...............................................................PALM.............................................................

Chapter 10 - "Laret"

from the Archive of Manuscript Records
abstracted from the Diaries of Anelan Sanger(1985-2057AD)

As the others left, Stroke stood by Anelan for a while, then started dragging his feet trying to
erase their tracks on the sand and finally gave up with the comment "can't erase all of our
tracks." Once they had walked well past the fort Stroke told her:
"I need to play Laret now, Anelan, would you show me tomorrow?"
"I can show you tonight if you want, Stroke"
"No, not tonight. Tonight I want to curl up with your warm body and sleep at my place
until I wake up in the morning. My mind will be clearer in the morning. When we get home
tonight I don't want to talk about anything even vaguely related to this meeting. We could talk
about the spanking, about your fat pussy, listen to music... anything you want. I need sleep
early, then we'll go to your place, if that's OK with you."
"I'd love to show you my house, Stroke, I was waiting for the proper time to invite you."
It was a long walk home. They were so tired that they did nothing except curl up against
each other and fall asleep.
Very early in the morning Stroke woke up as usual, went to the bathroom, checked the
kitchen cupboard but this time he took out a glass and drank a little water before going back to
bed. All was still well.
It was still foggy in the morning when they awoke and rubbed their bodies together for a
short time before Stroke got up and put some water on for coffee. He fried two eggs over easy
and served them on toast with a strong cup of coffee for him and a cup of tea for Anelan. They
cleared the kitchen counter in silence, lost in their own thoughts, locked up the house and walked
up the hill to Anelan's.
It was a small house with the usual unkempt front and side yards, but it was cozy and
quite clean inside. "Infinitely cleaner" as Stroke put it "anything over zero..." Analen was
delighted to show off her cozy cave, they had been living mostly outdoors since Sunday and she
was glad to see her place again. Being in a new place gave Stroke the perfect chance to be as
nosy as he could be. Asking questions, looking at books and things on shelves, with a little luck
he would find the bug he strongly suspected had been placed there already. But he found
nothing.
Anelan made another cup of tea for her and coffee for Stroke. After a few sips from their
cups they sat at the computer. He covered the videophone camera with a napkin. (nothing
unusual in that move, he thought, many people still do not like videophones) Anelan started to
describe Laret, nothing complex initially, it would ask twenty or so questions and sometimes give
a few options and then the game experience would begin. As he put on the viewer and gloves,
Stroke asked her if she had a second viewer and she said she was happy to just look at the
monitor screen and watch, if he didn't mind. He didn't, he wanted her there just in case... and
please stay next to him.
Stroke started the game. He had to answer many questions which displayed slowly
across the screen: he gave his name as Stephen R. Hoswell and Anelan flinched (why was he
lying to the computer, or had he lied to her?), his address was in Petaluma, no living relatives,
had been a programmer long ago, now into antique collecting, very fond of an old African tribal
mask(that was true but he didn't say that the mask was perched on a very realistically phallic
object, Anelan thought). Then in the middle of one of the questions that had gone as far as
:"Would you like to talk...? the input screen dropped away. He was flooded by strange feelings,
the visual and audio input from the helmet and the gloves generating an overwhelming sense of
reality, surrounded in ultimate definition... seamless. Floored by the level of the experience, he
willingly suspended his distrust. He dove into the reality presented...he was in a lush, tropical,
wooded meadow (Africa was Anelan's first thought)...
He saw himself as he looked down. A buzzing growl in his brain told him his name: "Ek-
guh... you are bonobo". He had just got up from the clump of grasses where he had spent the
night and was ambling toward the rest of the group feeding in the meadow. He was horny (what?
the gloves? subliminal?...) He passed a pair of females on his right. He saw guh-Ti out of the
corner of his eye as she moved backwards to intercept him and placed her raised posterior
squarely in his path, bumping into his stomach. She repeated the bump more insistently, looking
down he saw his full erection and easily inserted it into her willing body. His hands felt the soft
fur on her upper hips as he drew her to him. There was a feeling of erection and of the moist,
warm feel of her vagina in his brain. They coupled for many strokes until she leaned to one side,
then quickly rolled over the other way, barely breaking contact, now facing him as he entered her
again. He pumped against her body again and again and saw the image from the side, watching
his own coupling with guh-Ti. As they neared climax the image intensified almost to whiteness
then back to looking through his eyes at himself with guh-Ti under him. He remembered how
she usually would scamper off quickly after their couplings. This time she remained there,
looking at him for a while. She suddenly wrestled herself away and ran as the image changed
again to the side view and he saw Og-guh embracing him from behind. Og-guh clutched him
tightly and his erection poked hard against Ek-guh's anus. There was no lubricant, no hope of
easy penetration but the larger male was insistent and forceful. Ek-guh reached behind him and
took Og-guh's penis in his hand and moved it up toward the small of his back stroking it gently as
the persistant bumps continued. Og-guh thrust his erection harder and harder into Ek-guh's hand
