The God Machine

by Martin Caidin

  Is—"

  "Oh, no, sirr! Misunderstand. Honorabre father in Nipponese Navy, sirr. Make attack against American freet at—"

  The bell drowned out his next words. Instantly Mike gathered up his books, and we both beat a hasty retreat through the rear door of the classroom.

  "Whew!" Mike laughed, wiping his brow. "Saved by the bell!"

  I was still roaring. "Did you see his face? Good God, I thought the old bastard would have a fit right in front of the room. Jesus, if I were you, Mike, I think I'd take a little vacation for the next couple of days. Anywhere away from Kaiser Willie."

  "Aw, he's not so bad," Mike countered.

  I looked at him in surprise. "You're defending Weisskopf?"

  "Not really, I suppose," Mike countered with a wave of the hand. "But you can't knock him as a teacher. He's about the best they got here at MIT."

  "Well, maybe," I offered, "but he sure demands his pound of flesh." I looked at Mike, and laughed.

  "And sometimes he gets it taken from him."

  Mike grinned back at me.

  "You know something, Mike? I never knew your old man was killed at Pearl Harbor. I didn't even know he was in the Japanese Navy. I thought you were Nisei a couple of generations back."

  "Oh, that." Mike grinned again. "Course he wasn't in the Japanese Navy. The old man's a tourist guide in Honolulu. Biggest damn thief in the business; worth a fortune. He's so mad at me for going straight, as he puts it, that he almost disowned me when I left the islands to come here to MIT."

  God bless Mike Nagumo. Shortly after we met, we knew we were on the way to a fast and deep friendship. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology could be a forbidding place, and Mike and I naturally gravitated toward each other, sharing an apartment near MIT. The giant Nisei was determined to pursue a career in nuclear physics. If the promise he showed as a brilliant student was to be sustained, he faced a dazzling career ahead of him.

  There were times when I leaned heavily on the irrepressible humor and friendship of Mike Nagumo. For if nothing else, MIT proved to be my intellectual comeuppance.

  It was one thing to move securely within the sheltered confines of my high-school years and something entirely different to plunge through the cruelly demanding environment of this new scholastic world. At the time I never realized just how deliberately demanding my school years were made to be. I was unaware that on certain MIT files my name carried after it the significant number HS-A193 and that my instructors (influenced by a lavish federal endowment) always made certain that I should chase my own shadow—at the speed they set.

  Everything I did pointed eventually to a kinship with cybernetics—the digital computer systems infusing every aspect of modern technology. In principle the advanced digital computer—the cybernetics system—made it possible to automate any human mental activity if it could be described in the form of a set of rules that precisely and simply defined the process of performing a given form of mental task.

  Let me take that just a bit further. One of the most striking properties of digital computers is their universality, which is based, first, on the possibility of reducing complex mathematical problems to a set sequence of very simple arithmetical operations and, second, on the possibility of using mathematical expressions to describe various processes of the mental activity of man. Therein lay the key to my training and the path along which I would move in future years—to construct an electronic representation of the mental activity of man.

  My courses were doubled up on me, and while at times the pressure led to fierce headaches, within two years I had my BA. Another year and my Master's was behind me. I kept at my studies without letup, working toward my PhD, accepting that somewhere in the background was the watchful gaze of Tom Smythe and the United States Government.

  Somewhere along the way, observed covertly for the signs by my instructors, I began to metamorphosize from the neophyte into a creature of new instincts in the world of cybernetics. To some extent, I would learn later, I had already attained a kinship with the process along which advanced cybernetics systems must function.

  Tom Smythe, in a Panel meeting of the Pied Piper team, put it another way. "He's starting to think, well, to think like a computer," Smythe explained to his group. "He doesn't know it yet, and he won't be told the fact until we think he's ready, or he stumbles upon the truth by himself. But one thing is certain—

  we're on the right road. Steve Rand is going to become a master psychologist of cybernetics. . . ."

