"But we argued, contradicted each other!"
"We were simply thinking aloud together. You can argue with yourself.
Man's thoughts are mere variants of actions and they are always
contradictory. But we strive to act together."
"Yes... but that's no good! We're not working now, we're plugging away.
An extra pair of hands doubles the work capacity. But our main function is
to think. And here... listen, original, we have to become different."
I couldn't imagine what serious repercussions this innocent
conversation would have. And, as they write in novels, the repercussions
didn't make us wait.
It began with my double buying a volume of Human Physiology intended
for secondary phys ed courses. I won't try to guess whether he had really
planned to distinguish himself from me or whether he was simply attracted by
the bright green cover and gold lettering, but as soon as he opened it, he
began muttering "Aha! Now that's something,..." as if he were reading a
catchy mystery, and then he bombarded me with questions:
"Do you know that nerve cells can be up to a meter long?"
"Do you know what controls the sympathetic nervous system?"
"Do you know what protective inhibition is?"
Naturally, I didn't know. And he went on telling me with a neophyte's
enthusiasm about the sympathetic nervous system regulating the functions of
the internal organs, that protective inhibition or pessimum, occurs in nerve
tissue when the strength of excitation exceeds the permissible level.
"You understand, the nerve cell can refuse to react to a powerful
stimulus in order not to destroy itself! Transistors can't do that!"
After that textbook he bought up a whole batch of biology books and
journals, read them cover to cover, quoting his favorite passages, and got
mad when I didn't share his enthusiasm. And why should I have?
Graduate student Krivoshein set aside the diary. Yes, that's precisely
how it all began. In the dry academic lines of the books and articles on
biology he suddenly sensed the proximity of truth that he had earlier felt
only when reading the works of great writers, when, delving into the actions
and emotions of invented characters, you begin to learn something about
yourself. Then he did not realize it, because the physiology facts had
enthralled him, so to speak. But he was upset that original Krivoshein was
left cold by it all. How could that be? They were the same; that meant that
they had to react to things the same way. Did that mean that he, the
artificial Krivoshein, wasn't the same? That was the first hint.
The second time he overslept-sitting up reading until dawn-I blew up:
"Why can't you get interested in mineralogy-or production economics-if
you want so badly to be different! At least you'd get some sleep."
We were talking in the lab, after my double arrived past noon, sleepy
and unshaven; I had shaved in the morning. That kind of discrepancy was
enough to worry our institute friends.
He gave me a haughty and surprised look.
"Tell me, what's that liquid?" and he pointed at the tank. "What is its
composition?"
"Organic, of course, why?"
"It's not tricky. Why did the computer-womb use ammonia and phosphoric
acid? Remember? It kept spewing out formulas and amounts and you ran around
all the stores like a crazy man, trying to find it all. Why did you get it?!
You don't know? I'll explain: the computer was synthesizing atpase and
phosphocreatine-the sources of muscle energy. Understand?"
"I understand. But what about Galosha brand gas? And calcium rhodanate?
And the methylviolet? And the other three hundred reagents?"
"I don't know yet. I have to read up on biochemistry...."
"Uh-huh... and now I'll explain to you why I got those disgusting
things: I was fulfilling the logical conditions of the experiment-the rules
of the game, and nothing else. I did not know about your superphosphate. And
the computer probably didn't know that the formulas it was turning out in
binary code had such fancy names-because nature is made up of structural
elements and not names. And yet it asked for ammonia, phosphoric acid, and
sugar, and not for vodka or strichnine. It figured out for istelf, and
without textbooks, that vodka is a poison. And it created you without
textbooks and medical encyclopedias-it modeled you from life."
"I don't see why you're so uptight about biology. It has everything we
need: knowledge about life and man. For example . . ."-he was trying to
convince me, it was obvious-"did you know that conditioned reflexes are
created only when the conditioning stimulus precedes an unconditioned one?
The cause precedes the effect, understand? The nervous system has a greater
sense of causality than any philosophy book! And biology uses more precise
terms than everyday life. You know, how they write in novels: 'The
unconscious terror widened his pupils and made his heart beat faster.' The
sympathetic system went to work. There you go...." He leafed through his
green bible. " 'Under the influence of impulses passing through the
sympathetic nerves, the following occurs: a) dilation of pupils through the
contraction of the radial muscles of the iris; b) increase in frequency and
strength of heart contractions....' That's more like it, eh?"
"It's more like it, but how much more? It doesn't occur to you that if
biology had made giant strides in this business, then it would be biologists
and not us who are synthesizing man?"
"But on the basis of this knowledge we'll be able to make an analysis
of man."
"An analysis!" I remembered the "streptocidal striptease with
trembling,..." my near breakdown, the punchtape bonfire-and I got mad. "All
right, let's drop our work, memorize all the textbooks and pharmacology
manuals, master a mass of terms, acquire degrees and baldspots, and thirty
years or so from now let's return to our work so that we can label it all
properly. This is phosphocreatine, and this is gluten... a hundred billion
labels. I've already tried to analyze your appearance. I've had it. The
analytic path will take us the devil knows where."
In a word, we didn't reach an agreement. This was the first instance
when each of us retained his opinion. I still don't understand why he, a
systems technologist, engineer, electronics man... well, the same as I...
why he turned to biology. We have an experimental setup the likes of which
he'll never find in any other lab. We have to run experiments, systemize the
results and observations, establish general laws-I mean general ones,
informational ones! Biological laws are a step backward in comparison.
That's the way it's done. And that's the only way to study the best way to
control the computer-womb-after all, it's a computer first and foremost.
The arguments continued during the next few days. We got angry,
attacking one another. Each one used arguments in his favor.
'Technology shouldn't be copying nature; it should be complementing it.
We plan to double good people. And what if the good man is limp? Or lost an
arm in the war? Or is in lousy health? After all, a man's worth is usually
known when he has reached a ripe old age; and then his health isn't what it
used to be, and maybe senility is creeping up ... and we should re-create
all that, too?"
"No. We have to find a way to iron out the wrinkles in the doubles. Let
them be healthy, attractive."
'There, you see!"
"What see?"
"In order to correct the doubles you need biological information on a
good constitution and attractive looks. Biological!"
"I don't see that. If the computer, without any biological preparation,
can re-create an entire person, then why does it need information when it
will be creating parts of a person? Biological information won't help you
construct a person or an arm. You crazy person, why can't you see that we
can't delve into all the details of the human organism? We can't. We'll get
bogged down. There are untold billions of them, and no two are the same.
Nature didn't follow a few state plans, you know. That's why the question of
correcting doubles must be reduced to tuning the computer-womb by external
integral characteristics ... in other words, so that we just have a few
dials to spin!"
"Well, really!" He would spread his hands in shock and walk away.
This situation was getting on our nerves. We had wandered into a
logistical dead end. A difference in opinion on future work is nothing so
terrible; finally you can try it both ways and let the results be the judge.
The unbearable part was that we did not understand each other! Us-two
informationally identical people. Is there any truth in the world in that
case?
I began reading his collection of biology opuses (when he was on duty
at the lab). Maybe I just had an antibiology hangover from my school days
and now I would read it, and be amazed, and start mumbling: "Now that's it!"
I didn't. There was no question; it was an interesting science, and there
were a lot of edifying details (but only details!) about the functions of
the organism. It was good for one's general development, but it wasn't what
we needed. It was a descriptive and approximate science, another form of
geography. What did he see in it?
I'm an engineer-that says it all. After ten years of work, machines
have entered my soul, and I feel confident working with them. In machines,
everything is subject to reason and my hands; everything is definite. If
it's yes, then it's yes; if it's no, then it's no. Not like with people:
"Yes, but..." followed by a phrase that crosses out the "yes." And yet the
double was me....
We began avoiding our painful argument and worked in silence. Maybe
everything would work out and we would understand each other. The
information chamber was almost ready. Another day or two and we could let
the rabbits in. And then what had to happen sooner or later finally
happened: the phone rang in the laboratory.
It had rung before. "Valentin Vasilyevich, either produce a form
requisitioning the reagents by June 1 or we'll close the supply department
as far as you're concerned!" The call was from accounting. "Comrade
Krivoshein, drop into department one," said Johann Johannovich Kliapp. "Old
man, can you lend me your silver-nickel battery for a week?" said good old
Fenya Zagrebnyak. And so on. But this was an absolutely special call. As
soon as my double had said "Krivoshein here," he looked beatifically dumb.
"Yes, Lena," he murmured, "yes ... no, no, dearest. Don't be silly...
every day and every hour!"
Pliers in hand, I froze by the chamber. My beloved was being taken away
from me before my very eyes. My beloved! I knew that for sure now. I got
hot. I coughed wheezily. My double looked up at me with eyes clouded with
tender desire and came to. He was grim and sad.
"Just a second, Lena, . . ." and he handed me the phone. "It's
basically for you."
I grabbed the phone and shouted: "I'm listening, darling. Go on!"
