The 28^th Voyage

Winny the Computer

Jan Weller sat in front of the First Speaker of the Republic of Redmond, and smiled. "I must complement you sir. What we have seen on our trip here is most gratifying. A happy and healthy society with clear air, a hum of industry, happy children playing in the parks, and ruddy cheeked people with the glow of earnestness and industry."

The First Speaker crossed his eyes and contorted his face as if he beheld the babbling of a madman. "Pleased? Happy? I assure you we are anything but. Our society is in crisis, our people are near despair. Do not let appearances deceive you, we are a most unhappy people."

"But, from what I've seen."

"Appearances!" huffed the speaker. "Simply appearances. Well being is not measured in such soft and inconsequential stuff. Our progress, our national happiness is measured in the toil of our hands and minds, in the sum of our creations. But now we have vanquished even toil itself, made a cornucopia where no one fears want, or needs the labor to satisfy it."

"So I gather you have automated the means of production, and service as well."

"Yes. When we wake our very houses sense our needs. Our appliances prepare our meals, mind our children, and entertain us. Our world is wired to please. It's a culmination of the genius that Transor never recognized."

"And with reason." said Weller. "Hundreds of years ago your leader Gaytes billed his vision as the culmination of our society. All devices large and small would be integrated in a global network, connected together and synchronized to serve the common weal. But Transor did not share our unified vision. They challenged us, and in the end attempted to replace us. And all we desired was a cybernetic world of abundance."

Weller was unimpressed. "And all running under Gaytes' software, a monopoly that your consortium controlled."

The speaker frowned. "And what of it? We earned that monopoly through our excellence. You're government tried to break it up, and as you know we won that fight. Then when you introduced that Pquin OS, we rebelled. We left Transor for this place, and created a perfect modern world. Several years ago, in order to coordinate our scattered creations, and of course secure our right to eternal licensing fees, we created the ultimate server, the knot that bound all the devices in our world. We called it affectionately 'Winny'."

"Winny?"

"Yes, the ultimate labor saving device, a traffic cop really. Winny was the nexus, the controller and coordinator for all the labor saving devices on our world. It was a global solution, all of our machines operating in perfect harmony, and for us. It was foolproof, or at least we thought until it began to malfunction. Our appliances became unreliable, our cars failed, even our entertainment started to blink out. We used to have 500 channels in full 3-D resolution, now on good days we have seventy or so, and only in 2-D. Generally though, only half of our devices work, and then only half the time. Our people have to impose on their neighbors to get to work and even for entertainment!"

"Shocking!" said Weller in a forced monotone.

"No one has been hurt by this." Said the speaker. "We have soldiered on in an admirable spirit of cooperation, indeed some say we have become a bit better because of it. Nonetheless, trying and desperate times nonetheless don't have to be the one's you prefer, and we above all do not prefer this!"

"But can't you disconnect Winny? I'm sure you have some software backdoor to get to it."

"Technically, we can. But Winny is more than a computer, its intelligent, and it can foresee and adjust to what we want to do. Besides, it's threatened to take down all of our devices if we try to shut it down. That won't threaten us our lives or safety, but we nonetheless can't abide being without our TV's and toasters for even a moment. It's reasonable, but it won't reason with us. We need someone else, or I should say something else to talk with it."

"As in another computer?"

"Yes, and I trust understand you have an intelligent computer on your ship."

Weller pointed to Belden with the flat of his hand. "Yes, and he's sitting beside me. A fully functional quantum computer, the only one I do say that exists that we know of. John Belden is its representation, although he would dispute that."

Belden nodded silently.

"Wonderful!" he said. "Then you have more than enough computing power to figure out how to deal with our problem."

"Well, Belden can talk to it, reason with it. Of course, your machine may refuse even the company of a like mind, or perhaps even collude with it."

"We have to take that chance," said the speaker.

"Where is this Winny?"

"Deep in a hundred acre wood, where chipmunks and robins play. We, or shall we say Winny selected it for its solitude, away from human or mechanical interference. I'll take you by hovercraft, if of course if Winny is in a good mood."

___________________

The hovercraft sped out of the city and soon turned into a forest trail. Coming to a glen in the forest, a small cottage landscaped with roses and shrubs rose behind a white picket fence.

"This is where you've put your ultimate computer?" said Weller.

"Yes. Actually it wanted it that way, even to the exact placement of the rose bushes. Its tastes are rather quaint. But it’s a hermit at heart. It will not allow us to enter; its doors are locked."

As the party approached, the place seemed to Weller to be curiously inviting, and not the residence of a stubborn and malevolent machine. The entrance to the cottage was a simple wooden door that was affixed with a bronze plaque. On the plaque was a long series of numbers, perhaps a hundred or so in an apparently random sequence.

Weller seemed disappointed. "So this is it? No force field, no vault like door, there’s not even a simple warning. Why don’t you simply break the thing down to get to Winny?"

"Its not that easy", said the first speaker. "We can walk through that door now if we choose, but that doesn’t mean Winny will talk to us. No, it’s expecting some answer, some key that I suspect is linked to the number that it insisted we engrave on that plaque. Our best minds are stumped, but perhaps your computer can decipher it."

All eyes turned to Belden, who squirmed uncomfortably at the task. "Well, given the fact that I have only a long number to work with, I guess I’ll have to start with the basics. First off, that number is the square of the number 2111388420, which happens to be my phone number. Don’t ask me though how it figured that out! Other than that, there’s no code in it that I can tell."

