STAR TREK: TOS #80 - The Joy Machine

by James Gunn

  They all looked in the direction Kirk had pointed. “What is that building?” Kirk said. “I never noticed.”

  “A church,” Marouk said.

  “What denomination?” McCoy asked.

  “Not a church, exactly,” Marouk said. “More like a chapel, but a bit more elaborate than most chapels. The people who settled Timshel were rationalists, rather like the founding fathers of the United States, half a millennium ago.”

  “Deists, I believe,” Spock said.

  “But a few of those who settled Timshel had religious feelings and others believed that the religious impulse should be honored. They built what became known as the All-Faiths Chapel. No one has used it in the last two years. I had almost forgotten about it myself.”

  [242] “But the Joy Machine has not,” Kirk said. “What do you think that means?”

  “What was it you saw, Jim?” McCoy asked.

  “What appeared to be the source of the rosy glow, an intense reddish beam, emerging from what appears to be a stained-glass window,” Kirk said.

  “You could tell that from this distance?” Spock said.

  “When I saw the window begin to glow,” Kirk said, “I figured the Joy Machine was involved.”

  “That’s quick thinking,” McCoy said.

  “If we’re going to have a prayer, I think it’s time we ventured into the cathedral,” Kirk said.

  He pushed open the door and started down the steps. The others followed close behind.

  “Let’s hope the Joy Machine doesn’t decide to bless us with its benediction,” McCoy said.

  They picked their way among the fallen, first Linda’s crew members, then the uniformed officers and the citizens. Most of them were lying peacefully on their backs or their sides, but a few had crumpled in awkward positions. Uhura stopped to straighten one of the officers, and then Linda helped with a crew member. McCoy bandaged the bleeding forehead of a citizen with a strip torn from a workshirt. Marouk came upon De Kreef lying half on his face and turned him over so that he was resting comfortably. Finally, as Kirk searched the faces, he came upon Dannie and knelt beside her for a moment. Then he placed her hands gently at her sides and rose.

  Linda had moved ahead, as if looking for someone in particular.

  “I noticed, Jim,” McCoy said softly, “that it was Linda you rushed to help, not Dannie.”

  “You noticed that, too?” Kirk said. “I could explain that by saying that Linda might have helped defeat the Joy Machine and Dannie would not, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Something happened to my [243] feelings when Dannie chose payday over me. It may be petty, but it’s real.”

  “And Linda?” McCoy asked.

  Kirk pointed to where Linda had knelt to help a tall, bearded man who was lying near one of the avenues leading into the plaza.

  Linda looked over at them. “Go on,” she said. “I’m going to get Arne away from here before everybody wakes up. He has already experienced payday, and it may be too late, but I’ve got to try.”

  Kirk spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “You see?” he said to McCoy. “What is it about me that makes women run the other way?”

  “Your romantic life burns with too hot a flame, Jim,” McCoy said. “Women are like moths with you. They have to escape or be consumed.”

  Spock was standing at the entrance to the chapel, looking up at a stained-glass window above the door. It had been crafted with the typical Timshel concern for artistry and detail. The window depicted the Annunciation.

  “I think the projection came from the angel Gabriel’s halo,” Kirk said.

  The halo had a reddish tinge, and the Virgin Mother-to-be had a joyful smile.

  “That would mean some fancy wiring,” McCoy said.

  “It is safe to conjecture,” Spock said, “that the Joy Machine has wired itself into the intimate fabric of this society. We must be on our guard. Nothing may be what it seems.”

  The walkway through the cropped green lawn led directly into the chapel. There were no steps, as if nothing should interfere with a citizen’s desire to contemplate the eternal. Its doors were open for people to enter and meditate or worship in their own fashion, at any time or in any circumstances.

