by Tom Aston
‘Fucking lawyers wouldn’t allow me to switch it on in the US,’ said Semyonov dismissively. ‘It’s a world-changing development. Historic. Yet all those guys can think of is their “corporate liabilities”. Protecting their sorry, Harvard-educated asses.’
‘Come on, Semyonov. If you run away to China, Uncle Sam wants to know what you’ve been up to. Your government was never going to sit idly by. The FBI and SearchIgnition have over a hundred software analysts trying to figure out the code and algorithms running your search engines.’
‘They haven’t even cracked the encryption,’ said Semyonov with a sneer. ‘And when they do they’re in for a whole new world of pain trying to figure out how the programs work.’
‘Like a crossword puzzle in a language you can’t even imagine?’ said Stone.
‘Worse. Things have moved on, Stone. This isn’t the kiddie programs I wrote in prison. No more Chinese characters. This is many levels above that. They may as well try to analyse a rock.’
‘The Machine is even worse than the search engine technology, I’m guessing.’
‘Much worse,’ said Semyonov, croaking. ‘Last time I looked, it had been upgrading itself. I could barely figure it out myself, and I built it. That was weeks ago.’
‘It’s bringing itself up to sentience?’
‘Possibly,’ said Semyonov. No wonder he wanted to get his hands back on it.
‘But I still don’t get how it works,’ said Virginia, almost to herself. ‘I get that it’s a computer that comes up with these ideas.’
‘More than ideas. Breakthroughs, my dear — detailed plans and blueprints. It comes up with new devices, new chemicals, new processes to make them, new alloys, materials… It’s simply sweats great ideas. They’re coming out every few seconds. Even Oyang couldn’t use more than a fraction of them.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Virginia. ‘How does it know anything to start with? How is the Machine producing all this technology just by sitting there in a hole in the ground, thinking to itself? How does it even know what people want?’
Semyonov was sitting in the sterile plastic underclothes. The blood was slick and damp on the inside, the red clearly visible through the blurred sheeting. Then he began to put on light cotton shirt and trousers with the male nurse.
‘Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘Your friend Steven here pretty much invented Internet search technology. Semyonov’s search engine technology basically sucks up the whole of the Internet and indexes it, so that people can find things. Semyonov took all that information — the whole of the Internet — and packed in into the Machine. That Machine was loaded up with a copy of every page, of every web site, every research paper, every engineering textbook, every marketing blurb, idea, and sci-fi story in existence. It takes all that and munches through it, making connections. The Machine has one purpose: to take that planet-full of information and ideas, fit it all together, and come up with new ideas,’ said Stone, still staring through the plastic at Semyonov. ‘It looks like it worked pretty well.’
‘And Oyang?’ asked Virginia.
‘Oyang was on the take,’ said Stone. ‘He blew the whole thing wide open by cherry picking ideas, getting patents and selling them. Some of the weapons he manufactured in that place in Shanghai. It was never going to go unnoticed. Now thanks to Oyang, everyone who has any notion of what the Machine can do, wants to get their hands on it. China, the US, Russia…’
‘But without me, they’re wasting their time,’ said Semyonov. ‘I’m impressed, though. That you figured it out.’ Behind the curtain, he was weakly trying to clap his bleeding hands together.
Stone was impressed too. He was astonished. He wouldn’t have managed it without Carslake — he was a dark horse.
The big white man was suffering, forced to wear clothes and make-up for the trip. It was irritating, painful. He seemed buoyed nonetheless. Perhaps he felt unburdened. ‘For your information,’ said Semyonov after a while, ‘There is nothing down there in that mine that is new or special to me. Just something I want to get out. There are problems down that hole which I never suspected. But congratulations. You have just volunteered to help me go to the Machine and bring it out.’ Semyonov struggled to his feet and stood gasping for breath. ‘I suppose I should feel gratitude. But these days, that emotion does not come easily to me. We must go,’ he said. ‘The clothes and make-up are itching and irritating. But not yet excruciating as they will be in a couple of hours. When we arrive at the crater, Virginia will explain what must be done. We may as well get on with it. Time is not exactly on my side.’
