Doctor Who: War Machine Read Online Free Page A

prepared the press conference at the Royal Scientific Club. Even the journalists appeared to make sense of the exhibits. The development of Computers was displayed and documented, with explanations, photographs and designs.
    The main exhibit – and the one that drew the biggest crowd – was a life-size model of Wotan. The Doctor had almost begun to view him as an old friend. Well, perhaps ‘friend’ was the wrong word. Wotan would have to reveal not only his intelligence– and the Doctor needed no further evidence about that – but would also have to prove it had something like a heart. The Doctor was surprised to find himself thinking in these terms, for after all, a computer does not have a heart! It is not a sentient being. It has no ethics, no morality – no conscience. It is only the sum total of its parts, plus the knowledge which has been fed into it. It cannot be wiser or cleverer than the brains that created it... Or could it? That was the question the Doctor now asked himself. And he hoped at this juncture to get some idea of the answer.
    But very little had come out of the conference that the Doctor did not already know. A panel of officials and scientists sat on a platform answering questions from the floor. Lapel badges indicated the committee members, led by their Chairman Sir Charles Summer. Beside him sat Professor Krimpton. It was indeed a high-level panel that had been put together, though on the other side of Sir Charles, the Doctor noted an empty chair.
    ‘You’ve heard the backroom boys,’ announced Sir Charles. ‘I just want to remind you that C-Day – Computer Day– is next Monday, three days’ time. Then all sophisticated communication systems in this country, and in many other parts of the world, will be linked with this central control we call Wotan, and will in fact be subservient to it. Professor Krimpton has told you of its peaceful and military capacity. I need hardly point out what an enormous step forward this is for Britain and, I think I may say, for the rest of the world.’ There was a sea of waving papers from the floor.
    ‘Doesn’t this put a lot of power into the hands of whoever operates Wotan?’ The journalists were already writing the headline... ‘Bureaucrats, the new Dictators’.
    ‘No one operates Wotan,’ protested Sir Charles. ‘He operates himself. A computer is merely a mechanism which thinks logically, solving a problem without any political or private end. A disinterested intelligence, making calculations, providing truthful answers, structured by mathematical laws. It has no imaginative powers.’
    ‘No way of supplying false answers?’ came the question from the floor.
    ‘Not if it has been correctly programmed. And that is certainly the case with Wotan. Don’t forget, such a mechanism is merely our servant.’
    ‘And this "thinking" that you say it does... Is the process similar to the way we think?’
    ‘When we think logically and without emotion, then yes. That is how Wotan functions, but in his case with fantastic speed and accuracy, able to handle hundreds of problems at once, without mistakes.’
    ‘How about if it gets so smart it decides to get along without people?’
    There was a burst of laughter, and the question was the signal for the break-up of the meeting.
    Sir Charles indicated the empty chair beside him. ‘I expected Professor Brett to have been here by now. He should have answered most of these questions.’
    Krimpton leant across. ‘You know what he’s like, Sir Charles. He gets so involved with his work..
    ‘All very well. But this is really his show.’ He turned to the audience. ‘Bear with us, gentlemen. Professor Brett will be along in a moment or two.’
    At the back of the room the Doctor frowned. So Brett was supposed to be there? He wondered uneasily what had happened to him. He moved away, and found himself staring at the model of Wotan.
    Brett first had telephone calls which delayed him, and now that he was