proportions of Schmidt-Friech.... It seems that in a proportionate man the
buttocks are exactly at mid-height. Who would have thought!
God, what a poor engineer had to learn!
I'm taking Hercules as my basis since he is shown from all angles.
August 74. The twelfth experiment-and it's still not right. Still
lopsided and vulgar. First one leg is shorter than the other, then the arms
don't match. Now I'm going to try the proportions of Durer's Adam.
August 20. The proportions are right. But the face ... an eyeless, dead
copy with Krivoshein's features. Large rust-colored marble curlicues instead
of hair. In a word, today was the twenty-first "No!"
Someone careful and suspicious inside me keeps asking "Is this it? The
method you're developing now, is this the method?"
I think so, yes. Anyway, it's a step in the right direction. For now,
in order to synthesize a man, I introduce only high-quality information
about his body. But in the same manner we could (and in time we'll work out
how to do it) introduce any information gathered by humanity into the
computer-womb on the best human qualities, and create not only externally
beautiful and physically strong people, but ones who are beautiful and
strong in mental and spiritual qualities as well. Usually the good is mixed
with the bad in people: he's smart but weak in spirit; he's got a strong
will but applies it to trifles either through stupidity or ignorance, or
he's firm, and kind, and smart, but sickly . . . and with this method we
could get rid of all the bad and synthesize only the best qualities into a
person.
"A synthetic knight without fear or flaw"-that must sound terrible. But
what's the difference in the end: whether they're synthetic or natural? As
long as there are plenty of them. There are so few "knights"-personally I
only know them from movies and books. And yet we need them so much in real
life. There'll be room and work for all of them. And each will be able to
influence the world to be a better place.
August 28. It's working! Pathetic daubers with their brushes who try to
capture the beauty and power of living person in a dead medium. Here it is,
my "brush," an electrochemical machine, a continuation of my brain. And I'm
an engineer, not an artist. Without using my hands, through the power of my
mind, I am creating beauty in life with life.
The delicate and precise proportions of Durer's Adam with the rippling
muscles of Hercules. And the face is handsome. Two or three more tries ...
and I'm done.
September 1. The first day on the calendar! I'm on my way to the lab. I
have pants, shirt, and shoes for him. Into the suitcase. And don't forget
the movie camera-I'm going to film the appearance of the magnificent double.
I'm anticipating what an effect that home movie will have someday when I
show it!
I'm going over there, put on Monomakh's Crown, and mentally I'll give
the order . . . no, I'll say it out loud, damn it, in a strong and beautiful
voice, the way the Lord had spoken in a similar situation:
"You may! Appear into this world, double Adam-Hercules-Krivoshein!"
"And the Lord saw that it was good...."
Of course, I'm not God. I spent a month creating a man, and He managed
on a shortened workday, Saturday. But was that work?
Man has always considered himself smart-even when he walked on all
fours and curled his tail like a handle on a lea-kettle. In order to become
smart, he'll have to feel that he is stupid at least once.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 59
The next entry in the diary shocked student Krivoshein with its uneven,
changed handwriting.
September 6. But I didn't want... I didn't want something like this!
All I can do is shout to the sky: I didn't want it! I tried to make things
come out well... without any mistakes. I didn't even sleep nights. I just
lay there with my eyes shut, picturing all the details of Hercules' body,
and then Adam's, noting which features should be added to my double.
I couldn't do it all in one session. No way-that's why I dissolved him.
I couldn't let out a cripple with arms and legs of different length. And I
couldn't possibly have known that each time I dissolved him I killed him.
How could I have known?
As soon as the liquid cleared his head and shoulders, the double
grabbed the edge of the tank with his powerful hands and jumped out. I was
running the movie camera, capturing the historic moment of a man appearing
from a machine. He fell on the linoleum before me, sobbing with a hoarse,
howling cry. I ran to him:
"What's the matter?"
He was hugging my leg with his sticky hands, rubbing his head against
them, kissing my hands as I tried to lift him.
"Don't kill me, don't kill me! Don't kill me any more! Why do you
torture me, aaah! Don't! Twenty-five times you've killed me, twenty-five
times. Aaah!"
But I hadn't known. I couldn't know that his consciousness revived with
every experiment! He understood that I was reshaping his body, doing what I
wanted with him, and he couldn't do a thing about it. My command "No!" first
dissolved his body, and then his consciousness dimmed. Why didn't that
artificial idiot tell me that the consciousness begins functioning before
the body?
"Damn it!" the student muttered. "Really-the brain must be unplugged
last. When was that?" He turned the pages and sighed with a certain relief.
No, it wasn't his fault. In August and September he couldn't have told him,
he didn't know it himself. If he were running the experiment, he would have
made the same mistake.
And so I got a man with a classic physique, a pleasant look, and the
broken spirit of a slave. "A knight without fear or flaw."
Go ahead, look for a scapegoat, you louse. You didn't know; you tried!
But did you!? Wasn't it conceit, self-love? Didn't you feel like God sitting
up in the clouds in a labeled leather armchair? A god, on whose whims
depended the appearance and disappearance of a man, whether he would be or
not be. Didn't you experience an intellectual passion when you gave the
computer-womb the orders over and over: "You may!" and "Not it!" and "No!"?
He tried to escape from the lab immediately. I barely talked him into
washing up and dressing. He was trembling. There could be no question of his
working alongside me in the lab.
He spent five days with me^ five horrible days. I kept hoping he'd
relax, get better. No way! No, he was healthy in body, knew everything,
remembered everything-the computer-womb recorded all my information in him,
my knowledge, my memory-but the terror of his experience was overwhelming
and could not be controlled by his will or thoughts. His hair turned gray
the first day from the memories.
He was terrified of me. When I would come home, he would jump up and
get into a position of submission: his gladiator's back would hunch and his
arms, bulging with rippling muscles, would hang limp. He was trying to look
smaller. And his eyes-oh, God, those eyes! They looked at me with a prayer,
entreaty, with a panic-stricken readiness to do anything to mollify me. I
felt terrified and guilty. I've never seen a man look that way.
And tonight, sometime after three... I don't know why I woke up. There
was a dead gray light from the streetlights on the ceiling. Adam the double
was standing over my bed with a raised dumbbell. I could see his muscles in
his right arm tense for the blow. We stared at each other for a few seconds.
Then he giggled nervously and moved away, his bare feet scuffling on the
wood floor.
I sat up on the bed and turned on the overhead light. He was crouching
on the floor by the closet, his head on his knees. His shoulders and the
dumbbell in his hand were shaking.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "You should strike, once you've aimed.
You would have felt better."
"I can't forget," he muttered in a hollow baritone through the sobs.
"You see, I can't forget how you used to kill me... twenty-five times!"
I opened the desk, took out my passport, engineering degree, what money
there was, and shook him by the shoulder. "Get up! Get dressed and go. Go
off somewhere, make a life for yourself, work, live. We won't be able to do
anything together. No rest for you or me. It's not my fault! Damn it, can't
you understand that I didn't know? I was doing something that had never been
done. Surely there were things I couldn't have known. A man can be born a
monster or mentally ill, or become that way after an illness or accident,
but then it's nobody's fault, nobody to bash with a dumbbell. If you had
been in my place, the same thing would have happened, because you are me!
Understand?"
He was backing toward the wall, shaking. That sobered me up.
"I'm sorry. Take my papers. I'll manage here somehow. Here," I said,
opening the passport, "you look more like me on the picture than I do. The
photographer must have tried to perfect my features, too. Take the money, a
suitcase, clothes-and go where you want. You'll live on your own, work a
bit, and maybe things will be easier for you."
Two hours later he was gone. We agreed that he would write to me from
wherever he settled. He won't write....
It's a good sign that he tried to kill me. That means he's no slave. He
feels hurt and insulted. Maybe things will work out for him?
And I'm sitting here without a thought in my head. I have to start
over. Oh, nature, what a bitch you are! How you enjoy laughing at our ideas!
You seduce us, and then....
Drop it! Stop looking for someone to blame. Nature has nothing to do
with it, it is part of your work only on an elementary level. And the rest
is all you. Don't try to get out of it.
The alarm went off: 7:15. Time to get up, shave, wash, and go to work.
A murky sun over the buildings, the sky full of smoke, dirty, like an old
curtain. The wind raised dust, whipping the trees, blowing through the
balcony door. Downstairs a bus licks people off the street at the stops.
They gather again, and they all have the same expression on their faces:
can't be late for work!
And I have to get to work too. I'll get to the lab, jot down the
results of my unsatisfactory experiment, and console myself with the
bromides: "You learn from your mistakes;" "There are no beaten paths in
science;" and so on. And I'll start the next experiment. And I'll make more
mistakes and destroy not guinea pigs, but... people? You conceited, dreaming
cretin, armed with the latest technology!
The wind whips the trees. It was all in the past: the days of research
and discovery, the evenings of meditation, the nights of dreaming. And here
you are, the cold, clear morn, wiser than the night. Merciless morning! It's
probably in this sober time that women who had dreamed all night of having a
child go for an abortion. And I had an abortion. I dreamed. I wanted to
bring happiness to the world, and I've created two miserable people already.
I'll never master this work. I'm weak, unneeded, and stupid. I must take up
something mediocre, that I can handle-for an article, for a dissertation.
And then everything will be fine.
