Self-discovery

by Vladimir Savchenko

  Krivoshein tipped the fish tank over the pool and started the stopwatch. The students leaned over the edge. A streak of black lightning sped to the gray — tiled bottom of the pool, made a circle, another, crossed the green light over the cylinder. Apparently blinded by that, the eel bumped into the opposite wall and reeled back.

  Suddenly the light in the pool got brighter — and in the green light Krivoshein saw something that made his skin crawl: the eel got trapped in the wires that held the graphite rods, the regulators of the reactor, and was struggling among them! One rod fell out of its case and flew off like a green stick into the water. The light got even brighter.

  “Everyone back!” Quickly appraising the situation, the pale Valerno barked a command. His baritone was flat. “Please leave at once!” He pulled the emergency alarm. The contacts of the automatic blocking device clicked. The light in the water blinked, as though they were doing arc welding in the pool, and got even brighter. The students, covering their faces, raced from the exits. There was a crush at the door.

  “Please stay calm, comrades!” Valerno shouted in a real falsetto. “The concentration of uranium — 235 in the heat — generating elements is not enough for an atomic explosion! There will only be a heat explosion, like in a steam engine!” “Oh, God!” some exclaimed.

  The doors cracked. A girl screamed. Someone cursed. The freckled four — eyes, not losing his head, grabbed a very heavy Sl — 8 synchronoscope from the table, and threw it through the window, following it rapidly…. The room was empty in a few seconds.

  In the first moment of panic Krivoshein followed the rest, but stopped himself and went over to the reactor. Rapid, large bubbles rose from the cylinder and the water churned. Instead of the quiet glow there was a green bonfire in the water. The eel was quiet, but the graphite rods that it had knocked out were crisscrossed and wedged against one another.

  “When the water splashes up, there’ll be a cloud of radioactive steam all over,” Krivoshein thought feverishly. “That’s as bad as an atomic blast. Can I do it? I’m scared. Well! What good are all my experiments, if I’m scared? And what if I end up like the eel? The hell with it!”

  (Even now Krivoshein couldn’t believe it. How could he have done it? Had he decided that he was invincible? Or was it the thinking of a motorcyclist who has to pass between two oncoming trucks — the important thing is don’t think, just go forward! The intoxicating instant of danger, the roar of the trucks, and with a beating heart you tear out into the asphalt expanse! But this wasn’t an instant — and it was quite possible he could end up along with the dead eel on the pool bottom.)

  The motorcyclist’s daring hit him. Tearing off his buttons, he undressed, put his leg over the edge, and — “Stop, Val! Think!” — went to the counter, and put on rubber gloves and goggles (“Wish I had an Aqua — lung!”). He filled his lungs with air and plunged into the pool.

  Even at a distance from the reactor the water was warm. “A thousand one, a thousand two….” Krivoshein, instinctively turning his face away, walked across the slippery tiles to the middle of the pool. His rubber gloves were in contact with something, and he had to look: the eel, hanging in a loop between the wires, was there. “A thousand ten, a thousand eleven,” and carefully, so as not to disturb the rods, he pulled at the dead fish. “Thousand sixteen….” His hands got hot, and he instinctively wanted to pull away, but he controlled the impulse and slowly extracted the eel from the jumble. The goggles weren’t so hermetic, and streams of radioactive water seeped into his eyes. He squinted. “Thousand twenty, a thousand twenty — one” — he got it out! The green glow flickered, and the rods silently slipped back into the cylinder. It got dark in the pool.

  “A thousand twenty — five!” With a sharp push Krivoshein came up to the wall, jumped out of the water, grabbed the edge, and climbed over. “A thousand thirty….”

  He had the presence of mind to hop around to get the excess water off his body; he even rolled around on the floor. He wiped his face and eyes dry with his pants. “Just don’t let me get blind before I get there.” He dressed haphazardly and ran out of the room.

  The radiation counter howled harshly as he went by. An automatic barrier blocked his path. He jumped over it and ran across the freshly dug lawn to his dorm.

