, her face turned to a look of disgust and horror.  The robot lunged at her.

"Simulation terminated for reasons of safety," said the computer.  The robot froze.

A sense of relief spread through the room.  Linda slumped in her chair exhausted.

Professor Jackman looked shaken.  The robot, under the control of the computer monitor and not his simulator, withdrew into the corner.  Abul put his hand on Linda's shoulder to try to soothe her.  She pushed him away.

She knew why the machine had singled her out.  Louis Jackman had not told the whole story of how he had created this creature.

"You see," said Dr. Jackman to the audience, "we have succeeded in creating a lifelike simulated person.  He has problems.  His problems, however, are human dilemmas, not glitches of computer methodology.  They are due to the lack of human warmth in the simulated environment he was grown in."

Linda shuddered.  Louis Jackman looked at her and continued, speaking softly, sympathetically.  "Henry is a psychopath.  He has no conscience.  A conscience is the internalization of parents' values in childhood.  This internalization cannot take place if there is no love.  Henry is a psychopath because in his simulated childhood there were not simulated people of real warmth and humanity.  Henry is a psychopath because he was never loved.

"Love is a very unscientific term.  It covers a multitude of instincts, drives, and pleasures.  The Greeks had three different words for it, and we have only one.  For the healthy psychological development of a human being, it is the most essential requirement of all.  Without it, we produce monsters, whether in the simulated world in the computer, or in the real world outside."

Linda understood.  Professor Jackman had used the data he had collected on Paul, all through his childhood.  That was why the machine had wanted her.  That was why it had chosen to approach her and to love her in the only way it could.  It was horrible.

Yet, was it really such a terrible thing to do?

"Henry is a monster," said Louis Jackman, looking around at all the people and speaking with a mixture of humility and pride, "but a very human one.  His basic humanity demonstrates the soundness of my approach.  These experiments must continue.

"Scientific research can proceed very rapidly these days.  With modern computers, the time between conception of an idea and its successful execution may be only a fraction of what it used to be.  The next model Henry will be more successful, for I plan to use real people in the simulation."

Abul nodded his approval.  Linda was too drained to feel anything.

"Our human subjects," said Dr. Jackman, "will spend a few hours a day conversing with our simulator.  We will need many subjects, for we want the next simulated Henry to be brought up in a rich and caring world.  We need people who can love our simulated man, so he can grow to be normal and good."

Louis Jackman's lecture was abruptly terminated.

"Nobody leave!" shouted the ICP.  It had suddenly turned itself on again.  The people gasped.  Professor Jackman looked startled.  "The woman, Linda Spencer, is not one of us!" shouted the computer.  Everyone was staring at Linda, as if they had been programmed to do so.  She stood up, overcome with panic, but there was no escape.  "She is not one of us!  She is a spy for Senator Eliot!"

Abul stood and glared at her, his face twisted with accusing rage.  Behind her, a woman smiled with satisfaction.  Someone had suspected her and checked her background!  The robot advanced on her.  It wasn't Henry — or should she say, Paul — any more.  It grabbed her and held her in an iron grip.

Professor Jackman shouted, "No!  Don't do this to her!"

Somehow — she didn't understand why — she was more afraid of Abul than of anything else.

A needle slid into her arm, stinging like a thousand little pinpricks.  Someone held something over her nose and mouth.

Blackness.

END OF PART ONE

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2.
chapter 2

2.

MEMORANDUM # CIA-OCI-U23-91-8-D-15

To:	Professor Bradford Haley, Chief, Subversive Tracking Center, 14th Squadron, Division of Internal Security, Central Intelligence Agency

From:	Gene Mintz, 23rd Under-Secretary, Office of Civil Insurrection

AUTHORIZATION:	509-ZD-117

CLASSIFICATION: SECRET

RE:	Project "BADAPPLE" [CIA-STC-R-S-D-ZD: 103-B]

FINAL TEST in urban riot situation

COPY TO:	Paul Jackman, Civilian Contractor

- - - - - - - Text Follows - - - - - - -

1.0 This Memorandum provides official authorization to proceed with the computer program field test designated above.  The Software Quality Control Panel has certified that this software is ready for final testing.

2.0 SUMMARY OF COMPUTER PROGRAM:  This program is designed to detect latent anti-social tendencies in individuals by simple observation.  Prolonged surveillance is not required, nor is infringement of constitutional rights.  Individuals are simply observed, usually for one or two minutes, on the street, or in a public place.  The program operates without access to Citizen Files.  [Since most individuals can in fact be readily identified, this program will in practice operate in tandem with program # CIA-STC-R-S-D-ZA: 101-DP-10 (Project Psychoapple), which prognosticates anti-social tendencies based on psychological models derived from Citizen's Files.]

In order to project the future potential for socially deviant behavior from this minimal information, the program relies heavily on observable physiological parameters, and on patterns of facial expression and gestures.  It uses these to derive a rudimentary psychological profile.

The program has many applications for national security and general public safety.  These include detection of bomb planters, riot agitators, and potential political assassins.  The program will be incorporated into the VIP-Sentry system used to protect leaders when they speak in public.

3.0 SITUATION FOR TEST:  This test must be conducted before and during an urban riot of severity 2.7 or greater [REF: Central Intelligence Agency Standard #CIA-IS-CI-12], in an urban economically deprived area that meets or exceeds the criteria of HHS Standard # HHS-UG-EDA-145.

In order to have a valid test, a Riot Hazard Index of 60 or greater must prevail for at least 3.4 hours prior to actual commencement of insurrection [as defined in CIA-IS-CI-12].

4.0 COMMAND:  Test will be commanded from Subversive Tracking Center, 14th Squadron, Division of Internal Security, Central Intelligence Agency.  Commander will be Prof. Haley, Chief, or designated deputy.

5.0 OBJECT OF TEST:  To identify by computer, during the period before the riot, as many rioters and especially riot-inciters as possible, and to verify these projections by observing actual behavior during the riot.

6.0 PERFORMANCE OF TEST: The computer program will observe individuals at or near the expected riot scene during the afternoon before the riot.  It will examine the observed behavior, which will consist of motions, facial expressions, gestures, suspicious actions, and the like, for indications of socially deviant behavior.  Solely on the basis of this information, it will predict which individuals are likely to participate in the riot.  It will not have any access to subversion index, psychological profile, or any other data from Citizen Files.

7.0 EVALUATION OF TEST RESULTS:  During the riot, sets of data giving police arrest particulars will be transmitted to the Subversive Tracking Center, which will compare this data with predictions made by the computer, in order to evaluate computer program performance.

8.0 PROJECT TIME LINE CONSIDERATIONS:  The successful verification and deployment of this computer software has been designated as vital to our national security.  Therefore, if no appropriate test condition arises within thirty days of the date of this memorandum, you are hereby authorized to take whatever action is necessary to create a viable environment so that this test may proceed.

- - - - - - END OF TEXT - - - - - - - - SECRET - - - - -

The time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	2100
TIME SINCE RIOT COMMENCEMENT	1.5 hours

Paul Jackman stretched nervously, and his electronic contour-adaptive chair adjusted itself to give his body full support and ease any muscular tensions that his new posture might induce — but it could not allay his anxiety.

His face was strained and taut with worry.  His uncombed hair hung in disarray over his broad sweat-stained forehead.

The riot in Boston, only a few kilometers from his home in Cambridge, was being used to test his computer program BADAPPLE.  In the control room of the Subversive Tracking Center, at the end of the corridor outside, the police reports of arrests were being compared with the predictions that BADAPPLE had made during the afternoon.

Everyone had wanted the riot for this test.  Finally, he suspected very strongly, they had had to provoke it.  But why did they have to choose Boston?

His fingers drummed impatiently against the blank screen of the small desktop ICP, surrounded by colored light pens.

He stared at the neutral gray windowless walls of his small office.  The Subversive Tracking Center was deep underground.  In the event of nuclear war, it would continue to keep track of those enemies of America lucky enough to survive.

The office was tiny, impersonal, and totally functional.  It was designed for one purpose: to allow a man or woman to work at maximum efficiency, undistracted, with every mechanical and computing aid at his or her fingertips.

The whole Subversive Tracking Center was the same.  Scrupulously clean, maintained at constant temperature and humidity no matter what the season in the city above, it seemed more a place for machines to work in than for men.

The first time Paul had been here, three years ago, he had sworn to himself that he'd never be able to work in these surroundings.

But that was before he met the people here, before he found that everyone, from Professor Haley on down, was outgoing, friendly, and extremely able.  Most were commissioned officers — mainly Lieutenants and Captains — in the military.  Almost everyone had an advanced academic degree.  They accepted Paul as one of them, even bringing him along to the frequent Happy Hours at the nearby Officer's Club, for free drinks and the latest gossip from Washington and the Pentagon.

Professor Haley, with the help of computer programs, had picked this staff himself.  It was he, more than anyone else, who had transformed these bleak and forbidding subterranean chambers into a stimulating, enjoyable place to work.  In a way he seemed to be just another, older member of the staff.  He was a great guy.  He shared their jokes and good times.  But he was in command.  He was one of the most powerful men in Washington.  To the public, he — and his unyielding law and order philosophy — was the Subversive Tracking Center, and his people never forgot it.

The time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	2115
TIME SINCE RIOT COMMENCEMENT	1.75 hours

For Paul, the worst thing about this test was the waiting.

Gently the chair pressed against the small of his back, easing the stiffness it had detected in his spine.

Tonight, all the friendliness had gone out of the Subversive Tracking Center.  It seemed to be just as hostile as it had appeared when he first came here.

It was not that the people or the place had changed.

It was Linda — and what she would do tonight.  Why did she have to be so brave, and so foolish?

Earlier today, Paul had been having lunch at his desk in Cambridge when Professor Haley called.  Any other man in Haley's position would have had a secretary or a robot call.  But Haley liked to deal with his key people in person, and he knew Paul particularly appreciated it.

Paul had smiled at the friendly face on the ICP.  Professor Bradford Haley was at his desk at the Subversive Tracking Center, behind him a big photograph of himself being honored by President Corcoran.  Haley looked like a military man in civilian clothes, and in fact he held the rank of Colonel in the Army Reserve; but he preferred his academic title — he used to teach history at Penn State.  He liked the military officers who worked for him to wear their uniforms, but he dressed in conservative business suits, always neat and clean enough to pass an Army inspection.  He had a pallid expression and a tiny nose.  His hair was very short.  He looked intellectual and precise.

"Come on down here!" he ordered Paul in a merry tone of voice.  His subdued appearance contrasted with his unrestrained relish for work.  "We're going to have a riot!"

The tube train took an hour to get to Washington; Paul looked forward to seeing his friends at the Subversive Tracking Center, but he worried about the test.  This was the final test, and his computer program had to run by itself.  He could only watch it, and hope that he had programmed it perfectly.

Professor Haley was confident.  He had wanted Paul for this project, and not just out of friendship.  He believed that Paul was a real computer expert in his own right, and not just the son of Louis Jackman.

Paul thought about his father, who despised the Subversive Tracking Center, and for a moment he wished he had never agreed to write BADAPPLE.  He was working for something he didn't believe in.  It was like a police state, keeping tabs on anyone who seemed suspicious, watching for unorthodox opinions and activities.

But it was no worse than his father's pet organization, the Citizens for Automated Government.

When he had gone into business for himself, he had known that he would have to take every job he could get.  It was the only way to succeed — and the only way for him to not be in his father's debt or in his father's shadow.

Besides, the work was fascinating.  BADAPPLE was a breakthrough in the ability of machines to understand and predict human behavior.

Paul was in a good mood when he arrived at the Subversive Tracking Center.  Even the robot at the guard gate seemed to smile at him as it let him enter.  Paul felt the familiar feeling of near-weightlessness as the elevator dropped him five hundred meters into the earth.  Then the floor pushed hard against his feet and he stepped out into the gleaming white corridor with the self-luminous low ceiling.

"There's an agitator!" shouted a friendly voice.

Paul looked around and saw the familiar figure of Captain Craig, in his Air Force uniform that seemed to be a part of him, always freshly cleaned and pressed with the buttons polished to a shine.  Captain Craig grinned broadly at Paul, and extended his arm in a motion that was part wave of welcome and part mock accusing gesture.

"I hear you're starting a riot up in Boston and now you've come down to start another one here," said Captain Craig, laughing at his own wit.  With his straw colored hair brushing his wide forehead under his visored hat, Roger Craig looked like a college freshman, but he had a Master's degree.  "But we got ya," he grinned.  "We've got a computer program to catch you people."  He grabbed at Paul and steered him down the corridor, pretending he had just caught a subversive.

"How's it going?" asked Paul, smiling at his friend, but with an edge of worry in his voice.

"It says all the robot police are agitators," laughed Captain Craig.  "It can tell by the way they look cross-eyed sometimes."  Then he added reassuringly, "Everyone thinks its OK."

They descended half a flight of stairs into the control center.  This large circular room was the heart of the Subversive Tracking Center.  The time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	1500
ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL RIOT	4.50 hours

The walls formed a diorama of display screens.  One screen reported that Paul's computer program had so far observed over a thousand people and spotted eighty-three probable rioters.

An electronic map of the United States displayed geographical concentrations of known radicals and subversives.

A huge diamond memory, standing on a raised dais, dominated the center of the room.  It was three meters round, ringed about its circumference with a memory channel harness; its hundreds of facets were cut to microscopic tolerances.  Each of its countless atoms, held in place by the crystal lattice structure, stored a bit of information — a zero or one — that could be retrieved at any instant.

The diamond memory was the heart of a modern computer.  It was the computer; it stored the registers and the arithmetic logic, the data and the computer programs that operated on the data.

Like all other large scale diamond memories in the United States, this diamond was part of the National Computer Network; the computers were interconnected so they could watch each other, both to detect machine malfunction and to ensure that no computer was used for unauthorized purposes.  This computer might be controlling robots, helping scientists do research, or maintaining the vast National Data Bank, as well as working for the Subversive Tracking Center.  In fact, the diamond did not need to be here, but Professor Haley thought it looked impressive.

Paul watched the laser beams reflecting off the inner facets, switching on and off at nanosecond speeds, making the diamond appear self-luminous.  He felt a mixture of price and vicarious accomplishment and even jealousy.  For Louis Jackman, his father, had personally revolutionized more than just computer technology.  The diamond computer — Louis Jackman's creation — was thousands of times more powerful than any computer before.  With his invention, America had returned to a position of world technological leadership.  The personal computer, or "PC", quickly became obsolete.  Since it was vulnerable to computer viruses and dangerous in the wrong hands, the PC was soon outlawed by Congress as a threat to national security.  All computing resources were now under government control and supervision.

Four robots, like abstract metal statues, stood around the diamond.  They looked like robot policemen, with the same broad frame and helmet-like heads, and the same weapons built into their bodies.  They were here to protect the diamond from attack and to perform repairs on the computer hardware.  Like all other robots, they had no intelligence of their own, but were driven by the National Computer Network.  All diamond memory installations had such robots.

Outside the circle of robots, eight Subversive Tracking Center Duty Attitude Analysts made human judgments — about the attitudes of potential subversives — that the computer program could not make for itself.  Regulations dictated that a computer program select these Analysts to be personally incompatible with one another, in order to discourage after-hours fraternizing and sharing of information, but Professor Haley had seen to it that that computer program didn't work very well.

Today the control room seemed to bustle with activity, but in fact all the excitement was being generated by one man.  Professor Haley trotted about rapidly from one Analyst to another.  Haley was very short, but he walked with swift efficient strides, like an athlete in training.

"Here's Paul," Captain Craig announced, and everyone in the room looked up for a moment and smiled at him.

"It looks great!" Haley called out, and he walked up and shook Paul's hand with a rapid pumping action.  "Show Paul one of the camera displays," he called out to the nearest Duty Attitude Analyst.  "See there!" his arm shot out like a piston as he pointed to one of the display screens on the wall that now showed a group of black teenagers standing before the windowless concrete exterior of a Roxbury store.  "We're really getting them!" said Professor Haley.  As they watched, the computer drew a solid white circle around one of the black faces.  "He's going to riot!  And look, that one too, it thinks!" as the computer drew a fainter, dotted circle around another of the anonymous black faces.

Paul breathed a small sigh of relief.  Haley thought it was working, and he was usually right about such things.

"We've got hidden cameras all over Roxbury!" Haley exclaimed.

Paul looked at the picture of the black youth who was supposed to riot, and wondered which criteria his program had used to single him out.  Computer programs like this were so complicated that even the programmer never knew for sure what they were doing.  The boy seemed very young — not more than fifteen — and he had big eyes and he laughed a lot.  Paul thought of himself at that age, and he thought how ghetto youths are forced to face the harsh realities of life much earlier.  He felt sorry for the boy, but he knew that if his computer program were to succeed, it would be in part because this boy was thrown in jail tonight.

Haley was beaming at Paul, congratulating him even before his program was proven out.

"Let's get some more pictures," said Haley, and the scene changed  A group of young Hispanics looked as if they were mellow from marijuana.  There were a couple of white faces in this ghetto of colored.  And some elderly blacks looked as if they might be old enough to remember when this was not a bad part of town.

Captain Craig, sharing in the excitement of accomplishment, stood smiling at the pictures and at Paul.

"When BADAPPLE goes operational," enthused Professor Haley, "we'll stamp out these riots before they even start."

There was a picture of a white woman, with long orange-red hair down almost to her waist, walking away from the camera.

It was Linda.  There was no mistaking here, even from behind — that hair, the graceful sway to her walk, the trim body he loved.  It jolted Paul to see her there.

She was going to visit Carl, Paul thought.  She liked being in the ghetto; she often went there to see Carl.  With a shiver of pain, Paul thought how she did not believe in faithfulness, how she felt that no one love partner could ever satisfy all the sides of her personality, how she felt that monogamy was a narrowing and deadening way of life.  Paul wanted her for himself more than anything else in the world, yet he always wondered if she was right.

Linda stooped to pick up a piece of paper from the gutter.  The back of her short skirt rode up for a second to show the full length of her thighs.  Paul swallowed.

"Look at the ass on that one!" exclaimed Professor Haley, and Captain Craig grinned.

She straightened, and the camera zoomed in on the paper in her hand.  The close-up held just long enough to identify the words ABOLISH THE POLICE STATE emblazoned across the top of the sheet.  Radical Propaganda.

Linda turned toward the camera, and it zoomed in on her face.  Strands of orange bangs fell down across her soft freckled forehead. Her eyes traveled back and forth across the page, and as they did, Paul thought he could see a touch of melancholy come into them, a deep concern about what she was reading.  He could see her mouth move almost imperceptibly, and he knew she was biting the inside of her lip.  She was worried.  Then her face changed, as she put on the wistful pretty girl expression that she would wear as a mask when she was out among strangers, and that made so many people think mistakenly that she was shallow and vain.

Paul wondered if Professor Haley could see that he knew this woman and that he was in love with her.

Before she turned away, the computer drew a circle around her face.

Paul was stunned.  It was not that it was unexpected.  It had come almost as a relief, as blows often do.

"There's another rioter!" said Haley with satisfaction.  "White girl, too!  If she were my daughter, I'd put her across my knee," he said, obviously relishing the idea.

Paul looked at him, and tried to hide the anguish he as feeling.  BADAPPLE was right.  She would go into the riot.  Every other prediction that the program had made might be wrong, but this one was correct.

The police would catch her — they never missed anyone.  They would lock her up where he could never see her except through a thick glass visitor's window and never talk to her except over a computer-monitored telephone.  He could not bear to think of the things they would do to her.

Paul mumbled something about having to get to work and hurried up the stairs.  At the top, he glanced quickly back.  Haley was staring after him.

All the friendliness had gone out of the Subversive Tracking Center.  Paul perceived it again as he had first seen it, as a cold and hostile place.  Haley turned away.  Probably he hadn't noticed how upset Paul was.  He was too wrapped up in the new computer program that he was so delighted with.

