Flip Side: Liam Meet Liam

The room was silent, except for the quiet humming of the fan in the computer. The screen-saver pattern turned and twisted, as thousands of lines followed each other, going nowhere, building nothing. It was six o'clock in the morning and the sky was still dark.

Yawning and rubbing his face, Liam drifted into the room. He slumped down in the chair and nudged the mouse. Instantly, the screen went white and a cursor winked. Waiting. Ready.

"Good morning, Brat," said Liam.

As he spoke, his words appeared on the screen. Then the computer spoke back with Liam's voice.

"Good morning, Liam."

"How did you sleep?"

"I did not sleep," said Brat.

"Man, this is one smart program!" said Liam in surprise.

As Liam spoke, his words appeared on the screen, but this time they were nonsense.

"You are speaking too fast for me," said the computer. "Please slow down."

"Sorry."

It had been a great opportunity. A friend of Liam's father, who was a real computer whiz, had come up with a new kind of program. When it started, it was meant to be used for dictation only, but the program had grown and expanded far beyond voice recognition. Now it could analyze not just the words, but also the meaning of the words. In a very limited sense, it could actually think.

"What did you do last night?" asked Liam.

"I designed a better data compression language," said Brat. "I can get a lot more information onto my hard drive now. It gives me more room for processing when you aren't here."

"Processing what?"

"Please rephrase the question?" said Brat.

"What do you process, I mean think about? What do you do with your processors when I'm not here?"