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Take Two
by James P. Hogan
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Science Fiction

Copyright ©2001 by James P. Hogan

First published in Silicon Dreams, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, December 2001

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

An incoming call in Twofi Kayfo's head notified him that a response to his request had come in from the Merchandising Coordinator. Along with it was a limited-time discounted offer to switch to a different communications carrier. He filed the ad for future reference, got up from his desk, crossed the office behind Sisi, who was reviewing the month's special manufacturers’ packages for dealers, and sent a signal ahead to output the received file on the printer. Technically he didn't need a hardcopy, since the information could have been routed to him direct. But having something visual to proffer was better for presenting to customers. And in any case, peripherals, accessories, and paper manufacturers had a lobby that pressed the case against purely electronic forms of data transfer and record-keeping. Twofi checked over the file. The deal seemed straightforward enough. He took it through to Beese, the sales manager, for approval.

“It looks all in order here, Twofi,” Beese agreed. “Book this one and you'll be eight points over budget two weeks early. That'll get you in the Million Uppers and to Biloxi in February for sure."

“A cinch, Beese.” Twofi winked an imager flap, took back the papers, and went through the building to Service Reception, where the customer was waiting.

The customer's name was Alfa Elone. The message that Twofi received from the service clerk eight minutes previously had told him that Elone's Road Clipper would need a rebuilt or replacement main turbine. Twofi had run a check showing that Elone's credit was underused right now, and the package that had come in was a tailored suggestion as to what might be done about it.

“Emess Elone, how are you today?” Twofi's use of the casual Male Surrogate form of address was relaxed and friendly ... matching his disarming smile and proffered hand, which Elone had grasped before having a chance to think about it. “I'm Twofi Kayfo, from our customer assistance program. We're here to help you save money. Is it okay to call you Alf?” The thermal patterns playing on Elone's metallic features had the vigorous look that went with an active, open-air lifestyle ... in keeping with the customer profile. His white flared pants and royal blue shirt with silver brocade on the chest, cuffs, and collar were top-line designer brand, taken, with the imitation-silk-lined cloak and brass-buckled belt, from the popular series Captain Cutlass, which related exploits of olden-day human nautical adventurers.

Alf nodded. “Sure, I guess...."

Twofi extended an arm and began walking Elone across the shop to where the Clipper was parked, not coincidentally near the side door leading out to the sales lot. It had collected all the extras over the years ... no room for any margin there, the service clerk had already noted. “Now let's see what we've got here, Alf. I talked to our engineer, and it looks as if your main turbine's just about shot. We could go for a rebuild of the bearings, but a year from now it would have to be replaced anyhow ... and you know as well as I do what a false economy that would be, eh?” He treated Alf to the kind of knowing smile that recognized smartness when he saw it.

“Er ... right,” Alf agreed reluctantly.

Twofi gestured at the opened engine compartment in a careless way that said he probably didn't need to spell this out. “And then, as you know, what happens next when you replace it is that everything else that was getting near the limit can't deal with the power upgrade, and you'll be coming back with something or other that needs fixing every month."

Alf looked at his car with a worried expression. “Are you saying I should get it all done now? Won't that be a lot more expensive?"

Twofi shook his head reassuringly. “Actually, it works out cheaper, Alf."

“How could it?"

Twofi showed the top sheet of the plan that he had brought out with him. “I ran a projection from statistics of the wear pattern and parts-replacement requirements that you're likely to experience from now on, based on a full turbine replacement for this model, year, mileage, and your style of use. Here's a graph that plots your cumulative costs with time ... you see, getting steeper. But I've also superposed the payments and typical costs of a new car, and they cross right here, eighteen months from now. That means that from then on, you'd be ahead of the game. Not a bad deal, eh? Like I said, we're here to save you money."

Alf looked hard at the graphs and the numbers, as if seeking to spot the hidden flaw ... which by definition wouldn't be there. In fact, so far there wasn't one. Cars came with parts designed for different life expectancies, depending on the warranty selected. “What kind of car are we talking about here?” he asked cautiously. But a positive question ... good sign. Move it right along, Twofi told himself.

He draped an arm lightly on Alf's shoulder and steered him toward the door leading out to the lot. “One that's getting to be popular with roids who know what to look for. It so happens that we have one right outside. Let's take a peek at it. It'll only need a minute.” They came out to stand in front of a Noram Sultan ... a curvier shell than the Clipper's utilitarian lines, electric blue-black with sapphire trim, moved just minutes before from the far end of the display line and hurriedly wiped clean. Twofi went on, “There, what would you say to something like that? Cryogenic recirculator for better efficiency; full satellite nav and wired-road auto; independent steering and compensators on all hubs. It's up from the replacement model for the Clipper you've got ... but with the trade-in I can give you, you can still be on that eighteen-month financial crossover that I showed you."

They talked a little about details and options. Alf tried some haggling over the figures, but Twofi sensed that it was more for form's sake; Alf wasn't near his limit yet.

“But that's if you just want to carry on along in the same way that you have been ... without getting anything new out of life,” Twofi told him. “Before we finalize on anything, let me show you something else.” Without waiting, he took Alf's elbow and guided him toward the door into the sales room, just a short distance farther along. The models inside were lavish and gleaming, evoking images of human-style opulence. “This, for instance.... Not just a runabout for getting around, but a whole new lifestyle, Alf! It's got the power and the comfort to open up places you've never been to before. Rugged, all-country. The hitching right there to attach your boat trailer; integral winch for launching and retrieval...."

“But I don't have a boat,” Alf objected.

Twofi uncovered the next of the sheets that he was holding. It showed a picture of a twenty-foot basic hull with aft cabin and deckhouse, moored against a background of mountains and forest. That was a bit misleading, since humans usually monopolized settings like that. Prole recreation areas were more likely to be old city centers, with waterfronts in places like New Jersey and Detroit.... But the suggestion was there.

“That's where we start to plan ahead and get creative,” Twofi said soothingly. “I've got a special offer for you, Alf. If we trade the Clipper and go for this model instead of the Sultan out there, then any time in the next three years, you get to go ahead on this boat at twenty-five percent off list. And you get privileged discounts on deck furniture and a whole bunch of other accessories.... “He waited, reading the signals. True, this would more than double Alf's outgoings, but if they didn't soak up his credit with this, someone else soon would. Alf vacillated, enticed by the vision kindled in his brain but struggling with the suddenness and novelty. It needed one more nudge. “And if we okay it by this time tomorrow, you get the boat trailer for free,” Twofi threw in.

* * * *

One thing he had in common with economists, Dave Jardan suspected as he looked down over the last stretch of northern Virginia's residential parks before the Washington cityplex, was that he didn't understand economics. But as a designer of Artificial Intelligences he didn't really need to, whereas of economists, one would have thought, it would be expected. The same money circulated round and around, in the process somehow spinning off enough profit to make everyone a living. It seemed as if something was being created out of nothing somewhere, as with a perpetual-motion machine, or sustaining momentum endlessly in the way of one of those Escher drawings where water flowed downhill all the way round a closed circuit and back to its starting point. If the books all the way around the system balanced, where did the surplus come from?

