Self-discovery

Chapter 10

We went out into the institute grounds. The night was warm. Our exhaustion made us forget that we should not appear in public together, and we remembered only in the entry. Old man Vakhterych stared at us with his inebriated eyes. We froze.

“Ah. Valentin Vasilyevich!” the old man exclaimed happily. “Done for the day?”

“Yes…” we replied in unison.

“Good.” Vakhterych rose heavily and unlocked the front door. “And nothing will happen to the institute, and no one will steal it, and have a good evening, and I still have to sit here. People go off to enjoy themselves, and I have to sit here….”

We ran out into the street and hurried off.

“That’s something!” I noticed that the facade of the new institute building was decorated with multicolored lights. “What’s the date?”

My double counted on his fingers:

“The first… no, the second of May. Happy holiday, Val!”

“Belatedly… oh, boy!”

I remembered that I had a date with Lena for May I to go out with some of her co — workers and to go for a motorcycle excursion on the second. I had blown it. She would never forgive me.

“And Lena is out dancing right now. somewhere with somebody,” my double muttered.

“What do you care?”

We fell silent. Buses, decorated with branches, raced up and down the street. Neon rocket boosters were set up on rooftops. We could see people dancing, singing, drinking, through open windows.

I lit a cigarette and started rethinking my observations of the computer — womb (as we finally decided to call the complex). “First of all, it’s not a computer — oracle or a computer — thinker, because there is no winnowing of information in it, only combinations — sometimes meaningful, sometimes not. Secondly, it can be controlled not only by energy (clamping the hoses, turning off water and power — in other words, grabbing it by the throat), but also by information. Of course, for now it responds only to the command ‘No! — but it’s a beginning. I think the most convenient way to command it is through Monomakh’s Crown with brain waves. Third, the computer — womb, while very complex, is still only a machine, an artificial creation without a goal. The striving for stability, informational equilibrium, is not a goal but a characteristic, just like that of an analytic scale. But it is expressed in a more complex way: through synthesis in the form of living matter via external information. A goal always lies in solving a problem. There was no problem — and so it fooled around from an excess of possibilities. But…”

“… man must set its goals,” my double picked up; I was no longer amazed by his ability to think with me. “As for all other machines. Therefore, as the bureaucrats say, all responsibility lies with us.”

I didn’t feel like thinking about responsibility. You work and work unstintingly — and then you get stuck with responsibility, too. And people go off to enjoy themselves. We missed the holiday. What dopes! And my whole life will go by in a smelly lab.

We turned down a chestnut — lined avenue which led to Academic Town. A couple strolled ahead of us. My double and I felt a pang — we poor, sober, hungry, and lonely men. That couple fit in so beautifully in the gaslit avenue. Tall and elegant, he held her by the waist. She bent her full mane of hair toward him. We unthinkingly sped up, in order to pass them and be spared the lyrical sight.

“We’ll play some music, now, Tanechka! I have records that’ll make you salivate!” Hilobok’s buzzing voice reached us, and we were knocked for a loop. The charm of the lovely picture faded. “Harry has another new one,” my double announced. As we got closer we recognized the girl, too. Just recently she had come to the institute in school uniform to do her probation work; now, I think, she worked as a lab assistant in the digital computer lab. I liked her looks: full lips, a soft nose, and big brown eyes that were dreamy and trusting.

“And when Arkady Arkadievich is on vacation or on a business trip abroad, I have to make many of his decisions,” Harry said, spreading his peacock tail. “And even when he’s here… what? Of course, it’s interesting, why not?”

There goes little Tanechka, her head bent forward towards Hilobok’s shoulder, and assistant professor Harry seems like a shining knight of Soviet science to her. Maybe he even has radiation sickness like the hero of the movie Nine Days in One Year? Or maybe his health is completely undermined by his scientific work, like the hero of the movie Everything Will Remain for the People? And so she melts, imagining herself as his heroine, the little fool…. Your scientific boyfriend is in fine shape, don’t you worry, Tanechka. He hasn’t worn himself out with science. And he’s leading you directly to your first major disillusionment in life. He’s a pro in that department….

My double slowed down and said under his breath:

“Should we beat him up? It would be very easy; you go off to visit some friends and establish an alibi, and I’ll….”

He beat me to it by a split second. He spoke hurriedly in general, to prove his individuality. He understood that we thought the same way. But since he spoke up so soon, I immediately developed the second mechanism of proving my individuality: opposition to someone else’s idea.

“Over the girl, you mean? The hell with her; if not her, then he’ll get someone else.”

