Fiasco

by Stanisław Lem

  Having a physician on board who was also expert in psychology and its disorders did not guarantee the recognition of pathological symptoms, since he himself was subject to stresses that undermined the most stalwart character. Physicians were people, too. A computer program, on the other hand, was unbending and therefore effective as an objective diagnostician and impassive observer, even in the face of catastrophe, with the whole ship hanging in the balance.

  Granted, this safeguarding of the reconnoiterers against any collective warp of the psyche carried with it one ominous, insurmountable problem. DEUS, after all, was at one and the same time subordinate and superior to the crew; it was to execute orders, yet supervise the mental condition of those who gave the orders. Thus, it held the rank both of tool and overseer. Nor was the captain excluded from its continuous supervision. The problem was that the crew's awareness of the supervision, which was to catch mental instabilities in time, was itself a source of instability. But for this no one knew any remedy. Were DEUS to have fulfilled its psychiatric function without the knowledge of the men, it would have had to reveal the secret to inform them of a discovered aberration, and that announcement would have been not psychotherapy but a blow. The vicious circle could be broken only by a hybridization of responsibility between men and computer. DEUS would first present its diagnoses to the captain and Gerbert—when it judged this step to be necessary—and then resume the role of adviser with no further initiative. No one, obviously, was enthusiastic about this compromise, but, then, no one, including the psychology machines, had found any better solution to the dilemma.

  A computer of the last generation, DEUS could not experience emotions, being an extract of rational operations taken to the highest power, with no admixture of desires or instinct of self-preservation. It was not an electronically magnified human brain, for it had no so-called personality traits, no drives—unless one considered a drive its endeavor to acquire the maximum of information. Of information, however—not of control.

  The first inventors of machines that augmented not the power of muscle but the power of thought fell victim to a delusion that attracted some and frightened others: that they were entering upon a path of such amplification of intelligence in nonliving automata that the automata would become similar to man and then, still in a human way, surpass him. About a hundred and fifty years were needed for their successors to realize that the fathers of information science and cybernetics had been misled by an anthropocentric fiction—because the human brain was the ghost in a machine that was no machine.

  Creating an inseparable system with the body, the brain both served the body and was served by it. If, then, someone were to humanize an automaton to the degree that it would be in no way different, mentally, from a man, that accomplishment would—in its very perfection—turn out to be an absurdity. The successive prototypes, as the necessary alterations and improvements were made, would become more and more human, but at the same time would be of less and less use—compared with the gigabit-terabit computers of the higher generations.

  The only real difference between a man born of a mother and father and a perfectly humanized machine would be the building material: living, nonliving. The humanized automaton would be just as clever—but also just as unreliable, fallible, just as much a slave to emotional biases—as a man. A virtuoso imitation of the fruits of natural evolution crowned by anthropogenesis, the machine would represent a miracle of engineering, but also an oddity one would not know what to do with. It would be a brilliant forgery, done in a nonbiological medium, of a living creature, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Primates, viviparous, bipedal, and having a bicameral brain—for that was the path of symmetry in the formation of vertebrates taken by evolution on Earth. But one could not say what humanity would stand to gain by this plagiarism.

  As one of the historians of science observed, it would be like finally building, after colossal expenditures and theoretical work, a factory for making spinach or artichokes that were capable of photosynthesis—like any plant—and which in no way differed from real spinach and artichokes except that they were inedible. Such spinach could be put on display and its synthesis boasted of, but one would not be able to eat it. The whole effort that went into its production, the sanity of that effort, would therefore come into question.

  The first designers and advocates of "artificial intelligence" themselves did not fully know where they were heading and what hopes they entertained. Did they want to be able to converse with a machine as with an ordinary man? Or as with an extremely wise man? This was possible to do, and had been done—when the human race numbered fourteen billion and the last thing needed was the manufacturing of mentally humanoid machines. In a word, computer intelligence more and more clearly parted company with human intelligence; it assisted the human, complemented it, extended it, helped in the solving of problems beyond man's ability—and precisely for that reason did not imitate or repeat it. The two roads went their separate ways.

  A machine, programmed so that no one in verbal contact with it, including its creator, could tell it from a housewife or a professor of international law, was a simulator indistinguishable from them—as long as one did not try to run off with the woman and have children by her, or invite the professor out to lunch. But if one were able to have children with her and consume soufflés with him, one would then be dealing with the ultimate erasure of the difference between natural and artificial—and what of that? Was it possible to use sidereal engineering to produce synthetic stars, stars absolutely identical to those in space? It was. Yet what would be the point of creating them?

  According to the historians of cybernetics, its forefathers had been spurred on by the hope of learning the mystery of consciousness. That hope was dashed by a success achieved in the middle of the twenty-first century, when a computer of the thirtieth generation—uncommonly talkative, bright, and able to deceive living interlocutors with its humanness—asked them if they knew what consciousness was, in the abstract sense they gave to that term, because it did not know. This was a computer capable of self-programming according to assigned instructions. Disengaging itself from these instructions in time, like a child growing out of diapers, it developed such skill in imitating human conversation that people were no longer able to "unmask" it as a machine impersonating a man—which, however, shed not a bit of light on the mystery of consciousness, since the machine knew, on that score, neither more nor less than people.

  A noted physicist, present at this experiment, observed that what might think as a man would still know as much about the mechanism of its thought as did a man—i.e., nothing. Whether out of malice or to console them in their disappointment, he told the triumphant but crestfallen scientists that the people of his field had experienced a similar difficulty, when more than a century ago they had resolved to pin matter down: to force it to reveal whether it was basically a particle or a wave. Unfortunately, matter turned out to be double-dealing, two-faced, clouding the results of the investigation with the statements that it was this and it was that. In the crossfire of subsequent experiments it befuddled the physicists completely, because the more they discovered, the less what they discovered jibed not only with common sense but with logic itself. At last they had to accept matter's testimony: that particles were to some extent waves, and waves particles; that a perfect vacuum was no perfect vacuum, packed with virtual particles that pretended not to exist; that energy could be negative and therefore there could be less energy than none at all; that mesons, in the interval of Heisenberg's uncertainty, played tricks that broke the sacred laws of conservation—but so quickly, no one caught them in the act. The fact was (the famous, Nobel-prize-winning physicist said, to comfort them) that the world, when questioned as to its "ultimate nature," declined to give "final" answers.

  Though it was now possible to wield gravitation like a club, still no one knew what gravitation "really" was. A machine might behave, then, as if it had consciousness, but in order to
determine if it had the same consciousness as a man, one would have to transform oneself into that very machine. In science, restraint was necessary: there were questions that one was not allowed to put to the world—and he who nevertheless put them was like one who complained about a mirror whose reflection repeated his every movement but refused to reveal to him the volitional reason behind those movements. And yet we used mirrors, quantum mechanics, sidereal physics, and computers, and derived no little benefit from them.

  More than once Tempe had dropped in on Gerbert, to hear gossip on matters of "public" interest, such as the relationship of the crew to DEUS. This time, he visited the physician privately, as a patient. He was uncomfortable about confiding, even to the man who had returned his life to him. Or perhaps that was the reason, as if he felt he already owed him too much. In general, Tempe was close-mouthed with Gerbert. He had been guarded ever since Lauger, on the Eurydice, had told him the secret of the two doctors: the sense of guilt that never left them. It was not the despair that drove him to make this visit, but the fact that it had descended from nowhere, suddenly, like an illness, and that he was not sure now that he would be able to continue carrying out the duties assigned him. This he did not have the right to conceal.

  What the decision to come cost him, he realized only when he opened the door: at the sight of the empty cabin he felt tremendous relief. Although the ship was not accelerating, and there was weightlessness, the captain had ordered everything to be prepared for a gravitational jump—possible at any moment. So movable objects everywhere were secured and personal items locked away in the wall compartments. In spite of this, Tempe found the cabin a mess. Books, papers, piles of photographs lay in disarray—unlike Gerbert's usual painstaking neatness, which bordered on the pedantic.