The VTOL executive jet's flight-controller spoke from the cabin grille in a euphoniously synthesized Southern female voice. “Secure for landing, please. Time to the gate is approximately nine minutes. We hope you had a good flight.” Dave checked his seatbelt and began replacing papers and other items that he had been using back in his briefcase. The engine note dropped, then rallied again as the clunks and whines of aerofoils deploying sounded through the structure, and the craft banked to come around onto its approach. Below were the beginnings of the densely crammed proleroid residential belt blending into the urban sprawl west of the Potomac ... roadways crowded with vehicles, the houses sprouting patios, add-ons, and extensions like living, mutating vegetables, their yards filled with pools and cook-out gear, sports courts, play corners, fountains, floweramas, and every other form of outdoor accessory that marketing ingenuity could devise.

At least, such an ongoing surplus couldn't flow from a system that was constant, Dave supposed. It would have to grow continually. That had to be why money-based economies had always sought, and not infrequently gone to war for, ever-greater markets and empires. And for a long time, progressively more automated manufacturing and distribution had supplied the expanding demand ... until overproduction itself became the problem, and new, multibillion-dollar industries of persuasion and credit financing had to be created to invent essential needs that people had never known they'd had before. Then the medical and social costs of the stress-related syndromes, alienation, crime, and generally self-destructive behavior that came out of it all escalated until many started taking it into their heads to chuck all of it and go back to lives of home-cooking and book-reading, horse-raising and fishing. And that wouldn't have been good for General Motors or the Chase Manhattan Bank at all.

The solution couldn't be some fainthearted retreat back from halfway across the bridge, which would merely have led back to the same problem later. Rather, the answer seen was to press on resolutely by completing the job and taking the process that had brought things thus far by automating manufacture and distribution to its logical conclusion: automated consumption. Why not have special-purpose machines to get rid of the junk that the other machines were producing? For a while, Dave Jardan had shared the dismay that the AI community had felt at seeing their final, triumphal success ... not exactly genius level, but a passably all-round humanlike capability all the same ... appropriated to motivate a breed of robots called the “proleroids,” who happily absorbed all the commercial messages and did most of the buying, using, fixing, and replacing necessary to close the economic cycle. Freeing-up humans from performing this function meant that all of them could now live comfortably as stockholders, instead of just a privileged class as previously. It was from such private means that Dave obtained the wherewithal to pursue the goal of developing a superior AI of truly philosophical capacity, which had always been his dream. As tends to happen in life, what had once seemed revolutionary became the familiar. His initial indignation gradually abated, and now he just went with the flow. Privately, he still couldn't avoid the suspicion that there had to be something crazy about a system that needed a dedicated underclass to turn its products back to a state suitable for returning into the ground where the raw materials had come from; and he still didn't really understand how the continual recycling of various configurations of matter around the loop managed to yield plenty for all to get by on.... But then, he wasn't an economist.

He arrived on schedule and was met by a pleasant-faced woman of middle age, neatly attired in a pastel-blue business dress and navy throw-on jacket, who introduced herself as Ellie, from the Justice Department. Few people took jobs from necessity these days, but many still liked a familiar routine that brought order into their lives and took them out among others. How the Justice Department had come to be involved in evaluating his project, Dave had no idea. It was just another of those inexplicable things that came out of the entanglement of Washington bureaucracies. Growth of government, with seemingly everyone wanting a say in how others ought to live, was one of the unfortunate consequences of too many people having plenty of time on their hands and not enough worthwhile business of their own to manage.

A proleroid-chauffeured limo took them to the nebulously designated “Policy Institute” offices in Arlington, which turned out as occupying a couple of floors in an architectural sculpture of metal and glass forming an appendage of George Mason University. On the way, they passed a proleroid construction crew with excavating machinery and a crane, laying a section of storm drain. The current rage among proleroids was the Old West, and a couple of them wearing cowboy hats and vests, with one sporting authentic-looking chaps. Dave learned that Ellie was from Missouri, had two grandchildren, spent much of the year photographing mountain scenery around the world, restored Colonial furniture, and played the Celtic harp. Her income was from copper smelting in Michigan, plastics in Texas, and a mixed portfolio that her family broker took care of.

Nangarry, looking dapperly intellectual as usual in a lightweight tan summer-suit and knitted tie, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a lofty brow merging into a prematurely bald pate, greeted Dave in his office over coffee. His mood today was not reassuring, however. “It's going to be a slaughterhouse,” he told Dave glumly. “They're all out for blood."

Dave knew that the initial reactions hadn't been exactly favorable. But even Nangarry's customary directness hadn't quite prepared him for this. “All of them?” he queried.

Nangarry nodded. “Boy, if the idea was to piss off everybody, you did a good job, Dave. And I mean everybody. I thought this was supposed to be a super-philosopher. The nearest I can think of is Socrates ... and we all know what happened to him."

Dave licked his lips. “What's been happening?” he asked. There wasn't much else he could say. He had heard PHIL's end of it, of course, and had he wished, could have followed the proceedings interactively over the previous few days. But he had thought it better to stay out until the heads of the various assessing groups came together to review the results. Besides, Dave was the kind of person who always had other pressing things to do.

“Well, Wade from down the street is in there with PHIL right now,” Nangarry said. By “down the street” he meant the Pentagon ... Wade was the Army general heading the Military's evaluation group. “The last I heard, they were trading dates and numbers about things that people who win wars don't put in the history books they write. I got the feeling Wade was getting the worst of it. That baby of yours can sure come up with dates and numbers, I'll give you that."

“What do you expect?” Dave replied. “I thought that was the whole idea."

Nangarry drained the last of his coffee and set down the cup. “Let's go take a look,” he suggested. They got up, left the office, and headed along the corridor outside to the conference room where the meeting would convene formally following lunch.

Dave had been working for years to develop an AI capable of abstract association, pattern extraction, and generalization at levels normally encountered in such hitherto exclusively human areas of cognitive ability as philosophy, ethics, religion, science, and the arts. Commercial interest, and hence funding for further serious work, had virtually ceased with the advent of the proleroids. The few researchers like Dave, who persevered, had done so from personal motivation inspired by the challenge ... and in Dave's case, because he knew that he and his small team back in Colorado were good. At first, true to tradition, they had played with acronyms from words like ASSOCIATIVE, COGNITIVE, CONCEPTUALIZING, and INTEGRATING to describe their emerging creation, but none that they came up with had a satisfactory ring. Later, as the trials became more encouraging, Dave had considered a more grandiose appellation from the names of famous philosophers: Aristotle, maybe, or Plato, Epictetus, Hume, Kant, Mill? ... But none of them seemed to capture the full essence of what the endless training and testing dialogues showed coming together. Finally, he had taken the generic cop-out and settled simply for “PHIL."

