by James Gunn
“But I was just as worried about the others,” McCoy said. “I wasn’t sure that, having tasted pure happiness, I could ever come back to a world filled with duty and pain, and I didn’t know whether either of them could come back to us from an experience like that.”
“You might have trusted me to do what was right,” Uhura said.
“I trusted you more than I trusted myself,” McCoy said. His expression changed. “But that damned Vulcan. It’s clear to me what happened.”
“What?” Kirk asked.
[218] “That ‘It is only logical’ son-of-a-Vulcan let them give him a payday!”
Kirk looked at McCoy and then at Uhura. Uhura nodded. “It makes sense,” Kirk said. “But if he did, I’m sure he had a good reason. And of us all he was the one best equipped to handle payday.”
“Except you, Jim,” McCoy said. Kirk was about to say something when McCoy continued, “Nothing’s going to humanize Spock. Anyway, the pain kept building up. In addition to everything else, the pain made sleep difficult. But suddenly in the middle of the night, the pain stopped. I’ve never slept so soundly in my life.”
“That must have been the time I got my payday,” Kirk said softly.
“You, Jim?” McCoy said.
“There were extenuating circumstances,” Kirk said.
“In addition to the pain in his arm, he was sick,” Marouk said. “And I told him that it would help you and Uhura and Spock.”
“You did it for us,” Uhura said.
“Don’t give me too much credit,” Kirk said. “I had other motives.”
“Are you all right, Jim?” McCoy asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Kirk said. “But don’t let me too close to a payday couch.”
McCoy smiled.
“You think I’m joking,” Kirk said. “But I’m serious. You were right to be concerned about the ability of humans to experience pure happiness. And I can tell you now that if what is available on Timshel gets loose, it may be the end of not only you and me, but of humanity itself.”
“It’s that bad?” McCoy asked.
“It’s that good.”
Kirk saw McCoy and Uhura exchange glances and [219] felt a wave of irritation that they considered him an object of sympathy.
“Well,” McCoy said, “let’s get back to the Enterprise, and I’ll give you a checkup.”
“Yes,” Uhura said, “and we can get ready to take out the Joy Machine. We should be able to isolate E-M Waves from its mental processing, since its thought patterns occur without life signs. And if we can’t attack it directly, an electromagnetic pulse would knock out all the communications on the planet, and maybe all the computer memory as well. It might take a while to restore, but—”
“There’s one big problem,” Kirk said. “We can’t get beamed aboard.”
“Why not?” Uhura asked.
“Even if we had a way of communicating,” Kirk said, “the computer has refused to let my messages get through to Scotty.”
“Refused?” McCoy said.
“I think it’s been taken over by the Joy Machine,” Kirk said. “And if that’s the case, it may also be telling Scotty that it cannot locate us on Timshel.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Uhura asked.
“We’re on our own,” Kirk said.
McCoy and Uhura looked at each other again and then at Kirk. This time they had dismay in their eyes. It was only a little easier for Kirk to accept than their sympathy.
McCoy took a deep breath. “Every organism has a weakness,” he said. “All we have to do is to identify the weakness in the Joy Machine and then attack that.” He turned to Marouk. “You know this thing better than any of us. What is its Achilles heel?”
“Well,” Marouk said, “it is a machine, and that implies that it is not as mobile as an animal.”
“That’s true,” McCoy said.
“But it also has replicated itself so extensively that it may be omnipresent in the circuitry,” Marouk said, [220] “and thus it may be more difficult to destroy than an animal.” McCoy and Uhura frowned at Marouk’s calm rationality. “It operates from a program, so that it is more inflexible in its responses than a human,” Marouk continued.
“Yes,” Uhura said.
“But,” Marouk went on, “it has modified its original program so extensively that it may be impossible to predict its responses, and it is capable of far more simultaneous operations and far speedier calculations than any person or any group.”
McCoy took a step toward Marouk as if he were going to attack him. But he stopped short and said, I’m beginning to think you don’t want the Joy Machine to be stopped.”
“I just want to be realistic about the possibilities,” Marouk said. “You may get only one chance.”
“What Marouk has said has made me realize one important aspect of this situation,” Kirk said.
“Yes?” McCoy said.
“Computers are susceptible to viruses,” Kirk said. “People are, too: prejudices, hatreds, fads, crazes, a susceptibility to messiahs. De Kreef created a people virus even more powerful than any of those. Happiness. Total, complete. It contaminated an entire world and threatens to contaminate the whole galaxy.”
“Computers are even more susceptible to viruses,” Uhura said. “They’re easier to program than people and easier to contaminate.”
“And we’ve got to find a virus that will be as irresistible to the Joy Machine as De Kreef’s was to humans,” Kirk said.
“Joy to the Machine?” McCoy said.
“I don’t know yet,” Kirk said. “But one of my abductors programmed a computer virus into a strain of influenza, and then she injected it into me. Maybe I passed that virus on to the Joy Machine. Things have changed outside. Maybe the Joy Machine already has been taken out.”
[221] “So?” McCoy asked.
“I think the first thing we should do is check it out,” Kirk said. He started for the door.
