Your living quarters within 400-foot-long space craft is a centrifugal drum equipped with an electronic library of literature and music. Here you relax, eat, exercise, sleep, and chat with Hal, the conversational computer who never forgets anything - not even your birthday.

Your mission is of such importance that it has been surrounded by the deepest official secrecy. You are probing a fantastic frontier, following a trial that has led to the outer edges

How was Hal going to defend himself against effective "death"? Dave was out for blood. What would you expect Hal to do in response? Lurk behind a space pod and bash Dave over the head with a handy oxygen cylinder as Dave came storming past? No, that would be too reminiscent of what a man-ape would do four million years ago.

Maybe Hal's human interaction programming should have been more thorough. The programming was done solely for the astronauts' comfort, and was never intended to help in any of the really important parts of the mission, such as making objective and effective decisions.

All of a sudden, in the middle of your mission Hal, the super smart computer, takes over the controls of the ship, and the astronauts try to disconnect it from the controls. It must be intensely frustrating for Hal to communicate with human beings. Hal's whole being is built around the ability to communicate at electrical energy speeds. There is never a moment when Hal is not obser

Some common words found in the essay are:
, Maybe Hal's, Arthur Clarke, Dave Frank,
Approximate Word count = 661
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)