Actually, there's no need to describe what we talked about. She, it
turned out, was away on a business trip and had only returned yesterday. Of
course, she was mad about the May 1 holidays. She had expected a call from
me.
When I hung up, the double was gone from the lab. I didn't feel like
working any more either. I locked up the lodge and headed off for home,
whistling, to shave and change for that evening.
My double was packing.
"Going far?"
"To the village to visit my aunt, to the sticks, to Saratov! To
Vladivostok to lick salt spray from my lips. It's none of your business."
"No, drop the jokes. Where are you going? What's up?"
He looked up at me:
"You really don't understand? Well, that makes sense. You're not me."
"No, why not? You are me, and I am you. That, anyway, was always our
starting point."
'That's the point-it's not so." He lit up a cigarette and took a book
from the shelf. "I'll take Introduction to Systemology. You can use the
library. You are number one, and I'm the second. You were born, grew up,
developed, took on a certain position in society. Every man has some place
in life. Whether it's good or bad, it's his own. I have no place. It's
taken! Everything's taken, from girl friend to civil position, from the bed
to the apartment."
"You can sleep on the bed, for God's sake, I don't have any
objections."
"Don't talk nonsense. The bed isn't the point."
"Listen, if you're leaving over Lena, then . . . maybe we can
experiment a little more, and ... maybe we can try it?"
"Re-create a second Lena, an artificial one?" He laughed darkly. "So
that she can hang around life like a ticketless passenger. A reward for a
good life... what a stupid idea that was! The best pupils, they're a bunch
of spoiled privileged people. Imagine Arkady Arkadievich's double:
Academician A. A. Azarov, but without an institute to run, without a
framework, without membership in the academy, without a car and
apartment-without anything except his personal qualities and pleasant
memories. What would his life be like?" He put a towel, toothbrush, and
toothpaste into the suitcase. "In a word, I've had it. I can't lead a double
entendre life any more-worrying about being seen together, looking around in
the cafeteria, taking money from you. Yes, I'm taking your money from you,
being jealous of you and Lena. Why should I suffer like that-for what sins?
I'm a man, not an experimental subject and not somebody's double!"
"How about the work?"
"And who says I'm planning to drop the work? The chamber is almost
ready, and you can run the experiments yourself. There's little for me to do
here. I'll go away and study the problem of man and machine from the other
end."
He told me his plan. He was going to Moscow to enter the graduate
biology department of MSU. The work was dividing up into two streams: I
would study the computer-womb and determine its possibilities; he would
study man and his possibilities. Then-different by then, with different
experiences and ideas-we'd put the work together.
"But why biology? Why not philosophy, sociology, psychology, or life
studies, or fine arts? They all deal with man and human society. Why?"
He looked at me thoughtfully.
"Do you believe in intuition?"
"Well, maybe."
"My intuition tells me that if we overlook biological research, we will
lose something very important. I don't know yet just what. I'll try to
explain in a year."
"But why doesn't my intuition say any such thing?"
"Damned if I know!" he sighed with his old expressiveness. His good
mood was returning. "Maybe you're just a dumb jackass."
"Sure, sure. And you're brilliant and sensitive-like the dog that can
feel everything but can't express any of it!"
In a word, we had a talk.
Everything was clear: he had to gather individual information, to
become his own person. And I accepted the fact that in order to do that he
had to be away from me, somewhere on his own. To tell the truth, our
"double" situation was beginning to wear on me, too. But that biology
stuff-I really didn't understand that at all....
The graduate student leaned back in his chair and stretched. "And
couldn't understand it." he said aloud. In those days he didn't understand
himself.
In Lieu of an Epigraph
"The theme of today's lecture is: why does the student sweat at exams?
Quiet, comrades! I suggest you take notes-the material is on the subject....
Thus, let us examine the physiological aspects of the situation that all of
you present have had to experience. The oral exam is on. The student through
various contractions of the lungs, thorax, and tongue is creating air
vibrations-answering his question. His visual analyzers control the accuracy
of his response by the notes in his hand and by the nods of the examiners.
Let us sketch the reflex chain: the executive apparatus of the second signal
system utters a phrase-the visual organs register a reinforcing stimulus, a
nod-and the signal is passed to the brain and supports the stimulation of
nerve cells in the proper part of the cortex. A new phrase... a nod... and
so on. This is often accompanied by a secondary reflex reaction: the student
gesticulates, which makes his answer all the more convincing.
Meanwhile the unconditioned reflex chains operate on their own,
inexorably and unconstrainedly. The trapezoid bone and broad muscles of the
back support the student's body in an upright sitting position-as natural
for us as the position of walking was for our predecessors. The chest and
intercostal muscles maintain rhythmic breathing. Other muscles are tensed
just enough to counteract gravity. The heart beats evenly; the sympathetic
nervous system has stopped the digestive process so as not to distract the
student. . . and everything is in order.
But now the student registers a new aural stimulus through his eardrums
and membranes of the ears: the examiner has asked him a question. I never
tire of observing what follows-and I assure you, there is no sadism in this.
It's simply pleasant to watch how quickly and clearly, taking the millions
of years experience of our ancestors into account, our nervous system reacts
to the slightest hint of danger! Look: new air vibrations first bring on the
end of the previous activity of the unconditioned reflexes-the student stops
talking, often in mid-word. Then the signals from the hearing cells reach
the medulla, excite the nerve cells of the rear tubers of the lamina tecti
which commands the unconditioned reflex of caution: the student turns his
head in the direction of the examiner! Simultaneously the signals of the
aural stimulus branch off into the diencephalon, and from there into the
temporal lobes of the cortex, where a hurried meaning analysis is undertaken
of the air vibrations.
I want to direct your attention to the high expediency level of the
location of the analyzers of aural stimuli in the cortex-right next to
theears. Evolution naturally took into account that a sound in the air moves
very slowly: some 300 meters a second, almost the same as the speed of
signals traveling along nerve fiber. Yet a sound could be the rustle of a
lurking tiger, the hissing of a snake, or-in our times-the noise of a car
careening around the corner. You can't lose even a fraction of a second to
transmit the sound through the brain!
But in the present situation the student recognized not the rustle of a
tiger but a question posed in a quiet, polite voice. Hah, I think some would
prefer the tiger! I assume that I don't have to explain that a question
asked during an oral exam is taken as a signal of danger. After all, broadly
speaking, danger is an obstacle in the path toward a given goal. In
ourwell-ordered times there are few dangers that threaten the basic goals of
a living being which are protection of life and health, propagation of the
species, and satisfaction of hunger and thirst. That's why secondary
dangers-the protection of dignity, respect, scholarships, the opportunity to
study and then have an interesting job and so on-take on primary prominence.
Thus, the student's unconditioned reflex reaction to danger worked
beautifully. Let's see how he reflects it.
In biochemistry lectures you have been familiarized with the properties
of ribonucleic acid, which is found in all the brain cells. Under the action
of electrical nervous signals RNA changes the continous distribution of its
bases: thymine, uracil, cytosine, and guanine. These bases are the letters
of our memory; we can write down any information in the cortex of the brain
using combinations of them. And so, this is the picture: the question,
understood in the temporal sites of the cortex leads to the excitation of
nerve cells that take care of abstract knowledge in the student's brain.
Weak response impulses arise in neighboring areas of the cortex: "Aha, I
read something about that!" So the stimulation concentrates in the most
hopeful of these areas, takes it over, and-oh horrors!-there with the help
of thymine, uracil, cytosine, and guanine there is recorded God only knows
what in long molecules of RNA, for instance: "Drop your studying, Alex! We
need a fourth!" Quiet down, comrades, don't be distracted.
And then a quiet panic in the brain sets in-or, less colorfully
speaking, a total irradiation of stimulation. The nerve impulses arouse the
areas of logical analysis (maybe I'll figure something out!) and the cells
of visual memory (maybe I've seen it?). Vision, hearing, and sense of smell
sharpen. The student sees with amazing acuity the ink spot on the edge of
the desk and a bunch of scribbles, hears the leaves rustling outside the
window, someone's footsteps in the hall, and even the whisper: "Guys, Alex
is in trouble!" But that's not it. And so stimulation passes to greater and
newer parts of the brain-danger, danger-spilling over the motor centers in
the frontal convolution, penetrating into the midbrain, the medulla, and
finally, into the spinal cord. And here I want to move away from the
dramatic situation to sing the praises of the soft grayish white growth
about a half meter in length that penetrates our spine to the waist-the
spinal cord.
The spinal cord ...oh, we are greatly mistaken if we think that it is
nothing more than an intermediary between the brain and the body's nerves,
that it is subjugated to the brain and can only control a few simple
reflexes of natural functions! It's still a moot point as to which is
subordinate to which! The spinal cord is an older and more venerable process
than the brain. It saved man in those days when his brain wasn't developed
enough, when in fact he wasn't yet man. Our spinal cord guards memories of
the Paleozoic, when our distant ancestors, the lizards, wandered, crawled,
and flew among giant ferns; of the Cenozoic, the period when the first apes
appeared. It has sorted and stored synapses and reflexes proven over
millions of years to be effective in the struggle for survival. The spinal
cord, if you will, is our inner seat of rational conservatism.
