The God Machine

by Martin Caidin

  "Oh, sure," Charlie Kane said quickly. "I asked Dr. Vollmer to stay after the staff had left, one evening last week, I mean, for a demonstration. I didn't want to have a crowd around— you know how Vollmer doesn't like to feel cluttered with people about him when he's working—so we had dinner first and then returned to the test section."

  So Vollmer also goes on the list. . . .

  "Anyone else?"

  "Umm, let's see. Of course." He snapped his fingers. "A few nights ago we had Professor Bockrath—you know Walter Bockrath, Steve?"

  I should. As Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Colorado he was a consultant to Project 79. I knew him, all right. He'd been present when Selig Albracht and I had our little explosion and he'd been decidedly cool to me ever since then.

  "Whose idea was it to bring Bockrath down?"

  Charlie beamed. He leaned forward with unconcealed pleasure and excitement. "Dr. Vollmer," he said. "The next day, the very next day after I demonstrated the system to Dr. Vollmer, he called Bockrath at the University and asked him to come down that night. He—Vollmer—told me I wouldn't have to be there, that he wanted to have some discussions alone with Bockrath and that they might last for quite a while. I spoke to Vollmer the next day, and he was pleased, really pleased, at the way things worked out."

  "I'm glad to hear that, Charlie. It's not easy to please Vollmer."

  "Boy don't I know it, though!" Charlie Kane laughed happily. "I've worked with Old Crotchety long enough to regard a pat on the back from him as manna from heaven."

  I shared his laugh, but I was thinking about something else. That makes Kane, Vollmer, Bockrath, so far. Who else?

  "Has Kim seen your setup at work yet?"

  He shook his head. "Uh-uh. No time, I suppose. She's been buried in some side projects, I guess.

  Sort of overworked since she took over the reports from your office."

  Thank God for small favors.

  "I was sort of hoping you'd be able to get into the shop pretty soon, Steve," he said with sudden seriousness. "Thursday night, I think . . . umm, yeah, that's it, all right. Thursday night I'm to set up an experiment—you know, a complete demonstration for Dr. Cartwright—"

  "Arthur Cartwright?"

  "Uh-huh. Dr. Vollmer asked me to arrange everything."

  Arthur Cartwright! He was the world's greatest living cyberneticist, the heir to Norbert Wiener.

  Why him? Outwardly I stayed calm. "Thursday night, you say?"

  "That's right. Think you can make it?"

  "I don't know," I said with obvious doubt, looking at my leg again. "I'll have to play that by ear."

  He rose to his feet. "Well, I hope you can swing it, Steve. It would be great to have you there."

  "Sure, sure it would, Charlie. Just great. I'll call you first chance I know how things will turn out."

  "Right. So long, Steve."

  "Don't take any wooden nickels, Charlie."

  The next morning I arranged to get Charles Kane out of my hair for the two days following. It was easy enough. I sent him out of town. To Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio, to be exact.

  The Bionics Branch of the Air Force Avionics Lab, working with scientists of Carson Laboratories, had developed an Optical Maze Runner that promised great things for computer memory systems. They combined a laser beam and a tiny storage crystal to stimulate biological nerve patterns that store data for learning, and contribute data for decision-making. Into a single potassium-bromide crystal, no larger than a matchbox and impregnated with hydrogen, they could store 40,000 bits of information. It worked by ...

  the devil with how it worked, just so long as it would keep Kane away for the two days.

  The moment he was en route I called Kim and gave her a long list of directions for a new test. She was accustomed to this, of course, and as the director of my own programs within Project 79 my requests were met without any stumbling blocks. I told her to set up the equipment as I had outlined and that the day after I'd be in to handle the final details personally.

  Kim managed everything in her customary efficient manner. When I arrived at Cubicle 17 the door was locked and a DO NOT ENTER sign glared from the panel. I went in, locked the door behind me, and closed off the observation window. In a project where close coordination was a byword of everyday activity, my own actions were nothing less than unusual. But scientists are a breed unto themselves, and as a program director . . . well, there's the old saw that rank has its privileges. I used mine.

  I checked over the equipment. Three motion-picture cameras in their concealed positions. Not just for my requests, of course, since it was a normal matter to obtain film records of different tests. But I wanted to be absolutely certain that this cubicle was rigged for a visual record of what went on here on Thursday night—that same evening. The cameras checked out fine, as did the tape recorders. Then I added a few refinements of my own.

  An engineer working directly under me, with orders to consider everything he did as part of a highly classified test (score one for the effectiveness of Tom Smythe; the man nodded gravely and pigeonholed within his own mind what he was doing), rigged the electrical connections. I didn't want power for the cameras and the tape recorders coming into the cubicle from the power lines that made up the cybernetics system. Instead, I had the engineer run some extra cables into the heavy-duty housekeeping system so that it would remain free entirely of the computer-controlled electrical input. Set up in this manner, it would be impossible for 79 to monitor the equipment I was preparing to record the

  "interrogation" with Dr. Arthur Cartwright. And that was just the way I wanted things to be.