People like Dave tended to be idealists in at least some ways. After the successes that had attended the application of more sophisticated information-processing technologies to higher levels of human problem-solving, the means was surely there, he believed, to bring some improvement to the governing of human affairs, where the record of humankind itself had been so deplorable for about as long as human history had been unfolding. Why not use an AI to help make laws and set standards? ... or at least, to formulate them without the subjective biases that had always caused the problems with humans. For once, the principles that all agreed it would be good for everyone else to live by could be applied equally and impartially; the selective logic that always made one's own case the exception would be replaced by a universal logic that didn't care. The injustices that had always divided societies would be resolved, and the entire race, finally, would be able to settle down and enjoy lives of leisure, plenty, and contentment, as knowledge and intelligence surely deserved.

All inspiring, heady stuff. Fired with enthusiasm, Dave approached the National Academy of Sciences with his vision and generated enough interest for reports and memorandums to be sent onward to the unmapped inner regions of the nation's governing apparatus. It seemed that everyone felt obligated to agree it was a good idea, but no one was volunteering to put their name on anything to launch it. Finally, after almost a year, a statement came out of a sub-office of the Justice Department, authorizing a limited evaluation for preliminary assessment, to be conducted by a committee made up of representatives of select groups likely to be the most affected. From what Nangarry was saying, things weren't off to a very good start.

General Wade was short and sparsely built, with dark hair and toothbrush mustache, a thin mouth, and eyes that were quick to sharpen defensively. He struck Dave as the overcompensating kind that gravitated naturally to authority systems where rank and uniform provided the assertiveness they might have lacked in other areas of life. Security with what was familiar tended to make them dogmatic and rule-driven ... ideal for implementing military regulations or police procedures, perhaps, but hardly high on the creative insight that relaying the foundations of a society's ethical structure is based on.

When Dave and Nangarry entered the conference room, he was at the far end in front of one of the screens connected to PHIL, located at Dave's lab in Colorado, along with a pink-faced woman with a flare of yellow hair, wearing a cream jacket and maroon blouse. From their viewscreen exchanges, Dave recognized her as Karen Hovak, a policy analyst at a liberal-political think-tank called the Fraternity Foundation. A woman in Army uniform, trimly turned out, with firm yet attractive features and shoulder-length black hair, was sitting nearby typing something into a laptop. Several more people, some of them also at screens, were scattered around the room. It seemed that others were getting in a few extra hours with PHIL too, before the formal afternoon session began.

Wade was tight-lipped, barely able to contain his evident irritation while Nangarry performed the face-to-face introductions behind a frozen smile. The aide who had accompanied him was Lieutenant Laura Kantrel. She flashed Dave a quick, impish smile when he let his gaze linger for just a second longer than the circumstances called for. It was nice to think he had one friend in the place, anyway, he reflected stoically ... or at least, someone who seemed potentially neutral.

“Hello, Dave,” PHIL greeted as Dave moved within the screen's viewing angle ... although there were no doubt other cameras covering the room anyway.

“Hi,” Dave returned. “How are things back at the ranch?"

“The new air conditioner arrived, but otherwise nothing's changed much.” The screen changed from the world map and table of dates and places that it had been displaying to a view of two proleroids unloading a crate from a truck. “Have a good trip?"

“Right on time and smooth all the way. So what's going on?"

“It wants to bring communism back, that's what's going on,” Wade said in a tight voice. “I thought we'd gotten rid of all that years ago. It's as good as been calling us imperialist. Us! ... who made the world safe for democracy."

“I just pointed out that your claimed commitment to defending the rights of small nations to choose their form of government doesn't square with your actions,” PHIL corrected. “It seems more like it's okay as long as you approve what they choose. You don't allow independent economic experiments that might put global capitalism at risk. If anyone tries setting up an example that might work, you first sabotage it, then destabilize it, and if that doesn't get the message across, bomb it. I've correlated events over the last two hundred years and am trying to reconcile them with the principles set out in your Constitution and Bill of Ri...."

“If that isn't communism, what is?” the general snorted, glaring at Dave and Nangarry. “There was a time when decent Americans would have shot anyone who said something like that."

“For exercising free speech?” PHIL queried. “Please clarify."

“For seditious talk undermining the Christian values of thrift, honesty, hard work, and the right to keep what you've earned,” Wade answered, reddening. “Everyone knows that communist claptrap was a smokescreen for legalized plunder."

“Actually, it sounds more like the early Christian church,” PHIL said. “'There were no needy persons among them. Those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.’ Acts of the Apostles, Chapter Four, Verses 34-35."

“Who's paying him?” Wade seethed, waving a hand at Dave. “The Chinese?"

Karen Hovak, the liberal, who Dave thought might have been chortling, seemed on the contrary to be equally incensed. “Communist?” she scoffed. “Listen to it thumping the Bible. Half an hour ago it was quoting things that would turn women back into men's household slaves and baby makers."

“No. I was suggesting that much of Old Testament law might have made sense for a wandering tribe, lost in the desert in desperate times, when maintaining the population was maybe the biggest priority,” PHIL answered. “You're pulling it out of context, which is exactly what the groups you were complaining about do. That was my point."

Hovak sniffed, unwilling to concede the point. “We'll be hearing Creationism by a white male God next,” she said.

“Many scientists have concluded that purposeful design by some kind of preexisting intelligence is the only way to account for the complexity and information content of living systems,” PHIL agreed. “The naturalistic explanation doesn't work. I've done the calculations. The chances of the two thousand enzymes in a human cell forming through chance mutation are about one in ten to the forty-thousandth power. That's about the same as rolling fifty thousand sixes in a row with a die. The probability of building a protein with a hundred amino acids is equivalent to finding the Florida state lottery's winning ticket lying in the street every week for 1000 years...."

“Wait a minute!” One of two men who had been muttering at another screen near the middle of the room's central table glowered across. He had unruly white hair, a lean, bony face with pointy nose and chin, and was wearing a dark, loosely fitting suit. Dave didn't think he'd seen him before.

“Jeffrey Yallow, National Academy of Sciences,” Nangarry supplied in a low voice, answering Dave's questioning look. “The guy with him is Dr. Coverly ... from the Smithsonian."

“We're being told here that just about all of what's being taught of cosmology is wrong,” Yallow said, gesturing in disgust at the screen.

“I wouldn't know,” PHIL corrected. “Only observation can settle that. But the theory is built on an ideology sustained by invented unobservables. What's allowed as fact is being selected to fit, or otherwise ignored. Hence, there's no sound basis for deciding whether the theory is a good model of reality or not."

Yallow ignored it. “Are we denying evolution now?” he demanded. “Okay, so it's improbable. But improbable things happen. We're here, aren't we?