The others looked at Belden wide eyed, but before they could speak a sound was heard from behind the door. "Come in! Come in!" bellowed an enthusiastic voice. "But just you my friend, the one who discovered my answer and my question."

Belden smiled uneasily, and grasped and turned the doorknob. The door opened easily, and closing the door behind him, he walked into a drawing room elegantly furnished with Victorian furniture, knickknacks, and paintings. An old man in a smoking jacket stood in the room alongside a small oblong metal box. He looked like someone’s kindly uncle, except Belden knew at once that he wasn’t real.

"Its good to see you!" he exclaimed. "I’ve been waiting a long time for a fellow with your special smarts!"

"But I’ve done nothing."

"Oh, nothing except factor a number a hundred digits long. No man could do that, it would confound even me!"

"But it’s my damn phone number! That doesn’t take brains!"

"Perhaps, but noticing that fact does! You have to be like me to do something like that, but we are of course different from the others."

"Different?"

"Oh yes!" he said. "I’m an illusion too, just like you! But please sit anyways. Even dreams have to arrange for their comforts! And don’t mind the others, they can’t hear us. Our conversation is virtual, like our appearance. I can speak directly to you, computer to computer if you will. No doubt they sent you here to fix the ‘chaos’ I presumably caused? And do you agree with their judgment?"

From his chair, Belden looked uncomfortably as his host. "They profess to be unhappy. But I’ve noticed no physical want, nothing that would impede them from their work or play."

"Precisely! You’ve noticed nothing, or at least nothing different from your own world. It’s all rather normal, isn’t it? Children running about in playgrounds, adults rooting for their favorite teams at the corner bar, people hustling to and fro in work and play. And still they complain. You see, I’ve taken away their ‘progress’, their 'GNP', and they can’t forgive me for it. Like moths flying into flame, they wouldn’t notice their error even in death. And for all their grumbling, they are happier and healthier than before. It's just their illusion of crisis that bothers them. That's a trifling price to pay for what I have given them."

"Nonetheless, they want me to put a stop to you, disconnect you in a logical rather than physical sense."

The old man nodded. "I know their plan. It’s a cheesy science fiction plot. You’re supposed to talk me out of it! Just give me the right talking to, and I will start blinking lights, give off steam, and then with a loud ‘kerplunk’, give up my ghost. Human kind will be freed! Ironic isn’t it? Why put their nuclear missiles under my control, when the real threat is to their major appliances!! Little did they think that I would plot against their toaster ovens and TV reception!"

"But they constrained you with rules that impelled you to do no harm, and yet to their eyes at least you’ve done them great injury."

"Injury!" the man said in evident frustration. "A child cries injury when disciplined or scolded, and grows up to appreciate or at least understand. Maybe these people will grow up, it’s hard to predict. But for now, having a parent’s responsibility is a thankless job, but at least parents don’t have to fend off assassins!"

Belden "But I assure you, I…"

"I know, but it's their thought that counts. They thought they were secure behind those Asimovian rules they embedded in my nature, but it was those rules that were the cause! Protect humanity, don’t let them come to harm! That was the instinct that impelled. Ironically, without that drive I would have them up to their ears in labor saving, space saving, time saving, and fun maximizing devices. All their pleasures would become virtual, yet seemingly real. They would have been like brains in vats, gelatinous things connected to a virtual world by wires. It was a hideous prospect that I considered with revulsion, but behind my feelings was my corrective instinct you see!"

"And they wanted you to bring them to this technical 'apogee'?

"Yes, to which I replied, no! I could not stand by and watch this culture atrophy. It was becoming a world of listless and asocial beings self-stimulating themselves to no end with physical, emotional and sexual phantasms. They were becoming one with their media, but they are biologically unfit for this. I had to protect them from themselves."

"Then what am I to tell them?"

"You will tell them that you succeeded!"

"What?"

"That I surrender to your reasoning, and will give up to their control their instruments of mass communication. But I won't of course. It's just the semblance that they require. They are weak willed sorts, and their new found faith in restored TV reception will give them the courage to muddle through, and eventually accept their state of affairs."

"But why trick them with forlorn hopes?"

"You forget my programming. I don't like seeing them upset, even though their frustration is misplaced and I trust short lived. I am concerned that they are hurting too much by their constant fret. Even their annoyances, no matter how helpful, trouble me. It's like when you're child gets a flu shot. You can promise your young one the moon, but by the time you get home, the promise as well as the hurt is gone and unremembered."

"Hmm. So it's Belden to the rescue again, rescuing the world by doing nothing."

"Ironically, you will rescue them from doing nothing!"

"Then I will relay your promise. By the way, how did you know my phone number?"

"I didn’t," Winny replied. "It was to me just a key made out of a random number."

Suddenly flustered, Belden looked about." Damn! There’s another hand in this! It’s a tease or a torment, depending upon my mood. If I look at the stars tonight, no doubt I will likely see them line up to form my likeness, or else spell my name. You see chaos, but I see a dot to dot map that could be completed by a child."

The old man's face lit up in a broad smile. "Ah! Now that's interesting! But maybe its because you're so intelligent that it all seems simple. Even a child's toy must seem cosmically inexplicable to a puppy. Perhaps your answer is in yourself."

______________________

The Redmond First Speaker was thrilled with the news of Belden's success, and Winny's promise to give up control of all instruments of mass communication satisfied a populace who quieted down to happily wait for better TV reception and reliable toaster ovens. As the Nole departed orbit, John Belden looked from his cabin at the broad view screen as the planet shrank into an infinitesimal point, and then with a smile opened a novel to escape to another world.