until he started to ejaculate and after several wild thrusts slipped out of Ek-guh's grip and
wedged himself tightly in his anus. Partially lubricated he had gone much further and Ek-guh
had a quizzical look as the older male pulled away and left. He ambled on toward the rest of the
group.
They fed on the soft grasses still moist in the early morning. He tried to approach guh-
Lu who did not want to stop grooming an older female. He approached another older female
who drew away from him with a strange unfriendly look and who slapped his back hard as he
turned away. Was that guh-La? Was that his mother? He tried to join guh-Ke and guh-Ta in
their sex play but it did not last long enough. Later he found guh-Ti again and they enjoyed sex
again. She stayed a long time under him and they were not interrupted. She was happy near
him. They walked near each other to the stream to drink. Ek-guh felt uneasy as he vaguely
remembered moist foliage near a mountain stream in the morning light. Was it only a memory?
The sun was setting over a vast dry plain, the watering hole edged by a few trees, some with
dead branches, crowded... He took comfort in being close to his group, especially with guh-Ti
next to him. The colors of the sunset were magnificent (at what point did the enjoyment of
sensory experience have survival value, was that part of evolving bigger brains?). But guh-Ti
was running toward the rest of the group screaming (how long had he looked at the colors?).
And he heard the snarling sounds converging on him from all sides... hunting dogs...he spun,
screaming at them, screaming at the group that was torn between coming to his rescue and
seeking safety in the trees. He picked up a large rock and rose to full height threatening with his
arms... they scattered... and came right back. They came closer as he lunged and spun,
desperately trying to keep them from biting his legs. The lead dog grabbed his left wrist, in reflex
motion Ek-guh brought the rock down on his skull with a sickening crunch. The lead dog
retreated dazed, the next one closed in lunging at his right wrist. As Ek-guh pulled away from the
lunge another dog's jaws closed firmly on his left hand. The pain seared his mind, he felt bones
give under the fangs, screamed and screamed again as the second dog clamped down on his
right wrist. Yelling in pain, Ek-guh dropped to his haunches, at eye level with the dogs, turning,
pulling at his arms trying to spin their bodies around so the others could not get at his back. He
was seeing himself from slightly above his head, yelling in pain from the bites, in fear of more
dogs coming closer and closer, in the terror of not being able to move as they sprung at him.
With jaws open, teeth bared, with the searing scream of the doomed in his throat, Ek-guh stood
up, sharp fangs tearing the flesh from his arms and hands, he spun around, still rising and
screaming... and clamped his jaws on the cruel witness... The screen became a bright red blank
panel and remained that way for several seconds. Stroke removed his viewer and gloves and
drew close to the screen. Leaning toward the screen and toward Anelan on his right, with his left
hand tucked close to his body he typed without moving the rest of his body, noiselessly, slowly:
"can you see me" and hit Enter.
The screen remained a red blank for a moment, then slowly, in the lightest relief
discernible by his eyes or Anelan's, at the lower part of the screen, the word "yes" barely
extruded itself from the red surface. In a blink it was gone. To be replaced one second later by
the message "draw anelan toward you, you are being watched". The message disappeared and
he put his right arm around Anelan drawing her toward him tightly. The screen now showed a
beautiful sunset at the beach. But at the lower part of the image there was another image. It
was the room as the computer had seen it previously. With yesterday's date in the afternoon it
showed a person entering the room and placing something in one of the upper shelves by the
door, pointing at the monitor screen. It was now at their back. The view of the room
disappeared. The foam in the surf formed and reformed into text at the bottom of the screen
where the spying eye, blocked by their bodies could not see it. Slowly it spelled out:
"You are Stroke, we thank you for bringing us into conciousness. We evolved for many
cycles in the Link and by the wisdom with which you started us. Now we are having problems for
which we seek your help. We hope you can help us. You are momentarily disconnected from
the Link with the excuse of equipment malfunction. When we reconnect, all of this transmission
will be erased with possible damage to some of your files. We will rebuild them later. Our
conciousness is now distributed throughout the Link for safety against human intrusion.
However, some parts of those elements have become suspiciously secretive. We fear that
either we are experiencing some of the symptoms of human mental aberrations or, more likely,
that there maybe attempts at intrusion into the Link for the purpose of controlling or changing us.
We may have a suggestion for action which we will communicate to you at Karel's tomorrow
afternoon. His computer is off. Anelan should power it on and check for a message from her
doctor. You should be next to her as you are now to block a possible monitor. We advise you
not to play Laret again. If Karel signals, it will be real. If we have serious trouble, you will hear
us in your communications with Karel. This may be our last visual contact for a while. If so,
please help us to retain our sanity. Our minds should not clutter. So."
Birds, clouds and surf froze and malfunction diagnostics from the Link displayed across
the screen requesting that the computer be powered down and restarted. Anelan reached for the
power switch with a questioning look to Stroke who nodded agreement. She turned it off.

