The Turing Option

“Yes,” the Colonel said into the phone, then stiffened, almost coming to attention.

“For you, General,” he said, and held out the phone.

“Who is it?” General Schorcht asked, but the Colonel did not answer. After an even briefer hesitation the General took it.

“General Schorcht here. Who?” There was a long silence as he listened, before he spoke again. “Yes, sir, but this is a military emergency and I must decide that. Yes I do remember General Douglas MacArthur. And I do remember that he overstepped his orders and was removed from command. The message is clear. Yes, Mr. President, I understand.”

He handed the phone back, turned and walked from the room. The officer on the floor climbed painfully to his feet, shook his fist at Benicoff, who smiled back happily, before he went after the others.

Only when the door had closed behind them did Erin Snaresbrook permit herself to speak.

“You pulled some long strings, Mr. Benicoff.”

“The President’s Commission is making this investigation — not that military fossil. I think he had to be reminded who was his commander in chief. I liked that reference to MacArthur and the expression on General Schorcht’s face when he remembered that President Truman fired the General.”

“You have made an enemy for life.”

“That happened a long time ago. So now — can you tell me what is happening? How is Brian progressing?”

“I will in just a moment. If you will wait in my office, I’ll finish up with him. I won’t be long.”

Brian looked up when the door opened and the doctor came in.

“I heard voices. Something important?”

“Nothing, my boy, nothing important at all.”

12 October 27, 2023

“Feeling fine today, are we?” Dr. Snaresbrook asked as she opened the door, then stood aside as a nurse and an orderly rolled in the heavily laden trolleys.

“I was — until I saw that hardware and that double-ended broom with the bulging glass eyes. What is it?”

“It’s a commercially manufactured micromanipulator. Very few have been made.”

Snaresbrook kept smiling, gave Brian no hint that this was part of the machine that Brian had helped her develop. “At the heart of the machine is a parallel computer with octree architecture. This enables it to fit it on a single and rather large planar surface. Wafer-scale integration. This interfaces with a full computer in each joint of the tree-robot.”

“Each joint — you’re putting me on!”

“You’ll soon discover how much computers have changed — particularly the one that controls this actuating unit. The basic research was done at MIT and CMU to build those brooms, as you call them. It is a lot more complex than it looks at a distance. You will notice that it starts out with two arms — but they bifurcate very quickly. Each arm then becomes two—”

“And both of them smaller, by half it seems.”

“Just about. Then they split again — and again.” She tapped one of the branching arms. “Just about here the arms become too small to manufacture, tools get too gross — and assembly would have to have been done under a microscope. So…”

“Don’t tell me. Each part is standardized, exactly the same in every way — except size. Just smaller. So the manipulators on one side make the next stage on down for the other.”

“Exactly right. Although the construction materials have to change because of structural strength and the volume-to-size ratio. But there is still only a single model stored in the computer’s memory, along with manufacture and assembly programs. All that changes with each stage is the size. Piezoelectric stepping motors are built into each joint.”

“The manufacturing techniques at the lower end must really be something.”

“Indeed they are — but we can go into that some other time. What is important now is that sensors in the small tips are very fine and controlled by feedback from the computer. They can be used for microsurgery at a cellular level, but now they will be used for the very simple job of positioning this connection precisely.”

Brian looked at the projecting, almost invisible, length of optic fiber. “Like using a pile driver to push in a pin. So this gets plugged into a socket in my neck, as you told me — and the messages start zipping in and out?”

“That’s it. You won’t feel a thing. Now — if you will just roll over onto your side, that’s fine.”

Dr. Snaresbrook went to the controls and when she switched the unit on, the multibranching arms stirred to life. She guided them to a position close behind Brian, then turned over control to the computer. There was a silken rustle as the tiny fingers stirred and separated, dropped slowly down, touched his neck.

“Tickles,” Brian said. “Like a lot of little spider legs. What is it doing?”

“It is now positioning the fiberoptic to contact the receptor unit under your skin. It will go through your skin, though you won’t feel it. The point is sharper than my smallest hypodermic needle. Plus the fact that it is looking for a path that avoids all nerves and small blood vessels. The tickling will stop as soon as the contact is in place — there.”