The wind whips the trees. The wind whips the trees....
On the next balcony there's a recording of Mozart's Requiem playing. My
neighbor, associate professor Prishchepa, wants to get into a mathematical
mood first thing in the morning. "Requi . . . requiem...." The voices are
bidding farewell to someone clearly and simply. This is good music to shoot
oneself by. Nobody would notice the shot.
The wind whips the trees.
What have I done? And yet I had doubts, and then not doubts but
knowledge. I knew that any change I made stayed with him, that the
computer-womb remembered everything. I didn't pay attention. Why?
I had a thought, not expressed in words, so that I wouldn't be ashamed,
or a feeling of well-being and safety, I guess: "after all, it's not me.
It's not happening to me...." And also a feeling of impunity: "Whatever I
want, I'll do. Nothing will happen to me...."
You won't shoot yourself, you animal! You won't do anything to
yourself-you'll live to a ripe old age and even set yourself up as an
example to others.
The wind whips the trees. The bus licks people off the stops.
I don't want to go to work.
September 20. Gray asphalt. Gray clouds. The motorcycle swallows up
miles like noodles. A kid stops by the road, and I can tell from his
position that he's decided to be a motorcyclist on a red bike when he grows
up. Be a motorcyclist, kid; just don't become a researcher.
I keep accelerating. The speedometer says over ninety. The wind is
lashing my face. Here comes a dump truck, hogging most of the road, of
course. Those bastard truckdrivers, they don't take bikers for people.
Always trying to ride us off the road. Well, I'm not yielding to this one!
No, there was no crash. I'm alive. I'm writing down how I tore around
glassy-eyed today. I have to write about something. The truck veered to the
right at the last second. I watched in the rear view mirror as the driver
pulled over and ran into the road, waving his fists at me.
Actually, if I had crashed, what difference would it make? There's a
spare Krivoshein in Moscow. I can't describe my repulsion and disgust for
everything right now. Including me.
How he shook, how he hugged my feet-the strong, handsome "not me." And
I could have foreseen it and spared him. I could have! But I thought: "It'll
work like this. What the hell! After all, he's not me."
And it was so interesting, good, beautiful. We dreamed and talked,
worried about the good of mankind, swore a vow. What shame! And in the work,
I overlooked the fact that I was creating a man. I thought about
everything-exquisite forms, intellectual content-but that it might hurt or
scare him never entered my mind. I just decided that there was no
informational death in the experiment-and fine. But death was a violence
that I performed on him over and over.
How did it happen? How?
The white posts along the highway reflect the motor's hum:
but-but-but-but how did it happen? But-but-but-but how? The speedometer
reads 110, the gray stripes of earth and trees whiz by. At this speed I
could escape from pursuers or save someone, getting there in time! But I
have no one to run away from and no one to save. I did have someone to save,
but I had to do some honest thinking there ... and I didn't.
I can master heights, elements, with my brain and brawn. It's easy with
the elements. They can be mastered. But how do you master yourself?
I just went over the diary-and I'm frightened by how low and
self-serving my thoughts are! Here I am discussing how troubles befall
people because they are unprincipled, that they think they can live off to
the side, not get involved, and a few pages later I cleverly make sure I'm
off to the side: don't get mixed up with Harry Hilobok, let him get his damn
doctoral dissertation .... Here I'm thinking about how to derive benefit
from my discovery, and here I call myself to do cruel acts with reference to
wars and murders in the world. Here I (or me and the double, it doesn't
matter) lower myself to the level of an ordinary engineer, who can't handle
such difficult work-a moral insurance in case it doesn't work; and when it
does work, I compare myself to the gods. And I wrote all this sincerely,
without noticing any contradictions.
Without noticing? I didn't want to notice them! It was so pleasant and
convenient that way: preen, lie to myself with an open heart, adjust ideas
and facts to fit my moral comfort. So it turns out I thought more about
myself than about humanity? It turns out that this work, if evaluated not
from a scientific but a moral position, was nothing more than showing off?
Of course, where would I find the time to worry about my guinea pigs!
What kind of a man are you, Krivoshein?
September 22. I'm not working. I can't work now. Today I rode down to
Berdichev for some reason and by the way, I understood the hidden meaning of
the mysterious phrase that was printed out one day. Twenty-six kopeks is
what it costs to fuel up to get from Berdichev to Dneprovsk: five liters of
gas, two hundred grams of oil. I've unearthed another discovery!
Where is Adam now? Where did he go?
And that creature that the machine tried to create after the first
double: half-Lena, half-me. It, too, must have suffered the horrors of death
when we ordered the computer to dissolve it? And my father. Oh damn! Why am
I thinking about that?
My father... the last cossack in the Krivoshein line. According to
family tradition, my forefathers come from the Zaporozhian cossacks. There
was a brave cossack whose neck was damaged in battle-and there you get the
Krivoshein line. When Empress Catherine broke them up, they moved to this
side of the Volga. My grandfather Karp Vasilyevich beat up the priest and
the head of the village when they decided to get rid of the village school
and set up a church school. I haven't the slightest idea what the difference
was between them, but my grandfather died at hard labor.
Father took part in all the revolutions, and served under Chapayev in
the Civil War.
He fought in the last war as an old man, and only the first two years.
They were retreating in the Ukraine and he led his battalion out from an
ambush in Kharkov. Then because of wounds and age, they transferred him to
the rear, as a commander on the other side of the Urals. There, in the camp,
a soldier and peasant, he taught me how to ride, how to take care of a horse
and saddle it, how to plow, mow, shoot from a rifle and a pistol, dig the
earth, and chop brambles with a machette. He also made me kill chickens and
pigs by stabbing them under the right shoulder blade with a small flat
knife, so that I wouldn't fear blood. "It'll come in handy in life, sonny!"
Shortly before his death he and I went down to his homeland in
Mironovka, to see his cousin Egor Stepanovich Krivoshein. While we were
sitting in his cottage drinking, Egor's grandson rushed over:
"Cramps, they dug out a body from the clay in Sheep's Gully where
they're digging the dam!"
"In Sheep's Gully?" my father asked. The old men exchanged a look.
"Let's go see."
The crowd of workmen and onlookers made way for the two old men. The
gray, chalky bones were piled up in one spot. Father poked the skull with a
stick, and it turned over, revealing a hole over the right temple.
"Mine!" father said looking at Egor Stepanovich triumphantly. "And you
missed. Your hand shook, huh!"
"How do you know it's yours?" the other demanded sticking his beard
into the air.
"Have you forgotten? He was coming back to the village. I was right on
the side of the road, you were on the left,..." and father drew a picture in
the clay to prove his point.
"Whose remains are these, old men?" a young foreman in a fancy shirt
demanded.
"The captain," father explained, squinting. "In the first revolution
the Ural cossacks were quartered here, and this here was their captain.
Don't bother the police with it, sonny. It's been over a long time."
How marvelous it was to lie in wait in the steppe at night with
father's gun, waiting for the captain-both for the principle and the fact
that the bastard ripped up men with his bayonet and raped girls! Or to fly
on horseback, feeling the weight of your saber in your hand, taking measure:
I'll chop that one over there, with beard, from his epaulets all the way
through!
The last time I fought was eighteen years ago, and it wasn't a fight to
the death, only to the school bell. I never galloped in the days of old. All
my bravado comes on a bike facing down a truck.
And I'm not afraid, father, of blood or death. But your simple lessons
never did come in handy. The revolution continues through different means,
with discoveries and inventions-weapons more dangerous than sabers. And I'm
afraid, father, of making mistakes.
Liar! Liar! You're preening again, you low-life! You have an
ineradicable streak of showing off. Oh, it's so pretty: "I'm scared of
making mistakes, father," and all about the revolution. Don't you dare!
You wanted to synthesize in people (yes, people, not artificial
doubles!) the nobility of spirit that you lack, the beauty that you don't
have, the determination you'll never have, and the selflessness you can't
even dream of.
You come from a good family. Your forefathers knew how to work and to
leave good work behind them, and to beat the bastards with fist or gun. They
didn't let up. And what are you? Have you fought for justice? Oh, you never
had an opportunity? Maybe you've cleverly managed to avoid them? What, don't
feel like remembering?
That's the problem. I'm afraid of everything: life, people. I even love
Lena in a cowardly way: I'm afraid to bring her close and I'm afraid to lose
her. And God forbid, no children. Children complicate things.
And the fact that I'm hiding my discovery-isn't that also a fear that I
won't be able to develop it properly? And I probably won't. I'm a weakling.
One of those smart weaklings who are better off not being smart. Because
their brain is only given them so that they can appreciate their lowness and
impotence.
Graduate student Krivoshein lit up a cigarette and paced the room
nervously. It was painful reading the notes-it was about him, too. He sighed
and returned to the desk.
Easy, Krivoshein, easy. You can talk yourself into something hysterical
this way. You still have the responsibility for the work... and everything
isn't lost yet. You're not such a son of a bitch that you should drop dead
immediately.
I can even make you look good. I haven't used the discovery for
personal gain, and I won't. I worked at peak capacity, and I didn't cheat.
Now I'm trying to figure things out. So I'm not worse than others. I made a
mistake. And who doesn't?
