#003: Falling, Falling

I spent the larger part of that night tiptoeing about in repeated checks on my guest while also playing code games with my personal computer.

Even with the strong sedative, her sleep was restless and punctuated with muffled little outcries, but I elected to let her sleep it out without interference from me; sometimes that is best.

Besides which, I was having a devil of a time with my computer linkage to the world brain. Amazing what you can do with these little gadgets—the so-called "personal computer"—if you know the tricks—and, of course, I had learned most of those under navy tutelage. It's a modest investment in "linkage." Smart shopping can set you up proudly for just a few thousand dollars, allowing you to tap in to the monster system costing millions.

A word or two is needed here about "monster systems," in case you have not noticed any. Modern human society is highly complex, much more so than one would imagine from casual observations of the common, workaday world; so complex, in fact, that it is only marginally manageable and—from an inside view—appears to be in daily danger of total collapse.

The whole thing is held together by a tenuous network of "management systems" and "data parameters" that embrace the full spectrum of government and private sector interests, most of which operate at cross-purposes and with a notable lack of cooperative effort. That the thing works at all is a testament not to the ingenuity of man but to the stubbornness of some impelling force of evolution that somehow keeps things stumbling along despite all efforts to frustrate it.

If that sounds cynical, then call me a cynic, but I am not really cynical about mankind per se, only about the mechanisms that are trying to stick us all together in manageable clumps. The mechanism has to be there, mind you, else all is chaos—witness modern Lebanon as an example of what happens when the machine collapses—but chaos is an inherent and basic constituent of every management system ever devised, more and more so as complexities increase.

I include any and every form of political government in the definition of "management systems." Include also, if you will, every religious and educational and commercial endeavor of mankind. Keep that in mind, please, then consider that the computer age has ushered in the most beautifully complex mechanisms yet conceived by an exploding race consciousness—while concomitantly producing the most menacing potential for utter chaos.

Artificial intelligence.

Sound like something from a science fiction movie? Sure, but it is also military-industrial jargon that you might encounter any Sunday in the L.A. Times classifieds under "Scientific Help Wanted." Artificial intelligence is the newest of the growth and glamour technological pursuits of our space-age society—mostly in military applications at the present state of development, but it has already crept into various private enterprises. The very term implies that more is under contemplation than mere data-mashing, which is mainly what a computer does; it suggests some sort of silicone brain that can reason both deductively and inductively, make decisions and execute them—the real-life equivalent of the old (ten years ago, I guess, is old by present standards) science fiction themes concerning the domination of mankind by monster computers.

But I digress. I was trying to make the point that our highly complex society of today is being managed, in most parts that really count, by computer technology and "artificial intelligence." A lot of the chaos that erupts in our personal lives, and in our personal interactions with a computer-managed society, is caused when an individual or an action does not match some mathematical model that is attempting to orchestrate the social conventions in a given sphere of activity.

I am trying not to sound professorial, but I think round so I guess I have to talk that way. Really what I am trying to suggest is that the monster computer is already among us, governing us to a large extent that we are being governed, controlling us to a large extent that we are being controlled.

I tend to resent that.

All of which, above, is a roundabout way of saying that I feel no pangs of conscience in using that same mechanism as a service to help me hold chaos at bay while I attempt some useful task.

So, yeah, I play the code games. Not in a frivolous sense, and I do have a rather stern ethic that keeps me from mucking around where I have no business. Most of the data pools that I have accessed from my little TRS-80 contain public records, anyway. Only occasionally have I invaded confidential files, and then only when the need seemed to justify the trespass.

The lady had come to me for help. If I am a physician and you come to me complaining of a bellyache and I suspect that your appendix is trying to explode, am I ethically justified in giving you a Rolaids and sending you on your way simply because you will not acknowledge the appendicitis? No—I cannot work that way.

Karen Highland had a problem that was much more ominous than the complaint that brought her to me. I did not exactly know the parameters of that problem, but I felt that I owed it to her as well as to myself to find out all I could about her.

I hit every major data bank in the state in that pursuit.

Know what? I found nothing. Nothing.

The mechanism that sticks together the people of California had no knowledge of the lady; she did not exist in that system. No driver's license, no work record, not even a record of birth, no medical records, no police records. Apparently she had never been insured, had never gone to school, never married or divorced, never applied for credit, never bought real estate, never paid taxes.

Along about three a.m., I began to get the feeling that I was falling toward chaos.

I have a distinct distaste for chaos. So I shut down the computer, took off my shoes, and stretched out on the couch to give my right brain a shot at the logic.

Instead, I guess I fell asleep because the next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming through the windows and my home had been invaded by a number of energetic men with nasty faces, two of whom were peering down at me over gun snouts.

I moved eyes and mouth only in a cautious query as to the nature of their business there.

One snapped, "Shut up."

Another, outside my area of vision, announced, "She's in here!"—and I was aware of energetic movements in the general direction of my bedroom.

It happened faster than I can describe the action. One moment they were there, the next they were gone—and Karen Highland too. I heard several vehicles pull away before I ventured to my feet. It could have been a dream for all the evidence left behind.

Even Karen could have been a dream.

But I knew that she was not.

For some strange reason, maybe only to validate the reality, the first thing I did was to call my friend at the coroner's office. It was a Saturday, but I knew that she normally worked the weekends. But she was not there, would not be there at all today, something about a family emergency out of town somewhere, no idea when she would be returning to duty.

The people at the county hospital kept me on hold for upwards of ten minutes before firmly assuring me that there was "no record" of my DOA.

Falling, yeah. Chaos loomed.

The 911 supervisor could find no record of a dispatch to my address on the previous day, and a telephone canvass of ambulance companies serving the area produced a solid ditto.

Then and only then I tried the telephone number that Karen Highland had given me just three days earlier. What I reached was a telephone company recording advising me that the number was no longer in service.

How I hate chaos.

So I called my drinking buddy, the doctor who had come over to check out Karen the evening before.

I bullied my way through two "services" to finally acquire a female voice that sorrowfully informed me that my friend, the doctor, had died of an apparent heart attack "late last night."

Someone or something was manipulating my little corner of reality, I was sure of that.

Or else the system, the social mechanism, had reached the edge of chaos and was about to engulf me in its collapse.

I could not buy that.

So I did something that could get me a few years in Leavenworth. I went back to my TRS-80 and accessed a government mainframe in Washington to invade confidential files in search of a "Highland" with a promising profile.

It took me up past the noon hour, and I was glad it was a weekend, with most of Washington away from the office, to afford me that kind of time on the access.

But, yeah, I found the "right" Highland.

And a hell of a lot more.

I found my validation. And a new respect for the mechanism.