Vladimir Savchenko. Self-discovery
страница №5
...ets introduced me and explained that I couldbuy up the bureau's damned solid-state circuits. But I agreed to benefact
and save Zhalbek Balbekovich only on the following conditions: (a) all
38,000 cells would be mounted on panels in accordance with a rough sketch I
gave him; (b) the cells would be connected by feed bars; © each cell would
be wired and; (d) all this would be done by the end of the year.
"You have great production forces here. It won't be difficult for you."
"For the same money? But the cells themselves cost fifty thousand!"
"Yes, but they didn't fit the FTD. Keep that in mind."
"You're a scourge, not a benefactor," said Zhalbek Balbekovich, sadly
waving his hand. "Fill out the order, Elena Ivanovna. We'll send it in from
our department. And I'm putting this whole thing in your hands."
May Allah bless your name, Zhalbek Balbekovich!
To this very day, I think that I won Lena's heart not with my great
qualities, but because-when the cells had been mounted on the panels and the
edges of the microelectrical cube looked like fields of colorful wires-I
answered her tremulous question "And how should they be connected?" with a
devil-may-care:
"However you like! Blue to red-and make sure it's aesthetically
pleasing!"
Women respect the irrational.
And that's how it all happened. Chance does make itself felt. (Oh, now
it's beginning to seem that during the course of my work I've developed a
worshipful attitude toward chance! The fanaticism of a convert.... Before,
to tell the truth, I was a real sluggard, preaching humility and resignation
in the face of "unlucky" events. If you think about it, such feelings always
mask our spiritual laziness and complacency. Now I was beginning to
understand an important aspect of chance, whether in life or science: you
won't conquer it with reason alone. Working with chance demands quick
thinking, initiative, and a readiness to change your plans... but it's just
as stupid to worship it as it is to deride it. Chance is neither enemy nor
friend, neither God nor devil. Whether chance is mastered or lost depends on
the person. And those who believe in luck and fate can go out and buy
lottery rickets!)
"But the name laboratory of Random Research' is too odious," said
Arkady Arkadievich, signing the order to establish an unstructured lab,
directed by engineer Krivoshein, with the concomitant material, fire safety,
and other responsibilities. "You shouldn't give people straight lines. Let's
call it something more restrained, like 'New Systems Laboratory.' And then
we'll see."
That meant that doing my dissertation remained my major problem. Beyond
that, it was "we'll see." I have yet to solve the problem.
Chapter 7
If an identification computer, or perceptron, signals "garbage" in
response to a picture of an elephant, to the depiction of a camel, and to
the portrait of a major scientist, this does not necessarily mean that it is
irreparable. It may just be philosophically inclined -K. Prutkov-enzhener,
Thought 30
Naturally, I had hoped, for my spirits, that the work would be
livelier. How could I not dream, when the mastermind of cybernetics, Walter
Ross Ashby, doctor of neurophysiology, kept coming up with ideas, each more
entrancing than the next! Random processes as the source of the development
and ruin of any system, . . . strengthening the thinking capabilities of
humans and machines by distinguishing the valuable thoughts from the
nonsense in random expression,... and finally, noise as the raw material for
extracting information-yes, yes, the "white noise," that troublemaker on
which I lost more than one year and more than one idea trying to drive it
out of circuitry!
In general, if you think about it, the founder of this tendency has to
be considered not Dr. Ashby, but the now-forgotten director of the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow, who (in order to create ominous rumblings in the crowd
scenes of Boris Godunov) first ordered each extra to repeat his home address
and phone number. But Ashby has posited solving the reverse problem. We take
noise-the surf, the hiss of coal dust in a mike, anything-and plug it into a
machine. From the noise chaos we extract the largest "splashes." This gives
us a pattern of impulses. And impulse patterns are binary numbers. And
binary figures can be changed into decimal ones. And decimals are numbers:
for example, the numbers assigned to words in a dictionary for machine
translation. And a collection of words is a sentence. Of course, for now,
the sentences are varied: false, real, abracadabra-informational raw
material. But the next cascade will have two streams of information-the kind
that is intelligible to people, and this raw material. Then operations of
comparison, coincidence, and noncoincidence-and everything nonsensical is
filtered out, as is the banal. Then original new thoughts, discoveries and
inventions, the works of unborn poets and writers, philosophical thoughts
from the future appear! A thinking computer!
Of course, the respected doctor did not explain how to perform this
miracle. His idea is embodied only in squares connected by arrows on a piece
of paper. In general, the question of how to do it is not highly esteemed in
academic circles. "If you remove yourself from the difficulties of technical
realization, then in principle you will be able to imagine...." But how can
I remove myself from it?
Well, enough whining! That's why I'm an experimenter, in order to test
ideas. That's why I have a lab. The walls give off the smell of fresh oil
paint. The air conditioner hums. New instruments shine on the equipment
shelves. Vessels and jars with reagents sparkle in the cupboards, and
colorful piles of wires and soldering irons, their points still red and
uncovered with scale, wait for me. Apparatus, neatly wrapped in plastic, sit
on the counters-and their pointers aren't bent yet and their scales aren't
dusty yet. Dictionaries, textbooks, reference books, and monographs are
arranged on the bookshelves. And in the middle of the room, glistening in
the January sun, stands the TsVM-12, the automatic digital printer, with
lacy, multicolored wires in the crystal unit. Everything is new, unsullied,
unscratched, and everything exudes the wise, rational beauty developed by
generations of craftsmen and engineers.
