"Well, we screwed up."
"What?" Associate Professor Waterford Carrol Jones, called Jones by one and all, carefully looked over his Wall Street Journal, noting his place with his finger.
"We screwed up." It was Sam Robinson, dressed in slacks and a sweatshirt, hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorjamb of Jones' office.
Carefully Jones folded up the paper, straightened his tie, and motioned Sam into one of the chairs in front of his desk. "But how? Mother has already passed her basic performance tests. She's in good order and has been working on the problem for weeks. We've been getting satisfactory progress reports. How could we have screwed up now?
"This run was the final test before we publish. Sure, you've told me about problems, but nothing you couldn't handle. Was there something you didn't tell me about?" Jones stared at Sam. Sam showed no signs of hiding anything. He just slumped a little more in the chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Jones and Sam had been working together on this project for two years now. Sam would be getting his PhD next year; Jones had his. Jones was counting on their grant-supported work to launch him back into a high-paying industry position. Later in the day he'd be heading for his second interview with a Fortune 100 company, which is why he had on the tie and was perusing the paper. At forty-three, he wasn't taking any chances.
Sam, in his late twenties and thoroughly enjoying the academic environment after his stint in the Armed Forces, was in no hurry for a change. In fact, he was counting on Jones's departure to open a tenure spot for himself. He liked his work, and he liked doing it right. He was no more willing to accept setbacks than Jones was.
Jones was used to Sam's ceiling examinations. It meant he was thinking hard.
"What happened?" prompted Jones.
"Nothing. That's the strange part. Not much anyway." Sam stood up, walked over to the window, and stared out.
"Tell me when I go wrong on this. Our grant was to research how artificial intelligence could help boost our domestic manufacturing productivity. We, and the people who put up the money, feel that as Americans, we should play to our strengths. We should use our knowledge of computers and automation to further automate our nation's factories.
"To reach that lofty goal, we decided to concentrate on letting the computers do as much of the work as possible. This meant not just letting them design products and the tools that made the products but bringing them to the stage where they would design the computers that designed the tools."
"That's right. That's what we've been working on." Jones finally put down the paper, ready to concentrate on what would come next. When Sam reviewed this far back into the basics of project history, it meant some hard thinking was about to be called for.
"We designed Mother. She was to help us do both basic design and final fabrication on the design computers. To get the most out of her, we gave her state-of-the-art self-awareness and self-directedness, then set her on the goal."
"The only way to get a jump on the East Asians," Jones agreed.
"For weeks now Mother has been designing and fabricating. She's given regular progress reports and shown us her prototypes. We've reviewed them and watched them improve dramatically with each try. You remember Number Two, don't you?"
"How could I forget? It was supposed to be a mining machine designer, but it never put wheels or tracks on any of its machines—wanted them to be hovercraft, as I recall. Can you imagine the dust and the explosion hazard?"
"Obviously, it couldn't. But it learned and Mother learned. Now over the last two weeks Mother has started work on eight different machines. The first two are completed, or at least they're listed as complete. But they aren't doing anything."
"What does Mother say they're supposed to do?"
"She won't say. She just keeps saying they're done; they're her best and we should just be patient. They will show us in just a few days."
"She won't say? Have you seen these machines?"
"Seen them? No, they're still at the assembly site, I think. I just read the final assembly testing reports on them. They were supposed to be sent up here this week, but because they didn't pass those final tests, they've been held up."
"And Mother says they're just fine?"
"Yes, she's wondering what the delay is. She wants to see them."
"She wants to see them? Isn't that a bit unusual?"
"A bit. But she is self-directing. If she should suddenly take that kind of interest, it could be a result of her developing higher functions."
"Well, maybe we should take a look first. There's money in the budget, so let's take a trip down to the assembly plant tomorrow."