  I wrote my thesis in bio-cybernetics. In effect, I proposed the adaptation of biological systems for direct two-way communications with advanced digital computers.

  Despite the irrefutable advances of the electronic systems, where truly complex systems were concerned man remained the most important and the most reliable link within these systems. Certain truths wouldn't go away just because we ignored them. In the face of the unexpected, the machine remained helpless.

  It was fast becoming a race of man attempting to duplicate his intellectual, reasoning self.

  Duplicating man, with his capacity for precise analysis and the synthesis of phenomena, and with the methods of processing information that are characteristics of his nervous system, became the goal, a sort of nirvana, which I anticipated as essential in the development of advanced cybernetics systems.

  I saw the true cybernetics system only as that which could emulate the superb construction of the human brain and certain elements of its nervous system. We had to adapt from the lessons of nature.

  Living organisms have central nervous systems consisting of billions of neurons—organic nerve cells. The capacity for work of the living system is retained in almost full measure despite the failure of many millions of neurons.

  The brain of one man contains more than ten billion neurons. This amazing, beautiful, truly extraordinary mechanism with all its sensory endings functions to perfection with an energy requirement of only several tens of watts. Equally extraordinary is the fact that each neuron can be in an excited or in an inhibited state. Nature, in effect, built a superb electrical switch. The neuron of the brain is an element with two stable states—on or off. In essence, really, it's an organic two-position relay.

  Compared to this miracle of design, even the most advanced cybernetics system was a clumsy thing of mud and sticks. To create an electronic device comparable in the number of elements to the human brain and requiring normal operating power, and packing everything together almost to the consistency of a solid cube or sphere, you'd end up with a physical calamity on your hands. It would equal a huge building in cubic space, and would demand about a million kilowatts for its operation; at this point you would still have to broach the staggering problems of cooling and ventilation, repair, change, modification, instruction, reporting, sensory terminals—ad infinitum.

  I knew in what direction my future would lie—to hurdle these barriers. I was absolutely convinced that the key to the true cybernetics system lay in bionics and the adaptability of bionics to cybernetics. In essence? Build the cybernetics system from the same materials with which nature, with time immeasurable for its experiments, created the human brain. I knew that before many years passed it would be possible to overcome the problems of physical bulk through the use of controlled force fields. We would be able to imprint memory through magnetic systems. We would be able to work in a new microcosmic world where subnuclear sizes would become obedient servants to the demands of artificial thought processes.

  And then—then it would be possible to create the true electronic brain. A brain that would utilize logic circuits with feedback and switching theory. Put that into one word and it comes out "flexibility."

  A brain created by man that would be able to think as did the man that shaped it and gave it life.

  5

  tom smythe dabbed his lips with his napkin, an act of delicacy almost outrageous for his great bulk.

  He pushed his seat back from the table, and sighed with p
leasure. I waited. Inevitably the pipe appeared.

  Tom searched his pockets for matches, and a cloud of blue smoke swirled thickly about us. As if on signal, our waiter appeared with busboys to clear the table. Steaming coffee was poured.

  "Anything else, sir? An after-dinner drink, perhaps?"

  Tom nodded. We shared a mutual taste. "King Alphonse," I said, holding up two fingers.

  "Very good, sir." The waiter disappeared. Tom didn't pick up the conversation. For the moment he remained content to enjoy his pipe. I dragged on a cigarette, watching a cortege of young lovelies moving past our table. The waiter reappeared with our drinks and again vanished.

  Smythe's first words came from out in left field.

  "Tell me about Tam."

  "Who?" The question caught me unprepared.

  "Tamara Severny."

  Tamara Severny . . .

  I didn't know how to answer Tom. What was I supposed to say? I had been dating Tam for nearly a year. She was the most wonderful girl I'd ever known, and—

  I caught Tom's gaze. "What do you want me to tell you?"

  "You've been going with her for a while, haven't you?"

  Anger flushed my face. "Quit playing cat-and-mouse with me," I snapped. "I'm sure you know I've been dating her. So why the setup"—I waved my hand to take in the restaurant—"for what you've already got down in your little black book!"

