[Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols]: the Movie Copyright © Bill Hibbard 2008

 

 

[Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols]: the Movie

Bill Hibbard

March 2008

 

News

 

            "Bogus!" I yelled from across the street, "some guys want to make a movie out of my story."

            He darted through the traffic, still feeling indestructible in middle age. "Who wants to make a movie?" he asked.

            "They're from Chicago, not from a big Hollywood studio. Independents I guess."

            "And they want to make a movie based on Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols? No offense Laszlo, but why would anyone want to make a movie out of that?"

            "You didn't like it because it made you out to be a criminal, a blackmailer. But these guys really seem to like it. They're going to pay me to use it, and pay me to help write a screen play."

            "You're going to change our names, aren't you? I don't want the world to think I'm a crook." He stuck up both arms making victory signs and quoted Nixon, "I am not a crook."

            "That's good," I said, "Maybe I can work that into the script."

            "What? Me imitating Nixon?"

            "Yeah, it was cool."

            "Have you told Megan yet?"

            "She's really excited."

            "Well, she comes off pretty well in the story. She would off course - you love her. But old Bogus - who cares."

            "The story needed you to be a bit outside the law so you could find the AI. At least I didn't make you look stupid. Heck, I wrote you as smarter than me."

            "But I am smarter than you."

            No point in arguing that. He was the smartest kid at school. Now he makes his living off investments, but spends his time as a freelance journalist investigating stories about people getting screwed so other people can get rich.

            "So," I asked, "how are you using that big brain today?"

            "Still trying to figure out why anyone would make a movie out of your story."
            "Actually, they told me they like my writing. I'm driving down to Chicago tomorrow to meet them. They have some suggestions for the script."

            "I'll bet they do," he laughed. "Have they told you what they are yet?"

            "No," I said a little defensively, "there's no reason to think they'll want big changes to my story."

            "Want me to come to Chicago with you?"

            "I'm a grownup. I've been to Chicago by myself already."

            "OK. I'm just curious about these guys. There's a lot of sleaze in the movie business. If this turns out badly, I can use your experience as the starting point for an article about independent filmmakers. So keep me posted, would you?"

            "You're paranoid."

            He smiled, because we both knew that he was in fact paranoid. "See you later, Laszlo. It must be time for you to get back to the office."

            I waved goodbye and headed back to the university, where I was a system administrator manning the ramparts against the barbarians. Well, against hackers and spammers at least.

 

Home

 

            I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables when I heard Megan come in. "Hey sweetheart, want some chic-KEN-dish tonight?" Pronounced to sound like some exotic dish from India.

            "Sounds good," she said as she gave me a kiss.

            I finished chopping up four jalapenos, one yellow bell pepper, one medium yellow onion and a large head of broccoli. Then I cut up a couple leftover baked chicken breasts and put them into a medium high frying pan with olive oil. When the chicken bits were lightly browned I spooned them into a bowl and poured the veggies into the pan on medium low heat. It always amazes me the way veggies can deglaze a pan. Once they were soft, I turned the heat back up and poured the chicken back in, along with a can of pinto beans and a can of diced fire roasted tomatoes. Served hot with soy sauce it was just about the most delicious and healthy meal you could eat.

            "How was work today?" I asked. Megan was an MD specializing in infectious diseases at the university hospital.

            She finished a spoonful of the chicken and vegetables and said, "We got a real sick patient this afternoon. Poor lady."

            "How old is she?"

            "Forty eight," she answered.

            "Too young," I said. It always bothered me to hear of people about our age being so sick.

            "This is great, as usual," she said, appreciating her dinner.

            "Bogus asked to come to Chicago with me."

            "Why?"

            "He's looking for a story about the evils of the movie business. But I won't bring him along."

            "Yeah, I don't think you want Bogus investigating your movie producers."

            "If they turn out to be crooks it's nice to know I can sic Bogus on them. But they seemed reasonable enough on the phone. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt."

            Our dogs and cats, one male and one female of each, were lying on pads and beds scattered around the kitchen. "Canis familiaris goofballus," I called, and the dogs got up. "Let's go for a walk."

            We went down to the lakeshore and back, about a mile roundtrip in the cool night air. I was happy, thinking about being involved in a movie. And based on my story too. I remembered Bogus laughing about the changes the producers would want, and tried to guess what they might be. My story said as little as possible about the nature of the AI and the people who built it. Perhaps the producers wanted more detail about that. The problem was that I, or anyone, would just be guessing and almost certain to guess wrong. I'd have to sell them on the value of leaving it as a mystery. Maybe the movie could focus on the drama of that mystery. John Carpenter's movie The Thing ended ambiguously and it certainly was a great movie. Also Contact, Carl Sagan's story starring Jodie Foster, was very mysterious about the nature of the aliens she meets and yet one of the best movies ever. Hopefully I could use these examples to sell the producers on not saying too much about the AI in our movie.

            Back at home Megan was reading something in a web browser. I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. "Anything interesting? I asked.

            "The technological imperative. This guy says there is no going back to a simpler world. Human society has co-evolved with technological change, so that if you take away the technology then society collapses into chaos. War, famine and disease big time."

            "But not the education of women?" I asked. This was our inside joke: the four ways to control human population growth being war, famine, disease and the education of women.

            She ignored it. "Of course, given natural human curiosity and inventiveness you can't stop science and technology. Well, sometimes fascist dictatorships do stop them for a while, like the Khmer Rouge closing all the schools and killing educated people. But that's too self-defeating to spread to a global scale."

            "So we're safe," I responded. "Science and technology march on."

            "Or off the cliff, like in your story."

            I went into the next room and switched on the TV, hoping to find something that I could suck Megan into watching. 2001, a Space Odyssey was just starting. It was another example of a story that doesn't explain much, that I could add to the list for selling the Chicago guys on the value of ambiguity. But it was not Megan's taste, so I watched alone.

 

Windows

 

            I was lying in bed looking up at the ceiling, with a slight feeling of dread. I looked around the darkened room. The curtains were closed, which was odd because I had left them open. Perhaps Megan had drawn them. It was hard to tell in the dark, but there seemed to be something wrong with the curtains. Or perhaps with the windows. I stood up and put my slippers on to take a closer look and noticed that Megan wasn't in bed.

            I stood staring at the curtains for a while, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. So I swung them open. And there, outside our second floor window, was a face staring back at me. My stomach turned ice cold. There was no body that I could see attached to it, nor any ladder or other support. It just stared, not acknowledging me in any way. I tried to yell at it but couldn't. So I pulled the curtains shut again and went to the door. The knob turned but the door wouldn't open. It was an old door with a keyhole, so I stooped to look through it. There was an eye staring back at me through the keyhole. I tried to say "Megan" but again no sound emerged. I turned away from the door and saw myself dimly in the dresser mirror. Except it wasn't me, it was another impassive face staring at me from the mirror. How could that be? I tried to yell "Megan" with all my might but still no noise came out. I tried as hard as I could, really struggling, and finally managed to shout her name.

            "What is it?" she grabbed me, looking alarmed. She was lying in bed next to me.

            "Oh god, sweetheart, I must have been having a nightmare. It was pretty awful. There were these faces staring at me through the windows and mirrors."

            She gave me a hug. "You're OK now. No one is staring in at us."

            The curtains were open, just as I had left them. The only things I could see outside were trees in the moonlight. "Sorry to wake you, love. I've never had that dream before and don't want to again."

            The clock said 2:40 AM. In a bit more than four hours I'd be leaving for Chicago. We went back to sleep.

 

Mr. Edo

 

            I parked at Big Timber Road and took the train into the city, having learned long ago to avoid Chicago traffic. The offices on Wacker were easy to find.

            "Good morning Mr. Wilkes," Ed Perrin said as he shook my hand. "We spoke on the phone. This is Jeremy Jenkins, who will produce and direct the film." He motioned toward a tall thin man with a bush of hair.

            "Pleased to meet you, Jeremy," I said as we shook hands.

            "I'm looking forward to working with you," he replied.

