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There is no such thing as a smart computer, only smart programmers. Certainly, with enough work, ingenuity, and a reasonable amount of computational power, a team of smart programmers can get a machine to pass the Turing Test, but if you look at the machine code, you’ll find subroutines, specifically designed after many failures, to eliminate machine ‘tells’ and fool a person into thinking he’s interacting with another human being. It’s the programmers who have done all the real thinking.
Albert Gleeson, College Panel Discussion on Artificial Intelligence.
Before going off to teach his classes, Al looked in on Pam.
Pam and Little Thomas were sitting at breakfast. The kitchen smelled of freshly baked buns, making Al hungry. He went to the pan and picked up a golden bun and bit into it. So good! It didn’t even need butter.
He looked at Pam. She looked so beautiful in the morning sunlight. She wasn’t showing yet, but she had been having bouts of morning sickness. She was reading to her son. Al loved to stand and watch her, especially with Little Thomas. She seemed to glow with the quiet joy of motherhood.
Well, it’s getting late. I have to get ready to teach my college class.
He walked over to the breakfast nook quietly, leaned over and surprised her with a kiss. She looked up with a welcoming smile.
“You’re off to school, honey?”
“Soon. I’m going in a bit later today because I’ll be home late tonight, sweetheart. This afternoon I’ve been asked to help with a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence with the Computer Science Department. We’re filming it for the students. The school may even upload the clip to the internet. I guess I’m included because I’m the resident sceptic. Then I’ll be helping with the basketball team after school again.”
Pam looked concerned. “What are you going to say about Artificial Intelligence?”
“I’m going to say that there is no such thing as a smart computer, only smart programmers.”
Pam frowned slightly.
“Are you still worried that I’m going to say too much?”
Pam’s frown turned to a look of concentration as if she were wrestling with a difficult problem. “Al, I know you have to speak your mind, and that when you do you’re gracious and respectful. You’re a man of integrity. But we do need this job with the baby coming. I just worry that our world has changed. Society pays lip service to honesty and free speech, but we don’t really practice it. If you challenge one of the pet theories of the Computer Science department head—I worry about what that could mean for us.”
Al pulled up a chair and sat down. “I hear you Pam. I know I’m often on the opposite side of issues from the status quo at the school. But I have to walk a fine line between speaking rashly and being silenced. There’s an oppressive climate in education these days that cares more about how statements mold student behavior than what’s true or false. Education has become a process of manipulation and behavior modification rather than a search for truth. Hardly anyone seems to believe in following the truth to wherever it may lead. Most don’t seem to believe in the idea of truth at all. If I’m to do any good at all for my students, I have to help them become truth-seekers. That’s the only way to maintain integrity, and to be connected to reality.”
Pam sighed. “I know you’re right. But with the baby coming, I’m feeling vulnerable right now. Sometimes my fear undermines my ability to trust in you and in God.”
“Hopefully your trust is in God over me. You of all people should see clearly that at best I’m a broken vessel.”
Pam smiled weakly but said nothing. Al took a deep breath. “I know Pam. It’s tough for both of us getting used to being a part of a college. Academia by its nature engenders a herd mentality. To survive, the academic has to be a part of an approving group. If he ever finds himself alone, with no one to support him, then no matter how right his position or how strong the evidence, his academic career will end and his voice will be extinguished because he’s lost his peer-group credibility. His peers will destroy his career with faint praise. I feel a strong pull, against my honest judgment, to say things and take positions that will gain the approval of my colleagues. That’s how to maintain my academic credibility. To me that’s the great trap—cutting corners and sacrificing integrity to maintain credibility with my peers.”
“But shouldn’t credibility be automatic if you have evidence and speak the truth?”
“Pam, I think that’s how it used to be, when a commitment to the truth over-rode everything else. But now, if you listen to the talk in the faculty lounge, there are so many issues where the focus is not on what’s true or false, but rather on getting the public to think or act a certain way or getting politicians to fund a particular project. When the end justifies the means, then often, a useful lie that moves public perception in a desired direction is exalted over an uncomfortable truth. This social pragmatism will be the death of science. When we go down this path, all we will have left is propaganda.”
Little Thomas was beginning to squirm.
