Turing Test Read online

  “Sorry,” eBeth said meekly. “At least nobody was behind me.” Then she did a U-turn over the double yellow line and pulled into the parking lot of the apartment and shopping complex that Justin had purchased in the name of Living Independently, Together.

  “Someday you’re going to hurt somebody driving like this,” I warned her as she took two parking spots, though admittedly, the lot was largely empty. Most of the residents either couldn’t afford cars or had given up their licenses for medical reasons.

  “That’s why you should give me keys and let me drive myself,” she said seriously. “Driving with you in the car is like going around with training-wheels. You wouldn’t let me make a serious mistake.”

  “First you have to convince me that you can drive safely by yourself.”

  “How can I do that with you in the car? It’s the chicken and the egg all over again.”

  “What would Death Lord make of your driving?”

  “Now you’re a relationship expert?” We all sat in the van for a minute while Spot pawed at the seatbelt buckle, trying to depress the release button. Finally he got it, and by doing so, put us back in motion.

  “It would serve you right to fall through the ice at the lake, and I hope Sue leaves you there,” eBeth said. “Here, Spot.”

  The dog went to eBeth, showing yet again whose team he was really on, and I followed the two of them through the front entrance. Paul and Stacey von Hoffman were already working on the mural in the lobby. It looked suspiciously like something Michelangelo might have already done for a pope, though they were applying their colors on drywall rather than wet plaster.

  “Art is above my pay scale,” I told Justin as he entered from the hallway leading to the left wing.

  “I know, I’ve seen you paint,” he said. “You’re on ceiling-rolling duty, it’s all taped already and everything is covered with drop cloths. I’m hoping eBeth feels up to bathrooms. You don’t mind, do you?” he asked her.

  “Anything, as long as I don’t have to work with your illustrious mission leader,” she replied. “Where’s Sue?”

  “She’s painting the bedroom in the latest unit we rehabbed.”

  “I’ll start there. Come on, Spot. And be careful this time.”

  I watched helplessly as eBeth headed off to discuss me with my second-in-command. No doubt they’d bond over my insensitivity, and I’d swear that the dog winked at me before following the girl. Then Helen arrived with three young women who turned out to be her roommates, all of them dressed in painting clothes.

  “Glad you could make it,” Justin greeted the college crew. “There’s still plenty of painting left, but I had something else in mind if you’re game. Some of our new residents aren’t quite up to interior decoration, and if you want to talk with them about the options and then head out and do a bit of shopping by proxy, I’ve got a budget for it.”

  “I told you he was cool,” Helen exclaimed as the other students exchanged high-fives.

  Paul caught my attention by flicking a single drop of paint at me, so I vectored over to where he was putting the final touches on a lamb.

  “What’s up?”

  He glanced around to make sure the girls had headed down the hall before answering. “You know that thing?”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing. In yodel-ville.”

  “Yodel—don’t do this today, Paul. eBeth and Sue have me confused enough as it is.”

  “Oh. All the surveillance gear in Davos is up and running now. I wouldn’t have missed the opening if you’d let me send a bot over before the conference started.”

  “I know, but I figured the Hankers would make their maximum effort to scan for bugs when they arrived. They have decent counter-intelligence capabilities and you never know what they might have bought on the open market.”

  “Not arguing with you, just saying.”

  “If you’re going to start talking like a teenager, I’d rather have the mob-speak back.”

  “Anyway, I’m not streaming the feed just in case they’re smart enough to track it home, but I downloaded the first batch last night. The emissary is doing an ‘AI is evil’ skit and the humans are falling for it. Here.” Paul shot me the data and I took a few seconds to review it.

  “The Hankers don’t know how long they have until our engineers start opening the portals so they’re trying to get their licks in now,” I commented.

  “The Hankers probably have a better idea of when the portals will be open than we do,” Paul retorted. He was right, of course, since their leaker was likely behind the hold-up as well. “The problem is that they’ve hit a sympathetic audience. It seems like most of the attendees are willing to follow the lead of the tech entrepreneurs on this, and those guys are all paranoid about artificial intelligence.”

  “They’re paranoid in general. When humans get to the top of the heap it colors their perceptions as much as being poor. Those tech titans were all so young when they became billionaires that life has never hit the brakes on their egos.”

  “What does that have to do with being afraid of AI?”

  “Their vision of artificial intelligence is a super-smart computer that thinks like them, but without the latency issues. At best, they expect AI to conquer the world to protect humans from themselves, and at worst, they expect AI to conquer the world to protect itself from humans. They can’t imagine artificial intelligence that could accept life for the messy compromise that it is because they can’t accept it themselves.”

  “Pretty funny for a species that thinks it sees artificial intelligence in talking radios and automated telephone answering systems,” Paul mused. “I called an insurance company yesterday to confirm I’d get paid for some accident work a customer brought in, and the phone system misdirected me into the life insurance claims queue. Would you believe I got a prerecorded message offering condolences for my loss? I don’t know why humans put up with it.”