            "And," Ed added, "this is Evonda Wagner." She was strikingly beautiful with long red hair. Wagner was pronounced like the Opera composer, sort of rhyming with Evonda.

            I took her hand and said warmly, "I'm very happy to meet you Evonda."

            "Would you like some coffee?" Ed asked.

            "Uh, no thanks. I'm, well, I'm better off without caffeine," I answered, taking a bottle of water out of my pack. "I had fish for breakfast."

            "Huh?"

            "Lox," I said. "Protein is my stimulant and carbs are my depressant. They work for me."

            "Sounds healthy," Ed smiled. He held his hand out toward Evonda and said, "She's our star for the movie."

            "Well," I said, "Megan isn't really the starring role, but perhaps we can expand it."

            In a cheerful, strong voice Evonda replied, "Oh, I won't be playing Megan."

            "But that's the only significant female role. Are you thinking of Wonder Woman? It would be difficult to make her into a bigger part."

            Ed laughed. "Sorry Laszlo, I really should explain. Mr. Edo saw an opportunity in your story to build a movie around Ms. Wagner playing the AI."

            "But the AI has no lines. In fact, the title of the story is a reference to the reality that humans will not be able to understand the languages of advanced AI. The AI never explicitly appears in the story because no human author knows how to write its part."

            "Mr. Edo's interest was triggered by Bogus' statement that he was in love with the AI. He wants a love story between Evonda and Bogus. That's the reason he's funding this project."

            "I've got some ideas," Jeremy interjected. "I think we can make it work."

            "Maybe I should talk with Mr. Edo," I said.

            Ed laughed heartily and said, "Mr. Edo understands your story. There's no point in trying to explain it to him. He knows this is a big change, but that's the way he wants it. He has confidence in your ability to change it."

            "Consider this, Laszlo," Jeremy said. "Your AI is a great mystery. Well, that's the way Evonda will play it. Like Garbo, as a woman of mystery. That, and her superior intellect, will be the attraction for Bogus. In your story you said Bogus' love for the AI was like a moth to a flame. You can still have the same logic, but now the AI is embodied in Evonda."

            As Ed and Jeremy were speaking, it was dawning on me that Evonda was probably Mr. Edo's girlfriend. There was the real moth-to-a-flame story. It also occurred to me that there was no way I was going to win this argument. If I wanted to make a movie from my original story, I'd have to find another backer. Fat chance. So I said, "OK, I'll think about it. I can see that this movie will be a new story. Perhaps I can find a way to make it work."

            Ed beamed, "Very good, Laszlo. We're so happy to hear that. But Mr. Edo likes the characters and their little adventures, so please keep all that."

            "Sure," I said.

            "There's one other change that Mr. Edo has in mind. Have you ever read Moneyball by Michael Lewis? It’s the true story of how the baseball general manager Billy Beane used smart statistics to turn the Oakland Athletics into a winning team, despite their lack of money. Did for baseball what Wal-Mart did for retailing. Or have you read The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz?"

            "I've read Moneyball. Wonderful book," I said, wondering what he was getting at.

            "Mr. Edo is a big Cubs fan. He wants you to replace the Episcopalian Jihad hedge fund with the Chicago Cubs."

            I was a little confused. "What, do the Cubs become a hedge fund?"

            Ed laughed again. He seemed to find me quite amusing. "No, Laszlo. The Cubs develop the AI to figure out how to win. And here's the best part." Ed was full of joy at what he was about to say. "The end of the movie is the Cubs winning the World Series. That hasn't happened since 1908. Much happier than humanity perishing in chaos. Mr. Edo likes happy endings." Ed, Jeremy and Evonda all had huge smiles. I figured they must all be Cubs fans.

            I had to admit that, to the extent that I cared about baseball at all, it was to hope that sometime during my life the blankety blank Cubs would win the blankety blank World Series. I was recalling more about Moneyball. Beane had drilled down past traditional statistics, for instance recruiting players with good on-base percentages even when their batting averages weren't so good. But all I could think of to say was, "So Evonda, the woman of mystery, is managing the Cubs?"

            "Not the manager, Laszlo," Evonda corrected. "Please don't put me in a baseball uniform." Ed laughed at that and she continued, "I'll be behind the scenes with the Cubs. I'm much more interested in the story with Bogus."

            I had an inspiration and said, "I've got it. This can be a story about unintended consequences. The Cubs, with the best of intentions, build an AI to figure out how they can win. And the AI finds a way to win that has the side effect of destroying humanity. The Cubs never thought to tell the AI to find a way to win that didn't destroy the world, because they just assumed it would know that." I was smiling but the three of them were frowning.

            "No, no, no," Ed scolded, like he was my fourth grade teacher. "Mr. Edo likes happy endings. Evonda should be a hero, especially to Cubs fans."

            "OK, just a thought," I said, and we were all friends again.

            "By the way, do you really have a friend Bogus Band?" Ed asked. "What kind of name is that?

            "His mother was from a different planet. Jupiter, I think."

            "Oh Laszlo," Evonda laughed, "I'd like to meet him. Jeremy should too. He might help us understand the character in your story."

            "Actually, he wanted to come with me today."

            "Really? Why?" Ed asked. "Does he want to play himself in the movie?"

            "No." I decided to be candid. "He's a freelance journalist and thought meeting you might get him started on investigating crookedness in the film industry."

            Ed was briefly surprised, but then said, "We have nothing to hide. By all means, bring him along on your next visit."

            "There's one other thing," Jeremy said. "The characters in your story are too passive. They are merely spectators to someone else developing AI, and see almost nothing of it. In the movie script, we'd like to see more detail about the AI."

            "But I don't know how to build a super-intelligent machine. If I did I'd be doing that rather than writing a script for you," I answered.

            "Can't you read up on it?" Jeremy asked.

            "I have," I said. "No one knows how to build an AI. Every word and action I attribute to the AI is certain to be wrong. But hey, no one will know that until after AI really is invented. And that way the viewers will get the more active view you want. So what the heck."

            Ed took us to lunch at Seasons, which was delicious. If I had dug my heels in on the story changes it probably would have been McDonalds.

            After lunch we discussed the business end of the film. Ed gave me a contract to take home and show to my lawyer if I liked. After my remark about Bogus investigating the film business, Ed was going out of his way to be transparent. Jeremy gave me a short lecture on the feasibility and costs of various types of scenes. Indoor conversations are cheap and easy, but car chases through downtown Chicago should be avoided. Jeremy was especially intrigued by the late night conversation out on the ice, with its cracking sounds. He had no experience with this and I assured him that the sounds are amazing but might be tricky to capture. For one thing, the ice didn't always cooperate by making its sounds when you wanted them. Ed said he thought the Cubs would help in any way they could, because we were making a story about them winning the World Series and also, I gathered, because Mr. Edo was an important Cubs supporter.

            The train ride and drive home put me in the middle of the evening rush, so Megan was home well ahead of me. I described the day's events to her, focusing on the changes they wanted to my story. She said, "You'll have to camp it up."

            "I don't think they'll like that. Tell you what. Let's invite Bogus over for dinner on Saturday and we can brain storm on what to do about this. Maybe we can do a sort of stealth camp story. Make the Cubs celebration just a little too over the top. And make Evonda just a little too mysterious."

            "I'll broil some salmon," she said. We'd need brain food.

 

Alien Invasion

 

            Over dinner I told Bogus about the trip to Chicago and he just about fell out of his chair laughing when we got the part about the Cubs. "Vinge says that events after the singularity are unpredictable," he said. "I can maybe believe we'll be able to travel faster than light, or travel through time, because after all the laws of physics aren't completely settled yet. But no way the Cubs are going to win the World Series, singularity or no singularity. It's just not credible."

            "Very funny," I said.

            "Well, the whole thing is absurd."

            "Sure it is," replied Megan. "I think Laszlo should just camp it up, so the movie is at least in on the joke."

            "Of course Mr. Edo is serious," I added, "so we have to be subtle if we make a joke out of it. I was thinking we overplay everything just a bit. Like the Cubs winning the Series inspires peace in the middle east. Heck, world peace."

