Free Cyber Rogues by James P. Hogan Page A

easily instruct TITAN never to do that particular thing again, it was true, and TITAN wouldn’t, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that TITAN had demonstrated a capability to approach a perfectly reasonable objective from a totally unexpected direction, and in doing so come up with a solution that was inarguably rational from the machine’s point of view but which, for other reasons that could never with the present state-of-the-art be conveyed to the machine, was absolutely unacceptable. Its next such experiment might well result in worse than a mere narrow escape.
    “Okay.” Dyer exhaled and nodded curtly. “I can see the problem. What I don’t see is how it affects the unit. What has all this got to do with closing the unit down?” A new expression of disbelief spread across his face as a possible answer struck him. “You’re not telling me they’re panicking and putting a total ban on further research are you? That’s ridiculous! They’re gonna need all the expertise and facilities they can get if they’re going to straighten TITAN out. We’ve got just the—”
    Lewis interrupted with a wave of his arm and a shake of his head. “I didn’t mean we’re going to throw everybody out on the street,” he said. “But the projects that your unit is currently working on are probably going to be stopped. That line of research is being funded by CIM with the aim of producing the technology that’s supposed to replace HESPER one day. Now the guys at CIM are saying that they don’t even want to think about what comes after HESPER because it’s obvious we don’t understand HESPER yet as much as we thought we did. In fact a lot of people are saying we should tear HESPER out of the system completely and only think about putting it back in when we can prove it’s safe.”
    “In other words the money being spent on FISE could better be spent on other things for the time being, so FISE goes down the tubes,” Hoestler summed up.
    “I’m sorry, Ray, but it looks as if that’s the way it is,” Lewis said apologetically. “As you yourself more or less said a second ago, there’s going to have to be a big re-examination of the whole HESPER concept. We’ll probably be able to reassign your people to a new CIM contract in that area as soon as some specific objectives have been worked out. In the meantime, if I were you, I wouldn’t waste too many nights’ sleep hoping for any Nobel Prizes. You’ll probably have to wrap it all up pretty soon.”

    Kim was just coming out of the lab when Dyer arrived back at the outer door to his office.
    “Hi,” she greeted cheerfully. “Betty told me you’ve just been over to see Hoestler. Did you get a chance to mention the business with the graphics moms?” Dyer turned his head in her direction but his eyes were far away.
    “Uh? Oh . . . er no,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I guess I must have forgotten about it.” With that he walked on in, leaving Kim wearing a puzzled frown.
    He sat for a long time, staring at the papers on top of his desk. Lewis’s revelations had shocked him to the core in a way that he was only now beginning to appreciate. He had been as convinced about the potential benefits of HESPER as he had about anything in his life, and he had devoted more than a little effort to convincing others. TITAN had gone ahead on the basis of his recommendations as much as anybody’s. To be sure, the final decisions had not been his to make, but the people who had made them had relied on the facts that he and others like him had presented. And a whole world had relied on those people and their advisers.
    His mind went back to some of the things that Laura had said over lunch and to the confident—almost arrogant—reassurances that he had voiced a little over an hour before. Suddenly he felt far from reassured himself. He didn’t feel arrogant at all.
    He rose and went through the inner door into the lab. Betty greeted him with a couple of messages