LETHE


                          BY  DOUG LENAT



                **********          **********











      "What ever happened to Will?"  The words came slowly,  for Rick
Bannon hadn't thought  of Will for thirteen  months.  But it  was the
tone  -- more  than confusion  though not  yet horror  --  which most
surprised his wife.

      "Will who, darling?"  Without  glancing up, Rick felt  the soft
concerned face searching for him in the dimness.  Helen's full blonde
eyebrows were converging, as if their union would let her  recall the
name.

      "Will isn't a `who'.  Look here!"

      Helen  groped  cautiously  across  the  living  room.   As  she
approached  the  candle,  a lean,  intense  face  took  form.  Though
familliar, it was made  grotesque now by flickering  shadows.  Rick's
eyes forced his wife's to a plaque near the flame.  Through a year of
dust Helen discerned the President, herself, Rick, and a few of their
co-workers  at  JCN poised  over  a huge  machine.   The  taper moved
slightly,  revealing an  inscription: To  Richard Bannon,  In Deepest
Appreciation of Will's Success.  August 26, 1972.

      "I can't remember meeting  the President of the  United States.
I never heard of Will.  I don't..."  Rick's voice trailed off  into a
chill that left him shaking.  The room felt cold now, though just ten
minutes before, he'd execrated the air conditioner for dying with the
rest of the appliances.

      A tiny hand trembled  on his shoulder, giving as  much strength
as  it had  meant to  absorb.  Helen's  hoarse whisper  echoed Rick's
thoughts.   "This  is  something  neither of  us  could  forget  in a
lifetime, and yet we've both forgotten it completely in a  year." Her
hand ran along the wall near where the plaque had been  hanging.  She
rubbed the dust between her fingers.  "But I clean every week..." Her
words were  devoured by darkness,  as the candle  leapt to  the other
side of the room.


                                  1



      "I'm  taking this  to JCN  right now."   The voice  was Rick's.
Rick Bannon was burly, six feet one, with a shock of dark  hair which
made  him seem  even  taller.  Yet  his  words seemed,  to  Helen, to
emanate from the tiny flame itself.

      "So late?" the darkness  pleaded.  "No one's to go  outside now
unless it's an emergency."

      Rick wasn't  listening.  Whatever Will  was, there should  be a
file  on it  in his  office.  The  candle flounced  across  the room,
collecting Rick's  wallet and  keys, then  resettled on  the glasstop
table.

      Engulfed in the silence following the click of the  outer door,
the darkness that was Helen cried "Will, me," without knowing what it
meant.   "Why  does Rick  leave  me home  alone  almost  every night,
working eighteen hours a day  at JCN?"  Helen shook her  head, trying
to clear it.  "What am I saying?  Rick never leaves me alone.  How...
bizarre!  It seemed so familiar when he drove off..."  Instinctively,
Helen had walked over to  the telephone, and had dialled  B-L-7.  She
stared down at her fingers.  "What's wrong with me?  Why am  I...?  I
don't even know anyone with a BL 7 number."  But Helen was  no longer
certain.


























                                  2



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      The black cougar ground  to a halt before  a usually-electified
gate.   An aged  guard, recognizing  Rick, smiled  as  his flashlight
double-checked  Dr.  Richard  Bannon's  ID.   He  began  a  reluctant
struggle with a  massive crank.  "For  twelve years I've  wondered if
this damned handle really did  work the damned gate.  But  you're the
eighth car I had to let through this last hour, and damned if I'm not
starting to  pray for  electricity." No sounds  were audible  as Rick
drove off, save the rapidly fading creakings and cursings of gate and
guard.

      The car scurried between looming livid shapes that were usually
friendly lab buildings.   Even when Rick  reached his own  office, he
felt oppressed by the darkness more than by the heat.  "Hell  must be
a lot like  this," he mused.   He pulled out  a thin conical  cup and
pushed the WATER, NO ICE button.  After a few seconds, he  laughed at
himself, crumpled the dry cup into a tight ball, and threw it  at the
cooler.  "We even  get water electrically, now.   If only you  were a
horse-trough...  I'm so thirsty I could drink a cup of water from one
of the  rivers in Hell.   Styx?  No, that's  on the border.   The one
through  the center..."  Lethe caught  him before  he  pronounced her
name.   Renouncing  thirst,  Rick  returned  unsteadily  to  reality.
Shaking fingers  sought the file  lock, twisted the  combination into
it, and  yanked it clattering  to the tile  floor.  A thin  pencil of
light located the Will file.  Rick blinked at the label.  The project
had gone from  Confidential to Eyes Only  to Declassified in  a three
month period, one year earlier.