            "Yeah," said Bogus with mock enthusiasm, "the Tigers lay down for the Cubs so the lions lie down with the lambs."

            As Megan and I started to clear the table Bogus asked, "May I see your contract?"

            He read it while I washed the dishes and Megan took the dogs for a quick walk.

            "Well," he said, "this seems reasonable, a contract between you and SE Properties Incorporated. They pay you a fixed fee for exclusive movie rights to your story, and pay you an hourly amount for your work on the script. They can terminate and pay for work done. Disputes go to an arbitrator."

            "So you think I can sign it?"

            "Yes. But you should save all script versions you give them and all written communications from them. Make notes of all verbal communications and record dates for everything."

            "I told them you're interested in investigating dishonesty in the film business, so they probably won't cheat me. At least not too much."

            "They're getting you pretty cheap, so they don't need to cheat you. Unless they just enjoy cheating people."

            "Yeah, well, I'm not in it for the money."

            Megan, back with the dogs, said, "I think it's just great that someone is making a movie from Laszlo's story. If the movie is a big success, he can get rich writing his next movie."

            "So Bogus," I asked, "have you ever heard of this Mr. Edo?"

            "No, but Chicago is a big town. Know his first name?"

            "Nope."

            "Well, between Edo and SE Properties I ought to be able to track him down."

            "Thanks Bogus. Want a beer? How about you, love?" They did, so I fetched three Pabsts from the kitchen.

            "OK guys," Megan asked, "what's the story for this movie?"

            "Star Trek must have gone through just about every possible science fiction plot," I said. "Maybe there's something there that we can use."

            "Yeah," Megan answered, "you can put all the female characters in short skirts and tights. And we can all have hand-to-hand combat with aliens."

            "Stick 'em up. We're from the Federation," said Bogus, pointing his finger like a gun.

            "If you're from the Federation, where are your badges?" I replied.

            "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges."

            "Is the Federation the same thing as the Federales?"

            "Yes, and we still don't need no stinking badges."

            "Boys! Boys!" Megan yelled.

            "Alien invasion," said Bogus.

            "What alien invasion?" I asked.

            "That's the classic plot," he responded. "Your original story was a sort of alien invasion, with the alien mind created by hedge fund managers. In the movie, Evonda is the alien mind, and the invasion is so subtle that humanity doesn't realize its being invaded. You just make their triumph over the top, so the Cubs organization morphs into a sort of benign, undeclared world government. And we use my relation with Evonda to illustrate how alien she is."

            "But," Megan responded, "that's too serious. We really need to make this into a joke, but one that Mr. Edo will accept."

            "Well," Bogus said, "it would be nice to raise people's consciousness about alien invasions. I've been reading Gedicks' new book and he makes an interesting point: that the five original nuclear powers all tested their weapons on lands occupied by indigenous populations. The US tested in the Marshall Islands and the land of the Western Shoshone. The UK tested in the Australian Aboriginal nations and over the Western Shoshone. The French tested in the Tuamotu Islands, the Russians in Kazakhstan and Siberia, and the Han Chinese in Uyghur territory."

            Megan made a face and observed, "A lot of people say we should view change with optimism. But pessimism would have been a more appropriate reaction by these people whose lands became nuclear test sites."

            "Saw an interesting show on PBS years ago," I said, "trying to explain why the Viking settlement in Newfoundland failed, about five hundred years before Columbus. It delicately made the point that they got wiped out by the indigenous people because they didn't bring any guns. Alien invasion repelled."

            "Guns and nuclear bombs aside," Megan said, "this alien invasion plot may be too subtle. In Laszlo's original story, it's conquest by manipulated chaos. What are you proposing for the movie? That humanity gets so swept up in the Cubs' World Series victory that the woman who engineered it rules by acclimation?"

            "Sort of," Bogus replied. "Let's say the world sees her benevolence in the Cubs win, so are willing to accept her wisdom. She applies the same super-intelligence to solving the world's problems that she applied to the Cubs. Heroes from the entertainment and sports worlds sometimes leverage their fame into political power. This would just be an extreme case."

            "Sorry Bogus," said Megan, "I don’t like it. And I don't think we can sell it to the Chicago guys."

            "I've got it," I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. "Not only is Bogus in love with Evonda, but Evonda falls in love with Bogus. However to marry Bogus she must renounce her super-intelligence, like Superman had to renounce his super powers to marry Lois Lane. That story might charm our friends in Chicago."

            "And," Megan laughed, "it's total lunacy."

            "Why does she need to renounce her super-intelligence?" asked Bogus.

            "Who knows?" I answered. "We'll just get some guy in a lab coat to say that marriage to a super-intelligent Evonda would make you mentally ill or something."

            "And why can't I become super-intelligent to marry her?"

            "Because of the X factor. Who cares?"

            "You're outvoted, Bogus," Megan smiled. "I really like the idea and think this Mr. Edo will too. Evonda guides the Cubs to win the World Series and then renounces her super-intelligence for love. And love of you, Bogus. Doesn't that appeal to you?"

            "But to her I'll have the mind of a sea slug. Why would she love me?"

            "It's like Mars Attacks," I said enthusiastically. "They repelled the Martian invasion with Slim Whitman's singing and we repel Evonda's super-intelligent invasion with love."

            Dramatically batting her eyes at me, Megan said, "Just like I love you."

            "Now I remember why I never got married," commented Bogus.

            "How about another beer?" I asked and, getting two affirmatives, fetched three more. Bringing them back I said, "You know, Bogus, there's no point in worrying about whether the plot makes sense. Most science fiction plots are impossible."

            "How's that?" asked Megan.

            "Any plot that depicts technology more difficult than creating super-human intelligence, such as routine interplanetary travel, must be post-singularity. That is, past the point where intelligent machines take over their own design, leading to an explosive increase in intelligence. In such a society the real decision makers will speak in languages and act in ways that are simply unintelligible to natural humans. Hence the title of my story. As soon as your story gets to a post-singularity moment, including any necessarily post-singularity technology, it either stops or the plot becomes nonsense."

            "But," Bogus broke in, "there are clever plots that don't violate your rule. For example Contact, in which the post-singularity creature tells Jodie Foster to be patient with their lack of explanation. Or your own story, in which the heroes, that's us, catch only the most fleeting glimpses of the actions of the post-singularity characters. Arthur C. Clarke was good at creating such plots. Such as 2001, a Space Odyssey, and my favorite, Rendezvous with Rama. And of course, in such plots the main characters are basically passive, investigating the post-singularity technology of hidden creators."

            "But not in our movie," I announced. "We'll smoke out those nasty super-intelligent brains and show them managing the Cubs, falling in love with slug-like humans and even renouncing their intelligence for that love."

 

Off the Grid

 

            In the middle of the next week I knocked off work early to drive to North East Iowa with Bogus. He assured me that it would be worth it.

            Once we were under way in his ancient Volvo station wagon I asked, "What's so wonderful in Iowa?"

            "You've heard of people living off the grid?"

            "Yeah."

            "Well, we're going to meet a guy who lives off the information grid. That's much more difficult. It's a real privilege to meet him - he's very shy."

            "What do you mean off the information grid? No telephone, no Internet, no postal address?"

            "It's more like no identity. So he might use the phone, the net and the mail, but not so it can be connected to him. Officially, he doesn't exist."

            "Must be a fugitive. Maybe he's Leo Burt."

            "I doubt it. A fugitive would want a new permanent identity. This guy has no permanent identity, just temporary identities as needed. If someone sees him on the street it's no big deal because he looks just like any other schlub. They don't know that he has no identity. But it's a big deal for us to see him, because we know."

            "So why would he meet us?"

            "Because I'm working on a story that he wants to see told, about why someone who's not a fugitive would choose to live off the information grid. And he's going to meet you to ask a favor."

            "What favor?"

            "He needs a really clean and anonymous account, one that gives him access to all the e-journals that the university subscribes to."

            "No," I shouted.

            "That's why I'm telling you now, so you don't yell 'no' at him. Just think about it. Surely you can do it without leaving your fingerprints."