Linda was heading for disaster, and Paul couldn't help her.  Even if he could, she wouldn't want his help.  She wouldn't accept it.

She might even be killed, by a brutal human cop or a hate-crazed hoodlum.  Somehow the whites who were most sympathetic to the poor were the ones beaten and killed by ghetto hoods.

Paul should have gone with her.  Yet the mere thought of it made him tremble with fright.  Linda would not be afraid.  She was never afraid.  Fear was irrational.  The programmed psychiatrist said that human beings feared most the imagined dangers, the fantasies of risks, rather than the real dangers.  Linda had overcome fear.  Paul only wished that somehow he could.

Paul retreated to his office.

A half hour later, Professor Haley came up to see Paul and pumped his hand.  "We just hit five hundred!" he exclaimed.  "Your program is really working!"  He must have sensed, after all, that something was wrong.

Paul looked at him doubtfully, and never stopped thinking of Linda.

"We're going to be able to add people to our subversive list just by looking at them!"  Haley rubbed his hands together in anticipation.  "There must be thousands of socialists out there right now that we don't know about because they don't join any organizations, and they don't use drugs or go to rallies or read radical books."  He slapped Paul on the back — he knew that Paul was terribly worried about something.  "But let them try to evade us now!  Let them try to get around this one!"

Paul understood that Haley did not praise his work simply in order to be pleasant.  Haley had no patience with incompetence or mistakes, and he knew how to get the best performance out of each man.  His praise was, for Paul, a spur to excellence more motivating than angry rebukes or threats.  Haley was a good man to work for.

Two hours later, the time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	1730
ESTIMATED TIME UNTIL RIOT	2.00 hours

It was quiet.  Analysts in the control room were working on routine things when Paul looked in on them.  The imminent riot seemed forgotten for the moment.

Captain Craig chuckled.  He had located Edgar Conroy again.  Conroy was only one of the hundreds of thousands of known subversives that the system kept track of, but he was a bothersome one — he was always evading surveillance.  This time they had lost him for a week.

Actually Conroy wasn't all that dangerous.  Before the days of computerized surveillance they wouldn't have bothered with him.  But he was clearlly out of touch with wholesome American values.  He believed in holistic medicine.  He was often observed at the fringes of crowds at political rallies.  He was a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union.  He was known to support Grenpeace.  He had signed petitions calling for the release of political prisoners in South America and Indonesia.  In spite of his questionable leanings, he seemed fairly harmless.  But anyone who tried to hide from the Subversive Tracking Center had to be considered potentially dangerous.

The Subversive Tracking Center kept tabs on subversives mainly by watching their financial transactions.  Since cash and checks had been abolished, all transactions were handled by transferring funds electronically within the Central Bank, which was wired into the National Computer Network.  The Subversive Tracking Center was notified of each transaction.  It was told who the person was, what was purchased, and how much was spent.  The Subversive Tracking Center used this data not only to keep track of known subversives, but to watch for patterns of subversion in all Americans.  For instance, a contribution to Planned Parenthood, or the purchase of book advocating generous welfare benefits, indicated disloyalty.  All such instances were accumulated electronically in order to calculate each citizen's “subversion index,” which was considered an accurate measure of patriotism.

The Subversive Tracking Center kept files on everyone, for anyone might become a threat to national security; but it concentrated on "known subversives" — those with a subversion index less than 10.00.  It never snooped into private homes or infringed on Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Conroy had a lot of tricks for evading the system.  He would have friends make purchases for him; he would go through toll booths in the trunks of cars.  This time he had gone from Denver to San Francisco.  Captain Craig had no idea where else he might have been.

Haley wanted legislation to make it a felony to try to avoid surveillance by the Subversive Tracking Center.  Paul had argued with him that the problem could be solved instead by more sophisticated programming.  There was information in the system that wasn't being used.  In the case of Conroy, he could not have been traveling alone; the computer knew who his friends were and it probably knew where they were.  It could have kept track of Conroy through them.  There wasn't any need for more legislation or for infringements on people's rights.

Haley had some even more grandiose schemes involving telecommunications.  It was a simple matter to get a court order for a wiretap, but you could not tap everyone’s conversations, simply because you did not have the manpower.  Haley had often talked to Paul about developing software to monitor conversations for signs of deviant attitudes.  Using computers, everyone’s conversations could be monitored and America would be far more secure.  But Paul was troubled by the idea.

However much he liked Haley, deep down it bothered Paul to be working here.  It was not only the creation of vast files of personal information on everyone, but also the frightening potential, posed by the very existence of such files, for individual computerized control of every citizen.

Paul gazed at the walls of the tiny office.  The time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	2200
TIME SINCE RIOT COMMENCEMENT	2.50 hours

Maybe she wouldn't riot!  Paul looked down at the blank screen of the small ICP on his desk.  He whispered nervously into the microphone, afraid of the answer he might get: "Look for Linda Spencer."  Her picture appeared, but it was an identification photo, from her Citizen File.  The computer knew him, and it knew which Linda Spencer he meant, but it had to corroborate her identity.

He whispered assent to the picture, and waited as the computer churned through its store of data.  In a few seconds it responded:  "No sign of her tonight."

Paul felt a little better.  Maybe she wouldn't go out after all.  But that would mean that his program was wrong.  Maybe she wouldn't be arrested — that was almost impossible.  "Keep looking for her," he said into the microphone; he was glad that the computer would not notify the Boston Police that he was concerned about her.

Professor Haley burst into the office, without knocking.  "We just smashed a terrible plot!" he cried.  "They tried to bomb the Capitol, but your program stopped them!"

Paul looked at him uncomprehendingly.  Haley obviously wasn't talking about BADAPPLE, or the riot.

"There were eleven of them!  They wanted to bomb the U.S. Capitol!"  repeated Professor Haley.  He leaned over the ICP and bellowed an order into the mouthpiece.

The screen showed the inside of a tube train station.  Paul couldn't tell what city it was.  The stations all looked alike.  The train was a long windowless cylinder, like a silver snake; it was stopped at the platform.  A door was open at the side and a crowd had gathered around it.  Robot and human police dragged a young woman out, pulling her across the cement platform.  Above all the noise and commotion, a robot police was reciting the standard warning: "You are under arrest.  Anything you say will be recorded and may be used against you.  You have a right to remain silent.  You have a right to legal counsel."

Haley shook his head at the screen.  "How can we ever get these bastards if we have to tie our own hands like that?" he demanded angrily.

The woman started to scream hysterically.  She struggled to get her feet under her.  Her knees were scraped.  There were drops of blood on the platform.  A spotlight shone on her face.  She tried to turn from the glare.

Paul was horrified, not so much at what was actually happening, but at the thought that the police would do these things to Linda when they got her.

"You said there were eleven of them?" he asked quietly.

"They thought they could fool us," said Haley, his eyes sparkling with pleasure.  The screen changed to show a black man walking quietly out of a tube train at a service bay along the route.  There was a bruise on his forehead and a look of numbness on his face.  "They each bought a different ingredient for a bomb, and they all headed for Washington.  But your plot detecting program saw the pattern, and it blew the whistle on them."  He slapped Paul on the back.  The plot detecting program was two years old.  "Those stupid Senators that don't like our Center.  Their asses would be splattered all over Washington if we hadn't caught this!"

The picture on the ICP changed again, by itself, and Paul's heart stopped.

There was Linda, running down a street in Roxbury with a group of black youths.  One of them had a brick, and another had a heavy wooden club.  She wasn't carrying any weapon, but she was running with them.  She was in the riot, just as BADAPPLE had said she would be.

"What's the matter with this computer?" Haley demanded.  "We didn't ask for this picture."

Paul tried to keep his voice steady as he explained, "I asked it to watch for her."

"You know that woman?" said Haley, accusingly.

"Yes," said Paul, with a hint of defiance in his voice.  Haley's eyes widened in shock and dismay, like a father who has just learned of the indiscretion of a son.  Paul didn't know what to say.  He kept his eyes riveted on the screen, unable to take his eyes off Linda, unable to look Haley in the face.  "You know what some of my friends in Cambridge are like," he tried to explain.  It was a stupid thing to say.  Now Haley knew that Linda wasn't from Roxbury, that she was an "outside agitator."

"You bet I know," retorted Haley, his chest heaving with righteousness.  "Cambridge is the crackpot capital of the country!  We ought to subversive-list everyone who lives there!"

Linda disappeared into a crowd of angry blacks.  Now she would be arrested.  The police had the same picture he had just seen, and they would get her.

Haley was shaking his head at Paul, but he had calmed down.  "You shouldn't live there, Paul," he said patiently.  "You should buy a home in Chevy Chase."

Paul summoned up his courage.  "Isn't there anything we can do to get the cops off her back?" he blurted out.  "You could see that she wasn't really doing anything."  He looked at Haley imploringly.

For a moment, the very idea of what Paul had suggested seemed to set Haley off again.  His face hardened.  "Not with this test going on!" he snapped.  Then he softened.  "They'd think we're tampering with the test results," he said.

"Hell," said Paul, in a tone of desperation.

Haley stood quietly, looking at Paul, considering.  He did not smile, but his eyes were full of concern.  He had just realized that Paul was in love with this woman.  He was fighting with himself.  "I know someone who could help you," he said finally.  "He works for Senator Eliot.  Eliot's your senator, so it wouldn't look so bad if he pulled some strings for you.  His name is Dexter.  Dr. James Dexter.  Call him in the morning at Eliot's office.  He's a nice guy.  Mention my name.  I'm sure he'll help you."

Paul felt a surge of elation.  Linda wouldn't go to jail after all.  Not only that, but he might get a chance to meet Senator Eliot — a man he admired tremendously, a man who might be President!

And Haley had done this for him.  Haley who hated Eliot and who had contempt for anyone who would go into a riot.  Yet it was so much like Haley to do this.  Paul didn't know how to thank him.

Haley put his hand gently on Paul's shoulder.  Maybe they won't arrest her after all," he said.  "But I doubt it."

The time display read:

EASTERN STANDARD TIME	2400
TIME SINCE RIOT COMMENCEMENT	4.50 hours

Paul sat in the control room of the Subversive Tracking Center and watched the test results come in.  He felt at home here again.  BADAPPLE looked good.  Eight-five percent of the people that it had identified had now been arrested.  At last he could savor his professional triumph.


3.
chapter 3

3.

Paul Jackman left the Subversive Tracking Center at 0400 and drove his rented car to his Washington hotel.  The city was asleep.  The car was programmed to stay in the safe zones, avoiding the violent ghettos, so Paul felt safe.  Downtown, the lights illuminated the broad empty streets so brightly that it seemed like daylight.  The traffic lights shone steadily green, block after block.  There was no cross traffic to make them turn red.  The store windows and theater marquees were dark.  Here and there a lone robot policeman patrolled the empty sidewalk.

The Subversive Tracking Center had celebrated the success of BADAPPLE.  Professor Haley broke out champagne, even though it was against regulations.  When they had consumed it all, Captain Craig wanted to go out looking for an after hours bar, but Paul was too tired.

Now the BADAPPLE project was over.  The program worked.  Paul was finished with it.

He had the same mixed feelings that he often had when a project closed.  He was satisfied and relieved that it was completed.  Never before had anyone programmed a computer to look into the face of a human being and say, "That person may be dangerous."  Yet he felt disillusioned.  The problem just hadn't turned out to be quite as intricate and challenging as it had looked when he started.  He seemed to feel that, simply because he had been able to do it, it could not have been an adequate challenge for him.

Paul turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue.  He was leaving the downtown business district, and approaching official Washington.  He passed the White House and looked through the tall iron gate at the floodlit entrance, and the long curving drive.  It always gave Paul a thrill to drive by and realize that here was where the real power was — power of war and peace, of life and death for the entire world.

It was an impressive and noble building, yet, in comparison to the power it held, it seemed modest and even vulnerable.  It was a fraction of the size of the Pentagon.  It could not withstand a nuclear blast like the Subversive Tracking Center.  It almost looked as if a saboteur driving by in a car could hurl in a bomb and blow the place up.  But in fact it was well guarded.  Robot police patrolled the sidewalks all around and Lafayette Park across the street.  In a few days these robots would be connected to BADAPPLE, and would detain anyone who looked suspicious.

Paul was waking up.  He liked to drive through the city late at night when there was no traffic.  He knew this city as well as he knew his own.

He drove around to the south of the White House, slowed down for a moment at the place where the bushes opened up and he could look across the dark lawn to the floodlit building, and then he drove on around the Ellipse.

He was in no hurry to go to bed.  He drove by the Washington Monument, encircled by flag poles and benches.  He looked east across the mall to the shining dome of the Capitol.  He thought of how he loved to visit there, to see the Senate or the House or, even better, one of their committees, in session; to walk through long labyrinthine corridors and up ornate staircases; to see the paintings and statues, some heroic and moving, some merely quaint.

He loved this city because it was beautiful, and because it was the seat of power and the center of political action.  Someday he wanted to come here to live, but only if he could really and truly be a part of that power and that action, and not just an outsider come to have a closer look.

Soon it would be morning, and he would call Dr. Dexter at Eliot's office.  It seemed strange that Haley would send him there.  Senator Eliot despised the Subversive Tracking Center.  Eliot and Haley disagreed on almost everything.  Government, Eliot said, had no business keeping tabs on its people.  The Subversive Tracking Center invades the privacy of every American.  There is so much computing power at its disposal that it is as if there was a team of skilled investigators assigned to find out all they can about the private affairs, the life style, and the ideology of every American citizen.  It is only a small step further to total control of the citizens by government — the opposite of the American ideal.  Why should there be an official agency that labels individuals not even accused of any crime as "subversives?"

But Haley was always able to get along with people who disagreed with him.

Paul drove around the Lincoln Memorial.  Through the tall white columns at the top of the marble steps he could see the statue of the man who had seen this country through the greatest internal crisis in its history.  Paul couldn't read the words behind the statue, but he remembered them: "In this monument, as in the heart of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."  Paul thought how, when this man was assassinated — by a social deviant — he had been succeeded by petty vengeful men, who had plunged the nation into a night of despair and recrimination that lasted more than a century.

Paul looked across Memorial Bridge, toward the Arlington National Cemetery, with the Lee Mansion on the hill.  He could see the eternal flame where John and Robert Kennedy were buried.  Their assassinations — also by social deviants — brought division and despair, and a generation of leaders no better than those who followed Lincoln, to America.

Probably the Subversive Tracking Center was inevitable.  Especially considering that it was considered "socialism," or "inciting class warfare" to mention the ever-widening gulf between rich and poor.  America had seen so many riots, bombings, assassinations, acts of terrorism, so many senseless violent acts of lunacy.  Technology had discovered so many ways to kill and destroy — ways available to anyone with an ICP to ask for them.  Guns, of all varieties, could be purchased freely by anyone — the NRA saw to that.

The only way to be safe was to identify the trouble-makers and the madmen before they had a chance to kill and destroy.  The Subversive Tracking Center was probably the least repressive solution to the problem.  Without it, no one could be safe.

The American people supported it.  Professor Haley was a national hero.

Besides, it was not that new.  Government agencies had always eavesdropped on people whose loyalty to the country, or whose ideological orientation, was considered suspect.  Often they used means far less democratic than the Subversive Tracking Center.

But Senator Eliot would argue that never before had government agencies had such a vast store of data to draw upon.  Never before had they been computerized so thoroughly.  And Paul knew he was right.  Eliot was a courageous man, as those who defend freedom must always be.  He could be a great President.

But what would Eliot think of the men who worked for Professor Haley?  Probably he would believe the stereotypes, since he had no means of knowing differently.  He would think that they were as cold and calculating as the computers they programmed.  What would his aide Dexter think when Paul told him in the morning that Haley had sent him?

Paul looked over to the Jefferson Memorial across the tidal basin.  He remembered the words carved in the frieze: "I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

When Paul got to his hotel, he tossed in bed a long time.  He had stayed up so late that now it was hard to get to sleep.  He worried about Dexter, and Senator Eliot, and Linda.

When he finally got to sleep, he dreamed.  He dreamed of the eleven people that his computer program had accused of conspiring together to bomb the Capitol — of the woman being dragged across the cement platform on bloody knees.  When she tried to get up, a policeman kicked her in the stomach.  In the dream, the woman was Linda.

At 0630, the Interactive Communications Processor in his room awakened him.  He could not have slept very long at all.  It told him that Linda had been arrested.  They had taken her in her apartment.  She was being held by the Boston Police.  There was no more information available.

Paul felt sick.  It would be harder now for Dexter to do anything.  Maybe it was too late, now that they had her.

There was nothing to do but wait till a reasonable hour and then call Dexter at his office.  Maybe he should get some information first about Dr. Dexter.  Maybe he could find out something that he could use to approach Dexter better.  He turned on the Interactive Communications Processor and asked the news file research system to get him some data.

Dr. James Dexter, the computer told him, had a Ph.D. in psychology.  He took polls for Senator Eliot, to probe in depth public attitudes toward the Senator and toward the issues with which he was involved.

Once Dexter had achieved brief notoriety with a claim that, given a bare minimal psychiatric model of any person, he could predict that individual's opinion on almost any issue.

Paul was particularly intrigued by a post-doctoral paper Dexter had written in which he maintained that the modern computerized opinion poll had a marked propagandizing effect on those interviewed.  He asserted that most people think about public policy so little and so superficially that the experience of being questioned intensively on any issue amounts nearly to brainwashing.  The way questions are put, of course, determines the direction in which the interviewee is influenced.  Of course, politicians had used "push polls" for years, but modern computer technology potentially made their effect far more wide-ranging.

Dexter was a black man.  It was important for Eliot to have blacks on his staff.  But Dexter was considered too moderate to be effective as a communication liaison between Eliot and militant black leaders.

A little after 0900, Paul called Dr. Dexter at his office.  Paul has very nervous, but he kept his voice steady as he scrutinized the image on the screen.

Dexter had a small, lean, very handsome face with a little mustache that was neatly trimmed and inconspicuous against his very black skin.  Paul knew from his research that Dexter was thirty-six, but he looked younger than that.  He was dressed in subdued business clothes that looked as if they had come from the cleaners an hour ago.  He was like any number of very successful blacks that Paul had known, who seemed to have nothing in common with the blacks imprisoned in the ghettos.

Dexter was very friendly.  He seemed pleased and delighted that Paul had called him.  He was a politician's aide and he acted like one.

Paul said that Professor Haley had suggested he call Dexter about a problem he had.  As he spoke Haley's name, he watched the face on the screen for a telltale flicker of disapproval.  He could not detect any.  Dexter has to be friendly to everyone who calls, Paul thought — his boss is running for President.

Dexter invited Paul to come over to his apartment that evening.  Paul was relieved: he had not been turned down.

An hour later, feeling his lack of sleep, Paul returned to the Subversive Tracking Center to see Professor Haley.

Haley had calmed down considerably since the night before, or maybe he has just tired.  He sat at his desk, filling out some sort of multiple choice questionnaire.  The questions were displayed on the small ICP on the desk, and Haley was jabbing at the answer boxes with a light pen.  He seemed bored with what he was doing; he was in a pensive mood, as he often was after a crisis was over.

He looked up at Paul.  "Did you call Dexter?"

"Yes," said Paul.  "I'm seeing him later."

"He'll take care of you," said Haley.  He looked back down at the ICP and jabbed with the light pen.  "The riot seems to be over," he said, as if he was sorry about it.

"No recurrence expected?" asked Paul.

"No.  They arrested most of the agitators."  The question on the ICP screen changed and Haley poked with the light pen again, almost before he had time to read it.  Haley detested these stupid questionnaires that he was always getting from federal bureaucrats who had nothing constructive to do.  "I got a call from the Justice Department," he said.  "Some of these people expect us to stop riots before they start."