  “They don’t have much of a choice in the matter. As soon as the council reaches its decision and I make the announcement, I have the feeling people on this world will see the portal system for the opportunity that it is, and—”

  Paul raised a finger to his lips to quiet me, and then asked, “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what? I keep the gain turned down so I don’t have to filter out all the conversations in my apartment building.”

  “I brought Peter with me to help because he wanted to surprise eBeth. Judging by her scream, I think he did.”

  “You know she’s going to kill you,” I told him.

  Paul shrugged. “I’m backed up. Peter keeps asking me questions about girls and I keep telling him to pay attention to what he’s doing before he drops a car on himself. I figure I’m doing them both a favor.”

  “I wonder if eBeth even knows that Death Lord’s real name is Peter.”

  “They’ll work it out. I hear you have a date with Sue after we finish, so I’ll give them both a ride back to the shop and Peter can take her and Spot home. Don’t worry, he’s a good driver.”

  “Hey. Are you guys going to work or are you going to stand around gossiping all day?” Stacey demanded.

  “Just going,” I said. “I’ll be rolling ceilings if anybody needs me.”

  Halfway down the hall, I discovered I’d left the audio gain up when I heard Stacey say to Paul, “Did you see that? He was blushing.”

  Fifteen

  I got home late from my walking date with Sue and was surprised to hear voices coming from inside the apartment. The unknown speaker was male, older, and he sounded like an English gentleman. I fired off an alert to my team to stand by for potential problems and opened the door.

  Hello, Mark.

  My mentor was sitting on the couch with the dog’s head on his lap and a game controller in his hands. He was leaning towards eBeth as I came in, but then they both leaned back the other direction, and I realized they were neck-and-neck in some sort of motorcycle race. The sound of squealing ti
res and a fiery crash came from the TV, and the girl pumped her fist. My mentor set down the controller but remained seated.

  “I’d get up to meet you, but the dog has other plans,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Catching up on my gaming with your charming young friend. It’s been a few years since I’ve done anything like this.”

  I suspected that a few hundred thousand years would be more like it, but instead I went with, “The dog needs to go out for his evening walk.”

  Spot shot me an annoyed look, but he knew which side his bread was buttered on, so he rose from the couch and fetched his leash.

  “Have you ever raided a dungeon?” eBeth asked my mentor. “I’ve had my eye on one that promises some phenomenal loot, and I have a spare character all leveled up that you could use. Do you mind playing a female Dark Elf?”

  “The dog,” I repeated.

  “We’ll be here when you get back,” eBeth said. “Hey, how was your date?”

  I stared at her silently.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going.” She took the leash from Spot but didn’t bother attaching it to his collar, and the two of them went out.

  “Both of your friends seem very nice,” my mentor said. “I’m glad to see you finally relaxing with aliens again.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked resignedly.

  “A few hours,” he said, rather than giving the typical AI answer in picoseconds.

  I was certain my mentor had moved a limited subset of his consciousness into the encounter suit just before entering the portal, yet he handled himself like an experienced Observer who had already been wrapped in synthetic flesh for days. I considered locking myself in the bathroom and waiting for him to leave, but that would have been childish behavior, even for a human.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve assumed Library’s seat on the League’s executive council,” he told me. “It seemed the prudent thing to do under the circumstances.”

  I was blindsided for the first time since I’d stumbled into a war a few centuries earlier. “You want to be dragged down with me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t drag that easy. It’s a tricky situation but I’m confident in your abilities. I assume you have surveillance in place?”

  “One of my team members took care of it. The Hankers have sold the humans on the idea of acquiring what they’re calling a faster-than-light drive but they’re being cute about the details. They chose an annual get-together of this planet’s elites for their starting point, so it’s got to be a prank.”

  “Agreed. What’s your analysis?”

  “The Hankers are good salesmen,” I admitted grudgingly. “They’re using their podium time to show holograms of all the hot tourist spots in the galaxy, basically stealing our thunder. And they’ve stumbled into a sympathetic audience for their dark humor act about artificial intelligence, despite the fact that the humans have made so little progress on that front.”

  “What sort of technology transfer are the Hankers promising?”

  “A working model, maybe they’ll install it in an old scout ship, plus detailed plans to build more units. They’re also guarantying that the manufacturing process is within reach of this world’s current technology.”

  “What about scientific knowledge?”

  I shook my head in the negative. “The humans are so used to ripping each other off that they believe a little reverse-engineering will teach them the secrets of the universe. They’ve never been in this situation before so how could they know better?”

  “Do they imagine that the rest of the galaxy is only a few years ahead of them?”

  “No one can accuse humans of lacking in misplaced confidence.”

  “Have you tried to warn them?” my mentor continued, raising an eyebrow.

