The Turing Option

Brian nodded agreement. “In all truth I had planned to take a walk, think this new thing out.”

“A good idea — as long as you don’t tire yourself.”

He put on his sunglasses before he stepped out in the midday desert glare. An armed corporal opened the door for him, fell in a few paces behind as he spoke softly into his lapel microphone. Other soldiers were out on both flanks, another walking ahead. Brian was getting used to their constant presence, barely noticed it now as he strolled along the path to his favorite bench by the ornamental pool. The Megalobe executive buildings were on the other side of the water, but shielded from sight by the trees and shrubbery. He was the only one who ever seemed to come here and he enjoyed the silence and privacy. He scowled when his phone buzzed. He thought of not answering it, then sighed and undipped it from his belt.

“Delaney.”

“Major Wood at reception. Captain Kahn is here. Says you weren’t expecting her today but would it be okay to talk to you?”

“Yes, of course. Tell her I’m at…”

“I know where you are, sir.’’ There was more than a hint of firmness in the Major’s voice at the suggestion that he didn’t know Brian’s location down to the nearest millimeter. “I’ll escort her to you.”

They came down the path from the main entrance, the wide-shouldered bulk of the Major dwarfing Shelly’s small but shapely figure. She wasn’t in uniform today and was wearing a short white dress more suitable to the desert climate. Brian stood up when she came close; Woody turned sharply on his heel and left them alone.

“I’m not disturbing your work, am I?” There was a thin line of worry between her eyes.

“Not at all. Just taking a break as you see.”

“I should have called first. But I just got back from L.A. and wanted to put you in the picture about progress. I have been working with some of the best investigators in the LAPD. With the kind of work you are doing I’m sure you know all about Expert Systems?”

CONTOUR MAP OF BORREGO, FROM USGS

SATELLITE SCAN DATA

“I wouldn’t say all — and I am surely out of touch with work done in the last years. But tell me, what language do you write your programs in?”

“LAMA 3.5.”

He smiled. “That’s good news. My father was one of the team that developed LAMA, Language for Logic and Metaphor. Is your machine detective up and running?”

“Yes, it is in a working prototype stage. Works well enough to be interesting. I call it ‘Dick Tracy.’ ”

“How does it work?”

“Basically, it is pretty straightforward. Three main sections. The first is a bunch of different Expert Systems, each with a specific job to do. These specialists are controlled by a fairly simple manager that looks for correlations and notices whenever several of them agree on anything. One of them has already searched through data bases all over the country, making lists of all transportation methods. Now it is compiling its own data bases about automobiles, trucks, air travel and so on. Even water transportation systems.”

“Out here in the desert?”

“Well, the Salton Sea is not very far. Then I have a lot of other specialist programs compiling various kinds of geographic data, especially satellite scans in this area for the period of time we are interested in.”

“Sounds good.” Brian stood. “I’m getting stiff — want to walk a bit?”

“Of course.” She looked about her as they strolled down the path. “Is this a military base? There seem to be an awful lot of soldiers about.”

“All mine,” he said, and smiled. “You notice how they keep pace with us?”

“I like that.”

“I like it even more. As you might imagine I don’t really look forward to a fourth attack on my life. Now the question is, can the system you’ve put together help us catch up with those crooks? Has Dick Tracy come up with hot leads yet?”

“Not really. It is still processing data.”

“Then throw it onto a GRAM and bring it here. The big computer that I’m using will give you all the computational power that you could ever need.”

“That would really speed things up. I’ll need a day or two to pull all the loose ends together.” She glanced up at the sun. “I think that I better go now. I am sure that I can get everything finalized by Wednesday, copy all my notes, and bring the GRAM out Thursday morning.”

“Perfect. I’ll walk you back to the guardhouse — I’m not allowed near the gate — and let Woody know what is happening.”

After she had gone he realized that he should have asked her for a copy of LAMA 3.5 — then laughed at his stupidity. The days of carrying programs around on disks, other than those that needed top security, were long gone. He headed for the lab. He probably had a copy of the program there on CD ROM. If not he could download from a data base.

This new-old world of 2024 still took some getting used to.

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February 21, 2024