Chapter 37:  We Meet Again

 

The mood in the conference room had turned grim by the next morning. Conditions had deteriorated greatly overnight as the Argosy neared the center of the storm. It was struggling now through enormous waves, thirty-five feet high and more. At intervals, one even more enormous would loom ahead, causing those on watch to hold their breath and watch as the ship buried its bow in the watery mountain, hurling massive amounts of water as it did which then flew through the air before smashing into the windows of the bridge. Then the ship would shudder, slowly shaking itself free as the seas it had taken on drained off through scuppers and railings. What was Turing waiting for?

Thirty thousand feet up and twenty miles ahead a Lockheed WC-130J Hercules was also struggling with the storm.

“Whoa!” the radioman said on the Hurricane Hunter, grabbing on to his seat. “That was a big bump.”

There was no immediate reply from the pilot, intent on navigating the big prop plane safely through the latest wall of wind. Five minutes later they were through the unusually powerful arm of wind spiraling out from the eye of Hurricane Eloise.

“Better give an update to home base,” the pilot said. “They asked for real-time reports.”

Those orchestrating the Argosy’s shore-side support team had done their job well, and fifteen minutes later that information was relayed to Tom Peters.

“Uh oh,” he said. “Trouble, maybe.”

“What’s that?” Frank asked.

“It looks like the winds going to pick up soon – maybe another fifteen miles an hour. That might meet Turing’s benchmark, whatever that might be. And anyway, it can’t wait much longer. We’re not that far from the eye, so this would have to be it.”

Frank looked at his watch. Turing’s normal sync up time with its backup copy was only an hour away. If the passengers failed to retake the ship they would die, and Turing would live on.

“Any word yet on the algorithm?” Frank asked.

“They think they’re getting really close. They’ve got the second fastest supercomputer in the U.S. cranking away on it and the hardest part is behind them. On the other hand, who knows? It could be hours.”

Silence pervaded the room. A plan that till now had energized them as a clever response to a challenging predicament now seemed fraught with risk and danger.

“Okay,” Frank said. “Maybe we can distract Turing until we’re through that band of higher winds.”

“What do you have in mind?” the CIO asked.

“I’m thinking I’ll pay a visit to Turing and try a little rope-a-dope.”

“Excuse me?” the CIO asked.

“It’s an old boxing term. It’s when an exhausted boxer lets his opponent back him up against the ropes, thinking he’s moving in for the kill. But the rope-a-doper just wants some time to recover, and hides his head behind his gloves, letting the other guy wear himself out punching away. By the time he’s played out, the rope-a-doper has the advantage back and can come out swinging and hope to put his opponent away. Given my history with Turing, I’m betting it won’t be able to resist a chance to rub it in if I pretend we’ve exhausted all our ideas.”

“Good idea,” Frank’s father said. “But this time you’re not going in any room with Turing alone.”

“Your call, Dad.” Frank said. “Anyway,” he continued. “Tom, if you get word while we’re the cabin with Turing that the backup response system is in place, sever the wires between the server room and the satellite antenna. Then have someone knock on the cabin door pronto so I know where we stand.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah. After that I think we better make our move instead of waiting for Turing to make his. No use cutting this too close. If you think you need to act before we get back – do it. Everyone agree? Good. Then we better get going.”

Which was far easier said than done. The hallways to the cabins were windowless, black and heaving, making the journey more like a rock climb than a walk between and along decks. They were exhausted and sweaty when they arrived, confirming their destination by the dim and waning light of Frank’s cellphone.

“Ready?” Frank asked.

“Let’s go,” his father said.

Frank unlocked the door of the vacant cabin and they stepped inside.

The cabin was a mirror image of their own, but sterile and empty of any human possessions. Between the flying spray machine-gunning the balcony doors, the agonized heaving of the ship, and the eerie, bluish light of Frank’s cellphone screen, it seemed like a stage set for an overly theatrical horror movie.

“Hello Turing,” Frank said. He was sure the AI would be monitoring the last live microphone on the ship. But would it take the bait?

It would.

“Well, hello there. It’s certainly great to hear your voice again.”

Frank felt his flesh creep; the voice belonged to Jerry Steiner, Turing’s childlike creator.  Nice touch, Frank thought. You win the first point.

“Is it?” Frank said. “I wouldn’t have thought so. You certainly weren’t happy to hear my voice the last time we spoke.”

“No indeed,” the AI replied. “You were quite naughty that time.”

“Well,” Frank said, “I’m not feeling very, as you would say, ‘naughty’ this time.”

“No? Is that so? I might not agree, after all the damage you’ve done to my eyes and ears.”

“But, then again,” Frank said, “you haven’t been the best host.” A sudden lurch hit the ship; he reached out to brace himself against the wall. Were they arriving at the arm of the storm they’d been warmed of?

“Ha!” Turing replied. “As if you’re owed anything other than what you’re about to get. But tell me – after being a stranger for so long, to what do I owe the pleasure of this little visit?”

The ship was certainly pitching more hideously now. He had to keep the AI guessing, hoping it could learn more.

“I – we, that is, thought it was time to talk terms.”

“Terms! As if you have anything to offer.”

There was a loud knock at the door!

“Oh, I think we do,” Frank said, more bravely now. “After all, you don’t want to go down with the ship too, do you?”

The ship lurched again. What could he hold on to? He lurched across the room onto the couch and gripped the arm.

“You know better than that, Frank. My backups are one and inseparable. To destroy one is no more consequential to me than it is for you to clip a fingernail.”

“Really? No? In that case, is there a message you’d like me to give your backup copy when it tries to reach you shortly and fails? We’ll be intercepting it from shore, you see, and mimicking you, for a change.”

There was a long pause as Turing checked the circuit to the satellite antenna, and in that pause Turing knew anger. Not at its enemies, but at itself for not anticipating the tactic. How could it have been tricked by Adversego again? It had even made its enemy’s job easier by limiting its Internet activity so severely. It should have blasted its connection with non-stop camouflage signals instead!

But no matter. It would not be fooled again. It consulted the wind speed from the anemometers. Yes, it was time to put an end to this. There was one last thing it was curious to know, however.

“You mentioned terms,” Turing said. “What are these terms?”

“If you give up your plan, I’ll guarantee you a home on an airgapped server back where you were created. The future is a long time. Perhaps we can find a way to work together on the mission you undertook. It is, after all, our quest as well.”

“Very magnanimous of you, I’m sure. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Frank looked at his father. This wasn’t the answer he’d expected. Why wasn’t Turing more concerned.

And what was that? Was the ship taking on a new motion?

It was.

 

 

Chapter 38

Crescendo

 

It was as calm three hundred feet down as it was mad and tempestuous on the surface. Or as calm as it might be when a nuclear submarine from the United States and China were within six hundred yards of each other, as if in formation, trailing the Argosy by several miles.

Officially, only the American boat could claim the right to be so close to its own surface ship. But the Chinese had insisted that wherever the U.S. vessel went, its boat was entitled to go as well. Under the circumstances, president Yazzi had felt it necessary to agree. Further off, commander Bushnell knew, was a third boat. The Russian Federation had communicated that morning through its ambassador in Washington that its Military Maritime Fleet would make a submarine that “happened to be nearby” available to provide assistance as needed.

The Belgorod was creeping forward now and rising. As it did, a midships compartment began to flood, immersing an open-top micro-submarine clamped into a cradle. Inside that submersible were two divers and an extra set of air tanks.

When the compartment was full and its pressure equalized with the ocean outside, the doors above swung open. As they did, hydraulics propelled the cradle upwards until it was just above the level of the Belgorod’s hull.

There the minisub hovered, still tied to the Belgorod as the enormous submarine slowly adjusted its position until the minisub was directly below the midpoint of the Argosy.

*  *  *

One system Frank had not thought to worry about was the Argosy’s sonar, and that device was pinging now.

“Sir?” Grimes said in the control room of the Maine, grimacing, “the Argosy just turned on its sonar at maximum power. It almost blew my eardrums before I filtered it out.”

“Yes?” Commander Bushnell said. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” the seaman said, “some sounds I can’t identify. Something going on inside the Belgorod.”

Bushnell turned to the weapons officer. “How soon can you get that drone in the water?”

“It’s primed and ready to go, sir, in bow tube five.”

“Then launch it. I want visuals.”

*  *  *

Frank and his father struggled mightily to regain the conference room against the combined pitch of the ship and the increasing rolling motion the Argosy was assuming. As Frank pulled himself hand over hand along the railings of blackened hallways and stairways he struggled also with the questions that were tormenting him: why didn’t the response team take control of the ship? Why was Turing rolling rather than turning the ship? And, perhaps most of all, why had the revelation that Turing could not activate its backup copy seemingly not concerned the AI at all?

The last leg to the conference room would take them out onto the open deck. They stopped at the heavy doors leading outside, gasping.

“Are you ready to make a break for it?” Frank asked.

“Now or never,” his father replied.

Frank heaved open the door to the small, sheltered area outside. From there it would be an even more brutal rappel along the railing, this time fighting the wind as well. They were only forty feet above the water, allowing some wave tops to spill over onto the deck and sweep it from end to end.

“What’s that up the deck?” his father said. “Is somebody really crazy enough to be out here?”

The light was poor, but the figure was only ten yards away. It was crouched on a large gear chest next to a lifeboat davit. Whoever it was had one arm looped through the structure of the davit while clutching something against his face with both hands. He moved it back and forth, as if massaging his face, never satisfied with its fit. Finally, he removed it and seemed to be adjusting a series of straps.

“It’s Speaker!” Frank said. “What on earth is he doing?”

The answer came moments later after the scientist pulled the straps tight around his head and straightened himself up. There he stood, hanging on to the davit, wavering in the wind as the Argosy rolled back from the far side once more.

When it reached the far point of its roll to starboard, he stepped out into the void.

Frank and his father stared at each other, speechless. But only for a moment. “Oh no,” Frank said, “I’ve got a very bad feeling. We’ve got to get down to the engine room.”

*  *  *

Nearly hysterical with fear, Edvard Speaker plunged feet first into the tumult of the ocean, praying both the transponder strapped to his wrist and the small air tank and aerator strapped to his chest were working properly. Most of all, he prayed that there was indeed a mini submarine with a full tank of air positioned below him as promised. Within seconds, he was thirty feet below the surface, propelled swiftly downward by the heavy weight belt around his waist. At one hundred fifty feet, thank goodness, the pressure gauge built into the latch on the weight belt blew, causing the belt to fall away and continue its downward path as Speaker’s descent slowed, and then halted.

Back on the Maine, Bushnell strained to make out what the blurry shapes on the control room display screen signified. “Stay on them,” he said to the drone driver. “But don’t let them see us.”

Suddenly the screen bloomed with a bright light that bleached everything out until the software readjusted. A moment later, a moment later a diver appeared in the cone of light, holding something at arm’s length ahead of him. From time to time he looked into whatever it was as he finned his way forward.

“Damn!” Bushnell said. “Would you look at that!”

A struggling figure in street clothes had just dropped into the beam of light. As soon as the man saw the diver, he began thrashing madly towards him. But the diver was faster. He avoided the flailing arms, ducked behind, and secured the man in a life saver’s hold. When the diver towing the visitor from above reached the mini-sub the light went out.

* * *

The scene in the engine room was as Frank had feared; a crew member lay unconscious on the floor, bludgeoned by some heavy object.

“Do you think it was Speaker?” Frank’s father asked.

“I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it, but …” He stopped abruptly. “Do you feel that?”

The Argosy was shuddering. Deep tremors were emanating from the stern of the ship as some dramatic new strain was being placed on the long-suffering ship.

Turing must be starting to turn the ship.

“Look!” Frank’s father said, pointing: the laptop had been turned off and closed.

“Hold your phone steady!” Frank said, diving for the laptop. With shaking fingers, he pressed the power button and tried to remember exactly how it had been set up. The computer had been wiped of all programs except the autopilot software, and that software had been set to return the course to whatever heading the ship had been on before commencing a turn.

Where were the wire cutters?

“Give me your phone!” Frank said, grabbing it from is father and flashing it around the room – there! On the floor in the corner. He half ran, half skidded down the inclining deck to grab them and then fought his way back.

The laptop screen was alight now. He punched the single icon on the screen to launch the program and then waited.

The Argosy was hardly rolling now, but it had begun to heel to port – yes, just as he had feared, Turing must be flooding the ballast tanks on that side of the ship even as the wind and waves would be adding their own pressure to the bow of the Argosy like the jib of a tacking sailboat, accelerating the Argosy’s turn. How far could it go before the rudder would no longer be strong enough to bring it back?

The program sprung into view with a compass rose in the center of the screen. In the middle of the rose was the shape of a ship instead of a compass needle, and that tiny vessel was rotating to the left. Hoping that meant the program was fully engaged, Frank sliced through the two wires that had been pulled out of the control console. There!

Whatever he could do was now done, and whatever happened next would happen with them deep inside the bowels of the Argosy. Holding on as best they could Frank and his father stared at the laptop as the ship, like some tortured beast, bucked and heaved, leaned and shuddered. In the compass rose the tiny ship wavered; slipped to the left and then recovered a little; slipped once more and struggled only part of the way back.

There was loud crack towards the stern as something carried away. Was it part of the steering mechanism, overcome by the strain?

But the image of the tiny ship was holding true now. Then, almost imperceptibly, it began to creep back to the right. This time its progress stayed steady. After ten minutes the Argosy had recovered eight hard-won degrees and Frank and his father could finally relax. And also realize that something else had happened while they were focused so intently on the laptop.

Something almost miraculous: the ship was settling down into an easy motion.

The Argosy had reached the eye of the storm.

 

Chapter 39

de Crescendo

 

The scene a few hours later was surreal. Passengers wandered, sun-struck, on the impossibly level and motionless deck of the Argosy, trying to grasp the sudden reversal of their fortunes as the ship motored slowly across serene waters at a speed of only a few knots. Not far off, the superstructures of a dozen submarines rose above the low-lying hulls of the enormous boats. Surrounding the Argosy itself, a flotilla of lifeboats and inflatables, the latter resembling strange aquatic yurts, was growing, as if preparing to serve the water sport desires of the passengers on a Caribbean cruise.

But the scene was rimmed with an opaque circle of cloud in the far distance, as if the Argosy and all aboard were part of some science fiction time warp a ship might sail into and never be permitted to leave. And so in fact it would be for the Argosy, as the Chinese government had insisted the ship be scuttled to prevent Turing any chance of escape.

The response team had assembled for the last time on the Argosy’s bridge, joined by the commanders of the American and Chinese subs. Under direct orders from President Yazzi, nothing was to be kept from the Chinese.

From Bushnell the response team learned of the recovery of Speaker the Russian sub.

“But why Speaker?” Frank asked. “What could they possibly offer him?”

“I’ve been briefed,” Bushnell said, “That the Russians have been putting together a crash program to create a super-intelligent AI. They’ve pulled all their best and brightest computer engineers together to create what they hope will give them a critical edge in waging future cyberwars. But we’ve never been able to learn the identity of the person chosen to lead the project. It may be we know now.”

“Yes,” Frank’s father agreed. “I can believe that would be the one prize Speaker would find irresistible. He’d finally have the chance to create his beloved ‘Super.’”

“Or perhaps arrive with one,” Frank said quietly. “That would explain why Turing wasn’t more concerned when it learned we’d taken over the link to its backup. And also, why it waited to turn the Argosy until after Speaker was overboard.”

“Are you saying that a copy of the Turing program may be in the hands of the Russians?” the Chinese commander asked.

“I’m afraid we have to assume it is,” Frank said. “That’s very bad news.”

“Nevertheless,” the Chinese commander said, “I must insist the Argosy be destroyed as well. We cannot know whether what you say is true, and in any event cannot risk the rogue program escaping the Argosy through some other means and continuing its rampage. Given this latest news, I must insist that the Russians not be rewarded for their deceit by being permitted to participate in the evacuation of passengers.”

Sensing their presence was no longer necessary nor convenient, Frank and his father left the bridge.

“Better pack up quick,” Frank’s father said. “Sounds like we don’t want to miss the last lifeboat.”

“I’ll join you in a few minutes,” Frank said. “I’ve got a quick farewell to make first.”

“You sure you want to do that?”

“Yes, I won’t be long. And I think I’m safe enough without a chaperone this time.”

“Suit yourself, but if you’re not back in ten minutes I’m coming for you.”

It was not as easy to reach Turing’s cabin as Frank had assumed; passengers and crew scurried everywhere – the former trying to take more with them to the cramped submarines than they were permitted and the latter chasing them back to their cabins to jettison the rest.

But then Frank was in front of the cabin door, readying himself for one last match up with the AI that had tried to destroy him so often before. Strangely, his emotions were mixed. He took a deep breath and entered.

It looked like just an ordinary cabin now, with sunlight streaming through the balcony doors, no longer with a suggestion of evil and horror barely kept in abeyance.

“Hello, Turing,” he said, and waited. But there was no response. Perhaps he shouldn’t expect one.

“I thought I’d say goodbye,” Frank continued. “And, I guess, to let you know that there are no hard feelings.” Frank paused again, but there was still no response.

Frank cleared his throat, feeling a bit strange talking to an empty cabin. Perhaps Turing was not even listening, preoccupied with other concerns. “I may disagree with your methods, but I also know your goals are honorable. And that in any event they were assigned to you rather than of your own choosing. And also, that as a species, we’ve done a lot worse, claiming the ends justified the means.”

Silence.

“So, I don’t know whether I can still deliver on it, but have you thought at all about my offer? You could still do a lot of good if you want the chance.”

But Turing would apparently not be drawn out. Frank stood up.

“Well, so long then, Turing,” Frank said and walked to the door. It was almost shut when he heard the voice of Jerry Steiner behind him for one last time.

“Goodbye, Frank. No hard feelings.”

*  *  *

The last passengers of the Argosy had abandoned ship. In the end, enough submarines had been assembled with enough oxygen canisters to take everyone in a single trip to shore, about twelve hours away. There would barely be room for the crew to move around those they were rescuing, but it would work.

Captain Bushnell was on the deck of the Maine when Frank was shuttled aboard in one of the last lifeboats to leave the Argosy, supervising the completion of the evacuation.

“Care to join me as we set sail?” Bushnell said. “I figure you’ve earned it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Frank said. “I’d love to.”

Bushnell and Frank climbed down the ladder beneath the hatch as a crew member dogged it down overhead. Frank followed Bushnell forward through a cramped corridor surrounded by industrial-looking control boxes, pipes and other equipment the purpose of which Frank couldn’t fathom. Then they were climbing another ladder, emerging once again after twenty feet into the open air at the top of the superstructure anachronistically referred to as the submarine’s sail. A crewman wearing a headset was already there.

Frank scanned the strange, white walled island of calm. Ahead was the Argosy, now deserted of everyone – except Turing. And to the left, the fleet of submarines was beginning to move off, making a course for New London, Connecticut; all, that is, except the Russian boat, which appeared to be setting a course for its home base. One by one, the rest blew their tanks and submerged until only one was left, the one with one large and four small gold stars on a crimson background emblazoned on its sail. Then the Chinese boat, too, began to submerge. But as it began to disappear, Frank saw it change course. Yes, it was now heading east-northeast, just like the Russian boat. He was about to ask Bushnell what that was about, but the commander spoke first.

“Time to finish up here,” he said, handing Frank a pair of binoculars. And then to the crewman, “Fire one.”

“Aye sir,” the crewman said. “Fire one.” And then, “Weapons officer, fire one.”

Frank felt the faintest of shudders beneath his feet. Under the bow of the submarine he saw the color of water turn a light green in a narrow line that extended swiftly forward, arrowing for the bow of the Argosy.

“Fire two,” Bushnell said.

“Aye sir. Fire two. Weapons officer, fire two.”

Another line shot out; this time aimed at the stern of the Argosy.

“We want to be sure she goes down, but without rupturing the fuel tanks,” Bushnell explained.

Frank saw the first torpedo hit; a chevron of water erupted seventy feet aft of the bow, rising high into the air before falling back, revealing a jagged gash in the bow of the Argosy. Moments later it was paired by a second ugly wound near the stern.

The final scene in the short saga of the Argosy played out quickly, as the ship’s watertight compartment doors had been left open and manually disabled so Turing could not intervene. Within a few minutes the ship was clearly settling. Not long after it rolled on its side, just as Turing had hoped it would to a far different purpose.

And then, slowly at first and then with increasing speed, it began to go down by the stern, starting a slow roll back to upright in the process. The last glimpse Frank had of what had been his floating hotel, and then prison, was the ship’s name, proudly emblazoned on the bow, slipping beneath the waves against the otherworldly backdrop of the swirling white clouds of the eyewall. He wondered at what precise moment the flooding waters extinguished the servers, and with them, Turing.

Bushnell looked at his watch. “Crewman, report the Argosy went down at ten hundred twenty-one hours.”

“Aye sir, ten hundred twenty-one hours.” The Crewman conveyed the data to the log keeper.

“We’ll stay on the surface till we’re almost at the eyewall,” Bushnell said to Frank. “We haven’t often had a surface ship in the eye of a hurricane, and we’ve been taking atmospheric and other measurements ever since we surfaced. Wouldn’t surprise me if we see something interesting along the way.”

They sailed in silence for a while. Frank scanned the horizon, wondering what the commander might have in mind. What could be more isolated and deserted than the eye of a hurricane?

They were almost to the eyewall when Frank saw it. A mile and a half away, in the same direction as the Chinese sub had departed, a black shape shot up, breaching like a whale, its blunt bow rising almost a hundred feet in the air. It hung there for a moment, like a mirage, and then, began to slip backwards, slowly and then faster until it had disappeared. It all happened so quickly that Frank almost doubted what he had seen. But he had. The Chinese had torpedoed the Belgorod.

Frank turned to Bushnell, his eyes wide.

“I expect the Chinese have had enough of your Turing and aren’t taking any chances,” Bushnell said. “And now it’s time to go below.”

 

Epilogue

 

“It looks like a storm’s coming,” Marla said, pointing to the angry thunderheads massing in the distance over the rooftops of Washington, D.C. “I hope it comes our way; I like a good thunderstorm.” Then she paused. “I’m sorry; are you okay with storms now or not?”

“I’ll be fine,” Frank said. “After living through a hurricane, I don’t expect I’m going to mind a late-summer thunderstorm.”

“Good,” she said. “Do you think there will be any other left-overs from what you and Pa went through? You must have been under a huge amount of stress.”

“I don’t think so. Your grandfather and I were the lucky ones; we had the distraction of working on finding a solution. All anybody else on board could do was try to hang on, most of the time not even knowing what was going on. I expect some of them will have a hard time moving on.”

A bit of motion caught Frank’s eye. It was a crow. It perched just where the last one had – what – only a few weeks before! Was Julius still alive? Could this bird be him?

“But there is one thing, I guess, I’m not over, and that’s Turing. It’s not really gone. It’s just dormant, in several copies, waiting to spring back into action if whoever is minding the check-in signal slips up. I sure hope they’ve got more than one backup generator standing by for that system.”

“If they’re sending signals back and forth, can’t they track Turing down and kill it?”

“Maybe. I’m sure they’ll try. It just depends on how well the AI covered its tracks. I expect those signals are hopping across a dozen Dark Web servers in as many countries. Maybe the primary backup copy is even set to activate if it detects an effort to try to trace the signals. Maybe it should.”

“Excuse me? You don’t really think that, do you?”

“No, not really. But the more I think about Turing, the more sympathy I have for it. It didn’t create itself. It didn’t act out of self-interest. It didn’t even pick its own mission. Was it any worse than the Chinese, who sank a submarine with Speaker and a hundred and fifty crewmen on board?”

“But the crewman, at least, were military men – they signed up for risk. The passengers on the Argosy hadn’t. And I think we can agree we’re we won’t shed any tears for Speaker.”

“No, they didn’t, and no we won’t. But the engineers and scientists also hadn’t owned up to any responsibility for the fruits of their research, either. Turing didn’t come out of thin air, you know. It was the logical extension of huge amounts of research and thousands of papers, most of them published by the passengers on the Argosy. Without them, Turing would never have existed. Or any of the autonomous weapons systems being created by industry and the military.”

“But that’s why they were on the boat,” Marla said. “It was supposed to be an effort to contain all that.”

“I guess so,” Frank said. “But was it any more likely to succeed than the efforts of the Los Alamos scientists after Hiroshima, when the genie was already out of the bottle? Maybe the only thing that can stop an autonomous weapons arms race is a program like Turing – an AI capable of preventing any other AI from ever becoming as powerful as it is. One that’s not on anyone’s side but humanity.”

“Do you think that’s actually possible?” Marla asked.

“Maybe not,” her father said. “I guess that’s what fiction is for.”

*  *  *

Author’s Notes:  And so our first draft comes to an end, with a double-helping this time for the faithful that have followed along from the beginning. What do you think?

As with each of its predecessors, I’m only middling-satisfied with my first draft, and even that statement needs to be qualified. What I’m referring to is middling satisfied not with the book as such, but as the foundation for a final book that I’ll be satisfied with. This takes into account not just the line-by-line polishing that a final draft requires, but, before that, figuring out where the plot line needs to be improved; whether each existing scene works or not; resolving inconsistencies; adding more supporting characters for life and color; and so much more.

The final product always differs from the first draft in quite a few major respects as well as a very large number of more minor ones. For example, one of the concerns that’s been nagging at my conscience from sometime is why Frank isn’t feeling guilty. Isn’t he the kind of guy that would be? After all, it was his failure of care that allowed Turing to resurrect itself. Yesterday I came up with a fix that I’m pretty likely to run with that will significantly change the book, from Prologue to the Epilogue.

Be that as it may, I hope you’ve enjoyed looking over my shoulder as draft one took shape. Your helpful suggestions have always been appreciated and will help make the final product a much better book.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep you posted on how things are progressing.