“Over her, and everything in general. For the good of my soul. Remember the stink he made over our work?” His eyes narrowed. “Remember?”

I remembered. I was working in Valery Ivanov’s lab then. We were developing storage blocks for defense computers. Serious things were going on in the world, and we were working hard, not observing days off or holidays, and turned in the work six months before the government’s deadline. And soon the institute well — wishers related Hilobok’s pronouncement on us: “In science people who turn in research before it’s due are either careerists or brown — noses, or both!” His pronouncement became popular. We have quite a few who are in no danger of being called careerists or brown — noses from working the way we did. Sensitive and hotheaded, Valery kept wanting to have a heart — to — heart with Hilobok, then had a fight with Azarov and left the institute.

My fists grew heavy with the memory. Maybe my double could provide the alibi, and I’d…? And then I pictured it: a sober intelligent man beating another intelligent man to a pulp in front of a girl. What was that! I shook my head to chase out the image.

“No, that’s not it. We can’t succumb to such base feelings.”

“Then what is if?”

“Then we must at least protect those dreamy eyes from Harry’s sweaty embrace.” My double bit his lip thoughtfully and pushed me under a tree (taking the initiative again). “Harry Haritonovich, could I see you privately for a moment?”

Hilobok and the girl turned around.

“Ah, Valentin Vasilyevich! Of course… Tanechka, I’ll catch up with you.” The assistant professor turned toward my double.

“Aha!” I got his plan and raced through the trees’ shadows. Everything worked perfectly. Tanechka got as far as the fork in the road, stopped, looked around and saw the same man who had called her boyfriend away just a few minutes before.

“Tanechka,” I said. “Harry Haritonovich asked me to convey his apologies. He won’t be returning. You see, his wife is back and…. Where are you going? I’ll walk you!”

But Tanechka was running away, hands over her face, straight for the bus stop. I headed home.

A few minutes later my double came in.

“Wait,” I said before he could open his mouth. “You told Harry that Tanechka is the fiancee of your friend, who’s a boxing champion?”

“And a judo black belt. And you told her about his wife?”

“Right. Well, at least we’ve found one positive application of our study.”

We got undressed, washed, and got ready for bed. I took the bed and he took the folding bed.

“By the way, speaking of Hilobok,” my double said, sitting down on his bed. “We didn’t mention that our retrieval topic will be discussed at the next scientific council? If Harry hadn’t reminded me so nicely, I would never have known. ‘It’s time, Valentin Vasilyevich. After all you’ve been working six months now, and it hasn’t been discussed yet. Of course, random retrieval is a good thing, but you’ve been requisitioning equipment and materiel, and I keep getting calls from accounting, wanting to know what to call the account. And there’s talk in the institute that Krivoshein can do what he wants while everyone else has to fill out forms in triplicate. I, of course, understand that you must do all this for your dissertation, but you must give your topic form and bring it into the overall plan…. The creep brought up work as soon as I told him about the boxing and judo.”

“If Hilobok is to be believed, all science is done to keep accounting happy.”

I explained the situation to my double. When the computer was spewing out those crazy numbers, I had called Azarov in total despair and asked to see him for advice. As usual, he was too busy and suggested that it would be better to have a scientific council; he would ask Hilobok to arrange it.

“And by then, the little red egg had hatched,” my double finished. “So shall we report it? With the intention of writing a master’s dissertation. Even Hilobok understands that it’s important.”

“And I’ll bring you in as a demonstration at my defense?”

“We’ll see who demonstrates whom,” he replied. “But basically… it’s impossible. We can’t.”

“Of course we can’t,” I agreed glumly. “And we can’t apply for a patent either. It looks as if I have only expenses so far on this deal, no profits.”

“I’ll give you the money, you cheapskate! Listen, what do you need with the Nobel Prize?” My double narrowed his eyes. “If the computer — womb can easily make people, then money…”

“… is easier than anything! With the right paper and all the water marks… well, why not?”

“We’ll each buy a three — bedroom co — op,” my double said, leaning back against the wall dreamily.

“And a Volga car…”

“And two dachas each: one in the Crimea for rest and one on the Riga seacoast for respectability.”

“And we’ll make a few more of us. One will work so that public outcry will be stifled…”

“… and the others will be parasites to their heart’s content…”

“… with a guaranteed alibi. Why not?”

We stopped and looked at each other in disgust.

“God, what depressing small — timers we are!” I grabbed my head. “We take a major discovery and try it on for size on stupid stuff: a dissertation, a prize, a dacha, beating people up with alibis… This is a Method of Synthesizing Man! And we’re….”