      The  file  lay  strewn  across  his  desk.   Rick  read slowly,
masticating  every  word, forcing  it  through the  disbelief  in his
throat.

      May  12, 1968.   Project Will  inaugurated.   Director: Richard
Bannon.  Team: Jack Sills, Edward Ho, Helen Sappestein,  Karl Muller,
Ralph Amory.   Task: Realization of  a Self-optimizing  LSI computer.
Resources:  Thirty-seven  technician-years.   Fifty  million dollars.
Deadline: June 1, 1971.

                                  3



      Nothing seemed  familliar.  The  names he  had heard,  but only
because of their importance at JCN.  He had never worked with  any of
them before, even Helen.  A few he had never seen at all, in  the six
years he'd worked for JCN.  "Am I losing my mind?"  Rick struggled to
review the events in  computer development before 1967.   "ENIAC, the
first  electronic  brain."   He smiled  at  those  early researchers'
naivete.  "Brain, indeed!  Built at the University of Pennsylvania in
1944.  Tube circuits; took  a whole room.  Transistor logic  in 1950.
The same  computer now fit  into a shoe  box.  Integrated  circuits a
decade later.  An ENIAC could be built matchbox size.  In 1964, using
a computer guided laser  beam, large scale integrated  circuits (LSI)
appeared.   Using  these, ENIAC  would  fit  on the  head  of  a pin.
Circuit densities approaching  and surpassing the densities  of human
brain   cells.   Advances   in   neurology.   But   the   problem  of
interconnecting trillions  of circuit `cells'  seemed insurmountable.
Elusive.   Research  at  Caltech,  using  disembodied  feline brains,
coming  tantalizingly close.   Then the  breakthroughs  in Artificial
Intelligence,   at   Stanford   and   MIT.    Automatic  programming.
Feasibility studies of self-optimizing heuristic systems,  leading to
my own idea for Project Will...  I'm beginning to remember..."

      All  night  long,  Rick  read  through  the  progress  reports,
summations,  memos, lab  reports, news  releases.  The  truth settled
upon him just slowly enough for him to remain sane.  With  the ending
of darkness, murky fears,  borne of ignorance, were replaced  by more
explicit, more terrible ones.

      Aurora  brought Rick  stiffly to  his feet.   Automatically, he
began  dialing  his home,  thankful  that at  least  the  phone still
worked.  What  would he say  to Helen?  With  the curtains  drawn, it
would still  be dark there.   "Hi darling... yes,  everything's fine.
Listen, I  found out about  Will.  Some of  it, anyway.  I  need your
help fitting it all together.  Also...  there's something we  have to
decide...  No, I'd rather not  talk about it over the  phone... Good.
See you in a little while...... Me, too."

      He  put down  the receiver  and wiped  his forehead.   This was
something only the whole  team could decide.  The JCN  directory slid
onto his desk.  Amory, Ralph.  Chairman, Psychometrics Group.  Office
1124 LR.   Extension 3471.   Home 1308  Waverly Street.   Home Pho...
"Ah! Here's his number."  Rick rolled the final "r" for  several lost
seconds.   The  receiver  rose  deliberately.    Chilblained  fingers
stabbed into the dial.  B - L - 7......






                                  4



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      "But Jack, they have  the money.  Why don't they  release her?"
The anguish demanded a reply.  How could he know why?

      "Maybe  they  want more.   The  police captain  told  me they'd
probably release  her as  soon as  they were  sure the  bills weren't
marked.  Or  if not,  they'd leave  her somewhere  and we'd  find her
right  away."   The  police  captain  had  actually  told  him they'd
probably  kill her,  or  leave her  somewhere she'd  never  be found.
"They've...  I don't know, maybe been held up by the  power failure."
He could never tell her he'd given up.

      "My baby, my baby..."

      The phone's ring gave Jack Sills some genuine  hope.  "Who...?"
The hope  ignited into anger.   "What the hell  do you want?   Do you
know its five a.m...?  What kind of an emergency?  Alright,  but it'd
better  be important."   There  was nothing  more he  could  do here.
Getting back to work  might be panacean.  He considered.   "I'm going
out to look for her  again"  Jack Sills hoped his guilt  didn't show.
As he left the bedroom, his wife called after him.

