Six by Mark Alpert Read Free Book Online Page B

between are a dozen SUVs, each holding a terminally ill teenager and his or her parents. Shannon Gibbs is in the car behind us, along with her mother and father. I don’t know any of the other kids, but they came from all over the country. Each family arrived at Telluride in an Air Force Learjet, landing just before dawn. Then, as the sun came up, the soldiers loaded us into the convoy and we headed for the mountains.
    The Army is totally obsessed with keeping this project secret. Colonel Peterson told everyone he couldn’t answer any questions until we arrived at the Nanotechnology Institute, which is apparently very remote and heavily guarded. But after the long flight in the Learjet from New York to Colorado, the colonel allowed Dad and me to ride alone in our SUV, without an Army driver, so we could talk in private.
    Dad announced at the start of the drive that he would tell me everything about the Pioneer Project, but so far he hasn’t said a word. And to be honest, I’m not so anxious for him to begin. I’m in no rush to hear the details that horrified my mother. After her fit at Westchester Medical Center, she went home and locked herself in her bedroom, where she chose to stay rather than come with us to Colorado.
    After a while the road curves sharply to the north, climbing higher into the mountains. The convoy slows to about thirty miles per hour and Dad shifts the SUV to a lower gear. He shakes his head. “Look at all the snow on the ground. Hard to believe it’s almost April. I guess spring comes late around here, huh?”
    He glances sideways at me, clearly hoping for a response. But I’m not interested in talking about the weather, so I say nothing.
    â€œI’d hate to get caught in a snowstorm on this road,” he persists. “Good thing it’s a sunny day.”
    I feel sorry for him, actually. Dad’s terrible at communicating. He can’t talk about anything personal without getting upset, so he avoids difficult conversations. I was four when the doctors at Westchester Medical diagnosed my Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but it took Dad almost five years to work up the courage to explain what it meant for me. The same thing is happening now. He needs help getting started.
    â€œWe’re not here for the sightseeing, Dad. You said you were going to explain everything.”
    He looks straight ahead, staring at the road. “I know, I know.” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat. “There’s so much to tell you. I don’t know where to begin.”
    â€œStart with Sigma.”
    He nods. His hands squeeze the steering wheel. “Sigma is the eighteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. In mathematical formulas it symbolizes the sum of a sequence of numbers.”
    â€œOkay, I already knew that. What does—”
    â€œWe gave that name to our artificial-intelligence software because it was like a sum. Our research group developed Sigma by combining different kinds of AI programs.” He glances at me again, then turns away. “Some of the programs focused on pattern-recognition tasks, such as recognizing a face in the crowd. Other programs were more like the ones we designed for understanding language. They could find the answers to complex questions by searching through billions of documents and finding the connections.”
    â€œYou mean like QuizShow? The program that played Jeopardy ! ?”
    â€œYes, that was the prototype for a whole new class of AI software. Our strategy was to load all these artificial-intelligence programs into the neuromorphic circuitry we built and get them to compete with each other. Basically, we set up a computer version of Darwinian evolution. Only the strongest programs could survive.”
    â€œOkay, you lost me. How can the programs compete with each other?”
    â€œWe tested each program to see how well it could imitate human reasoning and conversational skills. We