Kirk led the way through the vast hall toward the inconspicuous door beside the front entrance. Before he went up the steps he turned to look at the vast murals out of Timshel history. Only a few weeks ago he had stood here with Tandy and Noelle, and the murals had said, “Discover what evil has destroyed the bright promise we once celebrated.” Now they said, “Deliver us from the blight of easy joy.”
He swung back. The small group mounted the stairs, one at a time, until they reached the fifth floor.
“I don’t think we ought to be doing this, Jim,” Marouk said.
The door to the attic stairs in the middle of the central block of offices opened in front of Kirk. “We have to find out where we stand,” he said. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to confront the Joy Machine.”
He preceded the others into the dusty attic room and stopped. Marouk stopped behind him, and Uhura and McCoy almost bumped into Marouk before they, too, stood still.
“What’s going on, Jim?” McCoy asked, trying to peer past Marouk and Kirk to see what the attic room contained.
“Nothing,” Kirk said, stepping forward to afford the others a better view.
The Joy Machine stood gray and silent in the middle of the room. No lights flickered under its cooling vents. No fans stirred the dusty air. Nothing suggested that this had once been the throne room for the tyranny of joy.
“By golly,” McCoy said. “The virus must have worked.”
Kirk shook his head. “I can’t believe it was that easy,” he said.
“I agree,” Marouk said.
[222] “Sometimes things happen that way,” Uhura said. “We fight so hard and so long that when success comes we are unable to accept it. We push so hard that we fall down when the resistance disappears.”
“But why should the Machine be turned off?” Kirk asked.
“Exactly,” Marouk said. “Even if the virus worked, why should the Joy Machine shut itself down?”
“Maybe it isn’t shut down,” McCoy said. “Maybe it’s a trick. Or an ill
usion.”
“A computer has to dissipate heat. When I was here before, I could feel it,” Kirk said, “and the fans stirring the air.”
“That could have been an illusion, too,” McCoy insisted.
“As could all of life,” Marouk said. “But solipsism isn’t the answer. We have to believe in a basic reality that all can share, or we are all locked inside our own sensibilities and have nothing to talk about but how we feel.”
“Illusions can deceive the eye,” Kirk said, “but they seldom extend to the other senses.”
They all stared at the silent gray machinery as if it had the power to utter prophecies.
“What do you think it means, Jim?” McCoy asked.
“I think the Joy Machine has had to change plans,” Kirk said. “For whatever reason it has removed its center to another locus. Perhaps to protect itself from potential destruction, perhaps to serve another end that we will learn in time. While it was relocating, its supervision over Timshel and its citizens has lapsed here and there.”
“Then now may be the time to strike,” McCoy said.
“If we had something to strike with, or knew where to strike,” Kirk said.
Outside the building came the dull sound of distant explosives. Even through the thick stone walls of the World Government building, shouts and screams and sounds of combat came from the street outside.
[223] “Someone else thinks so, too,” Kirk said. “If Spock were only here, we might be able to take advantage of the confusion to reach the Joy Machine. If we knew where it was.”
“Here I am, Captain,” a voice said behind them.
They all turned. “Spock!” McCoy said.
Spock stood unruffled and imperturbable at the top of the stairs.
[subspace carrier wave transmission]
>agreed<
>agreed
but how interrogation<
Chapter Sixteen
Joy to the World
KIRK LOOKED AT SPOCK for a moment with an expression of surprise mixed with joy. “Spock!” he said, and moved forward to put his hands on both shoulders of his first officer. “You’re safe and sound.”
“In a manner of speaking, Captain,” Spock said. “I see that you, too, survived your abduction.”
“Welcome back,” Uhura said.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” McCoy growled.
“And I, all of you,” Spock said, “including Kemal, who, I believe, has done the best he could under difficult circumstances.”
Marouk bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“How did you get free?” McCoy asked.
“Stallone Wolff arranged a payday with the Joy Machine,” Spock said.
“Uhura and I could have been freed on those terms,” McCoy said. “But we refused.”
“That is true,” Spock said, “but my mental processes are more resistant to the pleasure principle, so that I could afford to take the risk in order to gain freedom of movement.”
[226] “Well,” McCoy asked, “what was it like?”
“Surprising,” Spock said. “And momentarily overwhelming.”
“Yes,” Kirk said.
“Everything I had ever wanted was mine,” Spock said. “Although I did not know until then that I was in need of what I was given.”
“What kind of things?” Uhura asked.
“A universe that operated on pure logic,” Spock said, “populated with creatures who behaved rationally. It did not resemble a dream. There were no pictures or fantastic elements. It was more the ‘feeling’ of the universe, such as the feeling we have every waking moment of our lives. Of everything we take for granted. The feeling of reality.”
“That doesn’t sound so great to me,” McCoy said.
“No doubt the stimulus delivered by the Joy Machine releases images and emotions from the brain that the individual mind has stored away in moments of unqualified happiness,” Spock said. “Even Vulcans have such moments. My response was exquisite joy.”
“Joy?” McCoy echoed, as if he could not identify that emotion with Spock.