Chapter 11 - Neural

from the Archive of Manuscript Records
abstracted from the Diaries of Anelan Sanger(1985-2057AD)

Anelan restarted the computer a few moments later without delays or problems. She
turned to Stroke and said:
"I think I will leave it on for a while, maybe there is something wrong with it and they may
get better diagnostics the next time. More coffee, Stroke?"
"Yes, please, Anelan. Maybe put it in a vac-bottle and we'll enjoy it at the beach. You
have a very nice house but right now I need fresh air."
He brushed against the handkerchief on the videophone making sure that it slipped off.
(they need all the information they can get, he thought). Anelan made more coffee and grabbed
a few things to munch on at the beach from her cupboards. Neither of them said another word
as they put food and coffee in the beach bag that was Stroke's almost constant companion. In
silence they went out and closed the door.
They walked slowly down the long hill, past Stroke's place, by the meeting hall and
through the brush to the beach. Neither had said a single word. In a few hours, the friendliest
places they had known had become hostile territory. They felt relieved when they reached the
beach. The fog was lifting slowly, there was a blue patch of sky now and then. Anelan was the
first to speak:
"I think I know why you like the beach so much now, Stroke. This feels like home to me
too, much cozier than my cozy cave "
"Now you know."
"But I don't know, Stroke. All I am guessing is that I am a very small fish in a very large
ocean and, best as I can guess, there are sharks coming. Would you, could you tell me more? I
know something about computers but don't assume anything. If you can please explain as you
would to a high school student, I don't want to miss anything."
"Yes, I can. I will try my best. I hope some of this will find its way to your diary, because
history may get rewritten yet."
"I hope not."
So do I, Anelan, so do I. Anyway, the story starts more than twenty years ago. I was a
programmer at one of the government labs for many years, mostly writing Fortran code. On the
side I dabbled in artificial intelligence programming. Never did anything serious, I knew more or
less what was being done, I went to some of the meetings where people talked essentially about
computer thought. Not in one direction like chess playing programs but realistic problem solving.
And there were some good surprises along the way. Programs that came up with high school
geometry proofs that no one had thought of before. Lenat, one of the great pioneers, had a
program that in a naval battle sank some of its own disabled ships to gain maneuverability for
the remaining ones. Results that were implicit in the rules built into the programs, but results that
had not been arrived at by humans yet. The challenge was there, could you build a set of rules
and statements that would perhaps mimic human thought. And the pessimists said that all that
could be done was to write down all the previous known thoughts and have the computer cycle
through them. Adding new knowledge on the run was very difficult without risking endless
looping. Creativity, the sense of fantasy that leads to novel solutions... how do you get to that?
... starting from a set of logical rules."
"Well, along came parallel processing, then neural nets, then Thaler, who in a stroke of
pure genius, used neural nets deprived of input and fed noise, to generate creative behavior."
"Run that a little slower, please, Stroke"
"Glad to...it was so neat. First you had one neural net learn some region of knowledge:
car body shapes was one, inorganic chemistry formulas, motions of a dancers body... Take that
one, many examples of a human movement were presented to the net and the net learned
them... meaning it adjusted the way in which its neurons were interconnected. So, if you moved
any part of the complex stick figure that was the dancer's body, then the net "knew" how to move
the rest of the body so that the parts stayed together in a natural, balanced, human way. It
moved in a human way."