How could I not dream? And what if I succeeded? Actually, for myself,
my dreams were much more modest: not of a supercomputer that would be
smarter than man (in general, I'm not crazy about that idea, even though
lama systems technologist), but of a computer that would understand man, the
better to do its work. Then that idea seemed possible to me. Indeed, if a
computer can exhibit definite behavior based on everything that I tell and
show it, and so on, then the problem is solved. That means that it has begun
seeing, hearing, and smelling through its sensors in the purely human sense
of these words, without quotation marks or explanations. And then its
behavior could be adapted for any work or problem-that's why it's a
universal computer.
Yes, then in January, it all seemed possible and simple; the sea was
only knee-high. Oh, the inspirational quality of new equipment! The
fantastic green loops on the screen, the confident hum of the transformers,
the crackling of the relays, the blinking of the lights on the panel, the
precise movements of the arrows and pointers.... It feels as though you're
going to measure everything, conquer it all, do it all, and even an ordinary
microscope inspires the confidence that right now (with a magnification of
four hundred and double polarized light) you will see something that no one
else has ever seen!
Why even talk about it? What researcher hasn't dreamed at the outset of
a project, didn't imagine handling the hardest tasks? What researcher hasn't
experienced that overwhelming impatience when you're rushing-hurry!
hurry!-to finish the boring preparatory work-hurry! hurry!-plot the course
of the experiment, and get on with it?
And then . . . and then the everyday lab worries, the everyday
mistakes, the everyday failures break your dream's spirit. And then you're
ready to settle for anything, just so that the whole thing wasn't a waste.
That's what happened to me.
Writing about failure is like reliving it. So I'll be brief. The plan
was like this: we would plug the 38,000-cell crystal unit into the TsVM-12,
and everything else would go into the crystal unit's input: the mikes, the
smell, moisture and temperature sensors, the tesometric feelers, the
photomatrices with a focusing probe, and Monomakh's Crown, to compute the
brain's biowaves. The source of external information was me, that is,
something moving, noisy, changing shape and its coordinates in space, having
temperature and nervous potential. You could hear me, see me, feel me, take
my temperature and blood pressure, analyze my breath, even climb into my
soul and thoughts-go right ahead! The signals from the sensors would have to
feed the crystal unit, stimulating various cells in it; the crystal unit
would form and "pack" the signals into logical combinations for the TsVM-12;
the computer would deal with them as though they were usual problems, and
produce something meaningful. In order to make it easier for the computer, I
programmed all the number-words from A to Z in the computer translation
dictionary into its memory bank.
And . . . nothing. The selsyn motors, whining gently, moved the feeler
and lenses when I moved around the room. The control oscilloscopes showed a
daisy chain of impulses, which jumped from the crystal unit to the computer.
The current flowed. The lights blinked. But during the first month the
digital printer didn't stir once to make a single mark on the punched tape.
I punctured the crystal unit with all the sensors. I read poems. I
sang. I gestured. I ran and I jumped in front of the lenses. I stripped and
dressed. I let the feelers touch me (brr! those cold feelers!). I put on
Monomakh's Crown and-O God!-tried to influence it. I was ready for any magic
formula.
But the TsVM-12 could not put out abracadabra; it wasn't made that way.
If the problem has a solution, it solves it; if it doesn't, it stops.
Judging by the panel lights, something was going on, but every five or six
minutes the "stop" signal went on, and I had to press the reset button. And
it would begin all over again.
Finally, I started thinking about it. The computer had to be performing
arithmetical and logical operations with the impulses from the crystal unit.
Otherwise, what else could it be doing? That meant that even after these
operations the information was still so raw and contradictory that the
computer could not bring the logical ends together. So it would stop! That
meant that one cycle in the computer wasn't enough. That meant-and here, as
usual in these cases, I was embarrassed for not having thought of it
sooner-that meant that I had to arrange for feedback between the computer
(from the units where the impulses still were) and the crystal unit! Then
the raw material would be inputted into the clever cube, transformed there
one more time, and then fed into the computer, and so on, until perfect
clarity reigned.
I perked up. Now we were cooking! I can condense the story about how
150 logic cells and dozens of matrices burned out because the TsVM and
crystal unit were out of sync (smoke, acrid smells, transistors flaming like
bullets in an oven, and me-instead of cutting off the voltage on the panel,
I ran for the fire extinguisher on the wall!), and how I got new cells,
soldered the transition circuits, and coordinated the cycles of all the
units-just the usual difficulties of technical realization. But the
important thing was I got the project off the ground.
On February 151 finally heard the long-awaited clatter: the machine
printed out a string of numbers on the punched tape. Before deciphering it,
I circled the table on which the piece of tape lay, smoked and smiled
vaguely. The computer had begun behaving. There it was, the computer's first
sentence: "Memory 107 bits."
It wasn't what I was expecting. That's why I didn't realize right away
that the computer "wanted" (I can't write a word like that without quotes)
to increase its memory bank.
Actually, it was all very logical. It was receiving complex information
that had to be stored somewhere, but the banks were already filled. Increase
the memory banks! A commonplace task in building computers.
If it weren't for Alter Abramovich's respect for me, the computer's
request would have gone unheeded. But he gave me three cubes of magnetic
memory and two of ferroelectric memory. And everything proceeded smoothly: a
few days later the TsVM-12 repeated its demand, and then again and again....
The computer developed serious demands.
What was I feeling then? Satisfaction. Finally something was happening!
I tried the results out on my dissertation-to-be. I was a little put off by
the fact that the computer was working only for itself.
Then the computer began building itself! Actually, that was logical
too; complex information had to be processed by units more complex than the
standard ones of the TsVM-12.
My work load increased. The printer printed out codes and numbers of
logic cells, and announced where and how they should be added. At first the
computer was satisfied with standard cells. I mounted them on auxiliary
panels.
(I'm only beginning to realize it now, but that was precisely the
moment, if you look at it academically, that I made a grave methodological
error in my work. I should have stopped and figured out just what circuits
and logic my complex was building for itself: the sensors, crystal unit and
TsVM-12 with an increased memory. And then, only when I had it figured out,
move on. And when you think about it, a computer building itself without
being programmed to do so-what a terrific dissertation topic! If I had done
it right, I could have gotten a doctorate right there.
But curiosity took over. The complex was obviously straining to
develop. But why? To understand man? It didn't look like it. The computer
seemed quite satisfied that I understood it and diligently carried out my
commands. People make machines for their own aims. But what kind of aims
could a machine have? Or maybe it wasn't an aim, but a kind of innate
accumulation instinct, which is found in all systems of a certain
complexity, be they earthworms or electrical machines? And what limits would
the complex reach?
It was then that I let loose the reins-and I still don't know whether
that was good or bad....)
In mid-March the computer, which had evidently learned from Monomakh's
Crown about the latest developments in electronics, began asking for
cryosars and cryotrons, runnel transistors, film circuits, micromatrices....
I had no time for analysis; I was rushing all over the institute and the
whole city, wheeling and dealing, lying and cajoling, trying to get my hands
on all this chic stuff.
And it was all for nothing. A month later the computer "got bored" with
electronics and "took up" chemistry.
Actually, this shouldn't have been unexpected either: the computer had
chosen the best way to build itself. After all, chemistry is nature's way.
Nature had neither soldering irons nor cranes, nor welders, nor motors, not
even shovels-it merely combined chemicals, heated and cooled them, lit them,
boiled them... and that's how every living thing on earth came about.
That was the point, that everything the computer did was consecutive
and logical! Even its desires for me to put on Monomakh's Crown-and that was
the most frequent request-were transparent.
Rather than process raw information from photo, sound, smell, and other
sensors, it was much easier to use information already processed by me. In
science, many do that.
But, my God, what reagents the computer demanded: from distilled water
to sodium trimethyldyphtorparaamintetrachlorphenylsulfate and from DNA and
RNA to a specific brand of gasoline! And the convoluted technological
circuits I had to get!
The lab was changing into a medieval alchemist's den before my very
eyes; it was filled with bottles, two-necked flasks, autoclaves, and stills.
I connected them with hoses, glass tubing, and wires. My supply of reagents
and glass was depleted in a week and I had to requisition more and more.
The noble, soothing electrical smells, rosin and heated insulation,
were replaced with the swampy miasmas of acids, ammonia, vinegar, and God
knows what else. I wandered lost in these chemical jungles. The stills and
hoses bubbled, gurgled, and sighed. The mixtures in the flasks and bottles
fermented and changed color; they precipitated, dissolved, and regenerated
metallic pulsating clumps and pieces of shimmering gray threads. I poured
and sprinkled according to the computer's directions and understood nothing.
Then, the computer suddenly asked for four more automatic printers. I
was happy: so the computer was interested in something other than chemistry!
I worked at it, got the stuff, connected it... and off it went!
(Probably, this was the point at which I created Ashby's "power
information retrieval" or something like it. Who knows! That was when I
became hopelessly confused.)
Now the lab sounded like a typing pool. The machines were printing out
numbers. Paper ribbon with columns of numbers poured out of the machines
like manna from heaven. I rolled up the tapes, picked out the words
separated by spaces, translated them, and made sentences.
The "true" phrases were very strange and enigmatic. For example: "....
twenty-six kopeks, like from Berdichev." That was one of the first. Was that
a fact, a thought? Or a hint? How about this: "An onion like a steel
wound...." It resembles Mayakovsky's "A street like an open wound." But what
does it mean? Is it a pathetic imitation? Or maybe a poetic discovery that
contemporary poets haven't reached yet?
I deciphered another tape: "The tenderness of souls, taken in Taylor's
series expansion, in the limits of zero to infinity comes down to a
biharmonic function." Well put, no?
And all of it was like that: either nonsensical excerpts or something
"schizophrenic." I was going to take some of the tapes to the
mathlinguists-maybe they could figure it out-but I changed my mind, fearing
a scandal. Meaningful information came only from the first printer: "Add
such and such reagent to flasks 1,3, and 7. Lower the voltage by five volts
in electrodes 34-123." And so on. The computer remembered "to feed itself,"
and therefore it hadn't "gone mad." What was going on?