Yes, but in this work comparisons on a relative scale-who's better,
who's worse-don't apply. Others study crystals or develop machines; they
know their work, and that's enough. Their character flaws only harm them,
their co-workers at the lab, and their relatives. But I'm different. In
order to create Man, it's not enough to know, to have a scientific handle on
the thing-you have to be a real Man yourself, not better or worse than
others, but in the absolute sense a knight without fear or flaw. I wouldn't
mind that at all, but I don't know how to go about it. I don't have the
information.
Does that mean that I can't handle this work?
October 8. The yellow and red autumn is in the institute grounds, and I
can't work. It's full of dry leaves, the lightest rain makes a lot of noise
on them, and then there's a coffee aroma of rotten leaves. And I can't
work....
Maybe I shouldn't, it's not needed? A good generic stock, a quality
education, a hygienic life-style.... Let smart people re-create themselves,
have lots of children with good stock. They'll be able to feed them, their
salaries will stretch; after all, they're smart people. And they'll be able
to bring them up. They're smart people. No computers will be necessary.
Harry Hilobok called today. They're organizing a permanent exhibit at
the institute: "The Achievements of Soviet Systemology," and naturally, he's
the organizer.
"Won't you contribute something, Valentin Vasilyevich?"
"No."
"Why are you like that? Now Ippolit Illarionovich Voltampernov's
department is giving three exhibits and other departments and labs are
contributing. We should have at least one exhibit on your topic. Don't you
have anything yet?"
"No. How's the biosensor system moving, Harry Haritonovich?"
"Eh, Valentin Vasilyevich, what's one system compared to all of
systemology, heh-heh! We're working on it, but meanwhile you see, everyone's
demanding exhibit stands, mock-ups, tableaux, signs in three languages, and
our heads are spinning. The lab and the workshops are full up, but if you
should have anything for the show, we'll manage. Things are going fast
around here."
I almost said that it was the system that I needed to come up with an
exhibit for your stupid show but I controlled myself. (Let him make it and
then we'll see.) Always being sneaky, Krivoshein!
My exhibits were all over the world. One was in Moscow struggling with
biology. The others were munching grass and cabbage in gardens. And another
just ran off to who knows where.
Should I exhibit the computer-womb to shock the academic world? Create
two-headed and six-footed rabbits as part of the demonstration, at the rate
of two an hour? That would create a stir.
No, brother. This machine makes man. And there's no way of getting
around that.
Every action carries obligations. Inaction doesn't oblige you to
anything.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener
October 11. I'm repeating the experiments in controlled synthesis of
rabbits-just so that the mechanism doesn't sit around for nothing. I'm
filming it all. I'll have a documentary. "Citizens, present your
documentaries!"
October 13. I've invented a method of destroying biological information
in the computer-womb quickly and dependably. You can call it an "electric
eraser." I use tension from the noise generator as input for the crystal
unit and TsVM-12 and 15-20 minutes later the computer forgets everything
about the rabbits. If I had had this method earlier instead of the order
"No!" I would have destroyed Adam each time irreversibly and fundamentally.
I just don't know if he would have liked that any better.
Time is making the leaves fall and the sky grow cold. And my work isn't
moving. I can't undertake serious work now. I don't have the stomach for it.
I'm lost.
Here, Krivoshein! You can now take it as conclusively demonstrated that
you are neither God nor the hub of the earth. Thus, you should seek help
from others. You must go to Arkady Arkadievich....
"Aha," graduate student Krivoshein exclaimed.
I must follow procedure; he is my superior. Actually, that's not the
point. He's smart, knowledgeable, influential, and a marvelous
methodologist. He knows how to formulate any problem. And, "A formulated
problem," as it says in his Introduction to Systemology, "is the solution to
the problem written in hidden form." And that's just what I need. And he
supported my topic at the scientific council. Of course, he's overly
officious and conceited, but we'll manage. He's a smart man, after all.
He'll understand that glory is not the point of this work.
Wait! Good intentions are one thing, but reasonable care can't hurt. To
let Azarov in on the deep, dark secret that the computer-womb can synthesize
live systems-no, that can't be allowed. I have to start with something
simpler, and then we'll see, as he likes to say.
I have to synthesize electronic circuits in the computer. That was what
old Voltampernov had attacked, and by the way, that's my official topic for
the next year and half.
"You must, Valentin Vasilyevich, you must!"
Here's the plan. We place six wires into the liquid: two are feeders;
two, the control oscillograph; and two, the impulse generator. I give the
computer the parameters of the circuits and the approximate sizes through
Monomakh's Crown. I definitely know what's "it" and "not it" in this-it's
familiar ground.
October 15. Rounded brown squares are appearing in the tank. They look
like laminated insulation. Metal lines of the circuits settle on top of the
squares, then layers of insulation, condensers, strips of resistors, and
diodes and transistors .... It looks a lot like film technology, which is
being developed in microelectronics, but without the vacuum, electrical
discharge, and other pyrotechnics.
And how pleasant it is after all the headaches and nightmares to click
the switches, adjust the brightness and contrast of the beam on the
oscilloscope, and count off the microsecond impulses! Everything is clear,
precise, understandable. It's like coming home from distant shores. The
devil lured me onto those shores, into the dark jungles called "man" without
a guide or compass. But who is a guide and what's a compass?
All right. The parameters of the circuits agree, project 154 is half
done. Won't Ippolit Illarionovich be glad!
I'll go to see Azarov. I'll show him the samples, explain a few things
and hint at future prospects. I'll go there tomorrow and say:
"Arkady Arkadievich, I come to you as one smart man to another...."
October 16. I went... flying into open arms.
So, in the morning I thought through our conversation, took along the
samples, and headed for the old building. The autumn sun shed light on the
ornate walls, granite steps, and me, walking up them.
My depression began at the front door. Those governmental
three-meter-wide doors made out of carved oak, with curved handles and tight
pneumatic springs! They seem to be created especially for beefy young
bureaucrats with hands as big as skillets for a dozen eggs. The young bucks
open the doors with a light tug and go handle important papers. Once through
the doors I began thinking that a conversation with Azarov should not begin
with a shocking opening ("I come to you as one smart man to another....");
instead I should kowtow-he's an academician and I'm an engineer.
And as I walked up the marble staircase covered with thick carpet
attached by chrome tacks, with bannisters too broad to grasp completely, my
soul reached a respectful readiness to agree with anything the academician
might say or recommend. In a word, if it was Krivoshein the discoverer who
went up the stairs with a spring step, it was Krivoshein the supplicant who
entered the director's waiting room, shuffling his feet, with a hunched back
and a guilty face.
His secretary Ninochka cut me off with a fervor that Lev Yashin, the
goalie, would envy.
"No, no, no, comrade Krivoshein, you can't. Arkady Arkadievich is going
to a congress in New Zealand. You know how much trouble I get into if I let
people in! He's not seeing anyone, see?"
There were quite a few people sitting in the waiting room. They all
gave me a dirty look. I sat down to wait, without any particular hope for
success, simply because the others were waiting, and I would, too. To be
part of the collective. A dead-end situation.
More people arrived. They were all grim and ugly. No one spoke to
anyone.
The more people there were in the waiting room, the less important my
business seemed. It occurred to me that my samples were measured, not
tested, and that Azarov would try to prove that technological work in
electronics wasn't for us. "And why am I bothering him? I've still got over
a year to finish the project. So that Hilobok can crack jokes about my work
habits again?"
Speak of the devil, Hilobok appeared in the doorway with a rushed look;
I took up a good position and slipped in after him.
"Arkady Arkadievich, I'd like...."
"No, no, Valentin ... eh ... Vasilyevich." Azarov frowned in my
direction, accepting some papers from Harry. "I can't! I simply can't.
There's a holdup with my visa. I have to go over the typed lecture. Please
address your questions to Ippolit Illarionovich. He'll be my replacement
this month, or to Harry Haritonovich. I'm not the only person in the whole
world, for pity's sake!"
So, the man is going to New Zealand. Why am I bothering him? To a
congress and to familiarize himself. And why did I ever think to grab him by
the coattail? It's silly. Just go on and work, until they want a report.
Some day they'll interrupt government meetings for this project. Yes,
but why that does that have to be some day?
They won't interrupt meetings, don't worry. I'll be dealing with
second-level clerks, who will never take it upon themselves to take any
action or responsibility-weaklings, just like me.
Weakling. A weakling and nothing more! You should have talked to him,
if you had decided to. You couldn't. You apologized in a repulsive voice and
left his office. Getting an Azarov who is hurrying across the seas
interested in your work is a lot harder than commanding the computer-womb.
But there's still something wrong.
October 25. And this is right, I think! Our fair city is being visited
by a major specialist in microelectronics, a technical sciences candidate, a
future doctor in the field, Valery Ivanov. He called me today. We're meeting
tomorrow at eight at the Dynamo Restaurant. Dress accordingly. Ladies not
excluded.
Valery Ivanov, with whom I used to cut classes so that we could play
cards, my roommate, the guy I did my probation work and went to parties at
the library institute with. Valery Ivanov, my former boss and co-inventor of
two projects, a good arguer and a man of great ideas! Valery Ivanov, the man
I worked with like this for five years. I'm happy.
"Listen, Valery," I'll say to him, "give up your microelectronics, and
come back here. I've got a great project."
He can even head the lab, since he's got the degree. I'm willing. He
knows how to work.
Well, let's see how he's changed over the last year.