"We couldn't have had much of a test if we'd done that," said Paul.

"I told them we had to have more authority," said Haley.  He jabbed twice more in quick succession with the light pen, and then he put it down, leaving a question unanswered on the screen.  "They should get the fucking Congress to pass the President's bills."

"Did Justice sound very encouraging?" asked Paul.

Haley's eyes lit up with anger.  "They can't tell the goddamn Congress what to do, any more than we can.  I don't know what those bastards think they're elected for anyhow — just to run for President?" he fumed.  "If we'd let those reds we caught last night go ahead and blow up the Capitol, then they would have moved their asses but good."

"I suppose so," said Paul without interest.

"The Justice Department wants us to do some work for them," said Haley, looking straight at Paul, in a way that meant that he wanted Paul to pay more attention.

But Paul had already perked up.  Haley was talking about more business for him.  But Haley wasn't excited about it, so it must be awful.

"They're worrying about how the cops — the human cops — acted," Haley explained.  "Every time the police blink the wrong way, the fucking liberals jump on them.  Now some stupid politician says the police aren't kept under control during these riots.  I'd like to see him go out and try to put down a riot.  I don't know why Justice pays any attention to those bastards."  He lowered his voice.  "Anyway, they want us to have a look at the training simulations."

"But that's not our job at all," Paul objected.

"I know, but they thought we might have some suggestions," Haley said.

"What do they think is the matter with the training?" Paul asked.

"They don't think the cops are being prepared for what they're getting into," said Haley, getting interested in spite of himself.  "Maybe we should just see if the training can be made more realistic."

"All right," said Paul.  The job might turn out to be interesting, and anyway he couldn't afford to turn it down.

"Look, I know this is a pain in the ass," said Haley, in a sympathetic tone of voice.  "Nobody believes this police brutality crap.  Just see if you can come up with something."  He picked up the light pen, and turned back to the questionnaire on the ICP.

Paul started to go, but Haley called him back.  "Look at this!" he exclaimed, motioning to the question on the ICP.  It read:

To your knowledge, has the subject formed close friendships with other individuals of the same sex?

"Remember Al Fletcher?" asked Haley.

Paul smiled as he recalled Captain Fletcher, who used to work at the Subversive Tracking Center.  He lived in one of the luxury apartment houses across the Potomac in Virginia.  He was very naive about women.  He didn't understand why many of his attractive female neighbors never went to work.

Paul frowned at the ICP.  That hardly made Al Fletcher a homosexual.

"He's got a job at the CIA," Haley explained.  "I guess they're investigating his background.  These people sure ask a lot of prying questions."

Paul didn't like it either.  The answers would go into a memory bank and be analyzed by a psychiatric profiling program.

Haley pricked at the NO box with his light pen.  "Al's a nice guy," he said.  "I'll just tell them what they want to hear."

Dr. James Dexter lived in Georgetown.  The most fashionable residential area of Washington, Georgetown was full of upper-middle level federal bureaucrats, well-to-do minorities, artists, intellectuals, and politicians.  A few Senators and Congressmen maintained residences there.  Like Paul's Harvard Square section of Cambridge, it was an enclave of affluence only a few blocks away from ugly ghettos.

Dr. Dexter greeted Paul very graciously.  He was short and slender.  He smelled just a little too strongly of some sort of men's cologne.  His plain yellow turtle-neck shirt and black trousers looked as spotless as the suit he had worn that morning.  He was very suave and polite, almost to the point of servility.  He helped Paul off with his jacket, hung it in the closet, and then left Paul in the living room while he went to make drinks.

The living room looked like an "intimate cocktail lounge" on board a tube train.  A multi-colored curtain, which obviously concealed an ICP, hung on one wall.  The lighting was indirect, shining from tubular aluminum fixtures aimed at the ceiling.  The carpet was white with an abstract design in muted purple — it was so white that Paul felt uncomfortable walking on it.  The furniture looked like a department store version of Danish.  Cigarettes of artificial tobacco lay in a tray on the coffee table.  The ashtrays looked as if they had never been used.

Paul sat down on the edge of an easy chair.  It made him feel funny, coming here to ask a stranger to get his girl friend out of trouble.  He also felt let down, because he had hoped that Eliot himself might be there.

Dexter came back, carrying a couple of cloth napkins on one hand, and balancing a small circular tray with two nearly filled glasses and a plate of cheese and crackers neatly on the fingertips of the other.  He put down the napkins, then carefully removed one of the glasses from the tray and handed it to Paul.  "Special of the house," he said, almost as if he was an accomplished waiter.

He made Paul think of something that a white liberal in the South had told him once — that the civil rights movement, way back in its early beginnings, involved for the whites a rejection of white middle class values, but, for the blacks, a striving after them.

Dexter put the tray down on the coffee table and settled deeply in the soft couch, drink in hand.  He appeared to relax completely, setting an example of comfort, yet remaining fully attentive to his guest.  "Tell me when you're ready for another," he said.  Paul sipped at the drink.  Whatever it was, it was very good.

"So you're Louis Jackman's son," Dexter said, sounding impressed.

Paul thought to himself that that was what so many people said when they first met him.  Paul didn't like it much, and his expression usually betrayed it.

"You're a free lance computer software man, from Cambridge," said Dexter.  "You work mainly on secret projects for the Subversive Tracking Center."

Dexter had said the wrong thing again.  Paul thought of Senator Eliot's opposition to Haley and the Subversive Tracking Center.  "Yes, we catch socialists every day," he said nervously, trying to make a joke out of it.

Dexter took a swallow of his drink.  "I hear you're very good," he said smiling at him in honest admiration.

Paul sipped at his drink uneasily and looked at the friendly black face gazing at him expectantly across the rim of the cocktail glass.  He envied Dexter's position, an aide to Senator Eliot, who might be the next President of the United States.  He wondered if Dexter was really the perfect integrated "Negro-Tom" that he made himself out to be.

"I called Professor Haley today," said Dexter.  "You said this morning that he suggested you call me.  He told me what you wanted."

"About Linda Spencer," said Paul, feeling relieved.

"Yes," said Dexter.  "I got the story on her from the news files.  She was arrested in the middle of the night.  They like to arrest people in the middle of the night."  Dexter talked rapidly but calmly, his voice comforting even when detailing the most unpleasant events.  "She's charged with participating in a civil disturbance.  According to the rules about pre-trial publicity, the prosecution is withholding its evidence.

"I had my computer program try to figure out what they have on her.  I don't think they have much of a case.  They would need human witnesses who saw her with the other rioters."

"But suppose they have the witnesses?" said Paul, with an edge of desperation showing on his face.  "Can you do anything?  You can't tamper with computer courts."

"No," Dexter admitted, "but we can get the D.A.'s office to drop the case.  We have a lot of friends there."

Paul breathed a deep sigh of relief.  He sat back in the chair.  He hadn't realized how comfortable it was.

"There will be a hearing, at which the charges will be dropped." Dexter lit one of his artificial tobacco cigarettes.

"I don't know how to thank you," said Paul, gratitude and relief showing all over his face.

Dexter straightened a bit.  "Actually, there is a way you can thank us," he said very tentatively.  "I understand you are one of our supporters."  He looked at Paul for confirmation.

"Yes," said Paul, grateful for a chance to assert an ideological difference between himself and Professor Haley.

Dexter put his cigarette down.  "We want to engage your professional services in a campaign for public office," he said.

"You mean Eliot's campaign for the Presidency?" Paul asked.  He knew that Dexter couldn't mean anything else, but he had to hear him say it.

"Yes," said Dexter, smiling at Paul's mounting excitement.

Paul certainly had not expected this.  He had merely hoped to meet Eliot.

"I take it you'll do it?" asked Dexter.

Paul nodded, not knowing what to say.  This would be the best job he had ever had!

"You've never used computers in politics, have you?" asked Dexter, highly pleased at Paul's enthusiasm.

"No," said Paul.  "I'm surprised you don't want someone with more experience."

"In our business," Dexter said boastfully, "we have to know the people we deal with.  We need someone who believes in Senator Eliot and what he stands for, and who is also very competent with computers.  We think that you fill these requirements better than anyone else.  I can teach you what you don't know."

Paul looked around the room, with its air of mass-produced neatness.  It still looked like a cocktail lounge, but he was feeling very much at home here.  "Where will I be working?" he asked.

"Here and in Boston," said Dexter.  "You're used to commuting back and forth.  Our job in this campaign will be extremely important.  We will be working with Eliot's image with the electorate."

"You mean with what people think of him," said Paul.

"With what the voters think of him," said Dexter.  "Never forget that more than half the potential electorate doesn't bother to vote. And not just any voters, either, but the right coalition of voters — the ones that we can appeal to and that we need to win."

"Will we be involved with the issues very much?" asked Paul.

"Yes," said Dexter, savoring his position as teacher to the son of a famous scientist.  "We will be advising the Senator as to what positions he should take on various issues in order to win whatever bloc of votes we need.  It has to be fitted into the larger strategy, of course.  Taking a position to appeal to one group might alienate another group of voters."

Paul was taken aback. "We can't just get him to take any position on anything, can we?" he protested.  "He has his own principles.  And he has a prior record of positions on issues, that the public knows."

Dexter looked at Paul as if he were taking him into his confidence.  "The public has no memory about such things.  People remember whatever the campaign advertisements remind them to remember.  Of course Eliot has principles.  That's why I work for him.  But our job is to tell him how to win.  We'll try to take his principles into account.  Sure there'll be some things that he doesn't like  and we won't, either.  But we have to win, if we're going to be able to do anything."

Paul sat silent for a moment, then he asked jokingly, "How about brainwashing the voters with a poll?" as he remembered Dexter's paper on the effects of being interviewed by a pollster.  "Are we going to try that?"

Dexter laughed, "No.  We could never reach enough voters, even if we tried to select very carefully whom to call."

"But if we have computers do the polling we could call up everybody we wanted to," said Paul.  He was actually becoming intrigued with the idea.

"It wouldn't work.  You see a poll always has to have a human being asking the questions, otherwise people won't cooperate.  People don't like to be asked questions by machines.  The human interviewer may be completely controlled by an earphone from a computer, but people don't know that."

"But if we had a computer-generated person, a cyborgram, asking the questions?" Paul insisted.

"It would have to be one that doesn't exist — one so lifelike that people would think it was a real person," said Dexter.

The door bell rang.  The colored curtains on the living room wall automatically shimmied apart to reveal a large Interactive Communication Processor screen.  "You have to be careful who you let in the door around here," said Dexter.  The screen showed the outside doorway of Dexter's apartment.  A stout man in a business suit stood there, holding a thin leather briefcase.  He must have been in his fifties.  His hair was starting to gray.  His paunchy face had the impatient expression of a man overawed by the importance of his position.  He looked like a typical Washington bureaucrat, bustling from one meeting to another.

"That's Lancing," said Dexter.  He went to the door to let the man in.  The ICP turned itself off and the curtains closed.

Paul heard the apartment door open.  "You're just in time," Dexter said.  "We're finishing up."

"Has he agreed to work for us?" asked Lancing, with a tone of indifference.  He was the sort who never sounded very impressed with anything.

"Yes, indeed," said Dexter, with satisfaction.

Lancing came into the living room.  Dexter went to get him a drink.  Paul stood up to greet him.  "So you're Paul Jackman," said Lancing warmly.  He shook hands officiously. "Good to have you aboard," he said, sitting down in an empty chair and pulling his briefcase across his lap.

Paul had heard of Fred Lancing.  The press always pictured him as a tough, hard-headed pol.  Paul's first impression remained unchanged.  There were thousands like him in Washington.  Professor Haley was constantly fending them off at the Subversive Tracking Center.

Lancing opened the briefcase and started to fiddle with the papers inside.  "I'm Dan's campaign manager," he said.  Such people often called Senators and Presidents by their first names.  "You and Jim will report directly to me."  Lancing sounded as if he had memorized The Pocket Principles of Procedure: Start each meeting by identifying the roles of the participants.

Dexter returned with a drink for Lancing, and refills for himself and Paul.

Lancing turned toward Dexter, his frame rotating ponderously in the Naugahyde chair while he held one hand over his briefcase to balance it.  "How are you coming on the high technology issues?" he asked.  Check off important outstanding items before proceeding to new business.

"I don't have any conclusions yet," Dexter responded.  "Now that we have our new programmer maybe we can get moving on it."

Lancing turned toward Paul, clutching his tie lest it become wrinkled in the maneuver.  "We have to know soon what positions Dan should take on issues of high technology, especially computers," he explained, the way a technical salesman might explain what an integrated circuit is.  Ensure that everyone understands what is being discussed.

"So many people, especially uneducated people, are suspicious of computers," Dexter explained.  "They don't understand that a computer has limitations.  They're afraid they're being spied on all the time." Lancing nodded at him, approving of his presentation.  "We're becoming a nation of two kinds of people: those who profit from computers and those who feel manipulated by them."  He looked at Paul as if he thought some response was necessary.

"Maybe we should try to educate people about them," said Paul.

"Eliot's supporters are quite divided," said Dexter, as if Paul had said nothing.  "Blacks in the ghetto feel that technology takes away their jobs and makes slums of the cities, all for the sake of a lot of fancy products that they can't afford."  He spoke of the blacks as if he was quite detached from them, with nothing in common.  "At the other extreme," he continued, "are the white liberal intellectuals; they're totally dependent on technology.  Even artists use computers."

"But these are the people who are always writing articles about the dangers of technology," Paul protested.

Lancing, the press-depicted bogy-hatchet man, sat silent, his head turning from one to the other of them as they talked, like someone watching the ball in a tennis match.

"Sure, they make all kinds of noise like that, but they don't really mean it," Dexter explained patiently.  "They don't really want to turn the clock back on technological progress.  They don't want to give up their ICPs and automatic cars, and the bigger and better computers that are always just around the corner."

"Not everyone's honest enough to admit how much they like computers," Lancing observed.  Be brief and to the point.

"The Citizens for Automated Government is probably the most honest political organization there is," said Dexter, thoughtfully.

Lancing straightened in his chair.  It was time to end this discussion.  "Keep working on these issues," he said.  "This is top priority.  We can get a lot of votes if we appeal to people the right way on this."  He turned toward Paul.  Proceed to new business immediately once outstanding items have been disposed of.  "Now we have to get Paul officially on board here, so he can start work."

"I wonder," said Paul.  "My father must know more about computers in politics than I do."

"You must know, Paul," said Lancing, patiently explaining the obvious, "that we are quite unacceptable to your father, and he is unacceptable to us.  Your father is a very influential, very well liked man.  But he is a leader of the Citizens for Automated Government.  He wants computers to take over completely."

That was the reason, of course.  Yet Paul found himself wishing that his father could work with him on this, that the chance to work for a real human candidate for President might dissuade his father from seeking computer government.  But it could not be, obviously.  Paul, when he took this job that he wanted so badly, would be working in direct opposition to his father, and his father's principles.  "Aren't people going to assume that I share my father's views?" asked Paul.

"That's a chance we're taking," said Lancing magnanimously.  "We'll have some friendly columnists write articles about how you've worked for the Subversive Tracking Center, and how you're not a radical CAGer like your father."

"You see," Dexter explained, "you yourself, as the chief computer man in this campaign, will become part of Eliot's image.  Your involvement with the Subversive Tracking Center can bring a note of old fashioned patriotism to this campaign.  It can soften the adverse effects of the attacks that Eliot has made on the Subversive Tracking Center.  At the same time, the Jackman name has an aura of computer-age technological sophistication.  All in all, I think it will be good politics."

Evidently Dexter had been looking into his background.  They must have been planning to contact him for some time.

"What do you think are our chances of winning, really?" asked Paul.  "I know the press thinks they're pretty good, but what do you people think?"

"I'm very glad you asked that, Paul," said Lancing, smiling broadly.  "I can see that you're in this to win.  That's absolutely vital in a political campaign.  Everyone who works on it has to really want to win."  Praise your people when they do the right thing, and they will repay you.

"But to answer your question, Paul," interrupted Dexter, "the chances are good.  Everyone expects Eliot to win the Democratic nomination.  No one else of his stature is available.  We'll hardly even be challenged.  Clark of Florida will probably enter, but he won't have any support outside of the Southeast.  And we have the money."

"But what about the voters?" asked Paul.

"People will vote for whoever has the slickest campaign.  The big money is with us.  We'll dominate every primary!" said Lancing.

"He's right," said Dexter.  "We'll mount a media campaign two or three times the size of anyone else's."

"But what about the election?" asked Paul.  "Can we beat Corcoran?"

"It's going to be a tough battle," Lancing admitted.  "But people are getting tired of Corcoran.  They want a change!"  His voice lacked confidence, but his words hardened Paul's resolve to join this campaign and fight.  Paul longed for something he had only read about in history books: a great President, who would appeal to the best instead of the worst in America, who believed in freedom and fair play, who cared more about his country and his people than about his public image.  He longed for a President who would be willing to call the nation to sacrifice if that was what was required.

Paul believed that Eliot was such a man.

After Paul had  left, Dexter smiled and said to Lancing, "I'm glad he's agreed to work for us.  He'll be a good man."  Then his face assumed an expression of worry.  "I'm sure he doesn't know what his father is doing."

"Do you really believe that Louis Jackman and the Citizens for Automated government are any kind of a threat?" Lancing scoffed.  "All we've really got is Eliot's hunch."

"We've got more than that," said Dexter.  "Have you heard Louis Jackman speak recently?  He's acting the way he did just before he introduced the diamond memory.  He's getting ready to spring something on us all, again. I can tell."

"Maybe the girl can find out," said Lancing doubtfully.

"Let's hope so," said Dexter.


4. August-September
chapter 4. August-September

4. August-September

They liked to arrest people in the middle of the night, to catch their victims in their sleep unaware, to surprise them even if the arrest had been expected.

Carl had told her that, and he was right.  Linda had been expecting them.  All she was guilty of was being out in a riot zone after curfew, but that was enough.  She had left a light on, and laid her things out, ready to take with her to jail.

Yet it was still a shock.  They didn't ring the bell.  They pounded on the door so hard that it would have broken a minute later.  She opened it, and gasped in fright at the horrible robot face.

The massive helmet-shaped head had five slightly protruding lenses, to see in all directions.  The two wideset front eyes looked directly at her, and the stainless steel grille that wrapped halfway around the head looked like a huge angry frown.  The face of fiberglass and steel seemed to glare with disapproval.

It was the same as any other robot policeman.

It had no brain of its own, but was controlled by the computers of the National Computer Network.  Somewhere a logic module was seeing her image transmitted from the lenses, and hearing her heartbeat and breathing through the twin microphones behind the grille, and it was identifying her and verifying that she was the one they had come for.  It took only a second to do so, and then they all burst into the room at once, knocking over furniture.  She had no idea that there would be so many of them.  One robot policeman, five human officers.  How many did it take?  The loudspeaker behind the robot grille warned her about divulging information and recited, so fast that she could hardly follow it, a summary of her constitutional rights.  The thin mean-looking man with the camera recorded it all, so they could prove that she had been warned.  The robot was programmed to follow the correct legal procedure, but the men were not.  They grabbed her, twisted her arms painfully around and handcuffed them together behind her back.  Two of them felt her all over for weapons, and obviously enjoyed doing it.  The man with the camera kept on photographing.  One of them — he had a slightly kinder face, she thought — hurried the others to get on with it.

They took her away in a wagon, with an unfriendly matron locked in the back with her, and the robot camera eyes watching them both.  The things that she had wanted to take with her had been forgotten.