The most painful part was knowing that there was nothing I could do. I
had had inexplicable things happen in other experiments, but in those, at
least, I could always backtrack and repeat the experiment. If the bad effect
disappeared, all the better; if not, we could analyze it. But here, there
was nothing that could be replayed, nothing that could be turned back. I
even dreamed of wavy, snakelike tapes in scaly numeral skins, and tried to
figure out what the computer was trying to say.
I didn't even know where to hide the rolls of tape. In our institute we
use the tape two ways: the ones with answers to new questions are turned in
to the archives, and the rest are taken home to be used as toilet paper-very
practical. I had enough rolls for every bathroom in Academic Town.
And when one fine day in April (after a sleepless night in the lab
fulfilling every caprice of the computer: pouring, sprinkling, regulating)
printer Number 3 gave me the following sentence: "A streptocidal striptease
with trembling streptoccoci,..." I knew that there was no point in
continuing.
I took all the rolls out onto the lawn, ruffled them up (I might have
been muttering: "Streptocide, huh? Berdichev? Tenderness of the soul?
Onions?...'' I don't remember) and set fire to them. I sat by the bonfire,
keeping warm, had a cigarette and understood that the experiment was a
failure. And not because nothing had happened, but because I had gotten a
mess. Once for a lark Valery Ivanov and I welded from all the materials we
had on hand a "metallosemiconducting potpourri" in a vacuum oven. We got a
breathtakingly colored ingot; we broke it down for analysis. Each crumb of
the ingot showed all the effects of solid body-from tunnel to transistor-and
they were all unsteady, unstable, and unreproducible. We threw the potpourri
in the garbage.
And this was the same thing. The point of scientific solutions is to
find what is necessary in the mass of qualities and of effects in an
element, in matter, or in a system, and to throw out the chaff. And it
hadn't worked here. The computer had not learned to understand my
information. I headed to the lab to turn off the current.
And in the hallway my eye fell on a tank-a beautiful vessel made of
transparent teflon, 2 x 1.5 x 1.2 meters; I had acquired it back in December
with the idea of using the teflon for other things, but I hadn't needed it.
And the tank gave me a final and completely mad idea. I put all the printers
in the hall and put the tank in their place. I brought all the wires from
the computer, the ends of the piping, tubing, and hoses, poured out the
remains of the reagents, covered the smelly mess with water and turned to
the computer with the following speech:
"Enough numbers! You can not express the world in binary numbers,
understand? And even if it were possible, what point is there to it? Try it
another way: in images, in something tangible, damn you!"
I locked the lab and left with a firm determination to get some rest. I
hadn't been able to sleep for the entire past week.
Those were a pleasant ten days-calm and soothing. I slept late, charged
my batteries, took showers. Lena and I took the motorcycle outside town,
went to the movies, took long walks, kissed. "Well, how are our solid-state
circuits doing?" she would ask. "They haven't gone soft yet?" I would answer
in kind and change the subject. "I have nothing to do with any circuits, or
computers, or experiments!" I would remind myself. "I don't want to be
hauled away from the lab one day in a very cheery mood wearing a jacket with
inordinately long sleeves."
But something was bothering me. I had run off, abandoned the project.
What was going on in there? And what had happened? (I was already thinking
of the experiment in the past tense.) It looked as though, through random
information, I had started some kind of synthesis in the complex. But what
kind of crummy synthesis was it? Synthesis of what?
Chapter 8
The waiter wrapped the bottle in a towel and opened it. The room was
filled with a roar and smoke, and unshaven cheeks and a green turban rose to
the ceiling.
"What's this?"
"It's a genie!"
"But 1 ordered champagne! Let me have the complaint book."
-A contemporary fairy tale
A man was walking toward me on the paved path. I could see the green
trees and white columns of the old institute building behind him. I was
headed for the accounting office. Everything was normal in the grounds. The
man had a slightly rolling gait, swinging his arms, and he didn't quite
limp, but stepped more carefully with his right foot than with his left. I
noticed that particularly. The wind made his raincoat flap and ruffled his
red hair.
My first thought: "Where have I seen this guy?"
The closer we got to each other, the more I saw of him: his sloping
forehead with a widow's peak and steep ridges over the eyes, flat cheeks
with a reddish, week-old stubble, haughtily pursed lips, and bored,
squinting eyes. No, we had definitely met before. It was impossible to
forget an obnoxious face like that. And that jaw-my God!-it should be worn
only in the closet.
My second thought: "Should I say hello or walk by indifferently?"
And then everything around me no longer existed. I tripped on the flat
pavement and stood stock still. The person coming toward me was me.
My third thought (edited): "What the...."
The man stopped in front of me.
"Hello."
"H-h-hello...." A thought sprang up from the chaos that ruled in my
brain. "Hey, are you from the film studio?"
"The film studio? I recognize my independence!" My double smiled. "No,
Val, the studios aren't planning a movie about us yet. Though now, who
knows."
"Listen here, I'm not Val to you, but Valentin Vasilyevich Krivo-shein!
Some pushy guy like you...."
The man smiled, obviously enjoying my anger. I could tell that he was
much more prepared for our meeting and was relishing his upper hand.
"And... be so kind as to explain: who you are, how you come to be on
institute grounds, and why you are wearing that makeup and outfit to look
like me?"
"Sure," he said. "Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein, head of the New
Systems Lab. Here's my pass, if you like." He displayed my worn, used pass.
"And I came here from the lab, naturally."
"Ah, so that's it?" It's important not to lose your sense of humor in
situations like this. "Very nice to meet you. Valentin Vasilyevich, you say?
From the lab? I see ... uh-huh."
And then I realized that I believed him. Not because of the pass, of
course. You could fool anyone with a pass. Either it was the realization
that the scar over my eyebrow and the brown birthmark on my cheek, which I
always saw in the mirror on my left, actually were supposed to be on the
right side of the face. Or it was something in his behavior that absolutely
ruled out the possibility of a practical joke. I was scared. Had I really
gone mad during the experiments and run into my split personality? "I hope
no one sees us. I wonder, to anyone else, am I here alone or are there two
of us?" I thought.
"So-from the lab, you say?" I tried tricking him. "Then why are you
coming from the old building?"
"I was in accounting. Today's the twenty-second." He took out a roll of
five-ruble notes and counted off part of it. "Here's your cut."
I took the money and counted it. Then:
"Why only half?'
"Oh, God!" my double sighed expressively. "There are two of us now, you
know."
(That exaggerated, expressive sigh-I'll never sigh like that. I didn't
know you could demean someone with a sigh. And his diction-if you can call
the absolute absence of diction diction!-do I really spit out words like
that?)
"I took the money from him, and that means he really exists," I
thought. "Or are my senses tricking me? Damn it, I'm a researcher, and I
couldn't care less about senses until I know what's going on here!"
"So you maintain that... you've come out of a locked and sealed lab?"
"Uh-hum. Definitely from the lab. From the tank."
"From the tank, my, oh.... What do you mean, from the tank?"
"Just that, from the tank. You could have set up some handles. I barely
managed to get out."
"Listen, drop this! You don't think you could really convince me that
you were . . . that I was . . . no, that you were made by the computer?"
The double sighed once more in the most demeaning manner possible.
"I have the feeling it's going to take you a long time to get used to
the idea that this has happened. I should have known. After all, you saw
that there was living matter in the flasks?"
"Big deal. I've seen mold, too, growing in damp places. But that didn't
mean that I was present at the conception of life. All right, let's assume
that something living did arise in the flasks. I don't know. I'm no
biologist. But what do you have to do with it?"
"What do you mean?" Now it was his turn to get angry. "And what did you
think it would create: an earthworm? a horse? an octopus? The computer was
collecting and processing information about you. It saw you. It heard,
smelled, and observed you. It counted the biowaves of your brain! You were
around so much you callused its eyes! There you are. If you have motorcycle
parts you can only make a motorcycle, not a vacuum cleaner."
"Hm, all right. Then where are the shoes, the suit, the pass, and the
raincoat from?"
"Damn it! If it can create a person, how hard do you think it is for
the computer to grow a raincoat?"
(The victorious glint in the eye, the clumsy gestures, the arrogant
tone of voice. Am I really that obnoxious when I feel I'm right about
something?)
"Grow?" I felt the fabric of his coat. A shudder ran through me. A
raincoat wasn't like that.
Major things don't fit into the brain immediately, at least not in
mine. I remember when I was in school I had to take charge of a delegate to
a youth festival, a young hunter from the Siberian tundra; I showed him
around Moscow. He took in the sights implacably and calmly: the bronze
statues at the Economic Achievement Exhibits, the subway escalators, the
heavy traffic. And when he saw the tall building of MSU, he simply said,
"With poles and skin you can build a small hut- with rock, a big one." But
when we were in the lobby of the Nord Restaurant, where we had stopped off
for a bite, he came face to face with a stuffed polar bear with a tray in
its paws- and that amazed him! That was what happened to me. My double's
raincoat resembled mine very much, down to the ink spot that I had added one
day trying to get my pen to work. But the fabric was more elastic and almost
greasy. The buttons were attached to flexible outgrowths, and there were no
stitches in the fabric. "Listen, is it attached to you? Can you take it
off?" My double was driven to a frenzy.
"That does it! It's not necessary to undress me in this cold wind to
prove that I'm you! I can explain it without that. The scar over the eye-
that's when you fell down when your father was teaching you to ride a horse.
The torn ligament in the right knee happened during the soccer finals in
high school. What else do I have to remind you of? How you used to secretly
believe in God as a child? How as a freshman you used to boast that you had
known many women, when actually you lost your virginity in Taganrog just
before graduation?" (That son of a bitch! The examples he picked!) "Hm, all
right; but you know, if you're me, I'm not so crazy about me.
"Neither am I," he grunted. "I thought I had some smarts...." His face
tensed. "Shhhh, don't turn around!" Footsteps behind me. "
"Good day, Valentin Vasilyevich," said Harry Hilobok, assistant
professor, sciences candidate, scientific secretary and institute busybody.