October 26, night. Nothing happens in life for nothing.
From my first look at him, I knew that we wouldn't have the old
rapport. And it wasn't a question of a year's separation. The old
Harry-esque vileness had come between us. It's not his fault or mine, but
we've ended up on opposite sides. He, who had proudly quit and slammed the
door, was somehow more in the right than I, who stayed behind and didn't
share his bitter lot. That's why there was a slight unpleasantness between
us all evening, a bitterness that we couldn't overcome. We somehow trusted
each other less now. It was good that I took Lena with me; at least she
decorated our meeting.
Actually the conversation was interesting. It's worth relating.
The meeting began at 8:00 P.M. A Petersburgian sat before me. An
imported suit in a discreet gray check, without lapels, a white, starched
shirt, hexagonal glasses on an aquiline nose, a proper black crew cut. Even
the drawn cheeks reminded me of the blockade.
Lena was no slouch, either. As we walked across the room, everyone
looked at her. I was the only slob in the group: a checked shirt and
not-too-rumpled gray pants. Two doubles had depleted my wardrobe severely.
Waiting for our order, we enjoyed looking at each other.
"Well," Petersburgian Ivanov broke the silence, "Oink something, you
old pig."
"I see your mug is assymetrical."
"Assymetry is a sign of the times. That's my teeth. I got a chill in
the train," he said touching his cheek.
"Let me give you a punch-it'll pass."
"Thanks. I think I'll stick to cognac."
That was our usual warm-up before a good talk.
They brought cognac and wine for the lady. We drank, satisfied our
first hunger with sturgeon in aspic and then stared at each other
expectantly again. There were parties going on around us. A tubby man
standing at two joined tables was toasting "mother science." (They were
drinking to a completed dissertation.) A tipsy fellow all alone at a
neighboring table was threatening a carafe of vodka, muttering:
"I'm quiet... I'm quiet!" He was bursting to tell some secret.
"Listen, Val!"
"Listen, Valery!"
We looked at each other.
"Well, you go first." I nodded.
"Listen, Val," his eyes glistening invitingly behind his glasses, "drop
your systemology and come over to us. I'll arrange your transfer. We're
working on such an interesting project now! A microelectric complex, a
machine that makes machines. Do you get it?"
"Solid-state circuits?"
"Ah, what are solid-state circuits-obsolete now. Electronic and plasma
rays plus electrophotography plus cathode spraying of film plus... in a
word, here's the idea. The circuit of an electronic machine evolves in
bundles of ions and electrons, like the image on a TV screen-and that's it.
It's finished; it can work. A density of elements as in the human brain. See
that?"
"And does that exist now?"
"Well, you see, ..." he raised his eyebrows. "If it did, then why would
I call on you? We'll do it in the time allotted."
(Well, of course, I had to drop systemology and follow him! Not him
follow me; oh, no ... of course not! That's the way it always was.)
"What about the Americans?"
"They're trying, too. The question is who'll be first. We're working at
full blast. I've already made a dozen depositions. Do you get it?"
"Well, what's the goal?"
"Very simple: to make computers as easily mass produced and cheap as
newspapers. Do you know the code name I gave to the project? 'Poem.' And it
really is a technological poem!" The booze made Valery's nose glow. He was
putting in a big effort and was probably sure of success. I was always easy
to talk into things. "A computer factory no bigger than a TV set, can you
imagine that? A factory that's a machine! It receives a technical assignment
by teletype for new computers, recalculates the assignment into circuits,
encodes the result into electric impulses, which run the beams on the screen
and print out the circuit. Twenty seconds-and the computer is finished. A
thin plate that contains the same circuitry it now takes a whole room to
house, understand? They send the thin plate in an envelope to the buyer, and
he installs it in the unit. The command panel of a chemcial plant, a system
for controlling traffic lights in a city, a car-wherever-everything that in
the past had been done slowly, clumsily, and with mistakes by man can now be
done with electronic precision by the wise microelectronic plate! So you see
what I mean?"
Lena was watching Valery rapturously. Really, the picture he painted
was so marvelous that I didn't realize right away that he was talking about
the same film circuits that I created in the tank of the computer-womb. Of
course, they were simpler ones, but in principle, more complex ones could be
made, too.
"But why the vacuum and various rays? Why not chemistry? Probably, you
could do it that way, too."
"Chemistry. Personally, ever since Professor Varfolomeyev used to
lecture us, I haven't been too hot on chemistry. [Lena giggled.] But if you
have some ideas on chemical microelectronics-let's have them. I'm for it.
You can handle that end of it. In the long run, it's not important how we do
it, as long as it gets done. And then... and then we'll be able to do so
much...." He leaned back dreamily. "Judge for yourself. Why should the
computer-factory be assigned to create circuits? That's extra work. All it
has to do is receive information on the problems. After all, we have
computers working in production, in services, in transport, in defense. Why
translate their impulses into human speech if they will only have to be
retranslated back into impulses! Imagine: the computer-factories receive
radioed information about other computers from industry, planning,
production, shipping .. . from everywhere, even on the weather, the crops,
the needs of people. They work it out into the necessary circuits and send
them out."
"Microelectrical recommendations?"
"Directives, my good fellow! What recommendations? Mathematically based
electronic circuits are the reflexes of production. You don't argue with
mathematics."
We drank.
"Valery," I said, "if you do this, you'll be so famous that they'll
even print your picture on bathroom paper!"
"Yours, too," he added generously. "We'll be famous together."
"But, Valery," Lena said, "in your complex there's no room for people.
How can that be?"
"Lena, you're an engineer." Ivanov condescended. "Let's look at this
subject, man I mean, from an engineering point of view. Why should there be
room for him? Can a man receive radiosignals, ultra and infrared, heat,
ultraviolet rays and X-rays, radiation? Can he withstand a vacuum, gas
pressure at hundreds of Gs, vibrations, thermal shocks from minus 120
degrees Celsius to plus 120 with hourly frequency or the temperature of
liquid helium? Can he fly with the speed of a jet, submerge to the ocean
floor or plunge into molten metal? Can he figure out a problem with ten
factors-only ten-in a fraction of a second? No."
"He can with the help of machines," Lena said, supporting humanity.
"Yes, but machines can do it without his help! So all that's left him
in our harsh electronic and atomic age is to push buttons. But that's the
easiest operation to automate. You know, in modern technology, man is the
least dependable element. That's why there are all those breakers and
buffers and other defenses against fools."
"I'm not saying nothing," the drunk growled.
"But man could be perfected," I muttered.
"Perfected? Don't make me laugh! That's like perfecting steam
engines-instead of replacing them with diesels or electric engines. The flaw
is in the physical principles of man, the ion reactions and metabolism. Look
around," he said, waving his arm around the room.
"That damn process is draining all of man's strength."
I looked around. At the joined tables the revelers were kissing the
brand-new candidate, a bald youth, worn out by work and tension. Next to him
was his wife. At a nearby table twelve tourists were feeding decorously.
There were smoke and noise over every table. On the stage, a saxophonist,
leaning over to the side and jutting out his belly, was wailing a solo with
variations; the brass section was busy syncopating and the drummer was in a
frenzy. The band was doing a rock version of an old folk song. Near the
stage, without moving their feet, couples agitated all the parts of their
bodies.
"I'm not saying nothing!" our neighbor announced, staring into the
empty carafe.
"Actually, man's only redeeming feature is his universality," Ivanov
noted. "Even though he does it badly, he can do a lot. But universality is a
product of complexity, and complexity is a quantitative factor. When we
learn to make computers tens of billions of times more complex with the use
of electro-ion beams, it'll be all over. Man's song will be sung."
"What do you mean?" Lena demanded.
"Nothing terrible will happen, don't worry. Simply a situation will
come about quietly, with dignity, in which machines will be able to do
without man. Of course, the computers, respecting the memory of their
creators, will be kind to all the rest. They'll satisfy their simple-minded
needs in terms of metabolism and such. The majority of people will be very
pleased with the situation. In their unflappable conceit they will even
imagine that the machines are serving them. And for the computers it will be
like a secondary unconditioned reflex, an inherited habit. And maybe the
computers won't have habits like that. After all, the basis of a computer is
rationality. What would they need habit for?"
"By the way, those rational machines are serving us now," Lena
interrupted hotly. "They satisfy our needs, no?"
I said nothing. Valery laughed.
"That depends on how you look at it, Lenochka! The computers have every
reason to think that we satisfy their needs. If I were, say, a Ural-4 I
wouldn't have any grudges against people: you live in a bright
air-conditioned room with a steady supply of alternating current-the
equivalent of hot and cold water. A servant in a white lab coat scurries
about, fulfilling your every whim, and they write about you in the papers.
And the work is clean: switch those currents and transmit those impulses.
What a life!"
"I'm not saying nothing!" our neighbor announced for the last time,
then stood up and shouted an obscenity at the room.
The maitre d' and company ran over to him.
"So what if I'm drunk," the man yelled, as he was assisted out of the
restaurant. "I'm drinking on my own money-money I earned. Robbery is a job,
too, you know."
"There he is, the object of your concern, in all his glory!" Valery
compressed his thin lips. "A worthy descendant of the parasite who shouted
'Man-that has a proud ring!' Not any more. Well, how about it, Val?" he
turned to me. "Come on over. Get in on the project. This way you and I will
buttocks are exactly at mid-height. Who would have thought!
God, what a poor engineer had to learn!
I'm taking Hercules as my basis since he is shown from all angles.
August 74. The twelfth experiment-and it's still not right. Still
lopsided and vulgar. First one leg is shorter than the other, then the arms
don't match. Now I'm going to try the proportions of Durer's Adam.
August 20. The proportions are right. But the face ... an eyeless, dead
copy with Krivoshein's features. Large rust-colored marble curlicues instead
of hair. In a word, today was the twenty-first "No!"
Someone careful and suspicious inside me keeps asking "Is this it? The
method you're developing now, is this the method?"
I think so, yes. Anyway, it's a step in the right direction. For now,
in order to synthesize a man, I introduce only high-quality information
about his body. But in the same manner we could (and in time we'll work out
how to do it) introduce any information gathered by humanity into the
computer-womb on the best human qualities, and create not only externally
beautiful and physically strong people, but ones who are beautiful and
strong in mental and spiritual qualities as well. Usually the good is mixed
with the bad in people: he's smart but weak in spirit; he's got a strong
will but applies it to trifles either through stupidity or ignorance, or
he's firm, and kind, and smart, but sickly . . . and with this method we
could get rid of all the bad and synthesize only the best qualities into a
person.
"A synthetic knight without fear or flaw"-that must sound terrible. But
what's the difference in the end: whether they're synthetic or natural? As
long as there are plenty of them. There are so few "knights"-personally I
only know them from movies and books. And yet we need them so much in real
life. There'll be room and work for all of them. And each will be able to
influence the world to be a better place.
August 28. It's working! Pathetic daubers with their brushes who try to
capture the beauty and power of living person in a dead medium. Here it is,
my "brush," an electrochemical machine, a continuation of my brain. And I'm
an engineer, not an artist. Without using my hands, through the power of my
mind, I am creating beauty in life with life.
The delicate and precise proportions of Durer's Adam with the rippling
muscles of Hercules. And the face is handsome. Two or three more tries ...
and I'm done.
September 1. The first day on the calendar! I'm on my way to the lab. I
have pants, shirt, and shoes for him. Into the suitcase. And don't forget
the movie camera-I'm going to film the appearance of the magnificent double.
I'm anticipating what an effect that home movie will have someday when I
show it!
I'm going over there, put on Monomakh's Crown, and mentally I'll give
the order . . . no, I'll say it out loud, damn it, in a strong and beautiful
voice, the way the Lord had spoken in a similar situation:
"You may! Appear into this world, double Adam-Hercules-Krivoshein!"
"And the Lord saw that it was good...."
Of course, I'm not God. I spent a month creating a man, and He managed
on a shortened workday, Saturday. But was that work?
Man has always considered himself smart-even when he walked on all
fours and curled his tail like a handle on a lea-kettle. In order to become
smart, he'll have to feel that he is stupid at least once.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 59
The next entry in the diary shocked student Krivoshein with its uneven,
changed handwriting.
September 6. But I didn't want... I didn't want something like this!
All I can do is shout to the sky: I didn't want it! I tried to make things
come out well... without any mistakes. I didn't even sleep nights. I just
lay there with my eyes shut, picturing all the details of Hercules' body,
and then Adam's, noting which features should be added to my double.
I couldn't do it all in one session. No way-that's why I dissolved him.
I couldn't let out a cripple with arms and legs of different length. And I
couldn't possibly have known that each time I dissolved him I killed him.
How could I have known?
As soon as the liquid cleared his head and shoulders, the double
grabbed the edge of the tank with his powerful hands and jumped out. I was
running the movie camera, capturing the historic moment of a man appearing
from a machine. He fell on the linoleum before me, sobbing with a hoarse,
howling cry. I ran to him:
"What's the matter?"
He was hugging my leg with his sticky hands, rubbing his head against
them, kissing my hands as I tried to lift him.
"Don't kill me, don't kill me! Don't kill me any more! Why do you
torture me, aaah! Don't! Twenty-five times you've killed me, twenty-five
times. Aaah!"
But I hadn't known. I couldn't know that his consciousness revived with
every experiment! He understood that I was reshaping his body, doing what I
wanted with him, and he couldn't do a thing about it. My command "No!" first
dissolved his body, and then his consciousness dimmed. Why didn't that
artificial idiot tell me that the consciousness begins functioning before
the body?
"Damn it!" the student muttered. "Really-the brain must be unplugged
last. When was that?" He turned the pages and sighed with a certain relief.
No, it wasn't his fault. In August and September he couldn't have told him,
he didn't know it himself. If he were running the experiment, he would have
made the same mistake.
And so I got a man with a classic physique, a pleasant look, and the
broken spirit of a slave. "A knight without fear or flaw."
Go ahead, look for a scapegoat, you louse. You didn't know; you tried!
But did you!? Wasn't it conceit, self-love? Didn't you feel like God sitting
up in the clouds in a labeled leather armchair? A god, on whose whims
depended the appearance and disappearance of a man, whether he would be or
not be. Didn't you experience an intellectual passion when you gave the
computer-womb the orders over and over: "You may!" and "Not it!" and "No!"?
He tried to escape from the lab immediately. I barely talked him into
washing up and dressing. He was trembling. There could be no question of his
working alongside me in the lab.
He spent five days with me^ five horrible days. I kept hoping he'd
relax, get better. No way! No, he was healthy in body, knew everything,
remembered everything-the computer-womb recorded all my information in him,
my knowledge, my memory-but the terror of his experience was overwhelming
and could not be controlled by his will or thoughts. His hair turned gray
the first day from the memories.
He was terrified of me. When I would come home, he would jump up and
get into a position of submission: his gladiator's back would hunch and his
arms, bulging with rippling muscles, would hang limp. He was trying to look
smaller. And his eyes-oh, God, those eyes! They looked at me with a prayer,
entreaty, with a panic-stricken readiness to do anything to mollify me. I
felt terrified and guilty. I've never seen a man look that way.
And tonight, sometime after three... I don't know why I woke up. There
was a dead gray light from the streetlights on the ceiling. Adam the double
was standing over my bed with a raised dumbbell. I could see his muscles in
his right arm tense for the blow. We stared at each other for a few seconds.
Then he giggled nervously and moved away, his bare feet scuffling on the
wood floor.
I sat up on the bed and turned on the overhead light. He was crouching
on the floor by the closet, his head on his knees. His shoulders and the
dumbbell in his hand were shaking.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "You should strike, once you've aimed.
You would have felt better."
"I can't forget," he muttered in a hollow baritone through the sobs.
"You see, I can't forget how you used to kill me... twenty-five times!"
I opened the desk, took out my passport, engineering degree, what money
there was, and shook him by the shoulder. "Get up! Get dressed and go. Go
off somewhere, make a life for yourself, work, live. We won't be able to do
anything together. No rest for you or me. It's not my fault! Damn it, can't
you understand that I didn't know? I was doing something that had never been
done. Surely there were things I couldn't have known. A man can be born a
monster or mentally ill, or become that way after an illness or accident,
but then it's nobody's fault, nobody to bash with a dumbbell. If you had
been in my place, the same thing would have happened, because you are me!
Understand?"
He was backing toward the wall, shaking. That sobered me up.
"I'm sorry. Take my papers. I'll manage here somehow. Here," I said,
opening the passport, "you look more like me on the picture than I do. The
photographer must have tried to perfect my features, too. Take the money, a
suitcase, clothes-and go where you want. You'll live on your own, work a
bit, and maybe things will be easier for you."
Two hours later he was gone. We agreed that he would write to me from
wherever he settled. He won't write....
It's a good sign that he tried to kill me. That means he's no slave. He
feels hurt and insulted. Maybe things will work out for him?
And I'm sitting here without a thought in my head. I have to start
over. Oh, nature, what a bitch you are! How you enjoy laughing at our ideas!
You seduce us, and then....
Drop it! Stop looking for someone to blame. Nature has nothing to do
with it, it is part of your work only on an elementary level. And the rest
is all you. Don't try to get out of it.
The alarm went off: 7:15. Time to get up, shave, wash, and go to work.
A murky sun over the buildings, the sky full of smoke, dirty, like an old
curtain. The wind raised dust, whipping the trees, blowing through the
balcony door. Downstairs a bus licks people off the street at the stops.
They gather again, and they all have the same expression on their faces:
can't be late for work!
And I have to get to work too. I'll get to the lab, jot down the
results of my unsatisfactory experiment, and console myself with the
bromides: "You learn from your mistakes;" "There are no beaten paths in
science;" and so on. And I'll start the next experiment. And I'll make more
mistakes and destroy not guinea pigs, but... people? You conceited, dreaming
cretin, armed with the latest technology!
The wind whips the trees. It was all in the past: the days of research
and discovery, the evenings of meditation, the nights of dreaming. And here
you are, the cold, clear morn, wiser than the night. Merciless morning! It's
probably in this sober time that women who had dreamed all night of having a
child go for an abortion. And I had an abortion. I dreamed. I wanted to
bring happiness to the world, and I've created two miserable people already.
I'll never master this work. I'm weak, unneeded, and stupid. I must take up
something mediocre, that I can handle-for an article, for a dissertation.
And then everything will be fine.
The wind whips the trees. The wind whips the trees....
