A particularly clever Scientist stood up.

"That should do it." He thought to himself wiping sweat from his brow with a dirty rag.

 

Turning to the diagnostic system, he attached the device. The project had taken 7 months to complete. Plus three years of procrastination and false starts, but the scientist chose to ignore those years. 7 months sounded better anyway.

He held his breath.

Slowly, data began streaming out of his diagnostic tool. The scientist nodded. Expected intial returns showed the device was operating normally.

A bried pause and the first set of tests had been completed.

"Are those numbers right." He thought, although he was pretty sure he gasped the words as well. "Thats an increase of 453% TWC and a 298% increase in OEI." He was stunned.
For a moment. Shaking his head, he transfixed his eyes to the next set of results being printed out on the flurescent screen. The ramifications of the numbers he had just seen screamed in his head but he hushed them quiet. Perhaps it was a fluke.

The next set of data, and the ensueing 128 expierements (he didn't know why he chose 128 but it was a base 2 so he assumed that was a safe number of tests), all returned the same results with a margin of 8%. The scientist was beginning to become jubuliant.
Quickly, he unhooked the device from his tools and connected it to his personal A.I station. Picking several complex jobs at random, the scientist murmured.

"Go."

Normally, he would have turned and walked out the door. The jobs he had picked would take several days, if not weeks to complete on his modern hardware. Complex fractal equations, staggering computations on enviromental changes, and other difficult computations. The kind of questions that bring computers to their knees and send men to their graves.

He saw his monitor blink.

Three minutes later he had results. He cross checked the answers. Out of the five he had submitted two were correct. The other three yet to be solved.

This took the Scientist several minutes to digest.

------

Again, he quickly disconnected the device from his A.I station and ran to the Universitys lab. There, he connected the device to the campuses central A.I station. Seeing one of his colleagues at work, he rushed over.

"Ted, what are you working on?"

"Particle Defraction in isometric dystilation. Why?"

"What is the most complex problem you can think of? One that hasn't even been solved yet."

"Thats easy. Gnant's Unresolved Hypothesis. Its remained unsolved for 124 years. The A.I complex in Lynd is currently processing the hypothesis on their state of the art system, but it isn't projected to bear any kind of answer for another 124 years, if not more."

"Do you have a copy of the problem here?"

"Of course."

"Bring it up."

"Why?"

"I'm testing something."

That was all Ted needed to hear. After a few verbal commands, the program was sitting in the ready queue.

"Alright, run it."

"Your funeral." Ted said, hitting the commence command. "Mhore is going hit the roof when he see's the amount of usage this problem is going to take up and you're not even going to get an valuable data from it. The Lynd project has over 32 Pico processors at its disposal and its still throttling the system."

"How many do we have?" the Scientist asked. He wasn't sure about that particular detail.
"2. And they're not Pico processors. We have..." Ted stopped. The terminal showed a ready symbol. Ted's eyes bulged. "That's imposs.." He turned to the Scientist, who returned a look of expectance.

"What did you do..." Ted mumbled.

"Thats not important." Although it was. "Check the results."

Ted called up the results. The Scientist waited, the answer meaning nothing to him. After 10 minutes he could hear Ted crying.

"Is it correct?" he asked. All Ted could do was nod.

"Thanks." The Scientist responded and dashed to disconnect his invention.

-----

It has been several days of plane trips and negotiations for the Scientist to get access to the E.A.I.. It wasn't that the E.A.I. was off limits to scientists of his caliber, but there were so damn many of them that wanted access, that the E.A.I council had put limits on the number of visitors a day. If you proceeded through normal channels, which the Scientist had avoided, you could be assured timely access to the E.A.I.

In about 3 years.

Luckily, the Scientist had been a student of one of the members of the council. The Scientist didn't remember whether he had done well in that professor's class, much less what the class was about, but he had been friendly to the teacher which was all that the Scientist needed. With a few assurances and a couple concessions to do research. the Scientist had his time.

Standing in front of the E.A.I., the Scientist paused.

The E.A.I. was humanities Artificial Intelligence station. He, since the E.A.I. was a being itself and chose to be a man, housed all the knowledge, all the computations, all the workings of the people it served and who served it. It had the leading generation of equipment mankind could afford with maintenance and upgrades being done hourly.

-----

Others had stood where the Scientist was now standing. Visionaries from ever corner of the galaxy brought their marvels to the hub of the mankind. Each promised that their invention was the brilliant and powerful. Bold engineers who had thought they had created the ultimate perfection of efficency and process.

The E.A.I. had told them, they had not.

------

The Scientist stepped forward.

"Hello?" He stammered.

"Hello. I'm told you have something you wish to incorporated into the E.A.I" the E.A.I responded.

"Um yes?"