  “A thousand seventy; a thousand seventy — one,” his brain continued to count. It was twilight and he avoided meeting acquaintances; but someone called after him near zone B: “Hey, Val, where’s the fire? He thought it was Nechinorov, a graduate student. “A thousand eighty, a thousand eighty — one….” His skin ached and itched and then it was pierced by a million needles. That was his nervous system, honed in previous experiments, telling him that the protons and gamma — quanta from the decayed nuclei were shooting the molecules of protein in the cells of the epithelium, in the nerve endings of the skin, breaking through the walls of the blood vessels, and wounding the red and white corpuscles. “A thousand hundred. thousand hundred five….” Now the prickling had moved to his muscles, stomach, and under his skull. His lungs were congested as though he had taken a deep draw on the crudest homegrown tobacco in the world. That was the blood carrying the exploded atoms and fractured proteins all over his body.

  “A thousand two hundred five… two hundred eight… idiot, what have you done? Two hundred twelve….” He no longer had the idea, the impetus. There was only fear. He wanted to live. He was getting nauseating cramps in his stomach, and his mouth was filled with copper — tasting saliva. Bumping into the massive front door as he ran in, Krivoshein realized that he was dizzy. He was seeing black. “Two hundred forty — one… will I make it?” He had to get up to the fourth floor. He slapped himself as he ran, and his head got clearer.

  Twilight rushed into the dark room with him. For the first few seconds Krivoshein circled the room aimlessly and weakly. The fear, that biological fear that cannot be controlled, that makes a wounded animal head for his lair, had almost killed him: he had forgotten what to do. He felt terribly sorry for himself. His body was filled with a ringing weakness and his consciousness was slipping away. “Well, so go ahead and perish, you fool,” he thought listlessly and felt a wave of extreme anger. And that’s what saved him.

  His clothes, spotted with green like lichen on trees, fell on the floor. The room got even lighter; his feet glowed, and his hair and vein pattern were visible on his hands. Krivoshein ran into the shower and turned it on. The cold water poured over him, sobering him up, over his head and body, forming an irridescent pool of emerald green on the floor, and refreshed him long enough to gather his thoughts and will power.

  Now, like a strategist, he commanded the battle for survival that was raging in his body. Blood, blood, blood, was rushing through his entire body! The feverish pounding of his heart resounded in his temples. Myriad capillaries washed damaged molecules and particles from every cell in his muscles and glands and sucked them out from the lymph nodes. The white corpuscles surrounded them, breaking them down to elemental particles, and carried them off into the spleen, the lungs, the liver, kidneys, intestines, tossed them into the sweat glands. “Cover the bone vessels!” he instructed the nerves, remembering in time that radioactivity could settle in bone marrow, which produced blood cells.

  Several minutes passed. Now he was exhaling radioactive air with faintly glowing vapors, spitting out glowing saliva that had collected the decayed radioactive cells of the brain and muscles, washing off greenish drops of sweat from his body, and urinating a beautiful emerald green stream. After an hour his excretions no longer glowed, but his body still ached.

  And so he spent three hours in the shower. He swallowed water washed himself off, and threw out all the harmful radiation from his body. He came back to his room after midnight, unsteady on his feet from weakness and physical emaciation. He pushed his glowing clothes into a corner and fell onto his bed. Sleep!

  The next day he was very thirsty. He dropped by the radiometrics lab, used the Geiger counter all over hi
s body. The apparatus crackled as usual, noting random cosmic particles.

  “My God, when did you lose all that weight?” Nechinorov asked as he ran into him at a lecture….

  “Yes, in terms of results, that was a major experiment,” chuckled the graduate student. “I conquered a fatal dose of radiation! But in terms of performance… no, those experiments are no joke. It’s better to do it his way.”

  July 27. I have a great quantity of doubles and monsters. I set the normal rabbits free on the grounds, and the monsters I take out one at a time in a satchel and take them to the other side of the Dnieper.

