The Turing Option

Nothing like this was ever going to happen to him again. No one was ever going to get close enough to him to hurt him. He was going to think about his AI managing program and see if he could get it to work and forget about her. Forget about girls. Something like this was never going to happen to him again. Ever.

9 Coronado April 2, 2023

The helicopter came in over the bay, past the bridge that connected the hooked peninsula of Coronado to San Diego. The roads below were sealed tight by security: the copter was not only the safest but was the fastest way in and out of the base. It swooped low over the gray shapes of the mothball fleet, quietly rusting into extinction since the end of the Second World War. They dropped down to the HQ helipad, dust clouds roiling out, and saw a stretched limo pull up.

“This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a meeting,” Erin Snaresbrook snapped. “Some of us have work to do. This is totally ridiculous — when we could have had a teleconference.”

“All of us have work to do, Doctor, all of us,” Benicoff said. “You have only yourself to blame — this meeting was your idea. You must have realized that this was the only way that we could guarantee security.”

“A progress report, that was all that I said.” She raised her hand before Benicoff could speak. “I know. I hear the arguments. It is far safer here. The disappearances, the thefts, assassination attempt. It’s just that I hate these infernal awful choppers. They are the most dangerous form of transportation ever invented. One of them fell off the Pan Am Building, you’re too young to remember, dropped right into Forty-second Street. They are death traps.”

They drove into an underground entrance to the headquarters building. Past marine sentries, guards and locked gates, TV cameras and all the security apparatus so adored by the military. One last guarded door admitted them to a conference room with a panoramic view of the bay and Point Loma. An aircraft carrier was just coming in from the open sea. In front of the window at least a dozen dark-suited civilians and uniformed officers were gathered around the teak table.

“Is this room secure?” Snaresbrook whispered.

“You’re being facetious, Doctor,” Benicoff whispered back. “That window will stop a thirty-inch naval shell.”

Erin turned to look at it, then caught Benicoff’s smile. Like her, he was joking to relax the tension.

“Sit down,” General Schorcht ordered, his usual charming self. His introductions were equally succinct. “Dr. Snaresbrook is on the left. With her is Mr. Benicoff, whom you have met before and who is in charge of the ongoing Megalobe investigation.”

“And who are all these people?” Erin Snaresbrook asked sweetly. General Schorcht ignored her.

“You have a report to make, Doctor. Let’s have it.”

The silence lengthened, the General and the surgeon radiating cold hatred at each other. Benicoff broke in, not wanting the situation to decay any further.

“I called this meeting because it appears that the operations undertaken by Dr. Snaresbrook have now reached an important and most vital stage. Since the rest of our investigation is stalled, I feel that everything now depends on Dr. Snaresbrook. She had been a pillar of strength, our only hope in this disastrous matter. And she seems to have worked a miracle. She will now bring us up to date. If you please, Doctor.” Slightly mollified, still very angry, the surgeon shrugged and decided that she had had enough of the petty feuding. She spoke calmly and quietly.

“I am now approaching the end of the basic surgery on the patient. The superficial damage caused by the bullet has had a satisfactory resolution. The more important and vital deep repairs of the nerve bundles in the cortex have been completed. The film implants were successful and the connections have been made by the inbuilt computer. Gross surgery is no longer called for. The skull has been closed.”

“You have succeeded. The patient will talk…”

“I will have no interruptions. From anyone. When I have finished my description of what has been done and what my prognosis is I will then answer any questions.”

Snaresbrook was silent for a moment. So was General Schorcht, radiating pure hatred. She smiled demurely, then went on.

“I may have failed completely. If I have, that is the end of it. I’ll not open his head again. I want to tell you strongly that there is always a chance of this. Everything I have done is still experimental — which is why I make no promises. But I will tell you what I hope will happen. If I have succeeded the patient will regain consciousness and should be able to talk. But I doubt if I will be talking to the man who was shot. He will not remember any of his life as an adult. If my procedures succeed, if he regains consciousness, it will be as a child.”

She ignored the murmur of dismay, waited until it died down before she continued.