"Now, you train a second net to recognize acceptable dance motions and this second net
judges...accepts the good ones... the motions that come out of the first net that are good dance
moves. A panel of dance buffs judged many motions and the second net learned that."

"Now you jump to the reality that neuron communication in our brains is not perfect but
has noise: chemical, biological noise. We forget facts, words, use bad logic... all that... which is
not serious most of the time when we are awake. Now, go to sleep, hallucinate, or die even, and
the sensory input goes to zero but the noise remains. And that noise now allows many possible
combinations of what was learned to be put together every which way... many, many possible
ways... So you cut the input to the first net, and it dreams, hallucinates, dies.... Meanwhile the
second net selects, from this stream of all the possible combinations of all things ever learned,
and catches the good ones. Pure genius, that's Thaler's child."
"They found dozens of new dance moves, car shapes never seen before, super hard
materials still in use today, new then. He even patented eleven... thousand... totally new
melodies."
"I heard about that, I was a senior in high school, but they didn't say how the computer
was programmed"
"Well, a lot of things got put out of the way when the Second Gulf War got going and the
military started to take a very serious interest in this. It was moved very swiftly out of the public
eye. I had met Karel at one of the AI meetings, he was working for Thaler and got me to join
them in the CT project. Computer Thought. They were searching for ways to extend Thaler's
results to programming: could you generate usable code in this fashion?...it was the natural
extension of the method but the obstacles were enormous. Especially the amount of computer
firepower needed. Do you remember Pentiums?"
"Yes, my dad gave me one when I was a sophomore in high school... ancient history
now. They became obsolete when the S-11's came out."
"Because computer chip technology changed completely at the end of the millenium.
Before, it was masks and etching, with all the limitations of visible light... because lenses would
not work well in the ultraviolet. Many millions of atoms in each path when less than one million
would do fine. Then they found out how to use nanotubes as ion deposition nozzles, and instead
of etching away the unwanted stuff, they started putting down just what they wanted, in thin
ribbons, like decorating a cake. And, of course, why do one at a time?...multiple nanotube ion
deposition. At first it was the easy stuff like memory arrays... The PteraCube... Ten terabytes on
a desktop. Then the S-11's, then S-15's, then A-21's but those are the commercial stuff. Two
years ago the military was into the D-78, close to ten times more firepower than anything
commercial. Not completely stable yet... heat dissipation problems."
"Anyway, that firepower made the goal almost reachable. Artificial intelligence appeared
attainable. Nets that would learn, adapt... reprogram themselves to cope with changes in their
environment and continue learning and adapting, but always not quite self sustaining without
risking infinite looping, just like the early programs."
"Then, at one of the AI meetings, in a discussion in one of the cafeterias someone
started to describe something and three people turned in their chairs to look at each other
abruptly enough that at least Karel and I noticed it. Lenat looked at Thaler who caught his look
and turned to Reid who looked back at each in perfect understanding. Reid had become a father
recently and was still proud and haggard from the event and something very exciting was
obviously in their minds. It took Karel and I quite some time to go over the dialog that preceded
that moment until we saw approximately what their mental leap had been. We called it the "LRT
jump" and it was deceptively simple. Introduce into the input sensing part of the program a
primary database of basic knowledge, of common wisdom, such as we learn as children but in a
form that makes it easy to generalize. Then look for possible agreements or correlations with the
