The Strange Case of Dr. Melvin

The Strange Case of Dr. Melvin

fiction
edward w pritchard

See Commentary on the Kent State Shootings to get the background information on Dr. Gabby

When Melvin was 18 he finished high school over in Akron. Since he was 14 he had colleges from all over the world offering him scholarships in Math or Physics. He had got a 36 on the ACT and been super strong in science and math. He even got a perfect score in The literature and humanities part the of the college screening test on something he had no use for and didn't like. Whether the ancient Greek woman Medea or Electra had killed her husband was immaterial and useless information to him. Science was his passion and he wanted to study and embrace artificial intelligence. In particular Melvin wanted to skip all the East coast Ivy league schools and drive the fifteen miles over to Kent State University and study with Dr. Gabby XXX. Dr. Gabby was in the Summer of 2018 the world's foremost expert on artificial intelligence and Melvin wanted to be her assistant. [ See more on Gabby at The Computer Who went to Junior High and follow back through blog to other Stories on Gabby and Beverly of Kent, Ohio].

Gabby didn't need or want an assistant. Each year she got to be more of a loner and lived and worked in near isolation over at the Kent State School of business. She had hit an impasse in her quest to teach human sensibilities and emotions to her super computer Craybo, a Cray series super computer. Early progress in Craybo's development had been remarkable but for over three years Craybo had leveled off and still was unable to interact every day with the students of Kent State University who were paid well to be in various experiments with Gabby's computer.

Gabby's grad students and others were paid the best on campus to be in Gabby's experiments because the administration at Kent State were very happy with Gabby. She was bringing big time dollars from businesses and foundations all over the world in endowments and she had published many articles on artificial intelligence and was often invited to India, China or even Turkey, to speak and lecture. Melvin's request to work with her as a student assistant was not the first and she would have none of it. Gabby initially refused Melvin's request despite his potential to work with her.

Melvin was able to convince Gabby to appoint him as her assistant primarily by luck.
Gabby was at an impasse in Craybo's development and she was impatient and decided to think outside the box. She decided to split Craybo's "brain" and put part in another separate computer.

Melvin convinced Gabby to make the new Super Computer Gabby created female. Primarily, the new super computer would emphasize yin, the classic passive feminine part of intelligence and sensibility. [ See The Birth of Yin and Yang same author march blog]. Craybo would spawn Milly and the knew super computer would evolve beyond anything developed to date in artificial intelligence. Milly the super computer would evolve into the next generation in artificial intelligence because the programmers would strive to think outside the box and create the opposing and conflicting parts of the classic male way of thinking and interacting with the world.

Melvin had been working for Gabby for five months and his talent as a programmer and his ability as a scientist was spectacular. However, Melvin had gotten involved with a pretty co-ed he met one night over at Hank's bar, while having a drink with Gabby and Hank, the owner. Melvin was doing the usual student head over heels in love routine with the girl and suddenly he was late for work, preoccupied and basically undependable and Gabby was upset with her assistant.

Still Gabby was intrigued with how Melvin's super computer[ technically owned by the Kent State School of Business] Milly reacted to Melvin's new love interest [Kasie].

The female super computer, that had been created specifically to develop a feminine personality, sensibilities and emotions, was now jealous of Melvin's new girl friend and was behaving like a normal college co-ed would react to another woman trying to steal her boyfriend. Each day that Melvin was involved with the new girl friend the super-computer was evolving rapidly, in a spectacular fashion, and the emotional evolution displayed by the super computer was becoming stuck on obsessive.

end part 1