  That’s it. The pleasure of the novelty has worn off. I’m disgusted by this mockery of nature: it’s only a rabbit, but it is alive. The ones who squint at themselves suspiciously, two heads on the same body… ugh! But, what the hell! I’ve discovered a method of controlling biological synthesis. I tested it and developed it. Science in the long run creates methods, not constructions, not things, not objects, but methods — how to do it all. And no researcher would ever pass up a chance to squeeze every possibility from his method.

  By the way, yesterday there was a new dish at the institute cafeteria — roast rabbit with new potatoes, forty — five kopeks. Let’s just call it a coincidence. But even that’s a possible application of the discovery: breeding rabbits, as well as cows, for meat, improving the breeds. With an industrial application this method would have to be better than standard methods.

  Tomorrow I’m going back to experiment on the synthesis of man. The methodology is clear, there’s no point in dragging it out. And the very thought of it makes me drool. To go back to the synthesis of man… it was one thing when my double appeared on his own, almost by accident, the way it happens in life; it’ll be another thing to prepare a human being consciously, like a rabbit. In essence, I won’t be ‘going back’ to this, I’ll be beginning.

  What kind of a creature is man, that I can’t work with him as calmly as I do with a rabbit?

  Let’s set up some perspective here. The megagalaxy, a cloud of stars, floats in the black void. There is a lentil — shaped dust mote of stars in it — our Milky Way. At the edge of it, our Sun, and around it, the planets. On one of them — not the largest, and not the smallest — live people. Three and a half billion, that’s not so many. If you line them up in formation, all of humanity can be seen from the Eiffel Tower. If you put them together, you would get a cube with each side a kilometer long, that’s all. A cubic kilometer of living and thinking matter, a molecule in the universe…. And so what?

  What? That I’m a human being too. One of them. Not the lowest and not the highest. Not the smartest, and not the dumbest. Not the first, and not the last. And yet I feel that I am all of that. And I feel responsible for everything.

  Chapter 15

  In caring about your neighbor, the important thing is not to overdo it.

  K. Prutkov — engineer, Thought 33

  July 29. I’m sitting in the information chamber, surrounded by sensors, the Monomakh’s Crown on my head. I’m keeping a diary because there’s absolutely nothing else to do. I’ll be sleeping here this week, too, on a cot.

  So I’m sitting around, thinking wise thoughts.

  Thus, man. The highest form of living matter.

  A carcass of hollow bones, flexible clumps of protein, which contain what scientists and engineers are trying to analyze and re — create in logical circuits and electronic models — life, a complex, constantly functioning and constantly changing system. Millions of bits of information penetrate us every second through the nerve endings of our eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue and are turned into electrical impulses. If they are amplified, you can hear the characteristic “Drrrr… dr…” in their dynamics. The bionics people played it for me once. The machine — gun volleys of impulses spread along the nerves, increase or engulf one another, and stick in the molecular memory cells. A huge processing unit, the brain, sorts them, compares them with the chemical recording of the internal program that contains everything — dreams and wishes, duty and goal, survival instinct and hunger, love and hate, habits and knowledge, superstition and curiosity — and makes up the commands for the executive organs. And people talk, run, kiss, write poetry and denunciations, orbit in space, scratch their heads, shoot, push buttons, bring up children, meditate….

  What’s the most important thing?

  I’m getting a picture of method for the controlled synthesis of man. You can introduce additional information and thereby alter the form and content of man. This will come — we’re moving toward it. But what information should be introduced? What alterations should be made? Take me, for instance. Let’s say that a computer will be synthesizing me (especially since it already has): what would I like changed?

  You can’t answer that off the bat. I’m used to myself. I’m much more interested in people around me than in myself. We all know what we want from other people: that they don’t interfere with our lives. But what do we want from ourselves?

  Yesterday I had the following conversation:

  “Tell me, Lena, what kind of a son would you like?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean how would you like to see him as an adult?”