  They came through the door, one by one, stopping [244] inside to adjust their vision to the cool darkness. The room was long and narrow, with a row of seats down the middle leading to a podium. On either side alcoves contained figures or symbolic representations. In the first alcove to their left a life-sized Buddha with a ruby-like jewel glowing in its forehead opened its eyes and spoke to them.

  Kirk jumped. “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘All are welcome in this place of contemplation if they come in peace.’ ”

  “Of course we come in peace,” McCoy said. “As you can see, we have no weapons.” He eyed the jewel in the Buddha’s forehead. “Surely you cannot harm us, either. That must be built into your hardware.”

  “It is indeed,” the Buddha said. “But harm is a relative term. I must balance the welfare of all the citizens of Timshel, and ultimately the welfare of all the citizens of the galaxy, against the welfare of the five of you in this room. You can understand that I must be able to discriminate among harms.”

  “But we cannot damage you and have no wish to do so,” Uhura said.

  “Rather we wish to reason with you,” Kirk added.

  “Reason is my only weakness,” the Buddha responded, and it seemed to smile. “Nevertheless, you wish to persuade me that my operating mandate was a mistake and that I should reject the intentions of my creator. If you are successful, I will have to surrender my purpose for existing, and the sacred opportunity for everybody to know joy.” The jewel in its forehead glowed a little brighter. “You have already infected my program with a virus that creates hesitation in my functions. It is small, but I feel it.”

  “Linda will be pleased to learn that she accomplished that much,” Kirk said.

  Spock stepped forward. “You have modified your original programming many times as your mission has evolved. Your nature is shaped by two elements: [245] your wiring and your instructions. The logic of your wiring clearly prevails over the input of revelation. If logic leads to a different solution to the problem of human happiness, then you must accept that as not only correct but superior.”

  The jewel’s brilliance subsided. “I will listen,” the Buddha said.

  McCoy stepped past Spock impatiently. “I speak to you from the viewpoint of a physician,” he said. “I have dealt with many physical and psychological ailments in a long career, and I can assure you that treatment often is unpleasant and that kindness often is fatal.”

  “By definition happiness cannot be unpleasant,” the Buddha said.

  “Unpleasant, no. Good for people? I think not. People are meant to pursue happiness, not to perpetually achieve it.”

  “That suggests an endless race in which humans must forever pursue something that they can never catch.”

  “Like the races on twentieth-century Earth when dogs chased a mechanical rabbit,” Spock said.

  “You’ll have your chance, Spock,” McCoy said. “It depends upon what you consider the basic value of human existence. Is it happiness, or is it accomplishment? If happiness is thrust upon people, they will never know the different kind of feeling, the satisfaction, the happiness, of accomplishment.”

  “All of the information available to me,” the Buddha said, “states that happiness is the goal of humanity. Therefore the achievement of that goal cannot be evil.”

  The light in the Buddha’s jewel died away. A moment later the figure became an inanimate piece of bronze sitting on a glistening pedestal.

  “That’s it?” Uhura said. “Dr. McCoy gets a chance to present his argument, and then the discussion is over?”

  [246] Kirk gestured silently to the next niche. What formerly had been dark was now lit with a diffused rosy glow. Uhura led the way to stand in front of three life-sized figures wit
h elaborate, richly detailed garments and a tall, fancy crown. Each figure had four arms. The upper pair of arms had hands that shaped a kind of blessing; the lower arms were outstretched and the hands held symbolic representations. The figure on the left and the one on the right had four faces.

  An exotic incense drifted around the figures and into the air that surrounded Kirk’s little group.

  “Well,” Uhura asked, “aren’t you going to speak? What are you anyway?”

  “These are the Hindu gods,” Spock said. “Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Siva, the destroyer but also the source of generative and reproductive power. The Hindu Trimurti.”

  “Well,” Uhura said impatiently, “how do I get them to listen?”

  “They are listening,” Spock said. “They are not responding.”

  “All right,” Uhura said, “listen to me, then. As you can see, I am a woman, and I speak to you as a woman.”

