Gridiron - Philip Kerr

'Mitch, how ya doing?' grinned Beech. 'Where've you been keeping yourself?'

'Why is it,' Mitch remarked, 'that whenever you see computer programmers working, they always look like they're in the middle of a coffee break?'

'Yeah?' said Yojo, 'well, there's a lot to keep in your mind, man. It's like football, you know? A lot of the time we have to huddle and figure out all the possible plays.'

'I'm flattered that you want to include me in your touchline discussions, Coach.'

Beech whooped. 'You haven't heard what we want to ask you yet.'

Mitch smiled uncertainly. 'I understood that there's a problem.'

'Yeah, that's right,' said Beech. 'Maybe you can help us get a handle on it. A bit of technical coordination is what's required.'

'That's my job.'

'But first we need some kind of executive decision from you, Mitch. To do with Abraham here.'

'Abraham, right,' echoed Yojo. 'Whose dumb idea was that name?'

Cheech and Chong: like the two marijuana-movie stars of the early seventies, Beech and Yojo affected a laid-back air, heavy, Wyatt Earpsized moustaches and unhealthy, slightly glazed looks. Like Aidan Kenny, this impression was created by their deskbound, screen-centred occupations rather than by any fondness for smoking dope. Mitch was certain of that much, anyway. Every time you visited a washroom in the Gridiron your urine was tested for drugs by the computer. Preventive health-care was something the Yu Corporation took very seriously.

'Thanks for coming down, Mitch, I appreciate it.' Aidan Kenny cleared his throat and rubbed his mouth nervously. 'Jesus, I wish I had a cigarette.'

'Smoking is forbidden in the computer room,' said the computer's urbane English voice.

'Shut up, asshole,' said Yojo.

'Yeah, thanks, Abraham,' said Kenny. 'Tell me something I don't know. Take a seat there, Mitch, and let me put you in the picture. And Hideki, would you watch your language in front of my son, please, guy?'

'Sure, no fucking problem. Hey, sorry, right?'

Mitch sat down at the spare desk and stared at the picture unfolding on the computer screen: it looked like an enormous coloured snowflake, growing even as he watched.

'What's this?' he said, momentarily fascinated.

'Oh,' said Yojo, 'that's just a screen-saver program. Stops the tube on the screen burning out.'

'It's beautiful.'

'Neat, isn't it? A cellular automata. We give the computer a seed and a set of rules and it does the rest itself. Go ahead and touch it.'

Mitch touched the screen with his finger and, like a real snowflake, the cellular automata melted quickly. Hundreds of strings of programming information started scrolling past his eyes.

'There's your problem,' said Beech.

'And how,' added Yojo.

A dull explosion emanated from the screen on Michael's desk and the boy banged the arm of his chair angrily. 'Shit,' he said loudly. And then

'Fuck, fuck, fuck.'

Hideki Yojo shot a look at Aidan Kenny and said, 'There's nothing I can teach your kid about cursing, Aid.'

'Son, cut it out. If I hear you using language like that again you'll be in big trouble, birthday or not. Do I make myself clear?'

'Yes, Dad.'

'And put your headphones on, please.'

'OK,' said Kenny, turning towards Mitch. 'This is a self-replicating system, right?'

Mitch nodded hesitantly.

'A fully autonomous, general purpose, self-replicating program that plans for the building and business-management needs of tomorrow. A fuzzy-logic-based system that operates a neural net so that it can improve on its own performance by learning. After a period of occupancy by the Yu Corporation, old Abraham here will have learned all there is to know about the way the company works. Everything from the likely pattern of office use to how the company plans to expand. For instance, using the electronic subscriber network it might monitor the local real estate market in order to alert the occupants as to the opportunities that exist in a particular location.'

'Is that so?' said Mitch. 'Maybe it can find me a house.'

Aidan Kenny smiled thinly. Mitch apologized and, sitting back in his chair, adopted a more serious-looking expression.

'After a while, version 3.0 writes version 3.1. Or, if you prefer, Abraham sires the next generation of program: Isaac. And who better to do it? That improved version of Abraham, Isaac, is even more capable of dealing with the developing needs of the Yu Corporation of tomorrow. After that, with Isaac operating at a higher level of fitness, and having performed his parental duty, Abraham becomes sterile and ceases to operate as anything other than a simple maintenance facility before finally lapsing into complete desuetude, when Isaac sires his own next generation of program, when version 3.1 writes version 3.2, if you like.'

Mitch folded his hands and nodded patiently. 'I understand all this,' he said. 'Get to the point, will you?'