  Smythe chuckled. "Temper, temper," he chided. "We don't know everything. Wouldn't you rather have me ask you right out?"

  "Ask me what! Are you so interested in my social life?"

  His great head shook slowly. "No," he said after a pause. "I would like to know what Miss Severny finds, um, what she finds of interest in her conversations with you, Steve." His eyes leveled with mine, unblinking. "Come now, Steve. It's obvious why we have this interest."

  I still wasn't buying it. Tamara Severny was an exchange student from the Soviet Union, but . . .

  well, for Christ's sake, this cloak-and-dagger nonsense was just too much! To me Tam was a beautiful girl and— Damn! What was Smythe getting at, anyway?

  He seemed almost to anticipate my thoughts. "You know her home?"

  I nodded. "Leningrad."

  "Were you aware that she is a member of the Leningrad Mathematics Society?"

  I whistled. "No. I didn't know that." I looked up at Smythe. "I know she's good, but that good?"

  "That good. Maybe even better."

  "But why all this, Tom?" I felt the agitation rising in me and I didn't like it. "It sounds as if you suspect Tam of being a secret agent, or something."

  "Nothing of the sort," he said to dispel my thoughts on the matter. "But she is a young lady of unusual intelligence; she is interested in areas that are, ah, shall we say, sensitive? And," he threw in the clincher, "within three months she is returning to Leningrad."

  His last words rang in my ear. "Tam? She's going home, in —in the next three months?" The news was a shock. "I didn't know that."

  Tom didn't answer for several moments. "I know," he said simply.

  A sudden sinking feeling took the props out from beneath me.

  If she was returning that soon to Russia, why hadn't she told me?

  "Are you sure about her going home?" I shot abruptly at Smythe.

  He nodded.

  "But how—I mean, she's never said anything to me! How can you be so sure?"

  "It's my job to be sure, Steve."

  I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another, and stared unhappily at the table.

  "I didn't know you were that serious about the girl." Tom's voice came from a long way off.

  "I—hell, I don't know," I muttered. "I don't suppose I thought that much about it, really. I mean, where it would all end up. That sort of thing."

  "Obviously," he said, his tone a flicker of annoyance.

  I kicked back my chair, and stood up. "Let's get out of here," I said abruptly. "Suddenly the damn walls are closing in on me."

  "There's a new religion in the Soviet Union. It has its idol. Elektronno-vychislitel'naya-mashina."

  I looked with surprise at Tom. "That's Russian," I said.

  "Uh-huh. It means 'electronic calculating machine,'" he explained. "But you'll be hearing a lot more about kibernetika—"

  "Cybernetics?"

  "That's right. It covers the same ground," Tom said. "Just about everything that involves all possible methods of control and communication common to living organisms and machines." Smythe had adopted an air of gravity uncommon to the rare hours we had spent together in recent months. I wasn't yet accustomed to it.

  "How much do you know about cybernetics in the Soviet Union?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know, Tom. I read the reports, of course. There's an exchange bulletin, from the Russians, I mean, that we get here at MIT." I shrugged again. "That sort of thing. Why?"

  "Ever discuss the subject with your Tamara?"

  "Sure I have." I grinned. "We've been known to have some pretty wild arguments on the subject.

  We get together in groups —Mike Nagumo is usually with us—and sometimes we have at it. Tam isn't exactly a shrinking violet."

  He smiled. "No, of course not." Immediately he was back to the subject. "Did you ever read Krayzmer?"

  I thought for a moment. Leonid Pavlovich Krayzmer . . . yes, I'd read him. "Who hasn't?" I shot back at Smythe. "I mean, anyone in this business, they've got to have read him. That thing he did on bionics—his original paper in 1962, well, it's still considered the greatest thinking on bionics applications to cybernetics ever written."

  Smythe nodded. "It is," he said simply. Then, again suddenly, "What about Nemchinov?"

  I couldn't help smiling at the name. "Vasili Nemchinov? The academician?"

