The Turing Option

“By doing just the opposite. You can learn a lot of ways not to solve it. A lot of wrong methods not to try. Then, once you find the most common mistakes, you can hardly help doing the right thing without even trying.”

He remembered exactly where she had gone wrong and knew at once what her misunderstanding was. He explained it patiently, two or three ways, until she finally caught on.

“Is that what my trouble was! Why didn’t Beastly Betser explain it like that? It’s obvious.”

“Everything is obvious once you understand it. Why don’t you work through the rest of those examples while this is clear in your head?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Got things to do, gotta run.”

Run she did, or at least trotted out of the dining room, and he shook his head as he watched her go. Girls! They were a strange breed. He opened his book and winced at the red tomato stains. Sloppy. Sloppy thinking too, she should have worked this thing out while it was fresh in her head. Five will get you ten she would forget the whole thing by tomorrow.

She did. “You were right! It was gone, zip. I thought I remembered, but not exactly.”

He sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes heavenward. Kim giggled.

“Look,” he said, “there’s really not much use spending the time to learn something unless you spend a little more time making sure that it stays learnt. First, you can’t really understand anything if you only understand it one way. You have to think a little about each new idea — which old ones it is like, and which are really different. If you don’t connect it to a few other things, it will evaporate the moment anything changes. That’s what I meant yesterday, about the solution not being important. It’s the differences and similarities.” He could see that this was having no effect, so he played his ace. “Anyway, I worked out an auto-tutor program that simplifies the subject of successive approximations. I’ll give you a copy. Then you can run it whenever the curtain starts to fall in your brain and all will be made instantly clear. At least it will get you through this part of the course.”

“You really have a program like that?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know anything about you at all, Mister I.Q. Kid.”

“Why did you call me that?” He was angry, hurt, both feelings mixed together. He had overheard the other students calling him that behind his back. Laughing.

“I’m sorry — I didn’t mean it, I just never thought. Any moron that calls you that must be a moron. I apologized so you can’t be angry.”

“I’m not,” he said, and realized mat he meant it. “Give me your log-on ID and I’ll zap a copy of that program to your modem.”

“I always forget the ID, but I’ve written it down someplace.”

Brian groaned. “You simply can’t forget your ID. That’s like forgetting your blood type.”

“But I don’t know my blood type!”

They both laughed at that and he found the only solution. “You better come over to my place and I’ll give you a copy.”

“You will? You’re a great guy, Brian Delaney.”

She shook his hand in gratitude. Her fingers were very, very warm.

8 March 25, 2023

There were muttered complaints from people waiting in the line, but not from Benicoff. Not only didn’t he mind — he enjoyed the security. When he finally reached the two M.P.s they coldly asked him for his ID — although they knew him very well. They examined this closely, then his hospital pass, before they let him approach the front door of the hospital. Another guard inside unlocked it for him.

“Any troubles, Sergeant?”

“None other than the usual with you-know-who.”

Benicoff nodded in understanding. He had been present when General Schorcht had chewed the Sergeant out, him with hash marks up to his elbows, a Master Sergeant, not that the General cared. “I got my troubles with him too — which is why I’m here.”

“It’s a tough life,” the Sergeant said with marked lack of sympathy. Benicoff found the internal phone and called Snaresbrook’s secretary, discovered that the surgeon was in the library, got instructions how to find it.

Leather-bound medical books lined the walls; but all of them were years out of date and just there for decoration. The library was completely computerized, since all technical books were published in digital form. This had only become possible when conventions and standards were set for illustrations and graphics which were animated most of the time. So any medical book or journal was entered into the library’s data base the instant that it was published. Erin Snaresbrook sat in front of a terminal speaking instructions.

“Can I interrupt?” Benicoff asked.

“In two seconds. I went to make a copy of this in my computer. There.” She hit return and the item was instantly transferred to the data base in her own computer upstairs. The surgeon nodded and spun about in her chair. “I was talking to a friend in Russia this a.m., he told me about this. It’s in St. Petersburg, a student of Luria. Some very original work on nerve regeneration. What can I do for you?”