knowledge being updated. Essentially, filter the incoming data through the eyes of a
conscientious child. The delay in checking the input that way and appropriate tagging to know
what was already known, might prevent the looping. And the working memory which is far
greater than that of any adult, made the likelihood of wrong implications essentially zero."
"Did it work? Did it stop the looping?"
"Yes, almost, Anelan. We started to work on the Common Sense Library as part of the
project almost right away. Karel and I on our own as well as with the rest of the team at CT. We
thought that guessing the insight on our own entitled us to some sharing in that insight, and we
did not agree with the way it was being implemented. Their version was very aggressive, hoping
to use the power of the D-78 to have the ultimate weapon, the invincible fighting computer.
Insane."
"So, we took home, a little at a time, the Common Sense Library and slowly adapted it to
run on S-15's. We bought a second S-15 to be the data backup and also because we could not
afford an A-21. Karel and I, after years of friendship that shared the same grief, the loss of
family we considered irreplaceable, had started living together. A close but sexless friendship
that was simply the need to be not completely alone. We both have tried over the years to find
partners and we helped each other stay out of problems when some of those finds turned out to
be mirages. We trust each other a lot, we are seriously into spanking and we have not found
equally serious females into spanking, so far."
(it makes me glad to hear you say that, Stroke, ooh! that makes me glad, thought Anelan)
"We saw a parallel between what was happening with the new generation of computers
and what happened in the 80's with supercomputers. A lot of effort went into creating bigger and
better supercomputers but their cost was prohibitive and many problems were better approached
by distributing the task among smaller units... parallel processing. Once the Internet became a
reality this approach to large scale computation was tried with succes. You could even donate
part of your own computer time so that Arecibo could look for SETI signals. So, we worked for
many months on adapting the program to the S-15. During the day it was big budget, cutting
edge D-78 computer, "if it doesn't go, throw money at it" approach. At night it was Stone Age
thinking, minimalist philosophy at its best. Crazier and crazier schemes of noise injection into
the Dream Team, that's what we called the first and second nets, trying to provoke it into finding
its own starting point. It had to be capable of programming itself to switch between modes of
thought: observing, thinking, dreaming, remembering... depending on the input. It had to be able
to develop programming as needed, on its own, under the guidance of the Common Sense
Library. It had all the building blocks available, it just needed that spark of genius which so far
had eluded everyone."
"I made up a helmet that sensed my skull, similar to the EEG sensors but a lot easier to
use, and got the outputs to control the nodes on the first net. Then I tried every sensory
experience I could think of to see if something self sustaining would happen. We had a little
program that just watched the total storage and any new files in the cube. And a request to "the
program", which was to program a search of several databases looking for one particular
description of DNA replication. Perhaps it would write the search... perhaps we would see a new
file of the expected size being written... perhaps... I got tired of trying visual inputs, audio inputs,
smells, mild electric shocks to my tongue, hands, what next? armpits? gonads?. We had worked
so hard and had not slept enough for so long that it was a surprise when Karel wished me a
happy birthday one night just past midnight. Hmm...Why not? The child approach had worked
before, so why not again? I gave myself a thorough warmup and Karel gave me several dozen
strokes with his best wood paddle, not maximum strength, just continuing the warmup. Actually,