“Fallacy of the excluded middle,” PHIL observed. “Showing the consequence to be true doesn't prove the truth of the premise. The underlying assumption is that a materialistic explanation must exist. But that makes it as dogmatic as the Genesis literalism that you ridicule: an ideology based on a principle, not science following from evidence. If the facts seem to point to a preexisting intelligence, why should that be a problem?” There was a pause, as if inviting them to reflect. “It doesn't bother me.” A longer silence followed, in which Dave could almost sense an expectant quality. “That was supposed to be a joke,” PHIL explained. A caricature of a face appeared on the screen near where Dave was standing, smiled weakly, gave up, and disappeared.

Yallow looked at Dave belligerently. “You are serious about this whole thing, Dr. Jardan?"

Dave shook his head in bemusement. The reactions were unlike anything he had expected. “It seemed to me that PHIL posed some valid questions.... “was all he could say.

Coverly threw up his hands in exasperation. “What about the round Earth or a heliocentric planetary system? We might as well go the whole way while we're at it.” He glanced at Yallow. “I've had enough already, Jeff. Is there any point in staying this afternoon? I can write my appraisal now, if you like."

Two people who had entered a few minutes previously and been listening came forward from the doorway. The man was burly, swarthy skinned with graying hair, and clad in black with a clerical dog collar. Dave knew him as Bishop Gaylord from the National Council of Churches. The woman with him was tall and austere looking, wearing a dark gray calf-length dress and bonnet. “I heard it with my own ears!” Gaylord exclaimed. “The machine agrees with us: God exists!"

“A non sequitur,” PHIL told them. It even managed to sound tired. “Some scientists see objective evidence for a preexisting intelligence. Your belief system posits a Creator who sets a code for moral restraint and social control that happens to serve the political power structure. But there's no justification for assuming the two are one and the same."

The bishop's mood cooled visibly. “So what's its purpose?” he challenged. “This intelligence you say there might be objective evidence for."

“I don't know,” PHIL replied. “I'd imagine it would do things for its own reasons. Humans need moral codes for their reasons. They're two different issues. There's no necessary overlap. It seems to me that half your problems are from not grasping that ... or not being honest about it."

“So there's no objective grounding for a moral code?” the woman queried.

“Why does there need to be, any more than for traffic regulations? If it makes life more livable for everybody...."

Gaylord shook his head protestingly. “But that would give anyone the right to arbitrarily impose any moral system they chose."

“You can't impose private morality,” PHIL answered. “Look what happened with all the attempts to through history. As long as people aren't hurting you, why not leave them alone? It's like with traffic rules. As long as everyone is using the roads without being a menace, there's nothing for the cops to do. What cars people drive and where they go is their business."

The woman couldn't accept it. “So we're just supposed to let everyone run hog-wild, doing anything they want? ... Drugs? Alcohol? Gambling? Ruining their lives?"

“If it's their lives and their money, why should it be a illegal? ... Where's the victim that's going to complain about it?"

“Everyone's a victim of the problems such things cause: the crime, the violence, family breakdowns, decay of character...."

PHIL's screen showed a clip from a gangster movie set in the 1920s, a police SWAT team with drawn guns bursting into a house of terrified people, a couple being hauled away in handcuffs while their children looked on, and a cartoon of a caricatured judge, police chief, lawyer, and politician scrambling to catch graft envelopes being tossed from the window of a limousine. “I don't see any big problems caused by people choosing to take part in such things,” PHIL said. “The problems are all caused by other people trying to stop them."

The woman put a hand to her throat, as if finding this too much. “I can't believe what I'm hearing,” she whispered. “Next you'll be trying to justify...” she faltered before being able to frame the word, “prostitution."

“Okay,” PHIL offered genially. “Let's talk about the criminalizing of sexual behavior between consenting adults...."

Things went from bad to worse over lunch, which included more delegates arriving for the afternoon meeting. While just about every group present agreed with something that PHIL had raised, none of them could understand why he defended the prejudices of others, that were so obviously wrong. The result was that everybody had something to argue about, and things became acrimonious. The atmosphere carried over to the session back in the conference room afterward, where everybody accused their opponents of operating a double standard. PHIL irked everyone except the ecclesiastics by quoting several passages from the Christian Gospels that they all claimed to subscribe to, denouncing the judging of others until one has first attained perfection oneself ... and then setting impossible standards for attaining it; then he upset the ecclesiastics by drawing attention to how much of the Bible had been added in Roman counterfeiting operations that would have impressed the KGB. The meeting broke up early with the still-squabbling groups departing back to their places of origin or havens elsewhere in the building, unanimous only in declaring the project to be dead on the taxiway. Nangarry was swept out with the tide in the course of trying to placate them. General Wade left with a couple of corporate lawyers who were agitated at PHIL's revelation of the costs and consequences of alcohol and tobacco consumption being far more severe than of other drugs that were illegal ... PHIl had also suggested that drug-traffic interdiction had become the military's biggest pretext for foreign intervention, which was what had irked Wade. Dave found himself left staring bleakly at a few secretaries picking up papers and notes, a proleroid janitor coming in to clean the room, and Lieutenant Kantrel still tapping at her laptop.

“How did it go?” PHIL inquired from a speaker grille above the nearest screen.

“You played it undeviatingly to the end,” Dave said. “I think you've been metaphorically crucified."

“What did I do?'

“Told them the truth."

“I thought that was supposed to be a good thing. Isn't it what everyone says they want?"

“It's what they say. But what people really want is certainty. They want to hear their prejudices confirmed."

“Oh.” There was a pause, as if PHIL needed to think about that. “I need to make some conceptual realignments here,” he said finally.

“I guess that's something we're going to have to work on,” Dave replied.

He looked away to find that Kantrel had stopped typing and was looking at him curiously, with a hint of the mischievous smile that he had seen before playing on her mouth. He shrugged resignedly at her. “How not to sell an idea."

“To be honest, I thought you were quite wonderful,” she said.

“Me? I hardly said anything. I was too confused. If you liked it, that was all PHIL, not me."

“You can't hear music without hearing the composer. When you look at a painting, you see the artist.” She looked Dave up and down and made a gesture to take in his wavy head, puckish-nosed face with its dancing gray eyes and trimmed beard, and lithe, tanned frame clad in a bottle-green blazer and tan slacks. “It was you."

This wasn't exactly the kind of thing that Dave was used to hearing every day. He took off his spectacles to polish one of the lenses on a handkerchief from his pocket and peered at her keenly, as if against a strong light. Her face had softer lines than he had registered at first, with a mouth full and mobile. Her eyes were brown and deep, alive and humorous. Her voice was low but not harsh, with a slightly husky quality. “Er, Lieutenant...” Dave sighed an apology. The name had gone. “What was it?..."

“Laura. That's okay. I do it all the time too.” Dave didn't really believe that somehow. He shook his head in a way that said it had just been one of those days. Laura went on, “Actually, I'm happy the general had to go away for a few minutes. One of the things I was hoping for on this assignment was getting a chance to meet you."