  "That's right," Tom said. "But why the smile?"

  "According to Tam he's a living legend in Russia," I explained. "From what I understand he's in his seventies, but still absolutely clear in his thinking. And quite the revolutionary in cybernetics. Sort of setting up the guidelines for the new generation to follow. I think Tam said something about studying under him for a while."

  "Go on," Smythe urged.

  "How strongly does she equate cybernetics with Communism?"

  I looked at him in surprise. "She quotes Nemchinov pretty strongly on that," I said. "Her argument—I suppose she was carrying the Nemchinov philosophy—is that only the Communist system gives sufficient room to apply the combination of mathematics and cybernetics to the national economy.

  Pretty dry phraseology, but not the way it sounds when Tamara is talking." I grinned self-consciously.

  "Okay, okay, so I've got a thing about the girl."

  He waved me on to continue.

  "Well, according to Nemchinov," I said, "public ownership—the Communist system—is essential to setting up a single automatic electronic network. I mean, a net that includes cybernetic systems for industry, commerce, agriculture—the works."

  "And capitalism?"

  "Nemchinov—according to Tamara—has it thumbs down on private enterprise."

  "Why?"

  I shrugged. "Something about there being an inherent barrier in private enterprise to creating the true cybernetics system on a national scale. The framework of companies, corporations, syndicates—all these spell out unacceptable interference from conflicting interests. The way Nemchinov puts it, you need almost the equivalent of an ant society to create a really meaningful cybernetics system."

  "Do you think his point is valid?"

  I thought that one over for several moments. "Not really, I suppose. I haven't made any effort," I added, "to weigh the pros and cons of one system against the other, Tom. In the cybernetics sense, I mean."

  I lit a cigarette and tried to think back to my long debates with Tamara, Mike Nagumo, and our friends. At the drop of a hat we'd get into spirited arguments about cybernetics and its systems. Tam was unshakable in her belief that only Communism could properly nourish the growth of cybernetics as an in
tegral element of society.

  A thought came to me. "There was something else," I said, "but the name escaped me. Antonov, Oleg Antonov. He's the clarion voice of Soviet doctrine. Tamara referred to him quite often. I think it was Antonov—I'm trying to remember all this from months back, you understand?" Smythe nodded, and I went on. "Well, Antonov is the one who wants to keep Communism as the holiest of holies, in cybernetics or anything else. He claims that despite the undisputed position of Norbert Wiener as the father of cybernetics, the basic concept goes back further. In fact Antonov claims that originally it was Marx who postulated the idea that a science reaches maturity only when it begins to use mathematics. He carries this further into cybernetics, into a national computer system that uses mathematics for the immediate benefit or guidance of society."

  Tom Smythe regarded me carefully from behind his screen of pipe smoke. Finally, deep in his own thoughts, he nodded again. The pipe stabbed at me.

  "Steve, I want you to come with me to Washington," he said. "For a few days."

  It was my turn to be surprised. I didn't need to ask the obvious questions; Tom would tell me in his own good time. He did.

  Indoctrination. A cybernetics indoctrination. Not of our systems. Of theirs.

  The Soviet system. That included a young, beautiful, and brilliant girl with whom I was in love? Or was I? Was it just circumstances, the manner in which we'd been thrown together, all the things we did so well together, the spark that always shone so brightly when we were with each other? It didn't matter, I suppose. Not in the long run.

  I had competition. Her career. Cybernetics in the Russian future promised Tamara a dazzling world. She wasn't about to let anything or anyone get in her way. Steve Rand? Well, Tamara was on vacation for a year, so to speak. As an exchange student she could both work and enjoy herself. She did. With me. It was wonderful, marvelous—all the things of which fierce young love is made.

  And in three months she was going home. Period.

  Tom Smythe's grueling indoctrination in the massive Soviet program to create a computer-based society was like a journey through the Looking Glass. You wake up early one morning and discover that an electronic monster has been stirring into life right at your side—with a frightening lack of awareness on your own part.