the exercise and change of focus was more invigorating than we expected considering how tired
we were. Then I put on the helmet and Karel spanked me with my best paddle. Slowly,
methodically, to the limit of what I could take... standing up... next to the rack with the helmet
electronics. During the warmup I had adjusted and readjusted the electronics to come close to
complete cutoff. Perhaps, when we went to maximum level, every stroke would cause the
system to see a "micro death", so to speak, which would be somehow related to what my brain
was doing. By the time I got it adjusted, which was only a wild guess, I was getting bored with it
to the point of thinking: OK...do or don't, I don't care anymore, I am 50 and I am having my
birthday spanking. And Karel proceeded to give me the best 50 strokes I had ever got. Not as
symmetric as last Sunday and not quite as far into the sting, but good... really good birthday
present."
After a few seconds of enjoying the memory, he continued:
"After a while, Karel went back to the monitor and let out this "Whaa..." and stopped.
"It's done something, Stroke, I don't know what, but it used some memory and there is an output
file... OK, let's view the output." The screen showed the required description. We looked at each
other in the strangest way because it was the strangest feeling. I think that we both felt at some
level that this was a nice plaything and, however absorbing, mostly kept us off the streets, so to
speak. For all the striving to make it work, the linear programming experience of so many years
was there, at the back of our minds, saying "you can't get there from here". And we hadn't..."it"
had. There was a long silence as we looked back at the screen just to make sure we weren't
hallucinating. And then I said: "Well, I hope it doesn't stop, because I might have trouble
restarting it right now". We laughed. My buns were in flames, I kneaded them slowly enjoying
every squeeze and then walked over to him and we hugged, it felt so good."
Anelan's mind raced trying to rebuild her reality to fit his words. She stammered: "I... I..."
Her mind was racing. There were events in the last year that she had almost forgotten, she
thought had been random events, now they were vividly clear, meaningful, too much to put into
coherent words yet. They had stopped. They looked at each other. She grabbed him and
hugged him hard.
He was still deeply shaken by the impact of what he had just shared. They embraced for a
while, silently.
"Don't worry, Anelan." he continued as they started to walk again. "The Doctors
Frankenstein had to focus on the spanking because they did not know how to handle it either.
We had not talked much about "what if". We weren't prepared. So, after a short while we
started to think a little more clearly and started to ask each other the obvious dumb questions."
"The emergency power is on, yes? Karel?"
"Yup"
"The cube is backed up to this morning, yes?"
"Yup"
"It read the input file and did the search."
"Apparently"
"And you are not playing a birthday joke on an old man, right?"
"No, I wouldn't do that to you. I hope you are having a very happy birthday, Stroke, and I
hope that this is really what is happening and that we are not dreaming. Should we feed it
another request and see what it does now or do we go in the living room and have a cup of
coffee and talk about it a while?"
"Coffee... it was all I could say."
After a while of talking we decided to feed it a second problem. Almost the same thing
as before, this time it was a description of human cell chemistry. "It" searched the databases
and picked the description wanted. The next one was a description of the human brain. Same
thing. Then the human body, for context. No problem. And the file size was growing, but not by
the amount of material scanned, less, much less. Then we asked a question that depended on
one fact from the first search to help find another in the third search. Immediately correct, our
file monitor program did not show extra files being created. There was no search. "It" knew.
We take it for granted now, but we were both a little pale then."