      "You forgot it!"

      Jack  had  always taken  a  revolver with  him  when  he'd gone
looking -- really looking --  for his daughter.  Now he had  to carry
it with him for his wife's benefit.  Disgusting world.

      "And bring your file on Project Will...  Good.  I'll see you in
an  hour  then.   So  long, Eddie."   Rick  finished  his  last call.
Frustrated,  he  reached over  and  hit the  watercooler,  not really
anticipating  a response,  of  course.  The  blow was  meant  more to
punish  than to  request.   The machine  answered with  a  spatter of
water.  Rick gaped in terror.  It was operating.  The current must be
back on!  He  raced his eyes over  the file.  Will's  power circuits.
Would he...?  No!  He was  off now.  Could only be  started manually.


                                  5



Relief  found  Rick  Bannon wishing  this  were  merely  a nightmare.
Slowly, he pulled out a cup.















































                                  6



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      The door marked CONFERENCE opened for the sixth time that hour.
Ralph Amory froze at the scene before him.  A series  of half-serious
explanations raced through his mind and were rejected.  JCN bankrupt?
World  War III?   What could  bring the  top five  scientists  at JCN
together at this hour?   He recognized some from staff  meetings, the
rest from their Group  Head ID badges.  Jack Sills,  Biophysics; Rick
Bannon,  Artificial Intelligence;  Helen  Sappestein --  no,  she was
Helen Bannon now -- Mathematics; Eddie Ho, Electronics;  Karl Muller,
Computer Engineering.  Why was he, a psychiatrist, sent for?

      Then  Dr. Amory  examined  their faces  more  closely.  Varying
degrees  of  shock.  Bewilderment.   Disbelief.   Horror.  Confusion.
Struggling mentally...   On a  problem?  No,  more like  straining to
remember...

      With apparent  calm, Ralph Amory  removed a cigarette  from its
silver holder.   As he  lit it,  he began,  "I deduce..."   The pause
while deeply puffing always drew all eyes to him.  "...that  you have
been confronted with something  so horrid, you cannot accept  it, and
yet you must."  A thin smile  traced a line which spread up  the side
of his face to meet one descending from his eyes.  Long greying hair.
Carefully touselled.  Anything for effect.  "Life is a collocation of
various sorts of deceits," he mused.  "God, this room is  dim.  Ought
to have turned on more lights."

      Rick had only seen Ralph Amory four times in as many years.  He
sought the  medical insignia for  confirmation.  "Pretty  close, Doc.
But its `we', not `you'.  You  are as much a part of this  as anyone.
Read your  copy of  this file."  Rick  Bannon's fingers  directed the
psychiatrist  to sit, open the folder, and begin reading.

      Jack Sills looked  as though he hadn't  slept in two  days.  He
hadn't  slept in  three.  Ten  years older  than Rick,  his  face was
beginning to wrinkle.  First the kidnapping, now this.   Tears welled
in his eyes as  he thought of Daphne.   Just a year old.   But aloud:


                                  7



"Let's  give  Doc Amory  a  few minutes,  and  then  summarize what's
happened.  Just so we all  agree." Ralph Amory looked up at  him, but
Jack  Sills didn't  perceive the  suspicious look  which  crossed the
Doctor's face.













































                                  8



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      "....LSI circuitry.  This gave Will a thousandfold  the storage
capacity of a human brain.  Ten milliard cell modules, interconnected
like brain cells..."  Helen  Bannon noticed the troubled  stare Ralph
Amory was giving her, and mistakenly interpretted it as  a reprimand.
".....sorry; I meant as close as we could come to synaptic networks.

      For two months, the computer's main activity was optimizing its
own  circuitry.   Dr. Amory  and  I devised  seven  hundred graduated
problems  that would  mark Will's  intellectual progress.   The first
were  trivial: adding,  comparing, correlating  and such.   Next came
problems  requiring  Will  to synthesize  the  vast  stores  of world
knowledge  we were  pouring into  him: natural  language translation,
Hilbert's  third  problem...    Finally, Will  passed  on  to current
questions.  Mathematics  first.  Hilbert's other  twenty-two problems
in thirteen minutes.  Jack, you'd better continue."