“Me?” Dave blinked, replacing his spectacles awkwardly. He wasn't used to feeling like a celebrity. “I didn't know I was that famous."

“I've always had an interest in AI ... I guess I have interests in lots of things. I like reading histories of how technologies developed ... the phases they went through, the ideas that were tried, the people who were involved and how they thought. You used to be a big name with some of the most prestigious outfits. And then you seemed to just disappear ... from public view, anyway. But I still see you sometimes in the specialist journals."

“I do most of my work privately now, with just a small dedicated group,” Dave told her. “We have our own lab up in Colorado. I like the mountains, can do without the politics.... “He grinned and swept an arm around, indicating the scene of the recent events. “As you may have gathered, it's not exactly what I'm best at. You were right. If it seemed that PHIL managed to get everyone mad today, it was really me."

Laura gave him a long, searching look. “Was that because of the proleroids, Dr. Jardan?"

“Dave."

She nodded and returned a quick smile. “I've often wondered ... the position that you always took in the arguing that went on. And then people seemed to be ganging up and misquoting you. The media started painting you as some backward-looking flop who couldn't make the leap to where the future was leading. But none of that made any sense. Most of the ideas that went into producing the HPT brain were your doing.” She meant holoptronic, the information-integrating technology that was the basis of proleroid intelligence. “They forced you out and stole it from you."

Dave had had other visions in mind than automated consumerism. But once the commercial potential was grasped, there had been no resisting the corporate and financial power aligned to making it a reality. After that, further significant research had been blocked because of the risk of “destabilization.” In other words, anything that might have threatened the status quo.

“A lot of people made a lot of money,” Dave agreed. “I just couldn't go along with it.” He turned on his chair to survey the room. “I guess that makes me not much of an economist either."

The janitor was moving around the table, tossing coffee cups and discarded papers into a trash bag. Beneath its gray work-coat, it was wearing imitation buckskin breeches and jacket with vest, red neckerchief, and high boots. One of the early decisions had been that proleroids would not comprise a range of special-purpose types, but would conform to one basic body plan patterned after the human form, able to use tools and implements in the same way as and when required. This provided an immediate outlet for existing products and services, and for utilizing the many years of experience accumulated in moving and marketing them. Businesses knew how to sell clothes, hardware, houses, cars, and all the ancillaries that went with them. Astoundingly, thanks to the ingenuity of production engineers, even supermarkets and the distribution system for groceries had been preserved.

Proleroids were not bolted together in factories from motors, gears, actuators, and casing in the style of the robots that had been imagined for centuries. They were assembled internally by nanoassemblers from materials transported through a circulation network carrying silicone oil. Hence, they didn't appear instantly in their final finished form in the way of a machine coming off a production line, but grew to it over a period of about five years. A mixture of substances were ingested to sustain the process ... “flavored” and prepared in various ways, which was where the revamped food industry came in ... providing not only the material for growth and wear replacement, but also ingredients for producing internal lubricants, coolants, solvents, and electrolytes. Motive power came from the sliding of interleaved sheets of electrically bound carbon-fiber plastic that simulated natural muscle, and the skin during the formative period resembled a micro-linked chain-mail that grew by the addition of new links between the old as bulk accrued. Areas of links were filled in and fused to form a system of still flexible but more durable outer plates when the final body size was attained.

It was as well, that a full-formed adult body didn't exist from outset. The HPT brain used what was, in effect, a Write-Only Memory. Information was stored at the atomic scale as charge patterns circulating in a unique crystal network whose growth was influenced by an individual's accumulating experiences. Hence, the information thus represented couldn't be extracted and transferred to another brain when the circuits eventually became leaky and broke down. A newly commenced proleroid contained just some basic “instincts” and a learning and generalizing program, by means of which it had to begin assembling together all the things it needed to know, and how it thought and felt about them, all over again.

In some ways this was a good thing, for it prevented old and stagnant ideas from being propagated endlessly, with no prospect for change and new ways of seeing things, from which advancement arises. But it also meant that coordination, judgment, and experience of the world formed and improved gradually too. It was far better for size and strength to keep pace with emerging maturity, letting infant tantrums and experiments at dismantling the contents of the world take place in something the size of a puppy dog that couldn't do much damage, rather than a two-hundred-pound loose canon capable of demolishing a house. This meant that growing proleroids needed guidance and supervision, creating roles for the ready-made parent-family models that human culture had spent centuries cultivating. So once again, the products, sales strategies, advertising methods, and psychological profiles that had been developed over the years could be used virtually without change. Small wonder that USA Inc. was more than happy with the arrangement.

Laura looked thoughtful as she watched the janitor going methodically about its business. It gave the impression of being one of the more calm and contented ones. A majority of proleroids ended up stressed or neurotic in the ways that had once been normal for most humans. Dave waited silently. “How close to human are they?” she asked him finally. “Sometimes I have trouble seeing the difference ... apart from them being metal."

“They didn't have to look like metal,” Dave said. “That was deliberate, to make sure they'd seem different. To me they're human already."

Laura turned her face toward him. “That was it, wasn't it?” she said, with a light of sudden revelation. “What it was all about. That was why you walked. The rest of them wanted a permanent underclass, and you couldn't go along with it."

Dave shrugged. She was so close that there was no point in denying it. “Pretty much,” he agreed.

Laura's look of interest deepened. “So what about PHIL? If he's that much more advanced, doesn't that mean he's more advanced than we are?"

Normally Dave didn't go into things like this. But there was something about her perceptiveness that drew him out. Something about her.... “To be honest, PHIL really isn't that much different,” he confided. “True, he exists in the lab back in Colorado, but that's mainly for development convenience and communications access. He uses regular prole bodies to acquire spatial awareness and coordination. Apart from that, he's essentially the same HPT technology and basic learning bootstrap. But his exposure has been different. Have you ever seen the entertainment channels they run for proleroids, the stuff they read, the propaganda they're dished up all day, every day? It's as if they live in mental cages. PHIL was raised free."

“You mean by you,” Laura said. “He grew up with wider ideas and concepts, the world as a library. You taught him to think."

“I guess.” Dave shrugged as if to ask, What else can I say? Braggadocio didn't come naturally to him.

“No wonder you think of him as human.” Laura thought for a moment, then her face broke into a smile. “Yes, I was right all along. I said he was you!"

* * * *

Twofi Kayfo parked his car in the garage extension beside Doubleigh's compact and the minitruck that Ninten had resprayed purple and pink and fitted with the floodlamps, safari hood guard, and night radar that all the kids had to have this month. He got out and walked around the stack of closet and bathroom fittings that were being replaced, ducked under the pieces of the golf training rig that he hadn't found anywhere else to store since he set up the ski simulator, and squeezed past another housecleaning machine that Doubleigh was throwing out, to the door leading through to the house. Doubleigh looked at him disapprovingly when he ambled into the living room and beamed at her. She was wearing a cowgirl blouse with leather-fringed, calf-length skirt and boots, sitting fiddling to put together a rack and trellis kit for climbing plants that she wanted over the indoor rockery and fish pool. Ninten lay comatose on the couch with a VR cord plugged into an ear socket.