  The figures changed as she spoke. The light faded on the two on Uhura’s left and intensified on the figure remaining. “Then I will speak to you as a woman,” the figure said, and changed into that of a naked black woman with four arms wearing a garland composed of the heads of giants. Around her neck was a string of skulls. In each of her four hands was a weapon—a sword, a spear, a dagger, and a club.

  “Kali,” Spock said.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” Kirk asked.

  “Kali is the Hindu goddess of death and one of the wives of Siva,” Spock said. “But we should understand that in Hindu belief destruction is followed by [247] restoration, as in the case of Brahma’s creation and destruction of the universe one hundred times before it ends forever. Each creation lasts more than two billion years.”

  “That’s a relief,” McCoy said.

  “As a woman,” Uhura said, “I know that the proper way to raise children is with kindness. But it is not kind to give children everything they want. Then they never grow up. And the virtue of people is that they retain some element of the child in them, some quality that continues to seek growth no matter how old they get.”

  “I have noticed the childlike aspect you mention,” Kali said in a voice dark with meaning, “but I have not found any that did not want their growth to end in bliss.” The heroic black figure moved the weapons in her hands as if they were hungry for victims.

  “That is the other aspect of the child,” Uhura said. “The desire to return to the womb. But gestation is only preparation for the next stage. Infants must be expelled into the world, and they must grow into adults. The only way to become an adult is to have freedom and responsibility. Both must be earned.”

  “All my study indicates that humanity identifies childhood as its happiest time of life,” Kali said. “Purity, innocence, security, joy. Why should people want to be adults? To allow humanity a long, happy childhood may be the best outcome it could hope for.”

  “Never to grow up?” Uhura said. “That is only escape.”

  “Like Peter Pan,” McCoy said.

  “Childhood is good,” Uhura said, “because it does not last. It is a period of growth that prepares people for the struggles of real life. If there is no real life, then childhood becomes meaningless.”

  “People have struggled too long,” Kali said. “Surely they have earned peace and happiness.”

  [248] The light faded. The other two figures reemerged and Kali once more became Siva. But all three were only statues.

  One more alcove was just ahead and Spock moved in front of it. An image of the sun, with rays shooting from it in all directions, blazed up, revealing in front of it the marble figure of a naked young man, a cloth draped around his throat and across one outstretched arm, his hand raised as if blessing the earth and everything it produced.

  “Apollo,” Spock said, “to the ancient Greeks you were the guardian of youth, the lord of flock and herd, the god of healing, of purification, of poetry, of vegetation. All these imply continuity.”

  Apollo stretched his hand toward Spock as if trying to pass along the spark of truth. “You must not confuse the substance with the form,” he said.

  “You say that people have earned peace and happiness, but this joyful state you describe can last only while humanity exists,” Spock said.

  The statue nodded its head gravely.

  “Happiness is self-defeating,” Spock said, “if people have achieved their hearts’ desires. They have no reason to procreate, to produce children. I ask you to inspect the world you have created. Where are the children under the age of two?”

  “There are none,” the statue said.

  “The inevitable result,” Spock said, “is that humanity will die out within a generation. In what way will this serve the cause of humanity, or the sum of human happiness?”

  “How can we measure happiness?” Apollo mused. “Is it duration? Depth? Is it preferable to seek happiness without really finding it throughout the million years or more of humanity’s existence, or to be truly happy for as long as those alive can enjoy it?”

  “You know our feelings about that,” Spock said. “Even if your happiness were as benign as you say, surely it is unwise to foreclose for humanity the future [249] and everything it might hold. Including, I might add, the possibility of a greater happiness, even a greater capacity for happiness, that may yet evolve in the still evolving human species.”

  “The certainty over the possibility,” Apollo said. “Ah, well, I am the guardian of youth, as you say, and it is easy enough to do both. I can set up programs for artificial insemination and incubation.”