“It’s all right, it happens. Every person has petty thoughts once in a while. The important thing is to keep them from turning into petty acts.”

“Actually, so far I see only one positive application of the discovery: you can see your faults much better when they’re in someone else.”

“Yes, but is that any reason for doubling the earth’s population?”

We were sitting opposite each other in our underwear. I was reflected in him, a mirror image.

“All right, let’s get serious. What do we want?”

“And what can we do?”

“And what do we understand about this business?”

“Let’s begin with what’s what. The ideas of Sechyonov, Pavlov, Weiner, and Ashby agreed on one point: that the brain is a machine. Petruccio’s experiments on controlling the development of a human fetus is another move in this direction. The striving for greater complexity and universality in technological systems — just take the desire of microelectricians to create machines that are as complex as the human brain!”

“In other words — our discovery is no accident. The way was prepared for it by the development of ideas and technology. If not this way, then another; if not now, then in a few years or decades; if not us, then someone else would discover it. Therefore, the question comes down to…”

“. what can we and must we do in that period — maybe a year, maybe decades, no one knows, but it’s better to take the shorter time — that we have as a head start on the others.” “Yes.”

“How is it usually done?” My double rested his cheek on his hand. “An engineer has the desire to create something lasting. He looks for a client. Or the client looks for him, depending on who needs whom more. The client gives him a technological problem: ‘Use your ideas and your knowledge to create such and such. It must have the following parameters and withstand the following… and it should guarantee the production annually of no less than such — and — such percent. The amount is, and the time allotted is. The sanctions follow general usage…. A contract is signed and then it is done. We have an idea and we want to develop it further. But if a client comes along now and says: ‘Here’s the dough; go to work on your system for doubling people and it’s none of your business why I want it’ — we wouldn’t agree, right?”

“Well, it’s a little early to be worrying about that. The method hasn’t been researched. What kind of production could there be? Who knows, maybe you’ll disintegrate in a few months.” “I won’t. Don’t count on it.” “What’s it to me? Live for all I care.”

“Thanks! You are such a boor! Just unbelievable! Would I like to give you a good punch!”

“All right, all right, don’t get off the subject. You misunderstood me. I meant that we still don’t know all the aspects and possibilities of the discovery. We’re at the very beginning. If we compare it to radio, say, then we’re at the level of Hertz’s waves and Popov’s spark transmitter. What now? We must research the possibilities.”

“Right. But that doesn’t change things. Any research that is applied to man and human society must have a definite goal. And there’s nobody around to give us a two — page, typewritten list setting a technological task. But we don’t need it. We must determine for ourselves what goals man now faces.”

“Well… before, the goals were simple: survival and propagation of the species. In order to achieve them you had to worry about wildlife, skins for cover, and fire. beating off animals and acquaintances with a cudgel, digging in the clay to make a cave without any conveniences, and so on. But modern society has solved these problems. Get a job somewhere and you’ll have the minimum you need for living. You won’t perish. And you can have children; if worst comes to worst, the government will even take on the responsibility of bringing them up for you. So now, it follows that people should have new desires and needs.”

“More than you can count! Comfort, recreation, interesting and not boring work. Refined society, various symbols of vanity — titles, awards, medals. The need for excellent clothing, delicious food, embroidery, a suntan, news, books, humor, ornamentation, fads….” “But none of that is important, damn it! That can’t be important. People can’t, and don’t want to return to their previous primitive existence; they squeeze everything from modern life that they can — it’s only natural. But there has to be some goal behind their desires and needs, no? A new goal of existence.”

“In brief, what is the meaning of life? Rather a complicated problem, wouldn’t you say? So, I knew we would end up here!” My double got up, moved to get the kinks out of his body, and sat down again. So — starting out with jokes and getting more and more serious — we discussed the most important aspects of our work. I’ve often gotten around to discussing the meaning of life — over cognac or on a coffee break — as well as social structure, and the destiny of mankind. Engineers and scientists like to gab about worlds the way housewives do about high prices and lack of morality. Housewives do it to prove their diligence and goodness, and the researchers do it to demonstrate the breadth and scope of their vision to their friends. But this conversation was much more difficult than the usual engineering bull: we overturned ideas as if they were snowdrifts. It was distinguished by responsibility: after this conversation deeds and actions would follow the words — deeds and actions that allowed no room for mistakes.

We weren’t sleepy any more.

“All right. Let’s assume that the meaning of life is to satisfy needs. No matter what kind. But what desires and needs of mankind can we satisfy by creating new people? The artificially created people will have their own needs and desires! It’s a vicious circle.”