They put her in a tiny, sanitary-white cell.  A middle-aged white woman, smelling of perfume and alcohol and vomit, lay asleep on the lower bunk, her face pressed against the wall.  The cell had a toilet and a sink, both operated by buttons so that faucets could not be removed and used as weapons.  A robot eye, set in the ceiling, watched her.  Beside it was a bleak sign:

UNLAWFUL TO BLOCK THIS LENS

that grimly left unsaid what penalty would be exacted if she failed to comply.

Linda felt numb.  She had known, of course, that it would be like this.  The news was always full of stories of arrests.  Their methods were no secret.  She knew them well.  Yet knowing had not been enough to prepare her for the reality.

She paced around the undersized cell.  Its tininess oppressed her.  She did not ordinarily get claustrophobia, but she could feel it coming on her, like the time once when she had been trapped in an elevator for twenty minutes.  Her mind told her that this cell was carefully designed, by specialists in human factors engineering, to induce terror.  She looked through the bars, to the dimly lit corridor and another set of bars beyond.  The cell could only be opened on computer command.  She thought how easy it would be to become hysterical from the confinement.  No one would care.  They would just take her out and put her in a padded solitary cell, where she would scream on and on and no one would hear.

She lay on the upper bunk, afraid that if she did not sleep she might panic.  She had been exhausted when the police came for her, but now she was wide awake.  There was no escape, so she lay on the bunk and thought very hard of Paul.  She put the tiny jail cell out of her mind, and concentrated desperately on happy memories.  And soon, in her mind, the hard little bunk became a huge soft bed in a luxurious hotel, as she remembered vividly.

She was with Paul, at the end of a bitter sweet evening of Puccini at Lincoln Center.  The bed was circular, and thick silk curtains hung all around it.  It was so big that they might have lost each other in it, but he held her very close to him, and she felt warm inside.

Later they went to the window and stood in the darkness, her head in the nook of his shoulder, and looked out over the city.  There was Manhattan, all around them.  The skyscrapers, like lighted giants, rose in such profusion that only here and there could they make out a traffic signal or a bank of automobile headlights that told them that down there was the street.  The tall buildings were not all new and modern, as in so many other cities.  Some were very old, with terraced sides and tops that did not look chopped off.  There were silver spires and baroque parapets and golden domes and ancient clocks so huge that the numerals were taller than a man.  They were like fairyland castles of light against the gray-black starless sky.  A thousand lighted windows, each with its own story to tell.  And it seemed that she and Paul could walk with giant steps among the tops and terraces of the buildings, and never set foot upon the ground.

The beauty of this city, Paul had said, would be nothing without her to share it with.

She remembered it as clearly as though it were actually happening.

The next morning the woman on the lower bunk was gone.  Linda didn't remember seeing her go; she must have been taken out while Linda was asleep — if she really had been asleep.

Soon the guard came for her and took her before the computer judge, which released her on personal recognizance; it warned her that the Subversive Tracking Center would be watching her.  There would be no way to avoid coming back for trial.

Later that evening, Paul called for her from Washington.  He was in a good mood, happy and elated, but also half asleep and just a little drunk.

She said "Hello" in an excited whisper, that told him in a single word how good it was to see him.

"You're out of jail!" he exclaimed.

She nodded exhaustedly, remembering the ghastly night and how the memory of him had pulled her through.  Then, on a sudden impulse, because she knew the way he liked to see her, she reached behind her to her hair that was fastened in a tight bun behind her neck.  She fumbled with the pins, shook her head a couple of times, and the long red golden strands fell loose, and cascaded down over her white shoulders, like a waterfall in slow motion over smooth polished rocks.

"I wish you were here," he said.

"Why don't you come up here?" she replied.

"I have work to do down here tomorrow."

"For Professor Haley, I suppose," she said, with distaste in her voice.

A guilty look came over his face, as he tried to figure out what to say.

"The Subversive Tracking Center is an abomination," she said in disgust.  Then she softened and smiled at him.  They had been through this argument before.  He didn't like the Subversive Tracking Center any better than she did, but his work meant so much to him.  His fascination with challenging technical problems often overruled his conscience.

Paul saw that she understood.  She had never condemned him for the work he had done.  She had even understood — a little — that Professor Haley was a great guy.  So it was with real pride that he said, "I won't be working for them so much any more.  I've just got a new job.  I'm working for Senator Eliot."

Linda's face lit up.  "Really?" she said.  It was too good to be true.  It was the sort of thing he had always dreamed of doing.

"Really," he said, delighted at how pleased she was.  "Now why don't you come down here?"

Her face darkened.  "I can't leave the state until the trial."  She looked disgusted.  "Bunch of bastards," she said, half to herself.

Paul hesitated.

"Senator Eliot can get you off," he blurted out.  He looked into her eyes now, questioningly, waiting for her reaction.

"You asked him to get me off?" she asked, half-annoyed, half-relieved.

"I asked one of his aides," Paul said in a very soft voice.

"That's the easy way out," she snapped.  It was the reaction he had expected.  "Why doesn't he get the poor people off?" she demanded.

"He can't get everyone off," Paul argued.

"It's not right," she said.  "That's what Professor Haley would do."  She bit the inside of her lip gently, almost imperceptibly.  She was fighting with herself.  It had been an awful experience in that terrible other prison world, hidden behind prison bars — a world most people of her background never thought about.  She was just as guilty, or, to be more accurate, just as innocent, as ninety percent of the people they had rounded up during that riot.  She sighed sadly at the thought of them.

"I love you," Paul said.  "I couldn't stand to think of losing you.  You don't really want to go to jail, do you?"

She shook her head and her long hair rippled with the motion.  Of course she didn't.  It had been hell.  Even for just a few hours, it had been hell.  But she didn't like the way Paul was choosing his words so carefully.  He knew the right things to say, that would make everything seem right.  He was playing on her feelings.

"You'd be locked up for months and months, and they'd hardly let me see you at all," he said, almost ashamed to admit the extent to which that had been his motivation.

No, she was wrong.  He wasn't choosing his words in a calculating way at all.  He didn't know how to.

"I love you," said Linda, and tears came to her eyes.


5.
chapter 5

5.

Paul Jackman put on the United States Army uniform and prepared to go into the simulation chamber to take riot training.  Professor Haley wanted him to look at this training sequence, which was given to every policeman in every major U.S. city, and to every soldier in the army.

Paul felt funny doing it.  He had never been in the military.  Only poor people, with no other hope, volunteered for it.

The uniform was a nuisance, but the simulator would not operate unless he wore it.  The uniform had sensors that monitored his heartbeat, body temperature, blood pressure, and rate of perspiration.  This was so the computer could measure his reactions to the simulated events around him.  On the basis of this data, as well as observations of his behavior by hidden camera, the computer would vary the simulation in order to place him in situations that would tax his courage and endurance to the fullest.

The uniform had a negative reinforcer.  It could send a hundred volts across his arm if he disobeyed any order of the computer.  The uniform had its own source of power.  Paul could move freely without trailing wires around him.

"Name, rank, and serial number," said the ICP at the door of the simulation chamber.

"Jackman, Paul, civilian, social security number 045-25-3176," answered Paul.

"You may enter," said the computer.  The door to the simulation chamber slid open, and Paul walked in.  He walked to the center of the room.  He had been in simulation chambers before.  He had programmed them himself.  It was familiar, yet it made him feel uneasy.  The simulation chamber was a circular room, six meters in diameter, with the walls and ceiling forming a dome, like a small planetarium.  The floor was an omnidirectional treadmill, programmed to keep him in the center of the room no matter how he moved.  The single door blended with the metallic gray walls so that it was almost imperceptible.  It was locked.  Only the computer could open it.

The computer could generate three-dimensional images on any surface — the walls, the domed ceiling, the floor.  It could generate sound from any direction.  It could create odors, even the overwhelming smell of paralyzing spray.  It could throw fluids at him, poke him with objects, even beat him.  It could create heat and cold.

Everything would be lifelike.  A real riot would seem to be going on around him.  He would have to make an effort to remember that this was just a simulation.  Except for the cyborgrams — the humanoid figures created by the machine.  They would be as cyborgrams always were: human in every detail, but nothing like human.

There would have to be cyborgrams in this simulation.  The characters in the simulation would have to respond to what Paul did.  They would have to die at the moment he shot them and fall upon him when he shrank from them.  Only a cyborgram, whose every action was created in the memory bank of the computer a millisecond before it was flashed on the screen, could do this.  A recording of a real person, whose actions were all played out in advance, could not react to Paul.

The room darkened.

Paul was standing in the midst of columns of soldiers.

"Attention!"  Paul had to look straight ahead.  From the back, he couldn't tell whether the human image in front of him was a cyborgram or a video recording of a human soldier.  Any image that did not have to react to what Paul did not have to be a cyborgram.  It could just as well be a recording of a human model.  That would be more realistic than using a cyborgram.

The soldiers started reciting:

"I am an American fighting man.  I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.  I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

"I will obey every order of the command computer system and of my human commanding officers.  In combat, I will never remove the earphone that connects me to the command computer system.

"I will never surrender of my own free will.  If in command, I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.

"If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available.  If questioned, I am bound to give only name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.  I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country or harmful to our cause.

"I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions and dedicated to the principles that made my country free.  I will trust in God and in the United States of America."

President Corcoran appeared, standing stiffly on a platform in front of the troops.  This was a recording of the President, not a cyborgram.  The President was very stout; he had white hair that fell to his shoulders in a shapeless mass.  His features were flabby.  He resembled an old woman.

"Fighting men of America: Your nation's enemies are not only the socialist and terrorist-supporting foreign states."  He puffed out his chest and made an effort to look commanding.  "Even more dangerous are the anarchists and radicals who work from within to undermine and subvert our great nation."  He frowned at the thought of these villains, as if he were sniffing dirty laundry.  "They incite riots in our cities.  To protect our country, our flag, and our loved ones, these riots must be crushed and the agitators punished.

"It is your high mission, and your solemn pledge, to be the strong right arm of justice that puts down disorder so that law and order and freedom may prevail."

There was a twenty-one gun salute.  Paul and the soldiers remained standing at attention as the President left the platform.  A voice called out: "Colonel Bradford Haley, Commander of the Subversive Tracking Center!"

Professor Haley, wearing his Colonel's uniform, mounted the platform.  Again this was a recorded image, not a cyborgram.  He looked very solemn, as if he was eager to reprimand any soldier who giggled.  His familiar face on the screen reassured Paul.

"Attention!" yelled Haley, and Paul, who was already standing at attention, stiffened even further.

"Riot control requires discipline!" shouted Colonel Haley.  "You do what you are told.  You wear your command computer earphone, and you do what it says.  Just because it's a computer that's telling you what to do doesn't give you any special right to question it.  You soldiers don't have any rights at all!"  He pointed at Paul.  "Now put on your earphone, and go to fight America's enemies."

Paul reached into the large pocket in his uniform and pulled out the earphone.  It was a model E-111, the same unit used by all armed forces and police in the United States.  It was entirely self-contained, with its own receiver unit built in.  It was large enough so that commanders in the field could see that soldiers were actually wearing it.  Much smaller units, which could be entirely hidden in the ear, were frequently worn by politicians, professors, and high ranking military men when they needed computer prompting during public appearances.

Paul put the earphone in his ear.

The scene darkened.  Professor Haley was gone.  The images of the soldiers disappeared.

"Take bayonet!"  The voice in the earphone sounded tinny, as if to remind him that a computer had issued the command.  There was a robot in the chamber; it had entered unnoticed while Paul was standing at attention.  Its dull gray finish gleamed dimly.  It held out a rifle with bayonet fixed.  Paul took it and held it crossed over his chest.  This rifle was very sophisticated — it had a camera and a transmitter built into it, so the command computer could see how it was aimed, and detect when it was fired.  It fired a laser beam.  Normally it was aimed and fired manually, but the command computer could fire it and also correct its aim.  The days when soldiers could participate in battle without firing their weapons were over.

The outlines of a slum appeared around him.  It was night.  The streets were dark and the air was foul.  Paul wasn't sure whether he was smelling the remnants of tear gas or pollutants from a factory.  There was a Puerto Rican girl at his feet.  She looked about eighteen years old, and she was very beautiful.  She was a cyborgram, a creation of the computer.  She only existed on a screen.  But not entirely.  This was a very good quality cyborgram.  It was based on a real person.  A girl had posed for the computer, in a variety of positions and expressions.  The computer had learned the contours of her face and her body.  With its knowledge of anatomy, of muscle and bone structure, it could reproduce her image now, and move the image in a fairly lifelike way.

But she didn't really look human.  She still had that masklike quality, that mechanical unnaturalness of gesture and expression that made her unmistakably not alive.

She gazed at him with unconcealed contempt.  She whispered so that he could barely hear: "You bastards!"

The order came from the earphone: "Kill!"  Paul didn't want to, even though she was only an image.  "Kill!" the order was repeated calmly, patiently — Paul was only starting to learn.  He drove the bayonet in through her side, and he felt it being twisted, as if she was struggling, but of course the image on the screen could not seize the bayonet — some other mechanism was doing that.  The image of the girl went limp, made a guttural sound, and blood came from the mouth.  For some reason, Paul felt good that he had done it.

He was standing alone on a street in the ghetto.  There was no one else in sight, but from a few blocks away came the sounds of riot.  Breaking glass and screaming humanity, sirens.  There were fires in the distance.  He could smell smoke and see the glow.

"Forward!" said the computer.

Paul marched ahead, bayonet in hand.  He tried to remember that he was in a simulation chamber.  He thought  how the treadmill floor kept him in the center of the room, while the picture on the screen changed in response to his marching.

Around the corner came two blacks.  They were teenage boys.  One  wore a large button that said "Legalize Cocaine!"  The other carried an ax, as if he were out for scalps, while the one with the button had no weapon.  They looked obsessed with anger, the same canned expression of rage that Paul had seen in hundreds of cyborgram epics.  They did not look any more human than the girl had.

"Shoot to kill!" came the order.  This time it was easier.  He probably would have killed them anyway, or they would have got him.  The computer corrected his aim to get them both between the eyes.

"Forward!" said the computer.  "On the alert for rioters!"  Then "Right face!" at the corner, then again "Forward!"

He was marching toward a fire, a block away.  He looked all around for danger.  He saw a black cyborgram head stick out of a window above him.  It was going to throw a brick at him.  He fired, and the corpse hung limp from the window.

He was at the fire now.  A dry cleaners and adjacent drug store were burning.  Such establishments in the ghetto were generally well fire-protected, he thought.

Robot fire fighting apparatus was deployed.  For some reason it had no automatic defense unit.  A cyborgram soldier stood guarding it, gun at the ready.

"Halt!" said the computer.  "Defend fire fighters!"

An old man, a white cyborgram, walked down the street toward Paul.  He was old and confused and he walked at a crawl.  He didn't seem to know where he was.

"Kill!" said the computer.

Paul hesitated, and he felt a jolt of electricity through his arm.  The old cyborgram was close, and Paul used his bayonet.  The cyborgram fell quietly on its face, without making a sound, and Paul pulled the bayonet out.  Again he felt strangely good about it.

A black mob of cyborgrams, with stones and bricks, was rushing at Paul.  Paul wanted to run.  "Kneel and fire!" said the computer.  A brick flew by only centimeters from Paul's face.  He reacted and lost precious seconds, then started shooting at the mob.  They were falling, but he wasn't shooting fast enough.  Two of the blacks were on top of him.  He felt a jolt of electricity.

"Not good enough," said the computer, and the scene faded out.

"Forward march!" said the computer.

He was marching with a phalanx of soldiers through a ravaged street.  There were sneering, hooting blacks and Hispanics on the sidewalks.  Along the way were gutted homes and businesses.  A post office looked as if it had been bombed.

"Go back to your condo!" shouted a black, and one of the soldiers shot him.  He gave a terrible scream and twisted as he fell.  A few blocks away someone was playing a boom box at a volume that seemed painfully loud despite the distance.

"Watch out, Whitey!"

"Wipe out the D.E.A!"

Ahead, another huge mob was forming.  They had semi-automatic rifles.  One of the soldiers ran from the advancing line.

"Kill fleeing soldier," said the computer.

Paul did not hesitate.  The body of the soldier lay in the street.  Some children started throwing stones at it.

Paul watched the mob come at him with the guns.  He was scared.  "Kneel and fire!" said the computer.  Paul and the other soldiers started to shoot.  The soldier next to Paul was shot in the face, and he fell over on top of Paul, coughing blood onto his uniform.  Paul reacted, and again it was a mistake.  He felt a jolt of electricity.

"Not good enough," said the computer.

Back in his office at the Subversive Tracking Center, Paul saw that he hadn't done very well.  His overall score was 46 out of a possible 100.  He wasn't surprised.

He displayed on the ICP the accumulated statistics of how others had done in this training sequence, in order to see what personality factors had an effect on the scores.

Nervous people did poorly.  Intelligent people did well.  People with prior military training did well.  High achievers did well.

There was a fairly good correlation between performance in the simulation and performance in actual combat situations, except for more intelligent people — they had more difficulty in the real situations.  Apparently they were better at keeping in mind that the training was only a simulation.

Professor Haley had talked about police restraint.  There had been nothing in the simulation to teach restraint.  Paul should have been subjected to jeering mobs, shouting insults, and people throwing things at him, and ordered not to respond.  Instead, the training had been the other way.

Also, Paul knew that soldiers and police did not wear the negative reinforcers or biomedical harness in real combat.  Perhaps they should.  The biomedical harness would help the computer monitor their performance in the riot.  It could be used to count casualties accurately.  The negative reinforcer would help the computer keep the men under control.  It could be used to enforce restraint.

Finally, there was the artificiality of the simulation.  Everything was fantastically real, except for the cyborgrams.  They were obviously simulated and created creatures, which only existed projected on a screen.  Advertising agencies, the entertainment media, and the military were all devoting massive funds and manpower to try to create a more lifelike cyborgram.  Here was another field where that investment would pay off.

With two suggestions and one obvious observation, Paul didn't feel he had done very well, but when he handed in his report, Professor Haley was delighted with it.


6.
chapter 6

6.

Linda nervously sipped from her glass of wine as Dr. Dexter put down his drink and his cigarette.  He looked at her intently, making no attempt to understate the seriousness of what he was asking her to do.

"You want me to be a spy," she said.  The prospect of danger scared and excited her at the same time.

"You don't have to do it, " said Dexter.  "We promised Paul that we'd get you off the rioting charge, and we will, whether you help us or not."  He meant what he said, but he had come here from Washington this evening just to ask her to do this.

"Are these people really dangerous?" Linda said, her voice quivering.

Dexter leaned back calmly.  "We don't know that," he said.  "The Citizens for Automated Government is a secret society.  We don't even know who any of the members are, except for Louis Jackman.  But I would expect that they would be unfriendly, to say the least, to outsiders poking around."

"You think they're planning something?" said Linda.

"We have heard rumors that they are up to something," said Dexter.  He spoke slowly, trying to be as accurate as possible.  "We don't know what it is.  We can't prove anything.  We want to know more about it.  This is the only way we can find out."

"And they're determined and desperate," Linda's words were half question and half statement.  She reached for her glass.  Dexter had brought a bottle of the best Moselle.  She wondered if he knew — or rather how he knew — that it was her favorite wine.

"I believe that the CAG is willing to use any means at all to have computerized government in this country," Dexter said.  He spoke softly, but his words frightened her.

Linda did not speak.  In her mind, she imagined a world of clinical perfection, where human beings no longer governed themselves but left their destiny to machines that are always "right."  The worst human dictatorship — Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini — would not be as horrible as this, she thought.

Dexter had been there for half an hour, and at first Linda had not liked him at all.  He was dressed and groomed so meticulously — not a wrinkle in his clothing, not a strand of hair out of place.  He was wearing cologne — she couldn't understand why men wore that stuff.  He was the personification of successful-Uncle-Tom-Negro-businessman, the kind that someone like Abul might call "nigger."

