Self-discovery

Chapter 16

The next entry in the diary shocked student Krivoshein with its uneven, changed handwriting.

September 6. But I didn’t want… I didn’t want something like this! All I can do is shout to the sky: I didn’t want it! I tried to make things come out well… without any mistakes. I didn’t even sleep nights. I just lay there with my eyes shut, picturing all the details of Hercules’ body, and then Adam’s, noting which features should be added to my double.

I couldn’t do it all in one session. No way — that’s why I dissolved him. I couldn’t let out a cripple with arms and legs of different length. And I couldn’t possibly have known that each time I dissolved him I killed him. How could I have known?

As soon as the liquid cleared his head and shoulders, the double grabbed the edge of the tank with his powerful hands and jumped out. I was running the movie camera, capturing the historic moment of a man appearing from a machine. He fell on the linoleum before me, sobbing with a hoarse, howling cry. I ran to him:

“What’s the matter?”

He was hugging my leg with his sticky hands, rubbing his head against them, kissing my hands as I tried to lift him.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me any more! Why do you torture me, aaah! Don’t! Twenty — five times you’ve killed me, twenty — five times. Aaah!”

But I hadn’t known. I couldn’t know that his consciousness revived with every experiment! He understood that I was reshaping his body, doing what I wanted with him, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. My command “No!” first dissolved his body, and then his consciousness dimmed. Why didn’t that artificial idiot tell me that the consciousness begins functioning before the body?

“Damn it!” the student muttered. “Really — the brain must be unplugged last. When was that?” He turned the pages and sighed with a certain relief. No, it wasn’t his fault. In August and September he couldn’t have told him, he didn’t know it himself. If he were running the experiment, he would have made the same mistake.

And so I got a man with a classic physique, a pleasant look, and the broken spirit of a slave. “A knight without fear or flaw.”

Go ahead, look for a scapegoat, you louse. You didn’t know; you tried! But did you!? Wasn’t it conceit, self — love? Didn’t you feel like God sitting up in the clouds in a labeled leather armchair? A god, on whose whims depended the appearance and disappearance of a man, whether he would be or not be. Didn’t you experience an intellectual passion when you gave the computer — womb the orders over and over: “You may!” and “Not it!” and “No!”?

He tried to escape from the lab immediately. I barely talked him into washing up and dressing. He was trembling. There could be no question of his working alongside me in the lab.

He spent five days with me^ five horrible days. I kept hoping he’d relax, get better. No way! No, he was healthy in body, knew everything, remembered everything — the computer — womb recorded all my information in him, my knowledge, my memory — but the terror of his experience was overwhelming and could not be controlled by his will or thoughts. His hair turned gray the first day from the memories.

He was terrified of me. When I would come home, he would jump up and get into a position of submission: his gladiator’s back would hunch and his arms, bulging with rippling muscles, would hang limp. He was trying to look smaller. And his eyes — oh, God, those eyes! They looked at me with a prayer, entreaty, with a panic — stricken readiness to do anything to mollify me. I felt terrified and guilty. I’ve never seen a man look that way.

And tonight, sometime after three… I don’t know why I woke up. There was a dead gray light from the streetlights on the ceiling. Adam the double was standing over my bed with a raised dumbbell. I could see his muscles in his right arm tense for the blow. We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then he giggled nervously and moved away, his bare feet scuffling on the wood floor.

I sat up on the bed and turned on the overhead light. He was crouching on the floor by the closet, his head on his knees. His shoulders and the dumbbell in his hand were shaking.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “You should strike, once you’ve aimed. You would have felt better.”

“I can’t forget,” he muttered in a hollow baritone through the sobs. “You see, I can’t forget how you used to kill me… twenty — five times!”

I opened the desk, took out my passport, engineering degree, what money there was, and shook him by the shoulder. “Get up! Get dressed and go. Go off somewhere, make a life for yourself, work, live. We won’t be able to do anything together. No rest for you or me. It’s not my fault! Damn it, can’t you understand that I didn’t know? I was doing something that had never been done. Surely there were things I couldn’t have known. A man can be born a monster or mentally ill, or become that way after an illness or accident, but then it’s nobody’s fault, nobody to bash with a dumbbell. If you had been in my place, the same thing would have happened, because you are me! Understand?”

He was backing toward the wall, shaking. That sobered me up.

“I’m sorry. Take my papers. I’ll manage here somehow. Here,” I said, opening the passport, “you look more like me on the picture than I do. The photographer must have tried to perfect my features, too. Take the money, a suitcase, clothes — and go where you want. You’ll live on your own, work a bit, and maybe things will be easier for you.”