      Jack Sills was better qualified to relate the  biomedical part,
but Helen stopped for other  reasons as well.  The strain.   The look
Ralph Amory was giving her.  Why did she feel uneasy,  almost guilty.
She slid into her chair, guided more by her hands grasping  the table
than by her mind.  Rick's  hand touched hers and Helen  started, then
leaned against him.  Straining to relax, she missed Sills'  first few
remarks.

      Ralph Amory's eyes were fixed  upon Helen as she spoke,  yet he
hadn't heard  any of  her words.   His thoughts  drifted back  to the
first time they'd made love, the Hollywood touches of  crashing waves
and lightening,  the demanding  lips, the  unexpected fury  of her...
Suddenly, his reverie ended.  What had he been thinking?  He had seen
Helen often, but only at meetings.  He'd never seen her nude,  yet he
remembered how she  blushed about the strawberry-shaped  birthmark on
her bottom.  But he'd never even seen her by herself!  Was  he simply
fantisizing?  It seemed so... too much like a recollection.   For the
first  time in  his adult  life, Ralph  Amory permitted  his  face to
express bewilderment.


                                  9



      "...Medical: Scores of devices were linked directly  into Will,
and he could examine, diagnose,  and treat patients at a rate  of two
hundred per hour."  Jack Sills' voice was dry and monotonic, as if he
were disinterested.   "On August  seventh, we asked  Will to  work on
correlating  the data  we had  on  EEG's.  By  the next  day,  he had
cracked the mind's code.  It was so complex, however, that  only Will
could figure out what a  subject was thinking from his  brain    wave
patterns.

      "The next  logical step was  two-way communication  of thoughts
directly between Will and mens' minds."  As Sills rasped the words, a
wild  hope  began  to  form  in  a  nether  chamber  of   his  brain.
"Transmitters were  hooked into  molecular-gated continuous-recording
electroencephalographs; and giant dish receivers relayed individuals'
patterns from all over the world.  Everyone's wave configurations are
so individualized that Will had no trouble easing the death throes of
an Outback aborigine,  while simultaneously alerting a  pedestrian in
Amsterdam of an  onrushing trolley.  At  about that time  the project
drifted out of my hands.  Rick....?"

      "...given  certain  priorities.   First,  not  to   change  our
culture.   Secondarily,  to help  individuals  solve  their problems.
Finally, to continue optimizing  its circuitry in any  spare instants
it had.  Will  had developed a  crude kind of  conciousness, although
nothing resembling  emotions was  ever  observed.   These constraints
formed the sole motivation Will ever evinced.

      "When  Will  was  revealed  to  the  public,  he  drew  a mixed
response.   Some  threats,   some  praises.   Always  there   was  an
apprehension that something would go wrong.  Maybe everyone  had read
too many sci-fi  stories."  Rick's chuckle  ended as a  sigh.  "Maybe
each of us knows more about human nature than he cares to admit, even
to himself.  In any case, billions of people were calling  `Will, me'
at all times, in all tongues.   This was the signal to Will  to probe
that  person's  thoughts,  ascertain the  problem,  compute  the best
solution, and inject it into  his mind.  Within a month,  everyone in
the world was hooked.  Dr. Amory...?" Rick had heard enough  of Amory
not to get caught up in psychological technicalities with him around.

      "Anxiety,  hatred, all  antisocial behavior  vanished  from the
face of the earth.  True.  But with no responsibility, with a mammoth
parent figure  like Will, men  degenerated emotionally  into...  into
infants."  Dr. Amory  paused to  observe the  tightened look  on Jack
Sill's  face  at  the  mention  of  infants.   Record  it  for  later
consideration.   "The   culture  was  significantly   altered.   Aha!
Will's prime directive was violated:  Will realized this and tried to
correct for  it, by removing  the deleterious agent:  himself."  Rick


                                 10



noted that the Doctor still spoke as if delivering a Psych 1 lecture.
Sustain interest while maintaining and reinforcing your pretention of
superior intelligence.   Amusingly out  of place.   Everything seemed
out of place here.  "...Will  tried to turn himself off, but  we kept
restarting him.   There is, I  believe, no subsequent  written record
acknowledging  Will's existance.   Since  then no   living  being has
mentioned Will.  The conclusion appears inescapable that..."

      "Will made us forget him!"  The shock of  realization contorted
Jack Sill's features.