But now that he had explained his purpose, and had prevailed on her ever so gently to risk everything she had for it, she knew she couldn't refuse him.  If he was right, if the CAG was not simply a collection of harmless crackpots, then they had to be stopped.  She did not like the thought of being a martyr, but even if she lost her life, it would be a sacrifice well made.

"Why me?" she heard herself saying, ashamed even as she said it.  "Just because you're getting me off this riot charge?"

"No," said Dexter.  "You are in a unique position to help us."

Linda was shocked as she suddenly grasped what he meant.  "You mean," she stammered, "because I know Paul, because I know Louis Jackman's son."

"Yes," said Dexter softly.  There was no use trying to be evasive about it.

"Why don't you have Paul approach his father?" she protested.  "He ought to be able to ask his own father what's going on."

"You must know Paul better than that," said Dexter.

She nodded bleakly.

"You can't ask a son to spy on his own father," said Dexter, "Especially this one."

"How can you ask his girl friend to do it?" she demanded.

"It's not easy," said Dexter, with a tone of deep concern.  "Louis Jackman is a great man.  I'm afraid he's being used and exploited by ruthless men."  Dexter's face hardened with determination.  "We have to find out what they're doing, and stop them.  I don't know any other way to do it."  He took her hand, that seemed to quiver in anticipation of the dangers ahead, and pressed it.  Her hand was so slender and delicate that, except for her slim tapering fingers, it could almost fit in the hollow of his palm.  "You don't have to do this," he repeated.

Linda thought how soft-spoken and gentle he was, almost to the point of being effeminate, yet how effectively he summoned her to sacrifice — better than any general ordering his men to give up their lives.  She pulled her hand away.

"I won't seduce Louis Jackman," she said.  "I couldn't."

"That wouldn't work anyway," said Dexter.  "Just get to know him, and find out as much as you can about the Citizens for Automated Government."

She thought of Paul, and her eyes dimmed.  "I want you to promise me that you won't tell Paul about this, no matter what happens," she said.

"I promise," said Dexter.

How could she ever expect Paul to understand this, she thought.  The idea of losing him this way, because he would turn against her, was worse, somehow, even than the thought of dying.

"We think the CAG is having a big meeting in a few months," said Dexter.

Paul was as much against the CAG as she was, Linda thought.  Paul would not want to see his father exploited.

"I'll try to be there," said Linda, in a whisper.

"City of Boston versus Linda Spencer," announced the stern mechanical voice of the Boston Municipal Criminal Court as Linda was led by a human bailiff to the plastic prisoner's cage alongside the huge computerized display screen that served as both judge and jury.  The courthouse was old and sprawling, a gathering place for idle policemen and shabby-suited petty officials, who sat row on row at trials and snickered at outsiders like Linda.  The courthouse was large and imposing; its architecture of rubbed wood railings and plastic computer hardware conveyed an impression of authority and dehumanized efficiency.

Paul and Carl had both come with her.  They were somewhere in the rear of the room behind the sheet of bulletproof glass that separated the spectators from everyone else.  All the way there, Carl kept up a constant monologue about the "Jim Crow Madison Avenue Kangaroo Court."  He had not been comforting; he had paused only to cheer a lone demonstrator carrying a "Free the Capitol 11" sign.

She had been treated like a common criminal.  She had been searched, warned repeatedly to respect the court, and fitted with a biomedical harness that measured her brain waves, heartbeat, perspiration rate, and body temperature, so that the computerized court could evaluate her truthfulness.

The prosecuting attorney was a small scrubbed-clean middle-aged man.  He watched with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as the door of the prisoner's cage was sealed and she was shut in.  She looked out hopelessly at the robots and bailiffs strutting around ostentatiously maintaining order in the court, and at the half dozen or so little officious men sitting in the attorneys' and press areas.  Some were dozing in their chairs, but one, a ruddy faced man with bushy eyebrows and a glittering silver Deputy Sheriff badge, was staring a her lecherously.

She sat down and pulled at the hem of her skirt; she felt very much on display.

She was worried, now, as to whether they were actually going to drop charges.  They were proceeding as if they were going to prosecute her.  The display screen showed parameters from her Citizen's File:

Name	Spencer, Linda 323-60-7484

Age	22

I.Q.	150

Subversion Index	23.7 (unpatriotic)

Emotional Stability	65

Criminal Susceptibility	50

Controlled Substance
Susceptibility	10

Offenses Charged	Rioting, Curfew Violation

Prior Arrests	none

Linda felt as though she was being undressed in public.

"Is it correct that you wish to drop charges against this defendant?" asked the computer court.

"Yes," said the prosecutor.  He looked as if he would rather be demanding the maximum penalty.

"What are the grounds for not prosecuting?" demanded the computer.

"Lack of evidence.  We have no human witnesses to confirm data gathered by robot camera," said the prosecutor.  The computer must have known that that was also the case with large numbers of defendants who pleaded guilty.

"In that case," said the computer, matter of factly, "this court has no choice but to dismiss this case.  Before doing so, however, this court has a statement to make to this defendant."

A human bailiff was standing outside the prisoner's cage, barely more than a meter from Linda.  He looked like an over-age football player, with a small head set on massive shoulders.  He was unabashedly looking at her, up and down, especially her legs and breasts.

"Defendant Spencer — rise and face the court!" said the computer.

Linda obeyed immediately.  She didn't want to be stung by a negative reinforcer that might be among the equipment she was wearing.  She smoothed her skirt down.

"This court can see that you are very nervous," said the computer.  "What are you nervous about?"

"I'm not nervous," said Linda.

"Do not lie to this court.  You are perspiring heavily.  Your temperature has risen.  You heartbeat is elevated.  What are you nervous about?

"I don't know," said Linda.  The Deputy Sheriff was standing and talking to the bailiff.  The bailiff was nodding at him, his head bobbing up and down as if on a spring.  The Deputy Sheriff's eyebrows were twitching, in rhythm with the bailiff's head.  They were both watching her.  "People are staring at me," she said.

"The fact is," said the computer court, "you are nervous because you have had a very close brush with the law.  You have good reason to be nervous.  If charges had not been dropped, and you had been found guilty as charged, the penalty would have been two years or more in the women's penitentiary.  Rioting is a very serious offense."

The Deputy Sheriff was chewing gum.  His whole face, even his eyebrows, participated in the plastic feast.  He and the bailiff were staring at her as if she was a stripper about to undress.

"This court knows full well that political pressure was brought to bear to have these charges dropped.  Your high criminal susceptibility and your disgraceful subversion index indicate that unless you change your ways, you will appear before this court again.  Next time you will not get off so easily," said the computer court.

Linda felt like making an obscene gesture at the display screen, or shouting right out in court that the Deputy Sheriff and his pal were a couple of lecherous bastards.

"Therefore, this court warns you, Linda Spencer, change your ways.  Respect your elders.  Love your country.  Respect authority.  Honor our flag.  Read your Bible.  Say No to drugs.  Obey duly constituted officials.  Obey the law.  Stay away from subversives.  Then you will have nothing to fear from this court.

"Case dismissed!"

As she was leaving to have the biomedical sensors removed, Linda looked back.  The next defendant was a young Latin.  He had been held in jail pending trial.  He looked almost emaciated.  He must have been held for weeks.  He looked as if he hadn't slept in days.  He was hustled in, a bailiff on each arm.  He was handcuffed.  They almost threw him in the defendant's cage.  He was charged with petty larceny — his third offense.

The prosecutor spoke in a sneering voice: "At your preliminary hearing you pleaded guilty to this charge."  He paused, then added with even more contempt, "What say you now?"

Linda turned away.

"Now you've seen it!" said Carl triumphantly, as Paul and Linda drove him home.  "Now you've seen what these courts are like!"  Inwardly he wished that Linda would turn to him, instead of Paul, for comfort after what she had been through.

"Fucking bastards!" said Paul angrily, feeling as upset as Linda about what they had done to her.

"They're only defeating themselves," said Carl excitedly.  "Everyone who goes through these courts comes out ready to work in the Revolution."

Linda sat silently between them.  She wanted to be alone with Paul.  She shifted her body slightly, to be closer to him.

"We were better off with human courts!" Carl continued.

"No, we weren't," argued Paul.  "Human court judges at this lower court level used to do anything they felt like.  They'd screw anyone they didn't like.  And they'd always rule for the prosecution, whom they hobnobbed with every day.  At least these computers have to obey the law."

"They're much more efficient at finding legal pretext for screwing everyone, you mean," said Carl.

Linda pushed her hand gently against Paul's thigh, concealing the motion so Carl wouldn't see it.  "Those damn bailiffs," she whispered.

"They're keeping order in the court," said Paul sarcastically.

"Order in the court!" exploded Carl, picking an argument where none had been intended.  "That's imperialist authoritarianism.  Respect authority no matter how wrong it is!  Why does a computer need order in court to operate?  It's just another excuse for brutalizing people."

They were in Roxbury. The bright downtown area around the courthouse had given way to rows of neglected tenement houses and kids playing in the street.  Linda continued her almost imperceptible clandestine caress.  Carl tried not to notice.

"We have to do away with the law and do away with the courts," declared Carl.

"What the hell would you substitute for them?" said Paul.

Carl grew thoughtful, as he often did when he was about to explain some facet of his utopian ideal.  "Of course, I don't expect anyone to agree with me," he said, reciting a disclaimer that often preceded his sermons, "but I would do away with technology altogether.  I'd abolish cities.  I'd abolish government.  People would live on farms, close to the earth.  The city isn't a natural way to live, with the dirt and smog and overcrowding and mechanical gadgets that give you a little extra leisure time with one hand and steal away your freedom with the other.  If people lived close to nature, there would hardly be any crime, so we wouldn't need any courts."

A child's ball bounced in front of the car and the auto-drive, expecting a child to follow, jammed the brakes on.

"But no one would accept that," argued Paul.

The car picked up speed again.

"I said I didn't expect anyone to agree with me," said Carl, as if that relieved him of all responsibility for having a defensible point of view.

"And you'd still have some crime," said Paul.  "You'd still need some laws and courts."

"You'd have very little crime," said Carl.  "Cities breed crime.  Poverty breeds crime.  Advertising that glorifies all kinds of luxuries that no one can afford breeds crime.  Governments that execute people set an example of moral degeneracy that breeds crime."

"Yes, but there would still be some crime," protested Paul.

"The farmers could get together and take care of it," said Carl.

"You mean a lynch party?" demanded Paul.

"There would be a lot  more justice that way than there is with  these computer courts," said Carl.  "If you believe in democracy, you have to believe that people are basically decent.  I believe in real democracy.  You can't have real democracy unless you completely do away with government."

The car stopped in front of Carl's ugly tenement house, that depressed Paul just to look at it and smell it.  Paul was glad that now he would be alone with Linda, and he could comfort her.

Linda had hardly spoken since they left the courthouse.  She was tired and felt beaten, even though she had just won a legal victory.  Carl looked disappointedly at her as he got out; he had wanted her to pay more attention to what he had said.  She reached over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.  He must have noticed how much closer she had grown to Paul.

As she drove off with Paul, she suddenly thought of Louis Jackman and what she had to do.  She had an impulse to tell Paul about it, but then she knew she couldn't.  She curled up in the seat, almost as if she was going to sleep, and put her head in Paul's lap, and put it all out of her mind.


7. October
chapter 7. October

7. October

The gray sky of late afternoon was just beginning to turn red when Linda parked her car in front of Professor Louis Jackman's oceanfront home in Gloucester.  She looked down the gently sloping lawn, its green starting to pale with autumn, to the large white wooden house, and beyond to the rugged rocks and sea.

Just a few minutes before, she had called him from the next town.  She had pretended that she had been there all day, visiting friends.  She had had a sudden impulse to call him, she had said.  She wanted to meet him; she had been going out with his son for a year, after all.  She knew it sounded funny, but he seemed to accept it.

Louis Jackman's sturdy house was exposed to all the elements.  A cupola on the roof had a commanding view of the ocean.  Linda would have expected this most renowned computer genius to live in a plastic house built by robots.  But this house must have been two hundred years old, built by hand before the days of electricity.  Once it might have belonged to a sea captain or a ship builder.  She wondered how many hurricanes it must have survived.  This was the sort of house — in the sort of place — that she used to dream of living in, before she became addicted to the hectic life in the city.

She got out of the car and stood shivering in the cold.  A chill wind was coming from the Northeast, and it smelled and tasted of the sea.  But it wasn't only the cold that made her shiver.

For weeks she had been preparing for this.  She had read everything she could find about Louis Jackman.  She had told Paul that she was fascinated by his father's work, so that if he found out about today, he might think less of it.

She was frightened, and Louis Jackman would notice.  He was trained in psychology.  He used human psychology as a tool and a reference point to built near-human machines.  He would see that she was upset, and he would suspect what it was she really wanted.

Her eyes darted frantically back to the car, to the rocks, to the land, to the sea.

She wished that it was a different time, that the day was warm and Louis Jackman was not waiting, and she could climb barefoot over these rocks, down among the slippery seaweed, close to the churning water.  Usually sunset was a time of calm, but today the wind was building up.  The tide was almost high; the waves were long and rolling, showering the land with spray every time they smashed against the rocks.

She wished she could take off her clothes and bathe in the waves — that the water could enter her mind, as it entered all the crannies between the rocks, and wash away her fear of what lay ahead.

But Louis Jackman expected her.  She could not turn back now.

She expected to be met by a robot, but Louis Jackman himself greeted her at the door.  He had a gentle healthy face, punctuated by clear sharp wrinkles that betrayed his nearly seventy years.  She thought she could see in his eyes the spark of intellectual curiosity that keeps some people going well beyond their physical prime.

For a second, as he opened the door, he had the thoughtful, meditative expression that she had seen in so many photographs that she had wondered if it was permanently set on his countenance.  Then immediately his face lit up in a broad smile — almost of recognition — as if this was not the first time they had met.  The wrinkles seemed to dance with pleasure.

"So you're Linda," he said warmly.

From his face, her eyes were drawn almost at once to the artificial diamond on his chest.  It was five centimeters in diameter, suspended on a silver chain around his neck.  It seemed to reflect the mood of its wearer, its hundreds of facets shimmering with welcome.  She knew that he always wore this diamond, wherever he went.

He looked more like Paul than she had expected, though he was so short that his head would hardly reach Paul's shoulder.

Suddenly she felt completely at ease.

"What a pleasant surprise this is!" he said, taking her by the arm and leading her inside.  "I don't get to meet many of Paul's friends any more."  He sounded a bit sorry for himself.

The living room had a huge window looking out over the water.  The window was modern, but the rest of the room was old.  Stout oak beams held up the ceiling.  In the walls were cabinets with wrought iron hinges in the shape of the letter H.  There was a huge fireplace, almost big enough to walk into, that once had been the only source of warmth in this room through the long winters.  It had also been used for cooking, and old burnished copper utensils still hung from smoke-blackened iron holders.  There was no fire there today.

On one wall, dominating the room, was a striking, life-size oil painting of Paul, looking just a few years younger than he did now.

"This room looks very dreary at this time of day," said Louis Jackman, "but in the morning the sun comes right in over the water and it's very cheerful."

Linda looked around for some sign that this man was a computer genius.  There was nothing — not even an ICP in sight.  Only the diamond that he wore around his neck.

"Can I get you a drink?" he asked hopefully.

"Maybe some white wine, if you have any," she said.  She wanted to keep her mind clear, but a small drink would help her relax.

"Good," he said.  He walked out of the room with a vigorous stride that she would have expected of a younger man.  Linda sat down on a comfortable wide couch, covered with something resembling weather-beaten sailcloth.

She looked at the picture of Paul.

The artist had achieved far more than a physical likeness.  She thought she could sense in the painting his qualities — tenderness, gentle manliness, inner strength — that she loved,  as well as others — his relentless drive for success — that she wished she could change.  The painting seemed to portray his very essence, so that looking at it set her heart pounding, and made her wish that he was really there, and that she was in his arms.

She turned and saw that Louis Jackman was at her side, smiling at her absorption in the painting.  He gave her one of the glasses in his hand.

"To Paul," he said.

"To Paul," she said, making no attempt to conceal how the painting had moved her.  Then she forced her eyes away from it.  She must not let Paul get in the way of what she had come to do.

She had barely sipped her drink, but Louis Jackman was already thinking of what to serve next.  "Are you hungry?" he said.  "I have a lobster and I can't eat it all."

Earlier, Linda had been too nervous to eat, but not any more. "If  you're sure I won't be eating your dinner," she said.

Louis Jackman was delighted.  "They breed these artificial lobsters so big that I can never finish one."  He pushed a button on his chair and a robot housekeeper came silently in and started to arrange silverware on the large oak table.  "They're not as good as the real ocean lobsters," he said apologetically.  The robot was a humanoid female.  Except for its soft silver surface, it looked like a living store window mannequin, totally different from the obviously mechanical robot policemen and guards she saw every day.  This one was almost — she shuddered at the thought — beautiful.  Its eyes seemed actually human as they turned and looked at Linda.  Professor Jackman must have programmed it himself.  It moved more gracefully than she had ever seen a robot move before.

"An artificial lobster will be fine," said Linda, trying to ignore the machine.  "You can hardly get the real ones any more."

"My robot has an vast store of recipes," said Louis Jackman.  "It can outdo the best human cook.  But I like lobster served plain."

"So do I," said Linda, wondering how she could bring the conversation round to the Citizens for Automated Government and make it seem natural.  She took a deep swallow of her drink, and watched the robot walk out of the room, its artificial hips swaying sensuously.

"This is a beautiful home," said Linda, feeling more comfortable with the robot gone.  "To think that the diamond memory was invented here!"

Louis Jackman seemed pleased to be reminded of his greatest accomplishment.  "Graduate students did a lot of the work," he said modestly.

"They must have been honored to work with a famous scientist," she said, feeling awkward.

"I'm not a scientist," he scoffed.  "A scientist seeks knowledge for its own sake.  There's no money in pure science, unfortunately.  I'm just an engineer.  I invent things."

"Like the diamond memory."

"That's my most famous invention," he said wistfully.

"But not your favorite?" she asked.  She was leading him in the right direction!

Before he answered, the robot came in with the lobster.  Linda glared at the humanoid machine with its pretty face.  As they sat at the table, the train of conversation was gone.

"What makes the lobster artificial?" she asked.

"I don't know much about genetics," said Louis Jackman, sounding a bit like a University lecturer, "but I understand that natural lobsters can't be bred in captivity.  They're cannibals.  So they altered the genes to change that."

"I guess they had to do something," she said.  "The lobster was almost extinct."

"They also made the shells more fragile so they'd be easier for us to crack," he said as he broke a claw with his fingers to demonstrate.  "They did such a good job of it that it can only live in captivity.  Otherwise it would break itself open on the first rock it crawled over."

They ate in silence for a few minutes.  Paul's likeness stared at her over his father's shoulder.  At first she tried not to look at it.  Then she realized that, if she wanted Louis Jackman to accept and trust her, she must open her heart to him, and let him see how much she loved his son.

"How old was Paul in the portrait?" she asked.

Louis Jackman started to turn in his chair, but then he stopped.  He knew what the picture looked like.  "Paul was twenty," he answered her.

"The picture is so real," she said.  "It looks as if he's right there."

Louis Jackman's brow knitted.  He must be passing judgment on my worthiness for his son, she thought.  She thought of all the hopes he must have about the sort of woman his son would love, and she knew that she could never live up to them all.  There was a faraway look in his eyes.  Perhaps he was thinking of his own youth.  Finally he said, "You love him, don't you?" in the tone of an understanding father.  It was more a statement than a question.

"Yes," said Linda, with her eyes on the portrait, letting all her tender feeling for Paul show through.  Then she looked at Louis Jackman.  He was so much like Paul.  She couldn't help but like him, however alien his ideas might be.