“No, no. The meaning of life is to live. Live a full life, freely, interestingly, creatively. Or at least to aim for that… and then?”

“Fully! Meaning of life! Aiming!” My double jumped up and started pacing the room. “Interests, desires, mammy, what abstractions! Two centuries ago these approximate concepts would have sufficed, but today…. What the hell can we do if there are no exact data on man? What vectors are used to describe striving? What units measure interests?”

(We were discouraged by that then — and we’re discouraged by that now. We were used to exact, precise concepts: parameters, clearances, volume of information in bits, action in microseconds — and we came face to face with the terrifying vagueness of knowledge about man. It’s good enough for a conversation. But please, do tell me how can you use them in applied research, where a simple and harsh law reigns: if you know something imprecisely, that means you don’t know it.)

“Hmmmmmm… I envy the men who invented the atom bomb.” My double got up and leaned in the balcony doorway.” ‘This device, gentlemen, can destroy a hundred thousand people’ — and it was perfectly clear to them that Oak Ridge had to be built… And our device can create people, gentlemen!”

“Some people do research on uranium; others build factories to enrich uranium with the necessary isotopes… others construct the bombs… others in high political circles give the order… others drop the bombs on still others, the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… and others…. Hey, wait a minute, I’m on to something!”

My double regarded me with curiosity.

“You see, we’re talking very logically, and we can’t find our way out of the paradoxes, the dead questions like ‘What’s the meaning of life? and you know why? There is no such thing in nature as Man in General. On earth there are all kinds of different people, and their desires are varied, and often contradictory. Let’s say a man wants to live well and for that he needs weapons. Or take this: a young man dreams of becoming a scientist but he doesn’t feel like chewing on the granite of science — he doesn’t like the taste. And these different people live in different circumstances, find themselves in varying situations, dream about one thing and strive for another, and achieve yet a third… and we’re trying to fit them all in one mold!”

“But if we move on to individuals and take into account all the circumstances…” my double frowned, “it’ll be a mess!”

“And you want everything to be as simple as the creation of storage blocks, eh? Wrong case.”

“I know it’s a different case. Our discovery is as complex as man himself… and we can’t throw anything out or simplify anything to make our work easier. But what constructive ideas are flowing out of your great insight that all men are different? I mean constructive, that will help our work.”

“Our work… hm. It’s tough….”

Our conversation hit another dead end. The poplars rustled downstairs by the house. Someone walked into the courtyard, whistling a tune. A cool breeze came in from the balcony.

My double was staring dully at the lamp and then shoved his finger second — knuckle deep into his nostril. His face expressed the fierce pleasure of natural exercise. Something itched in my right nostril, too, but he had beat me to it. I watched myself picking my nose and I suddenly realized why I hadn’t recognized my double when we met on the institute grounds. Basically, no one knows himself. We never see ourselves — even before the mirror we unconsciously correct ourselves, trying to look better and more intelligent. We don’t hear ourselves, because the vibrations of our thorax reach our eardrums through the bones and muscles of our head as well as through the air. We do not observe ourselves from the side.

My double cleaned his nose, and then his finger, and then looked up and laughed, when he understood what I was thinking.

“So, are people different or the same?”

“Both. A certain objective lesson can be drawn here — not from your lousy manners, of course. We’re talking about the technical production of a new information system — Man. Technology produces other systems: machines, books, equipment…. The common factor in every produced system is similarity, standardization. Every book in a given press run is like all the others, down to the typos. And in equipment of a given series, the needles, the scales, the class of precision, and the length of the guarantee are the same. The differences are minor: in one book the text is a little clearer; in one piece of equipment there’s a scratch or it has a slightly higher margin of error at high temperatures…”

“… but within the class of precision.”

“Natch. In the language of our science, we could say that the volume of individual information in each such artificial system is negligibly small in comparison with the volume of information that is common in all the systems of a given class. And for man that is not the case. People contain common information, biological knowledge of the world, but each person has an enormous amount of personal, individualized information. You can’t overlook it — without it man is not man. That means that every person is not standard. That means…” “… that all attempts to find the optimum parameters for man with an allowable margin of error of no more than five percent is a waste of time. Fine! Do you feel better?” “No. But that’s the harsh truth.”

‘Therefore, we can’t hide in our work from these terrible and mysterious concepts: man’s interests, personality, desires, good and evil… and maybe even the soul? I’m going to quit.”

“You won’t. By the way, are they really so mysterious, these concepts? In life people all understand what’s what. You know, they judge a base act and say, ‘You know, that was lousy! and everyone agrees.”

“Everyone except the louse. Which is very much to the point.” He slapped his thighs. “I don’t understand you! It’s not enough that you got burned on the simple word understanding? Now you want to give the computer problems with good and evil? A machine doesn’t catch things between the lines, doesn’t get jokes, is indifferent to good and evil… Why are you laughing?”

I really was laughing.

“I don’t understand how you cannot understand me. After all you are me!”

“That’s tangential. I’m a researcher first, and then I’m Krivoshein, Sidorov, or Petrov!” He was obviously all worked up. “How will we work if we don’t have precise concepts of the crux of the matter?”

“Well. the way people worked at the dawn of the age of electrotechnology. In those days everyone knew what phlogiston was, but no one had any idea about tension, voltage, or induction. Ampere, Volt, Henry, and Ohm were merely last names. They tested tension with their tongues, the way kids check batteries nowadays. They discovered current by copper buildup on cathodes. But people worked. And we… what’s the matter with you?”

Now my double was doubled up with laughter.

“I can just imagine it: twenty years from now there’ll be a unit measuring something and they’ll call it a krivoshein! Oh, I can’t stand it!”

I fell down on my bed laughing, too.

“And there’ll be a krivosheinmeter… like an ohmmeter.”

“And a microkrivoshein or a megakrivoshein… a megakri for short. Ho — ho!”

I like remembering how we roared. We were obviously unworthy of our discovery. We laughed. We got serious.

“Historical examples are inspirational, of course,” my double said. “But that’s not it. Galvani could blather as much as he wanted over ‘animal electricity, Zeebeck could stubbornly insist that thermo — stream gave rise not to thermoelectricity, but to thermomag — netism — the nature of things was not altered by that. Sooner or later they hit on the truth, because the important thing was the analysis of information. Analysis! And we’re dealing with synthesis. And here nature is no guideline for man: it builds its own system; he builds his. The only truths for him in this business are possibility and goal. We have the possibility. And the goal? We can’t formulate it.”

“The goal is simple: for everything to be good.”

“Again with good?” My double looked at me. “And then we have childish prattle about what is good and what is bad?”

“Skip the childish prattle! Let’s operate with these arbitrary concepts however clumsy they may be: good, evil, desires, needs, health, talent, stupidity, freedom, love, longing, principle — not because we like them, but because there aren’t any others. They don’t exist!”

“I have nothing to counter that. There aren’t any others, that’s true.” My double sighed. “I can tell this is going to be a lot of work!”

“And let’s talk it all out. Yes, things should be good. All the applications of the discovery that we permit to enter the world must be ones that we are sure of, that will not bring any harm to people, only good. And let’s put aside our discussion of how to measure benefit. I don’t know what units it takes.”

“Krivosheins, of course,” my double countered.

“Cut it out! But I know something else: the role of an intellectual monster on a world scale does not appeal to me.”

“Me neither. But just a small question: do you have a plan?”

“For what?”

“A method for using the computer — womb so that it only gives benefit to mankind. You see this would be an unprecedented method in the history of science. Nothing that has been invented and is being invented has that magical quality. You can poison yourself with medicine. You can use electricity for lighting homes or for torturing people. Or for launching a rocket with a warhead. And that holds for everything.”

“No, I don’t have a concrete plan as yet. We don’t know enough. Let’s study the computer — womb and look for that method. It must exist. It’s not important that there is no precedent for it in science — there is no precedent for our discovery either. We will be synthesizing precisely that system that does good and evil, and miracles, and nonsense — man!”

“That’s all true,” my double agreed after some thought. “Whether we find that great method or not, there’s no point in undertaking work like that without a goal like it. They manage to make people without us, somehow or other….”

“So, let’s end the session properly, all right?” I suggested. “Let’s make up a work project like in a contract: we the undersigned: humanity, called the client, and the party of the first part; and the heads of the New Systems Laboratory of the Institute of Systemology, V. V. Krivoshein and V. V. Krivoshein, called the Executors, and the party of the second part, agree to the following….”

“Why so much about a contract and a technical task — after all in this work we represent the interests of the client ourselves. Do it straight and simple!”

He got up, took down the Astra — 2 cassette recorder from the closet, put it on the table, and turned on the microphone. And we — that is, I, Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein, thirty — four years old, and my artificial double, who appeared on this earth a week ago — two unsentimental, rather ironic people — swore a vow.

I guess it might have seemed high — flown and ridiculous. There was no fanfare, no flags, no rows of students at ease. The morning sky was pale, and we stood before the mike in our underwear, and the draft from the balcony chilled our feet… but we made the vow in dead earnest.

And so it will be. No other way.