Of course nowadays, that old cord of man, which can react to the
complex stimulation of contemporary reality in only two positions-saving
life and propagating the species-can't help us out all the time, as it did
in the Mesozoic Era. But it still has influence on many things! For example,
I would posit that it is the spinal cord that often determines our literary
and cinematic tastes. What? No, the spinal cord is not literate and does not
contain any special reflexes for viewing film. But, tell me, why do we
soften prefer detective movies and novels, no matter how poorly they are
made or written? Why do so many of us like love stories-everything from
jokes and gossip to the Decameron? Because it's interesting? Interesting?
Why is it interesting? Because the firmly engrained instincts for survival
and propagation encoded in our spinal cords force us to gather
information-what can you die of?-so that we can save ourselves in that
situation. How and why does happy and true love come about, the kind that
results in offspring? What destroys it?-so that you don't blow it yourself.
And it doesn't matter that such a dangerous situation may never come up in
your safe, comfortable lives. And it doesn't matter that there is love and
more descendants than you know what to do with-the spinal cord tows its
line. I'm not going to call these desires in the viewer and reader base, as
so many critics do. Why? These are healthy, natural desires, admirable
desires. If cows in their evolution ever learn to read, then they'll also
begin with mysteries and romances.
But let us return to the student whose brain failed him in responding
to the examiner's question. "Ah, you greenhorn," the spinal cord seems to
say to its colleague as it receives the panic signals and goes into action.
First, it sends signals to the motor nerves of the entire body; the muscles
tense into a position of readiness. The primary sources of muscular
energy-adenosine triphosphate and phosphocreatine-break down in tissue into
adenosine diphosphate and creatine, releasing phosphoric acid and the first
amounts of heat and energy. And I want to direct your attention once more to
the biological expediency of raising muscle tone. After all, danger in the
old days required quick energetic movement, to leap away, strike, bend,
climb a tree. And since it is not yet clear which way you will have to jump
or strike, all the muscles are brought into readiness.
Simultaneously, the sympathetic nervous system is also stimulated and
begins to command the whole kitchen array of metabolism in the organism. Its
signals reach the adrenal gland, which throws adrenaline into the blood,
stimulating everything. The liver and spleen, like sponges, squeeze out
several liters of extra blood into the circulatory system. Blood vessels
expand in the muscles, lungs, and brain. The heart beats faster, pumping
blood into all the organs, and with it, oxygen and glucose. The spinal cord
and the autonomous nervous system prepare thestudent's bodyforheavy, fierce,
and long fighting for life or death!
But the examiner cannot be stunned with a cudgel or even with a marble
inkwell. And you can't run away from him either. The examiner won't be
satisfied even if the student, overflowing with muscular energy, performs a
handstand on the desk instead of answering the question. That's why the
secret, stormy activity of the student's organism ends in a useless burning
up of glucose in the muscles and heat generation. The thermoreceptors in
different parts of the body send hysterical signals of overheating to the
brain and spinal cord. And the brain responds in the only way it knows-by
expanding the vessels of the skin. Blood rushes to the skin (incidentally,
also causing the student to blush) and heats up the air between the body and
the clothes. The sweat glands open up to help the student with evaporation
of moisture. The reflex chain, stimulated by the question, is finally over.
I'm sure you will make your own conclusions about the role of knowledge
in the correct regulation of the human organism in our complex environment,
and about its role in the regulation of the student organism at our next
session..."
From a lecture by Professor V. A. Androsiashvili in his course, Human
Physiology.
Yes, he was leaving in order to become himself, and not the Krivoshein
who lived and worked in Dneprovsk. He threw the apartment key which Val had
tucked into his pocket out of the train window. He crossed out all the
addresses and phone numbers of Moscow acquaintances from his book, including
his Aunt Lapanalda. He had no friends, no relatives, no past-only the
present, from the moment he entered the biology department, and the future.
He knew a simple but dependable way of establishing himself in the future;
the method had never let him down. It was work.
And he had more than that.
Once upon a time physicists had perfected the methods of measuring the
speed of light, just so that they could achieve the greatest accuracy. They
did. And they determined a scandalous fact: the speed of light did not
depend on the speed of motion of the light source. "Impossible! The
equipment is wrong! The results contradict classical mechanics!" They
checked. They measured the speed of light another way-with the same results.
And the almost completed, logically perfect universe rising in the
scaffolding of right-angled coordinates, crumbled, raising an awful lot of
dust. The "crisis of physics" began.
The human mind often strives for a reconciliation of all the facts in
the world rather than for a deeper knowledge of those facts: the important
thing is for everything to become simpler and more logical. And then some
sneaky little fact floats out, irreconcilable with the neat theories, and
you have to start all over again....
They had also created a simple and understandable picture in their
minds of how a computer creates a man from information about man. The
computer-womb was playing children's games with blocks. In a liquid medium
via electrical impulse it combined molecules into molecular chains, the
molecular chains into cells, and the cells into tissue-with the sole
difference that there were untold billions of "informational blocks." The
fact that the result of the game was not a monster or even another person,
but Krivoshein's informational double, proves that there was only one
solution to the puzzle. Well, naturally, it couldn't have been any other
way: blocks can only fit into a picture that exists in their surfaces. The
variants (a fragmented Lena, a fragmented father, the "delirium of memory,"
the eyes and feelers) were merely informational garbage that could not exist
independent of the computer.
This concept was not incorrect, merely superficial. It suited them, as
long as the facts supported the theory that they were the same externally
and in thoughts and deeds. But when irreconcilable differences came up on
the use of biology in their work, this concept turned out to be inadequate.
Yes, it was their inability to understand each other, and not the
interest in biology (which might have passed in Krivoshein-2 with no harmful
effects), that became to his discovery what the constancy of the speed of
light was to the theory of relativity. A man never knows what's banal about
him and what's original; that only comes in comparsion with others. And
unlike other people, Krivoshein-2 could compare himself to not only his
acquaintances, but to "himself" as well.
Now it became very clear to graduate student Krivoshein what the
difference between them was: their ways of appearing were different.
Valentin Krivoshein appeared over three decades ago the way every living
thing did-from an embryo, in which a program for building a human being
developed over thousands of centuries and in which generations had been
encoded by a specific arrangement of protein and DNA. But the computer-womb,
even though it was working from individual Krivoshein information, was still
dealing with random information; it had to seek out the principles of
formation and all the details of the biological information system. And the
computer found a way different from nature's: a biochemical assembly instead
of embryonic development.
Yes, now there was much that he understood. In a year he had passed
from sensations to knowledge and from knowledge to mastery of himself. And
then... then it had merely been a powerful attraction to biology and the
inexpressible certainty that this was where he had to seek his answers. He
couldn't even explain it well to Krivoshein. He came to Moscow with the
vague feeling that something was wrong with him. He wasn't sick or imagining
things, but he had to figure himself out, to make sure that his feeling was
reality and not an idee fixe or a hypochondriacal hallucination.
He worked so hard that he could look back on the days at the institute
in Dneprovsk as if they had been a vacation. Lectures, lab work, the anatomy
theater, the library, lectures, seminars, lab work, lectures, the clinic,
the library, lab work.... He never left the Lenin Hills campus during the
first semester; he would walk down to the parapet before going to bed, to
look down at the Moscow River, smoke, enjoy the lights glimmering and
blending with the stars on the horizon.
A gray-eyed, second-year student who resembled Lena always sat next to
him in Androsiashvili's class, which he attended. Once she asked: "You're so
solid, so serious-were you in the Army?" "In prison," he replied, jutting
out his jaw. The girl lost interest in him. It had to be. Girls take up too
much time.
And he was convinced by every experiment, every calculation. Yes, in a
cross section of a nerve bundle that goes from the brain to the pituitary
gland, under a microscope you can actually count approximately a hundred
thousand fibers-and that means that the pituitary is closely monitored by
the brain. Yes, if you add beta-active calcium to a lab monkey's diet of
bananas and then use a Geiger counter on its excretions, it really is true
that bone tissue renews itself approximately twice a year. Yes, if you stick
electrode needles into muscle tissue and conduct sound into earphones, you
can really hear a rhythmic quacking or a fragmented pulse of the nerve
signals, and these sounds corresponded with what he was feeling! Yes, skin
cells actually do move up toward the surface, changing structure, dying, so
that they can slough off and make room for new ones.