  I wrapped up my preparations, assigned the room officially to Charles Kane for a test to be made later that night, authorized the presence of visitors, and went home. And drank myself into a pleasant mind-sodden stupor.

  Naturally, I had nightmares.

  26

  I sighed, and gave in to the inevitable. It was nicer to have Kim snuggled up close with me on the couch in the darkened room. But the light flickering from the screen wasn't made for the amorous touch, and Kim was sitting straight up on the edge of the couch, her eyes wide and staring, caught between acute attention to what flashed before her eyes and her startled exclamations to me.

  The film chittered through to the end of the reel, and as bright light splashed on the screen I killed the projector and turned on the apartment lights. Kim sank back in her seat and shook her head.

  "I—I saw it," she murmured. "I really saw it, didn't I, Steve?" she murmured, talking both to herself and to me.

  "Yeah," I said, still with a sour taste in my mouth at having looked at the film for the sixth time and knowing I was going to do a repeat in just a few moments. I pushed my way to the projector and started rewinding the film. "Mix me a double, will you, honey?" I muttered, poking at the projector.

  "Scotch?" I heard the tinkling of ice into glass.

  "Sure. Strictly for what ails."

  "I'll join you in that," she said. I thought I could detect more shaking of ice than usual. That film would shake up anyone.

  Kim's hand and the drink appeared at my side, and she sat close to me as I threaded the film. She looked at me. "Again?"

  "Uh-huh. Only this time we do it with sound." I glanced at her. "How's your head?"

  She rubbed her forehead with her fingers. "It hurts. Is it that light, I mean, the one in the film?"

  "That's it, all right," I said. "Old skull-bender in its original form. Feels like something's reached right inside your head, and twisted, doesn't it?" I made a feeble attempt at a grin.

  "I don't see what's so funny about it, Steve," she said with a touch of anger. She took refuge in the Scotch.

  "Oh, ain't funny," I remarked. "It's just that it hurts me less when someone else feels the same way."

  "What hurts good for Stevey hurts good for everybody, huh?"

  My laugh sounded like a croak. "Shaddup and hand me my dri
nk, woman," I growled. I didn't stop until I had a long, deep pull at the Scotch.

  "My, my," she said quietly, "we're doing a wonderful job at staying away from the obvious, aren't we?"

  I nodded, the subject of the film pushing aside the warm feeling from the Scotch as it trickled down inside me. "But not for long," I sighed. "It's not the sort of thing that stands for being ignored." I gestured to the projector and the tape recorder. "You ready?"

  She shook her head. "No, I am not ready," she said firmly, "and I don't think I will ever be ready. I don't like headaches in double doses." She stirred her ice with a finger. "But I suppose you're going to do it anyway, aren't you?"

  "Sure I am. I always like to apply the screws at every opportunity, and—"

  She was on her feet and walking across the room before I could finish. "Well, I'm not going through that again without fortification," she said in a no-nonsense voice. "More of the same for you?"

  My glass was already extended. "Need you ask?"

  She went about the business of pouring the Scotch and adding ice cubes. "When were these taken, Steve?" she asked, gesturing to the projector.

  "Two days ago," I said. "I've already looked at this thing six times."

  "Oh, my." There was real sympathy in her voice. "You must have a real bump inside your skull."

  "That I do, that I do, and at the first opportunity you have after we do the bit once more, I would like to have your cool and silken fingers caressing, most gently, if you please, the furrowed surface of a very feverish brow. Mine, to be specific."

  "I'll be there," she promised. "Who else has seen the film, Steve?"

  "Just us two. I don't want anyone else to have a look at it yet. And the only reason you're seeing it, my sweet, is that I am more than reasonably certain that sometime in the past week or so you haven't been seated in that same chair where we saw Cartwright. Furthermore—"

  "You can stop right there, Steve Rand. What the devil do you mean, you're reasonably certain I haven't been in that chair? Of course I haven't, and you know it!"

  "You can sprinkle some of that ice water on your aroused female ire, Kim," I said with a touch of growing weariness. I knew I'd be saying these same words many times again in the future. "I don't know you haven't been in that chair, and you don't know you haven't been in that chair because if you had been, my love, you wouldn't have the faintest recollection of your little session with 79. As I said, I am more than reasonably certain that you haven't. And since"—I waved my hand for her to join me on the couch—"I will go out of my ever-loving mind if I don't have someone with whom to talk over this insanity, and because my feelings for you are a mixture of love and complete trust, et cetera, et cetera, here we are together."

  She patted my leg as she eased herself to the couch. She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "My, my, that's quite a statement of unrequited love and all that jazz, isn't it?"

  We laughed together. I held up my glass and peered owlishly at the remaining Scotch. "Here's how," I groaned. "Last drink for the condemned man. We are about to have at it again." I turned to the projector. "Kill the lights, will you?"

  Running the film through for the second time had even greater impact for Kim. Not only did the voice of 79 come through with devastating effect, but she had learned to keep her eyes away from that infernal light controlled by the computer. In silence, listening to the voice of 79 and the monotone answers, first of Charlie Kane and then of Dr. Arthur Cartwright, we watched and listened as Kane responded immediately to the light (I made a note to that effect; at first sight of the glowing pattern Kane was instantly under control), and then as Dr. Cartwright went under.

