Decoded

by Mai Jia

  If you decide that you want him to try and undertake a scientific research topic, let me suggest that he work on artificial intelligence. Once we have solved that particular mystery, we will be able to create a machine that in some way mimics the human mind, and the next step will be the development of robots – inanimate human beings. Science has already begun to unlock the secrets of other organs – eyes, noses, ears – we are now even in a position where we can create artificial wings. Why cannot we begin to work on artificial intelligence? The fact is, the development of the computer involves the creation of a kind of artificial intelligence, though it is solely concerned with calculations. Since we can already create a machine that can carry out that kind of function, surely other aspects cannot be too far behind? Think about it for a moment: if we have this kind of inanimate human beings – creatures made of metal, robots powered by electricity – how many uses they could be put to! In this generation we have suffered so much warfare – in the space of less than half a century we have been forced to go through two world wars. What is more I suspect (indeed I have already seen some proof ) that soon we will have another war – what a terrible thing that is! In my opinion, humanity can now make warfare even more appalling, even more frightening, even more terrible that at any point in history. It is now possible to kill a truly enormous number of people on the same field of battle, to have them die at the same time, to have them die instantly, to have them die the moment the bomb explodes. It seems that we will never be rid of warfare, and yet the hope that one day we can rid the world of this scourge has been handed down from one generation to the next. Mankind is faced with many terrible problems of this kind, which require enormous labour; which require exploration in dangerous circumstances . . . Mankind seems unable to extract itself from the difficulties that beset it.

  If scientists were to succeed in creating an artificial human being – a robot, a creature made of metal, a being without flesh or blood – we could allow them to do work that is at present carried out by people working in genuinely inhuman conditions, fulfilling some of our more perverse requirements. I am sure that no one could object to that. That means that this branch of scientific endeavour, once fully publicized, would have an immeasurable practical value and a wonderful future. The first step is to solve the mystery of intelligence. It is only in this way, by creating artificial intelligence, that you have any chance of making the next step and creating a robot that can undertake some of the tasks at present carried out by humans. At one time I decided that the rest of my life would be devoted to cracking the problems connected with artificial intelligence but before I had even properly begun, I was forced to give up this idea. I have never told anyone why I gave up – let me just say that it was not because of any particular problem or lack of ability, but at the express command of the Jewish people. The last few years I have been working on something very important on their behalf – the troubles that they have faced and their hopes for the future have moved me deeply; for their sake I have given up a long cherished ambition. I have said this much in the hope of piquing your interest.

  Let me remind you: without Jinzhen, you cannot do this. What I mean is that if Jinzhen does eventually die from this terrible disease, you had better give up the idea of developing this project because you are too old for it. If Jinzhen survives, perhaps within your lifetime you will see one of the last great mysteries to confront humankind solved through the creation of artificial intelligence. Believe me, Jinzhen is the best person to find a solution to this problem – this is what he was born to do; God has chosen him. As you have mentioned to me before, dreams are the most mysterious manifestation of the human spirit, and this is something he has confronted day and night since the time he was a tiny child. Over the course of time, he has built up truly remarkable skills at interpreting the meaning of dreams. Although he did not realize it, right from the beginning of his conscious life, he began preparations for researching the mysteries of human intelligence. This is what he is meant to do!

  Let me end by saying that if you and God are both in agreement that Jinzhen is here to develop the science of artificial intelligence, then this letter may prove helpful. Otherwise, if either you or God is determined to prevent him from pursuing this line of inquiry, then give this letter to the university library, that it may serve as a memento of the twelve happy years that I have spent working there.

  I hope that Jinzhen will recover soon!

  Jan Liseiwicz.

  Written on the eve of departure.

  Young Lillie read this letter straight through, sitting on the cardboard box. The wind ruffled the pages; raindrops caught and tossed in the breeze spattered down, as if they too wanted to read the contents of this letter. Maybe it was because he had not slept well the night before; maybe it was because the letter had touched some hidden corner of his mind: the old man sat quiet for a long time after he had finished reading. He sat quietly, looking up into space. After a very long time, he finally seemed to come to. Turning into the wind and rain, he suddenly spoke the following words: ‘Goodbye, Jan. I hope that you have a good journey . . . ’

  [Transcript of the interview with Master Rong]

  Jan Liseiwicz decided to leave after his father-in-law was almost executed as a war criminal.