On the next balcony there's a recording of Mozart's Requiem playing. My
neighbor, associate professor Prishchepa, wants to get into a mathematical
mood first thing in the morning. "Requi . . . requiem...." The voices are
bidding farewell to someone clearly and simply. This is good music to shoot
oneself by. Nobody would notice the shot.
The wind whips the trees.
What have I done? And yet I had doubts, and then not doubts but
knowledge. I knew that any change I made stayed with him, that the
computer-womb remembered everything. I didn't pay attention. Why?
I had a thought, not expressed in words, so that I wouldn't be ashamed,
or a feeling of well-being and safety, I guess: "after all, it's not me.
It's not happening to me...." And also a feeling of impunity: "Whatever I
want, I'll do. Nothing will happen to me...."
You won't shoot yourself, you animal! You won't do anything to
yourself-you'll live to a ripe old age and even set yourself up as an
example to others.
The wind whips the trees. The bus licks people off the stops.
I don't want to go to work.
September 20. Gray asphalt. Gray clouds. The motorcycle swallows up
miles like noodles. A kid stops by the road, and I can tell from his
position that he's decided to be a motorcyclist on a red bike when he grows
up. Be a motorcyclist, kid; just don't become a researcher.
I keep accelerating. The speedometer says over ninety. The wind is
lashing my face. Here comes a dump truck, hogging most of the road, of
course. Those bastard truckdrivers, they don't take bikers for people.
Always trying to ride us off the road. Well, I'm not yielding to this one!
No, there was no crash. I'm alive. I'm writing down how I tore around
glassy-eyed today. I have to write about something. The truck veered to the
right at the last second. I watched in the rear view mirror as the driver
pulled over and ran into the road, waving his fists at me.
Actually, if I had crashed, what difference would it make? There's a
spare Krivoshein in Moscow. I can't describe my repulsion and disgust for
everything right now. Including me.
How he shook, how he hugged my feet-the strong, handsome "not me." And
I could have foreseen it and spared him. I could have! But I thought: "It'll
work like this. What the hell! After all, he's not me."
And it was so interesting, good, beautiful. We dreamed and talked,
worried about the good of mankind, swore a vow. What shame! And in the work,
I overlooked the fact that I was creating a man. I thought about
everything-exquisite forms, intellectual content-but that it might hurt or
scare him never entered my mind. I just decided that there was no
informational death in the experiment-and fine. But death was a violence
that I performed on him over and over.
How did it happen? How?
The white posts along the highway reflect the motor's hum:
but-but-but-but how did it happen? But-but-but-but how? The speedometer
reads 110, the gray stripes of earth and trees whiz by. At this speed I
could escape from pursuers or save someone, getting there in time! But I
have no one to run away from and no one to save. I did have someone to save,
but I had to do some honest thinking there ... and I didn't.
I can master heights, elements, with my brain and brawn. It's easy with
the elements. They can be mastered. But how do you master yourself?
I just went over the diary-and I'm frightened by how low and
self-serving my thoughts are! Here I am discussing how troubles befall
people because they are unprincipled, that they think they can live off to
the side, not get involved, and a few pages later I cleverly make sure I'm
off to the side: don't get mixed up with Harry Hilobok, let him get his damn
doctoral dissertation .... Here I'm thinking about how to derive benefit
from my discovery, and here I call myself to do cruel acts with reference to
wars and murders in the world. Here I (or me and the double, it doesn't
matter) lower myself to the level of an ordinary engineer, who can't handle
such difficult work-a moral insurance in case it doesn't work; and when it
does work, I compare myself to the gods. And I wrote all this sincerely,
without noticing any contradictions.
Without noticing? I didn't want to notice them! It was so pleasant and
convenient that way: preen, lie to myself with an open heart, adjust ideas
and facts to fit my moral comfort. So it turns out I thought more about
myself than about humanity? It turns out that this work, if evaluated not
from a scientific but a moral position, was nothing more than showing off?
Of course, where would I find the time to worry about my guinea pigs!
What kind of a man are you, Krivoshein?
September 22. I'm not working. I can't work now. Today I rode down to
Berdichev for some reason and by the way, I understood the hidden meaning of
the mysterious phrase that was printed out one day. Twenty-six kopeks is
what it costs to fuel up to get from Berdichev to Dneprovsk: five liters of
gas, two hundred grams of oil. I've unearthed another discovery!
Where is Adam now? Where did he go?
And that creature that the machine tried to create after the first
double: half-Lena, half-me. It, too, must have suffered the horrors of death
when we ordered the computer to dissolve it? And my father. Oh damn! Why am
I thinking about that?
My father... the last cossack in the Krivoshein line. According to
family tradition, my forefathers come from the Zaporozhian cossacks. There
was a brave cossack whose neck was damaged in battle-and there you get the
Krivoshein line. When Empress Catherine broke them up, they moved to this
side of the Volga. My grandfather Karp Vasilyevich beat up the priest and
the head of the village when they decided to get rid of the village school
and set up a church school. I haven't the slightest idea what the difference
was between them, but my grandfather died at hard labor.
Father took part in all the revolutions, and served under Chapayev in
the Civil War.
He fought in the last war as an old man, and only the first two years.
They were retreating in the Ukraine and he led his battalion out from an
ambush in Kharkov. Then because of wounds and age, they transferred him to
the rear, as a commander on the other side of the Urals. There, in the camp,
a soldier and peasant, he taught me how to ride, how to take care of a horse
and saddle it, how to plow, mow, shoot from a rifle and a pistol, dig the
earth, and chop brambles with a machette. He also made me kill chickens and
pigs by stabbing them under the right shoulder blade with a small flat
knife, so that I wouldn't fear blood. "It'll come in handy in life, sonny!"
Shortly before his death he and I went down to his homeland in
Mironovka, to see his cousin Egor Stepanovich Krivoshein. While we were
sitting in his cottage drinking, Egor's grandson rushed over:
"Cramps, they dug out a body from the clay in Sheep's Gully where
they're digging the dam!"
"In Sheep's Gully?" my father asked. The old men exchanged a look.
"Let's go see."
The crowd of workmen and onlookers made way for the two old men. The
gray, chalky bones were piled up in one spot. Father poked the skull with a
stick, and it turned over, revealing a hole over the right temple.
"Mine!" father said looking at Egor Stepanovich triumphantly. "And you
missed. Your hand shook, huh!"
"How do you know it's yours?" the other demanded sticking his beard
into the air.
"Have you forgotten? He was coming back to the village. I was right on
the side of the road, you were on the left,..." and father drew a picture in
the clay to prove his point.
"Whose remains are these, old men?" a young foreman in a fancy shirt
demanded.
"The captain," father explained, squinting. "In the first revolution
the Ural cossacks were quartered here, and this here was their captain.
Don't bother the police with it, sonny. It's been over a long time."
How marvelous it was to lie in wait in the steppe at night with
father's gun, waiting for the captain-both for the principle and the fact
that the bastard ripped up men with his bayonet and raped girls! Or to fly
on horseback, feeling the weight of your saber in your hand, taking measure:
I'll chop that one over there, with beard, from his epaulets all the way
through!
The last time I fought was eighteen years ago, and it wasn't a fight to
the death, only to the school bell. I never galloped in the days of old. All
my bravado comes on a bike facing down a truck.
And I'm not afraid, father, of blood or death. But your simple lessons
never did come in handy. The revolution continues through different means,
with discoveries and inventions-weapons more dangerous than sabers. And I'm
afraid, father, of making mistakes.
Liar! Liar! You're preening again, you low-life! You have an
ineradicable streak of showing off. Oh, it's so pretty: "I'm scared of
making mistakes, father," and all about the revolution. Don't you dare!
You wanted to synthesize in people (yes, people, not artificial
doubles!) the nobility of spirit that you lack, the beauty that you don't
have, the determination you'll never have, and the selflessness you can't
even dream of.
You come from a good family. Your forefathers knew how to work and to
leave good work behind them, and to beat the bastards with fist or gun. They
didn't let up. And what are you? Have you fought for justice? Oh, you never
had an opportunity? Maybe you've cleverly managed to avoid them? What, don't
feel like remembering?
That's the problem. I'm afraid of everything: life, people. I even love
Lena in a cowardly way: I'm afraid to bring her close and I'm afraid to lose
her. And God forbid, no children. Children complicate things.
And the fact that I'm hiding my discovery-isn't that also a fear that I
won't be able to develop it properly? And I probably won't. I'm a weakling.
One of those smart weaklings who are better off not being smart. Because
their brain is only given them so that they can appreciate their lowness and
impotence.
Graduate student Krivoshein lit up a cigarette and paced the room
nervously. It was painful reading the notes-it was about him, too. He sighed
and returned to the desk.
Easy, Krivoshein, easy. You can talk yourself into something hysterical
this way. You still have the responsibility for the work... and everything
isn't lost yet. You're not such a son of a bitch that you should drop dead
immediately.
I can even make you look good. I haven't used the discovery for
personal gain, and I won't. I worked at peak capacity, and I didn't cheat.
Now I'm trying to figure things out. So I'm not worse than others. I made a
mistake. And who doesn't?