      "Precisely."  Dr. Amory looked pleased.  "I believe that is why
Dr. Bannon asked us here tonight."

      Rick Bannon nodded  regretfully.  "These past months,  Will has
apparently  done no  `helping'  at all.   He's spent  his  time doing
nothing but making us forget that he ever existed.  Oh, possibly some
auto-optimizing, concurrently."

      No one stirred.  Each scientist's mind was racing along its own
path; thus most  were barely listening as  Eddie Ho spoke.   "So when
the  current  started  to  drop, my  breaking  circuits  cut  off all
electricity at this junction and kept it off.  They were  designed to
protect Will  from the sudden  surge of current  when power  would be
resumed.  He can only be started manually now.  It should take a full
two  hundred  milliseconds  to  bring the  current  up  to  its final
value..."  Ralph Amory could not help smiling at a man who considered
a fifth of  a second an  eternity.  After momentary  deliberation, he
silently apologized.  After all, how different was this from  the way
we consider a thousand years.   And to a piece of metal,  a millenium
must seem as insignificant  as a second.  "...automatically.   So all
one need to do to restart Will is to throw this switch, toggle five."
The short heavyset Hawaiian  gathered his diagrams and  pictures back
into  one  tight pack  and  neatly  sat down.   Edward  Ho  was quite
interested,  though  his voice  was  as emotionless  as  Jack Sills'.
Edward Ho was devoid of human compassion.  Except for a rigid code of
ethics,  and  a  passion  for  handball,  he  might  have   been  the
archtypical mad  scientist.  Life was  little more than  a scientific
investigation to him; the world merely a slithing  laboratory animal,
whose death was unimportant compared to sectioning and  examining and
staining and catalogging its carcass.

      "We must decide what to do."  Rick's circadian rhythm increased
his  alertness as  the  morning sunlight  overpowered  the conference
room's flourescent tubes.  "I  suggest we decompose the  problem.  We
have  to be  sure why  Will  did this  thing.  Amory,  you  and Helen
apparently knew  the behavior  mechanisms of  the system  better than
anyone else.  Tell us what restarting Will would do.

                                 11



      "Next, we have to consider the effects of doing  nothing...  at
least for a while.   We need  an estimate of the time we  have before
others can deduce what's happened.  Biology and logic: Sills, you and
Muller try to project that.

      "Eddie, there's something special I want you to help me rig up.
Let's all meet back here in, say, one hour.  Good Luck."

      They dragged themselves out of the room.  All but one  felt the
anguish of awareness.  Far away, Cassandra shed one tear of empathy.

      Dr. Amory scrutinized  Jack Sills again, then  approached Rick.
"May I  speak with  you about Sills  a moment  first..." he  began to
whisper.

      Helen Bannon was outwardly calm as she rose from her seat.  The
night's revelations swirled before  her.  Flashes of a  torrid affair
with Ralph Amory came to her, much the way she  occasionally recalled
playing  with  some  long-forgotten  childhood  toy.   She conciously
begged not to remember, yet  she struggled to recall every  detail of
her adultery.  "The guillt I've suffered is genuine; don't I have the
right to at least savor the memories of what few happy  moments there
were?  A few  hours hence, Will'll make  me forget all of  it anyway.
Probably.  Now  Rick's thrown  Ralph and me  together again.   God, I
wonder if he remembers?"

      During  the ensuing  hour, neither  deviated from  the  role of
casual  co-investigator.   Helen stretched  as  they  concluded their
task.   As she  turned to  leave her  office, Ralph  reached  out and
stopped her.  "You know,  don't you?"  Helen nodded  slightly.  Their
lips touched  softly, and lingered,  as if they  knew this  was their
final embrace.  "In  many ways, we'll  probably never see  each other
again.  We  may pass,  perhaps even chat.   But that  will be  as two
strangers, not as us..."  No  one would notice the soft  moistness of
the eyes of the first pair to report.