'All right then, the point is this: it seems — '

'Seems?' said Beech. 'There's no seems about it, man. It's a goddamn fact.'

'It appears that Abraham has already begun his own self-replication program. Which means — '

'Which means,' said Mitch, 'that he's taking account of an entirely irrelevant occupancy. Namely ourselves. Not the Yu Corporation, like he's supposed to.'

'I told you Mitch would understand,' said Beech to Yojo.

'That's it exactly,' said Kenny. 'I mean, there's no point in Abraham evolving into a higher level of fitness and siring Isaac if he's only been dealing with us and a few goddamned workmen.'

'But this is what has happened?' said Mitch. 'Isaac is already in existence?'

Aidan Kenny nodded unhappily.

'And what does Abraham himself have to say about it?' asked Mitch.

'That's a joke, right?' said Beech.

'I don't know,' shrugged Mitch. 'You tell me.'

Bob Beech grinned and brushed up his formidable moustache with an outstretched forefinger and thumb.

'Hey, we're the best, but we're still in the twentieth century, Mitch,' he said. 'An explanation implies an understanding.'

'Not if you frame the question correctly,' argued Mitch.

'Yeah, it's a nice idea,' said Hideki Yojo. 'If only things were that sophisticated. We're doing well just to have improved on the old binary logic — true or false, y'know? Fuzzy logic encompasses binary logic but allows for the scenario which says that something might have partial membership of two separate sets.'

'So that something might be partly true, or partly false.'

'That's right. Or true given certain conditions.'

'I read something about that,' said Mitch. 'Wasn't there something about how a computer should define a penguin?'

'Oh, that.' Beech looked bored and nodded. 'Yeah, a conventionally programmed computer knows that birds fly. But when told that penguins cannot fly it insists that a penguin is not a bird. Fuzzy logic computers get around this difficulty by accepting that most if not all birds can fly.'

'Similarly,' said Aidan Kenny, 'with regard to systems management control, the fuzzy controller — in this case Abraham — permits some interpolation between sensor data classes.'

'Look,' said Yojo, 'can we please stop using that word "fuzzy" and use the proper term? It drives me nuts. This is an adaptive analog we're talking about. Mitch, the idea is that it's similar to what a human brain does in that it favours adaptation over precision and uses relative not absolute values. OK?'

'Look guys,' interjected Kenny, 'what we need to discuss — '

'There must have been a problem with defuzzification,' continued Beech and seeing Yojo's display of disgust and irritation, he gave him the finger. 'Some kind of collapse of the output fuzzy distribution into a single value — '

'You asshole — '

'- and — and that value must have distorted Abraham's interpretation of the fuzzy output.'

'What we really need to discuss,' said Kenny, raising his voice, 'is what the hell we're going to do about it.'

'Amen, brother,' said Yojo.

They seemed to be waiting for Mitch to say something. He shrugged. 'I don't know. You're the engineers, I'm just the architect. What do you suggest?'

'Well obviously there are going to be a few risks attaching to whatever we do,' said Kenny warningly.

'What kind of risks are we talking about here?'

'Expensive risks,' cackled Yojo.

'We never took an SRS off-line before,' said Beech. 'We're not exactly sure what'll happen.'

'The thing is, Mitch,' said Kenny. 'We hadn't even ceded full control of the building to Abraham yet. So in a way we can't run and test all the building management systems properly until we shut down the offspring: namely, Isaac.'

'Speaking for myself,' said Beech, 'I'd like to leave things as they are for just a while longer and see how they play out. This is interesting. I mean, it could be important not just for your building management systems, but for the future of the Yu-5-'

'The trouble with that scenario,' said Yojo, 'is that you risk sterility for Abraham. And the longer you put it off, the greater the risk becomes.'

'On the other hand,' argued Beech, 'you shut down Isaac and you run the risk that Abraham might not be able to generate another offspring program. Not without building the whole MPPS up from scratch again.'

'And you want me to decide this?' said Mitch.

'Yeah, I guess we do.'

'C'mon guys, King Solomon I'm not.'

'Cut the baby in half!' laughed Yojo. 'What a great idea.'

'We were kind of hoping you might help us decide,' said Kenny.

'But what if I decide wrong?'

Kenny shrugged.

'What I mean is, how much. What's the possible cost of the wrong decision?'

'$40 million,' said Yojo.

'Yeah, take your time there, guy,' said Beech.

'Come on,' protested Mitch, 'You're not serious. I can't decide something like this.'

'Technical coordination, Mitch,' said Aidan Kenny, 'that's what we need. A little coordination. Some executive guidance.'

