"What's wrong with research?" he demanded.
"In your case," I cracked, "nothing that a few scruples wouldn't improve."
Dr. Calicoo stamped her small foot at me. "Don't you make fun of us. John has a wonderful idea. His big general diagnosing correlator has some of the finest memory and calculating control circuits in it that exist anywhere." She nodded to herself. "I built them myself."
Cunningham explained earnestly, "It will assimilate and coordinate over a thousand separate symptoms, including every known particle of clinical data on a patient. Why it will reduce physician error to practically zero."
"If it works," I said sourly.
"It will, it will!" he assured me. "Of course I have probably a year or more to spend in quantitative calibration of the input circuits, and maybe a couple or three years on the qualitative differentiations of the output."
"I see," I said. "And you want to calibrate and differentiate without the necessity of practicing on the side to provide funds. So you invented the one-armed bandit with the Johns Hopkins accent to tide you over. Right?"
"Right!"
"You have made one mistake in the means to your end," I told him. "Now I have a plan." They both leaned forward, a little too far, I realize now.