                                 12



                **********          **********











      "One hour  hasn't changed their  expression much,"  Ralph Amory
noted  silently.   Aloud,  he  continued  his  report.    "So  Will's
situation  was  clear.   He  had  changed  our  culture  by  his very
existence.  In order  to set society aright,  he had to  abstain from
giving anyone advice.  Time after time, he powered himself  down.  At
first, we  kept restarting him  immediately, assuming there  was some
bug, and Will himself could fix it.  Gradually, we suspected that the
crashing  of  Will's  system was  brought  on  intentionally.   I can
imagine  our shock  when we  found out  it was  Will himself  who had
decided  he  should  terminate his  contact  with  humanity.   But we
wouldn't allow him to simply commit suicide.  We planned to reprogram
Will, to  eliminate the culture  constraint.  But that  directive was
still in effect.  Will knew what our intentions were, so  he couldn't
permit us  to touch  him.  This  time, Will  remained on,  but simply
refused to advise anyone.  When the technician came to turn  him off,
to begin the ordered alterations of his priority structure, Will made
him forget why he'd come into  the computer room.  By the end  of the
day, Will had to keep everyone in JCN from thinking about him.

      "After that, no one on this planet ever thought of  Will again.
Until last night,"  Amory paused for a sip of water.  Or  perhaps for
effect.  "In fact, Will tried to undo as much of his previous affects
as he could.  Those who succeeded due solely to him, suddenly failed.
Friendships..."  Ralph  looked directly at  Helen as he  finished his
sentence.  "... and relationships, which formed because of Will, were
instantly,   totally  dissolved.    Will  apparently   felt  strongly
motivated toward what he was  doing.  If we restart him, there  is no
doubt but that he will immediately resume playing Lethe..."

      "That was it !" Rick thought.  The River Lethe.  He looked down
at his cup of water, and his file.  And smiled.

      Dr. Amory noticed, but  failed to decipher, the  smile.  "...It
is now a question of what will happen if we do nothing.  Jack?"



                                 13



      "Yes," there was a new quality in Jack Sills' voice.  Something
which could  have been  called hope  had it  not been  so diabolical.
"Many people would  slowly piece together  what happened, just  as we
did.  They won't  have as ready access  to our files, of  course, but
there  are  so  many newspaper  and  magazine  articles...   Karl has
projected a maximum time of  two months until the situation  would be
completely   public,  based   upon  public   deduction  capabilities,
availability of relevant data, and so on.

      "But there is  another factor.  As," Sills  hesitated, surveyed
his audience,  then made  up a name:  "...as Weindall's  old cerebral
exterpation experiments showed, our brain is organized in such  a way
that every  piece of information  is stored everywhere.   It's become
popular  to call  our memory  holographic for  this reason.   So even
without  hearing  a word,  people  will begin  remembering.   As they
concentrate on various related subjects, their memories of  Will will
be perturbed, be brought to the very fringe of their awareness.  Each
thought  they have  will bring  them closer  to  conciously recalling
Will.

      "That process has already begun.  By tomorrow morning, everyone
in the world will know almost as much as we know now.  Rick, how long
would it take if you were forced to reprogram Will not to worry about
our culture?"  Sills had  led into the question beautifully,  but Dr.
Amory  noticed  the eagerness  in  his voice.   Ralph  turned, caught
Rick's attention, and nodded slightly.

      "All the preparations were completed last year.  It would  be a
twelve hour job for  one man.  Eddie and  I might do it  together in,
oh, about seven or eight hours.  I see what you're driving  at, Jack.
Tomorrow morning  the world will  be crying for  Will to  advise them
again.  The  JCN administration will  force Will to  be reprogrammed.
We may as well assume that, unless we act tonight, Will will  be made
permanently `helpful' tomorrow. I recommend starting Will the  way he
is now.  That way, no one would ever recall Will, no one  could order
his reprogramming.  Eddie and I have rigged an emergency  solar power
storage system for Will.  Once started, he need never go  off again."
Rick shifted his gaze to  Jack Sills, and noted he was  reaching into
his  pocket.  "If  we're all  convinced, I'll  restart Will;  if not,
then..."

      "Must restart him!"  It was the first time Karl  Muller's heavy
German voice rumbled over the  group.  "Looking, Ralph and I,  at old
Delphi  surveys,  newspapers and  video  reports past  hour.   We saw
everything,  had  become a...   a  Huxleyian nightmare  of  a utopia,
without even  a few misfits  or`savages' to redeem  it.  Perspective,
she  didn't exist.   Fell  the crime,  yes.  But  fell  ambition much


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faster.   No  one  starving,  but  no  one  giving  thanks  for food.
Everyone prospering, but only by our superficial  material standards,
by  the  attitudes we  programed  into Will.   Food,  wealth, correct
decisionmaking, law and order, all  of it, they meant nothing  to the
populace.  Why?  Because no  risks.  Wasn't a heaven.  Wasn't  even a
life.  Was  a...  just  hell.  Will  saw.  Stopped  it.  We  don't do
something, then `utopia' starts again, and no one to stop it.  No one
to stop it...."  Karl's  voice had become increasingly  more agitated
and he broke into a cold sweat.  He commenced  babbling incoherently,
mixing in large proportions of his native language.

