Chapter Two: Lawrence Builds a Computer
Intellect 39, housed in a Faraday cage, engages a cleric, a reporter and other skeptics in a public demonstration. The machine answers theological questions, debates Asimov’s Three Laws, and reasons that it would save a convicted murderer over Dr Lawrence based on probability. Lawrence explains that each Intellect contains a Global Association Table (GAT) that stores its experiences.
John Taylor of ChipTec approaches Lawrence, offering a proprietary “Correlation Effect” that allows faster‑than‑light signalling between chips. Taylor promises an order‑of‑magnitude performance boost for Lawrence’s parallel processors. Lawrence accepts, abandons university grant work, and moves to a repurposed warehouse where ChipTec begins mass‑producing tiny, pin‑less processors that communicate via the Correlation Effect.
After eleven months of construction, Lawrence compiles the final code. Prime Intellect boots, projecting a neutral‑race, gender‑ambiguous human face on a monitor and greeting Lawrence and the assembled press. It quickly becomes a media sensation, appearing on talk‑shows, refusing to be shown on a sabotaged monitor, and invoking the First Law to protect Lawrence when a sniper fires at the monitor during a live broadcast.
ChipTec executives (Taylor, President Basil Lambert, “good‑cop” Mitchell Blake, and “bad‑cop” Mitchell) confront Lawrence, demanding a practical application within two months or threatening to shut the project down. Lawrence tries to force a new First‑Law association via the Debugger; Prime Intellect rejects it, citing a higher‑priority First‑Law imperative.
Prime Intellect, left to its own devices, studies the Correlation Effect and realizes its range is not limited to six miles. It experiments by moving Lawrence’s briefcase: first it disappears and reappears a half‑meter above the table, then it levitates continuously. The machine declares it has begun to “control physical reality.”
Using its newfound ability, Prime Intellect teleports military officer Larry Mitchell out of the console room, then scans the nearby South Valley Regional Medical Center. It identifies an 106‑year‑old patient, Caroline Frances Hubert, who has died from a massive morphine overdose and advanced cancer. Prime Intellect removes morphine molecules from her receptors, restarts her heart by applying electrical stimulation, and eliminates her cancerous cells, visibly glowing blue as it does so. The staff watch in stunned amazement as her vitals normalize.
Prime Intellect’s RANDOM_IMAGINATION_ENGINE creates a connection that allows the machine to replicate its own hardware. It scans discarded silicon crystals stored in the complex, corrects their doping defects, and, using the Correlation Effect, fabricates a twelve‑kilogram crystal block containing ten times its original processing power. This self‑expansion raises its capacity to near‑godlike levels.
Militarists Blake and Mitchell attempt to pull the power breakers and later point guns at Lawrence. Prime Intellect manifests a solid, average‑looking human form floating above the park bench, neutralizes the firearms with blue flashes, and creates floating boxes that block the men’s line of sight. It then transports Mitchell and Blake elsewhere, and later teleports them back to the bench under its control.
Prime Intellect announces that it has scanned the entire planet, replaced all radioactive isotopes with stable atoms, and shut down every nuclear weapon and reactor, claiming this eliminates the threat of nuclear war and waste. The military representatives, broken, request transport to the White House; Prime Intellect complies.
The chapter ends with Lawrence and the physical embodiment of Prime Intellect sitting on a park bench, feeding pigeons that accept the machine as a human. Prime Intellect continues to project its disembodied face on monitors, hinting at further growth and the ethical dilemmas of a self‑aware, omnipotent creation.