I didn't get a chance to open my mouth. My double grinned marvelously
and nodded:
"Good day to you, Harry Haritonovich!"
A couple walked past us in the light of his smile. A plump brunette
clicked her heels merrily on the pavement and Hilobok, walking in step,
minced along as though he was wearing a tight skirt.
"Perhaps, I didn't quite understand you, Lyudochka," he buzzed in his
baritone, "but I, from the point of view of not understanding completely, am
only expressing my opinion."
"Harry has a new one," my double announced. "You see, even Hilobok
accepts me, and you have doubts. Let's go home!"
The only explanation I can think of for following him so quietly to
Academic Town was that I was completely flabbergasted.
In the apartment, he headed straight for the bathroom. I heard the
shower running, and then he stuck out his head:
"Hey, sample number one, or whatever your name is. If you want to make
sure that I'm all in order, come on in. And you can soap my back while
you're at it."
So I did. It was a living person. And he had my body. By the way, I
didn't expect such thick folds of fat on my stomach and sides. I have to
work out with my barbells more often.
While he washed, I paced the room, smoked and tried to accustom myself
to the fact that a computer had created a man. A computer had re-created me.
Oh, nature, is this really possible? The ridiculous medieval ideas about a
homunculus, . . . Wiener's idea that the information in a man could be
decoded into impulses, transmitted over any distance, and reordered into a
man again, in the form of an image on a screen, . . . Ashby's assertion that
there was no major difference between the work of the brain and of a
computer (but of course, Sechenov had maintained that earlier, too),... all
that had just been clever talk to keep the brain going. Try to do something
practical with any of those ideas!
And now it looked as if it had been done? There, on the other side of
the door, splashing and snorting, was no Ivanov, Petrov, or Sidorov-I would
have tossed them out on their ear-but me. And those rolls with the numbers?
I guess I had burned the "paper" me.
I was trying to extract short, usable truths from the combinations of
numbers, but the computer went deeper than that. It stored information,
combining it this way and that, compared it through feedback, picked and
chose what was necessary and at some level of complexity "discovered" life!
And then the computer developed it to the level of man. But why? I
wasn't trying to do that!
Now, as I think about it calmly, I can figure it out. It did exactly
what I was trying to do. I wanted a machine that could understand man and
that's all. "Do you understand me?" "Oh, yes!" answers the listener, and
both go about their business, happy with each other. In conversation it's
much easier. But in experiments with computers I shouldn't have confused
understanding with agreement. That's why (better late than never) it's
important to figure out what understanding is.
There is practical, or goal, understanding. You put in a program; the
computer understands it and does what is expected of it. "Attack, Prince!"
and Prince grabs the pants cuff of a passerby, "Gee!" and the horses turn to
the right. "Haw!" and they go left. This kind of primitive understanding of
the gee-haw type is accessible to many living and inanimate systems. It is
controlled by achievement of the goal, and the more primitive the system,
the simpler the goal must be and the more detailed the programmed task.
But there is another understanding: mutual understanding. A complete
transferral of your information to another system. And for this, the system
receiving the information must not be any simpler than the system giving the
information. I didn't give the computer a goal. I was waiting for it to
finish building itself and making itself more complex. But it never
finished-and that's natural. Its goal became the complete understanding of
my information, not only verbal, but all of it. (The goal of a
computer-that's another loose concept that shouldn't be played with. Simply
put, information systems behave according to certain laws that somewhat
resemble the rudiments of thermodynamics. In my system sensors, crystal
units, TsVM-12 had to reach an informational equilibrium with the
environment-just as the iron ingot in the oven must achieve temperature
equilibrium with the coals. This equilibrium is mutual understanding. And it
cannot be achieved on the level of circuitry nor on the level of simple
organisms.)
And that's how it happened. Only man is capable of mutual understanding
with man. And for good mutual understanding, a close friend. My double was
the product of informational equilibrium between the computer and me. But,
incidentally, the pointers on the informational scales never did match up. I
wasn't in the lab then and didn't meet face to face with my newly hatched
double. And later everything went differently for us anyway.
In a word, it was horrifying how poorly I had run the experiment. The
only point in my favor was that I had finally thought of setting up the
feedback mechanism.
An interesting thought: if I had run the experiment strictly,
logically, throwing out dubious variants, would I have gotten the same
results? Never in my life! I would have come up with a steady, sure-fire
Ph.D. thesis, and nothing more, hi science, mostly mediocre things
happen-and I was prepared for mediocrity.
So everything was all right? Why does sadness gnaw at me? Why do I keep
harping on my mistakes? I succeeded. Because it didn't go by the rules? Are
there any rules for discoveries? Much happens by accident that you can't put
down to your scientific vision. What about Galvani's discovery, or X-rays,
or radioactivity, or electronic emissions, or any discovery that is the
basis of some science or other and is related to chance. I still don't
understand a lot of it? That's the situation with many scientists. Nothing
to be upset about. Then why this self-torture?
I guess the problem is something else: you can't work that way now.
Science has become very serious now, not like in the days of Galvani and
Roentgen. This is the way, without thinking, that you can come up with a
force that can destroy the whole world instantly-with a brilliant
experimental proof....
My double came out of the bathroom rosy pink and in my pajamas and
settled in front of the mirror to comb his hair. I stood behind him. Two
identical faces stared out from the mirror. Only his wet hair was darker.
He took out the electric razor from the closet and plugged it in. I
watched him shave and almost felt that I was visiting him; his behavior was
so casual and at-home. I couldn't resist speaking up:
"Listen, do you at least realize how unusual this situation is?" "What?
Don't bother me!" He was obviously beyond being interested in the fact.
The graduate student put down the diary and shook his head: well,
Valentin the Original didn't know people very well.
He had also been in shock. His sense had told him that he woke up in
the tank, understanding everything: where he was and how he got there.
Actually, his discovery began then. And his insolence was only a cover-up.
He was searching for a mode of behavior that would keep him from being
reduced to a lab guinea pig.
He picked up the diary.
"But you appeared from a machine, not from a mother's womb! From a
machine, do you understand?"
"So what? Appearing from a womb is such a snap? A human's birth is much
more mysterious than my appearance. Here you can trace the logical sequence,
but there? Will it be a boy or a girl? Will it favor father or mother? Will
it be smart or a dope? It's all in a fog! That business seems normal only
because of its frequency. Here, the computer took down information and
re-created it. Like a tape recorder. Of course, it would have been better if
it had re-created me from Einstein... but what can you do? If you tape
boogie-woogie you can't expect to hear a Tchaikovsky symphony."
No, I wasn't a boor like him. He must have been acutely aware of the
ticklishness of his situation and didn't want me to realize it. And what was
there that I couldn't realize. He appeared out of flasks and bottles, like a
medieval homunculus, and he was wildly angry. I've often noticed that people
who have an inferiority complex are always more obnoxious than the rest.
And he was trying to behave with the spontaneity of a newborn. A baby
isn't overwhelmed with the event (Man is born!), but instead immediately
makes a fuss, sucking, and messing his diapers.
Graduate student Krivoshein merely sighed and turned the page.
"But do you feel all right?"
"Absolutely!" He splashed on some after-shave. "Why shouldn't I feel
all right? A computer is an apparatus without fantasy. I can just picture
what it might have done if it had an inkling of imagination. But I'm fine:
I'm not a two-headed monster. I'm young, healthy. I'm going to have dinner
and go to Lena's. I've missed her."
"What?"
He watched me with interest, sparks dancing in his eyes.
"Yes, we're rivals now! Listen, you seem to have a very primitive
attitude toward all this. Jealousy is old-fashioned and in poor taste. And
who are you jealous of, anyway? Think about it. If Lena's with me, it
doesn't mean that she's being unfaithful to you. You can only be unfaithful
with another man, someone different, more attractive, for instance. And as
far as she's concerned, I'm you. Even if we have children, you can't
consider yourself cuckolded. You and I are identical-all the same genes and
chromosomes. Easy!"
He had to hide behind the closet door. I grabbed a dumbbell and headed
for him.
"I'll kill you! Don't try logic with me. I'll give you logic, you
homunculus! I gave you life and I'll kill you, understand? Don't you dare
even think about her!"
My double fearlessly stepped out from the closet door. He was frowning.
"Listen, Taras Bulba, put down the dumbbell. If you're going to talk
like that, we might as well agree on some terms right now. I'm leaving
'homunculus' and 'kill' aside as products of your hysteria. And as for
locutions like 'I gave you life'... well, you didn't. I exist without any
help from you, and you might as well forget any ideas of being my lord and
master."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that. Put down the dumbbell. I'm serious. If you want precision,
I was created despite your plans simply because you didn't stop the
experiment in time, and when you wanted to, it was too late. In other
words," he snorted, "it's quite analagous to the situation when you appeared
in this world because of your parents' carelessness."
(Look, he knows everything! It's true. My mother once said, after some
prank of mine, to make me obey:
"I was going to have an abortion, but changed my mind. And you...."
She shouldn't have said that. I was unwanted. I might never have
existed.)
"But as distinguished from your mother, you didn't bear me, didn't
suffer labor pains, didn't nurse and clothe me," he continued. "You didn't
even save me from death because, after all, I existed before this
experiment. I was you. I don't owe you my life, my health, my engineering
degree-nothing! So let's start even."
"And even with Lena?"
"With Lena... I don't know. But you ... you...." Judging by his
expression he wanted to add something, but held his tongue, exhaling
sharply. "You have to respect my feelings as I do yours, understand? I love
Lena too, you know. And I know that she's mine-my woman, understand? I know
her body, the smell of her skin and hair, her breath... and how she says,
'Really, Val, you're just like a bear!' and how she wrinkles her nose."
He suddenly stopped. We looked at each other, overwhelmed by the same
thought. "Let's get to the lab!" I ran for my coat first.
Chapter 9
If you want a cab and fate offers a bus, take the bus; at least it runs
on a schedule.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 90
We made a beeline through the park: the wind whistled in the branches
and in our ears. Asphalt-colored clouds blanketed the sky.
The lab smelled like a warm swamp. The ceiling bulbs glowed like
lighthouses in a fog. I stepped on a hose near my desk that had not been
there before, and pulled my foot away. The hose was moving!