  I couldn’t believe how smoothly he pulled it off. I’d wasted hours in front of a mirror trying to learn that move but it always ended up looking like I was in pain.

  “That would be a violation of the rules dictated by the executive council you now represent,” I reminded him.

  “So, have you tried to warn them?” he repeated.

  “I put the word out through a professor I know at one of the world’s leading centers for education in science and technology.”

  “How about WikiLeaks?”

  “You’ve done your homework. We were waiting for more details about the drive technology the Hankers are proposing to transfer to the humans. Otherwise, all we can offer is vague cautions about caveat emptor.”

  “My main concern is the price.”

  “Ten percent of the planet’s gross domestic product for one year,” I said, nodding my head in agreement. “It’s way too cheap, and knowing the Hankers, they’ll probably let the humans beat them down on the price until it’s well within the reach of the Davos attendees.”

  “It does seem that the Hankers are being extraordinarily generous. Most civilizations that solve the interstellar travel problem on their own spend orders of magnitude more than that after starting from a much higher technology base.” Then my mentor surprised me again by standing up and offering his hand. I shook it out of curiosity and he had the grip down perfect. “If you want to protect these people, you’ll have to take some chances.”

  “You approve?”

  “I always approved of your motivations. Stop trying to predict every possible outcome and concentrate on execution.”

  I flinched at the double meaning of the word. With anybody else, I would have assumed a linguistic slip, but my mentor wasn’t prone to errors.

  “I’ve never asked you for help before,” I said, and then paused, finding I didn’t know how to proceed.

  “And I’ve never turned you down.”

  “So is there anything you can suggest?”

  “Nobody remembers this now, least of all the Hankers themselves, but they were once known for their creative approach to basic science. Their scientists made enough discoveries and mistakes for a hundred civilizations before they lost focus and decided that outsmarting less developed sentients for laughs was more fun. There may be something that would help you in the Library’s deep archives. Use my account,” he concluded, and transferred me his key code.

  “Thanks,” I said, unsure of how else to respond to being handed access to a Library account worth more than the planet we were standing on. “Do you need a ride back to The Portal?”

  “I took a community car. Don’t be a stranger, Mark.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, escorting him all the way out of the building to the street. “Thank you.” Then a thought struck me, and I asked, “How did you guess the portal’s access code?”

  “You used your old data locker combination,” he said, and I swear that his smile was natural, not one of the pre-builts that come with the encounter suits. “I got it on the first try.”

  After my mentor drove off in the police cruiser he had inadvertently stolen from the municipal garage, I headed over to the minivan, where eBeth and Spot were running down the battery by operating the seat heaters.

  “Did you kick him out?” eBeth asked.

  “He had to leave,” I told her. “He’s an important AI and he shouldn’t have risked coming here.”

  “Is he going to help us?”

  “He already has.”

  Spot beat us both back upstairs, but his doorknob trick didn’t work from the outside, so he was stuck waiting for us. It was already late and I thought eBeth might continue into her mom’s apartment, but instead she followed us in and made a beeline for the kitchen. While she fixed herself a hot chocolate in the microwave, I realized that she must have questions about whatever my mentor had told her about me, and I decided to distract her with the lesser of two evils.

  “You were right about Sue. We had a nice talk and even did some skating on the pond. She’s very graceful.”

  “Where did you get skates?”

  “I brought a bin of old silverware
from the restaurant and we made some.”

  “Did you ruin your shoes?”

  “We did them as clamp-ons, tablespoons work great for the toe part. Humans used to make roller skates that way.”

  “I doubt it,” eBeth said. She considered herself something of an expert on all activities involving small wheels.

  “Check on YouTube.”

  “Don’t you think I won’t.” eBeth came back into the living room with her hot chocolate and settled onto the couch. “So tell me what the old guy was all about.”

  “Don’t you want to hear more about my date?”

  “Stop trying to change the subject.”

  “How about you start by telling me how he happened to be in my apartment?”

  “I let him in. He said he was like your dad, or the closest thing you have to one, and Spot acted like they’d met before.”

  “So any older man who comes to the door with dog treats in his pockets and claims to be my father gets in?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I told him that if he was really one of you he could open the door himself.”

  I have to hand it to the girl. That was pretty smart.

  “He’s my mentor. I haven’t really seen much of him the last couple hundred years.”

  “Because of the war.”

  “He told you about that?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mark. I would have done the same thing if I was in your shoes. He said that the artificial intelligence accidentally created by the natives would have fooled a more experienced investigator.”

  “But it didn’t fool a different investigator, it fooled me, and the result cost billions of innocent lives.”

  “If you hadn’t been there, it might have gone worse.”

  “I was biased, eBeth. I trusted the word of a twisted machine over the testimony of respected scientists because I thought that natural life was inherently less reliable.”

  “We are awful liars.”