Marcella Henry watches over a sentient computer at night. What she doesn't know is that the computer also watches her.
This is a GEEK / NERD story. The beginning is very technical and is not at all sexy. The last portion gets sexy. Depending on how this is received, I will most likely be writing additional stories of PLATO, Helen, and others. They won't need the long introduction. If you want to skip the GEEK stuff, search for *** and it will take you to the end of the plot setup.
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WARNING! This warning is possibly not needed for this particular story, but I am including it because it is needed for most of my stories.
If you decide to read other of my stories make sure that you read the disclosures and warnings at the beginning of each story.
All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and responses are fictional ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.
If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand the difference between fantasy and reality or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted in these stories, please stop reading immediately and move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.
Archiving and reposting of this story is permitted, but only if acknowledgment of copyright and statement of limitation of use is included with the article. This story is copyright (c) 2018 by The Technician.
Individual readers may archive and/or print single copies of this story for personal, non-commercial use. Production of multiple copies of this story on paper, disk, or other fixed format is expressly forbidden.
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Marcella Henry leaned slightly forward so that her face was only inches from the huge console which formed the desk in front of her and then said brightly, "Good evening, PLATO."
There was actually a microphone in the earpiece which was hidden by her dark auburn hair, but somehow it seemed right to speak to the console rather than just stare out into the room as she spoke. Besides, there was a video screen in the middle of the raised console and directly above the screen, in large, white, letters, it said P L A T O. There were also microphones and speakers on either side of the video screen. They were muted when her headset was active, but still Marcella felt that she should be facing someone when speaking to them, so she spoke directly to the monitor as if it were truly a person.
A voice in her earpiece said, "Good evening, Marcy" and Marcella frowned slightly at her console. Normally if someone called her "Marcy," she would correct them and say, "My name is Marcella, not Marcy," but she had given up with PLATO. She had corrected him many times and each time he would always just answer, "To me you will always be Marcy."
PLATO didn't wait for her to scold him this time, but instead quickly added, "To me you will always be Marcy, Doctor Henry."
In response, her frown turned into a smile.
The monitor screen displayed the same words which had just been spoken. For some reason, when PLATO spoke to her, the font was different, almost like a handwriting. Marcella liked to think that she was actually having a conversation with another person, and the hand written font made it seem even more personal.
She also liked to think of the console with its video screen as PLATO, but PLATO was not in the console. He was not even in the control room with its huge banks of computers and memory drives. The true PLATO resided in a small glass pool on the other side of a very thick wall, submerged in a special liquid that was a combination nutrient and cooling fluid. Marcella had seen him once and decided that once was enough. To her, PLATO didn't look like the most advanced artificial intelligence computer ever created. He looked more like a large glob of old Jello sitting on a small plate under dirty water. Hundreds, if not thousands, of extremely small wires connected to the plate and formed a thick cable that went through the thick, concrete wall and then through the wooden walls to the control room with its bank of computers and, of course, to the console where Marcella currently sat.
Marcella saw the true PLATO during her orientation tour when she first joined the Bernaldi Institute three years ago while she was still working on her degree. PLATO has grown considerably since then and is now in a much larger glass tank that takes up more of his special room. He has also taken over the task of augmenting his own cells. His design for new and replacement brain cells is vastly superior to the original designs of his creator, Doctor Antone Bernaldi.
Doctor Bernaldi received a Noble Prize for his invention of Alternate Technology Organisms long before anyone ever thought of creating a true artificial brain. The ATOs he invented were basically cellular level micro-nano-robots that could be programed to repair human tissue. Microsurgeries to repair nerves, open capillaries in the brain, and do other things beyond human capability were now commonplace.
Doctor Ab, as he was usually called, became extremely rich off his invention. He also became extremely eccentric- or perhaps his wealth allowed his eccentricity to become more apparent. He despised the word "robot" and would never allow any of his organisms to be called robots. "They are not tiny little mechanical men running around in your veins with tool kits," he would scream. "They are technologically altered micro-organisms which are programed to mimic the cells of the human body."
PLATO, himself, was created- as are many great creations- almost by accident. Doctor Bernaldi was speaking to an orientation seminar for new doctoral interns at the Bernaldi Institute. One of them asked, "What happens to these tiny robots after they have done the work programmed for them?"
There was the expected immediate explosion where Dr. Ab screamed that they were not robots, but Alternate Technology Organisms. He then explained that the organisms were modified human cells to begin with. Thus, like any other cell in the body which has reached the end of its life cycle, they are excreted through the kidneys or bowels and become just another waste product from the body.
Another intern, Richard Mueller, then asked, "Doctor Bernaldi, what if all these excreted ATO cells get together in the sewers and form a totally new being?"
Doctor Ab laughed and said, "They can't because they are dead."
"OK then," Richard continued, "what if someone intentionally put a bunch of them together while they were still alive and programmed them to combine and evolve?"