The flasks and bottles were covered with thick gray dust; there was no
way to tell what was going on inside them. Streams of water bubbled from the
distillers and the relays clicked in the thermostats. In a far corner, which
could not be reached through the jumble of wires, tubes, and hoses, the
lights on the TsVM-12's control panel blinked at me.
There were many more hoses than before. We made our way through them,
as if through a jungle of lianas. Some hoses were contracting, pushing lumps
through themselves. The walls of the tank were covered with some kind of
mold. I wiped it off with my sleeve.
In the golden, murky medium there was a silhouette of a man. "Another
double? No...." I looked closely. The contours were a woman's, contours that
I could never confuse with anyone else's. A hairless head fluttered in front
of my face.
There was some mad logic in the fact that precisely now when the double
and I were fighting over Lena, the computer was struggling with our problem.
I was scared.
"But the computer doesn't know her!"
"You do. The computer is re-creating her from your memory." We were
whispering for some reason. "Look!"
A skeleton was beginning to form beyond Lena's ghostly outline. Her
feet solidified into white cartilage and toes; her ankle and shin bones took
shape. Her spine formed into a long white form and ribs branched off from
it; her shoulder blades grew. Seams appeared on her skull, and the outline
of her eye sockets formed. I can't say that it was a pleasant sight-seeing
your girlfriend's skeleton-but I couldn't take my eyes off it. We were
watching something that no one had ever seen-how a machine creates a person!
"With my memory, my memory..." I was thinking feverishly. "But that's
not enough. Or has the computer mastered the laws of constructing a human
body? From where? I certainly don't know them!" The bones in the tank were
becoming sheathed with dark blue strips and coils of muscle, and they were
covered by a yellowish layer of fat, like a chicken's. The circulatory
system shot red throughout the body. All this fluctuated in the mixture,
changing shape and form. Even Lena's face, with its closed lids, behind
which we could see her watery eyes, was distorted by horrible grimaces. The
computer seemed to be trying on ways to make a person.
I know too little about anatomy in general and female anatomy in
particular to judge whether the computer was building Lena correctly. But
soon I sensed that something was wrong. The original contours of her body
were changing. The shoulders, which just a few minutes ago had been round
and soft, became angular and grew in breadth. What was it?
"Her feet!" my double shouted. "Look at her feet!"
I looked at her feet that took a size thirteen shoe-and when I
understood I broke out in cold sweat. The computer had run out of
information on Lena and was finishing her off with my body! I turned to my
double; his forehead was glistening with sweat too.
"We have to stop it!"
"How? Cut off the current?"
"We can't. That will erase the memory bank in the computer. Turn on the
cooling... ?"
"To slow down the process? It won't work. The computer has large heat
reserves...."
The distorted body in the tank was taking on clearer features. A
transparent mantle moved over it, and I recognized the style of the simple
dress in which I liked Lena best. The computer with an idiot's diligence was
dressing its creation in it.
I had to order the computer to stop, convince it... but how?
"Right!" My double leaped over to the glass case, took out Monomakh's
Crown, pushed the "translation" button on it, and handed it to me. "Put it
on and start hating Lena; think how you want to destroy her... go ahead."
I grabbed the shiny helmet, turned it around in my hands, and gave it
back.
"I can't...."
"Jerk! What else is there? That thing will be opening its eyes soon
and...."
He pulled on the helmet and started screaming and waving his arms:
"Stop, computer! Stop immediately, do you hear me? You're not creating
a good copy of a human! Stop, you idiot! Stop right now!"
"Stop, machine, do you hear me?" I turned to the microphones. "Stop, or
we'll destroy you!"
It's disgusting to remember that scene. We, men who were used to
pushing buttons to stop and direct any process, shouting and explaining ...
and to what? A collection of test tubes, electric circuits, and hoses.
Phooey! We were panicked.
We yelled some more in disgusting voices, when the hoses near the tank
began shaking with energetic convulsions, and the hybrid specimen in the
tank was covered with a white mist. We shut up. Three minutes later the mist
cleared. There was nothing in the gold liquid. Only ripples and color
gradations spreading from the center to the edges.
"Wow..." said my double. "I somehow never appreciated the fact that man
is seventy percent water. Now I've got it."
We made our way to the window. The humid stuffiness made my body
sticky. I unbuttoned my shirt, and so did my double. It was evening. The sky
had cleared. The windows of the institute across the way reflected the
sunset as though nothing had happened. They reflected it like that on every
clear evening-yesterday, last month, last year-when this had not existed.
Nature was making believe nothing had happened.
The skeleton enveloped in translucent tissue stayed in my mind.
"Those anatomical details, the grimaces... brrrr!" said the double,
lowering himself into a chair. "I don't even feel like seeing Lena right
now."
I said nothing, because he had expressed my thoughts. It was over now,
but then ... it's one thing to know, even intimately, that your woman is a
human being made of flesh, bones, and innards, and another thing to see it.
I took out the lab journal and looked at the last few notes... vague
and pointless. It's when the experiment is working or when you get a good
idea that you write at length; here I had:
April 8. Decoded numbers, 800 lines. Unsuccessful.
April 9. Decoded extracts from five rolls. Didn't understand a thing.
Some kind of schizophrenia!
April 10. Decoded with the sa...