Two hours later he was gone. We agreed that he would write to me from wherever he settled. He won’t write….

It’s a good sign that he tried to kill me. That means he’s no slave. He feels hurt and insulted. Maybe things will work out for him?

And I’m sitting here without a thought in my head. I have to start over. Oh, nature, what a bitch you are! How you enjoy laughing at our ideas! You seduce us, and then….

Drop it! Stop looking for someone to blame. Nature has nothing to do with it, it is part of your work only on an elementary level. And the rest is all you. Don’t try to get out of it.

The alarm went off: 7:15. Time to get up, shave, wash, and go to work. A murky sun over the buildings, the sky full of smoke, dirty, like an old curtain. The wind raised dust, whipping the trees, blowing through the balcony door. Downstairs a bus licks people off the street at the stops. They gather again, and they all have the same expression on their faces: can’t be late for work!

And I have to get to work too. I’ll get to the lab, jot down the results of my unsatisfactory experiment, and console myself with the bromides: “You learn from your mistakes;” “There are no beaten paths in science;” and so on. And I’ll start the next experiment. And I’ll make more mistakes and destroy not guinea pigs, but… people? You conceited, dreaming cretin, armed with the latest technology!

The wind whips the trees. It was all in the past: the days of research and discovery, the evenings of meditation, the nights of dreaming. And here you are, the cold, clear morn, wiser than the night. Merciless morning! It’s probably in this sober time that women who had dreamed all night of having a child go for an abortion. And I had an abortion. I dreamed. I wanted to bring happiness to the world, and I’ve created two miserable people already. I’ll never master this work. I’m weak, unneeded, and stupid. I must take up something mediocre, that I can handle — for an article, for a dissertation. And then everything will be fine.

The wind whips the trees. The wind whips the trees….

On the next balcony there’s a recording of Mozart’s Requiem playing. My neighbor, associate professor Prishchepa, wants to get into a mathematical mood first thing in the morning. “Requi. requiem….” The voices are bidding farewell to someone clearly and simply. This is good music to shoot oneself by. Nobody would notice the shot.

The wind whips the trees.

What have I done? And yet I had doubts, and then not doubts but knowledge. I knew that any change I made stayed with him, that the computer — womb remembered everything. I didn’t pay attention. Why?

I had a thought, not expressed in words, so that I wouldn’t be ashamed, or a feeling of well — being and safety, I guess: “after all, it’s not me. It’s not happening to me….” And also a feeling of impunity: “Whatever I want, I’ll do. Nothing will happen to me….”

You won’t shoot yourself, you animal! You won’t do anything to yourself — you’ll live to a ripe old age and even set yourself up as an example to others.

The wind whips the trees. The bus licks people off the stops.

I don’t want to go to work.

September 20. Gray asphalt. Gray clouds. The motorcycle swallows up miles like noodles. A kid stops by the road, and I can tell from his position that he’s decided to be a motorcyclist on a red bike when he grows up. Be a motorcyclist, kid; just don’t become a researcher.

I keep accelerating. The speedometer says over ninety. The wind is lashing my face. Here comes a dump truck, hogging most of the road, of course. Those bastard truckdrivers, they don’t take bikers for people. Always trying to ride us off the road. Well, I’m not yielding to this one!

No, there was no crash. I’m alive. I’m writing down how I tore around glassy — eyed today. I have to write about something. The truck veered to the right at the last second. I watched in the rear view mirror as the driver pulled over and ran into the road, waving his fists at me.

Actually, if I had crashed, what difference would it make? There’s a spare Krivoshein in Moscow. I can’t describe my repulsion and disgust for everything right now. Including me.

How he shook, how he hugged my feet — the strong, handsome “not me.” And I could have foreseen it and spared him. I could have! But I thought: “It’ll work like this. What the hell! After all, he’s not me.”

And it was so interesting, good, beautiful. We dreamed and talked, worried about the good of mankind, swore a vow. What shame! And in the work, I overlooked the fact that I was creating a man. I thought about everything — exquisite forms, intellectual content — but that it might hurt or scare him never entered my mind. I just decided that there was no informational death in the experiment — and fine. But death was a violence that I performed on him over and over.

How did it happen? How?

The white posts along the highway reflect the motor’s hum: but — but — but — but how did it happen? But — but — but — but how? The speedometer reads 110, the gray stripes of earth and trees whiz by. At this speed I could escape from pursuers or save someone, getting there in time! But I have no one to run away from and no one to save. I did have someone to save, but I had to do some honest thinking there… and I didn’t.

I can master heights, elements, with my brain and brawn. It’s easy with the elements. They can be mastered. But how do you master yourself?

I just went over the diary — and I’m frightened by how low and self — serving my thoughts are! Here I am discussing how troubles befall people because they are unprincipled, that they think they can live off to the side, not get involved, and a few pages later I cleverly make sure I’m off to the side: don’t get mixed up with Harry Hilobok, let him get his damn doctoral dissertation…. Here I’m thinking about how to derive benefit from my discovery, and here I call myself to do cruel acts with reference to wars and murders in the world. Here I (or me and the double, it doesn’t matter) lower myself to the level of an ordinary engineer, who can’t handle such difficult work — a moral insurance in case it doesn’t work; and when it does work, I compare myself to the gods. And I wrote all this sincerely, without noticing any contradictions.

Without noticing? I didn’t want to notice them! It was so pleasant and convenient that way: preen, lie to myself with an open heart, adjust ideas and facts to fit my moral comfort. So it turns out I thought more about myself than about humanity? It turns out that this work, if evaluated not from a scientific but a moral position, was nothing more than showing off? Of course, where would I find the time to worry about my guinea pigs!

What kind of a man are you, Krivoshein?

September 22. I’m not working. I can’t work now. Today I rode down to Berdichev for some reason and by the way, I understood the hidden meaning of the mysterious phrase that was printed out one day. Twenty — six kopeks is what it costs to fuel up to get from Berdichev to Dneprovsk: five liters of gas, two hundred grams of oil. I’ve unearthed another discovery!

Where is Adam now? Where did he go?

And that creature that the machine tried to create after the first double: half — Lena, half — me. It, too, must have suffered the horrors of death when we ordered the computer to dissolve it? And my father. Oh damn! Why am I thinking about that?

My father… the last cossack in the Krivoshein line. According to family tradition, my forefathers come from the Zaporozhian cossacks. There was a brave cossack whose neck was damaged in battle — and there you get the Krivoshein line. When Empress Catherine broke them up, they moved to this side of the Volga. My grandfather Karp Vasilyevich beat up the priest and the head of the village when they decided to get rid of the village school and set up a church school. I haven’t the slightest idea what the difference was between them, but my grandfather died at hard labor.

Father took part in all the revolutions, and served under Chapayev in the Civil War.

He fought in the last war as an old man, and only the first two years. They were retreating in the Ukraine and he led his battalion out from an ambush in Kharkov. Then because of wounds and age, they transferred him to the rear, as a commander on the other side of the Urals. There, in the camp, a soldier and peasant, he taught me how to ride, how to take care of a horse and saddle it, how to plow, mow, shoot from a rifle and a pistol, dig the earth, and chop brambles with a machette. He also made me kill chickens and pigs by stabbing them under the right shoulder blade with a small flat knife, so that I wouldn’t fear blood. “It’ll come in handy in life, sonny!”

Shortly before his death he and I went down to his homeland in Mironovka, to see his cousin Egor Stepanovich Krivoshein. While we were sitting in his cottage drinking, Egor’s grandson rushed over:

“Cramps, they dug out a body from the clay in Sheep’s Gully where they’re digging the dam!”

“In Sheep’s Gully?” my father asked. The old men exchanged a look. “Let’s go see.”

The crowd of workmen and onlookers made way for the two old men. The gray, chalky bones were piled up in one spot. Father poked the skull with a stick, and it turned over, revealing a hole over the right temple.

“Mine!” father said looking at Egor Stepanovich triumphantly. “And you missed. Your hand shook, huh!”

“How do you know it’s yours?” the other demanded sticking his beard into the air.

“Have you forgotten? He was coming back to the village. I was right on the side of the road, you were on the left….” and father drew a picture in the clay to prove his point.

“Whose remains are these, old men?” a young foreman in a fancy shirt demanded.

“The captain,” father explained, squinting. “In the first revolution the Ural cossacks were quartered here, and this here was their captain. Don’t bother the police with it, sonny. It’s been over a long time.”

How marvelous it was to lie in wait in the steppe at night with father’s gun, waiting for the captain — both for the principle and the fact that the bastard ripped up men with his bayonet and raped girls! Or to fly on horseback, feeling the weight of your saber in your hand, taking measure: I’ll chop that one over there, with beard, from his epaulets all the way through!