      Dr.  Amory interrupted  to keep  him from  hysteria.   "Karl is
right.  I appreciate the mental deterioration Will caused,  and would
cause, if  he solves everyone's  slightest problem.  Helen,  you look
dubious.  How does our mathematician feel?"

      "I agree  that Will should  be restarted.  But  do we  have the
right?  It  appears necessary  to us,  sitting in  this room,  if our
values, our society are to survive.  Whether or not to start him is a
decision which will affect  everyone in the world.  Maybe  the choice
should be made by all the people, not just six.  Many would  think it
crazy  not  to  exchange  their  current  anguish  for  Will's almost
instantaneous euphoria.  For some, Will's help is clearly called for:
the mentally ill, the  starving, politicians in crises, ...   I could
go on and on.  Yet I have enough faith to believe that most could see
what we see: deliverance  from all want is equivalent  to deliverance
from all pleasure..."

      "Come on,  Helen.  You  know as  well as  I the  `people' won't
decide.  The military run JCN.  Otherwise, if what you say were true,
Will could have turned himself off and been left off.  No,  Will knew
he  would  be altered,  forced  into unchecked  advising.   If  we do
nothing tonight, he will  be, tomorrow."  Eddie Ho's  quiet reasoning
hit its logical mark.  Helen nodded.  "Good," Eddie murmured, staring
at his watch.  "Rick and I have connected a radio-controlled timer on
Will, so he will  start automatically in...  three  minutes."  Before
anyone  could  move,  Eddie  had  pushed  a  button  on   the  remote
transmitter.   Half  a mile  away  a relay  clattered  its obedience.
Suddenly, Eddie noticed the look on Jack Sills' face.   "Is something
wrong?  With the questions you asked I assumed..."

      "Well, there's no way to stop the timer now, is there?"

      "Sure, just hit switch five.  But you'd have to hurry.   It's a
long walk!"  Eddie thought Jack was kidding.  Jack jumped out  of his
chair, rapidly formulating a plan.  The revolver was in his hand.



                                 15



      "Listen, I know what I'm doing.  It may or may not be wrong for
humanity.  You  don't know,  and neither do  I.  But  I do  know it's
right for  me.  I've  got to have  Will's help.   He could  locate my
daughter instantly....   Look", Sills was  pleading now.   "You don't
have any more right to start him now than I do to modify him and then
start him.  Will was  working under his last orders,  his directives.
Well,  according  to the  Will  file, my  last  instructions  were to
enforce  the  reprogramming of  Will.   That came  directly  from the
governing board of JCN itself!"  Sills waved his folder at the group.
He was through  pleading.  "Rick, you and  Eddie will have  the eight
hours you spoke of to reprogram Will.  All of us will go  down there.
Now.  Move!"

      "We'd never reach the computer room in time."  If  Rick's words
carried any emotion, it was sympathy.  "Even by yourself, if you run,
you can't go 800 meters in...  two minutes, now can you?  So..."

      Jack Sills was out of the door and running.  He might be out of
condition now, but he had  been a track star in his  collegiate days.
He could have run a half  mile in two minutes then.  Easily.   And he
was running for his daughter now.

      "You were  right, Ralph." Rick  turned to the  remaining group.
"Doctor Amory  suspected that  Sills might  try something  like this.
That was  the real  reason for the  remote activation  control." Rick
Bannon sat  down, wondering why  his wife and  Ralph Amory  bade each
other goodbye.  Quietly, almost bittersweetly.

      As he burst into Will's room, Jack Sills heard the click of the
timer's contacts.  Less  than one second  until Will was  powered up.
He made a frantic lunge  for switch five.  But even in  midflight, he
wondered why.

      What was  he doing  here?  This  computer had  never functioned
successfully.  As he turned to leave, Jack Sills saw the  revolver in
his hand and he remembered:  He was looking for his  daughter.  Well,
she certainly wasn't in here.












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