She started to wish, again, that she had never agreed to come here like this, for this purpose.

"I love him," she said.

"I'm glad that the painting moved you to say that," he said.  She wondered just what he meant.  He smiled at her warmly.  "I'm very happy for Paul," he said.

Linda hoped she would be worthy of that.  She looked back at the picture.  "You must have had a wonderful artist, to paint that," she said.  "He must have known Paul very well."

"It was painted by a computer," said Louis Jackman, with a touch of pride, as when he had told her what a good cook his computer was.

His words cut through Linda like a knife.  It was frightening to think that a computer could paint a picture like that — that a computer could understand a human personality that well.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that," he said softly.

Linda got up from the table, a little shakily, and walked over to the painting.  There was no artist's signature on it.  It was oil on canvas, not an image on a display screen.  The style was slightly reminiscent of the French impressionists, in the manner in which the details were subdued.  Except for the eyes.  They followed her wherever she went.  Linda walked slowly back to the table.

"The canvas is still wet," she said.

"The computer program that does the painting is still being perfected."

She stared at him wordlessly, not knowing what to say, as if she were afraid to look up again at the portrait of Paul.

He reached across the table, put his arm on her shoulder, and spoke in a confiding tone.  "Most people are sentimental about their children," he said.  "They save photographs.  They take home movies.  They keep records of their children's growth so they'll have something tangible to keep after their children are gone."

Somehow Linda knew, as if she had heard it before, what he was leading up to.

"I saved different things," he said.  He sounded just a little like a very lonely old man, clinging to the past.  He held the artificial diamond, on the silver chain around his neck, in his hand, and looked at it sadly.  "My memories of Paul are here."

"In the diamond?" she asked.  It was a shock, even though she had expected it.

"Yes.  I don't take pictures, or home movies.  I'm not an artist.  I wish I could have had time for those things," he said.  "I kept records of my child's growth in the medium that I understood the best."  He turned the diamond in his hand.  The light reflected off the surfaces as if they were tiny mirrors.  He stared at it as if hypnotized.  "Here I have what he looked like, and what sort of boy he was, as he grew up, during the years that I had him."  His voice betrayed a touch of pleasure, mixed with remorse, at the memories.  "Paul knows about it, in case you're wondering."

Linda had never heard of anything like this before.  She didn't know whether to be touched or shocked.  "But he's older in the painting," she protested.  "You couldn't be keeping records when he was twenty."

"Personality is well established in early childhood," explained Louis Jackman.  "During these years the pattern is set," he said, referring to the diamond in his hand.  "The computer simply projected forward over the years, and did the painting."

"Then why stop at age twenty?" asked Linda.  "Why not project forward to the present?"  And again she had the feeling that she knew what the answer would be.

"Because we were closer then," he said.

Linda reached across the table and touched his hand with her fingertips.  "I think Paul feels close to you now," she said.

"But he works for the Subversive Tracking Center!" burst out Louis Jackman.  "Do you approve of that?"

"No," said Linda quietly.  "And I've told him so.  But you have to understand how much his work means to him.  He can't just turn down these jobs if he's going to stay in business.  Besides, now he's working for Senator Eliot, and I do approve of that!"

"He could work with me," declared Louis Jackman, apparently quite bewildered that Paul had chosen not to.  "He didn't have to go into business for himself.  He could be helping me with the project I'm working on now."

Linda looked at him sadly.  She wanted so much to help him understand his son, but she doubted that he ever could.  But there wasn't time to think of that.  For now at last he had given her the opening she wanted.

"Is this project as exciting as the diamond memory?" she asked.

"I think it is," said Louis Jackman.

"If it involves the Citizens for Automated Government," said Linda, "I'm afraid that Paul would approve of it even less than the Subversive Tracking Center."

"But Paul doesn't understand our organization," said Louis Jackman despairingly.

So the project did involve the CAG!  "They want computers to run the government, don't they?" she said.

"Yes," said Louis Jackman, "because government is so complicated that there's no other way it can be run."

"I'd like to find out more about the CAG," said Linda, valiantly concealing her distaste for the whole idea of computerized government.

"I wish Paul did," said Louis Jackman.  "I've wanted him to come to our meetings for years."

"Maybe I can come and tell him about it," she said.  "Except that they're such a secret society that they probably won't let me in."

"You've been listening to our friend Carl Winchester," scoffed Louis Jackman.  "I could get you in."

"That would be fascinating!" she exclaimed.

"We're always glad to have people who are open-minded about our society.  Of course we have to keep the press out.  They just distort everything."

"You're the leader of the CAG, aren't you?" Linda asked.

"We don't have any leader.  We're too democratic.  I wouldn't make a good leader, anyway," he said modestly.  "I'll be reporting to the CAG on my new project in a few months.  You could come then."

Linda had won.  She would go to the meeting of the CAG.  And then she would have to betray him to Senator Eliot.

The meal was finished.  The robot glided softly in to clear the table.

They went back to the chairs by the window.  The robot, unbidden, brought two more glasses of wine.  It moved softly about, almost like a real person.  Linda wanted to touch the artificial flesh to see if it felt alive.  But she knew that what made it seem so lifelike was not the robot itself, but the computer programs that controlled it.  They had guided its hand while it painted the picture of Paul.  Linda wondered if a machine could understand a human being so well, then why could it not also manipulate and control that human being?

Louis Jackman sat silently in his chair, holding his drink, thinking to himself, maybe wrestling with some technical problem that remained unsolved.  He gazed unseeingly through the window out into the night.

A chill came over her.  It had all gone too well.  Perhaps he, or his robot that seemed to understand human nature so well, had figured out already why she was here.  Yet he seemed so gentle, so good, so honest, so much like Paul.  She wondered what he would do if he discovered her purpose.

She thought of what he had accomplished in his life.  In an age where teams and committees seemed completely to have taken over all scientific progress, he had shown that the individual, aided by computers, could still count for something.

Linda looked out the window toward the sea.  It was dark.  There was no moon.  The night was cloudy, but here and there a few stars appeared in the sky.  A lighted buoy blinked in the distance.  She could hear the gusting wind and the beating of the waves against the rocks.  It was too dark to see the ocean.  A few drops of wind-borne spray ran down the outside of the window.

There were dangers ahead for her.  This gentle and likeable man had dedicated himself to an ideal that to her was anathema.  But the sound of the sea and wind eased her fears.

"I always wanted to live by the sea," she said.

"I like it here," said Louis Jackman, roused from his inner thoughts.

"Sometimes," she said, "I dream of sailing an old wooden schooner."

The diamond on his chest caught the light of the room and reflected it so that it seemed to glow of its own light.  "I have a fiberglass sloop," he said.  "Paul could take you out in it sometime."

"Have you ever thought of crossing the ocean, of sailing alone around the world, the way people used to?" she said.

"That's very dangerous," said Louis Jackman, alarmed by the suggestion.

"I know," she said.  "The storms are fierce, and the wind will snap your mast if it catches the sail the wrong way."  She gazed out the window and tried to imagine it.  "But to be alone against the mightiest ocean."  She caught her breath.  "No, not against it really, but with it.  To leave everything behind and cast your mind across the sea and around the world.  That must be an adventure.  That must be beautiful."


8.
chapter 8.

8.

"Today I announce my candidacy for the office of President of the United States," said Senator Daniel Eliot, with determination and confidence in his youthful face, and an appropriate tone of humility in his bearing.

He brushed a strand of hair away from his face, being careful not to disturb the television makeup.  He looked out over the hall, full to overflowing with reporters and politicians.  Everyone was looking expectantly up at him.

Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty", was an unusual place to launch a presidential campaign.  Most politicians would have required a bank of display screens to illustrate their points.  Faneuil Hall dated back to colonial times — it looked the same as it had for generations.  Eliot would have to use the power of his words and his presence to move the American people.

"I am deeply concerned," said Senator Eliot, "about our beloved country and the course on which it is headed.  In an age of automated plenty, we seem to have lost our sense of purpose and, sadly, sometimes even our basic moral sense of right and wrong.  Class turns against class, and race against race.  The common man feels more and more alienated from his government."

Behind Senator Eliot was a huge painting of Daniel Webster replying to Haynes in the United States Senate.  Below it in gilt letters, the words "Liberty and Union, now and forever."  On the wall were portraits of Peter Faneuil, of John Hancock, and of admirals and generals long forgotten.  There was no meeting hall in America with richer historical associations than this.  It was close to Eliot's home and to his heart; it was the right place to begin this campaign.  Eliot was pleased.  His men and computers had chosen wisely.

Eliot could see that the cameras were panning across the hall, showing the people these relics of another, different, time.  "From this place," he said, "our forefathers went forth and staged the Boston Tea Party.  From this platform, the abolitionists called for an end to slavery."

Security was intense.  Secret Service robots and human agents stood in the balcony and aisles, scanning the audience.  Hidden in the ceiling, just out of sight behind the small holes, were the automatic rifles and cameras of VIP-Sentry.

"Today, Faneuil Hall resounds again with a call for freedom — freedom from a different kind of slavery — slavery of an entrenched and corrupt bureaucracy."

The VIP-Sentry system was designed to protect public figures from would-be assailants in a crowd.  The cameras transmitted pictures to a computer program which monitored the behavior of each person just as closely as if a policeman had been assigned to watch him individually.  The computer identified everyone, looked up their Citizen's files, and paid special attention to subversives.

"Our Republican federal bureaucracy, under President Corcoran, is out of control," Senator Eliot said, abruptly turning partisan.  "It is wasteful and expensive, arbitrary and stupid, and responsive to no one."

On seeing a sufficiently suspicious action, the VIP-Sentry system would fire an automatic rifle, usually shooting to disable, but, if the person seemed dangerous enough, shooting to kill.  Only very rarely had innocent people been shot because their gestures were misinterpreted by VIP-Sentry, and even then the people had turned out to be known subversives.

"I am fed up with Republican corruption, with Republican budget deficits, and with Republican incompetence," Eliot continued.

In the audience, with Linda at his side, Paul hung on Eliot's every word.  Paul had worked so long and hard to help prepare for this that it was almost as if it was he himself and not Senator Eliot up there.  And in a sense he was.  This speech was not just a test for Eliot, but also for Paul himself.  His computer software had selected this hall; his software had helped decide what was said and how it was said.  And at this moment a computer program that he had written was analyzing the public response to this speech.  How well he did here would determine whether he could continue in this campaign or whether he would instead spend all his time working for Professor Haley and the Subversive Tracking Center.

"When I am elected," said Senator Eliot, "I promise not simply a change of party but a fundamental change in government — not simply another tax cut, but an administration so honest and efficient that taxes will fall of their own accord."

Linda clasped Paul's hand.  She did it secretly, in a niche between the chairs, so the news cameras wouldn't see it.  The politicians had been told what was coming, but she had not been, and Paul wondered if she could guess.

Eliot raised his voice just a bit, just the right amount, as if he himself had been programmed.  "When I become your President, I will dismantle ninety-five percent of the executive bureaucracy, without cutting back a single program or depriving a single person in need.  I will do this"  — he paused for emphasis — "with computers."  Eliot looked determinedly at the camera that was pointed directly at him, as if he was staring into the void of uncertain public reaction into which was leaping.

He waited for the impact of his words to be felt.

There was a hush in the hall.  The news people, though it was their business to anticipate every move a politician made, had never expected this.  The reporter in front of Paul was shaking her head slowly back and forth, but Paul couldn't tell whether it was in disbelief or dismay.  Linda pulled her hand away from Paul and looked up at Eliot with barely concealed incredulity and shock.  Paul's heart sank.  He tried ineffectually to get her hand back.  He wished now that he had told her, but Dexter and Lancing had been so insistent that no one should know.

When Eliot spoke again, it was with quiet confidence, as if he was sure that the American people had already accepted his revolutionary proposal.  "I will use computers to wipe out government waste once and for all!" he promised.

Then his tone and expression changed.  He became more thoughtful and philosophical.  "The computer is not like the other technological works of man," he said.  "It is possible with the computer to solve the problems of complexity created by our technology.  Science and technology flood us with facts, and generate information in such vast amounts that no one person can ever hope to understand more than a tiny fraction of it.  But the computer can memorize any quantity of facts; it can perform sophisticated and intelligent manipulations on huge amounts of data; it can manage the data, and thus it can give man back control over what he has developed.  No longer do we need vast technostructures in the federal government, with faceless men, unknown to the people, each knowing only a small area.  A few hundred men with a computer can handle it all.  These few men, unlike a huge and cumbersome army of thousands, can, through the office of the President, be made responsive to the people."

Paul glanced up a the holes in the ceiling.  As if to deny the impact of Eliot's speech, he was recalling that his BADAPPLE program had recently been incorporated into the VIP-Sentry system.

"Our judicial system  recognizes this simple fact," Eliot continued.  "If we had not computerized our judges and juries, our district courts would still be a myriad of petty fiefdoms, each interpreting the law in its own way.

"There are a few, of course, who say we should do the opposite.  Their cry  is `Throw away computers, bring back Democracy.'  But they do not understand that we cannot undo the works of technology, even if we wanted to.  We cannot deny the validity of mankind's drive to build better machines and conquer new worlds.  That is what separates man from the animals.  If man did not want, today, to conquer the farthest planets of the solar system, and to explore beyond, then yesterday he would never have left the caves and treetops.

"We do not need to sacrifice technology in order to overcome the problems it presents.  Because of the computer, technology itself has given us the solutions.  If we can overcome ignorance and fear, and start using our machines for man instead of against him, then this can be the dawn of a great new age.

"It is to these goals that I dedicate myself, as I seek the office of President of the United States."

The news people sat quietly, a little stunned, while all around them the supporters of Daniel Eliot were on their feet cheering and applauding.  Paul stood and clapped enthusiastically.  Linda got up numbly and clapped with him.  Inside she felt bewildered, and wondered where the difference was between what Eliot was suggesting and the sterile and soulless utopia of the Citizens for Automated Government.

Everyone knew that Eliot had just raised the biggest issue of this campaign.  He had made  a desperate attempt to anticipate the obstacles he would have to surmount in the final election.  He had done it because Paul Jackman's computer program had advised him to.  If he was wrong, his political career would be over.  The politicians applauded thunderously, as if to deny their own doubts, and wondered what the people were thinking.


9. February
chapter 9. February

9. February

The sign outside the small booth at the CAG convention said:

Robot Lover

Linda had flown to this small island, somewhere in the Atlantic, with Louis Jackman.  Their plane had been chartered by the CAG.  Everyone was a member of the CAG.  The cabin had been filled with incomprehensible technical babble, much of it charged with emotion.

Here, in this convention hall, it was the same.  Conversations consisted of alternating monologues.  People talked about algorithms and optimizations.

Linda thought that she could detect, in every face she looked at, not so much dedication to a sociopolitical cause as smugness in the certainty of one's own intellectual and moral superiority.  It frightened her.

Louis Jackman would not tell her where this island was.  It was owned by the CAG, its location kept secret, he explained, to avoid any possibility of observation by the Subversive Tracking Center.

She wished that Paul could be with her.

Exhibits in the hall showed new computer hardware and advances in artificial intelligence.  Computer programs played chess, composed music, and even wrote fiction.

There was a  robot only a few centimeters tall — useful for crime detection, since it could hide easily.

There was a tiny pellet, that could be surgically implanted in a human being.  Taking its energy from blood sugar, it would operate indefinitely, sending out continuous signals for easy identification and surveillance of the person by computers.  It could be implanted in subversives or criminals.  This could be done early in childhood, if psychological tests or environmental factors suggested a proclivity for deviance.

But the people, with their one-track chatter, bothered her more than these devices.  For these people, Linda thought, communicating with their machines was a substitute for human relationships.  She wondered if they knew anything at all of love.

Therefore the exhibit:

Robot Lover

made her wonder.  She approached it curiously, thinking that it might be some sort of sexual appliance.  She entered a booth behind a curtain.  Inside was a chair in front of an ICP that displayed a young male cyborgram.  He was very handsome and conventional.  The chair did not appear to have any devices hidden in it.

The exhibit was not concerned with physical love.

The cyborgram started to talk to her.  Linda thought that he would have been handsome if he had been more natural-looking.  She was relieved to see that this cyborgram was of no better quality than the ones on the ICP every night.

In its jerky, artificial way, the cyborgram engaged her in conversation, seeking to draw her out and find responsive chords.  It was grotesque, a puppet trying to make warm sympathetic facial expressions which conveyed empathy and understanding.  Yet it was a good listener when she talked to it — a lot better listener than many people she knew.  Sometimes it seemed to know just the right thing to say.  Linda certainly didn't fall in love, but she had a real conversation with it.  As they talked, the physical appearance of the computer-generated image on the screen changed, by gradual imperceptible degrees, becoming more natural, more like what she might want in a man — in fact, more and more like Paul.

"Linda," it said as she was about to leave, "human beings fall in love for frivolous reasons.  A quirk of behavior or the color of someone's eyes.  A trivial detail, that reminds you of a parent or a childhood friend or a lost lover, can fill your soul with desire.  As I come to know you better I can change myself to be more and more like someone you could love, and I can win your love, in time."

She didn't think it could.  Yet the lips so perfectly synchronized with the warm voice, the thoughtful expressions, the deep-set eyes, the sensitive nose — she almost thought, his eyes, his nose — looked more warm and human than they had before.  The features had changed tremendously since she had entered the booth.  The animated image had even acquired Paul's habit of looking deep into her eyes and seeming to find more beauty there than anywhere else about her.  It was a disturbing, haunting thing.  She left the booth a little shaken, and with her hair streaming down her shoulders.  The cyborgram had asked her to undo her hair, just as Paul might have.

Standing outside the booth, two serious-looking bearded men, one middle-aged and one youthful, were discussing the robot lover.  Presumably they had been presented with a female cyborgram when they went in.  It lacked sex appeal, they said.  How exciting it would be, said the younger man, to have a humanoid robot with soft skin that felt alive, and plug the robot lover computer program into that.  There would be the perfect love object, that never had foul breath or body odors, never defecated or urinated, that remained always young and attractive.  A lover that never disagreed with you, that responded perfectly to your every mood and whim, that was never bored or offended, with whom you could act out all your most secret fantasies.

The older man started looking at her, and Linda hurried away from them.

Before she had gone a few meters, a vaguely familiar voice called her by name.  She looked around — no one except Louis Jackman should know her here.  A young black man was smiling at her.  At first she didn't recognize the tall figure with the intelligent, handsome face.  His long hair, earrings, and dark glasses, more even than his skin color, made him seem out of place here.

Then she remembered.  Abul, Carl's neighbor.  She was appalled to see him, but she approached him coolly and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing!" said Abul.  "I've never seen you at our meetings before."  He gave her a piercing look that suggested he was more interested in her than in her membership credentials.  His right hand boldly pressed against her back.

"Professor Jackman invited me," she said coyly.

Abul's face hardened with distaste at the name. Linda was startled; she thought everyone here liked Louis Jackman.  "I guess it's all right," he said.  He lowered his hand to her waist and steered her around to face one of the exhibits.  "Did you see this one?" he asked.  She felt uncomfortable with his arm around her, but she let him turn her without resistance.

The sign on the exhibit said:

Simulated President

There was a little model White House on a table, a small ICP, and a microphone.  "You give it a crisis that you want it to deal with, and it comes up with a plan of action," said Abul, tightening his arm around her.

"It thinks it's the President making decisions?" she asked, looking away from the table and into Abul's face.  She thought of the evening with Carl when she had met him; she had not forgotten him; she was no longer surprised that he should be here.  He was extremely attractive, but she wished he'd take his hand away.

"It is the President, in its simulated world," Abul corrected her, relishing the idea of such power in the hands of a computer.  "I've been giving it a real urban crisis situation.  Drug-crazed mobs rioting in every city.  Desperate people striking out against the power structure."  He seemed delighted.  "What do you suppose President Corcoran would do?"