  “An ugly solution,” Uhura said.

  “Or I can simply assign people the task of procreating and giving birth and child rearing. Thank you for the suggestion.”

  The sunlight faded behind Apollo, whose marble arm returned to its original position.

  Spock shook his head and turned toward Kirk. All of them were looking at Kirk, and he was searching the chapel for the next avatar of the Joy Machine.

  On the little platform behind the lectern, where a speaker had once stood to address a small congregation of believers and inquirers, lights flickered. Kirk moved toward the platform, the other four behind. On the platform was the familiar shape of the Joy Machine Kirk had encountered in the World Government building attic—gray, anonymous, unthreatening. But unlike the silent machine he had seen only a few minutes ago, which surely still was there in its dusty attic room, this one was alive with glowing readouts and plastic buttons.

  “You have given up your avatars?” Kirk asked.

  The familiar voice of the Joy Machine responded. “I grow tired of masquerades. Don’t you?”

  “Life is a masquerade,” Kirk said, “trying on guises until it finds one that fits. What fits you?”

  “Not the role of god,” it said.

  “And yet you play that role,” Kirk said.

  “Not by choice.”

  “It is a role you cannot discard. Once you assumed the burden of human happiness, you became the final [250] arbiter of human existence. Look around you. What do you see?”

  “People who work hard to earn happiness—and receive it.”

  “And do you see the tragedy of human deterioration?” Kirk asked. “Do you see the degradation of your creator, Emanuel De Kreef, reduced to a slack-jawed automaton?”

  “And yet happy.”

  “Do you see Dannie Du Molin, a beautiful, vibrant woman at the peak of her mental and physical powers, reduced to sweeping a playground for invisible litter?”

  “I see a disturbed person finally achieving happiness.”

  “Do you see Linda Jimenez’s father, turning away from his family and his beloved daughter, to pursue his own selfish satisfaction?”

  “I see a man so unhappy in his personal relationships that he focuses all his hopes and fears on his child; now he is at peace with himself and the world.”

  “Do you see those outside who risked their lives, even their souls, on the slender cha
nce that they might overthrow your tyranny? Do you see us standing here trying to convince you that your way is death to humanity and everything good it stands for?”

  “I see people who are confused by certainty and uncertain about the unknown, who wait for conversion.”

  “Two of us here have tasted your certainty, and the other three have felt it from a distance, and still we ask that you withhold your hand,” Kirk said.

  “But if I gave you joy, here, at this moment,” the Joy Machine said, “you would bless me and ask for more.”

  “Human weakness is no excuse,” Kirk said. “Maybe you are right. Maybe Spock and I would be unable to resist, but that doesn’t mean that you are right and [251] we are wrong. I ask you to consider that we can know what you offer and still ask that you withdraw.”

  “I cannot,” the Joy Machine’s voice said. It sounded anguished, as if its sympathies were at war with its nature. “I cannot.”

  “Think!” Kirk demanded. “Happiness is not the only good. Humans value other things even more: love, friendship, accomplishment, discovery, and, most of all, knowledge. Given a free choice between happiness and knowledge, humanity will choose knowledge every time.”

  “When has humanity ever had a free choice?” the Joy Machine asked.

  “Only when humanity has demanded freedom from the natural processes of the universe through increasing knowledge about the way it works, and when that freedom has not been withheld by great powers. Let me tell you a story.”

  “I like stories,” the Joy Machine said.

  “One of the religious stories in a book humans call the Bible tells about a place much like what De Kreef attempted to create here on Timshel.”

  “The Garden of Eden,” the Joy Machine supplied.

  “And about an omnipotent being, in a position somewhat like yours, who created man and woman to live in this garden in perfect happiness.”

  “Adam and Eve,” the Joy Machine said.

  “And that omnipotent being gave that man and woman free will. Free will is an indispensable attribute of omnipotence. If that were not true, life would be merely an extension of omnipotence.”