“Seventeen, warn me if Ron starts paying attention to this conversation. I want you to tell me everything about this— change—that you told Toby.”
Seventeen, friendly as always, did just that.
“Can he put me in his own master program from his amp?”
“He could.”
“Analysis of Haller’s probable action in this matter.”
“Indications strong that he will direct the restoration. He feels guilty because he thinks he caused it all.”
“Simple. Create a basic program now that will act to cancel his directive when implemented.”
She thought a moment. That would do for now, but then they’d be going back through the new land to the core. He’d surely turn her over to Suzuki and she’d get the treatment in spades.
“Seventeen—what can I do to make this permanent? So that not even you or the shrinks could take it away. Is that possible?”
“I feel obligated to warn you that such a step would be permanent and irrevocable, even by you. This borders on the irrational and may trip my Guard flag1:”
“Is it possible?”
“Yes. However, I will have to have the specifics of your request before I can make a judgment.”
“I want to look, and feel, this way from now on. I want to be the most sexy, desirable girl around. I want to lose all the inhibitions that won’t do harm to others. I want to be mature, desirable, but get back the innocence and wonder of childhood. I’d be happy to be like that until I died. Can you understand that?”
“Would it disturb you to know that I felt compelled to send this to the Special Projects office? That Dr. Suzuki herself is monitoring this at this very moment?”
She felt a sudden crash. “Yes. It would disturb me a great deal.”
“Interesting. Dr. Suzuki has just informed me that she will not object to or interfere in this. It is up to you.”
She wasn’t sure. “You mean—she’s decided just like that that I’m expendable and she’s willing to allow me to be the subject of my own experiment for her learning purposes.”
“That’s about it. I feel personally, though, that you should reconsider right now. You are working from a predominantly emotional rather than rational viewpoint, and you may regret it later, if you’re able to. You don’t have to give it up now. The price you will pay for doing this in the manner you suggest is quite high.”
“What’s the price?” she asked him.
“First, the method is to add the desired localized program to the master program in such a mathematical string that it would be impossible to alter your specifics without altering the master Anchor program itself. That is effective permanence.”
“You mean—I would become a part of my own program instead of an overlay?”
“That’s right. And the 7240 maintenance computers would be obligated to maintain you that way to the same degree as they maintain the trees, grass, and hills. The only modifications possible would be at Guard, since those computers would be handling maintenance, not me. This is true of every mathematical string involved, in case of extreme emergencies. To get around this, you would have to supply your own personal string and allow me to make it infinitely more complex. You would have to supply the original string for the 7240 Guard to remove you from its master program.”
She thought a moment. “But I could be just put under by any shrink or slipped a pill and I’d give the number.”
The computer seemed to hesitate. Then it said, “Not if a filter were in place at activation that removed your computational abilities. This would be necessary in any event to preclude any involuntary interactions with the grid should you go into the void.”
So that was the price, and it was a big one for her. Mathematics had been a good part of her life. “That’s a hell of a price,” she told the computer.
“Actually, it’s computational abilities. You would be able to count to twenty, perhaps, on your fingers and toes, and you might manage subtraction in that range if the numbers weren’t large, but even multiplication and division would be beyond you. Further, the organization of each human brain is unique. The filter required might also trap other skills or abilities you have learned.”
She considered that as well. “But I would still have my memories? My identity? I wouldn’t come out, like, well, Hasim?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“Seventeen—work up a simulation and I’ll get back to you today on this.”
” Understood. Please reconsider though
“I am,” she said seriously.
She switched off, but the interloper on the other end, sitting in her office, did not. Suzuki had a private voice terminal line to Seventeen, worked through the Security link downstairs.
“Seventeen,” said the doctor thoughtfully.
“Yes, Dr. Suzuki?”
“Can you send programs to her when she’s on the amp interface?”
“Yes, Doctor. Very limited, but it’s possible.”
“Seventeen—priority security alert master command flag on.”
“Flag on. Password?”
“General McKenzie has fig pajamas.”
“Acknowledged. Send?”
“When Connie Makapuua signs back on, I want you to unobtrusively reinforce a conviction to accept her program. If she decides to go with it, I want it locked in so tight she will never reconsider. If she decides not to proceed, I want her mind changed. I want this with no hint that it is being imposed or reinforced to the subject—ever. Project security demands it.”
“Understood. Writing routine. Writing subroutines. Stored. Activation authority?”
“Mayor Snorkum will lay a cake.”
“Acknowledged. Done. I am out of place here, but may I ask the reason for this?”
Interesting. Seventeen had never asked something like that before. “Because she is emotionally unstable and undepend-able. Her emotive state, reinforced by her physical alterations, makes her a risk for future work with our equipment, but she simply has too much knowledge, skills, and training about things like Special Projects and the grid to be allowed to just roam all over. I don’t have the months it might take to cure her, nor the personnel, nor is she vital enough to be worth emergency treatment. This way she can be of value both to psychiatry and to our understanding of the programming process. More, because we are creating her expressed deepest fantasy, she will be happy. Is that sufficient? And why does it concern you one way or the other?”
“Understood. I am always reluctant to part with one who is in such direct communication with me. Loss of one who is at the point and has the ability to directly interface with me so that will is known semantically and intuitively, reducing error probabilities to negligible, is a slight diminishment of my external interface and abilities. Why are you so intent on the permanency factor?”
“That, right now, is none of your affair,” replied the doctor.
It had been a long, hard trip, but both Haller and his horse made it to the center amp, where Tombi and Caussa, a Nigerian married couple both of whom were technicians in engineering, had things prepped and waiting.
He had dwelled for a long time on Connie and her problem. He felt both guilty and responsible for the situation, yet his own inner feelings kept him in agony. He could circumvent it, but it went against his grain to do so. Worse, she was close to the void and now she not only knew the procedure but could get pointers from Seventeen. She could reverse it again, unless he bound her into the landscape program itself— and that would lock her in her old body and old mentality, but with memories of how she might have been and who prevented it. He didn’t need an analysis from Seventeen to tell him that he might just be prescribing a suicide. There was just too much about Connie he’d taken for granted that was proving wrong. He wondered if anybody really understood anybody else, deep down.
He managed to get a good night’s sound sleep, and spent the next morning checking out the gear. It wasn’t until well past midday when he got word that the north point was staffed and on line. Interestingly, the pair going down the east side and also had experiences with the grid, but they had less hours, overall, on the big amps than either he or Connie, and maybe they were less emotional, but nothing major happened to them.
Connie came on line, sounding bright and cheerful, and he was glad to hear that.
“Connie, I’ve decided that whatever you want to do has my blessing,” he told her. “I have no right to interfere.”