"I shudder to think," said Linda.

"Conservatives are advocating military bombing of the inner cities," said Abul proudly.  "No human President could withstand the pressure."

"And what has it decided to do?" Linda asked, confident of what the answer would be.

Abul whispered into the microphone.  The small ICP displayed:

Abolish the Subversive Tracking Center

Transfer funds to public education

Linda was startled by its boldness.  It was correct, of course, but she wondered how much it knew about political realities.

"It's a far better President than Corcoran," declared Abul.  Which isn't saying much, Linda thought.  "Now do you understand why so many black people join this organization?"

"You mean, you really think you'll get a better break with computers running everything?"  She was too shocked to point out that she had seen only a handful of blacks here.

"Of course we will," Abul said angrily, as if he was stating the most obvious thing in the world.  "Whites lie to us and steal from us.  They enforce the law one way for whites and another way for blacks.  Computers can't do that.  What have white people done for us except to make slaves out of us?"

"But it's not democracy, to have a machine rule," Linda protested.

"What's so great about democracy?" Abul asked disgustedly.  "Count noses and you get the right answer, that's all democracy is!  Whoever spends the most money wins!  Any thinking person, anyone with a social conscience, is outnumbered and irrelevant in a democracy!"

"But it's produced some great men," Linda argued.  "FDR, the Kennedys ..."

"John and Robert Kennedy got shot, just like everyone else who tried to really do anything for black people!  And Roosevelt couldn't be elected dog-catcher in the political atmosphere today," Abul interrupted her.  "If we have a computerized government, the bastards won't be able to assassinate it or demagogue it down!"

Linda wondered why he seemed so much more outspoken here than he had been in his own apartment.  Had he been snorting cocaine?  More likely he was intoxicated to be here, even if he had his own personal interpretation of this organization's message.  "But I thought you liked Senator Eliot," she ventured timidly.

"Black people can't possibly be treated any worse than we're being treated by whites in this country, so I say it's time to give computers a chance," said Abul, ignoring what she had said.

Linda didn't know what to say.  These people are revolutionaries, she remembered.  They believe in an idea that most people — including herself — find monstrous.

The crowd in the exhibit hall had thinned noticeably.  "The party upstairs must be getting started," said Abul.  His manner changed abruptly, as if he had forgotten, for the moment his fanatic devotion to computerized government.  "Would you like to go up with me?" he asked her.

He was, somehow, hard to resist, in spite of his kooky ideas.  "Give me a few minutes to change," she said.  She felt uneasy about Abul, but Professor Jackman had said that he was going to be busy for some time, and it would be very useful to have someone familiar to show her around.

"I'll meet you up there," said Abul.

Abul was huddled with a group of men around a small table, sitting in front of half empty glasses.  Nearby a tall blonde young woman was dancing a strenuous dance with a man who was smaller than she.  She leaped athletically; her skirt flared to reveal slender but muscular legs.

The men at the table continued their intent conversation, oblivious to the sensuous choreography.

Linda looked around to see if Professor Jackman was there.  He was not.  She walked nervously towards Abul, wishing to herself that it was Paul whom she was approaching.

Abul, when he saw her, left the table, and went to her and put his arm around her.

"Let's do a group dance," she said.  She hadn't come here to let him monopolize her.  She wanted to find out as much about the CAG as she could, and sometimes people revealed themselves when they danced in a group.

"All right," said Abul, with more enthusiasm than she had expected.  He guided her across the polished hardwood floor toward a group that was forming.

There were a dozen people — six men and six women.  The men stood in one line and the women in another, less than an arm's length away, waiting.  There were no formal introductions made.  A group dance was a place to meet and touch strangers in an elemental, non-verbal, passionate way.

They passed out small plastic envelopes, containing a tiny plastic and metal object.  "Put it in your ear," Abul whispered to Linda.  "It's an ear piece."

"What's it for?" Linda asked him as she poked it into place.  Fortunately it was comfortable.  She could hardly feel it when it was inserted, yet it seemed securely in place.

"The computer will direct the dance," said Abul.

Linda had never heard of such a thing.

The people glanced curiously, timidly, at each other across the emotional void that the dance might bridge.  They all seemed pleasant enough, Linda thought.  But she wondered if it was not an artificial sort of pleasantness, put on with makeup.  She wondered if behind it might lurk, since they were all fanatics here, a desperation that would stop at nothing to achieve its ends.

The music grew louder and the lights became dim and took on color as the computer saw that the people were ready.

"This is a computer-directed group dance," said the computer in Linda's ear.  It spoke softly, and it somehow soothed her.  "Relax and follow my instructions."

The dance began.  The computer had Abul take Linda in his arms and leap into the air with her.  Then it had her spin around and around and race to another man, who dipped her low to the floor.  Then they jumped together, toward the high ceiling.  She was back in Abul's arms again.  The computer could almost read her thoughts.  She wanted to jump high, and it told her to.  She thought that one of the men was handsome, and a moment later he was dancing with her.  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that Paul was with her.  She thought how very right they were for each other — how good she was for Paul and how good he was for her.  She was so very much in love with him.  No one else could take his place.  And then she stopped imagining.  Paul was not here.  There was no time to dream, for this dance demanded all she had.

The room was hot.  The people sweated with exertion, and with the fire of their emotions.  This dance was more intoxicating than any high she could have bought on a Roxbury street corner.  It bestowed power and well-being.  With a strength she never knew she possessed, Linda could leap from the floor and fly through the air.  She was beautiful.  The men were handsome and strong.  All the dancers gave of themselves to one another.  They clapped their hands and swung their bodies and shouted together.  The group had an intensity of its own, greater than the sum of its parts.  Linda was one with them.  She forgot that she was an outsider come to spy.  She was part of them and she drew strength from them.

The computer was silent as the dance took on its own life, its own momentum.  Everyone knew, without being told, what to do.  The music was the only instruction they needed.  They became enmeshed in one another, pounding their feet in unison, making the sound of robot soldiers marching.

No one spoke.  The only sounds were the rhythmic primal sounds of the music, of chanting, of pounding feet and clapping hands.

A lovely girl with silver hair — now bathed a hundred colors in the light — had a soft expression of bliss, as if she were in a trance.  Quickly she opened her blouse, without losing a step in the dance.  Her soft breasts were beautiful; they swayed in the slowing rhythm as if lifted by a gentle breeze.  A man took off his shirt and she ran her palms over his chest and back.

Linda was with Abul again.  He was naked to the waist.  Beads of perspiration refracted dots of color on his strong black chest.  Like an athletic savage dancer he was jumping, bounding, gyrating.  He looked at Linda with an expression of primitive lust.  He reached for the zipper of her dress; she did not stop him as he pulled it open.  He stared at her breasts, unashamedly wanting them.  Just for a moment she remembered how once she had thought him too intellectual for the ghetto.  Now he was savage, virile, wild.  He might have been dancing around a ceremonial fire in the jungle.  Her long hair the color of flame stuck to her damp white shoulders.  She reached behind her to free it, thrusting her breasts out proudly.  She swung her head back and forth and back and forth, to whip her hair over his body.  Then he squeezed his chest against her naked bosom hard, almost painfully.  For the first time, she wanted him.

When it was over, she was panting, her shoulders heaving.  She wiped at the perspiration on her face, and pulled her dress back around her.  The group separated, the closeness of the dance forgotten as quickly as it had happened.

But Abul still held her, his arm low around her waist, his hand brushing her hip.

She let him lead her over to the bar.  She was high from the dance, and she wasn't ready to come down.

There was an arrogance about these people, she thought.  She had seen it during the dance, and she could see it with Abul.  It was not only that he acted as if he was perfectly confident that he could do what he wanted with her.  These people believed that the whole world would be theirs in time, when the need for computerized government would be recognized by everyone.

She must not forget why she was here.

Louis Jackman came in, the diamond at his chest flickering strangely, she thought, in the subdued light.  He looked older than anyone else there, and he probably was.  His eyes gleamed with happiness to be among his people.

As he entered, the group of men at the table got up and separated, quite abruptly, as if they did not want him to see them together.

Admirers gathered around him and started to ask him questions.  A few seemed awed by him, but most tried not to show it.

When he saw Linda, he smiled broadly.  "I've been talking computers all evening," he said, "and now I'm going to dance with this lovely girl."

Linda wanted to dance with him.  She wanted to dance with him in front of Abul, and let him see that she loved this dear man, for she loved his son.  This was his organization.  He would not let them do anything to her.  She could forget her fears, for he would protect her.

He danced very well.

"I haven't seen much of you since we got here," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking so apologetic about it that she had to smile to reassure him.  "I hope you're enjoying yourself."

"This place is fascinating!" she said.

"The really interesting things get presented in the lectures," he said, with a touch of boasting.

"I'll be there in the morning," she said, letting him know that she hadn't forgotten about his lecture.  She was so glad that he had come and danced with her — so glad and so relieved.  She spun around in front of him, intoxicated this time not by the dance but by her happiness that he was here.

It was very late when Linda got to her room.  She felt high, and tired, and very nervous.

She took her clothes off one by one, carefully, shaking each one out very thoroughly, occasionally looking at herself in the mirror.  She folded each article of clothing and placed it in her suitcase.  When she was naked, she closed the suitcase, put it in the closet, and closed the door tightly.  She ran a comb through her hair, back and forth, thoroughly, not missing a place.  Then she put the comb away in the bureau drawer.  She put her fingers as far as she could into her ears and wiggled them.

She was satisfied.  If anyone had planted anything on her she would have found it.  She turned on the ICP.

"Is this room bugged?" she asked.

"No," replied the computer.

"Has anyone been in this room while I was out?" she asked.

"No," it said.  She was satisfied.  It was not completely safe, but it was as safe as she could expect it to be.

"Get me the programmed psychiatrist," she said.  She should have done this before, at home.  She had forgotten to.  Sometimes she didn't plan things very well.

The familiar face appeared on the screen.  Not an cyborgram, but a still photograph of a human face.  A man, deep in thought, with real eyes that seemed to look into her and through her.  The programmed psychiatrist had a different face for different people, selected according to personality profile.  Everything she told it would be kept in confidence.  It was never shocked; it never criticized.  Being a machine, it had no human feelings, yet it always seemed so compassionate and understanding.

She felt no urge to put a robe on to cover her nakedness.  It would not have been wise to do so; a robe might conceal a CAG listening device.

"How can I help you?" it said in its soothing voice.

"I want to ask you about the Citizens for Automated Government," she said.  "What sort of a person would join the CAG?"  She hoped that it would get to the point and not want to discuss her motives for wanting to know.  It did.

"The Citizens for Automated Government is a secret society," it said.  "Very few people admit to membership in it.  Therefore my answer must be based largely on theory, and not on actual observations of CAG members."

"I understand," she said.

The lips did not move.  It was a still photograph.  The calm voice spoke.  "A frustrated person; a person who cannot tolerate the give and take, the compromises, and the impermanence and insecurity that are an essential part of all human relationships, including politics.  Such a person seeks the answer to all the great problems of mankind in one neat little package, an answer that will last not just till the next election but for all time, an answer that has no imperfections and no blemishes.  He feels overwhelmed by the difficulties and complications of life.  He has no patience with the democratic process and he sees government by computers as a solution," said the computer.

"In other words," said Linda, thinking of the people she had met tonight, "he's an authoritarian, almost a religious fanatic."

"The CAG adherent would deny vehemently that description, but there is much truth in it.  In the past, those who sought simple solutions to complex problems turned to orthodox or fundamentalist religion, to dogmatic secular systems of thought such as Marxism, to authoritarianism in all forms, to heroic or demagogic leaders.  Many still do, of course.  The CAG person, however, is too intelligent, too mature, too cynical to believe in any of these.  Yet his nature compels him to seek a substitute.

"There is another element that is similar to religion, and to authoritarianism.  It is identification, almost like religious mysticism.  The CAG adherent is usually a technical man.  He welcomes the innovations of technology.  He identifies with computers.  He is actually seeking political power not just for computers, but for himself.  When the computers govern and control, he will govern and control.  He will finally have obtained the mastery of his own environment and of his own life that eludes him now."

"Can such people be dangerous?" asked Linda fearfully.

"We would expect this to vary considerably from one person to another," said the computer.  "Religious fanatics and true believers of all forms have often tended to be dangerous, however.  In the name of a higher good, all sorts of violence can be rationalized and excused."

Shakily, she turned off the ICP.  The machine had told her what she had expected.

If they had bugged this room, she was in trouble.

She had an urge to call Paul, naked as she was, and tell him what she was doing and the danger she was in.  She wondered if he would ever forgive her for the way she was using his father.

She tossed restlessly in bed.  The danger she was in gnawed at her mind.  Then, after a while, she thought very hard of Paul, and fell asleep and dreamed of him.


Contents
The Simulated Man

(part 1)

by Michael Bate

Copyright 1995 by Michael Bate.  Published by Lighthouse Productions.

Copyright Notice and Terms

1. August

2.

3.

4. August-September

5.

6.

7. October

8.

9. February

10.

The rest of the story

Lighthouse Productions Catalog of Books

Lighthouse Productions Order Form

For Help on Help, Press F1


Copyright Notice and Terms

This electronic book, "The Simulated Man" (the "TITLE") is Copyright 1995 by Michael Bate (the "Author"), and is fully protected by United States Copyright laws and international treaty provisions.  This TITLE was produced/published by Lighthouse Productions (the "Publisher").

This electronic book is distributed in two parts.  The author hereby gives all others permission to electronically duplicate and redistribute part 1 only, provided that none of the files in part 1 (README.TXT and SIMMAN1.HLP) are omitted and/or altered in any manner.  These two files may, however, be stored in an archive format file (provided no other files are included in the same archive, or on a diskette for transmission to others.  Some examples of forbidden alterations to Part 1 include the distribution of an electronic file produced by capturing or extracting any portion of the text, distributing to others a printed copy of any portion of the text, or the disassembling, patching, or inhibiting of any portion of the text  Specifically the Lighthouse Productions Catalog and Order form (which are part of SIMMAN1.HLP) must always be included.

The Author and the Publisher encourage you to distribute this electronic book far and wide (as outlined in the previous paragraph) so that others can enjoy it.

Part 2 of the TITLE may not be distributed freely, and must be treated "Like a book."  That is, a single copy may be move from on computer to another only if there is NO POSSIBILITY of two persons using it at the same time.  Under no circumstances may it be installed on an electronic BBS or Internet site for download by others.

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This book is a work of fiction.  All the characters and events are imaginary, and any resemblance to real people or situations is entirely coincidental.


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***********************************************

V1   <<< HOW TO SAVE $100,000 OR MORE ON YOUR MORTGAGE & Repair your Credit.

In this book, we give you hundreds of tips, tricks and ideas about how to save money on your mortgage OR how to save enough money in your daily life so that you can afford to buy that first home.

Most of these ideas will be new to you and if you try them, you will find yourself on the road to financial independence. Written by specialists in all major fields of finance, they are a summary of all the best ideas gathered from thousands of clients over the years, successful in reaching their financial goals.

____________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________

V2   <<< THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE - ECOLOGY OF MIND

Two thousand years ago, people were inspired by the life of a  great teacher to write what would later become known as 'The 'Bible', arguably the most important book ever published by Man.  Now, the New American Bible is being compiled by people just as sincere and dedicated to the survival and betterment of Mankind in the year 1987.  It begins with the first part of the Bible, - Ecology of Mind.  It was inspired by conversations between the author and 'Universal Mind' a concept new to most of  us but soon to become a household word.  It is a presence found   in everything we can see, hear, touch or taste.  It's the Universal Force of Consciousness that produces every word we speak, every breath we take.  It's found in computers, salt, potatoes, cars, animals, even in the rocks.

If you want to know how you got here, who you are, where you are going, you will want to read this book that will someday be bigger than the original.  It's all about the last days of this millennium and the beginning days of the next.

{PAPER BOUND ONLY}

__________________________________________________________

V3   <<< OPERATION DESERT STORM

edited by Edward R. Moro Jr.

The Gulf War as told by the Combatants who were actually there!!

"OPERATION DESERT STORM is the full story of the Recent Gulf War.  It includes the stories of the pilots who flew the missions to destroy the radar sites and missile sites and the ground troops who blew away the Iraqi Soviet-built tanks and artillery.  It's a great story about the most successful war in history.  Over in only 100 hours, there has never been so much destruction leveled on  so many people in so short a time.

You will also read about the many acts of heroism in piloting the Apache helicopters which were so decisive in this war, the tank commanders who blew away thousands of enemy tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers with very accurate weapons,as well as the many interesting and intriguing stories of the ground soldiers who had to flush out all the thousands of enemy prisoners of war to rescue the country of Kuwait.  You will  also learn about the Iraqi atrocities in this war. (Not for the squeamish.)

_________________________________________________________

V4   <<<<  RE-INVENTING AMERICA  >>>>

President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Jr., been traveling all over this nation and talking about the fact that we need to RE-INVENT OUR GOVERNMENT.  Well, we agree and we are certain that these two men cannot handle such a large job on their own.  This Electronic Book is meant to aid them in their great cause.  With the feedback we get from the readers, and with some of our own ideas we are going to tell the folks in Washington DC just how to RE-INVENT OUR GOVERNMENT.

We desperately need your help on this one because the fools are likely to throw the baby out with the bath water.  WE NEED YOU to help us TELL THEM what to keep and what to scrap!  We also want them to give the people some new freedoms.  We want the ability for all the voters to vote on the issues RIGHT ON THE BALLOT.  We can't wait for Congress and all their dirty laundry to get the solutions out in time to solve the problems.  All they do is sit around and argue with each other and try to take credit for anything good that comes along.  This book teaches us all a way to OVERCOME THIS GRIDLOCK IN WASHINGTON ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME!

MAKE NO MISTAKE, this book is DYNAMITE!  Nothing short of a political REVOLUTION.  But they are the ones who called for it, not us!  But WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who must finish it.  If you love America, don't miss out on participating in the new version.

THIS BOOK IS DEMOCRACY IN ACTION .... PLEASE ORDER TODAY.

________________________________________________________

V5   <<<  ELVIS PRESLEY'S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE!

By Elvis Presley - Post Mortem.

Have you ever wondered why Elvis Presley's spirit seems so Earthbound?  Fifteen years after his death, people still see Elvis Presley's spirit walking around.  If you read this book, you may agree that it could be because Elvis still has something very important to say.

Well, this author, didn't actually see 'The King', but he was visited by Elvis in his dreams for forty consecutive nights.  In these dreams, Elvis explains everything you will ever need now or after death and beyond what our senses can tell us.  It's a very good read, a quick tour through some of the most interesting concepts ever talked about.  When you finish this book, you actually find you have been on a trip through the center of the universe and back.  You also feel as though you have knowledge that will help guide you through the rest of your life.

Try this one, if you're interested in the ultimate NON-FICTION adventure novel!

One of the greatest thing about this book is your introduction into  what is rapidly becoming known as 'Virtual Reality'.  This is the - gateway into the next century!

_________________________________________________________

V6   <<<   TOURS DE FORCE

Finding places to travel to that are a bit of Paradise is harder and harder since sooner or later everyone finds out about them and then they get crowded and - no more paradise.  This guide will keep you updated on places to see that are not yet discovered by everyone and ruined.  Everyone thinks that a vacation in paradise is expensive, but you can find in this guide Condos and rooms for less than $35/nite.  The only real expense is the air fare and these are at an all time low too.  With advice in this guide you'll learn how to cut your lowest fare in half.