He studied his own body. He took blood samples and lymphatic samples;
he got a piece of muscle tissue from his right hip and examined it under an
optical microscope and then an electronic one; he calumnied himself to get a
Wassermann at the school clinic. And he determined that everything in him
was normal. Even the amount and distribution of nerves in the tissue was the
same as in the bodies they dissected in anatomy class. The nerves went up to
the brain, but he couldn't get in there with the use of laboratory
technology. He would have to implant too many electrodes into his skull and
plug into too many oscilloscopes to understand the secrets of his self. And
would he understand them then? Or would he come up with "streptocidal
striptease"-not in binary alphabet, but in the jagged lines of an
electroencephalogram?
The situation-a living person studying his own organism can't even
breech the mysteries of his body with laboratory equipment-was paradoxical.
After all, this wasn't a question of discovering invisible "radiostars" or
synthesizing antiparticles. All the information was in man. All that
remained was to translate the code of the molecules, cells, and nerve
impulses into the code of the secondary signal system-words and sentences.
Words and phrases are necessary (but not always) for one man to
understand another. But are they necessary to understand oneself? Krivoshein
didn't know. That's why he tried everything: analysis, imagination, books,
monitoring the sensations of his body, conversations with Androsiashvili and
other teachers, observation of patients at the clinic, autopsies....
Everything that Vano Aleksandrovich had argued in that memorable
December conversation was right, since it was defined by Androsiashvili's
knowledge of the world and his faith in the indisputable expediency of
everything created by nature.
But the professor did not know one thing: that he was conversing with
an artificial man.
Even Vano Aleksandrovich's doubts about the success of his plan were
solidly based, because Krivoshein's starting point was an engineering
computer solution. That December he began planning an "electropotential
inductor"-a continuation of the idea of Monomakh's Crown. A hundred thousand
microscopic electrode needles, connected to the matrices of a self-learning
automated machine (in the lab the bionics people modeled reflex actions on
it), were supposed to supply the brain cells with auxiliary charges,
bringing artificial biowaves through the skull, and thereby connecting the
thinking centers of the cortex with the autonomous nervous system.
Krivoshein laughed. How silly to think that such primitive apparatus
could have punched up his organism! At least he hadn't dropped his
physiology studies for that project. When he performed an autopsy, he
mentally revived the corpse: he imagined that he himself lay on the
dissecting table, that it was his white nerve fibers running through the
muscles and cartilage to the purple, yellow fat-encrusted heart, to the
watery clusters of salivary glands under the chin, to the gray rags of
collapsed lungs. Other fibers wove into white cords of nerves that went to
the pelvis, the spinal cord and up, through the neck, under the skull.
Signal commands ran along them from there: contract the muscles, speed up
the heart, squeeze out saliva!
In the student cafeteria he followed the movement of every gulp of food
to his stomach, trying to imagine and feel how, in the darkness, it was
slowly kneaded by the smooth muscles, broken down by hydrochloric acid and
enzymes, how the dull yellow mash was absorbed into the walls of the
intestine. Sometimes he spent two hours sitting over a cold cutlet.
Actually, he was remembering. Nine-tenths of his discoveries were due
to the fact that he remembered and understood how it had happened.
The computer-womb had no reason to begin with a fetus; it had enough
material to assemble an adult. Krivoshein, the original, had made sure of
that. At first the vague biological mixture in the tank contained only
"wandering" currents and "floating" potentials from external circuits-these
colorful terms from theoretical electronics were quite literal in this case.
Then the transparent nerve fibers and cells appeared-a continuation of the
electronic circuits of the computer. The search for informational
equilibrium continued. The nervous system was becoming more and more
voluminous and complex, and the layers of nerve cells turned into the cortex
and subcortex. That's when his brain appeared, and from that moment on, he
existed.
At first his brain was also a continuation of the computer's circuits.
But now he received impulses of external information, sifted it and tried
combinations, and looked for a way to realize the information in a
biological medium. He was assembling himself! In the vat a system of
nerves-for now still random-spread. Muscle tissue, vessels, bones, and inner
organs began appearing around the nerves-in that practically liquid state
when they could dissolve, blend, change structure under orders of the nerve
impulses. No, this wasn't an intelligent assembly of a body following a
blueprint, since there was no blueprint. The building block game continued,
a sifting through many variants and choosing of the only one among them that
reflected the information on Krivoshein. But now, like the computer which
evaluated every variant of the solution with binary signals, his computer
brain evaluated the synthesis of a body with a binary code of sensation: Yes
meant it felt good, No, that it hurt. Unsuccessful combinations of cells,
the incorrect distribution of organs were transmitted to the brain as a dull
or sharp pain; the successful and correct one, as delicious satisfaction.
And the memory of the search, the memory of the sensations of the body
under construction remained within him.
Life creates people who differ little in the properties of the
organism, but are very different in their psychology, personality,
knowledge, and spiritual refinement or crudity. The computer-womb acted in
the opposite manner. The graduate student Krivoshein was identical to
Krivoshein in psychology and intellect, but that was understandable. Those
qualities in a person develop through the same process of random retrieval
and choice. The computer merely repeated the retrieval. But biologically
they differed the way a book differs from its rough draft. Not just one
draft, but all the drafts and sketches that went into creating a finished
and polished work. Of course, the contents were the same, but the drafts
retain the path of finding and choosing the right words in their
corrections, additions, and deletions.
"Actually, that comparison is imperfect, too," the frowning student
mused. "The drafts of books appear before the books, not afterwards. And if
you show a scribbler all the drafts of War and Peace would that make him a
genius? Well, I guess they would teach him something.... No, I guess it's
better to leave comparisons out of this!" Man recalls what he knows in only
two situations: when he must recall it-goal recollection-and when he
encounters something that even remotely resembles the code in his brain.
This is called associative recall. The biology books were the hint that
stimulated his memory. But the difficulty lay in the fact that he did not
remember words or even images, but only sensations. Even now he couldn't
convey it all in words-and probably would never be able to.
Of course, that's not the important thing. What is important is the
fact that such information exists. Because "knowledge in sensation" gave
birth to a clear, thought-out idea in him to control his own metabolism.
It happened the first time on the evening of January 28 in the forms.
It turned out just like Pavlov's dogs-artificial salivation. But he wasn't
thinking about food (he had had a dinner of kefir and sausage), but about
the nerve regulation of the salivary glands. As usual he tried to visualize
the entire path of the nerve impulses from the taste receptors in the tongue
through the brain to the salivary glands and suddenly felt his mouth fill up
with saliva!
Still only fully aware of how it had happened, he concentrated on a
frightened protest-"No!"-and his mouth went dry instantly!
That evening he repeated the mental orders "Saliva!" and "no!" until
his mouth convulsed.
He spent the rest of the week in his room-luckily it was a school
vacation, and he didn't have to be distracted by lectures and labs. Other
organs listened to his mental orders. At first he could only command them
crudely. Streams of tears poured from his eyes; sweat appeared in profusion
all over his skin or immediately dried up; his heart either quieted down to
a near comatose rate or else beat wildly at a hundred forty beats a
minute-there was no middle ground, And when he commanded his stomach to stop
excreting hydrochloric acid he had such intense diarrhea that he barely had
time to get to the bathroom. But gradually he learned to control external
excretions gently and locally; once he even managed to spell out "IT'S
WORKING!" on his back with beads of sweat, like a tattoo.
Then he moved his experiments to the lab and first of all repeated the
effect of the sugar injection made famous by Claude Bernard. But now he
didn't have to open the skull and inject the midbrain. The amount of sugar
in his blood increased as a result of a mental command.
But in general it was much more complex dealing with internal
secretion. The results were not so apparent or so fast. He made puncture
marks all over his fingers and muscles checking whether the glands were
obeying his commands to secrete adrenaline, insulin, glucose, or hormones.
He irritated his gullet with probes trying to determine the reaction to his
commands on changing acidity. Everything was working-and everything was very
difficult.
Then he caught on. He should give his organism a specific goal, to do
this and that, produce certain changes. And really when he walked, he didn't
command the muscles: "Right rectus-contract... biceps-now... left
gastrocnemius...." He didn't have time for that. The conscious mind sets a
specific goal: go faster or slower, go around the post, turn into the
driveway. And the nerve centers of the brain take care of the muscles. And
that's how it should be with this. It wasn't his business which glands and
vessels would produce individual reactions, as long as they did what he
wanted!
Words and images got in the way. He was overexplaining. He told the
liver how to synthesive glycogen from amino acids and fats, break down the
glycogen into glucose, and excrete it into the blood; he told the thyroid to
contract and squeeze out drops of thyroxin into the blood; he told the
circulatory system to expand the capillaries in the large chest muscles and
to contract the other vessels-and nothing happened, his pectorals didn't
grow bigger. After all, the liver didn't know it was the liver, and the
thyroid didn't have the slightest idea what thyroxin was and couldn't
picture a drop of it. Krivoshein cursed himself for excessive attention at
his lectures and in the library. The result of all this exertion was only a
headache.
The problem was that in order to control metabolism within himself, he
had to avoid numbers, terms, and even images, and think only in sensations.