Mitch stood up and walked around behind Kenny's son. The boy was still playing his game, oblivious of the discussion around him, his face myopically close to the enormous screen as he twisted the analog joystick one way and then the other. Mitch watched the game for a moment, trying to fathom its purpose. It was hard to understand precisely what was happening. The game seemed to involve Michael negotiating a gun-toting space commando through an underground city. From time to time one of an apparently endless variety of hideouslooking creatures came through a door, or arrived in an elevator, or dropped through a hole in the roof, and tried to kill the protagonist. At this point a fierce fire fight would commence. Mitch watched as Michael's thumb, furiously depressing a button on the top of the joystick, activated a chainsaw fire-throwing gun and blasted the most recently arrived creature to all four corners of the screen. The graphics were superb, Mitch thought. Damage inflicted on the creatures looked extremely realistic. A little too realistic for Mitch's taste: a large section of the creature's intestines splattered against the screen and then slid slowly away, leaving a wide trail of blood. He picked up the box that had contained the CD-ROM and read the copy. The game was called Escape from the Citadel. There were other similarly violent games in a carrier bag by the boy's feet. Doom II. The Eleventh Hour. Intruder. In all, about two or three hundred dollars' worth. Mitch wondered if any of them were suitable for a child of Michael's age. He turned away. It was probably none of his business.

He shook his head, wondering if the game he was playing with these three men was really so very different. Certainly Alison would not have thought so: she thought that smart buildings were inherently absurd. What was it she said. The bigger the boys, the bigger the toys? For the moment Mitch was disposed to think that she might be right as he glanced at the three computer experts.

'OK, look, my decision is this,' he said finally. 'You're the goddamn experts. You decide. Take a vote on it or something. I'm not sufficiently informed on this one.' He nodded firmly. 'That's my decision. Vote. What do you say?'

'Are we taking a vote on whether we take a vote?' asked Yojo. 'I say a vote sounds OK.'

'Aid?'

Kenny shrugged. 'A vote. OK.'

'Bob?'

'I guess so.'

'That's settled, then,' said Mitch. 'Let's hear it. The motion is that we take the SRS off-line.'

'I say we shut Isaac down,' said Kenny. 'It's the only way. Either that or have a totally irrelevant BMS.'

'And I say no,' said Beech. 'BMS is only one small part of what Abraham is supposed to do. And we've never taken a self-replicating system off-line before. We don't know how Abraham's observer illusion will react to this. What you're suggesting seems to run counter to the rules of the universe.'

'The rules of the universe? Christ, that's just a bit heavy, don't you think?' laughed Yojo. 'Who are you? Arthur C. Clarke or something?

Shit, Beech, what is it with you? Always with the does God play dice shit.'

He shook his head. 'I say we kill the sonofabitch. The evolution has to suit the creator, not the machine.' He glanced at Beech and added, 'See?

You're not the only one who can get heavy.'

'The SRS is taken off-line,' said Mitch. 'Motion carried.'

Aidan Kenny let out a large breath. Beech was shaking his head. 'This is wrong, man,' he said.

'We took a vote,' sneered Yojo.

'OK,' Mitch said to nobody in particular, 'let's do it.'

'Hey, listen to Gary Gilmore there,' said Beech. 'Well, don't expect me to insert the curette. I'm pro-life.'

'Shut up with that crap, will you?' snarled Yojo. 'It gives me a headache.'

'That's just PMT,' said Beech. 'Pre-Murder Tension. Anyway, you've always got a headache. Don't you love me any more? I should never have married you.' Beech tossed a computer tape cassette to his colleague. 'Is this what you're looking for, you lousy criminal bastard?'

'Aid? The man is taking this very personally. Very personally.'

'Come on, Bob,' said Kenny, 'we took a vote. A democratic decision.'

'I can abide by the decision of the majority. But I don't have to be happy about it. That's what democracy's about, isn't it?'

Yojo went to one of the steel monoliths on the outer circle and fed the tape into a port.

'Democracy? What would you know about that?' he said. 'You're a Republican. You believe that freedom of speech means the freedom to say and do nothing.'

"What's on the tape?' Mitch asked hastily.

'SSPP,' Yojo said casually. 'Species Specific Predator Program. To deconstruct illegitimate offspring.' He drew a forefinger across his Adam's apple. 'It cuts the little bastard's throat.' He grinned wolfishly in Beech's direction. 'Relax, Beech. It's quite humane. Isaac won't feel a thing.'

He resumed his seat, smacked the computer screen with the flat of his hand to clear the saver program. 'Maybe a little infanticide will get rid of this damned headache.'