The last time I fought was eighteen years ago, and it wasn’t a fight to the death, only to the school bell. I never galloped in the days of old. All my bravado comes on a bike facing down a truck.

And I’m not afraid, father, of blood or death. But your simple lessons never did come in handy. The revolution continues through different means, with discoveries and inventions — weapons more dangerous than sabers. And I’m afraid, father, of making mistakes.

Liar! Liar! You’re preening again, you low — life! You have an ineradicable streak of showing off. Oh, it’s so pretty: “I’m scared of making mistakes, father,” and all about the revolution. Don’t you dare!

You wanted to synthesize in people (yes, people, not artificial doubles!) the nobility of spirit that you lack, the beauty that you don’t have, the determination you’ll never have, and the selflessness you can’t even dream of.

You come from a good family. Your forefathers knew how to work and to leave good work behind them, and to beat the bastards with fist or gun. They didn’t let up. And what are you? Have you fought for justice? Oh, you never had an opportunity? Maybe you’ve cleverly managed to avoid them? What, don’t feel like remembering?

That’s the problem. I’m afraid of everything: life, people. I even love Lena in a cowardly way: I’m afraid to bring her close and I’m afraid to lose her. And God forbid, no children. Children complicate things.

And the fact that I’m hiding my discovery — isn’t that also a fear that I won’t be able to develop it properly? And I probably won’t. I’m a weakling. One of those smart weaklings who are better off not being smart. Because their brain is only given them so that they can appreciate their lowness and impotence.

Graduate student Krivoshein lit up a cigarette and paced the room nervously. It was painful reading the notes — it was about him, too. He sighed and returned to the desk.

Easy, Krivoshein, easy. You can talk yourself into something hysterical this way. You still have the responsibility for the work… and everything isn’t lost yet. You’re not such a son of a bitch that you should drop dead immediately.

I can even make you look good. I haven’t used the discovery for personal gain, and I won’t. I worked at peak capacity, and I didn’t cheat. Now I’m trying to figure things out. So I’m not worse than others. I made a mistake. And who doesn’t?

Yes, but in this work comparisons on a relative scale — who’s better, who’s worse — don’t apply. Others study crystals or develop machines; they know their work, and that’s enough. Their character flaws only harm them, their co — workers at the lab, and their relatives. But I’m different. In order to create Man, it’s not enough to know, to have a scientific handle on the thing — you have to be a real Man yourself, not better or worse than others, but in the absolute sense a knight without fear or flaw. I wouldn’t mind that at all, but I don’t know how to go about it. I don’t have the information.

Does that mean that I can’t handle this work?

October 8. The yellow and red autumn is in the institute grounds, and I can’t work. It’s full of dry leaves, the lightest rain makes a lot of noise on them, and then there’s a coffee aroma of rotten leaves. And I can’t work….

Maybe I shouldn’t, it’s not needed? A good generic stock, a quality education, a hygienic life — style…. Let smart people re — create themselves, have lots of children with good stock. They’ll be able to feed them, their salaries will stretch; after all, they’re smart people. And they’ll be able to bring them up. They’re smart people. No computers will be necessary.

Harry Hilobok called today. They’re organizing a permanent exhibit at the institute: “The Achievements of Soviet Systemology,” and naturally, he’s the organizer.

“Won’t you contribute something, Valentin Vasilyevich?”

“No.”

“Why are you like that? Now Ippolit Illarionovich Voltampernov’s department is giving three exhibits and other departments and labs are contributing. We should have at least one exhibit on your topic. Don’t you have anything yet?”

“No. How’s the biosensor system moving, Harry Haritonovich?”

“Eh, Valentin Vasilyevich, what’s one system compared to all of systemology, heh — heh! We’re working on it, but meanwhile you see, everyone’s demanding exhibit stands, mock — ups, tableaux, signs in three languages, and our heads are spinning. The lab and the workshops are full up, but if you should have anything for the show, we’ll manage. Things are going fast around here.”

I almost said that it was the system that I needed to come up with an exhibit for your stupid show but I controlled myself. (Let him make it and then we’ll see.) Always being sneaky, Krivoshein!

My exhibits were all over the world. One was in Moscow struggling with biology. The others were munching grass and cabbage in gardens. And another just ran off to who knows where.

Should I exhibit the computer — womb to shock the academic world? Create two — headed and six — footed rabbits as part of the demonstration, at the rate of two an hour? That would create a stir.

No, brother. This machine makes man. And there’s no way of getting around that.