"We were simply thinking aloud together. You can argue with yourself.
Man's thoughts are mere variants of actions and they are always
contradictory. But we strive to act together."
"Yes... but that's no good! We're not working now, we're plugging away.
An extra pair of hands doubles the work capacity. But our main function is
to think. And here... listen, original, we have to become different."
I couldn't imagine what serious repercussions this innocent
conversation would have. And, as they write in novels, the repercussions
didn't make us wait.
It began with my double buying a volume of Human Physiology intended
for secondary phys ed courses. I won't try to guess whether he had really
planned to distinguish himself from me or whether he was simply attracted by
the bright green cover and gold lettering, but as soon as he opened it, he
began muttering "Aha! Now that's something,..." as if he were reading a
catchy mystery, and then he bombarded me with questions:
"Do you know that nerve cells can be up to a meter long?"
"Do you know what controls the sympathetic nervous system?"
"Do you know what protective inhibition is?"
Naturally, I didn't know. And he went on telling me with a neophyte's
enthusiasm about the sympathetic nervous system regulating the functions of
the internal organs, that protective inhibition or pessimum, occurs in nerve
tissue when the strength of excitation exceeds the permissible level.
"You understand, the nerve cell can refuse to react to a powerful
stimulus in order not to destroy itself! Transistors can't do that!"
After that textbook he bought up a whole batch of biology books and
journals, read them cover to cover, quoting his favorite passages, and got
mad when I didn't share his enthusiasm. And why should I have?
Graduate student Krivoshein set aside the diary. Yes, that's precisely
how it all began. In the dry academic lines of the books and articles on
biology he suddenly sensed the proximity of truth that he had earlier felt
only when reading the works of great writers, when, delving into the actions
and emotions of invented characters, you begin to learn something about
yourself. Then he did not realize it, because the physiology facts had
enthralled him, so to speak. But he was upset that original Krivoshein was
left cold by it all. How could that be? They were the same; that meant that
they had to react to things the same way. Did that mean that he, the
artificial Krivoshein, wasn't the same? That was the first hint.
The second time he overslept-sitting up reading until dawn-I blew up:
"Why can't you get interested in mineralogy-or production economics-if
you want so badly to be different! At least you'd get some sleep."
We were talking in the lab, after my double arrived past noon, sleepy
and unshaven; I had shaved in the morning. That kind of discrepancy was
enough to worry our institute friends.
He gave me a haughty and surprised look.
"Tell me, what's that liquid?" and he pointed at the tank. "What is its
composition?"
"Organic, of course, why?"
"It's not tricky. Why did the computer-womb use ammonia and phosphoric
acid? Remember? It kept spewing out formulas and amounts and you ran around
all the stores like a crazy man, trying to find it all. Why did you get it?!
You don't know? I'll explain: the computer was synthesizing atpase and
phosphocreatine-the sources of muscle energy. Understand?"
"I understand. But what about Galosha brand gas? And calcium rhodanate?
And the methylviolet? And the other three hundred reagents?"
"I don't know yet. I have to read up on biochemistry...."
"Uh-huh... and now I'll explain to you why I got those disgusting
things: I was fulfilling the logical conditions of the experiment-the rules
of the game, and nothing else. I did not know about your superphosphate. And
the computer probably didn't know that the formulas it was turning out in
binary code had such fancy names-because nature is made up of structural
elements and not names. And yet it asked for ammonia, phosphoric acid, and
sugar, and not for vodka or strichnine. It figured out for istelf, and
without textbooks, that vodka is a poison. And it created you without
textbooks and medical encyclopedias-it modeled you from life."
"I don't see why you're so uptight about biology. It has everything we
need: knowledge about life and man. For example . . ."-he was trying to
convince me, it was obvious-"did you know that conditioned reflexes are
created only when the conditioning stimulus precedes an unconditioned one?
The cause precedes the effect, understand? The nervous system has a greater
sense of causality than any philosophy book! And biology uses more precise
terms than everyday life. You know, how they write in novels: 'The
unconscious terror widened his pupils and made his heart beat faster.' The
sympathetic system went to work. There you go...." He leafed through his
green bible. " 'Under the influence of impulses passing through the
sympathetic nerves, the following occurs: a) dilation of pupils through the
contraction of the radial muscles of the iris; b) increase in frequency and
strength of heart contractions....' That's more like it, eh?"
"It's more like it, but how much more? It doesn't occur to you that if
biology had made giant strides in this business, then it would be biologists
and not us who are synthesizing man?"
"But on the basis of this knowledge we'll be able to make an analysis
of man."
"An analysis!" I remembered the "streptocidal striptease with
trembling,..." my near breakdown, the punchtape bonfire-and I got mad. "All
right, let's drop our work, memorize all the textbooks and pharmacology
manuals, master a mass of terms, acquire degrees and baldspots, and thirty
years or so from now let's return to our work so that we can label it all
properly. This is phosphocreatine, and this is gluten... a hundred billion
labels. I've already tried to analyze your appearance. I've had it. The
analytic path will take us the devil knows where."
In a word, we didn't reach an agreement. This was the first instance
when each of us retained his opinion. I still don't understand why he, a
systems technologist, engineer, electronics man... well, the same as I...
why he turned to biology. We have an experimental setup the likes of which
he'll never find in any other lab. We have to run experiments, systemize the
results and observations, establish general laws-I mean general ones,
informational ones! Biological laws are a step backward in comparison.
That's the way it's done. And that's the only way to study the best way to
control the computer-womb-after all, it's a computer first and foremost.
The arguments continued during the next few days. We got angry,
attacking one another. Each one used arguments in his favor.
'Technology shouldn't be copying nature; it should be complementing it.
We plan to double good people. And what if the good man is limp? Or lost an
arm in the war? Or is in lousy health? After all, a man's worth is usually
known when he has reached a ripe old age; and then his health isn't what it
used to be, and maybe senility is creeping up ... and we should re-create
all that, too?"
"No. We have to find a way to iron out the wrinkles in the doubles. Let
them be healthy, attractive."
'There, you see!"
"What see?"
"In order to correct the doubles you need biological information on a
good constitution and attractive looks. Biological!"
"I don't see that. If the computer, without any biological preparation,
can re-create an entire person, then why does it need information when it
will be creating parts of a person? Biological information won't help you
construct a person or an arm. You crazy person, why can't you see that we
can't delve into all the details of the human organism? We can't. We'll get
bogged down. There are untold billions of them, and no two are the same.
Nature didn't follow a few state plans, you know. That's why the question of
correcting doubles must be reduced to tuning the computer-womb by external
integral characteristics ... in other words, so that we just have a few
dials to spin!"
"Well, really!" He would spread his hands in shock and walk away.
This situation was getting on our nerves. We had wandered into a
logistical dead end. A difference in opinion on future work is nothing so
terrible; finally you can try it both ways and let the results be the judge.
The unbearable part was that we did not understand each other! Us-two
informationally identical people. Is there any truth in the world in that
case?
I began reading his collection of biology opuses (when he was on duty
at the lab). Maybe I just had an antibiology hangover from my school days
and now I would read it, and be amazed, and start mumbling: "Now that's it!"
I didn't. There was no question; it was an interesting science, and there
were a lot of edifying details (but only details!) about the functions of
the organism. It was good for one's general development, but it wasn't what
we needed. It was a descriptive and approximate science, another form of
geography. What did he see in it?
I'm an engineer-that says it all. After ten years of work, machines
have entered my soul, and I feel confident working with them. In machines,
everything is subject to reason and my hands; everything is definite. If
it's yes, then it's yes; if it's no, then it's no. Not like with people:
"Yes, but..." followed by a phrase that crosses out the "yes." And yet the
double was me....
We began avoiding our painful argument and worked in silence. Maybe
everything would work out and we would understand each other. The
information chamber was almost ready. Another day or two and we could let
the rabbits in. And then what had to happen sooner or later finally
happened: the phone rang in the laboratory.
It had rung before. "Valentin Vasilyevich, either produce a form
requisitioning the reagents by June 1 or we'll close the supply department
as far as you're concerned!" The call was from accounting. "Comrade
Krivoshein, drop into department one," said Johann Johannovich Kliapp. "Old
man, can you lend me your silver-nickel battery for a week?" said good old
Fenya Zagrebnyak. And so on. But this was an absolutely special call. As
soon as my double had said "Krivoshein here," he looked beatifically dumb.
"Yes, Lena," he murmured, "yes ... no, no, dearest. Don't be silly...
every day and every hour!"
Pliers in hand, I froze by the chamber. My beloved was being taken away
from me before my very eyes. My beloved! I knew that for sure now. I got
hot. I coughed wheezily. My double looked up at me with eyes clouded with
tender desire and came to. He was grim and sad.
"Just a second, Lena, . . ." and he handed me the phone. "It's
basically for you."
I grabbed the phone and shouted: "I'm listening, darling. Go on!"
