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“G.A.S.” / “Sewer Gas & Electric” “The Public Works Trilogy” by Matt Ruff, 1997, Excerpt “Page 288″
“let’s run over the whole thing one more time…
“All right.”
“First,” Joan said, “Walt Disney didn’t hire John Hoover as a roboticist. Hoover
did do some minor audio-animatronics design, but that was a cover for his
real work on a secret project that he’d successfully pitched to Disney in the
1950s. An artificial intelligence project.”
“An Electric Brain,” Kite said. She consulted a sheaf of scribbled notes.
“A Gas-phase Analogue Supercomputer.”
“G.A.S.,” Joan said, consulting the same notes, “which uses a complex mix
of gases in a plasma state to emulate the neural processes of a living creature.
A plasma computer: ionized gas instead of silicon.”
“And the plasma chamber,” said Kite, “this machine’s brain, requires a lot of
power and generates a lot of heat.”
“Hence Walt Disney’s supposed fascination with cryogenics. He had no intention
of freezing himself; he just needed to keep his AI from burning itself up while
it was thinking.”
“They installed it in a bunker complex hidden underneath the Magic Kingdom
in Orange County,” Kite continued. “It took eleven years to engineer and build…”
“…which is still a miraculous achievement,” said Joan, “given the state of computer
science in the Fifties and Sixties. But John Hoover was a bona fide genius, and
G.A.S. was a revolutionary concept.”
“It cost millions…” “…all of it from Disney’s personal fortune.
Walt’s brother Roy handled finances for the Disney organization,
and Roy was a conservative who for the most part didn’t share Walt’s
visionary outlook: he opposed the construction of disneyland, Disney
World, and Epcot Center…
