“Humans, at least humans in the sense you mean, are not capable. Let me put it this way: let us say that Councilman Tournet here owns the smartest French poodle in the world. This poodle is a genuine marvel. If you ask it how much two plus three is, it will tap its paw five times. If you point to the Sunday paper and ask it to bring you the comics, it will do so. This is, in fact, the smartest dog in the entire history of the Universe—but, after all is said and done, it is still a dog. It is limited by its physiology, by its genetics, by its very nature. And no matter how hard it tries, it can never be anything more than a very, very smart poodle—which is to say retarded, almost cretinous, by human standards. No matter what it does, that dog has no intellectual chance against a human being—at least in anything not involving smelling or barking.”
Once again Hunter’s grotesque body stirred uncomfortably in his bed. “Ladies, gentlemen, I am absolutely convinced that as matters now stand we have no chance at all in negotiating with these Trajendi. But unlike dogs, the human race can augment its intelligence. We can build a better human—one that may be able to keep up with the Trajendi.”
President Claybom stared at Hunter blankly. “You’re saying that we can build a better human in the next three months? What are you talking about?”
“I mean that we can build a neural-net computer of vast complexity and link it, biologically, with a human brain. The brain will supply the input-output functions, the self-awareness, and general reasoning; the neural-net machine will provide the data access, the computational speed, and the multivariable reasoning. With luck the combination might allow us to hold our own. I’m not a computer expert, Mr. President, but I have discussed this with people who are. They suggest a connection machine using at least 1,271 POP Chip processors, a high-speed data transmission protocol, and a silicon/biological interface chip implanted in the host subject’s brain. Which means, of course, that as a first step we’re going to have to recruit a highly specialized team to build such a computer at emergency speed.”
“POP Chip computers?” muttered Councilman Tournet into the silence that followed. “What precisely does that mean?”
“Parallel Optical Processors. They were actually developed forty or fifty years ago, at least the first ones were, but with all the anti-science hysteria of the Black Years, work on them pretty much fell into abeyance. And when it was picked up again, the Conservancy took it entirely under its own wing. Even now we’ll need a special order from you in the Executive Committee in order to get any cooperation from the Classified Projects Agency.”
“There are perfectly good reasons the CCPA has kept this technology under wraps,” blurted Councilwoman Moguiba. “And this is one of them. What you suggest is unthinkable! No sane person—”
“Madam, I admit that this is a desperate plan which will most likely fail, but I see no alternative. The fate of the human race is in the balance. Let me ask you this: after all the years it has taken the people of Africa to rise from the slavery and domination which they endured, are you personally ready to let them slide back into that state of subjugation? Will you let them lose everything they have gained to yet another race of imperialists?”
“But who would do it?” the Councilwoman asked finally.
“Why, me, of course,” said Royce Hunter.
It was almost two o’clock in the morning when Jacob Lattyak slumped down across from Hunter and wearily lifted his fourth cup of coffee of the night to his lips.
Hunter looked up from the small ground-effect machine in which he sat. Artificial arms had restored a semblance of his former bulk and his surprisingly lifelike hands moved restlessly over the machine’s controls. “So, Jacob, can we do it?” he demanded, taking a dainty sip of his cup of lukewarm tea. His insides were far from being what they had been before the attack—and, he knew, they never would be.
“The Project Saber machine we got from the CCPA is a pretty good start. Nothing on the scale we need, of course, only seventy-five processors, but it’s a beginning.”
“You can give me the technical play-by-play later. Can we do it?”
“Maybe.”
“When will you be able to give me a firm answer?”
“Two months.”
“In two months the Trajendi will be landing in Nevada.”
“Exactly my point.” Lattyak shook his great head. He was a vast untidy bear of a man with a Viking’s mustache and a dense mop of shaggy blond hair that fell past his shoulders. His disheveled bulk made the crowded laboratory on the perimeter of Nellis Space Base seem even smaller than it was. “The best I can say is that we have a chance. We won’t know if we can do it until we do it. I can probably, almost certainly, tell you ‘No’ before then. For a ‘Yes’ you will have to wait until we succeed.”
“Jesus, Jacob, I don’t have the energy for all this hairsplitting. What do you personally think?”
“What do I think? Now, that’s a different question.” As usual, the neurocyberneticist ignored the sour grimace that twisted Hunter’s lips each time Lattyak used this favorite expression. “OK, I’m tired too. But yes, I think we may be able to do it. We’ve got a good start here—they built a good foundation.” He gestured to the far end of the laboratory where seven technicians in white smocks huddled over the just-delivered computer like solicitous mother hens.
“Although this is only a seventy-five processor machine,” continued Lattyak, “the architecture will easily support a 1,271 array. They designed it on a multi bus principal. Each chip connects to a common, ultra-highspeed optical bus which connects all of the chips with common memory and all peripherals. High-speed physical shared memory can go as high as 640 billion bytes. Each processor has 64 million bytes of local memory and its mass storage memory is essentially unlimited. The common bus connects each chip directly with fourteen adjacent chips.”
“Fourteen?” Hunter repeated, his forehead wrinkled.
“Think of a cube with a chip at the center. Lines to the chips at the corners make eight connections. Lines to chips at the center of each face make six more connections, for a total of fourteen.
“Where the people at CCPA really got it right was with the OS, the operating system. It’s configured to dynamically allocate processes to the chips based upon need. If, for example, the machine was asked to calculate the position of every single rock in the Solar System in real time, it would figure out how many processors it would need to do the job, then associate them as a work unit which it would treat as a named object called NumberCrunch or whatever.
“Within itself, the NumberCrunch work-unit would operate as an independent neural net. It would divide the problem among its processors, which would communicate directly, processor to processor, using local memory. When the problem was solved, NumberCrunch would pass the results to the common memory over the optical bus. It’s almost infinitely scalable and very flexible.”
“It sounds like it ought to work,” admitted Hunter, his GEM jerking erratically back and forth as he continued to tinker with the controls.
“Look, Royce, we can build the processors and tie them in. That’s just hardware. Natural-language parsing software has been around for decades, so talking to the machine will be absolutely straightforward. The general-purpose database look-up and number crunching programs are already built into the system.”
“But—”
“But will it be able to derive intelligent answers to generalized questions? Will it be able to take the initiative in making crucial connections between varied data inputs when no question was even asked? Will you be able to use it in real time? I simply don’t know.”