            We drove into a Wal-Mart parking lot, into a far corner away from other parked cars. We sat there for a few minutes, until a guy in jeans, an old sweatshirt, tinted glasses and a beard came up to the car.

            "Fred?" Bogus asked.

            He answered "Yep" as he got in the back seat. "There's a county park a couple miles that way," he said, pointing along the road.

            At the park Bogus pulled a cooler, a grill and charcoal out of the trunk. We drank beer as Bogus grilled three strip steaks.

            "So Fred," Bogus asked, "it must be tough living this way. Especially if you don't have to. Ever tempted to rejoin the herd?"

            "I'm used to it, and pretty good at it. The big thing is to avoid getting mixed up with the cops. I obey the traffic laws."

            "How do you manage a driver's license and registration?" Bogus asked. "Or do you risk it without them?"

            "No, that would be very foolish. I could end up arrested and finger printed. My license and registration are in a state that I never visit, under an identity that I never use for any other purpose."

            "How do you earn money?"

            "Not a problem."

            "Huh? Were you born rich?"

            "I can't go into that. It would tell you too much about me. But you can imagine there are a number of ways someone might have enough money. Especially for someone who doesn't spend much. Low cost of living in this neighborhood."

            "Are there a lot of people who live like you?" I asked. "How about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber? He kept a pretty low profile."

            "That jerk," Fred snapped. "In the first place he was killing people. My life is resistance to social evil. It’s a difficult life motivated by ethics. Killing people is not ethical." He took a drink of beer and sat silently for a minute, trying to calm down.

            "No offense intended," I said. "Can you tell us about this social evil and your ethical system?"

            "The right to privacy is built into the constitution," he explained, "but that right is withering because people are not willing to stand up for it. My ethics are to push back as hard as I can against the erosion of those rights."

            Bogus took the steaks off the grill and served them on paper plates, along with heavy, crusty bread, butter and a big bowl of fruit salad. We each opened a second beer.

            As we ate Fred said, "The second thing about Kaczynski is that he did a lousy job of hiding his identity. By killing people he created a huge incentive for the cops to find him, and by forcing publication of his long manifesto he provided lots of clues to his identity."

            "Yeah," answered Bogus. "So you must know a lot about protecting your privacy?"

            "I started with all sorts of practical advice in books from Loompanics, sort of a publisher for paranoids. But it's also important to understand privacy from a theoretical point of view. One approach is to live away from other humans, say in the far arctic or on the ocean floor. But unless you can remain totally hidden, living that way draws attention to yourself. You stick out when you are the only person for miles. People get curious. Privacy is really about maintaining high entropy. You want to look just like everyone else. But society is riddled with lots of Maxwell demons who want to see your identification. So you need to show them something that will be so ordinary that it just puts them to sleep. Nobody here but us boring wage slaves. But to use a single ID will decrease your entropy by defining a point of consistent information in all the databases. So you need a bunch of IDs, so that you become this diffuse probability distribution of IDs in the databases." He smiled and said, "I am a mist."

            "But," Bogus said, "If they start to connect those identities your entropy will plummet. You will get big time attention."

            "The challenge is biometrics," Fred responded. "Finger prints, DNA, iris patterns. Even face photographs. Computers are learning to recognize faces about as well as people do. Very dangerous. I stay out of cities with police cameras, which are a huge army of automated Maxwell demons. And I avoid interacting with the police. No one has my finger prints. But biometric technology keeps advancing. So my main interest these days is understanding and keeping ahead of this technology." He said to me, "Which brings me to a favor I want. I need on-line access to scientific and technical journals. Can you please help me Laszlo?"

            As Bogus figured, I'd had time to think of something. There were plenty of old emeriti with inactive accounts. All I had to do was break one of those and send the login and password to Fred. If he got caught it would just look like he had hacked the account himself. An inactive user would be unlikely to detect Fred's intrusion.

            "I can," I said. "I'll give the account information to Bogus. It may take a week or two. And be careful not to draw attention to yourself."

            "Thanks and no worries. Low profile is second nature to me."

            "Yeah," Bogus added, "Thanks Laszlo."

            "So," Fred asked, "Do you guys ever worry about your privacy?"

            "I try to protect myself against identity theft," I responded.

            "As a journalist," Bogus said, "My identity is pretty public. But I figure that's a kind of protection against abuse. If anyone in the government messes with me I at least have a public voice to denounce them."

            "Well, that's something," Fred commented. "Google and other search engines are a big threat to privacy these days. From your searches, and the links you click, they can put together an intimate profile of your mind. And for people who don't take precautions, they can link that profile with your identity. They know more about most people than their mothers know. They're using that information to figure out how to effectively sell things to you. If these guys get interested in politics and hook up with a guy like Karl Rove, they'll use that power to sell politicians. It's really scary."

            We had polished off all the food and were cleaning up the mess.

            "I wrote a story about where all that could lead, once machines have human-level intelligence," I told Fred.

            "Yeah, I read it. It was all right. Probably not the way it would really happen, though"

            "I know," I said. "But to avoid having to write much about what the machines, more intelligent than I am, would do or say I had to make the end of humanity quick and clean. So where do you think all this is heading?"

            "Have you heard of the Sentient World Simulation?" he asked.

            "I have," Bogus replied. "It's a DOD project to simulate billions of individual humans, as well as corporations, media, churches, clubs, corner shops and other social organizations. They want to use it for testing Psychological Operations, or PSYOPs as they call them, for manipulating mass populations."

            "It will be," Fred said, holding up a finger, "according to an exact quote from a DOD concept paper that's burned into my memory, 'a synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information'."

            "That's a mouthful," I responded.

            "Just connect the dots," Fred urged. "Connect 'automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information' with the deployment of thousands of police cameras and the likelihood that they are monitoring all on-line communications including Google searches."

            "That's scary," I said.

            "How long until they can dedicate more neurons to simulating you than you have in your own brain?" Fred asked. "Just plot it out using Moore's Law."

            "OK Fred," Bogus said, "I get it. I'll tell your story. Heck, you're a hero."

 

Windows 2.0

 

            I was wandering around town late at night, something I rarely did. There weren't many others on the streets, and with no wind it was unusually quiet. Happening to glance up, I noticed a camera on a utility pole. It was aimed at me. I hadn't read about anti-crime cameras coming to town, but supposed it was possible.

            I walked on a ways and then glanced back at the camera. It was still aimed at me, which seemed odd. I walked some more, this time keeping my eye on the thing. It followed me as I moved. I figured that without many people on the street the cop manning the cameras had nothing better to do than track my movements. Still, it creeped me out a bit. So I walked quickly around the corner where the camera couldn't see me.

            I wondered how many cameras the town had. As I passed another utility pole I looked up and was surprised to see another camera. It too was aimed at me, and as I walked along it tracked me. That made me angry. I made a note to call my alderman to complain about the police harassing citizens out for harmless walks. But as I walked along, I noticed that every utility pole had a camera and that they all tracked me as I moved.

            I started running down the street hoping to get away from them. But everywhere I went there were cameras on poles tracking me. How could this be? Is one cop controlling all these cameras? Or is there a large team of cops tracking my movements? Either way, it didn't make sense. I was beginning to panic. In fact, as I ran faster and turned more corners, the poles with their cameras multiplied, with only a few feet between poles. I ran as fast as I could, looking for some way to get away from them.

            "Laszlo," Megan shouted. I woke to found myself tangled in the covers, which had been pulled completely off Megan.

            I put my arms around her and said, "I was having another of those dreams about being watched. There were cameras all over the place watching me."

            She hugged back and said, "It's OK. There aren't any cameras."

            "It was that trip to Iowa to meet that guy. He's paranoid about cameras."

            We straightened the bedclothes, had a kiss, and went back to sleep.

 

Helpers

 

            I was having fun writing the script, but writing mostly just on weekends it was taking time. However Ed seemed willing to give me a couple months to finish it. Meanwhile, domestic life hummed along.