  When the film ended, Kim was deep in thought. She turned to me suddenly. "Steve, run the tape through. Not with the film, just the tape. I want to hear the questions without that damnable light on the screen."

  We listened, and the room seemed to become colder with just the sound of 79 as it rolled question after question at Dr. Cartwright. The questions were unnerving, for the computer was tracking down a quarry. In whose hands, and in what fashion, was there vested the social control of the United States?

  This was the key sought by 79. Or, rather, the handful of keys that, when turned, opened the doors to the real power function of the country. It's inevitable, of course. In any power structure such as has been created in a technological society walking the brink of thermonuclear war with another technological society, the role of the individual—the man in the street, Mr. Average Joe—fades away. Power is by necessity vested in the hands of the few who control industry, military organization, and the press. Who were these people? What positions did they hold?

  What unnerved me even more than I had been until this moment was the realization that the United States Government for years had run studies specifically on the subject now examined with electronic efficiency by 79. Study after study, all seeking to determine the real nature of the power structure of this country, of other nations, and of the world itself. Back in 1965, a political uproar had sounded through several continents when word leaked out about the Army's Project Camelot. An old Brooklyn College professor had been found, by the Army, to have a natural sense of identifying the keys to power structure, and he was promptly installed within his own Special Operations Research Office in the Pentagon. The Army gave him six million dollars for expenses, some computers for assistance, and the professor began to track down the national power structures of South American governments. Officially, the Pentagon bleated, Camelot was intended "to construct a conceptual scheme or analytical model which will identify parameters of social systems to be studied in detail for an understanding of social conflict." Very neat.

  What the Army never intended to say was that they were setting up a scoreboard by which they could measure, and predict—and therefore control— the factors and processes that lead to discontent, to revolution or, if possible, to quiet takeover by usurpation of key elements of any government.

  This same sort of investigation had been run not only on foreign governments. It had been focused inwardly in studies of internal power structures of the United States. What better fashion for the political party then in power to give itself the greatest possible opportunity for remaining there than to make a computerized study of the key fulcrums of national power? If you know where to push and where to prod and where to apply pressure, then with a minimum of selective effort you can gain tremendous results.

  If you control the few men who control, essentially, the pattern of the stock market, you can establish a definite trend or pattern for the stock market—which permits you to take advantage of the economic and industrial upheavals that result. The key elements of the nation—industry, labor, foreign policy, cabinet members—weren't that difficult to identify. You don't need the ear of the President directly, but you do need those people who are his most trusted advisers. To whom does the President turn for his off-the-record conversations on labor unions? To whom does he listen the most closely about the political climate? To what extent does he trust one person against all others for his foreign intelligence? Get to those people, get to the leaders of the Congress who can sway the majority of their colleagues, reach the top editors and the editorialists, reach the market survey analysts with a proved record of success, get to the religious leaders who not only make noise but who also make the most effective noise ... do this, in terms of having those essential, those critical members of your society under your control, and you control the society.

  These were the people that 79 wanted brought to Cubicle 17. And for so rare an opportunity to be able to query the most advanced cybernetics brain in history, just about all of them would make their appearance.

  "So," I said under the influence of another double Scotch, "that's how our monster intends to play the game. All it needs is control of the right people in the right places. Poke the right nerve of the frog, and the whole frog jumps. Pull the right people in the right places, and the whole damned
country jumps.

  Without knowing a thing about it, of course," I added with a deepening sense of gloom.

  "And it will work," I added with desperation in my voice. "That's what grabs you by the short hairs. It'll work. 79 has run through every possible combination of factors. It's equated the social factors in terms of data bits. Working with its speed, it's run through thousands, maybe even millions, of possibilities, and it's come up with the right answers. I'd bet a dollar to a soggy doughnut that if we checked off that list of names Cartwright spouted so conveniently we wouldn't agree with the list. That's because we can't run umpteen thousand possible situations through the needle eye of probability like 79.

  In just a few minutes, I mean. So it's not guessing. It can anticipate— extrapolate mathematically—what's going to happen."

  "But what if—"

  I didn't even let Kim finish her question. "And you can forget the built-in safety factor of what can't be anticipated, my sweet," I said acidly, anticipating her words. "Remember that our electronic friend can run happily through switching theory and feedback and the best possible answer of many to any given situation. It knows when to stop. More important, 79 can change a situation if it controls the right people in the right places. Fill my damned glass, will you, please?"

  Kim obliged with the sound of Scotch pouring over the cubes.

  She handed me the drink and then stood behind the couch, leaning forward to rub the back of my neck with her cool, gentle fingers. I groaned with pleasure. "Jesus, Kim, I'll give you just three days to quit that."

  She ignored the remark. For several minutes we left each other to our own thoughts. Or rather she busied herself with thinking, and I gave in to the wonderful touch of her fingers. Finally she came out of her think-session.

  "Don't you think you should tell Smythe right away?" She asked.

  "Uh-uh. That was my first reaction, hon. But the more I thought about it, the more dangerous it became."