  As I am sure you are well aware, Liseiwicz was offered many opportunities to leave, particularly in the wake of the end of the Second World War. There were all sorts of universities and research institutes in the West that wanted him to join them, and his drawers were stuffed with invitations of one kind or another. However, it was quite clear that he had no intention of going anywhere – for example he brought back that huge wooden case of books and then a little bit later on he bought not only the house in Sanyuan Lane that he had been living in for years, but the whole courtyard. He was working hard at his Chinese and spoke the language better than ever. In the end he announced that he was going to apply for Chinese citizenship (this was never followed up). I believe that Liseiwicz and his father-inlaw were very close. This man was the son of a Provincial Graduate and a member of a very wealthy family – by far the most important gentry family in the region. When his daughter announced that she wanted to marry a foreigner he was extremely opposed to the idea. When she told him that she was getting married anyway, he placed very strict demands on the couple. Liseiwicz was told that he would never be allowed to take his wife to live abroad, that he would not be allowed to divorce her, that he would have to learn to speak Chinese, that any children would take their mother’s surname, and so on. From all of this you can see that while the man was a member of a prominent gentry family, he was neither educated nor gentlemanly. He was the kind of unpleasant person who would take advantage of his wealth and power to bully everyone else. When someone with that kind of personality finds themselves in an exalted position, it is easy to imagine that they will build up a lot of resentment against themselves. Furthermore, during the time of the puppet government, he occupied an important office in the county administration and was involved in some very dubious dealings with the Japanese. After the Liberation, the People’s Government was determined to deal with him and he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. At the time of which I am speaking, he was in prison awaiting execution.

  In the run-up to the appointed date, Liseiwicz went the rounds of every professor and student that he could think of, including Daddy and me, in the hope that we would write a joint letter to the government and thereby save his father-in-law’s life. Everyone refused. I am sure this wounded Liseiwicz deeply, but we really didn’t have a choice. To tell the truth, it is not that we did not want to help; there was genuinely nothing we could do. The situation in those days was not such that a couple of people making a fuss or a small demonstration was going to change anything. Daddy did actually go and speak to the mayor on his behalf, but the only answer he got was: ‘Only Chairman Mao himself can save the man now.’ What he meant was that Liseiwicz’s father-in-law was doomed!

&
nbsp; The fact is that in those days, the People’s Government was targeting men like him – bullies who had used their position to make the lives of the local people miserable. This was a matter of state policy and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. Liseiwicz didn’t understand that: he was far too naïve about the whole situation. There was nothing that we could do and so we simply ended up hurting him.

  What no one could have imagined was that Liseiwicz was in the end able to use the government of X country to save his father-in-law from the firing squad. It was quite unbelievable! Particularly when you consider that at that time, our two countries were open enemies – you can imagine how difficult it was to achieve what he did. Apparently X country sent a special envoy to Beijing to discuss the matter with our government – in the end the whole matter did end up on Chairman Mao’s plate – either his or Zhou Enlai’s! The final decision must have been made by someone right at the top of the Politburo. It really was quite unbelievable!

  The end result of their discussions was that Liseiwicz’s father-inlaw was released, and in return X country allowed two of our scientists that they had barred from leaving to come home. It seemed almost as if this horrible old man – who deserved everything that he had coming to him – had suddenly become a national treasure. Of course, he was nothing to X country; they wanted Liseiwicz. It seems as though they had decided that no price was too high to pay for him. So the question was, why was X country so determined to get Liseiwicz? Was it simply because he was a world-famous mathematician? It seemed that there must be more to it, but as to what on earth that could be, I did not have the faintest idea.

  Shortly after his father-in-law was released from prison, Liseiwicz and his entire family departed for X country.

  [To be continued]

  When Liseiwicz left the country, Jinzhen was still hospitalized, though it seemed that he was now out of danger. The hospital, concerned about the mounting medical bills, accepted the patient’s request to be transferred to his home to recover. The day that he left hospital, Master Rong and her mother went to collect him. The doctor who was waiting to meet them naturally mistook one of them for the patient’s mother. However, judging by their ages, one was a bit old and the other a bit too young, so he had to ask a rather bold question: ‘Which of you is the patient’s mother?’

  Master Rong was just about to explain, but her mother had already answered loud and clear: ‘Me!’

  The doctor explained to Mrs Rong that Jinzhen’s illness was now under control and his condition was stable, but he would require more than a year of special treatment to make a full recovery. ‘During the course of the next twelve months, you are going to have to look after him like a baby, or he might well still suffer a relapse.’

  When the doctor took her through the detailed list of what she would have to do, Mrs Rong realized that his comparison was entirely justified. There were however three key points to the treatment:

  1. His food would be subject to extremely severe restrictions.

  2. During the night he would have to be woken up at set intervals to empty his bladder.

  3. Every day he would have to be given his medication, which would include injections, at certain set times.

  Mrs Rong put on her spectacles and made notes of everything the doctor said; then she checked through them and asked questions to make sure that she had entirely understood every point. When she got back home, she asked her daughter to bring a blackboard and some chalk from the university and wrote out everything that the doctor had said. She then placed the blackboard in the stairwell so that she would see it every time she went up or down the stairs during the day. Since she had to get up regularly during the night to wake up Jinzhen to empty his bladder, she and Young Lillie started sleeping in separate bedrooms. She had two alarm clocks placed by the head of the bed, one set to ring just after midnight, the other in the early hours of the morning. After the early morning call to empty his bladder, Jinzhen would go back to sleep, but Mrs Rong would remain up so that she could prepare the first of the five meals that he had to eat during the course of the day. Although she was a fine cook, this was now by far the most difficult and time-consuming thing that she had to do. By comparison, having spent a lifetime punching holes in thick layers of felt to make cloth shoes, giving an injection was not a particularly difficult thing to learn to do – it was just the first couple of days that she was nervous and hesitant. But when it came to making food, how to prevent it from becoming tasteless and bland was a constant source of worry. The basic principle was simple: at that time Jinzhen was abnormally sensitive to salt and yet his life depended upon it: give him too much and he would suffer a relapse; give him too little and he would take much longer to recover than was strictly necessary. The doctor’s instructions on this point were extremely precise: during the patient’s period of convalescence, he would start by being allowed merely micrograms of salt, but that as time went by the amount could be gradually increased.

  Of course, if a person’s daily intake of salt could be measured in grams or ounces, this is not a particularly difficult problem to solve – you just buy a good pair of scales. The problem the Rong family was faced with was not nearly so easy to solve because Mrs Rong found it impossible to lay hands on an accurate enough set of scales, so to begin with she just had to use her own careful and patient judgement. Later on Mrs Rong took a whole load of different dishes into the hospital and got the doctors to pronounce on whether they were suitable. She had already made a note of how much salt she had put in each one – having counted every single grain – and once the doctors had decided which ones were suitably unsalty, five times a day she would put on her spectacles and dole out the white and glossy grains of salt, counting them one by one as if they were the pills that would save Jinzhen’s life.

  She was enormously careful when she put salt in his food. She put the salt in as if conducting a scientific experiment. Thus as one day followed another, as one night followed another, as one month followed another, her diligence and patience were as tested as if she had indeed been looking after a baby. Sometimes, in a moment of rest between bouts of this exhausting labour, she would take out the letter that Jinzhen had written in his own blood and look at it – it had been Jinzhen’s secret but having discovered it by accident, she kept it without being entirely sure why. Now, every time that she looked at this slip of paper, she was even more sure that everything that she was doing was worth it: it encouraged her to go back to work with redoubled energy. More than anything else, it was this that dragged Jinzhen from the brink of the grave.

  The following spring, Jinzhen was back in the classroom.

  10.

  Liseiwicz was gone, but part of him had remained behind.

  While Jinzhen was being coddled like a newborn baby, Liseiwicz was in contact with Young Lillie on three occasions. The first was not long after he arrived in X country: he sent a picture postcard with a beautiful landscape – on the back there was a simple greeting and a return address. It was his home address so there was no way of knowing where he was working. The second communication arrived not long after the first. It was a letter in response to Young Lillie’s reply. He said that he was very happy to know that Jinzhen was better. He gave a vague reply concerning Young Lillie’s questions about his work; he said that he was working in a research institute but said nothing about which one or what he was doing there – it was almost as if he wasn’t allowed to tell us about it. The third letter addressed to Young Lillie arrived just before Chinese New Year – Liseiwicz wrote it on Christmas Eve. The stamp on the envelope showed a Christmas tree. In his letter, Liseiwicz mentioned that he had recently received amazing news from a friend: Princeton University had amalgamated several independent research units to create an institute dedicated to the issue of artificial intelligence – their work would be directed by the famous mathematician Paul Samuelson. He wrote: ‘This means that it is not just me that has realized the value and importance of this field of res
earch . . . As far as I am aware, this is the first group working on this subject anywhere in the world.’

  Supposing that Jinzhen was really better (and in fact he had pretty much recovered completely by this time), he was hoping that he too would start work on the field. He made it clear that if Jinzhen could not carry out research into artificial intelligence in China, he thought he should leave and find somewhere better to work. He told Young Lillie that he should not let short-term benefits or problems prevent Jinzhen from achieving the great things of which he was capable. Perhaps it was because he was afraid that Young Lillie would insist on making Jinzhen stay with him and work on this problem that he even lugged a Chinese proverb into his argument: ‘A fine sword should not be used for chopping firewood.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he wrote, ‘the reason why I insisted that Jinzhen should study in America in the past, the reason why I want him to do so now, is because here he has the facilities to support his work – if he comes here, he will find everything much easier.’

  He concluded with the following paragraph:

  As I have said before, Jinzhen was sent to us by God to research this subject. In the past I have been worried that we would be unable to provide him with the quite the surroundings that he needs, not to mention the support that would carry him through all the difficulties that he will face. However, I now believe we can give him the right circumstances in which to carry on his work and space in which to breathe: Princeton University. There is a joke in your country about the girl who sews a wedding gown for another bride to wear – maybe one day people will discover that all the work Paul Samuelson’s group has put in has achieved nothing but cutting the cloth for a Chinese bride . . .

  Young Lillie read this letter in a break between undergraduate classes. While he was reading it, the loudspeaker just outside the window was playing a popular song at top volume: