The Turing Option by Harry Harrison

Author:Harry Harrison
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

CONTOUR MAP OF BORREGO, FROM USGS

SATELLITE SCAN DATA

"I wouldn't say all—and I am surely out of touch with work done in the last years. But tell me, what language do you write your programs in?"

"LAMA 3.5."

He smiled. "That's good news. My father was one of the team that developed LAMA, Language for Logic and Metaphor. Is your machine detective up and running?"

"Yes, it is in a working prototype stage. Works well enough to be interesting. I call it 'Dick Tracy.' "

"How does it work?"

"Basically, it is pretty straightforward. Three main sections. The first is a bunch of different Expert Systems, each with a specific job to do. These specialists are controlled by a fairly simple manager that looks for correlations and notices whenever several of them agree on anything. One of them has already searched through data bases all over the country, making lists of all transportation methods. Now it is compiling its own data bases about automobiles, trucks, air travel and so on. Even water transportation systems."

"Out here in the desert?"

"Well, the Salton Sea is not very far. Then I have a lot of other specialist programs compiling various kinds of geographic data, especially satellite scans in this area for the period of time we are interested in."

"Sounds good." Brian stood. "I'm getting stiff—want to walk a bit?"

"Of course." She looked about her as they strolled down the path. "Is this a military base? There seem to be an awful lot of soldiers about."

"All mine," he said, and smiled. "You notice how they keep pace with us?"

"I like that."

"I like it even more. As you might imagine I don't really look forward to a fourth attack on my life. Now the question is, can the system you've put together help us catch up with those crooks? Has Dick Tracy come up with hot leads yet?"

"Not really. It is still processing data."

"Then throw it onto a GRAM and bring it here. The big computer that I'm using will give you all the computational power that you could ever need."

"That would really speed things up. I'll need a day or two to pull all the loose ends together." She glanced up at the sun. "I think that I better go now. I am sure that I can get everything finalized by Wednesday, copy all my notes, and bring the GRAM out Thursday morning."

"Perfect. I'll walk you back to the guardhouse—I'm not allowed near the gate—and let Woody know what is happening."

After she had gone he realized that he should have asked her for a copy of LAMA 3.5—then laughed at his stupidity. The days of carrying programs around on disks, other than those that needed top security, were long gone. He headed for the lab. He probably had a copy of the program there on CD ROM. If not he could download from a data base.

This new-old world of 2024 still took some getting used to.

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