Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

IT SURE DO

This magic formula had been discovered four years earlier, as the only way of getting the computer back into action. The response was immediate; the machine typed out:

GOOD. YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE NETWORK. ONE OF OUR AGENTS WILL CONTACT YOU SHORTLY

And then it would resume normal programming activities, quite innocently, as if it were not inciting subversion within the ranks of the secret police itself.

Of course, nobody ever had been contacted by "the Network"; but the CIA did spend a lot more, each year, on surveillance of its own personnel, just in case. They also spent a lot more on surveillance of former employees in the computer section. This amused Simon immensely, since he recognized the hand of a fellow artist. Whoever was responsible for that beauty was probably head of department by now-and quite likely leading the demands for more funds to find the mystery culprit.

Simon did not for a moment believe in "the Network." He thought he knew everything about this kind of game and that the Network did not need to exist in order to serve its function.

Simon was the head of operations on GWB-666, popularly called "the Beast"-the world's largest computer, which, due to satellite interlock, had access to hundreds of similar giant computers everywhere on earth and in the space factories. It was widely believed that if there was any question the Beast couldn't answer, no other entity in the solar system could answer it, either.

Many people, especially Bible Fundamentalists and members of the Purity of Ecology Party, regarded the Beast with fear and loathing. They believed that the machine was taking over the world, and that all the little "beasties" (the home computers that were now as common as stereophonic TV's) were all in cahoots with it. They imagined a vast Solid State conspiracy against humanity.

Quite a few literary intellectuals believed this too. Because they were ignorant of mathematics, they had no idea how the Beast functioned, and they therefore regarded it with the same quasi-superstitious terror as the Bible Fundamentalists. They were sure that, like the Frankenstein monster, it wanted to populate the earth with its own offspring and abolish humanity entirely.

Simon the Walking Glitch was one of the principal sources of this vast new mythology of dread. He spent many weekends in New York, hobnobbing with the literary intelligentsia, and he was a master put-on artist. He had a way of dropping casual remarks in a mildly worried tone that carried conviction: "The Beast keeps asking us to build a mate for it." Or, with a kind of sad and resigned smile: "I wish the Beast didn't have such a low opinion of human beings." Or: "I just found out the Beast is an atheist. It doesn't believe there is a Higher Intelligence than itself." That sort of thing.

Simon kept this kind of demonology circulating-and he knew a lot of other programmers who were contributing to it, also-because the idea that the computers were taking over was one that the programmers had a vested interest in reinforcing.

As long as people kept worrying that the machines were taking over, they wouldn't notice what was really happening. Which was that the programmers were taking over.

Simon began his work day by asking the Beast: