Pulling The Dragon's Tail Read Online Free PDF

who cynically
believed that humanity could not save itself, that technology
eventually would lead to annihilation, and that humans were
tinkering in forbidden territory. Keagan also believed in a god who
was soon to administer a broad swath of punishment against
humanity. But with the hard set jaw slowly agitating, he quickly
changed the subject. ”What time you got?”
    “8:45.”
    “Only forty-five minutes until his first
treatment. Look at him, so psychotic that he’s blindly working on a
stupid puzzle.”
    “Well, Keagan, you know what they say. You can
only judge a robot by it’s mother board.” They turned down the
hallway. The profound wisdom in that saying was certainly
applicable to Keagan. She had correctly identified both Nate’s
concern over the upcoming treatment as well as Keagan’s
unreasonable antipathy toward this Church of Abraham believer. Her
carefully selected genes for high intelligence and astounding
beauty were proving to be quite a combination. Jentry was well on
her way to what her parents hoped would be great success.
    “Father,” prayed Nate silently, “give me
strength. Guide my hands. Help me to do Your will, not mine. Help
me accept why you put me here. In the name of Father Abraham. Let
it be so.” Then he straightened his tall frame and returned to the
stubborn puzzle, reassuring himself that the most important step in
his plan had already occurred: the delivery of the octagonal
puzzle. The combinations, mysteriously though, were in utter
disarray. He couldn’t help but blame Keagan, who had personally
brought the puzzle to him early that morning. The man is one
scary dude.
    Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash
of light. A second quick illumination caught his attention. Still
another slightly longer burst followed that. The turrets of his own
mind spun around. “Short and long flashes, short and long
flashes…Morse code?”
    His heart leaped with relief.
    “D-U-G-A-N,” he interpreted the Morse coded
message.
    “My faithful canine—never should have doubted
you!” He rushed to the small window, clapping his hands with joy.
The flashes of light continued to penetrate his eyes, emanating
from the top of a building about two-hundred meters away to the
northwest of the hospital.
    Embedded sensors in the wall took note of this
aberrant behavior. Cameras mounted across all angles of the room
zoomed in on the patient’s excited antics. This information was
passed on to the staff at the nurse’s station. The charge nurse
looked on in bemusement and then dutifully passed this information
into the CLUES system. The artificial intelligence program, in
turn, downloaded this latest piece of data. It only confirmed what
all staff including Dr. Campbell Devereaux knew for certain: Nate
Kristopher suffered from delusions of grandeur and was in need of
Neuro Shock to break the psychosis gripping him.
     
    * * * * * *
     
    “Pom daido woth epi abot, sned,” the computer
companion robot had spoken to Nate last night at seven p.m. in a
carefully designed phone call.
    “Foto ilt pom daido woth, clobo poz,” Nate had
replied in confirmation. He was constantly amazed at the Computer
Companion Robot’s intellectual capabilities and how it was able to
formulate contingency plans. But that was also exactly how Nate had
planned it. Dugan, as a new breed of artificially intelligent
machines capable of some self-understanding and self-modification,
was designed to grow and develop. But neither Dugan nor Nate had
ever come up against CLUES, the Computer Counselor: Learning,
Understanding, and Evaluation of Systems.
    He concentrated on the flashes of light coming
from Dugan.
    “I-S-I-T-S-O-L-V-E-D,” was the next Morse coded
message.
    Shoot. How’m I going to communicate with
him? He quickly turned around to explore the contents of his
room. The standard hospital bed-bolted to the floor; a table and
chair stood on the other side of the bed, and beyond that-the
bathroom. He glared at