Self-discovery

by Vladimir Savchenko

  “. what can we and must we do in that period — maybe a year, maybe decades, no one knows, but it’s better to take the shorter time — that we have as a head start on the others.” “Yes.”

  “How is it usually done?” My double rested his cheek on his hand. “An engineer has the desire to create something lasting. He looks for a client. Or the client looks for him, depending on who needs whom more. The client gives him a technological problem: ‘Use your ideas and your knowledge to create such and such. It must have the following parameters and withstand the following… and it should guarantee the production annually of no less than such — and — such percent. The amount is, and the time allotted is. The sanctions follow general usage…. A contract is signed and then it is done. We have an idea and we want to develop it further. But if a client comes along now and says: ‘Here’s the dough; go to work on your system for doubling people and it’s none of your business why I want it’ — we wouldn’t agree, right?”

  “Well, it’s a little early to be worrying about that. The method hasn’t been researched. What kind of production could there be? Who knows, maybe you’ll disintegrate in a few months.” “I won’t. Don’t count on it.” “What’s it to me? Live for all I care.”

  “Thanks! You are such a boor! Just unbelievable! Would I like to give you a good punch!”

  “All right, all right, don’t get off the subject. You misunderstood me. I meant that we still don’t know all the aspects and possibilities of the discovery. We’re at the very beginning. If we compare it to radio, say, then we’re at the level of Hertz’s waves and Popov’s spark transmitter. What now? We must research the possibilities.”

  “Right. But that doesn’t change things. Any research that is applied to man and human society must have a definite goal. And there’s nobody around to give us a two — page, typewritten list setting a technological task. But we don’t need it. We must determine for ourselves what goals man now faces.”

  “Well… before, the goals were simple: survival and propagation of the species. In order to achieve them you had to worry about wildlife, skins for cover, and fire. beating off animals and acquaintances with a cudgel, digging in the clay to make a cave without any conveniences, and so on. But modern society has solved these problems. Get a job somewhere and you’ll have the minimum you need for living. You won’t perish. And you can have children; if worst comes to worst, the government will even take on the responsibility of bringing them up for you. So now, it follows that people should have new desires and needs.”

  “More than you can count! Comfort, recreation, interesting and not boring work. Refined society, various symbols of vanity — titles, awards, medals. The need for excellent clothing, delicious food, embroidery, a suntan, news, books, humor, ornamentation, fads….” “But none of that is important, damn it! That can’t be important. People can’t, and don’t want to return to their previous primitive existence; they squeeze everything from modern life that they can — it’s only natural. But there has to be some goal behind their desires and needs, no? A new goal of existence.”

  “In brief, what is the meaning of life? Rather a complicated problem, wouldn’t you say? So, I knew we would end up here!” My double got up, moved to get the kinks out of his body, and sat down again. So — starting out with jokes and getting more and more serious — we discussed the most important aspects of our work. I’ve often gotten around to discussing the meaning of life — over cognac or on a coffee break — as well as social structure, and the destiny of mankind. Engineers and scientists like to gab about worlds the way housewives do about high prices and lack of morality. Housewives do it to prove their diligence and goodness, and the researchers do it to demonstrate the breadth and scope of their vision to their friends. But this conversation was much more difficult than the usual engineering bull: we overturned ideas as if they were snowdrifts. It was distinguished by responsibility: after this conversation deeds and actions would follow the words — deeds and actions that allowed no room for mistakes.

  We weren’t sleepy any more.

  “All right. Let’s assume that the meaning of life is to satisfy needs. No matter what kind. But what desires and needs of mankind can we satisfy by creating new people? The artificially created people will have their own needs and desires! It’s a vicious circle.”

  “No, no. The meaning of life is to live. Live a full life, freely, interestingly, creatively. Or at least to aim for that… and then?”

  “Fully! Meaning of life! Aiming!” My double jumped up and started pacing the room. “Interests, desires, mammy, what abstractions! Two centuries ago these approximate concepts would have sufficed, but today…. What the hell can we do if there are no exact data on man? What vectors are used to describe striving? What units measure interests?”

  (We were discouraged by that then — and we’re discouraged by that now. We were used to exact, precise concepts: parameters, clearances, volume of information in bits, action in microseconds — and we came face to face with the terrifying vagueness of knowledge about man. It’s good enough for a conversation. But please, do tell me how can you use them in applied research, where a simple and harsh law reigns: if you know something imprecisely, that means you don’t know it.)

  “Hmmmmmm… I envy the men who invented the atom bomb.” My double got up and leaned in the balcony doorway.” ‘This device, gentlemen, can destroy a hundred thousand people’ — and it was perfectly clear to them that Oak Ridge had to be built… And our device can create people, gentlemen!”

  “Some people do research on uranium; others build factories to enrich uranium with the necessary isotopes… others construct the bombs… others in high political circles give the order… others drop the bombs on still others, the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… and others…. Hey, wait a minute, I’m on to something!”

  My double regarded me with curiosity.

  “You see, we’re talking very logically, and we can’t find our way out of the paradoxes, the dead questions like ‘What’s the meaning of life? and you know why? There is no such thing in nature as Man in General. On earth there are all kinds of different people, and their desires are varied, and often contradictory. Let’s say a man wants to live well and for that he needs weapons. Or take this: a young man dreams of becoming a scientist but he doesn’t feel like chewing on the granite of science — he doesn’t like the taste. And these different people live in different circumstances, find themselves in varying situations, dream about one thing and strive for another, and achieve yet a third… and we’re trying to fit them all in one mold!”

  “But if we move on to individuals and take into account all the circumstances…” my double frowned, “it’ll be a mess!”

  “And you want everything to be as simple as the creation of storage blocks, eh? Wrong case.”

  “I know it’s a different case. Our discovery is as complex as man himself… and we can’t throw anything out or simplify anything to make our work easier. But what constructive ideas are flowing out of your great insight that all men are different? I mean constructive, that will help our work.”

  “Our work… hm. It’s tough….”

  Our conversation hit another dead end. The poplars rustled downstairs by the house. Someone walked into the courtyard, whistling a tune. A cool breeze came in from the balcony.

  My double was staring dully at the lamp and then shoved his finger second — knuckle deep into his nostril. His face expressed the fierce pleasure of natural exercise. Something itched in my right nostril, too, but he had beat me to it. I watched myself picking my nose and I suddenly realized why I hadn’t recognized my double when we met on the institute grounds. Basically, no one knows himself. We never see ourselves — even before the mirror we unconsciously correct ourselves, trying to look better and more intelligent. We don’t hear ourselves, because the vibrations of our thorax reach our eardrums through the bones and muscles of our head as well as through the air. We do not observe ourse
lves from the side.

  My double cleaned his nose, and then his finger, and then looked up and laughed, when he understood what I was thinking.

  “So, are people different or the same?”

  “Both. A certain objective lesson can be drawn here — not from your lousy manners, of course. We’re talking about the technical production of a new information system — Man. Technology produces other systems: machines, books, equipment…. The common factor in every produced system is similarity, standardization. Every book in a given press run is like all the others, down to the typos. And in equipment of a given series, the needles, the scales, the class of precision, and the length of the guarantee are the same. The differences are minor: in one book the text is a little clearer; in one piece of equipment there’s a scratch or it has a slightly higher margin of error at high temperatures…”

  “… but within the class of precision.”

  “Natch. In the language of our science, we could say that the volume of individual information in each such artificial system is negligibly small in comparison with the volume of information that is common in all the systems of a given class. And for man that is not the case. People contain common information, biological knowledge of the world, but each person has an enormous amount of personal, individualized information. You can’t overlook it — without it man is not man. That means that every person is not standard. That means…” “… that all attempts to find the optimum parameters for man with an allowable margin of error of no more than five percent is a waste of time. Fine! Do you feel better?” “No. But that’s the harsh truth.”

  ‘Therefore, we can’t hide in our work from these terrible and mysterious concepts: man’s interests, personality, desires, good and evil… and maybe even the soul? I’m going to quit.”

  “You won’t. By the way, are they really so mysterious, these concepts? In life people all understand what’s what. You know, they judge a base act and say, ‘You know, that was lousy! and everyone agrees.”

  “Everyone except the louse. Which is very much to the point.” He slapped his thighs. “I don’t understand you! It’s not enough that you got burned on the simple word understanding? Now you want to give the computer problems with good and evil? A machine doesn’t catch things between the lines, doesn’t get jokes, is indifferent to good and evil… Why are you laughing?”

  I really was laughing.

  “I don’t understand how you cannot understand me. After all you are me!”

  “That’s tangential. I’m a researcher first, and then I’m Krivoshein, Sidorov, or Petrov!” He was obviously all worked up. “How will we work if we don’t have precise concepts of the crux of the matter?”

  “Well. the way people worked at the dawn of the age of electrotechnology. In those days everyone knew what phlogiston was, but no one had any idea about tension, voltage, or induction. Ampere, Volt, Henry, and Ohm were merely last names. They tested tension with their tongues, the way kids check batteries nowadays. They discovered current by copper buildup on cathodes. But people worked. And we… what’s the matter with you?”

  Now my double was doubled up with laughter.

  “I can just imagine it: twenty years from now there’ll be a unit measuring something and they’ll call it a krivoshein! Oh, I can’t stand it!”

  I fell down on my bed laughing, too.

  “And there’ll be a krivosheinmeter… like an ohmmeter.”

  “And a microkrivoshein or a megakrivoshein… a megakri for short. Ho — ho!”

  I like remembering how we roared. We were obviously unworthy of our discovery. We laughed. We got serious.

  “Historical examples are inspirational, of course,” my double said. “But that’s not it. Galvani could blather as much as he wanted over ‘animal electricity, Zeebeck could stubbornly insist that thermo — stream gave rise not to thermoelectricity, but to thermomag — netism — the nature of things was not altered by that. Sooner or later they hit on the truth, because the important thing was the analysis of information. Analysis! And we’re dealing with synthesis. And here nature is no guideline for man: it builds its own system; he builds his. The only truths for him in this business are possibility and goal. We have the possibility. And the goal? We can’t formulate it.”