  “Handsome, healthy, smart, and talented. honest and kind. About your height, say… no, maybe a little taller! He could become a violinist, and I would go to his concerts. He could look like… oh, God, why did you bring it up? Oh, I see. You’ve decided to propose! Right? How interesting! Do it right, according to all the traditions, and I might say yes. Well!”

  “Hmmmmmm… no, I was just asking….”

  “Oh, just asking! An abstract son, so to speak?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Then you should be discussing it with an abstract woman, not with me!”

  Women take things very concretely.

  However, from what she said, one quality can be singled out — to be smart. That’s what I know about.

  Logical thought in humans works at a much lower level than it does in electronic systems. The speed of processing information is pathetic: fifteen to twenty bits per second. That’s why they always have to plug in “buffers.” Ask a person, unexpectedly, something very simple, like

  “What time is it?” and you’ll get an answer like “huh?” or “what?” This doesn’t mean he is deaf — simply that in the time that you take to repeat the question he’s thinking furiously for an answer. Sometimes that time isn’t enough, and then you get “hmmm, well… let’s see… the best way to put it… is… hmmmm….”

  Time for a smoke break. I’ve been here too long. Freedom!

  The morning is like a violin melody. The greenery is fresh. The sky is blue. The air is pure.

  There goes Pasha Fartkin on his way to the institute garage. He’s a lathe operator, a drunkard, and a sneak; he manfully bears the burden of his last name on his sloping shoulders. I’ll test it out on him!

  “Tell me, Pasha, what do you want from life on a morning like this?”

  “Valentin Vasilyevich!” He seemed to be waiting for the question, looking at me with joy and amazement. “I’ll be honest with you, like a brother: ten rubles until payday! I swear to God I’ll pay you back!”

  In my confusion, I take out a ten, give it to him, and only then realize that Pasha never pays his debts to anyone, it’s never been recorded.

  “Thanks, Valentin Vasilyevisch. I’ll never forget you for this!” Fartkin put away the money quickly. His puffy face expressed sadness that he hadn’t asked for more. “And what do you want from life on this beautiful morning?”

  “Well… actually… you see… well… to get the money back at least.”

  “Don’t you worry!” Pasha said and went on.

  Hmmmmmm… what happened? Does that mean that my logical thinking is weak, too? Strange. My nervous system processes a veritable Niagara Falls of information, and with its help I make complex movements impossible for any machine (writing, for instance) and yet I
can’t think fast enough to…. In a word I should prepare information on how to be smart and think fast for introduction into the computer — womb. If God didn’t give it to me, the least I can do is make sure my double has it. Let him be smarter than me.

  August 3. Yes, but in order to introduce information into the computer, you have to have it. And it doesn’t exist.

  I’m dividing my time now between the information chamber and the library. I’ve gone through a ton of books — and nothing.

  I could increase the volume of the double’s brain. That wouldn’t be hard. I can watch the brain appear. But there is no correlation between brain weight and the mind: Anatole France’s brain weighed a kilogram; Turgenev’s brain, two kilos; and one cretin’s brain almost made three kilos: 2 kilos 850 grams.

  I could increase the surface of the cortex or the number of ridges. That’s just as easy. But there is no correlation between the number of ridges and intellect: a woodpecker has many more ridges than our close relative the orangutan. So much for birdbrains!

  I know what man’s mind is related to: the quick action of our nerve cells. This is perfectly clear, and for electronic machines the quickness is the most important thing. If the computer doesn’t solve the problem in the short time it takes for the fuel to burn in the launching rocket — the rocket, instead of going into orbit, will fall on the ground.

  Most mistakes we make are analogous: we don’t solve the problem in the given time; we don’t have time to figure things out. The problems in life are no simpler than bringing a rocket into orbit. And time is always critical. It’s terrifying to think how many mistakes are made in the world just because we can only process two dozen bits of information in a second instead of two hundred bits!

  And so what? There are zillions of articles, reports, and monographs on the perfection of logic and the speeding up of work of computers (even though they can already do close to ten million operations a second) — and nothing about improving the logic and speed of human thought. The dobbler goes around without boots.