“No aftereffects?” Uhura asked.
“I must admit,” Spock said, “that I feel a longing for that clean, clear world of pure geometry. One of your early-twentieth-century poets said it in a line of poetry: ‘Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare.’ ‘Light anatomized,’ she called it. A woman named Millay.”
“Geometry,” McCoy said. “I might have known.”
“It is a feeling that will remain with me always,” Spock said. “But it is a feeling that, now I have experienced it, I can recall whenever I wish. That is the way the universe exists, if we can only perceive it. The universe is geometry. I do not need the Joy Machine to remind me of that. But I can’t speak for others.”
“You certainly can’t speak for me,” Kirk said.
[227] “You, too, Captain?” Spock said.
“It seemed the right thing to do at the moment,” Kirk said.
“I would have advised against it,” Spock said.
“And so would any of us,” McCoy said. “Not because you’re weaker, Jim, but because you’re human like the rest of us.”
“I can remember the feeling of intense joy,” Kirk said, “but I can’t re-create it. It was like all the great moments of my life combined into one, like every pleasurable feeling experienced at the same instant. In our brains lurk pitfalls we never suspected.”
“Maybe there’s an antidote,” McCoy said, looking at Kirk with an expression of concern.
“What kind of antidote is possible for the basic feeling of joy?” Marouk asked.
“Maybe you’ve forgotten, but Earth had a serious drug problem in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” McCoy said. “They solved it by developing a virus that short-circuited the effects of cocaine and heroin, blocking its ability to attach itself to the receptor sites in the brain.”
“But that took fifty years,” Spock said, “and it left a generation with its ability to feel pleasure seriously impaired.”
“Like a Vulcan,” McCoy said.
“Not at all,” Spock replied. “Vulcans feel pleasure from the contemplation of the logical process at work. And pain from perceiving its subversion. But Vulcans are able to control the effects of pleasure and pain on our behavior.”
“And we don’t have fifty years,” Kirk said.
“Perhaps,” McCoy said, “we can teach people to make ‘payday’ a part of their lives, like any pleasurable experience, and not the totality.”
“You mean we could ‘naturalize’ the process?” Uhura said.
“Historically, new technologies have introduced new ways of achieving pleasure. Everything, in its [228] turn, has been absorbed into the human experience,” McCoy said.
“Not this,” Marouk said. “Payday belongs in a class by itself. It isn’t a means to an end; it is an end. A person who experiences it is never the same.”
“That’s true,” Kirk said.
“Surely you’re the same James Kirk you always have been,” McCoy said.
“I hope I will behave the same,” Kirk said. “But like any person who has tasted paradise, I have been changed. Spock, McCoy, Uhura—if we are ever in a situation where I might be tempted, I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything, Jim,” McCoy said.
“Restrain me.”
Spock nodded. “Like Odysseus,” he said.
“Odysseus?” Uhura asked.
“In ancient Greek mythology Odysseus stopped his sailors’ ears with wax but asked to be tied to the mast so that he could hear the irresistible song of the Sirens but not surrender to it. The melody was enthralling, but the words were even more seductive. The Sirens promised knowledge, wisdom, and a quickening of the spirit. But they were heaped around with human bones.”
“A lot like the Joy Machine,” McCoy said. “Don’t worry, Jim, we’ll tie you to the mast
.”
The sounds of conflict in the streets outside the World Government building grew louder.
“What’s going on out there?” Kirk asked.
“An insurrection of sorts,” Spock said, “but I fear it is doomed to failure.”
“What kind of insurrection?” Marouk asked.
“Explosions apparently damaged some of the utilities serving the city,” Spock said. “As I entered, a small group was pressing across the plaza toward this building, but it was being opposed by a police force led by former Federation agent Wolff.”
“And who is leading the attackers?” Kirk asked.
[229] “A young woman,” Spock said. “And, if I am not mistaken, it is the same young woman who abducted you, Jim.”
Kirk grimaced in pain. “Linda,” he said. “I told her to leave the struggle to us.”
“Linda?” Marouk echoed.
“Why do you think the attack is doomed to failure?” Kirk asked.
“The Joy Machine seems to be temporarily incapacitated,” Spock said, “but Wolff’s forces seem adequate to hold off the attackers until the Joy Machine resumes its control.”
“Wherever that control has been removed,” Marouk said.
Spock studied the silent piece of machinery in the center of the little attic room. “It is too much to hope that the power has been cut,” he said.
“Everything else in the building is still operating,” Kirk said.
“Then it is likely the operational part of the Joy Machine has been removed to some less accessible location.”
“Why do you think the Joy Machine is only temporarily incapacitated?” Marouk asked.
“It is logical,” Spock said, “that a computer as versatile as the Joy Machine will have surrounded itself with protection against all kinds of perils.”
“But it does seem to have relaxed its hold on Timshel City,” McCoy said.
“It may be damaged,” Spock said, “but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the entire planet.”
“Kemal wants to construct a doomsday device that will destroy everything,” Kirk said. “He calls it ‘the ultimate solution.’ ”