  “The goal is simple: for everything to be good.”

  “Again with good?” My double looked at me. “And then we have childish prattle about what is good and what is bad?”

  “Skip the childish prattle! Let’s operate with these arbitrary concepts however clumsy they may be: good, evil, desires, needs, health, talent, stupidity, freedom, love, longing, principle — not because we like them, but because there aren’t any others. They don’t exist!”

  “I have nothing to counter that. There aren’t any others, that’s true.” My double sighed. “I can tell this is going to be a lot of work!”

  “And let’s talk it all out. Yes, things should be good. All the applications of the discovery that we permit to enter the world must be ones that we are sure of, that will not bring any harm to people, only good. And let’s put aside our discussion of how to measure benefit. I don’t know what units it takes.”

  “Krivosheins, of course,” my double countered.

  “Cut it out! But I know something else: the role of an intellectual monster on a world scale does not appeal to me.”

  “Me neither. But just a small question: do you have a plan?”

  “For what?”

  “A method for using the computer — womb so that it only gives benefit to mankind. You see this would be an unprecedented method in the history of science. Nothing that has been invented and is being invented has that magical quality. You can poison yourself with medicine. You can use electricity for lighting homes or for torturing people. Or for launching a rocket with a warhead. And that holds for everything.”

  “No, I don’t have a concrete plan as yet. We don’t know enough. Let’s study the computer — womb and look for that method. It must exist. It’s not important that there is no precedent for it in science — there is no precedent for our discovery either. We will be synthesizing precisely that system that does good and evil, and miracles, and nonsense — man!”

  “That’s all true,” my double agreed after some thought. “Whether we find that great method or not, there’s no point in undertaking work like that without a goal like it. They manage to make people without us, somehow or other….”

  “So, let’s end the session properly, all right?” I suggested. “Let’s make up a work project like in a contract: we the undersigned: humanity, called the client, and the party of the first part; and the heads of the New Systems Laboratory of the Institute of Systemology, V. V. Krivoshein and V. V. Krivoshein, called the Executors, and the party of the second part, agree to the following….”

  “Why so much about a contract and a technical task — after all in this work we represent the interests of the client ourselves. Do it straight and simple!”

  He got up, took down the Astra — 2 cassette recorder from the closet, put it on the table, and turned on the microphone. And we — that is, I, Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein, thirty — four years old, and my artificial double, who appeared on this earth a week ago — two unsentimental, rather ironic people — swore a vow.

  I guess it might have seemed high — flown and ridiculous. There was no fanfare, no flags, no rows of students at ease. The morning sky was pale, and we stood before the mike in our underwear, and the draft from the balcony chilled our feet… but we made the vow in dead earnest.

  And so it will be. No other way.

  Chapter 11

  If, when you come home at night, you mistakenly drink developing fluid instead of water, you might as well have some fixative, or you’ll leave things half — done.

  K. Prutkov — engineer, Thought 21

  The next day we started building an information chamber in the laboratory. We marked off an area of two meters square, covered it with laminated in
sulation panels and dumped into it all the microphones, analyzers, feelers, and objectives — all the sensors that had been strewn colorfully all over the place by the computer — womb. This was our idea: a living object would get into the chamber, and would gambol, feed, fight with one of its own kind, or just ramble, surrounded by sensors, and the computer would receive information for synthesis.

  The “living objects” are calmly chewing their cabbage to this day in their cages in the hall. My double and I were always getting into fights about who would tend them. They were rabbits. I traded the bionics lab a loop oscillograph and a GI — 250 generator lamp for them. One rabbit (Albino Vaska) had something like a bronze crown on his head made out of electrodes implanted for encephalograms.

  On May 7 we had a minor but unpleasant occurrence. Usually my double and I coordinated all our work fairly well, so that we would not appear in public simultaneously or repeat ourselves. But that damned lab of experimental apparatus could drive anyone to distraction.

  Back in the winter I had ordered a universal system of biosensors from the lab. I prepared the blueprints, a mounting diagram, ordered all the necessary materials and parts — they only had to put it together. And it still wasn’t finished! I needed to install the system in the chamber, and I didn’t have it. The trouble was that the lab was chronically changing directors. One guy turns over the work; the other accepts it — naturally there’s no one to do the work. Then the new director has to acquaint himself with the situation, introduce reforms and changes (a new broom sweeps clean), and no work gets done. Meanwhile the people who have placed orders scream and fume, go to Azarov with their complaints, and a new director is put on the job. See above. I even tried influencing the workers directly, slipping them some booze, getting P657 transistors for their radios — and to no avail. Eventually the reserve of people willing to head that lab dried out, and H. H. Hilobok took over, while continuing his other duties, at half pay — Harry is like this: he’ll take on any job. He’ll organize anything, reorganize, so long as he is not left one on one with nature, with those horrible pieces of equipment that can’t be bossed and bullied but which show things as they really are and what needs to be done.