Actually, there's no need to describe what we talked about. She, it
turned out, was away on a business trip and had only returned yesterday. Of
course, she was mad about the May 1 holidays. She had expected a call from
me.
When I hung up, the double was gone from the lab. I didn't feel like
working any more either. I locked up the lodge and headed off for home,
whistling, to shave and change for that evening.
My double was packing.
"Going far?"
"To the village to visit my aunt, to the sticks, to Saratov! To
Vladivostok to lick salt spray from my lips. It's none of your business."
"No, drop the jokes. Where are you going? What's up?"
He looked up at me:
"You really don't understand? Well, that makes sense. You're not me."
"No, why not? You are me, and I am you. That, anyway, was always our
starting point."
'That's the point-it's not so." He lit up a cigarette and took a book
from the shelf. "I'll take Introduction to Systemology. You can use the
library. You are number one, and I'm the second. You were born, grew up,
developed, took on a certain position in society. Every man has some place
in life. Whether it's good or bad, it's his own. I have no place. It's
taken! Everything's taken, from girl friend to civil position, from the bed
to the apartment."
"You can sleep on the bed, for God's sake, I don't have any
objections."
"Don't talk nonsense. The bed isn't the point."
"Listen, if you're leaving over Lena, then . . . maybe we can
experiment a little more, and ... maybe we can try it?"
"Re-create a second Lena, an artificial one?" He laughed darkly. "So
that she can hang around life like a ticketless passenger. A reward for a
good life... what a stupid idea that was! The best pupils, they're a bunch
of spoiled privileged people. Imagine Arkady Arkadievich's double:
Academician A. A. Azarov, but without an institute to run, without a
framework, without membership in the academy, without a car and
apartment-without anything except his personal qualities and pleasant
memories. What would his life be like?" He put a towel, toothbrush, and
toothpaste into the suitcase. "In a word, I've had it. I can't lead a double
entendre life any more-worrying about being seen together, looking around in
the cafeteria, taking money from you. Yes, I'm taking your money from you,
being jealous of you and Lena. Why should I suffer like that-for what sins?
I'm a man, not an experimental subject and not somebody's double!"
"How about the work?"
"And who says I'm planning to drop the work? The chamber is almost
ready, and you can run the experiments yourself. There's little for me to do
here. I'll go away and study the problem of man and machine from the other
end."
He told me his plan. He was going to Moscow to enter the graduate
biology department of MSU. The work was dividing up into two streams: I
would study the computer-womb and determine its possibilities; he would
study man and his possibilities. Then-different by then, with different
experiences and ideas-we'd put the work together.
"But why biology? Why not philosophy, sociology, psychology, or life
studies, or fine arts? They all deal with man and human society. Why?"
He looked at me thoughtfully.
"Do you believe in intuition?"
"Well, maybe."
"My intuition tells me that if we overlook biological research, we will
lose something very important. I don't know yet just what. I'll try to
explain in a year."
"But why doesn't my intuition say any such thing?"
"Damned if I know!" he sighed with his old expressiveness. His good
mood was returning. "Maybe you're just a dumb jackass."
"Sure, sure. And you're brilliant and sensitive-like the dog that can
feel everything but can't express any of it!"
In a word, we had a talk.
Everything was clear: he had to gather individual information, to
become his own person. And I accepted the fact that in order to do that he
had to be away from me, somewhere on his own. To tell the truth, our
"double" situation was beginning to wear on me, too. But that biology
stuff-I really didn't understand that at all....
The graduate student leaned back in his chair and stretched. "And
couldn't understand it." he said aloud. In those days he didn't understand
himself.
In Lieu of an Epigraph
"The theme of today's lecture is: why does the student sweat at exams?
Quiet, comrades! I suggest you take notes-the material is on the subject....
Thus, let us examine the physiological aspects of the situation that all of
you present have had to experience. The oral exam is on. The student through
various contractions of the lungs, thorax, and tongue is creating air
vibrations-answering his question. His visual analyzers control the accuracy
of his response by the notes in his hand and by the nods of the examiners.
Let us sketch the reflex chain: the executive apparatus of the second signal
system utters a phrase-the visual organs register a reinforcing stimulus, a
nod-and the signal is passed to the brain and supports the stimulation of
nerve cells in the proper part of the cortex. A new phrase... a nod... and
so on. This is often accompanied by a secondary reflex reaction: the student
gesticulates, which makes his answer all the more convincing.
Meanwhile the unconditioned reflex chains operate on their own,
inexorably and unconstrainedly. The trapezoid bone and broad muscles of the
back support the student's body in an upright sitting position-as natural
for us as the position of walking was for our predecessors. The chest and
intercostal muscles maintain rhythmic breathing. Other muscles are tensed
just enough to counteract gravity. The heart beats evenly; the sympathetic
nervous system has stopped the digestive process so as not to distract the
student. . . and everything is in order.
But now the student registers a new aural stimulus through his eardrums
and membranes of the ears: the examiner has asked him a question. I never
tire of observing what follows-and I assure you, there is no sadism in this.
It's simply pleasant to watch how quickly and clearly, taking the millions
of years experience of our ancestors into account, our nervous system reacts
to the slightest hint of danger! Look: new air vibrations first bring on the
end of the previous activity of the unconditioned reflexes-the student stops
talking, often in mid-word. Then the signals from the hearing cells reach
the medulla, excite the nerve cells of the rear tubers of the lamina tecti
which commands the unconditioned reflex of caution: the student turns his
head in the direction of the examiner! Simultaneously the signals of the
aural stimulus branch off into the diencephalon, and from there into the
temporal lobes of the cortex, where a hurried meaning analysis is undertaken
of the air vibrations.
I want to direct your attention to the high expediency level of the
location of the analyzers of aural stimuli in the cortex-right next to
theears. Evolution naturally took into account that a sound in the air moves
very slowly: some 300 meters a second, almost the same as the speed of
signals traveling along nerve fiber. Yet a sound could be the rustle of a
lurking tiger, the hissing of a snake, or-in our times-the noise of a car
careening around the corner. You can't lose even a fraction of a second to
transmit the sound through the brain!
But in the present situation the student recognized not the rustle of a
tiger but a question posed in a quiet, polite voice. Hah, I think some would
prefer the tiger! I assume that I don't have to explain that a question
asked during an oral exam is taken as a signal of danger. After all, broadly
speaking, danger is an obstacle in the path toward a given goal. In
ourwell-ordered times there are few dangers that threaten the basic goals of
a living being which are protection of life and health, propagation of the
species, and satisfaction of hunger and thirst. That's why secondary
dangers-the protection of dignity, respect, scholarships, the opportunity to
study and then have an interesting job and so on-take on primary prominence.
Thus, the student's unconditioned reflex reaction to danger worked
beautifully. Let's see how he reflects it.
In biochemistry lectures you have been familiarized with the properties
of ribonucleic acid, which is found in all the brain cells. Under the action
of electrical nervous signals RNA changes the continous distribution of its
bases: thymine, uracil, cytosine, and guanine. These bases are the letters
of our memory; we can write down any information in the cortex of the brain
using combinations of them. And so, this is the picture: the question,
understood in the temporal sites of the cortex leads to the excitation of
nerve cells that take care of abstract knowledge in the student's brain.
Weak response impulses arise in neighboring areas of the cortex: "Aha, I
read something about that!" So the stimulation concentrates in the most
hopeful of these areas, takes it over, and-oh horrors!-there with the help
of thymine, uracil, cytosine, and guanine there is recorded God only knows
what in long molecules of RNA, for instance: "Drop your studying, Alex! We
need a fourth!" Quiet down, comrades, don't be distracted.
And then a quiet panic in the brain sets in-or, less colorfully
speaking, a total irradiation of stimulation. The nerve impulses arouse the
areas of logical analysis (maybe I'll figure something out!) and the cells
of visual memory (maybe I've seen it?). Vision, hearing, and sense of smell
sharpen. The student sees with amazing acuity the ink spot on the edge of
the desk and a bunch of scribbles, hears the leaves rustling outside the
window, someone's footsteps in the hall, and even the whisper: "Guys, Alex
is in trouble!" But that's not it. And so stimulation passes to greater and
newer parts of the brain-danger, danger-spilling over the motor centers in
the frontal convolution, penetrating into the midbrain, the medulla, and
finally, into the spinal cord. And here I want to move away from the
dramatic situation to sing the praises of the soft grayish white growth
about a half meter in length that penetrates our spine to the waist-the
spinal cord.
The spinal cord ...oh, we are greatly mistaken if we think that it is
nothing more than an intermediary between the brain and the body's nerves,
that it is subjugated to the brain and can only control a few simple
reflexes of natural functions! It's still a moot point as to which is
subordinate to which! The spinal cord is an older and more venerable process
than the brain. It saved man in those days when his brain wasn't developed
enough, when in fact he wasn't yet man. Our spinal cord guards memories of
the Paleozoic, when our distant ancestors, the lizards, wandered, crawled,
and flew among giant ferns; of the Cenozoic, the period when the first apes
appeared. It has sorted and stored synapses and reflexes proven over
millions of years to be effective in the struggle for survival. The spinal
cord, if you will, is our inner seat of rational conservatism.
