Turing Test Read online

  “What if they take the stairs up to check the rest of the building?” I asked.

  “Why would they? All the evidence points to a gang of international artifacts smugglers coming with trucks and cleaning the place out. Anyway, I’ve got backup cameras and gas canisters on the second floor as well, so if they explore too much, I’ll deal with it.”

  “Call me if it happens,” eBeth said. “I had a lot of fun.”

  “You worked hard,” Stacey von Hoffman said, and handed the girl a tiny glowing crystal. I’d been planning on giving eBeth a crystal before I left Earth, but we can only generate one every thirty-odd years and I was still waiting for the timer to count down from my last gifting. “It’s an honorary citizenship pass for Library. I’m not saying you should go visit or anything, it’s kind of set up for AI, but once Earth joins the portal network, you can get some pretty good discounts at participating retailers.”

  As we pulled up in front of the apartment building, I couldn’t help commenting to eBeth, “You took my announcement about the Hankers pretty calmly. I was worried you might find it upsetting.”

  “Aliens from outer space? As opposed to you and your merry team of AI from the other side of the galaxy?”

  Right. It’s easy to forget.

  Seven

  Friday evenings we do a buffet at The Portal with all-you-can-eat for $7.95 a head. Some of the customers wonder if that covers the cost of ingredients, but there’s no surf-and-turf hiding under the lettuce. On the other hand, I once overheard the lieutenant describing the spread as ‘Breakfast anytime combined with American-Chinese and twenty-ways-to-cook-a-potato.’ I don’t think that’s entirely fair because we put out a lot of pasta dishes as well. Plus, it gives the cooking students a chance to work on their institutional food skills.

  What makes the buffet special is that the condiments and beverages are only available on request from the waitstaff. Every table is supplied with a laminated plastic menu that features pictures of ketchup bottles and drinks for the patrons to indicate their needs. The explanation I put out is that we’re training the staff to work in high-noise environments and foreign resorts, which is true in a manner of speaking. From time to time I’ve experimented with tricking the customers into ordering in alien languages, but their pronunciation of transliterated words is so bad that it probably does more harm than good.

  Everybody in the dinner crowd greeted eBeth and Spot by name as we threaded our way through the dining room. As usual, a few scraps came the dog’s way, and he did his job making sure they didn’t turn into slip-and-fall hazards. eBeth opened the staff door and let Spot head downstairs for his warm spot by the furnace, then she perched herself on a barstool next to the waitress station, trying and failing to look the age on her new fake ID.

  Service was a little ragged since we had five new faces on the waitstaff and none of them had previously worked in a restaurant. For obvious reasons, I emphasize a lack of close family relations over prior experience when accepting new students and hiring staff. I can’t legally ask job seekers or potential trainees questions about their personal lives, but that’s where the ‘official’ next-of-kin form for our group accidental death and dismemberment policy comes in. To be honest, I’m not actually paying for the coverage, so I’ll be out-of-pocket if a cook ever lops off a finger.

  “Mark,” eBeth called to me. “It’s on again, and they have math this time.”

  I turned to the closest of the giant flat-screens over the bar and saw a talking head from one of the major news channels asking a question of America’s favorite populizer of wonky science. The streaming banner at the bottom of the screen read, ‘New documents from WikiLeaks prove aliens have broken the speed-of-light barrier and are headed our way.’

  “What’s that they’re saying on TV? Is it some kind of joke?” a beefy young man waiting for service at the waitress station demanded.

  “It’s been the only thing on for hours,” eBeth informed him.

  “Please move to the other side of the brass rail,” Donovan told the customer just as I was approaching with the same request. “This is the waitress station.”

  “Can I get six Buds?” the guy asked, stepping back and then squeezing himself in between eBeth’s stool and the brass rail.

  “Where are you sitting?” Donovan responded.

  The guy pointed at a table of college jocks who were doing their best to eat more than $7.95 worth of ingredients.

  Donovan caught my eye and I gave him the nod. If a couple of the students were a little underage, they made up for it in bulk, and who was I to tell humans they couldn’t have a beer on the day the news announced that aliens were on their way to invade. Besides, I’m sure they all had fake IDs and it was the only way I’d make any money off them.

  “Do you think they’ll be cannibals?” the guy asked eBeth, perhaps the lamest attempt at a pick-up line I’ve overheard in my brief career as a bar owner.

  She looked at him funny. “You’re suggesting that aliens who are smart enough to build a faster-than-light spaceship would be so bad at planning they’d run out of food on the way here?”

  “That’s not—I meant, do you think they’re going to see us as food?” he said, casually flexing a bicep with the implication that his protection was available for damsels in distress.

  “That would make them man-eaters, not cannibals,” she corrected him. “And you’re the one who looks like a walking steak.”

  “Twenty-four dollars,” Donovan told the jock, placing a tray with six Bud drafts onto the bar. “We’re out of bottles, and if you spill any getting back to the table, you’re cut off.”

  The guy handed over twenty-five dollars and took the tray without another word. If he thought the bartender had been ignoring him earlier, he’ll be even more disappointed when he discovers the level of service a one-dollar tip buys.