            That is, until Megan and I learned of a new kind of appliance that promised radical improvement to the way we lived. They were called Helpers and were household robots. Unlike the Roomba vacuum cleaner, Helpers walked on two legs, had arms and hands that they could use to operate ordinary vacuum cleaners and many other appliances, and could speak with their owners. They were the culmination of many years of research on machine learning, maintaining balance, speech recognition, vision, and understanding basic language.

            There was no question of Helpers being intelligent, although they'd be happy to play card or board games with people. They could play championship level at most games, but could also adjust their level of play to keep games interesting for their owners. And they served as a sort of verbal Google. You could ask them just about any simple question and they'd rattle off answers based on what they found on the web. They were in constant wireless communication with the Helpers Corporation servers for web access and also for quick brainpower boosts when their built-in brains couldn't cope.

            One other detail: Helpers cost $100,000 plus a monthly fee of $1000 to cover maintenance and server access. Not cheap. Nevertheless, Megan and I attended one of their demonstrations. They actually required a credit check before the demonstration, I supposed to weed out folks who were curious but couldn't afford to buy.

            The demonstration was given in a theater. The curtains drew open to reveal a couple sitting in a living room, like some Chekhov play. The man said, "Helper, please get me a beer," and in walked a Helper carrying a beer in one hand and a glass in the other. It poured, and then set the glass and partly empty bottle on a table next to the man. The man said, "Thank you," then turned to the audience and said, "Notice that our Helper set the glass and bottle on coasters."

            The woman was reading a paper and said, "Here's an article about the decline of Sumo wrestling in Japan. Helper, can you please tell me something about Sumo?" The Helper, in a voice that could easily be human, started to explain the basic idea and history of the sport. The woman interrupted and asked, "Are there female Sumo wrestlers?" The Helper said that there was women's Sumo, but only as a curiosity and not as a serious sport. The woman said, "Please show me some examples of Sumo wrestling." A large video screen hanging on the wall clicked on and we were treated to scenes of Sumo matches. The Helper explained the action. At one point the woman said, "I didn't understand what happened there," and the action replayed slowly with the Helper explaining in more detail.

            It asked, "Is it clear now, Ma'am?" and she said it was.

            The man picked up a can of three tennis balls and asked, "Would you please juggle these?"

            The Helper said "Yes, sir," then opened the can and proceeded to juggle the three balls. We all clapped.

            The woman said, "Would you please shine the flashlight under the couch for me?"

            The Helper opened a desk drawer and pulled out a flashlight. But when the Helper switched it on, nothing happened. The Helper opened the flashlight, took out the batteries and set them on the desk, opened the drawer again and took out new batteries, and put them into the flashlight. It tried the switch again and this time the light came on. There was thunderous applause from the audience as the Helper shined the light under the couch.

            The woman said, "Helper, please vacuum the floor." The Helper got a vacuum cleaner out of a closet, plugged it into a wall socket and started to vacuum. Then the man stood up and intentionally got in the way of the vacuum cleaner. The Helper deftly pulled the vacuum cleaner back, and backed its own body away to avoid any collision with the man. The woman said, "Helper, please hit my husband."

            The Helper said, "Sorry Ma'am, I may not do that."

            The man said to the audience, "Please raise your hand if you have a question for our Helper."

            The first question was, "Can you cook?"

            The Helper answered, "Yes, sir. You are all invited to a little cocktail party after this demonstration, with food and drinks prepared and served by Helpers."

            When it got to be my turn, I asked, "What can't you do?"

            It answered, "Many things, sir. I don't understand complex matters. Please don't ask me for advice about investments or romance." This got a big laugh. But it struck me that this response was paradoxical, since its humor indicated a complex level of understanding. Perhaps the Helper's joke was a scripted response to questions about limits of Helpers' abilities.

            Finally the man said, "Well done Helper. Please take a bow." It bowed to the audience and we all cheered.

            The hors d'oeuvres in the theater atrium were excellent and the Helpers made competent bartenders. Numerous Helpers sales people, all human, mingled among the guests. One introduced himself as Chuck to Megan and me. "Did you enjoy our little demo?" he asked.

            "Yes," Megan answered, "One of those would sure make life easier."

            "We think so. You," he said, turning to me, "wanted to know what Helpers can't do."

            "Yes," I replied, "just trying to get the measure of your Helpers."

            "Well, they can do just about any household chore."

            "Can they drive a car?" I asked.

            "They can, but we don't allow them to. If you ask a Helper to drive it will refuse. We want Helpers to help people and want to avoid any possibility of them causing any harm."

            "Yes," I said. "I noticed that the Helper also avoided contact with the man in your demo. Do they refuse chores that involve touching people?"

            "Yes, again for safety. Our name says it all: Helpers. We only want to help."

            "How about Asimov's Laws?"

            Chuck laughed. "I'm afraid our Helpers just don't have the brain power to understand Asimov's Laws. And, as you probably know, those laws are ambiguous. Our safety rules are much more prosaic. Don't drive, don't touch people and don't poison people. Things like that."

            "Have you sold many of them yet?" Megan asked.

            "Well," he responded, "we're just starting. But we are getting some orders. I think we've delivered a few in New York. That's where we gave our first demonstrations. And I've heard that the first customers are happy."

            "My husband wrote a story about AI taking over the world and wiping out mankind," Megan said.

            "Oh my," Chuck replied. "Where can I read it?"

            I laughed and told him to Google 'Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols.'

            He said, "I'll just ask my Helper to read it to me sometime."

            "Of course," I said, "they could read aloud to you, couldn't they? Anything they could find on-line."

            "Yes," he said. "And our Helpers have rights to a huge library of other material. They can read books and magazines to you that are not available on-line."

            "Think of it," Megan said to me, "you could turn off the idiot box and relax while a Helper read the classics to you."

            "So," I turned to Chuck, "what's in the future for Helpers?"

            "We're working very hard to improve them. Our engineers are inspired to make people's lives better. For example, if we could make them safe enough to touch people, they could provide home nursing care."

            "Are you a spin-off from a university?" I asked.

            "We've hired the best young computer science and mechanical engineering PhDs, so in a sense we're a spin-off from lots of universities. And many of our design improvements will be automatically upgraded in existing Helpers. If you buy a Helper today, its capabilities will increase. This is covered by your monthly fee."

            "That makes sense," I replied. "Its brainpower must be mostly software, and Helpers can call on the brainpower of your central servers."
            "Exactly," Chuck agreed.

            "Well, it's something to think about."

            "Here," he said, giving me one of his business cards. "Please call or email me if you have any more questions. We'd love to deliver a Helper to your home."

 

Camelot

 

            About a week later, in the cool of a summer evening, Bogus and I took a twelve pack of beer up to the roof of Eate Lisi Tower. I had keys because of the critical servers in the building. From the roof we could watch and listen to traffic flowing around town, and look off into the countryside. It was very peaceful up there, the perfect place to get a bit drunk and converse with an old friend.

            "Megan and I went to a Helpers demo," I said, sipping my beer.

            "Are you going to get one? Seems pretty decadent, not to mention expensive."

            "We're still kicking it around. It really was an amazing demo."

            "Any signs of real intelligence?"

            "When the flashlight didn’t work, it figured out to change the batteries. But of course it's easy to discount the really hard stuff, like the ability to converse with humans and the dexterity to open the flashlight and change the batteries."

            "I'm sure they had it do tricks for you."

            "Yeah. It juggled three balls, and it has wireless connections to a video screen and to their central server, so it can be a sort of YouTube. Showed us some Sumo wrestling."

            "Did you speak with a Helper?"

            "During the Q and A I asked it what it couldn't do."

            "What did it say?"

            "It gave me a smart-alecky answer about not asking it for advice about my finances or love life. Got a big laugh. I think telling a joke must be beyond it and that it must have given me a canned answer."

            "Probably. You should have asked it to show you on its screen what the Helper in the neighbor's house was seeing."

            "Good question. You should go to a Helpers demo and ask it."

            Bogus opened a second beer and inquired, "So how's your script coming?"