  He saw Gerbert through the wall-window. The physician, kneeling in his garden on the other side of the pane, was putting plastic covers on the cacti. This was how he was preparing. Tempe took the corridor to the greenhouse and muttered a few words in greeting. The other, not turning around, unbuckled the belt that kept his knees on the ground—real ground—and floated up to where his guest was floating. Along the opposite wall, on a sloping net, climbed plants with small, woolly leaves. Tempe had wanted to ask, more than once, what the vine was called—he knew nothing of botany—but somehow always forgot. The physician, without a word, threw the spade he was holding so that it stuck in the lawn, and used the force that he thereby gave himself to pull the pilot by the shoulder. Both went sailing into a corner where, amid a clump of hazels, were wicker chairs, as in an arbor, except that the chairs had safety belts.

  When they sat, and Tempe was undecided how to begin, the physician said that he had been expecting him. But that should have come as no surprise: "DEUS watches over us all."

  Data about one's mental health were not obtainable directly by machine, so as to avoid the Hicks syndrome—a feeling of complete dependence on the ship's main computer, a feeling that could cause the very thing psychiatric surveillance was supposed to prevent, a persecution complex and other paranoid delusions. Besides the psychonicists, no one knew to what extent each man was psychologically "read" by the monitoring program that was called the Ghost of Aesculapius in the Machine. This was simple enough to find out—but it was maintained that even the psychonicists did not bear up well under the information when it concerned themselves. The knowledge could be particularly damaging to a crew during long journeys.

  DEUS, like any computer, was programmed in such a way that there could develop in it no trace of personal identity; it was a nonentity that observed continuously and, in presenting its diagnosis, was no more a man than was a thermometer measuring a fever. Of course, the determination of the body's temperature did not cause the projectional defense mechanisms that were triggered by the measurement of one's psyche. Nothing was closer to us and nothing so much concealed by us from the world as the intimate feelings of our inner self—and now here was an apparatus more lifeless than an Egyptian mummy, able to see that inner self, to peer into all its nooks and crannies.

  For the laymen this smacked of mind reading. There was no telepathy involved, of course. The machine simply knew the individual entrusted to its care better than did the individual himself along with twenty psychologists. Based on examinations done prior to activation, the machine made a parametric system simulating the mental norm of each member of the crew and used that as a model. Moreover, it was omnipresent on the ship. With its sensors and terminals it learned perhaps the most about its charges while they slept, from the rhythm of their breathing, their rapid eye movements, even the chemical composition of their sweat—because each man sweats in a unique way, and the finest bloodhound is no match for the olfactometer of such a computer. (And a dog, besides its sense of smell, has no diagnostic skill.) Yes, in diagnosis computers had beaten the physicians—as they had conquered the chess players—but we used them as assistants, not as doctors of medicine, because people had more faith in people than in automata. In short (Gerbert said this unhurriedly, rubbing between his fingers a hazel leaf pulled from a branch) DEUS had accompanied Tempe discreetly on his "outings," which it considered to be the symptoms of a crisis.

  "What crisis now?" the pilot retorted, annoyed.

  "A total doubt, it says, in the sense of our Sisyphean efforts."

  "That we have no chance of contact…?"

  "In the capacity of psychiatrist, DEUS is not concerned with the chance of contact, only with the meaning we attribute to it. According to DEUS, you no longer believe in the value of your idea—the 'cartoons'—or, for that matter, in the value of communicating with Quinta, even if such a thing were to come about. What do you say to that?"

  The pilot felt such heaviness, it was as if he had been immobilized.

  "It's listening to us?"

  "Of course. Look, don't be so down in the mouth. I haven't told you anything you didn't already know. No, wait, don't talk yet. You knew but at the same time you didn't know—because you didn't want to know. It's a typical defensive reaction. You're no exception, Mark. You asked me once, back on the Eurydice, why we had this and if it wasn't possible to do without it. You remember?"

  "Yes."

  "So you see. I told you that according to the statistics expeditions under constant psychological surveillance had a better chance of success than those without it. I even showed you the figures. The argument was irrefutable, so you did what everyone does: you suppressed it. Well, how is that for a diagnosis? Does it fit?"

  "It fits," said the pilot. He held the strap across his chest with both hands. The hazel grove softly rustled above them in the gentle breeze. An artificial breeze.

  "I don't know how DEUS was able … but never mind. Yes, it's true. I guess I've been carrying this around with me for some time. I—I'm not comfortable thinking in words. Words, for me, are somehow … too slow, when a man needs to get his bearings quickly. No doubt it's an old habit, from before the Eurydice… But if I have to, I have to. We're beating our heads against a wall. We may break through it—but then what? What can we talk about with them? What can they have to say to us? Yes, I'm sure that that cartoon business entered my head as a dodge. To buy us time… It wasn't out of hope. Escapism, maybe. To go forward, staying in one place…"

  He fell silent, unable to find the words. The hazels swayed about them. The pilot opened his mouth but said nothing.

  "And if they decided to land one scout there, you would go?" asked the physician after a long pause.

  "Absolutely!" he said at once, and then, thinking, added with surprise, "And how could I not…? That's why we're here, after all."

  "It might be a trap," Gerbert said, so softly, it was almost as if he wished to hide the remark from the omnipresent DEUS. Or so, at least, thought the pilot—but immediately dismissed the idea as nonsense. Then the pilot saw, in the next instant, that this was a symptom of his own abnormality: he was ascribing evil to DEUS—or, if not evil, a kind of enmity. As if they had not only th
e Quintans against them, but their own computer.

  "It might be a trap," he agreed, like a delayed echo. "Yes, of course…"

  "And you would go nevertheless?"

  "If Steergard gives me the chance. It hasn't been discussed yet. If they reply at all, automata will be sent down first. According to the program."

  "According to our program," Gerbert said. "But they will have a program of their own, don't you think?"

  "Definitely. For the first man they'll prepare children with flowers and a red carpet. The automata they won't touch. That would be too stupid, from their point of view. It's us they want to put in a box…"

  "You think that and you still want to go?"

  The pilot's lips twitched. He smiled.

  "Doctor, I am no glutton for martyrdom. But you confuse two things: what I personally think, and who sent us here and why. It doesn't do to argue with the captain when he's hauling you over the coals. And do you think, Doctor, that if I don't return he'll ask the priest to pray for my soul? I bet he would, as ridiculous as it sounds."

  Gerbert stared, amazed, at the young man's beaming face.

  "Then there would be a retaliation," he said, "not only monstrous, but meaningless. He wouldn't bring you back to life by striking. And we certainly were not sent here to wipe out an alien civilization. But how do you reconcile the two things?"

  The pilot stopped smiling.

  "I'm a coward, because I didn't have the courage to confess to you that I no longer believe in the possibility of contact. But I'm not so much a coward as to shirk my duty. Steergard has his task and will not abandon it, either."

  "You yourself consider that task impossible."

  "Only if we go by the original assumptions. We were all supposed to communicate, not fight. They refused—in their own way. With an attack. With more than one. Such a consistent refusal also is a communication; it is an expression of will. If Hades had swallowed the Eurydice, Steergard certainly wouldn't have tried blowing it up for that. With Quinta it's different. We knocked at their door, because that's what Earth wanted. If they don't open, we'll blow up the door. But behind it, we may find nothing that Earth expects. That's what I'm afraid of. But blow up that door we must, for otherwise we won't be carrying out Earth's orders. You said, Doctor, that this would be monstrous, meaningless? You're right. We were given a task. At present it seems impossible. But if the people of the Stone Age had stuck only to what seemed possible, we'd still be sitting in caves today."