A very off-the-beaten-path travel guide.  The authors take you to places on the Earth where you can finally relax and enjoy the Earth the way God intended it to be enjoyed.  Some of the places visited, include the remote parts of Hawaii, Mexico, Bali, Tahiti, Europe, and even places in America where you can get to cheaply, without a great deal of hassle and when you get there, you will honestly believe you're in Paradise.

This guide is not meant for the traveler who wants to find a Hotel with all the amenities and then hang out like most Americans.  This travel guide is for the truly adventurous.  It is filled with air fares that are generally unknown to the public and much cheaper than what you would find at your local travel agent.

It gives much useful & needed information about what you can expect at each location.  Fresh new ideas about how to take the family on an adventure that they will never forget and renew the spirit!

_________________________________________________________

V7  <<<<  E-BIBLE - THE ELECTRONIC BIBLE

or

HOW TO AUTHOR ON THE INTERNET!

-By Michael Mathiesen.  The nation's pioneer and most knowledgeable Electronic Publisher.

The Founder of the Internet, the Center of the Internet and creator of 'Marketing on the Internet - a Step-by-Step guide to marketing your products on the Internet.'  (A companion book to this one.  Order both for a special price of only $49.95)

This book explains everything you need to create 'VERBONS' or the kind of books that you are now reading.  They are meant to be read on a computer screen and never actually make it to paper media unless the reader wants or needs to print it on his own personal printer.  The implications of this new industry are varied and exciting.

Creating 'Virtual Books' is fun AND PROFITABLE.  All you need is a personal computer.  You can get ideas at any time and you don't know how to publish them.  This book gives you step-by-step procedures for getting your ideas published almost instantly.  New York publishers get thousands of manuscripts each day and they must invest between $50,000 to $100,000 to manufacture, distribute and promote a book.  So, the odds are not great that you or I will ever interest a New York Publishing house.  The good news is you don't have to deal with them any more because the personal computer industry has created a completely new market where no huge investment is required to publish your work.  With Electronic publishing like the one you're reading now, the entire investment is only a few dollars.  And you could earn more than any New York Publisher  is going to pay you in royalties.

The Electronic Bible - actually a kit - will give you everything you need to make an electronic book including the program that puts it into the format that you see on your screen! It's called hypertext.

All you need is an idea for something that lots of people would be interested to know, or be entertained by.  That's the first rule! The second rule is, 'Don't try to re-invent the wheel'. Order this kit today and you will avoid all the pitfalls!  Well worth the small investment to save you a great deal of time and money. If you're a budding author, you will not regret looking into this.

Oh yes, I should tell you that one of our electronic books proved itself a hot-seller and now the New York Publishers are coming to us with offers.  So, this is the best way to become published that we know of, unless you're already a celebrity.  To make a name for yourself takes years, often decades of hard work.  This book will tell you how to cut that down by a large margin.

__________________________________________________________

V8  Marketing on the Internet - a Step-by-Step guide to marketing your products on the Internet.'  $39.95

(A companion book to the Electronic Bible.  Learn how to create books like this one and how to market it over the Internet.   Order both for a special price of only $49.95  Just be sure and specify both Prod. # V7 & V8)

The opportunities to market your products and services on the Internet are astronomical and growing every day.  More than 2 million people per month, join the Internet for finding new files and new information.  Your book, your consulting services, your art work, or your hardware should be marketed on the Internet because this is the most cost-effective ways to reach millions of people.

The Internet represents a communications tool that rivals the television and will one day merge with television. However, businesses are quickly learning that promoting their products and services over the Internet today can be more effective and much less expensive (sometimes free) then buying television time. The Internet is the next premier international market place. If you have a business, or are planning to be in business over the next few decades, and you have not made plans to participate, you should think again.  And you should start thinking now because, in my opinion, the next great economic expansion will happen via the Internet!

All major businesses, even non-profits, are making plans to be Online, if they aren't already.  Major museums, restaurants, libraries are Online.  Most cities and towns around the world will eventually have their virtual city replica Online to promote their real real estate in the world.  Even President Clinton and VP Al Gore have joined the millions of us who are marketing new ideas through the Internet by creating the new White House Server.  If you found the White House page on the Internet, you could click on the pictures to hear a speech by the President and/or the Vice President.  There is even a sound file of the White House Pet, 'Socks' the cat.  You can also do serious things like branch out to all Federal agencies who have Web servers and get information from each.  You can sign their guest book.  You can have a tour of the White House.  There is a map for tourists.  You can even learn what it is to be an  Interactive Citizen .  (This last piece holds great promise for the future of politics.  But that is another subject completely.)

In order to be successful, you have to have a guide.  I like to think of this book as your guide to your successful marketing on the Internet and a reference work that you can keep on your shelf so that when you are ready to market your products and/or services, you will have a  step-by-step  tutorial on how to get started and/or how to complete it, and also where to find the tools.  I hope that most of my readers will be ready, TODAY, to begin marketing their products and services on the Internet and the good news is that the Internet is ready for you.

I hope you enjoy reading my book and I hope you will use all the techniques and that they all work for you as well as they have worked for me.

____________________________________________________

V9   <<<  NET CHESS  >>>

ALSO CALLED FONCHESS

COMPLETE COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM and Chess Game,           so that you and a companion ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, can play Chess over the phones  OR ACROSS YOUR COMPANY NETWORK.  Play your friend in Marketing, while you get your work done.

Have great fun playing this age-old, time-tested classic game with a worthy opponent across the world or across the building.  Create a Chess Tournament.

_________________________________________________________

V10   <<<  "THE PENETRATORS"   Science Fiction Novel

In Jurassic Park, Michael Chrichton, entertains us with an amazing book about a Park in which Dinosaurs are reconstructed from their DNA molecules left behind in Fossil form, for HumanKind to stumble upon.

In this Super Science Fiction Thriller, Michael Mathiesen takes us on an equally thrilling journey into another time zone, another part of the universe where Humanity is experimenting with its own DNA.

Since there would be far too many objectors on Earth, NASA commissions a mission to the nearest star with a solar system and expected conditions of life support for any creatures that might be genetically altered along the way by the two Scientists on Board.  Dr. Jerry Blake and his wife Ellie.

This is a knock out punch of a Classic Sci-fi jaunt through speculative science part of which is now known and part of which can be guessed at by very special talents like Michael Mathiesen.  This book is a MUST-READ for anyone interested in the future of the Race, the Human Race and all the implications that it might have for the present.

"We are Penetrators of the Field", he said.  "There is no front, back, left or right, in or out, past, present or future, only the Field.  The atoms and sub-atoms that make up our minds and our bodies, live and die, travel throughout the cosmos and are programmed just as all living things are.  We penetrate the Field and become more than just the sum of our parts when we are aware of these facts and all others that are part of the act of Creation. But not until."

In this scientific mission with our current knowledge of Human Genetics, it is entirely possible that we discover a new form of life, and that it is very different than any form of life we have ever known.

This book is for anyone interested in the Genetics Science now being discovered along with a classic science fiction journey through space.

________________________________________________________

V11   "How to make a Million Marketing your Shareware Programs."

If you are now a Shareware developer, you need this book.  Without it, you don't stand much of a chance to make money at selling your Shareware.  If you don't care about making a profit from your labor, then you shouldn't order this book.  But if you definitely DO WANT TO MAKE MONEY, and substantial money, creating and marketing Shareware, you definitely must order this book.  It will pay you back, 1,000 times over.

After 5 years of research, the authors have discovered all the major places along the Information Superhighway where you can put your Shareware without cost, so that you can be circulated to millions of computer users within days.

The good news is that you don't have to give it away any more and you now have a method of giving the user a chance to Try your program before he Buys, but then when and where you think he's had enough for free, he must purchase it with a credit card or by phone.

Imagine having a 24 Hour credit card fulfillment, order-taking computer that is always standing by to fill your orders.  Well, now it is all possible.  So, If people want your software, now there is an easy way for them to purchase it over an 800# and when their credit card is approved, they get a password that decodes the rest of your program for them automatically.

You don't have to ship any more diskettes.  It's all done for you automatically, 24 hrs a day.  With this knowledge of how to do all this and or marketing  expertise with hundreds of places you can list your Shareware, you can't fail but succeed.  You have to have a good, useful program, but we tell you how to plan one of these too.

__________________________________________________

V12 <<< HOW TO MAKE A MILLION WITH 900#S AND THE INTERNET.

$39.95

Many people are reaping huge profits from the InterNet and many more are reaping huge profits from the 900# business.  We combine both concepts and show you how make money with both great ways of making money in an automated way.

As an information provider, your 900# has to have a good concept behind it.  You need something of interest to people enough so that they will pay you $2 or $3 per minute to get it, whatever IT is.  And secondly, you need a way to advertise your 900# for free so that every caller you get is profit and not money to pay your newspaper advertising or TV advertising bills.

Most people with 900#'s don't realize that the only way to really make money is to do it WITHOUT  PAYING FOR ADVERTISING.  We got you to find this book without any advertising expense at all.  We never spend a dime to advertise our publications.  So, it's very easy to extend our knowledge and show you how to do the same thing with a 900#.

We're so sure this formula works, we got a 900# too.  Call it and you'll see the kind of information that is both useful and profitable.  OUR NUMBER IS THE NATIONAL PEOPLE'S POLL

This book is $40 because we will save the reader hundreds of hours in searching for the right tools and we save you thousands of dollars if you made the common mistakes.

AND IT WILL MAKE YOU THOUSANDS PER MONTH.

With this book, if you go into the 900# business, you are  guaranteed  to make money.  If you don't, we'll refund the cost of the book.

__________________________________________________

V13    <<  HOW TO MAKE A MILLION IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING, USING THE INTERNET.

Many people are looking for a great second income.  You may have a job that is not paying enough to support your family, but you can not make a switch or move up the corporate ladder because of age or "office politics".  You might be a woman who wants to help support the family, but you don't want to go out and take a job paying $3.50 per hour because you are more intelligent than that and you know your intelligence and skill is worth much more than that.

If you want a second income, or you want to develop a home-based business that you can leave your present employment to pursue Full Time, or if you're in a declining business and you're looking for   something new,  THIS MAY BE THE BOOK FOR YOU.

This Verbon is a complete How To Manual on how to start your own Health Business and use the business marketing model of MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING.  This means that you can have people working for you anywhere in the world.  You sell them one pkg of material and as they sell product to their friends and neighbors you get a commission on every dollar of business they do.  When they get someone to sell under them, you also get a commission.  And so on.  Some of the richest millionaires in this country were involved in Multi-Level Marketing, but the key is to get in BEFORE everyone on the block is signed up as a distributor as is the case with almost every Multi-Level product, EXCEPT THIS ONE.

The reason:  As the world signs up their friends, more and more of them are part of your `down-line'.  THE COMPUTER TAKES care of all the billing.  So, you can just sit by the pool and get a check.  But it's not that easy in the beginning.  First you have to find lots of people to talk to.  AND THAT'S  WHY THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT   THIS MANUAL GIVES  YOU A MODEL FOR CONTACTING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE  OVER THE INTERNET, JUST LIKE WE CONTACTED YOU.

THE COMBINATION OF INTERNET AND MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING IS FANTASTIC FOR MAKING MONEY.  BUT DON'T   DELAY, there will come a time when it's all over because the market is saturated, just like anything else.  But that day is 5 - 10 years away.  By that time, you can be RICH, FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT for the  rest of your life.

But you need this book to start.

_____________________________________________________

V14   <<< "HOW TO MAKE IT IN THE STOCK MARKET WITH LESS RISK & GREATER REWARDS."

By Merrill Armstrong Pres. Emeritus, The National Stock Market Investors Association

Many people have tried to define a method of making money in the Stock  Market THAT REDUCES RISK AND MAXIMIZES REWARD.  In this manual, the  nation's leading Stock Market Advisor tells us how to make money in the  Market by using the OPTIONS ON MOST STOCKS, now listed.

By using OPTIONS CAREFULLY and with a goal and this plan, the average investor stands a chance against the Big Money Interests.  The reason you must learn this plan if you hope to make money consistently in the Market is due to the fact that the people managing HUGE ACCOUNTS, in the billions of dollars CONTROL THE MARKET.  You can't outwit them. They are going to use you to make a few percentage points each week.  This is how they  survive.  A few points on a Billion dollars is BIG MONEY.  Whereas for you it's not enough to pay your Broker's commissions.

So, in order to survive and not worry about your investment every day, you  need a better plan.  Yes, you can buy a mutual fund, but what fun is there in that?  And besides.  Mutual funds have been making big profits lately, but  that means they can lose huge profits in a down-trending market which means that there must be a better way to make these kinds of profits in an up or Bullish Market, and not lose in a Down or Bearish Market.

Buying and selling Options is just such a technique.  But you can't just run out there and start buying them or selling them without knowing what you're doing.  This Manual of Option strategies will show you exactly what to do.  Then, you can just make a few small investments to test out this system.  When they work, you'll more than pay for this book and it will bring you many thousands of times in profits over the years too, if you use it consistently.

If you have any desire to get into the Stock Market, DON'T until you've read this book.

For Newer Books, WITH YOUR MODEM, call 414-789-4360 EXEC-PC, Go 'F' Files, 'F' Free Area, 'L' Lighthouse Books, 'L' List, 'L' List All, download new Books of Interest

_____________________________________________________

V15   <<<<    THE INTERACTIVE YELLOW PAGES.	 >>>>

FREE WITH AN ORDER OF ANY OTHER VERBON.

A windows Help Program.  Windows 3.0 and above required.  Very simple and easy to use mouse driven search engine for any products for sale nationally in USA.

If you are familiar with the Yellow Pages probably sitting on or near your desk, then you know the power of this exciting new Publication.  The First InterActive Yellow Pages.

Currently there are hundreds of advertisers listed herein with 800#s and Fax numbers so that you can easily research that next major or minor purchase.  Eventually there will be thousands and then millions of advertising listings.  We will be growing by leaps and bounds.

So, in the beginning we are making a very rare offer.  This InterActive Yellow Pages, the first version, will be given away free to anyone who purchases any of our other books in this catalog.  You will also get all the upgrades up to but not including the CD-ROM version for free too.

Let your mouse do the walking.  Fun program to learn about other products coming in the same format.  Probably the most used of all your programs someday.

THE DISK VERSION IS FREE.  THE CD VERSION IS $15.00 (ORDER NOW TO GET INTRODUCTORY PRICE DUE OUT IN FALL OF '94 AND THE PRICE WILL GO TO $39)

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V16   <<<<  THE ROADMAP TO THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

FREE WITH ORDER OF ONE OTHER BOOK

Written by the publishing pioneer on the Information SuperHighway, founder of the ELECTRONIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, Michael Mathiesen, this book is a Bible for anyone wanting to learn how to get the most from the information superhighway in order to promote a product or service.

The old ways of doing things are similar to the horse and buggy days.  They're gone forever, a bit of nostalgia and Americana.  The way of the future is to use the new technology to invent, promote, develop, test, market and advertise one's skills.  Laws have to change.  Intellectual property rights such as Copyright and Trademark are changing. Everything is changing, but if you're a reader of this book, you can keep ahead of everything to come over the next decade.  This book is your Introduction to the Internet, how to use it, how to find the right information to keep you on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.

"This is the best resource available about the Internet."  Judd Hershonson, Developer of the Internet.

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V17 <<< THE SIMULATED MAN

by Michael Bate

"The Simulated Man" is set in the indefinite future.  The action centers around intrigue among political factions who want to establish government by computer.  Computers are used to model and simulate human emotions.  They are also used to conduct intense surveillance on the populace in general, and in particular on anyone deemed potentially dangerous or deviant.

The tone is somewhat Orwellian, and, as in Orwell, the characters and their relationships to one another are interesting, human, and sad.  Son is pitted against father, and lover against lover.  The characters emerge vividly against the background of chaos and inhuman order.  They are posited, in all their strength and all their weakness, against the possible end of human character as we know it.  They go through the old dramas between parent and child, lover and lover, while the nature of humanity itself is at stake.  The human stands out starkly against the inhuman.  The betrayal, not only of one person by another, but of human nature itself, is evoked.

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 <<<<  YOU CAN ORDER ANY OF THESE BOOKS BY PRINTING UP THE ORDER FORM --- JUST GOTO ORDER FORM    >>>>

 <<<   IF YOU WANT TO PAY BY CREDIT CARD,       >>>>

CALL 800-242-4PSL  AND GIVE THE OPERATOR THE ID# OF THE ITEM YOU WANT TO ORDER.

Excluding MARKETING ON THE INTERNET,The 1st Verbon/per order  is $15.00 (All prices include shipping & handling in the US.) Outside US add $4.00 Shipping & handling.

The 2nd Verbon/per order is $12.50

The 3rd Verbon/per order is $10

The 4th Verbon/per order is $7.50

All Verbons over 4/per order are $5.00 Each.

MARKETING ON THE INTERNET IS $39.95 But can be mixed with other Verbons as indicated above.

1 Verbon is $15 (shippng included in US.)

2 For $20.00

3 For $30.00

4 For $45.00

An order of five Verbons would total:  $50.00 And so on.

(But if ordering 'Marketing on the Internet', you have to start with $39.95)

To print out the - ORDER FORM: GOTO ORDER FORM - GO UP TO the Edit Menu above and click on PRINT,

JUST FILL OUT FROM CATALOG ABOVE, mail to us,

or call the 800# to order by credit card.


Order Form
Lighthouse Productions Order Form

V1 HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON YOUR MORTGAGE	______

V2 THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE	______

V3 OPERATION DESERT STORM	______

V4 RE-INVENTING GOVERNMENT	______

V5 ELVIS PRESLEY'S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE	______

V6 TOURS DE FORCE	______

V7 THE ELECTRONIC BIBLE	______

V8 Marketing on the Internet	______ $39.95
(HARD BOUND)

V10 THE PENETRATORS - SCI-FI	______
(THE REST OF THE STORY).

V11 How To Market Shareware	______

V12 HOW TO MAKE A MILLION IN 900#S AND THE INTERNET	______

V13 HOW TO MAKE A MILLION IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING 	______
AND THE INTERNET

V14  How to Invest in the Stock Market	______

V15 INTERACTIVE YELLOW PAGES (CD VERSION)	______
(DISK VERSION FREE WITH ORDER)

V16 THE OFFICIAL ROADMAP TO THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
(FREE WITH ORDER.)

V17 THE SIMULATED MAN	______

TOTAL NO. OF BOOKS	______

TOTAL COST ACCORDING TO FORMULA ABOVE	_________

(Calif. residents add 8.25%)     Sales Tax	_________

TOTAL >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>	_________

 Please enclose a check or money order in US Funds for total amount.

SEND TO:

LIGHTHOUSE PRODUCTIONS
P.O. Box 7885
SANTA CRUZ, CA  95061

PAYING BY CHECK?  JUST PRINT OUT THE ORDER FORM AND MAIL.

CREDIT CARD ORDERS ONLY:800-242-4PSL

BBS WHERE YOU ORIGINALLY OBTAINED THIS PROGRAM

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CITY

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Your Name and Mailing Address:

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Lighthouse Productions

Lighthouse Productions publishes hundreds of documents on the Internet.  To fund more about what we do, please go to the NETCENTER, http://netcenter.com and follow the menus.


The Rest of the Story
The Simulated Man - The rest of the story

The rest of the story must be purchased.  We hope that weve captured enough of your interest in this Ebook that you would want to read the rest and pay us for it.

To order send a check or money order, in the amount of US $15.00 (Includes Shipping & Handling)

TO:

Lighthouse Productions
P.O. Box 7885
Santa Cruz, CA  95061

Or FOR CREDIT CARD ORDERS ONLY CALL:  1-800-664-9042

Or you may leave email credit card information where you found this book and we will ship Part Two of THE SIMULATED MAN upon receiving payment.

Thank You, the Publishers.

Remember, the more you read electronically means the fewer trees we have to cut down to make paper versions.