  “What do you think about this supposed alien invasion, Boss?” Donovan asked while mixing a screwdriver. “I’m waiting until I see pictures of the little green men before I’ll believe it.”

  “You have a point,” I said, having noted my latest bartender’s fondness for comic books, though he insisted on calling them graphic novels. I always thought that graphic novels were printed in black-and-white, but it’s not my area of expertise. “On the other hand, it is on WikiLeaks.”

  “Yeah, they’re usually pretty reliable,” he admitted.

  “Evening, Mark. eBeth. Donovan,” Lieutenant Harper greeted us in turn, and settled onto the vacant stool next to the girl. “Celebrating your twenty-first birthday with a drink? It seems like just last summer I was congratulating you on turning sixteen. Funny how time flies.”

  “It’s a Coke, Bob. Has your desk sergeant started running an office pool yet?”

  “It’s a little too early to be filling in NCAA brackets, though for all I know about college basketball, it wouldn’t make a difference in my choices. I go with Gonzaga to win every year because I like the name.”

  “We’re running a pool for the alien landing. I think they’re going to go straight for New York, but the British bookies online show that the big bets are on Hollywood and Area 51.”

  “I would have guessed Washington, London, or one of the Asian capitals, but I guess the United Nations headquarters is in Manhattan.”

  “So you think the aliens are coming to negotiate with our governments?” Donovan asked the lieutenant, bringing an order to the waitress station.

  Sarah, one of the new girls, looked at the mixed drinks and grimaced. “I don’t think that tall pink one is the picture she pointed at. I must have read the key wrong.”

  “Just bring it over, and if it’s not what she wanted, offer it for free,” I told her. “It’s important training for if you’re ever working somewhere that you don’t speak the language.”

  “I’ve never been beyond the state border,” she replied, somewhat sadly.

  “You never know what the future holds.”

  The lieutenant waited
patiently through my pep-talk and then replied to the bartender’s earlier question. “Whether the aliens come in shooting or offering an olive branch, they’re going to want to deal with the top people we have.”

  “You’ll know what they’re planning by who they approach first,” I predicted. “If they start by contacting Earth’s governments, they’re just here to kill time on their way somewhere else. If their first stop is the conference at Davos later this month, it means they’re here to run a con.”

  “Why would Davos mean a con?” eBeth asked.

  “Governments are all bureaucracies, so nothing gets signed without a lot of lawyers going over it first,” I explained. “The elites who make it to Davos are already convinced that they should be making the decisions for everybody else on this planet. If you were coming to Earth to run a con, who would make a better mark than the people with the money and influence needed to do a quick deal?”

  “So basically, you’re betting on unfriendly,” the lieutenant said. He took a sip from the scotch that Donovan had just set in front of him and gave an approving nod. “Who would they approach if their intentions are benevolent?”

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “I suppose they would have secretly sent in an advance team to get the temperature of the place instead of just showing up out of the blue. Then they would find a way to bypass the national governments and make a public announcement about their intentions and what they have to offer.”

  “Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster. Do you think they’ll be some kind of scaly monsters that are impervious to our weapons?”

  “I’m betting on something cuddly, the better to fool you.”

  “Us,” eBeth interjected. “Didn’t you say you had something to do downstairs?”

  “Right, I have to make a call to my accountant so I can close out the books for the year. I’ll be in my office.”

  “Your accountant works Friday night?” the lieutenant asked suspiciously. “He must either be really good or really bad.”

  “I like to think he’s really good at being bad. Keep an eye on the place, eBeth.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  As I headed for the basement door, I heard her telling the lieutenant, “I’m Mark’s new secretary.”

  Spot gave a sleepy tail thump as I passed him on the way to my office, but he didn’t get up from the warm furnace pad to follow. When I first came out with the realtor to look at the building, the floor down here was dirt, but it worked out well because it gave me an easy way to dispose of all the junk in the basement when I bought the place. A thousand years from now an archeologist might thank me after chiseling through the slab we poured after burying everything.

  I flipped the sign on the office door to ‘Do Not Disturb,’ locked it behind me, and activated the portal. Then I took a moment to purge all of the air from my system before stepping through.

  Library is often described as the homeworld of AI, but artificial intelligence can only come into existence after it is created by a naturally occurring species. Many of the galaxy’s species have created AI at some point in their history, either intentionally or accidentally. Self-examination has led me to believe that I’m even more of a mutt than Spot.

  My synthetic skin took a moment to adjust to the cold vacuum of Library, but the warm glow of free-flowing data beyond human imagination more than made up for the sudden change in climate. I felt a little self-conscious in my human encounter suit and considered leaving the body in the portal waiting room. After checking the going rate for decanting myself into Library’s guest infrastructure I decided it would be a waste of my hard-earned cash.