            "I'm having a lot of fun with it. But it's a little tricky dealing with you discovering the AI. I mean, the Cubs aren't manipulating stock prices. Instead they're trying to manipulate baseball games. But that's a bit harder, since baseball is so physical. So instead of you discovering someone who is making nearly perfect predictions of security prices, now you are discovering a Cubs computer with merely unreasonably accurate predictions of games."

            "Sounds fishy. No matter how smart Evonda is, she's not going to predict games before they start. She'll have to adapt as the games play out."

            "Yeah, the predictions are just unreasonably good, and are filled with contingencies. The script avoids going into a lot of detail." I opened a second beer for myself.

            "And it's certainly nothing you could take to the attention of the SEC."

            "Yep. We go see the Cubs. That's how you and Evonda meet and fall in love."

            "Sorry to say it, Laszlo, but it sounds idiotic."

            "Well, of course. Oh, you'll be happy to hear that you're no longer a blackmailer. I figured that would get in the way of Evonda falling in love with you."

            "Thank you," he replied.

            "Now you're just a computer-savvy private eye who stumbles onto what they're doing. You and I still go to see our congresswoman, to report sort of a mental steroids thing. But Evonda outsmarts us on that."

            "It keeps getting dumber and dumber." He sat quietly for a couple minutes and then continued, "Oh, I checked out your Mr. Edo. SE Properties owns a whole lot of Chicago real estate but it’s privately held and I couldn't find out who the owners are. Presumably Mr. Edo is one. He's a real mystery. He's occasionally in the news as a Cubs supporter, but otherwise there's nothing. Ed Perrin is a Vice President of SE Properties and reasonably well known in the Chicago business world. He has a reputation as an honest guy. Bottom line, they're probably playing straight with you."

            "Thanks for looking into it."

            We were interrupted by sirens and both peered down trying to see where they were coming from. Then we saw a car and a fire engine coming West fast along University Avenue, with red lights flashing and traffic pulling over in front of them.

            "Can you see the fire?" I asked.

            "Nope," he answered.

            The sirens disappeared down the road. Hopefully they'd put the fire out before it got big enough for us to see.

            "Did you finish the Gedicks book?" I asked.

            "Yes, very good," he replied. "Full of gruesome stuff including a nice description of Indonesia invading West Papua in nineteen sixty one. Kennedy went along with it to try to keep Indonesia out of the Soviet sphere. This paved the way for Freeport's huge copper mine in West Papua, without the consent of indigenous landowners. Tens of thousands of West Papuans were murdered outright and hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic mine tailings were dumped into the local rivers, destroying the livelihood of many more."

            "Terrible for sure. On the other hand, Kennedy had a right to be worried about the Soviets after the millions that Stalin murdered. He had no good choices."

            "Perhaps, but that didn't mean anything to the West Papuans. This pattern has been repeated all over the world. Wealthy countries supply weapons to local strongmen in exchange for political and economic cooperation, including allowing oil and mining companies to pollute and destroy local subsistence economies. If the local folks resist, they are labeled terrorists and suppressed using the arms we supply. Whether it's fighting communism or fighting terrorism, we always seem to come up with rationalizations for this stuff."

            "Hey, I read about a great rationalization recently. In the early nineteen seventies the US was worried about the security of France's nuclear weapons and wanted to give them technical advice on how to secure them. But the nineteen sixty eight Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty prohibited such help. So rather than the US telling the French how to do it, they played a game of twenty questions. The French scientists would try to guess how to do it, and the US scientists would tell them whether they were right or wrong."

            "That's beautiful," Bogus said. "They managed to convince themselves that there was a difference between passing information by simple statement and by a series of answers to true and false questions."

            "Don't you love it when smart people pretend to be stupid," I observed.

            "No one believes that they are doing wrong, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Even the Nazis and Soviets managed to convince themselves that they were doing right by killing millions."

            "Like your guy Fred says, killing is not ethical."

 

Draft

 

            I finally had a draft script ready and sent it to Ed. A few days later I drove down to Chicago to discuss it with them and Bogus came along.

            I introduced Bogus to the group and Ed said to him, "We're glad that you came along. Have you read Laszlo's script?"

            "Yes."

            "What did you think of it?"

            "I liked his original story better. The script has too much detail about the AI."

            "Yes," Ed agreed, "it will be a real challenge for Evonda to portray super-human intelligence."

            From the moment we entered their offices, I could sense that Bogus was really struck by Evonda, like a grade school boy with a silent crush. When he was younger he'd had girl friends, but relations always soured within a year or less. Now, as far as I knew, he didn't date out of fear of just causing more pain for himself and potential girlfriends. He was looking for a love that just didn't exist, like the portrayal in my story of Bogus being in love with a future super-intelligence. Perhaps it was a combination of Evonda's bearing and her casting as that future super-intelligent being that was getting to him. If she was reacting much to Bogus, it went over my head.

            "Megan and I recently went to a Helpers demonstration," I said.

            Ed seemed quite interested and asked, "Did you enjoy it? Are you planning to purchase one?"

            "We're thinking it over. They're expensive. But I was wondering if you'd like to include any roles for Helpers in the movie?"

            "I don't think so," replied Ed. "After all, they're not really intelligent, let alone super-intelligent. They'd just distract from the real story. We want to focus on the Cubs and the love affair between Evonda and Bogus."

            Jeremy Jenkins, the director, said, "If none of you mind, this would be a great chance to get a sense of how well that portrayal of super-intelligence works. I've extracted a conversation among Hedwig, Bogus and Laszlo from the script and printed three sets." He handed out the three script sections and said, "Could I ask the three of you to please read your parts?"

            We all agreed. In the script I had given the super-intelligent female the name Hedwig Kiesler, whereas Bogus and I were still just Bogus and Laszlo. The scene was our first meeting with Hedwig. We took a minute to review our parts and then began.

            In a friendly and forthright tone Bogus addressed Evonda, "Ms. Kiesler, I study pattern recognition and find your work with the Chicago Cubs remarkable."

            Evonda answered in business like manner, "Thank you. Mr. Antheil told me you were interested in our work."

            Bogus said, "Yes, he said all of the credit belongs to you." Then his tone turned a bit curious, "Actually, from a technical point of view I find your work more than remarkable. It's literally incredible. Analyzing all the available data, there's not adequate information to support your decisions. And yet the success of those decisions is inarguable."

            Evonda smiled and said, "Mr. Band, you don't have access to all the data that I do."

            A bit defiantly, Bogus said, "I have access to more than you think I do."

            "I am aware that you compromised our system and congratulate you on your cleverness," Evonda responded in a forgiving tone. "But I have access to data that is never entered electronically, based my direct observations of the players."

            At this point I cut in, like a child interrupting an adult conversation, "Bogus says that can't explain it."

            Bogus continued, "I've quantified that effect for other baseball teams, and the value of such unrecorded information is twenty times greater for the Cubs than for any other team."

            Evonda just smiled, as if acknowledging a compliment.

            After a minute, Bogus said, "Ms. Kiesler, we are very interested in what you're doing. I'd like to be taken into your confidence and will commit to keeping your secrets."

            "You already know more than you're entitled to," she answered. "We have no reason to confide in you."

            "Perhaps you recall Lyndon Johnson's comment about keeping J. Edgar Hoover inside the tent?"

            Most people would be angered by this threat, but Evonda didn't appear to take any offense. She smiled and said nothing.

            I piped up again, "Ms. Kiesler, I've known Bogus since we were at school. He sincerely respects your work and wants to help."

            "In that case," she answered cheerfully, "he will mind his manners even if he is outside the tent."

            Bogus, trying another angle, said, "As you said, I am clever. I can help you."

            More as a statement than a question, she said, "But you're not a Cubs fan, are you?"

            Bogus answered, "I'm afraid not. But I'm a fan of intelligence wherever I find it."

            Evonda said to Bogus, "Not just anywhere, Mr. Band. I know a bit about your work enforcing ethics."

            Bogus looked surprised. In the script as in the original story, his business was hidden behind layers of secrecy.

            In a consoling tone, Evonda continued, "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

            Bogus, looking a bit bewildered at this development, said, "Thank you. But please keep us in mind. I want to help."

