“Then what could be happening?”

“I wish I knew. Reports from our brokers will be coming in soon. We can get down to your lab then. What is it that you want me to see?”

Bill McCrory smiled nervously. “I think we had better let Brian explain it to you. He says it is the important breakthrough he has been waiting for. I’m afraid that I don’t understand what it is myself. A lot of this artificial intelligence stuff is beyond me. Communications is my field.”

J. J. Beckworth nodded understandingly. Many things were happening now in this research center that had not been allowed for in the original plan. Megalobe had originally been founded for a single purpose; to catch up and hopefully pass the Japanese with HDTV research. High-definition television, which started with a wider screen and well over a thousand scan lines. The United States had almost missed the boat on this one. Only the belated recognition of foreign dominance in the worldwide television market had brought the Megalobe founding corporations and the Pentagon together — but only after the Attorney General had looked the other way while Congress had changed the antitrust laws to make possible this new kind of industrial consortium. As early as the 1980s the Defense Department — or rather one of its very few technically competent departments, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — had identified HDTV not only as an important tool in future warfare but as being vital for industrial progress in future technologies. So even after the years of reduced budgets DARPA had managed to come up with the needed research money.

Once the funding decisions had been made, with utmost speed all the forces of modern technology had been assembled on a barren site in the California Desert. Where before there had only been arid sand — and a few small fruit farms irrigated by subsurface water — there was now a large and modern research center. A number of new and exciting projects had been undertaken, J. J. Beckworth knew, but he was vague about the details of some of them. As Chairman he had other, more urgent responsibilities — with six different bosses to answer to. The red blink of his telephone light cut through his thoughts.