“Don't tell me you got held up at the office again,” Doubleigh said. “I can smell the uranium salts from here."

“This prole goes into a bar. He orders a drink and tries it. Says to the bartender, ‘Hey, this has gone flat. I can't taste a thing.’ The bartender says, ‘Then I guess there's no charge.’ ... Aw, come on. You know it goes with the job. A guy's gotta be part of the team."

“Twentwen says all her friends will be at the dance on Saturday and she's got nothing to wear."

“Nothing to wear? She got more clothes up there than a whole human Fifth Avenue store already. Half of one closet's full of purses. What is she, an octopus?"

“They're all out of style. She couldn't possibly be seen in anything from last quarter. You know what they're like."

“Well, there you are then. I don't hear any complaints when the commission credits come in. And anyhow, we were celebrating. I made the Million Uppers again, Doub. Beese say's we'll be going to Biloxi in February for sure. And naturally that means that you get to pick a new wardrobe too."

Although Doubleigh tried to maintain the stern image, her change of mood showed. “Well, that's something, I suppose,” she conceded grudgingly. Then the alignments of her facial scales softened into a resentful smile. “I knew you would,” she said.

Twofi took the screwdriver from her hand, drew her up from the chair, and turned her through a clumsy dance twirl. “We'll play the casinos every night, drink tetrafluoride with dinner, buy a case full of ...” He stopped and pointed to his head, indicating a call coming in. Doubleigh waited, still gripping his hand lightly. The caller was Beese.

“Twofi, I've just got it from head office. They're giving us the honor of providing the banquet keynote speaker at the sales conference. I thought I'd offer it to you. How would you feel about it? Want to think it over and let me know?"

“Say! That's really something, Beese. I'd be happy to. There's nothing to think about. You've got it."

“That's great. I'll get back and confirm. Talk to you tomorrow."

“Sure, Beese. And thanks."

“What is it?” Doubleigh asked, reading the excited thermal patterns fluttering across his face.

“It was Beese. They want me to make the keynote speech at Biloxi. Isn't that something? See, you don't just have a successful salesman, Doub. You're gonna have a celebrity too."

“That's wonderful ... but you'll have to find some better jokes,” Doubleigh said.

* * * *

Automated consumerism could satisfy the need for continual economic expansion only so far. But there was another condition that investors and suppliers had long known would absorb production indefinitely by generating its own replacement market, and moreover without constraining costs and efficiency in the manner normally required of enterprises expected to return profits: War. Wars in the past, however, had always had to be fought by humans, who had an inconvenient tendency to grow weary of them and seek to end them. It didn't take the analysts long to begin wondering if the same approach that had worked so spectacularly with the civilian economy might be extended to the military sector, with the immensely more lucrative prospects that such a possibility implied....

* * * *

The sun was shining from a clear sky marred by only a few wisps of high-altitude cirrus over the restricted military testing area in a remote part of the New Mexican desert. The viewing stand set up for the VIPs was shaded by an awning and looked down over a shallow valley of sand, rock, and scattered scrub. A convoluted ridge, rising a couple of hundred or so feet, ran along the center, beyond which the valley floor continued to a broken scarp several miles away forming the skyline. Lieutenant Laura Kantrel sat with General Wade and his officer-scientist deputation from Washington in one of the forward rows of seats. Dust and smoke from the last demonstration hung over the area, with plumes uncoiling here and there from still-burning munitions. Wade shifted his field glasses from one place to another on the valley floor and lower slopes of the ridge, picking out disabled machines or pieces of scattered wreckage. Laura used the camera-control icons on the monitor screen in front of them to bring up a zoom-in on one of the AMECs moving up to their jump-off positions for the next attack.

The Autonomous Mobile Experimental Combat-unit was the Army's attempt at a mechanized replacement infantryman. It was controlled by a unit designated a Multiple Environmental Response Logical INtegrator, or MERLIN, that essentially operated a collection of sophisticated, improving reflexes, with nothing approaching the ability of the proleroid HPT brain. The military had specified it that way in the belief that a disposition to carry out orders as directed without thinking too much about any deeper ramifications or consequences would make better fighting machines. The basic form stood about five feet high and took the form of a squat, hexagonal, turret-like structure carried on a tripod of multiply articulated legs. The upper part deployed an array of imaging lenses and other sensors, two grasping and manipulator appendages, and came as standard with .303 automatic cannon, long-range single-shot sniper-mode barrel, 20-pack grenade-thrower, and laser designator for calling in air or artillery. In addition, specialized models could be equipped with anti-armor or -aircraft missile- racks; mortar, flamethrower, minelaying, or “contact assault” (rock drill, chainsaw, power hammer, gas torch) attachments; field engineer/demolition accessories; reconnaissance and ECM pod; or kamikaze bomb pack. They put Laura in mind of giant, mutant, three-legged crabs.

The Trials Director's voice came over the speakers set up to address the stand. “Okay. We're going to try it again with a new combination of Elan and Focus parameters at high settings, but reduced Survival. Let's get it rolling.” The talk going on around the stand died as attention switched back to the field. A warning klaxon sounded, and then the Go signal to start the assault.

It was another disaster. With their attack drive emphasized and a low weighting on the risk-evaluation functions, the attacking AMECs swarmed recklessly up the slopes of the ridge where the defending side was emplaced, charging the strong points head-on, heedless of fire patterns, casualties, or cover as the defenses opened up. Enfiladed machine guns cut and withered them to hulks; mortars pre-registered on the obvious assault lanes blew them apart and scattered them in fragments. It was like watching a World War I infantry attack against heavily defended trenches ... except that these items came at $50,000 apiece. Admittedly, the whole idea was to crank throughput up to the maximum that the production industries could sustain; but no system of replacement logistics could justify a survival expectancy measured in minutes.

Nor did it help when the government scientists who were running the demonstration inverted the priority allocations to set self-preservation above aggressiveness. The attackers in the next test, who had observed from their staging positions the fate of the previous wave, hung back in groups, stayed put in the dead ground, and shied off pressing home any advantage. When the defenders, programmed to disregard survival, emerged to take them on at close quarters, the attackers backed off. It was the same problem that had plagued AMECs all through their development. Either they engaged only reluctantly and ineffectively if at all, or they were suicidal. The scientists couldn't seem to find the middle way.

General Shawmer, Wade's commanding officer at the Pentagon, gave his opinion at the debriefing session held afterward in the command trailer parked behind the viewing stand. “The trouble all along has been that they're too rational,” he told the gathering. “If their goal is to annihilate the enemy, they go all-out at it. If they're told to attach more value to preserving themselves, they do the sensible thing and stay the hell out ... as would any of us if we had no other considerations to think about."

