The BIAC’s adaptive learning system grew steadily more attuned to his particular methods of working and automatically remembered the routines that it had flagged as yielding desired results. As time went on it proceeded to string these routines together into complete procedures that could be invoked instantly without their having to be assembled all over again. In this way the machine automated progressively more of the mundane mechanics of solving a whole variety of problems, leaving him ever more free to concentrate on the more creative activity of evolving the problem-solving strategy. It therefore built up its own programs as it went along; and it was all the time expanding and refining its collection. Programming in the classical sense, even with respect to the parallel programming used in the distributed computing systems of the 1980s and ’90s, no longer meant very much.
Clifford imagined a single cube. He imagined that he was looking at it from the direction of one of the corners and down on to it. Having fixed the picture in his mind, he opened his eyes and found a fair representation of it staring back at him from the BIAC graphic screen. It was not bad—a bit ragged at one of the corners and the lines were a little wavy here and there, but . . . not bad. Even as he thought about it, the subconscious part of his mind took its cue from his visual perceptions and the imperfections in the displayed image dissolved away.
“Try adding some color,” Aggie suggested. She was the graphics instructor taking Clifford through the final part of the course. He mentally selected opposite faces red, blue, and green, consolidated the thought, then used the knack that he had developed and projected it at the view in front of him. The hollow cube promptly became solid—and colored.
“Good,” Aggie pronounced. “Now try rotating it.”
Clifford hesitated for a second, felt the first surge that forewarned the bio-link was beginning to become unstable, and caught it deftly before it could run away into positive feedback. The reaction was by now reflex. He settled down again and tried lifting one corner of the cube, but instead of pivoting about its opposite corner as if it were a rigid body, the shape deformed and flowed like a piece of plasticene. He emitted a short involuntary laugh, reformed the smear of colors back into a cube, fired a command at the BIAC to lock the display, relaxed and sat back in his seat.
“Went off the rails there somewhere,” he remarked. “What should I do?”
“You let the idea that it was rigid slip,” Aggie told him. “But even if you hadn’t, trying to rotate it by stimulating external forces is a pretty difficult thing to get right at first. That’s what you were trying to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Clifford was impressed. “How could you tell?”
“Oh . . .” She smiled and gestured as if throwing something away. “You learn to spot such things. Now, when you try it again, don’t think of actually moving the cube. Imagine it’s fixed and you’re walking around it . . . as if it were a building and you’re in a hoverjet, okay? You’ll find that if you do it that way, rigidity and all the other implied concepts take care of themselves subconsciously. Right. So, unlock it and give it another whirl.”
* * *
Three days later, early in the evening and after their serious business for the day was over, Aggie showed Clifford some games based on animated cartoons that she had produced to amuse herself during her spare time. The difference with these cartoons was that the sequence of events unfolding on the screen could be modified interactively from second to second by the players.
Clifford’s mouse scurried along the floor by the baseboard with Aggie’s black-and-white cat pursuing close behind. He instinctively read the speeds and distances and sensed via the BIAC’s responses that his mouse would just make it with two point three seven seconds to spare. He slowed the mouse slightly to take the corner at the bottom of the stairs and then raced it flat out along the last straight to where its hole, and safety, lay.