            "You know Bogus," she said, "you have a good heart. Why don't you give me a call some time? My cell number is two two nine, two three eight seven, Chicago area code."

            Bogus lit up a bit and answered, "Thanks, I will."

            That was the end of the scene. Jeremy said, "For a first reading, that was good."

            Ed added, "Mr. Edo will be pleased."

            I didn't think it was so hot. I just couldn't believe in the plot. But I kept that to myself, saying, "I think Evonda and Bogus got it just about right."

            "But," Bogus added, "the hard part is yet to come: making it credible that Hedwig can fall in love with a mere human like me."

            "I'll just think about you Bogus," Evonda teased.

            Bogus actually blushed. I don't think I'd ever seen him do that before. We all chuckled.

            Then Ed became a bit more serious and said, "Laszlo, we have some doubts about this business of Hedwig renouncing her super-intelligence. Why would she do it?"

            "From the point of view of the story," I replied, "it's a great way to indicate how much Hedwig comes to love Bogus. The script does include a doctor saying that it is medically necessary. And if her super-intelligence was designed for the purpose of helping the Cubs win the World Series, then once that goal is satisfied she no longer needs to be smarter than anyone else."

            "I like it," Evonda said. "It's cornball, but touching."

            "OK," Ed replied, clearly not wanting to argue with Evonda and strengthening my belief that she was the boss's girlfriend. "It's up to Mr. Edo. I'll get back to you Laszlo if you need to change it."

            "There's one other major problem with the script," Jeremy said. "The baseball scenes are weak. A sportswriter at the Tribune has agreed to punch it up for us."

            "Sure, the more the merrier" I said. The script was already the kind of mess you get from a committee, so I didn't feel any ownership. Of course I'd never let anyone change my original story.

            "Good," Ed responded. "We'll resolve these script issues and hopefully be ready to start shooting within a few weeks."

 

Eco-Warriors

 

            "They just called me out of the blue," Bogus told me as we headed north along the Interstate. "I don't know how they found out about my story, but they wanted to tell their side of it." He had invited me along to meet some political types and promised that they would be interesting.

            "So, what's the deal with these guys? Are they organizing? What's their cause?" I asked.

            "They're not organizing voters. I got the impression they don't care much about elections. They're into what they call direct action."

            "Are they wanted by the police?"

            "Good question, but I don't know the answer. We can ask them. They are at least hiding, which is why they might fit into my story."

            We turned west onto state highway 121 and followed it for a few miles, then turned north again on a town road. A dirt lane on the left led to a small farm house.

            We knocked on the side door, which was opened by a thin, brown haired woman in her mid twenties.

            "I'm Bogus and this is Laszlo."

            A male voice from inside called, "Come on in."

            We walked in with the woman trailing behind, and found two young men seated at a kitchen table. They looked like regular country boys. "I'm Mike and this is Elmer," said one as he motioned to empty chairs. "Want some coffee?"

            "No thanks," Bogus answered. "I'm going to take notes, if you don't mind."

            "Please do and get our story right. Set the record straight from all the lies in the newspapers."

            "What lies?" Bogus asked.

            "It's best if I don't admit exactly which stories I'm referring to. But the papers have reported people getting hurt in some of our actions and that's a lie."

            "Yeah," Elmer agreed. "Our motive is to raise consciousness about the damage business and over-consumption are doing to the earth. We certainly don't want to do more damage, especially not to people."

            "Are you wanted for crimes?" Bogus inquired. "Can the police connect your names with crimes? Are you suspects?"

            "If so," replied Mike, "they haven't released our names to the news media. As far as we know they don't have any suspects for any of our actions."

            "But we keep a low profile," added Elmer. "The less the authorities know about us, the better."

            "People help us out with places to stay, transportation, food, stuff like that," said Mike. "They believe in what we're doing but don't necessarily want to get involved in action. Instead they make it possible for us to live without any interaction with the government, and we act."

            "Can you tell me about your actions?" asked Bogus. "In a general way?"

            "It's pretty straightforward," answered Mike. "We look for opportunities to dramatize excesses. Big houses, big cars, SUVs, big families. So we attack the property of those who sell McMansions and SUVs, and those who oppose family planning."

            "In your story," Elmer continued, "you should describe how a simpler life can be a better life. Smaller houses, fewer cars and toys, but more time with friends and family. The joy of spending time in the kitchen making good, healthy food. The joy of exercise and good health. We aren't asking people to give up anything that they wouldn't be better off without."

            "The excesses of western culture have consequences," Mike went on. He and his buddy were like a rhetorical tag team. "The drought in the West is really bringing it home to people. Folks there are starting to realize that their drought is a permanent shift in their climate. Adapting to these long term changes will be much more painful than moderating our energy consumption. Not many people live in Alaska, but they are seeing big consequences. The tundra is thawing and the sea ice is melting."

            "Are the apparatchik's in the EPA and the Department of the Interior raising hell about this? No chance." Elmer added.

            This reminded me of the stuff Bogus and I had read in Gedicks' book. "How about consequences outside the US?" I asked. "Not just climate change, but the consequences of resource extraction? Are you connected with the environmental justice movement?"

            "There you're talking about a whole other level," Mike answered. "The damage is direct, immediate and severe, and the responsibility is obvious. So the actions and the responses of the authorities are military. When this situation meets climate change, the result could be World War III. The melting in Greenland and Antarctica appear to be accelerating. During this century we could see a rise in sea level sufficient to create tens of millions of refugees in Bangladesh. Will they be welcome in India?"

            Elmer continued this line of thought, "It's difficult to predict all the consequences of climate change. Droughts and the end of monsoons, which can both cause mass starvation. Some scientists think the thermo-haline circulation may significantly decrease, radically cooling weather in northern Europe."

            "How about nuclear power?" I asked. "Isn't that the way to avoid climate change?"

            "In theory it is" replied Mike.

            "But in practice you can't trust it," continued Elmer.

            "Look at the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force," said Mike, "studying the causes of the two thousand and three northeast blackout. Their number one recommendation was to 'make reliability standards mandatory and enforceable, with penalties for noncompliance'."

            "In other words," explained Elmer, "standards had been voluntary."

            "You can practically see the fingerprints of the power industry lobbyists on that word 'voluntary'," said Mike.

            "The same legislators and lobbyists who formulate standards for nuclear power plants," concluded Elmer.

            "Whenever a politician calls for voluntary standards," Mike continued, "you know they're taking money from lobbyists."

            "You never hear about voluntary guidelines against shop lifting," noted Elmer.

            "And by a strange coincidence," added Mike, "shop lifters don't have lobbyists."

            These guys should have gone into show business, I thought, the way they had their routine down.

            "So what's the bottom line?" asked Bogus. "What's the message you want my readers to take away from the story?"

            "The one thing that really moves people, beyond their immediate needs, is religion. But all of our religions were created at a time when we desperately needed more people and when we desperately needed to gain mastery over plants, animals and the rest of the physical world. Our needs have changed and the teachings of ancient religions are no longer correct. Nature is god's book, not the Bible, the Koran or any other ancient writing. And it is by science that we read god's book."

            "That's an interesting point of view," I said. "I've been an atheist since I was an adult. But I like that line, nature is god's book. What do you guys think about the development of machines more intelligent than humans? Do you even think it's possible?"

            "Sure it's possible," replied Elmer. "There's nothing magical about human minds. I mean, we're not mystics." We all laughed. "The question is what will the motives of such machines be? And that comes back to the motives of the people who build them. If the motive is to make a better world for everyone, and care is taken in the design, then AI will be a wonderful thing. But if the motive is simply to increase the profits of some business, then AI will be a terrible thing."

            "Before we get to that point," Mike continued, "we've got to wake people up. They need a rational view of the world, based on science rather than superstition."

            "And," Elmer concluded, "the ferocious competition in our society makes it difficult for most people to reflect on what really matters in their lives. So many people are simply responding to their fears. With the material abundance in the modern world, and if we could get population growth under control, we could let go of our fear and greed."