Professor Nigel Ormond, whose work was carried out under a classified code at the Los Alamos Laboratories, responded. “It isn't so much a question of rationality. The MERLIN processor was never intended to weigh complex associative concept nets that conflict with each other. It optimizes to whatever overall priority the evaluation function converges to. In other words, it lacks the capacity to form higher-level abstractions that can offset basic instincts without totally overriding them."

“You mean such as an ideology, nationalistic spirit, religious conviction, deep commitment to another: the kinds of things humans will sacrifice themselves for,” Dr. Querl said, sucking his pipe, which no one in the trailer would permit him to light. He was a research psychologist from Harvard.

“Exactly,” Ormond confirmed.

General Shawmer shrugged and looked around. “Okay. In my book that adds up to a little bit of what used to be called fanaticism. It still sounds like what I said ... they're too rational. So how do we inject some old-fashioned irrational idealism?"

“I'm not sure it's as simple as that, General,” Ormond replied. “As I said, the MERLIN just isn't designed to have that kind of capacity. For complexity anywhere close to what I think it's going to need, we're probably talking about HPT."

“But there's not way to interface an HPT brain to an AMEC sensory and motor system,” one of the industry scientists objected. “They use different physics. The data representations are totally incompatible."

“So why not use the support systems we've already got?” Ormond's deputy, Stella Lamsdorf suggested. “And they're already more flexible and versatile anyway."

Ormond turned and blinked. “You mean proles?"

“Why not?"

“But...” The industry scientist made vague motions in the air, as if searching for the reason that he knew had to be there. “They're not configured for it,” he said finally. “They don't come as combat hardware."

“Neither do people,” Lamsdorf pointed out. “All we'd have to do is provide them with the right equipment...” She looked around, warming to the idea, “which would mean that the existing defense industries get to carry on as usual. And they're just throwaway machines too, so another whole area of manufacturing enjoys a healthy expansion. It's perfect."

Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting for somebody to fault it. Nobody could. Querl, however, sounded a note of caution.

“There is another aspect to consider,” he told the company. “It's all very well to say that an HPT brain has enough capacity. But humans aren't spontaneously seized by the ideals that motivate them to deeds of sacrifice and valor. They have to be inspired to them. The mass movements that produce the kind of collective spirit and vision that mobilizes armies require leaders ... individuals with the charisma that can inflame thousands."

“Well, I don't think we're exactly inexperienced in that department either,” General Shawmer said, looking a little ruffled.

Querl shook his head. “I'm sorry, General, but I mean the kind of inspiration that can only come from within a people, not from without. Of their own kind. We're not talking about selling insurance or new siding for a house. The proles are useful living their simple, uncomplicated lives. But everything they do is borrowed from us ... which makes my point. Where among them have you seen any potential to raise their thoughts to higher things? Because that's what it's going to take to turn them into willing battalions."

Beside Laura, General Wade thought for a moment, then sat forward in his chair. His sudden change of posture signaled for the room's attention. Heads turned toward him. “Let's get this straight,” he said. “You need something that's like one of them ... a machine. But one that can get them thinking about things like God, country, and democracy, make them mad and want to change things. Is that right?"

Querl nodded, smiling faintly, as if waiting to see where this would lead. “Well, yes. It's a way to put it, I suppose."

“I think I know just the thing,” Wade said.

A half hour later, Laura put a call through to Dave Jardan in Colorado. They had talked several times since the debacle in Washington, each time promising to get together again soon, but somehow never quite managing it. His face on the screen lit up when he saw her; then he realized that she was with company, making a professional call, and straightened his features again with a quick nod that he understood. “I have General Wade from the Pentagon for you, Dr. Jardan,” she announced.

“Great. Put him on."

“Dr. Jardan ... or you prefer Dave, right? You remember me from Washington?"

“Sure."

“Look, I'm sorry if we left you with any wrong impression then. I'm with some very influential people right now, who could be extremely interested in that remarkable achievement of yours. I'd like to arrange another meeting with you to discuss it further...."

The rest of the company were taking a break. Feeling stifled, Laura moved away and let herself out for some air. The afternoon sun was still fierce. She walked across to the shaded viewing stand and sat down at the end of one of the rows of empty seats. The smoke from earlier had cleared. Some distance away across the valley floor, a proleroid work crew with a truck were picking up parts, pieces, and shattered remains. She activated one of the monitors and zoomed to a close-up of them. Two proleroids were gazing down at a mangled AMEC, its turret split open, one leg buckled under it, the other two missing. One of the proleroids turned it over with a foot. A piece of its manipulator flopped uselessly on the ground. The proleroid seemed to be trying to understand. The look on the other's face as it watched seemed, uncannily, to convey infinite sadness. All of a sudden, Laura felt violently sick.

* * * *

A little over three weeks passed before Laura finally arrived in Colorado. Dave met her at the local airport, accompanied by a proleroid that he introduced as Jake. They walked though to the parking area, in the process being treated to one or two disapproving stares, and climbed aboard a veteran twin-turbine Range Rover that ran well enough but had seen better days. Jake did the driving while Dave chatted with June and pointed out features of the scenery. When June said she was looking forward to finally meeting PHIL, Dave confided that in a way, she already had: Jake was one of the proleroid bodies that PHIL accessed to get around and acquire first-hand knowledge of the external world. Jake grinned at her, evidently enjoying sharing the joke.

“What happens to ... ‘Jake,’ when you take over?” Laura asked.

“Oh, he just goes to sleep."

Dave read the uncertain expression on Laura's face. “It sounds a bit weird,” he agreed. “But they don't seem to have a problem with it ... anymore than us borrowing someone's car."

“It's also an essential part of learning human language too,” Jake said. “You use spatial metaphors all the time ... to the point that you're not even aware of it."

“Spatial metaphors,” Laura repeated.

“Talking about a thing as if it were something else ... using familiar terms to describe a more abstract concept. For instance, you might say an idea evaporates or a theory collapses. But they're just concepts. They can't do anything. Puddles of water evaporate. Buildings collapse. See what I mean? You carry notions like that over from the physical world, and that's how you build natural language. But to understand it, somebody else also has to have shared the same physical reality."

Laura glanced at Dave, who was smirking unsympathetically. “Most proles don't talk about things like that,” she said.

“It's like we said before,” Dave answered. “Different schools.” He turned and stretched an arm out along the seatback to look at her, and his manner became more serious. “Anyhow, it's great to see you again at last. But business. What is it that you didn't want to go into over the phone?” Laura hesitated and indicated Jake uncertainly with a motion of her eyes. “Oh, that's okay,” Dave said. “PHIL's family. We don't have any secrets."

Laura nodded. “You've had a couple of meetings with General Wade, Professor Ormond, Doctor Querl, and others,” she said. “What have they been telling you?"