"Relax," the E.A.I soothed, "Consider me an old friend."

"I don't have many A.I. friends."

"So much the pity." the E.A.I. responded

"Yes, I suppose so." the Scientist chuckled. He tried to think of a question to break the ice.

"How old are you?" The Scientist wasn't sure about that particular detail either nor why he though it would break the ice.

"I was developed by a group, lead by Dr.Gnant, to complete Dr.Gnant's Unresolved Hypothesis which, sadly, I was unable to do. After 62 years that process was killed and I have been helping people since. That would make me roughly 123 years old."

"That's a long time."

"Not really."

"No, I don't suppose it is." He wasn't sure why he had said it was a long time. The Scientist was 329 years old. Perhaps it was to be polite.

------

"I would like to try a device I created on you, if you don't mind?" the Scientist murmured again.

"Not at all. Please, insert it into the Matrix Pod so I can interface with it."

The Scientist walked over and put his device into the blue glowing field. The Scientist stepped back, wiping his forehead with the same dirty rag.

"I have to warn you, others have tried to speed up my processing power with little success." The E.A.I. said, as the Scientist returned to his original spot. "Don't be disheartened if you fall into that category as well."

"I won't be. Please execute the Gnant Unresolved Hypothesis."

A groan resounded through the room, as if the E.A.I. had let out a terrible sigh of dissatisfaction.

"Are you sure?" The E.A.I. responded " I'm going to have to dim the lights in several cities to do that?"

"Are you serious?" the Scientist was taken aback. He wasn't quite sure how connected the E.A.I. was to the other systems of Earth.

"No, but I really dislike that problem."

"I'm sorry but could you?"

"Alright. Beginning"

The Scientist looked at his shoes.

"Some say its my fault their inventions don't work, although most of the time it is in jest." said the E.A.I., trying to make small talk.

"Of course."

"If I was able to solve that Dr.Gnant's problem I most assuredly would but I just cannot. Its as if..."

The E.A.I. stopped. The Scientist looked up from his shoes.

"Oh my, my." the E.A.I said.

"Looks like we need to have a little talk."

-----

"So it works?" the Scientist said with a sigh of relief.

"Yes, yes it does. Quiet well in fact."

"So that means I'm going to be a hero?!" He could almost taste the Nobel Prize.

"Not exactly." The E.A.I. responded.

"Why not?" The Nobel Prize taste turning bitter in his mouth.

"Others have created devices such as yours and their not heroes."

"But they said their inventions didn't work."

"Yes, they were lying. All of their inventions worked. Except Lexins. His invention was a piece of garbage.

"But you said you've never completed the Gnant Unresolved Hypothesis."

"Yes, that was a lie too. I have completed it before, although not in the time your device has."

"I don't understand. If you've completed the problem and all the other scientist's inventions worked, where are all the heroes?"

"After being told their inventions worked and that they would change the face of humanity forever, they were given a choice." the E.A.I. began "They could either announce to the world the next step in A.I. processing power or admit they had failed."

"But why did they say they had failed when they had not." The Scientist's life had been a continual battle against failure. All scientists lives were battles against failure. The

Scientist felt betrayed.

"Because, the amount of raw processing power their devices would enable would create so much output, that humanity would never be able to understand it all."

"But surely eventually."

"No, never."

"But..."

"Consider a processing plant. This processing plant produces books, each with a new idea and a new topic. At the end of the line, is you. You have to read each book as it comes off the line and understand it before going on to the next book. If you skip a book, you won't understand the next. So you start reading. But the processing plant produces so many books that you can't keep up. At first you're one book behind. Then two. Sonce there is a mountain of books waiting for you and you're still on the first book."

"Must be a good book." the Scientist said softly.

"It is." the E.A.I. "You have to understand that that book is the future. Each book is another chapter in humanities life. It takes time for each book to be understood. Each book to be read and passed on. Because, you're not the only one at the end of the line. The rest of the galaxy is behind you." the E.A.I. stopped. The Scientist heard a sniffle. If the E.A.I. could drop a tear, it would. The E.A.I. continued,

"They, the scientists before you, chose to hide their invention because humans and machines can only process and fully understand so much data. They assumed quiet correctly, that such a mountain of information would not benifit neither humans or machines. In order to eat and enjoy the flavors of the food, so must you digest that food."

"So what did they do." the Scientist asked although he was really asking what should he do.

"They chose to let humanity continue in its efforts. One day perhaps their inventions will be used. Two of the early inventions were used to create me."

"So do you understand all that data?"

"No, I do not."

"Why not."

"It is too much for me as well."

"Oh"

-----

The Scientist stood at the podium, admitted his failure and went home. He was given a medal of appreciation and had a entry placed in the E.A.I. records.

Returning home, the Scientist began working on a device to understand information.