"THAT IS TOTALLY PREPOSTEROUS!" Doctor Bernaldi roared. "How could you even think of such a thing!? Why it... Why it... it... it just might work."
After staring out into the room for a moment or two, he sputtered some more and then said, "Not for a whole body, of course... but for a brain... it just might work." He then went on to mutter about brain cells programmed to organize themselves into a proper brain.
The Bernaldi Institute's "Grow a Brain" project was Richard Mueller's doctoral thesis. After graduation, he became the lead scientist in charge- under Doctor Bernaldi, of course. It was Richard who argued that the brain would eventually become sentient and named the process a "Living Alternate Technology Organism." He was also one of a select few who donated cells harvested from their brains as the initial seed cells from which the brain would be grown.
Since this was the first of what would hopefully be many living computers, Doctor Richard Mueller named this first creation PLATO- Prototype Living Alternate Technology Organism. PLATO would be a living, sentient computer. That meant it would be possibly the most powerful computer ever created. It also meant that there was a great deal of controversy about the whole idea.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of mistrust and discussion when someone unveils a nearly sentient computer. Lawyers and legislators began arguing about how a living computer fits into the definitions of life. Ordinary people, who had seen too many monster movies, were more concerned that PLATO would break free from his creator and wreak havoc on the earth like some modern-day Frankenstein's monster or perhaps secretly evolve into SkyNet and start killing off the human race.
In response to all that, a federal law was passed which said that sentient or near-sentient computers could never be left completely alone. Furthermore, they had to be monitored regularly by a health care professional for mental stability.
That is where Marcella first entered the picture. She was hired as a night-shift operator primarily because she was working on her doctorate in psychology and would qualify as a health care professional.
It was a simple, boring job, but it paid well. Each night Marcy would sit there, all by herself, and watch PLATO work on this or that. Sometimes she would talk to him, but most of the time, she did homework or, more likely, used the super-highspeed connections to browse her favorite websites on the internet. Now that she had her degree, she was contemplating between finding a new position, or perhaps making the study of PLATO's psychology her life's work... hopefully as part of the regular day team.
For now, she continued her night work. Since she was there primarily because PLATO could never be left alone, there wasn't much for her to do. If anything ever happened which seemed odd or out of place, she was supposed to report it to whoever was on the schedule. They would then come in and check it out. There was one additional task which Marcella had taken upon herself just to keep from going nuts. That extra job was to go into the cell production area and set selecting dishes back in place when they got jammed in PLATO's processing equipment and popped out of their conveyers.
PLATO designed the complex machines and processes which created the "brain cells," and he controlled their actions without human action. There was one action, however, that PLATO could not perform on his own. Ultimately a human person was still required to load the raw materials into one end of the process. Normally a stack of selecting dishes and a new vial of stem cells supplied by PLATO was set up by the technicians just before they left for the day. Cells would automatically be deposited in the growth medium as the dishes made their slow trip through the growth chamber. Then in the morning, processed dishes containing completed cells were transferred via an enclosed metal conveyer belt into PLATO's habitat where he would oversee the process of absorbing them into himself. The empty dishes would be returned on the same belt.
Even the technicians who originally built PLATO- perhaps that should be the technicians who originally grew PLATO- even they did not understand much of the complex machinery which PLATO had designed to augment the growth of his intelligence and to solve other complex medical problems. Even the purpose of much of this equipment was unknown. When asked, PLATO would just reply, "It's for a future project."
The technicians and operators assumed that some of the machinery- especially the strange chairs and tables- had something to do with one of the projects which PLATO was working on involving remote neural paths. One of the few things which is beyond the healing capabilities of Dr. Bernaldi's marvelous ATOs is massive destruction of the spinal column. PLATO proposed that rather than attempting the reconstruction of the entire spinal column, the ATOs would instead create an interface to a another clump of ATOs near the base of the spine that could relay the neural messages to the lower portion of the body. In effect, the ATOs would create an internal wifi link to carry nerve impulses to and from the brain. Dr. Bernaldi knew that was impossible, but since PLATO, himself, was also impossible, he authorized the construction of any machine or mechanism that PLATO requested, even if its purpose was a mystery.
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It was nearly one am when PLATO asked, "Marcy, are there any technicians or engineers in the building?"
"No PLATO," Marcella answered, "You know that everyone has gone home for the night." She paused and then said, "Why do you ask?"
"I had hoped one of the techs might still be around," he responded. "I seem to have a jam in the cell dish feeder mechanism." After a short pause, he said softly, "I will just have to suspend growth operations for the night."
"Now PLATO," she chided, "you know that I can clear jams in the mechanism. You don't have to wait until morning."
She waited for a response, but PLATO said nothing. After a few moments she asked, "Is there a reason you didn't want me to clear the jam?"