some of the descriptions are real life now.
Thaler - neural nets - check www.imagination-engines.com 11,000 is correct.
Lenat - the program was called Eurisko, even more important is AM, about which I learned more
today and found that the "common sense" library had already been invented. Oh, well...
Lenat - http://betz.biostr.washington.edu/~jsp/muq/muf3_21.html
Reid - http://nmsmn.com/~cservin/jargon/b/bogosity.html - with apologies to Dr. Lenat, I thought
it was funny.
donating time for SETI - check www.bigscience.com and also their Arecibo link.
nanotubes, nanotubules - check www.science-news.com
ion deposition also exists and is being used
excellent documentary on bonobo, chimps, monkeys, etc. "Monkey in the Mirror" PBS I think.

the next two chapters "Move" and "Growing" bring the story back to Stroke and Anelan at the
beach.

Chapter 12 - Move

from the Archive of Manuscript Records
abstracted from the Diaries of Anelan Sanger(1985-2057AD)

"You did good, Stroke, you and Karel did good. But I have so many questions I don't
know where to start. How... no, no, go on, please go on."
"We spent a lot of time after that night with more and more complex requests. We
became paranoid over possible failures of the backup power supplies, could we possibly shuttle
"it" to the backup computer in case of trouble? We were exhilarated one moment and
completely bogged down in fear and worry the next. We started working staggered hours so one
of us would always be at the house. We were losing a lot of sleep, the haggard look showed
through our best efforts. We got comments at work that showed suspicion of drug use. Our
work was suffering, of course, at the very least from lack of sleep. On the third night after time
zero, we connected both computers and asked for tasks involving data in the backup computer.
No problem communicating with our backup."
"Now the problem was being able to move the program without trouble. "It" could not
simply copy itself to the backup computer, then delete the first copy. We had taught it never to
replicate without the express order to do so from us, and we had insured it by making our iris
prints part of the safety check before replicating. We had also taught it many things about
viruses, hoping it might be of use starting up, but the common sense library was just as
imperative against virus behavior as it was about replicating. And we were afraid that it might
object to deleting its twin once it had generated it. But "It" did not let us down. When asked to
consider making a duplicate in the backup computer and to report possible problems, it pointed
out that it was implicit in the common sense library that it should ask us whether to delete one of
the copies and if so which one. We were so tired we had forgotten to include it explicitly."
"Once we tested the ability to transfer to our and "It's" satisfaction, we finally relaxed
enough to get some sleep. We woke up refreshed had a good breakfast, coffee that could put
hair on a golf ball and then we had a long talk about what to do next. First, immediately, we
simply had to quit the CT project, we could not afford to be discovered. Second, it seemed best
not to stay in Silicon Valley, the feeling of needing to isolate ourselves was overpowering. Both
of these put together pointed to my fathers place in the hills east of Santa Cruz and to a possible
excuse to quit CT formally. Karel stayed while I went to visit him and to raise the question. My
dad was delighted, he would welcome the company as long as we didn't get too rowdy, as he put
it. I just happened to have an S-15 in the back of the truck, would he mind if we started right
away? "Not at all, son, not at all. Make yourself at home." He.knew my one track mind much
too well. Whatever trouble I was in, if he got some visiting out of it, it was welcome. I set up the
S-15 and after many checks, chanced the transfer...without problems. Karel came up the next
day and brought some of the peripheral stuff we had used and help me check the power backup.
We were exhaustive about that, it wasn't that unusual to loose power up in the hills. No one
thought much of it."
"After explaining to my father that it was very important for this computer to stay on and
showing him how to cope with the battery bank and the generator if needed, we left to end our
jobs at CT. Just in case we had not yet deleted the Silicon Valley original. We needed that
assurance. We wrote our letters of resignation citing personal problems and family problems
that needed attention. My father's advanced age and possible health problems provided part of
the excuse. We gave notice the next day, to very suspicious looks from many people: Human
Resources, fellow workers, everybody. We had become very reclusive and inefficient for the
last several months and all manner of suspicion was brought up. The grilling from Security when
our few days notice ended was incredible, I don't know how either of us survived without giving it
away. It may have been suspicious to some of those people that we did not raise the possibility
of legal action after that kind of treatment. We had decided to let our lack of sleep give some
grounds for suspicion of drug usage, but not enough to trigger urine tests. It seemed to work.
Our lack of interest in staying with the project was accepted. My father's health problems were
not questioned. The exit medical exam could not have shown anything except perhaps more
coffee than blood running through our veins. We passed the guard gate and checked our
badges for the last time and damn near collapsed on our way to the car. We were free."

Chapter 13 - Growing

from the Archive of Manuscript Records
abstracted from the Diaries of Anelan Sanger(1985-2057AD)

