The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (25 page)

That was the day before John Taylor called him again.
John Taylor wore the same blue suit he had worn that day nearly two years earlier when Lawrence had spotted him in the audience watching Intellect 39. It occurred to Lawrence that he had seen John Taylor off and on over the past two years, and that he had never seen John Taylor wearing any other article of clothing. He wondered idly if John Taylor wore the suit to bed.
Basil Lambert was the president of the company, and he was said to be very enthusiastic about the Intellects although he had never bothered to say more than three consecutive words to Lawrence, their creator. Lambert said "Hello" when Lawrence entered the conference room.
The other two men might as well have had the word
military
engraved on their foreheads. They were interchangeably firm in bearing, and sat rigidly upright as if impaled on perfectly vertical steel rods. One was older with silver hair, tall and thin and hard. Lawrence imagined that this was a man who could give the order to slaughter a village full of children without looking up from his prime rib
au jus
. The other was wide enough to be called fat, though Lawrence could tell there was still a lot of muscle in the padding. His hair was brown but beginning to gray. He radiated grandfatherly protection and broad-shouldered strength. He would have lots of jolly, fatherly reasons why the 200 pushups he had ordered you to do were in your own long-term best interest.
Here it comes, Lawrence thought with deadly certainty. The good cop and the bad cop.
John Taylor introduced them by name. No rank, no association, just a couple of private citizens with an interest in his work. Lawrence felt a brief and uncharacteristic moment of anger at this insult to his own intelligence.
"The public relations campaign has been
excellent
, John Taylor said with a fake and enthusiastic grin. "The assassination attempt just made you even more popular. We have inquiries pouring in. We are
gonna
make a
fortune
on our chips and your software."
"Glad to hear it," Lawrence said neutrally.
"What John is trying to say," Basil Lambert the Company President said, "is that it is time to figure out what to do next. You've made a remarkable achievement, now what are you going to do with it?"
Lawrence had been ready for this, although it shook him to hear such a direct, such a long question from the usually stone-faced Lambert. "We don't know what Prime Intellect's capabilities are," Lawrence said. "I had planned to continue keeping him..." When had it become a
him
, Lawrence asked himself? "...in the public eye, interacting with other people, learning. It's already impossible to tell...it...from a television image of a person. I hope that with a little more education, it will begin to show some of the capabilities I was aiming for back when I started designing these machines."
"Such as?" asked the grandfatherly military man, whose name was Mitchell.
"Creativity and analytical ability," Lawrence answered without hesitation. "Prime Intellect is still uncertain about many things. As it gets more confident with its new abilities, it will begin to explore, and I think give us some pleasant surprises."