“Well I think I’d better go,” said Al.
“I think Little Thomas wants a kiss before you go.”
“No kisses!” said Little Thomas emphatically. “And no hugs.”
“He does that with me too,” laughed Pam.
“He takes after his dad—er—his step-dad and kisses women only.”
“In that case you ought to set him a good example.” She lifted her chin invitingly and Al obliged.
“I’ll keep dinner warm for you,” she said with a smile.
As he closed the front door Al felt a chill come over his heart. It was as if someone were watching him. The feeling only deepened as he drove down the long, tree-fringed lane to the main road.
But Al forgot about his foreboding until he returned home that night. The discussion on Artificial Intelligence went better than I hoped, he thought as he steered his car home, and the basketball players are starting to play like a team.
The overcast sky made the night dark. He thought again how isolated their property was. He turned into his lane. The wind picked up, whipping the trees. Leaves swirled as if a giant were waving a huge duster. The house was dark. His apprehension deepened as a palpable dread washed over him, paralyzing him for a moment. Murmuring a quick prayer that everything would be alright, he pulled the car near the front of the house. In the glare of the headlights, he could see that the door had been ripped off its hinges. He knew he should call 911, but he had to know if Pam and Little Thomas were safe. Turning off the headlights, he took a flashlight from the glove compartment, went to the shed, and picked up an axe handle. Quietly, he approached the mangled door.
I know this house better than any intruder would. I should have an advantage in the dark.
The inside was even darker than the outside. He heard a shutter bang in the wind. Behind him, the wind chimes tinkled and rattled as the wind gusted. The floor was covered with debris. His feet crunched on what sounded like broken vases from the window sill—in the faint light from the window he could tell the place had been trashed. Al searched the first floor, but found nothing and heard no sound but his own steps and the wind. He went upstairs—no one was there.
He went back to the main floor and turned on the lights. On the mantle, over the fire place was a folded piece of paper, fastened onto the wall with a steak knife. On it GLEESON was written in capital letters. He opened it, and terror filled his heart. as he read,
Gleeson, you stupid—he skipped over the profanity.
It’s payback time. They’re mine. You must have known I’d come for them. I’m taking them where you’ll never find them. Maybe later I’ll come for you too. Sleep tight.
Bigelow
Al sat down stunned. Think! You’ve got to think!
Bigelow disappeared during the Battle for Halcyon. He wasn’t with the survivors and his body was never found. He must have escaped to that continent to the east with the Bent Ones. What was it called? Abaddon—that was its name. How did he get here from the parallel world?
An idea occurred to Al; the radio frequency identification tag. Pam had been so paranoid about Bigelow coming back and snatching Little Thomas, that she had convinced Al, against his better judgment, to implant an RFID tag into Little Thomas. He had found an expensive one listed on the internet that was powered by bioelectricity, using the body’s own biochemical energy to emit a digital radio signal over the cell network. It was designed for pets, not for humans, but Pam could be very persuasive.
Al ran to his office and launched the tracking program. He could see the signal. It was a long way off. The map said Little Thomas was heading into Okefenokee Swamp. Al left the RFID-tracking program on and called 911. As he waited for the police, he kept watching the signal. He began to data-log the location coordinates and the signal’s intensity. Bigelow’s group stopped, as if they were making camp for the night. He wrote down the coordinates.
The police arrived. Al showed them the note.
“We’ll talk about this in a few minutes,” said one of the officers, “but first we’d like to search the house. Please stay here.”
“Sir you really ought to look at the tracking data I have on my stepson.”
“Tracking data—what do you mean?”
“My stepson has an RFID chip on him—my wife was worried that he’d be taken. The point is that I can pinpoint his location within a few meters. We need to act on this now.” Al’s voice had become shrill.
The two officers looked at each other. “Okay Mr. Gleeson, let’s have a look at your data.” Al took them to his office and showed them the data. The RFID log indicated that Little Thomas was not moving. He was several miles into Okefenokee Swamp.
The older officer called headquarters for a helicopter and dispatched it to the coordinates on a child abduction alert. The two officers began searching the house. In the living room, where he had been asked to wait, Al fidgeted.
Finally, the two policemen returned. The older officer, with “Monroe” stenciled on his uniform, sat down and looked at Al impassively for a few seconds. “Officer Connelly and I have a few questions, Mr. Gleeson. This note you found is rather personal. How do you know this Bigelow?”
“I knew Stan Bigelow from the University of Halcyon.” Al recounted the details of the University of Halcyon’s dislocation, told them that Bigelow was Little Thomas’s father, talked about many of the conflicts he had had with Bigelow at Halcyon, and finally told about their return home more than a year ago.
“Do you know where Bigelow moved after he returned?” asked Monroe.
“But that’s just it,” said Al, “As far as I know, Bigelow wasn’t among those who returned with us. I thought he was either dead or had stayed behind.”
The officers looked at Al sceptically. Suddenly the radio blared. Monroe answered it. He said “okay” a few times and then ended the call.
“Mr. Gleeson that call was from the helicopter pilot. There was no one at the coordinates you gave us, nor in the immediate vicinity—not so much as a light, a fire, or a campsite. You’ve been leading us on a wild goose chase. You’d better come with us down to the station.”
Al started to protest, but Monroe put up his hand. “Mr. Gleeson, we can either do this the easy way or the hard way. You wouldn’t like the hard way.”
They took Al down to the police station and into an interrogation room. Another officer began the questioning all over again. She probed Al’s relationship with Pam, how he felt about Little Thomas, curiously enough, even about Al’s religious beliefs. It took hours.
It wasn’t until morning that they released him. During Al’s interrogation, the police had obtained phone records, confirmed that Pam had made a telephone call from the house while Al was teaching, and received independent confirmation that Al had been at the college until late in the evening.
Grim-faced, Monroe and Connelly drove Al home. They didn’t even try to make small talk. Before they let him out of the car, Monroe turned to him. “You know, in some quarters, putting a tracking chip into a child would be considered child abuse. We won’t charge you, since our state has no specific laws that cover this particular case, but you’re definitely in a grey area. If you keep talking about this tracking chip, someone in the District Attorney’s Office may decide they have a case against you.”
The police left. Al went back to his office and looked at the tracking log. The RFID signal had not moved. But at 3:13:51 a.m. it had abruptly disappeared.
He knew that black swamp oaks acted like huge capacitors. When one stayed in them long enough, the trees built up whatever energy they needed to accomplish the transfer to the sister oak. It happened in an instant. He realized that Bigelow had taken Pam and Little Thomas right out of their world to the other place. Perhaps they were in the continent of Feiramar, but more likely in dreadful Abaddon.
Al couldn’t hold the tears back. He dropped to his knees. “God, how could you let this happen? Even if I find them, what will Bigelow have done to Pam? What will happen to our unborn child? What about Little Thomas?”
The thought came into his head: the most common command in the Bible is “fear not.” So why am I letting fear paralyze me?
He pulled out his Bible and turned to Psalm 91. He began reading out loud. He stopped after verse 10 and re-read verses 9 and 10.
Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place—the Most High who is my refuge—no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
But evil has befallen me. A plague has struck my tent. Does this promise really have any meaning? Haven’t others read this and clung to it, only to be disappointed?
Still he knew what he had to do. He had to do his part, and trust that God would do His. Al turned to the only friends he could really trust with this problem. He sat down at his desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began to write. Fifteen minutes later he walked to the swampy meadow at the back of his property and approached a curious tree with oak leaves. The branches folded in, so that the overall effect was that of a two-meter pear sitting on a ten-centimeter tree trunk. He parted the leaves and placed a small wooden box carrying his letter into the open space in the center of the tree. By some time tomorrow the box would appear in the sister tree in Feiramar.
Returning home, Al emailed his closest friends: Floyd Linder, Tom Chartrand, Dwight Larsen, and his brother Thomas. Next, he wrote a confidential letter to his lawyer with instructions. His lawyer would have to notify the college that a family emergency required Al to take a leave of absence. He put one signed copy in an envelope and left a second signed copy for his friends. Then he called his friend Makalo who lived close by. Al told him he was coming by; he needed his help.
Assembling his camping gear, sword, knife, and crossbow, he wrote detailed notes for his friends, and then left, wondering if he would ever return home again.