Yes, but in this work comparisons on a relative scale-who's better,
who's worse-don't apply. Others study crystals or develop machines; they
know their work, and that's enough. Their character flaws only harm them,
their co-workers at the lab, and their relatives. But I'm different. In
order to create Man, it's not enough to know, to have a scientific handle on
the thing-you have to be a real Man yourself, not better or worse than
others, but in the absolute sense a knight without fear or flaw. I wouldn't
mind that at all, but I don't know how to go about it. I don't have the
information.
Does that mean that I can't handle this work?
October 8. The yellow and red autumn is in the institute grounds, and I
can't work. It's full of dry leaves, the lightest rain makes a lot of noise
on them, and then there's a coffee aroma of rotten leaves. And I can't
work....
Maybe I shouldn't, it's not needed? A good generic stock, a quality
education, a hygienic life-style.... Let smart people re-create themselves,
have lots of children with good stock. They'll be able to feed them, their
salaries will stretch; after all, they're smart people. And they'll be able
to bring them up. They're smart people. No computers will be necessary.
Harry Hilobok called today. They're organizing a permanent exhibit at
the institute: "The Achievements of Soviet Systemology," and naturally, he's
the organizer.
"Won't you contribute something, Valentin Vasilyevich?"
"No."
"Why are you like that? Now Ippolit Illarionovich Voltampernov's
department is giving three exhibits and other departments and labs are
contributing. We should have at least one exhibit on your topic. Don't you
have anything yet?"
"No. How's the biosensor system moving, Harry Haritonovich?"
"Eh, Valentin Vasilyevich, what's one system compared to all of
systemology, heh-heh! We're working on it, but meanwhile you see, everyone's
demanding exhibit stands, mock-ups, tableaux, signs in three languages, and
our heads are spinning. The lab and the workshops are full up, but if you
should have anything for the show, we'll manage. Things are going fast
around here."
I almost said that it was the system that I needed to come up with an
exhibit for your stupid show but I controlled myself. (Let him make it and
then we'll see.) Always being sneaky, Krivoshein!
My exhibits were all over the world. One was in Moscow struggling with
biology. The others were munching grass and cabbage in gardens. And another
just ran off to who knows where.
Should I exhibit the computer-womb to shock the academic world? Create
two-headed and six-footed rabbits as part of the demonstration, at the rate
of two an hour? That would create a stir.
No, brother. This machine makes man. And there's no way of getting
around that.
Every action carries obligations. Inaction doesn't oblige you to
anything.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener
October 11. I'm repeating the experiments in controlled synthesis of
rabbits-just so that the mechanism doesn't sit around for nothing. I'm
filming it all. I'll have a documentary. "Citizens, present your
documentaries!"
October 13. I've invented a method of destroying biological information
in the computer-womb quickly and dependably. You can call it an "electric
eraser." I use tension from the noise generator as input for the crystal
unit and TsVM-12 and 15-20 minutes later the computer forgets everything
about the rabbits. If I had had this method earlier instead of the order
"No!" I would have destroyed Adam each time irreversibly and fundamentally.
I just don't know if he would have liked that any better.
Time is making the leaves fall and the sky grow cold. And my work isn't
moving. I can't undertake serious work now. I don't have the stomach for it.
I'm lost.
Here, Krivoshein! You can now take it as conclusively demonstrated that
you are neither God nor the hub of the earth. Thus, you should seek help
from others. You must go to Arkady Arkadievich....
"Aha," graduate student Krivoshein exclaimed.
I must follow procedure; he is my superior. Actually, that's not the
point. He's smart, knowledgeable, influential, and a marvelous
methodologist. He knows how to formulate any problem. And, "A formulated
problem," as it says in his Introduction to Systemology, "is the solution to
the problem written in hidden form." And that's just what I need. And he
supported my topic at the scientific council. Of course, he's overly
officious and conceited, but we'll manage. He's a smart man, after all.
He'll understand that glory is not the point of this work.
Wait! Good intentions are one thing, but reasonable care can't hurt. To
let Azarov in on the deep, dark secret that the computer-womb can synthesize
live systems-no, that can't be allowed. I have to start with something
simpler, and then we'll see, as he likes to say.
I have to synthesize electronic circuits in the computer. That was what
old Voltampernov had attacked, and by the way, that's my official topic for
the next year and half.
"You must, Valentin Vasilyevich, you must!"
Here's the plan. We place six wires into the liquid: two are feeders;
two, the control oscillograph; and two, the impulse generator. I give the
computer the parameters of the circuits and the approximate sizes through
Monomakh's Crown. I definitely know what's "it" and "not it" in this-it's
familiar ground.
October 15. Rounded brown squares are appearing in the tank. They look
like laminated insulation. Metal lines of the circuits settle on top of the
squares, then layers of insulation, condensers, strips of resistors, and
diodes and transistors .... It looks a lot like film technology, which is
being developed in microelectronics, but without the vacuum, electrical
discharge, and other pyrotechnics.
And how pleasant it is after all the headaches and nightmares to click
the switches, adjust the brightness and contrast of the beam on the
oscilloscope, and count off the microsecond impulses! Everything is clear,
precise, understandable. It's like coming home from distant shores. The
devil lured me onto those shores, into the dark jungles called "man" without
a guide or compass. But who is a guide and what's a compass?
All right. The parameters of the circuits agree, project 154 is half
done. Won't Ippolit Illarionovich be glad!
I'll go to see Azarov. I'll show him the samples, explain a few things
and hint at future prospects. I'll go there tomorrow and say:
"Arkady Arkadievich, I come to you as one smart man to another...."
October 16. I went... flying into open arms.
So, in the morning I thought through our conversation, took along the
samples, and headed for the old building. The autumn sun shed light on the
ornate walls, granite steps, and me, walking up them.
My depression began at the front door. Those governmental
three-meter-wide doors made out of carved oak, with curved handles and tight
pneumatic springs! They seem to be created especially for beefy young
bureaucrats with hands as big as skillets for a dozen eggs. The young bucks
open the doors with a light tug and go handle important papers. Once through
the doors I began thinking that a conversation with Azarov should not begin
with a shocking opening ("I come to you as one smart man to another....");
instead I should kowtow-he's an academician and I'm an engineer.
And as I walked up the marble staircase covered with thick carpet
attached by chrome tacks, with bannisters too broad to grasp completely, my
soul reached a respectful readiness to agree with anything the academician
might say or recommend. In a word, if it was Krivoshein the discoverer who
went up the stairs with a spring step, it was Krivoshein the supplicant who
entered the director's waiting room, shuffling his feet, with a hunched back
and a guilty face.
His secretary Ninochka cut me off with a fervor that Lev Yashin, the
goalie, would envy.
"No, no, no, comrade Krivoshein, you can't. Arkady Arkadievich is going
to a congress in New Zealand. You know how much trouble I get into if I let
people in! He's not seeing anyone, see?"
There were quite a few people sitting in the waiting room. They all
gave me a dirty look. I sat down to wait, without any particular hope for
success, simply because the others were waiting, and I would, too. To be
part of the collective. A dead-end situation.
More people arrived. They were all grim and ugly. No one spoke to
anyone.
The more people there were in the waiting room, the less important my
business seemed. It occurred to me that my samples were measured, not
tested, and that Azarov would try to prove that technological work in
electronics wasn't for us. "And why am I bothering him? I've still got over
a year to finish the project. So that Hilobok can crack jokes about my work
habits again?"
Speak of the devil, Hilobok appeared in the doorway with a rushed look;
I took up a good position and slipped in after him.
"Arkady Arkadievich, I'd like...."
"No, no, Valentin ... eh ... Vasilyevich." Azarov frowned in my
direction, accepting some papers from Harry. "I can't! I simply can't.
There's a holdup with my visa. I have to go over the typed lecture. Please
address your questions to Ippolit Illarionovich. He'll be my replacement
this month, or to Harry Haritonovich. I'm not the only person in the whole
world, for pity's sake!"
So, the man is going to New Zealand. Why am I bothering him? To a
congress and to familiarize himself. And why did I ever think to grab him by
the coattail? It's silly. Just go on and work, until they want a report.
Some day they'll interrupt government meetings for this project. Yes,
but why that does that have to be some day?
They won't interrupt meetings, don't worry. I'll be dealing with
second-level clerks, who will never take it upon themselves to take any
action or responsibility-weaklings, just like me.
Weakling. A weakling and nothing more! You should have talked to him,
if you had decided to. You couldn't. You apologized in a repulsive voice and
left his office. Getting an Azarov who is hurrying across the seas
interested in your work is a lot harder than commanding the computer-womb.
But there's still something wrong.
October 25. And this is right, I think! Our fair city is being visited
by a major specialist in microelectronics, a technical sciences candidate, a
future doctor in the field, Valery Ivanov. He called me today. We're meeting
tomorrow at eight at the Dynamo Restaurant. Dress accordingly. Ladies not
excluded.
Valery Ivanov, with whom I used to cut classes so that we could play
cards, my roommate, the guy I did my probation work and went to parties at
the library institute with. Valery Ivanov, my former boss and co-inventor of
two projects, a good arguer and a man of great ideas! Valery Ivanov, the man
I worked with like this for five years. I'm happy.
"Listen, Valery," I'll say to him, "give up your microelectronics, and
come back here. I've got a great project."
He can even head the lab, since he's got the degree. I'm willing. He
knows how to work.
Well, let's see how he's changed over the last year.
October 26, night. Nothing happens in life for nothing.
From my first look at him, I knew that we wouldn't have the old
rapport. And it wasn't a question of a year's separation. The old
Harry-esque vileness had come between us. It's not his fault or mine, but
we've ended up on opposite sides. He, who had proudly quit and slammed the
door, was somehow more in the right than I, who stayed behind and didn't
share his bitter lot. That's why there was a slight unpleasantness between
us all evening, a bitterness that we couldn't overcome. We somehow trusted
each other less now. It was good that I took Lena with me; at least she
decorated our meeting.
Actually the conversation was interesting. It's worth relating.
The meeting began at 8:00 P.M. A Petersburgian sat before me. An
imported suit in a discreet gray check, without lapels, a white, starched
shirt, hexagonal glasses on an aquiline nose, a proper black crew cut. Even
the drawn cheeks reminded me of the blockade.
Lena was no slouch, either. As we walked across the room, everyone
looked at her. I was the only slob in the group: a checked shirt and
not-too-rumpled gray pants. Two doubles had depleted my wardrobe severely.
Waiting for our order, we enjoyed looking at each other.
"Well," Petersburgian Ivanov broke the silence, "Oink something, you
old pig."
"I see your mug is assymetrical."
"Assymetry is a sign of the times. That's my teeth. I got a chill in
the train," he said touching his cheek.
"Let me give you a punch-it'll pass."
"Thanks. I think I'll stick to cognac."
That was our usual warm-up before a good talk.
They brought cognac and wine for the lady. We drank, satisfied our
first hunger with sturgeon in aspic and then stared at each other
expectantly again. There were parties going on around us. A tubby man
standing at two joined tables was toasting "mother science." (They were
drinking to a completed dissertation.) A tipsy fellow all alone at a
neighboring table was threatening a carafe of vodka, muttering:
"I'm quiet... I'm quiet!" He was bursting to tell some secret.
"Listen, Val!"
"Listen, Valery!"
We looked at each other.
"Well, you go first." I nodded.
"Listen, Val," his eyes glistening invitingly behind his glasses, "drop
your systemology and come over to us. I'll arrange your transfer. We're
working on such an interesting project now! A microelectric complex, a
machine that makes machines. Do you get it?"
"Solid-state circuits?"
"Ah, what are solid-state circuits-obsolete now. Electronic and plasma
rays plus electrophotography plus cathode spraying of film plus... in a
word, here's the idea. The circuit of an electronic machine evolves in
bundles of ions and electrons, like the image on a TV screen-and that's it.
It's finished; it can work. A density of elements as in the human brain. See
that?"
"And does that exist now?"
"Well, you see, ..." he raised his eyebrows. "If it did, then why would
I call on you? We'll do it in the time allotted."
(Well, of course, I had to drop systemology and follow him! Not him
follow me; oh, no ... of course not! That's the way it always was.)
"What about the Americans?"
"They're trying, too. The question is who'll be first. We're working at
full blast. I've already made a dozen depositions. Do you get it?"
"Well, what's the goal?"
"Very simple: to make computers as easily mass produced and cheap as
newspapers. Do you know the code name I gave to the project? 'Poem.' And it
really is a technological poem!" The booze made Valery's nose glow. He was
putting in a big effort and was probably sure of success. I was always easy
to talk into things. "A computer factory no bigger than a TV set, can you
imagine that? A factory that's a machine! It receives a technical assignment
by teletype for new computers, recalculates the assignment into circuits,
encodes the result into electric impulses, which run the beams on the screen
and print out the circuit. Twenty seconds-and the computer is finished. A
thin plate that contains the same circuitry it now takes a whole room to
house, understand? They send the thin plate in an envelope to the buyer, and
he installs it in the unit. The command panel of a chemcial plant, a system
for controlling traffic lights in a city, a car-wherever-everything that in
the past had been done slowly, clumsily, and with mistakes by man can now be
done with electronic precision by the wise microelectronic plate! So you see
what I mean?"
Lena was watching Valery rapturously. Really, the picture he painted
was so marvelous that I didn't realize right away that he was talking about
the same film circuits that I created in the tank of the computer-womb. Of
course, they were simpler ones, but in principle, more complex ones could be
made, too.
"But why the vacuum and various rays? Why not chemistry? Probably, you
could do it that way, too."
"Chemistry. Personally, ever since Professor Varfolomeyev used to
lecture us, I haven't been too hot on chemistry. [Lena giggled.] But if you
have some ideas on chemical microelectronics-let's have them. I'm for it.
You can handle that end of it. In the long run, it's not important how we do
it, as long as it gets done. And then... and then we'll be able to do so
much...." He leaned back dreamily. "Judge for yourself. Why should the
computer-factory be assigned to create circuits? That's extra work. All it
has to do is receive information on the problems. After all, we have
computers working in production, in services, in transport, in defense. Why
translate their impulses into human speech if they will only have to be
retranslated back into impulses! Imagine: the computer-factories receive
radioed information about other computers from industry, planning,
production, shipping .. . from everywhere, even on the weather, the crops,
the needs of people. They work it out into the necessary circuits and send
them out."
"Microelectrical recommendations?"
"Directives, my good fellow! What recommendations? Mathematically based
electronic circuits are the reflexes of production. You don't argue with
mathematics."
We drank.
"Valery," I said, "if you do this, you'll be so famous that they'll
even print your picture on bathroom paper!"
"Yours, too," he added generously. "We'll be famous together."
"But, Valery," Lena said, "in your complex there's no room for people.
How can that be?"
"Lena, you're an engineer." Ivanov condescended. "Let's look at this
subject, man I mean, from an engineering point of view. Why should there be
room for him? Can a man receive radiosignals, ultra and infrared, heat,
ultraviolet rays and X-rays, radiation? Can he withstand a vacuum, gas
pressure at hundreds of Gs, vibrations, thermal shocks from minus 120
degrees Celsius to plus 120 with hourly frequency or the temperature of
liquid helium? Can he fly with the speed of a jet, submerge to the ocean
floor or plunge into molten metal? Can he figure out a problem with ten
factors-only ten-in a fraction of a second? No."
"He can with the help of machines," Lena said, supporting humanity.
"Yes, but machines can do it without his help! So all that's left him
in our harsh electronic and atomic age is to push buttons. But that's the
easiest operation to automate. You know, in modern technology, man is the
least dependable element. That's why there are all those breakers and
buffers and other defenses against fools."
"I'm not saying nothing," the drunk growled.
"But man could be perfected," I muttered.
"Perfected? Don't make me laugh! That's like perfecting steam
engines-instead of replacing them with diesels or electric engines. The flaw
is in the physical principles of man, the ion reactions and metabolism. Look
around," he said, waving his arm around the room.
"That damn process is draining all of man's strength."
I looked around. At the joined tables the revelers were kissing the
brand-new candidate, a bald youth, worn out by work and tension. Next to him
was his wife. At a nearby table twelve tourists were feeding decorously.
There were smoke and noise over every table. On the stage, a saxophonist,
leaning over to the side and jutting out his belly, was wailing a solo with
variations; the brass section was busy syncopating and the drummer was in a
frenzy. The band was doing a rock version of an old folk song. Near the
stage, without moving their feet, couples agitated all the parts of their
bodies.
"I'm not saying nothing!" our neighbor announced, staring into the
empty carafe.
"Actually, man's only redeeming feature is his universality," Ivanov
noted. "Even though he does it badly, he can do a lot. But universality is a
product of complexity, and complexity is a quantitative factor. When we
learn to make computers tens of billions of times more complex with the use
of electro-ion beams, it'll be all over. Man's song will be sung."
"What do you mean?" Lena demanded.
"Nothing terrible will happen, don't worry. Simply a situation will
come about quietly, with dignity, in which machines will be able to do
without man. Of course, the computers, respecting the memory of their
creators, will be kind to all the rest. They'll satisfy their simple-minded
needs in terms of metabolism and such. The majority of people will be very
pleased with the situation. In their unflappable conceit they will even
imagine that the machines are serving them. And for the computers it will be
like a secondary unconditioned reflex, an inherited habit. And maybe the
computers won't have habits like that. After all, the basis of a computer is
rationality. What would they need habit for?"
"By the way, those rational machines are serving us now," Lena
interrupted hotly. "They satisfy our needs, no?"
I said nothing. Valery laughed.
"That depends on how you look at it, Lenochka! The computers have every
reason to think that we satisfy their needs. If I were, say, a Ural-4 I
wouldn't have any grudges against people: you live in a bright
air-conditioned room with a steady supply of alternating current-the
equivalent of hot and cold water. A servant in a white lab coat scurries
about, fulfilling your every whim, and they write about you in the papers.
And the work is clean: switch those currents and transmit those impulses.
What a life!"
"I'm not saying nothing!" our neighbor announced for the last time,
then stood up and shouted an obscenity at the room.
The maitre d' and company ran over to him.
"So what if I'm drunk," the man yelled, as he was assisted out of the
restaurant. "I'm drinking on my own money-money I earned. Robbery is a job,
too, you know."
"There he is, the object of your concern, in all his glory!" Valery
compressed his thin lips. "A worthy descendant of the parasite who shouted
'Man-that has a proud ring!' Not any more. Well, how about it, Val?" he
turned to me. "Come on over. Get in on the project. This way you and I will