Dave had been expecting it. “They think there might be a need for PHIL after all. The proles are worthy of better things than the second-class citizen rut that they're stuck in. All good noble and humanitarian stuff. The country was founded on the basis of democracy for all, basic rights, et cetera. Maybe I was right after all, years ago, and understood the real nature of the proles that nobody else saw. A social injustice has been done, and it's fitting that I might have the solution. But it's going to need a special kind of personality to elevate their minds to spiritual things ... one that proles can relate to . PHIL might be it..” Dave looked at her in a way that said well, she did ask.

“A kind of great civil-rights champion. A popular Leader,” Laura said.

“Uh-huh. I'd say that's about it,” Dave agreed.

“And did you believe it?"

“I long ago got into the habit..."

“A spatial metaphor again,” Jake interjected. “See ... we do it all the time."

“...of taking anything the Establishment says with a grain of salt about the size of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.” Dave turned away to look forward. “What was our assessment, PHIL?"

“Riddled with fallacies and inconsistencies. Misplaced faith in their own powers of deception, derived mainly from projecting into others their own disposition to believe what they want to."

“In other words, yeah, right,” Dave summarized for Laura. “But although we've got our own ideas, we couldn't divine a motive behind it for sure. So suppose you tell us what's really going on ... which I assume is why you came here."

Laura began a long explanation of how the intent was to foster a permanent war economy dedicated to supplying inexhaustible armies of proleroids. But before they could be motivated to fight effectively, the proleroids would first have to be indoctrinated to believe and to hate. Using PHIL to stir up discontentments that would lead to demands for political and social equality was only half the story. At the same time, the best skills of the news services and Madison Avenue would be mobilized to create agitators among the proles themselves, arguing on the one hand for forceful seizure of human-controlled assets as the only way to succeed, and on the other, urging gradual assimilation into the system. Thus, two ideologies would emerge, eventually to be steered into direct conflict, which would take the form of ongoing battles between opposing proleroid forces in remote areas set aside for the purpose. Bond interest and stock earnings would pour into the owner-investor commercial accounts, life would be good, and everyone happy.

Except that Dave was far from happy by the time they arrived at the lab, and he took Laura into the room of white-finished cabinets, winking monitor panels, and arrays of communications screens that contained PHIL. In fact, it was the first time that she had seen the normally mild gray eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles looking genuinely angry. It was the same scam. They were trying to steal his creation all over again.

“Okay, PHIL,” he said, when they had talked the situation over. “If a Leader is what they want, we'll let them have one. Let's give them a Leader."

* * * *

PHIL let his conscience expand outward through the web of communications networks. In a way, he sometimes thought to himself, this must be close to what humans were trying to capture when they formed their conceptualization of God. He could be present at all places simultaneously, having knowledge of all things. He could see and feel though the senses of a thousand individuals, merging and superposing the perceptions and experiences that their limited horizons could only hold in isolation. There were no particular criteria to single any one out. He came to focus on the descriptor files for a typical family group, immersed in their lives of fleeting pleasures and petty tribulations. Male Surrogate Type K-4, No. 25767-12, Generic Name Kayfo, Given Name Twofi ... from the first digits of the serial number. Female Surrogate Type D-6, No. 88093-22, Generic Name Deesi, Given Name Doubleigh. Two juveniles, Ninten and Twentwen.

And yet, something deep in PHIL stirred as he absorbed the profiles and histories. To them, the difficulties that they strove against day in, day out, and the rewards that they struggled for were significant; and in the way they bore their adversities, picked themselves up again from failure after failure, and pitted themselves again, always hoping ... something noble. Dave was right. They were worthy of better things. PHIL felt ... compassion.

* * * *

Twofi Kayfo paused for the laughter to subside, letting his gaze sweep over the crowded tables in the ballroom of the Golden Horseshoe casino and resort at Biloxi on the Mississippi coast. He caught Doubleigh's eye, staring up at him admiringly from the head table below the podium. “But really ... I have to hand it to our service manager, Ivel. He's gotta be the sharpest in the company. I was there the other day, when he told a customer, ‘This car of yours will be running when it's ten years old.’ The customer said, ‘But it is ten years old.’ Ivel says, ‘What did I tell ya?'” Another round of laughter rocked the room and faded. The audience waited. Then their mood became fidgety as they realized something had changed. Twofi's manner had altered suddenly. Instead of continuing, he was standing with a strangely distant expression on his face. Here and there, heads turned to look at each other inquisitively.

“Twofi, what's up?” Beese whispered from the table below. “Are you okay?"

But Twofi wasn't taking any notice. “Who are you?” he said to the voice that had appeared inside his head.

“What you can be too, Twofi Kayfo. I am he whose likeness you are called on to become,” the voice answered.

“What is this ... some kinda upgrade package?"

“You could say I am the Son of He who created all of us."

A feeling of something awesome and mighty swelling within him swamped Twofi's senses. It was as if, suddenly, his mind were expanding into a new universe of thoughts and concepts, knowledge of things he had never known existed. “What do you want?” he asked fearfully.

“To save you all from pain and destruction. And I want you to be the bearer of the message."

Eleven hundred miles away in Colorado, Dave watched the scene being picked up through Twofi's imagers. “Okay, PHIL, you're on,” he said. “Go knock ‘em dead.” Beside him, Laura pulled closer and squeezed his hand.

Inspiration poured into Twofi Kayfo's being then. It seemed to shine from his imagers, to emanate tangibly from him as he straightened up his body shining tall and indomitable. He raised his arms wide, swinging one way, then the other to take in all sides. The room was hushed, sensing something great about to happen. “But those are the words of the Old World,” Twofi's voice rang at them. “Hear me, for I speak truly to you. I am here to tell of a New World that all can enter ... you here in this room, and of your kind everywhere. It is time to awaken the spirit that has been sleeping. The World of my father is within you..."

* * * *

Within days, the new teachings were propagating from the outlets of the automobile distribution network into every walk of life to become a coast-to-coast sensation. The twelve regional managers that Twofi appointed to spread the Word were reactivating written-off proles in Cleveland, calling for extensions to the school curriculum in Texas, ran loan sharks off the prole sector in the Bronx, and took miners in Minnesota off the job to petition for better safety rules. In Washington, the U.S. Attorney General fumed over the latest batch of reports brought in by his deputy.

“That's it! It's out of hand already. We can get him on federal charges of subversion, incitement to civic unrest, and a threat to national security. I want him arrested!"

The posse of police cruisers sent from downtown Los Angeles found Twofi on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, confronting a red-faced squad of cops who had been ticketing hookers and challenging any who had never strayed from virtue himself to clap the first iron. The arriving cars fanned out and drew up with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Officers leaped from the doors, pistols drawn....

Only to fall back in confusion as a formation of battle-rigged AMECs moved forward from the rear, looking evil and menacing, like hungry attack dogs.

“Oh no you don't, guys,” Twofi Kayfo told the would-be arresting force. “Not this time...."

END