Of course nowadays, that old cord of man, which can react to the
complex stimulation of contemporary reality in only two positions-saving
life and propagating the species-can't help us out all the time, as it did
in the Mesozoic Era. But it still has influence on many things! For example,
I would posit that it is the spinal cord that often determines our literary
and cinematic tastes. What? No, the spinal cord is not literate and does not
contain any special reflexes for viewing film. But, tell me, why do we
soften prefer detective movies and novels, no matter how poorly they are
made or written? Why do so many of us like love stories-everything from
jokes and gossip to the Decameron? Because it's interesting? Interesting?
Why is it interesting? Because the firmly engrained instincts for survival
and propagation encoded in our spinal cords force us to gather
information-what can you die of?-so that we can save ourselves in that
situation. How and why does happy and true love come about, the kind that
results in offspring? What destroys it?-so that you don't blow it yourself.
And it doesn't matter that such a dangerous situation may never come up in
your safe, comfortable lives. And it doesn't matter that there is love and
more descendants than you know what to do with-the spinal cord tows its
line. I'm not going to call these desires in the viewer and reader base, as
so many critics do. Why? These are healthy, natural desires, admirable
desires. If cows in their evolution ever learn to read, then they'll also
begin with mysteries and romances.
But let us return to the student whose brain failed him in responding
to the examiner's question. "Ah, you greenhorn," the spinal cord seems to
say to its colleague as it receives the panic signals and goes into action.
First, it sends signals to the motor nerves of the entire body; the muscles
tense into a position of readiness. The primary sources of muscular
energy-adenosine triphosphate and phosphocreatine-break down in tissue into
adenosine diphosphate and creatine, releasing phosphoric acid and the first
amounts of heat and energy. And I want to direct your attention once more to
the biological expediency of raising muscle tone. After all, danger in the
old days required quick energetic movement, to leap away, strike, bend,
climb a tree. And since it is not yet clear which way you will have to jump
or strike, all the muscles are brought into readiness.
Simultaneously, the sympathetic nervous system is also stimulated and
begins to command the whole kitchen array of metabolism in the organism. Its
signals reach the adrenal gland, which throws adrenaline into the blood,
stimulating everything. The liver and spleen, like sponges, squeeze out
several liters of extra blood into the circulatory system. Blood vessels
expand in the muscles, lungs, and brain. The heart beats faster, pumping
blood into all the organs, and with it, oxygen and glucose. The spinal cord
and the autonomous nervous system prepare thestudent's bodyforheavy, fierce,
and long fighting for life or death!
But the examiner cannot be stunned with a cudgel or even with a marble
inkwell. And you can't run away from him either. The examiner won't be
satisfied even if the student, overflowing with muscular energy, performs a
handstand on the desk instead of answering the question. That's why the
secret, stormy activity of the student's organism ends in a useless burning
up of glucose in the muscles and heat generation. The thermoreceptors in
different parts of the body send hysterical signals of overheating to the
brain and spinal cord. And the brain responds in the only way it knows-by
expanding the vessels of the skin. Blood rushes to the skin (incidentally,
also causing the student to blush) and heats up the air between the body and
the clothes. The sweat glands open up to help the student with evaporation
of moisture. The reflex chain, stimulated by the question, is finally over.
I'm sure you will make your own conclusions about the role of knowledge
in the correct regulation of the human organism in our complex environment,
and about its role in the regulation of the student organism at our next
session..."
From a lecture by Professor V. A. Androsiashvili in his course, Human
Physiology.
Yes, he was leaving in order to become himself, and not the Krivoshein
who lived and worked in Dneprovsk. He threw the apartment key which Val had
tucked into his pocket out of the train window. He crossed out all the
addresses and phone numbers of Moscow acquaintances from his book, including
his Aunt Lapanalda. He had no friends, no relatives, no past-only the
present, from the moment he entered the biology department, and the future.
He knew a simple but dependable way of establishing himself in the future;
the method had never let him down. It was work.
And he had more than that.
Once upon a time physicists had perfected the methods of measuring the
speed of light, just so that they could achieve the greatest accuracy. They
did. And they determined a scandalous fact: the speed of light did not
depend on the speed of motion of the light source. "Impossible! The
equipment is wrong! The results contradict classical mechanics!" They
checked. They measured the speed of light another way-with the same results.
And the almost completed, logically perfect universe rising in the
scaffolding of right-angled coordinates, crumbled, raising an awful lot of
dust. The "crisis of physics" began.
The human mind often strives for a reconciliation of all the facts in
the world rather than for a deeper knowledge of those facts: the important
thing is for everything to become simpler and more logical. And then some
sneaky little fact floats out, irreconcilable with the neat theories, and
you have to start all over again....
They had also created a simple and understandable picture in their
minds of how a computer creates a man from information about man. The
computer-womb was playing children's games with blocks. In a liquid medium
via electrical impulse it combined molecules into molecular chains, the
molecular chains into cells, and the cells into tissue-with the sole
difference that there were untold billions of "informational blocks." The
fact that the result of the game was not a monster or even another person,
but Krivoshein's informational double, proves that there was only one
solution to the puzzle. Well, naturally, it couldn't have been any other
way: blocks can only fit into a picture that exists in their surfaces. The
variants (a fragmented Lena, a fragmented father, the "delirium of memory,"
the eyes and feelers) were merely informational garbage that could not exist
independent of the computer.
This concept was not incorrect, merely superficial. It suited them, as
long as the facts supported the theory that they were the same externally
and in thoughts and deeds. But when irreconcilable differences came up on
the use of biology in their work, this concept turned out to be inadequate.
Yes, it was their inability to understand each other, and not the
interest in biology (which might have passed in Krivoshein-2 with no harmful
effects), that became to his discovery what the constancy of the speed of
light was to the theory of relativity. A man never knows what's banal about
him and what's original; that only comes in comparsion with others. And
unlike other people, Krivoshein-2 could compare himself to not only his
acquaintances, but to "himself" as well.
Now it became very clear to graduate student Krivoshein what the
difference between them was: their ways of appearing were different.
Valentin Krivoshein appeared over three decades ago the way every living
thing did-from an embryo, in which a program for building a human being
developed over thousands of centuries and in which generations had been
encoded by a specific arrangement of protein and DNA. But the computer-womb,
even though it was working from individual Krivoshein information, was still
dealing with random information; it had to seek out the principles of
formation and all the details of the biological information system. And the
computer found a way different from nature's: a biochemical assembly instead
of embryonic development.
Yes, now there was much that he understood. In a year he had passed
from sensations to knowledge and from knowledge to mastery of himself. And
then... then it had merely been a powerful attraction to biology and the
inexpressible certainty that this was where he had to seek his answers. He
couldn't even explain it well to Krivoshein. He came to Moscow with the
vague feeling that something was wrong with him. He wasn't sick or imagining
things, but he had to figure himself out, to make sure that his feeling was
reality and not an idee fixe or a hypochondriacal hallucination.
He worked so hard that he could look back on the days at the institute
in Dneprovsk as if they had been a vacation. Lectures, lab work, the anatomy
theater, the library, lectures, seminars, lab work, lectures, the clinic,
the library, lab work.... He never left the Lenin Hills campus during the
first semester; he would walk down to the parapet before going to bed, to
look down at the Moscow River, smoke, enjoy the lights glimmering and
blending with the stars on the horizon.
A gray-eyed, second-year student who resembled Lena always sat next to
him in Androsiashvili's class, which he attended. Once she asked: "You're so
solid, so serious-were you in the Army?" "In prison," he replied, jutting
out his jaw. The girl lost interest in him. It had to be. Girls take up too
much time.
And he was convinced by every experiment, every calculation. Yes, in a
cross section of a nerve bundle that goes from the brain to the pituitary
gland, under a microscope you can actually count approximately a hundred
thousand fibers-and that means that the pituitary is closely monitored by
the brain. Yes, if you add beta-active calcium to a lab monkey's diet of
bananas and then use a Geiger counter on its excretions, it really is true
that bone tissue renews itself approximately twice a year. Yes, if you stick
electrode needles into muscle tissue and conduct sound into earphones, you
can really hear a rhythmic quacking or a fragmented pulse of the nerve
signals, and these sounds corresponded with what he was feeling! Yes, skin
cells actually do move up toward the surface, changing structure, dying, so
that they can slough off and make room for new ones.