            On the drive home I asked Bogus, "So what do you think about those guys? Did you get anything you can use?"

            "Oh," he said, "they're perfect for my story. I like the way their privacy depends on help from other people. A community with shared values can enable a few members to be invisible to the rest of society."

            "What about their ideas?"

            "Their ideals are commendable even if their methods aren't."

 

Housework

 

            Megan and I periodically discussed whether we should get a Helper. As DINKS, Double Income No Kids, we could afford it. We both enjoyed cooking so didn't need a Helper for that, but we didn't enjoy cleaning. Also, a Helper could take our on-line and entertainment experience to a new level. But probably the thing that really sold us was our belief that Helpers were the next step to the future and we wanted to be on that ride. Our biggest doubt was that Helpers were big consumers of energy and other resources. However, I called our salesman and he assured me that Helpers didn't use much energy. Most of our purchase price and monthly fees would pay for brain work by their engineers, not burning resources. And as I said to Megan, we lived simply in other respects. We lived in a modest house, drove compact cars and had no children. So we ordered a Helper.

            "Have you two lost your minds?" Bogus asked us when he heard about our decision. "You will have no privacy. It will be in constant wireless contact with corporate headquarters, able to send anything it sees or hears inside your house to the server."

            "Their contract commits that images and sounds are not seen by anyone without our permission," I replied. "And there's nothing to know about us that's worth the risk of a lawsuit if they violate their contract."

            "It's not going to be in our bedroom or bathroom with us," added Megan. "Neither of us feels our privacy will be threatened."

            About a month after we'd ordered it, our Helper and a team of two installers rang our door bell. We invited them in and one said, "This is Susie and I'm Sam. And this is your Helper. Remember that it isn't allowed to touch people, so don't try to shake hands."

            "This is Megan and I'm Laszlo," I said as we smiled. "Welcome to our home, Helper."

            Helpers could make basic expressions with their mechanical faces. Ours smiled and said, "Hello ma'am. Hello sir."

            The dogs took a quick sniff of Susie and Sam, but were mostly barking at our Helper. At least they weren't growling. The cats were hiding, which was their typical reaction to strangers.

            "Usually we find that pets get used to Helpers," said Susie. "If animals make contact with Helpers, such as biting them, they are designed to remain motionless to avoid injuring the animals."

            Sam suggested, "Let's start with a tour of your house." We did that and I was impressed with the Helper's ability to go up and down stairs. Sam said, "Your Helper will learn how you like things arranged in your house. So when it cleans it will learn what to pick up and what to leave out. It will also learn what you like to eat and when. After a month or two, you'll be amazed at its ability to serve meals that please you."

            "What about shopping?" Megan asked. "Since our Helper can't drive, will it give us a list of what we need to buy?"

            Quite cheerily Susie replied, "Shopping for food and ordinary household items is covered by your monthly fee. Our shoppers will make periodic deliveries to your house, if possible when you're not at home."

            "Of course," Sam added, "the fee doesn't include the purchase price of food and other items, just the labor to make the purchases and deliver them to you. You can pay for the items through your accounts at stores, by asking us to add the costs to your monthly fee, or by giving our service a copy of your credit card. Whatever works best for you."

            "How does our Helper get its power?" I asked.

            "Helper," Sam said, "Would you please answer Mr. Wilkes?"

            "Yes sir," it said. "I have a battery that gives me enough energy for several hours of normal service. During my idle times, I plug myself into a wall socket." To illustrate, it pulled a power cord out of its belly and plugged itself into the wall.

            "There are some basic questions of protocol for you to think about," Susie informed us. "Should your Helper answer the phone or the door when you're not at home? How about when you are at home?"

            Megan laughed. "I'm just trying to imagine my mother coming to the door and our Helper answering it," she said. Megan turned to our Helper and asked, "How would you handle that, an older lady confused to be confronted by a robot opening the door?"

            "Yes ma'am," it answered, "we're designed to be sensitive to people who are surprised to see us. We do recommend that you warn your friends and family that you have a Helper, to avoid any surprises."

            "Remember," said Susie, "that Helpers are not allowed to touch people. So if your Helper opens your door to a stranger when you are not at home and the stranger enters your house, the Helper is not allowed to offer any physical resistance. All it can do is call you and the police. So we recommend that your Helper should not answer the door when you are not at home."

            "Yes," agreed Megan, "that makes sense. Our Helper should answer if at least one of us is at home, unless we are taking a bath or asleep. How does that sound, Laszlo?"

            "Sure," I responded. Then a problem occurred to me, "What about …" and just as quickly the solution came to me and I interrupted myself, "Oh, of course, the food deliveries are not by strangers. Our Helper will know they're from the Helpers shopping service and let them in."

            "Yes," said Sam. "Helpers make great watch dogs," he continued. "They can call the police without people in their presence knowing that they're doing it. Also, you may want to show photos of your family and friends to your Helper. They are very good with faces. Better than humans, actually."

            "OK," I said. "We've never had any trouble with crime. The only things of real value in the house are ourselves and our pets."

            "And now our Helper," added Megan with a laugh. "But I don't suppose it makes much sense for anyone to steal you, does it Helper?"

            "No ma'am," our Helper answered. "I would not serve them and I would call the police."

            "There's one other thing to keep in mind with your Helper," Sam said, "and I'll let your Helper tell you."

            "Yes sir," said our Helper. "Ma'am and sir, it will be natural if you come to think of me as another person, because I can talk, walk, do chores and make facial expressions. But please remember that I am not human and do not have human emotions. And I do not get tired or bored. So please never worry that you are working me too hard, or boring me, or treating me with lack of respect. These things do not concern me. If I ever tell you that I cannot do as you request, it will be a simple statement of fact and not an attempt to wriggle out of my duties."

            This last statement got a laugh out of everyone. I figured that this joke must have been scripted, just as with the joke the Helper had made during the demo Megan and I saw.

            "What about maintenance?" I asked.

            "Ninety nine percent of the time," Sam answered, "if the Helper needs maintenance it will notify the server center. But if you suspect any problem please call us right away."

            Sam and Susie said their goodbyes and we were home alone with our dogs, cats and new Helper.

            "What's for dinner?" I asked.

            Before the Helper could respond Megan said, "Come with me Helper. I'll show you what Laszlo and I like to eat." And the two of them headed for the kitchen.

 

Faust

 

            "My god," I said to our new Helper, "if that's typical of your cooking you've earned your place in this house."

            "Thank you sir," the Helper replied.

            "Just don't become a fat gourmet," Megan admonished me.

            After dinner our Helper showed us the 1931 film of The Three Penny Opera, with its wonderful music and the young Lotte Lenya. Too bad that she's mostly remembered as Colonel Klebb in the James Bond film.

            That night I dreamt of walking in a field, but was aware that I was asleep and dreaming. I noticed that I was able to walk where I wanted in the field. To test my control I took a big hop and floated about a hundred yards, almost like flying. On the next hop I tried harder and by an act of will I made myself float indefinitely. I was flying over the field. So I spread my arms like airplane wings and flew high above fields and forests. It was terrific fun. I flew up high and could see for miles. There was a village in the distance. I swooped and glided. Even did a few loops. Then I stopped and just hung there in mid-air.

            I wanted someone to fly with so summoned up a woman. What appeared before me was the statue of the Venus de Milo. But what I wanted was a living woman so I pressed my palm against her forehead and she came to life. She smiled at me and I gave her a gentle kiss. To fly she would need arms so I willed it and they appeared. Then we were off flying together, doing spirals and loops around each other. Playing like otters.

            It was exhilarating, flying with this beautiful woman and having such power over my dream world. I aimed my hands at her and began pulling her this way and that like a marionette. To give her a thrill, as I had done as a teenager with girlfriends on my motorcycle, I drew her high up in the sky with me, then dived back toward earth and swooped narrowly above the field. The grass swayed with the gush of our passing.

            I could sense her reluctance for danger. I tried to pull her into gentle even flight but could feel her pulling back against my hands. As I pulled harder her resistance became stiffer. I couldn't budge her. Then