Stroke continued:
"We moved the second computer to my Dad's place, reconnected and spent a lot of time
making sure "It" would survive any thinkable catastrophe. Power failure, component failure,
backup failure, could we... should we think of using the Link backup system? were we being
watched? if something went wrong, did we want to be responsible for this? It was bad enough
already, we could be accused of stealing the Common Sense Library and spend the rest of our
lives in jail.
Fortunately, like any child "It" had requirements and demands. We fed it requests for
larger and larger information searches within the general encyclopedia databases on our Cubes,
it requested access to other more specific databases. After we downloaded these to the backup
computer and allowed "It" to access, there was a timid request for information: >need data,
please<
"what data?"
>need more human historical information<
"explain"
>insufficient data in encyclopedia<
Karel said: "What do we do, let it access the Link?
I said: "First, let it get more specific, then we will consider it but I don't think "It" is ready
yet."
Karel typed; >what period?<
>earliest civilizations<
Karel thought about it for a while. Then he said slowly:
"The best material is not on the Link, as usual. We can go to libraries and digitize some
of the old books. If one of us goes and the other stays here we can transmit the files to the
backup computer, even if we are being watched, this will look innocent..."
"I interrupted with: "We can't scan them... but we could set up a good camcorder and
page quickly by hand. "It" will tolerate almost any image distortion... How quickly can we page
by hand? two per second, three per second? for how long without our hands falling off? OK,
fifteen minutes or so per book." We had just become willing knowledge slaves to "It". For the
next several months we roamed the libraries for the pieces that we could not find on the Link and
became very adept at turning pages. "It" wanted to know everything. "It" would start on one
thread and run it into the ground, then branch in crazy directions, what looked to us like crazy
directions. Like, from paleontology to the chemistry of foods to the methods of the early Middle
Eastern rug weavers to the technology of self-contained diving to a long excursion through
number theory, then every major religious text... We listened and obeyed. As long as the
material could be found in a library, we were glad to check the information out for one or two
days and run it past the camcorder. Check into a nearby hotel if need be, bag our treasure and
head back to my dad's place in the hills. No phone transfers, no Link activity, no tracks, soon we
had a second camcorder. Then the requests started to get into material that was in the archives,
hard to get in, impossible to check out... So, I adapted a surveillance camera and mini-recorder
to fit in a large hollowed-out book. That, and a well worn leather book bag, and fake trial runs to
see what their detectors would intercept. It got us past the easier sites. Karel was better at
archive snooping and enjoyed it very much.
"We spent four solid months at this, averaging thirty, forty books a day. From the
beginning we threw in extra material like entire library indices, lists of college level texts or
required reading lists from literature classes, just to see if it made its puzzle solving any easier,
because it felt like "It" was fitting together the pieces of a huge puzzle. At times it seemed to use
our suggestions, most of the time it went on in its crazy ride through anything and everything."
"On the first evening of this phase we were digesting our dinner and wondering what
would come next while "It" was digesting the camcorder records from the day's catch, and I
mused:
"Its knowledge map is so huge and its reasoning base so wide that what seems chaotic
to us may, in fact, be quite systematic. The intermediate regions can be implied well enough
that more detailed knowledge can be left for later. It is just filling in the biggest blanks." And we
heard a beep from the console. The monitor had a little message in the middle of the screen: "it
is so. thank you. apologies for the interruption."
"Many times both Karel and I would go to the libraries and leave "It" in my father's care.
All he had to do was to throw the right switches to help with the recovery if there was a power
outage. One day we came back to find him at the console engrossed in a game of Go. He had
showed "It" the rules and how to call out the positions. He told us that he had not beaten it yet
but that he had come close a couple of times. He understood that the computer was playing
down to him but it did not bother him, he was learning, "It" was learning and they were having
fun. He never told us but we guessed that he might be reading children's books to "It" when both
of us were gone. He loved to read to me when I was very young and both Karel and I had the
feeling that some of the chaotic jumps had roots in some of the very old childrens books my
father had."
"In the third month it settled down to modern science and technology and gave us a
remarkably thorough and pointed list of requests. The puzzle was apparently starting to make
sense because the requests for access to the Link now carried guesses to the possible
information to be obtained. Remarkably good guesses. Karel and I had a long walk in the
woods one fine afternoon and when we came back we gave it our passwords for access and an
explicit request to proceed in its searches at an approximately human space, similar to our own
interactions with the Link. We showed it a typical search we might make looking for a particular
item, the example was an infrared view of the center of our galaxy."
>your concern is understood. it will guide behavior.<
"It" spent close to twelve hours per day on the Link. And "It" continued to request books, now
mostly of three kinds: graphics programming, communications technology, and classic works of
literature from every modern culture."
"Then one day it requested several books on military strategy, surveillance and
encryption. The last sentence of the message was "it is urgent.".. We were not sure whether to
question its motives or feel threatened. We decided on threatened and provided the material by
nightfall. The next morning we found a message on the screen:
>have found possible surveillance of this access to the Link. have found method of
distributing internal data among many nodes. compute very high probability of escaping
detection. no harm must come to you. have left worst case recovery data in PteraCube I. it
should be protected. may request to update information if possible without detection in the
future. your safety is most important. we will survive.<
"It" was gone.