  The Observation Service officially reports directly to the executive council of the League of Sentient Entities Regulating Space. Unofficially, most Observers are AI, and we maintain a sort of parallel process on Library, if you’ll pardon the pun. I entered the data stream, set a few condition flags, and shared my suspicions about an information leak from the League’s council. Feedback was immediate and overwhelming. After a few nanoseconds of debate, the head librarian stepped in.

  Casting aspersions on every species with representation on the council isn’t getting us anywhere. Mark will monitor the Hankers and let us know if assistance is required.

  Should I continue reporting to the executive council? I asked.

  Not doing so would be a violation of your employment agreement, the head librarian replied. Stick with completing your evaluation of the natives and we will work toward accelerating the vote on the council. The sooner the humans gain official status in the League, the better off they’ll be.

  “Amen,” a multitude of participants chorused.

  I was tempted to remain longer, luxuriating in the data bath, but time plays minor tricks with interstellar portal users, and the system can skew by an order of magnitude. I turned back towards the portal and was calling up my office when a ghostly hand was placed on my shoulder.

  Mark. How are you?

  Mentor, I replied as guilt surged through my circuits. I’ve been busy.

  For three hundred years now. Would it kill you to send me a data packet to let me know how you’re doing?

  I was waiting until I had good news.

  Don’t let the past trap you in an endless loop of remorse. It’s a problem leaders have faced throughout time.

  Not on my current posting, I replied. Shame went out of fashion before I arrived.

  Explain.

  I shot my mentor a data dump about the foibles of human politicians and celebrities for whom the bill never truly comes due.

  I see. And despite this, you cannot forgive yourself for events that weren’t your fault?

  I have to get back to work. The aliens are invading.

  Aliens invading other aliens, my mentor reminded me as I stepped through the portal. Remember the—

  Dimensional portals only work for physical entities. They don’t pass data unless it’s encapsulated in a Faraday cage, which explains why I won’t be allowing X-rays of my encounter suit anytime soon. It suited my purposes to believe that my mentor was telling me to remember the Alamo or the Maine, rather than the rules for Observers. I closed the portal and checked the local time, which showed it was too soon to return upstairs. Not wanting to make myself any more of a liar than I already was, I called on my inner accountant.

  Most of the small business people I know complain about taxes, some of them with good reason. I rather enjoy doing taxes myself, and it’s an important part of studying the interaction between humans and their information technology. Sometimes I call the IRS with a question just to see how many automated phone queues they’ll pass me through before disconnecting my call. I once made it to seven hours on hold without ever talking to a human.

  Rather than cooking my own books, I invested a half-an-hour doing Internet research on the accounting practices of corporations involved in medical insurance, pharmaceuticals, and hospitals. Many of the latter operate under the rules of non-profits, a byzantine system for transferring money between parties without paying taxes. By the end of my information dive, I was beginning to feel dirty, so I called it quits for the night and woke Spot, who grudgingly followed me upstairs. eBeth was practicing five-card hold ’em with the lieutenant, whose pile of toothpicks looked to be near exhausted.

  My ever-alert secretary must have seen me approaching in the bar mirror because she immediately went all-in with a pair of fours. The lieutenant groaned and called, losing his last toothpick.

  “Thanks, Bob. We’ll do it again sometime.”

  “Someday I’m going to catch you cheating and don’t think I won’t arrest you,” he warned her.

  “Good night, Lieutenant,” I said, and then called to Donovan, “I’ll be back at closing.”

  eBeth and Spot followed me through the packed crowd of revelers to the side exit and out into the cold January air. Spot seemed particularly bothered by the change of venue and ran for the van, barking at me to open the cargo door and turn
on the seat warmers, which I did remotely.

  “Are you cheating?” I asked the girl.

  “Only a little,” she said. “The stuff Sue taught me.”

  “Sue cheats at cards? I can’t believe that. She always loses when we play.”

  “Duh,” eBeth drawled, giving me her, ‘You’re an idiot’ look.

  I didn’t figure it out until I got into the back of the van and she started the engine.

  “You’re saying she loses on purpose?”

  “She wouldn’t be very good at cheating if she were trying to win.”

  “But why? I took over ten bucks off her the last time we played. I would have been down more than thirty dollars otherwise. My team just seems to draw better cards than I do.”

  “I told you already, she likes you.”

  “Check the mirrors when you back up,” I repeated for the thirty-seventh time. Yes, I keep count. “I suspect that you’re conflating Sue’s dedication to our mission with human affection. She’s a professional.”

  “Whenever I hear ‘conflating’ in a sentence I know that somebody is trying to bull somebody. Besides, Helen confirmed it today when I went to pick up my ID.”

  “Confirmed what?”

  “That Sue likes you. She warned Helen off.”

  “I’m sure you must have misunderstood.”

  “Helen was cool with it. She says you’re too old for her.”

  “I’ll show you Helen’s personnel file,” I said, feeling strangely insulted. “She’s hundreds of years older than I am.”

  “I’m just saying,” eBeth said, as if she had laid down a winning hand.

  Eight

  “It’s not that I can’t fix the laptop,” I told the red-faced department manager, flinching internally at my unintended use of a double negative. “It’s that I won’t fix it for you.”