He studied his own body. He took blood samples and lymphatic samples;
he got a piece of muscle tissue from his right hip and examined it under an
optical microscope and then an electronic one; he calumnied himself to get a
Wassermann at the school clinic. And he determined that everything in him
was normal. Even the amount and distribution of nerves in the tissue was the
same as in the bodies they dissected in anatomy class. The nerves went up to
the brain, but he couldn't get in there with the use of laboratory
technology. He would have to implant too many electrodes into his skull and
plug into too many oscilloscopes to understand the secrets of his self. And
would he understand them then? Or would he come up with "streptocidal
striptease"-not in binary alphabet, but in the jagged lines of an
electroencephalogram?
The situation-a living person studying his own organism can't even
breech the mysteries of his body with laboratory equipment-was paradoxical.
After all, this wasn't a question of discovering invisible "radiostars" or
synthesizing antiparticles. All the information was in man. All that
remained was to translate the code of the molecules, cells, and nerve
impulses into the code of the secondary signal system-words and sentences.
Words and phrases are necessary (but not always) for one man to
understand another. But are they necessary to understand oneself? Krivoshein
didn't know. That's why he tried everything: analysis, imagination, books,
monitoring the sensations of his body, conversations with Androsiashvili and
other teachers, observation of patients at the clinic, autopsies....
Everything that Vano Aleksandrovich had argued in that memorable
December conversation was right, since it was defined by Androsiashvili's
knowledge of the world and his faith in the indisputable expediency of
everything created by nature.
But the professor did not know one thing: that he was conversing with
an artificial man.
Even Vano Aleksandrovich's doubts about the success of his plan were
solidly based, because Krivoshein's starting point was an engineering
computer solution. That December he began planning an "electropotential
inductor"-a continuation of the idea of Monomakh's Crown. A hundred thousand
microscopic electrode needles, connected to the matrices of a self-learning
automated machine (in the lab the bionics people modeled reflex actions on
it), were supposed to supply the brain cells with auxiliary charges,
bringing artificial biowaves through the skull, and thereby connecting the
thinking centers of the cortex with the autonomous nervous system.
Krivoshein laughed. How silly to think that such primitive apparatus
could have punched up his organism! At least he hadn't dropped his
physiology studies for that project. When he performed an autopsy, he
mentally revived the corpse: he imagined that he himself lay on the
dissecting table, that it was his white nerve fibers running through the
muscles and cartilage to the purple, yellow fat-encrusted heart, to the
watery clusters of salivary glands under the chin, to the gray rags of
collapsed lungs. Other fibers wove into white cords of nerves that went to
the pelvis, the spinal cord and up, through the neck, under the skull.
Signal commands ran along them from there: contract the muscles, speed up
the heart, squeeze out saliva!
In the student cafeteria he followed the movement of every gulp of food
to his stomach, trying to imagine and feel how, in the darkness, it was
slowly kneaded by the smooth muscles, broken down by hydrochloric acid and
enzymes, how the dull yellow mash was absorbed into the walls of the
intestine. Sometimes he spent two hours sitting over a cold cutlet.
Actually, he was remembering. Nine-tenths of his discoveries were due
to the fact that he remembered and understood how it had happened.
The computer-womb had no reason to begin with a fetus; it had enough
material to assemble an adult. Krivoshein, the original, had made sure of
that. At first the vague biological mixture in the tank contained only
"wandering" currents and "floating" potentials from external circuits-these
colorful terms from theoretical electronics were quite literal in this case.
Then the transparent nerve fibers and cells appeared-a continuation of the
electronic circuits of the computer. The search for informational
equilibrium continued. The nervous system was becoming more and more
voluminous and complex, and the layers of nerve cells turned into the cortex
and subcortex. That's when his brain appeared, and from that moment on, he
existed.
At first his brain was also a continuation of the computer's circuits.
But now he received impulses of external information, sifted it and tried
combinations, and looked for a way to realize the information in a
biological medium. He was assembling himself! In the vat a system of
nerves-for now still random-spread. Muscle tissue, vessels, bones, and inner
organs began appearing around the nerves-in that practically liquid state
when they could dissolve, blend, change structure under orders of the nerve
impulses. No, this wasn't an intelligent assembly of a body following a
blueprint, since there was no blueprint. The building block game continued,
a sifting through many variants and choosing of the only one among them that
reflected the information on Krivoshein. But now, like the computer which
evaluated every variant of the solution with binary signals, his computer
brain evaluated the synthesis of a body with a binary code of sensation: Yes
meant it felt good, No, that it hurt. Unsuccessful combinations of cells,
the incorrect distribution of organs were transmitted to the brain as a dull
or sharp pain; the successful and correct one, as delicious satisfaction.
And the memory of the search, the memory of the sensations of the body
under construction remained within him.
Life creates people who differ little in the properties of the
organism, but are very different in their psychology, personality,
knowledge, and spiritual refinement or crudity. The computer-womb acted in
the opposite manner. The graduate student Krivoshein was identical to
Krivoshein in psychology and intellect, but that was understandable. Those
qualities in a person develop through the same process of random retrieval
and choice. The computer merely repeated the retrieval. But biologically
they differed the way a book differs from its rough draft. Not just one
draft, but all the drafts and sketches that went into creating a finished
and polished work. Of course, the contents were the same, but the drafts
retain the path of finding and choosing the right words in their
corrections, additions, and deletions.
"Actually, that comparison is imperfect, too," the frowning student
mused. "The drafts of books appear before the books, not afterwards. And if
you show a scribbler all the drafts of War and Peace would that make him a
genius? Well, I guess they would teach him something.... No, I guess it's
better to leave comparisons out of this!" Man recalls what he knows in only
two situations: when he must recall it-goal recollection-and when he
encounters something that even remotely resembles the code in his brain.
This is called associative recall. The biology books were the hint that
stimulated his memory. But the difficulty lay in the fact that he did not
remember words or even images, but only sensations. Even now he couldn't
convey it all in words-and probably would never be able to.
Of course, that's not the important thing. What is important is the
fact that such information exists. Because "knowledge in sensation" gave
birth to a clear, thought-out idea in him to control his own metabolism.
It happened the first time on the evening of January 28 in the forms.
It turned out just like Pavlov's dogs-artificial salivation. But he wasn't
thinking about food (he had had a dinner of kefir and sausage), but about
the nerve regulation of the salivary glands. As usual he tried to visualize
the entire path of the nerve impulses from the taste receptors in the tongue
through the brain to the salivary glands and suddenly felt his mouth fill up
with saliva!
Still only fully aware of how it had happened, he concentrated on a
frightened protest-"No!"-and his mouth went dry instantly!
That evening he repeated the mental orders "Saliva!" and "no!" until
his mouth convulsed.
He spent the rest of the week in his room-luckily it was a school
vacation, and he didn't have to be distracted by lectures and labs. Other
organs listened to his mental orders. At first he could only command them
crudely. Streams of tears poured from his eyes; sweat appeared in profusion
all over his skin or immediately dried up; his heart either quieted down to
a near comatose rate or else beat wildly at a hundred forty beats a
minute-there was no middle ground, And when he commanded his stomach to stop
excreting hydrochloric acid he had such intense diarrhea that he barely had
time to get to the bathroom. But gradually he learned to control external
excretions gently and locally; once he even managed to spell out "IT'S
WORKING!" on his back with beads of sweat, like a tattoo.
Then he moved his experiments to the lab and first of all repeated the
effect of the sugar injection made famous by Claude Bernard. But now he
didn't have to open the skull and inject the midbrain. The amount of sugar
in his blood increased as a result of a mental command.
But in general it was much more complex dealing with internal
secretion. The results were not so apparent or so fast. He made puncture
marks all over his fingers and muscles checking whether the glands were
obeying his commands to secrete adrenaline, insulin, glucose, or hormones.
He irritated his gullet with probes trying to determine the reaction to his
commands on changing acidity. Everything was working-and everything was very
difficult.
Then he caught on. He should give his organism a specific goal, to do
this and that, produce certain changes. And really when he walked, he didn't
command the muscles: "Right rectus-contract... biceps-now... left
gastrocnemius...." He didn't have time for that. The conscious mind sets a
specific goal: go faster or slower, go around the post, turn into the
driveway. And the nerve centers of the brain take care of the muscles. And
that's how it should be with this. It wasn't his business which glands and
vessels would produce individual reactions, as long as they did what he
wanted!
Words and images got in the way. He was overexplaining. He told the
liver how to synthesive glycogen from amino acids and fats, break down the
glycogen into glucose, and excrete it into the blood; he told the thyroid to
contract and squeeze out drops of thyroxin into the blood; he told the
circulatory system to expand the capillaries in the large chest muscles and
to contract the other vessels-and nothing happened, his pectorals didn't
grow bigger. After all, the liver didn't know it was the liver, and the
thyroid didn't have the slightest idea what thyroxin was and couldn't
picture a drop of it. Krivoshein cursed himself for excessive attention at
his lectures and in the library. The result of all this exertion was only a
headache.
The problem was that in order to control metabolism within himself, he
had to avoid numbers, terms, and even images, and think only in sensations.