Finally, finally, Stone was beginning to see where Semyonov was coming from. He wasn’t an evil man — just obsessed. There are people who start a business, or take up a sport. They start off by giving it their all. Some people’s commitment tails off, but others plunge in and give it more than their all. There are millions of people who neglect their partners and kids for their work — not because they are bad people, but because their work takes over. It defines them, and they love it. They spend less and less time with their families and even when they do see their kids they’re thinking of their work. If things get in the way of that one thing in their lives, it frustrates them like hell.
Semyonov’s frustration must be a thousand times greater. For outside of his work, his programming, his achievements — he had nothing. No woman, no child, nothing to enjoy. He was in constant pain and he was going to die. He’d neglected everything — friends, relationships, now even his business empire at SearchIgnition. He'd let it all go. All he wanted was the Machine — to give it to the world and show how brilliant he was. He’d tried to do it in the US, but SearchIgnition’s lawyers had stopped him. So now he’d placed a copy deep below ground in China. And if he couldn’t get it out of there, everything his brilliant mind had ever done would have been for nothing.
Chapter 65–10:54pm 13 April — Flight, Ningbo to Sichuan, China
They had flown by helicopter to Ningbo, to be met by Semyonov’s personal airliner.
Semyonov’s Chinese-made MA600 airliner was painted matte black. Which suggested he only travelled at night. The plane had followed the silver banner of the Yangze westwards, past the brightly lit cities and towns, on past the Brocade City, and now they were over the black wilderness of Western Sichuan.
Stone, Virginia and Carslake sat up front, while Semyonov was on a gurney to the rear with a small medical team.
‘Underground nuclear tests? Shoot! I hope not,’ said Virginia. She was trying to explain the layout of the crater, without even having seen it herself. She’d listened to Semyonov and made notes on lined paper in her All-A student’s handwriting. Now she was relaying the information to Stone and Carslake.
‘The monks said there’d been nuclear tests,’ said Stone. ‘Why else would that huge circle of ground be barren?’
‘That would mean it’s dangerous, right?’ she said.
‘Er… yes,’ said Stone. Carslake rolled his eyes. He had to stop doing that with women.
‘I don’t think so. Steven would have told me,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you what Steven said, ‘The “anomaly”, he calls it.’ Then she read from the notes in front of her. ‘The anomaly is the result of an asteroid strike from seventy million years ago. The reason there were mines here, for iron and all manner of unusual metals, is that they were present in the asteroid. This asteroid created a gravitational and magnetic anomaly.’
Carslake’s eyebrows had shot up his forehead. It made Stone want to laugh. Virginia had just explained Carslake’s precious underground radar pictures. The whole mystery.
Virginia read on, ‘”Chinese miners discovered three percent fissile uranium isotopes deep underground during the Nineteen Sixties.”’ She stopped herself. ‘What the heck does that mean?’
‘It’s like finding enriched, reactor-grade uranium lying around in the ground’ said Stone. He wondered himself how he knew some of these things. A macabre interest in the technology of death, i
f he was honest. He went on, ‘What I think Semyonov means, is that three percent of the uranium they found was of the fissile isotope, Uranium 235.’ Stone felt his ears register a pressure increase. They would be landing soon. In the crater.
‘Fissile? As opposed to what?’ she asked.
‘The decayed Uranium 238,’ said Stone. ‘The Uranium 235 decays much more quickly, and that means it’s rare. In the four billion years the earth has been around, wherever you look on earth, the uranium had decayed to where it’s only 0.7 percent fissile. That’s why you have to enrich it to 2.7 percent to make nuclear fuel, and even more to make a weapon. I guess the three percent concentration here was because the uranium landed in the meteor.’
Virginia looked at him suspiciously. ‘Sometimes you sound like a real professor. It’s not a great look, Stone.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said. There was renewed activity at the back of the cabin, where the medical team in white suits and masks were preparing Semyonov for the landing with padded plastic straps.
Virginia continued, ‘You could be right though. This is what I wrote when Steven was telling me. I have to read Steven’s words verbatim, because I’ve no idea what it all means.’ She began to read. ‘“It was known that at three percent uranium 235, a natural nuclear reaction could occur in the ground. French scientists had identified the phenomenon at a site in Gabon, West Africa in the early Sixties. All that was needed was ground water, which would act as a neutron moderator.” I mean, what the hell? “It would also naturally control the reaction. As the water boiled off in the heat, and pressure increased, the fission would stop, and begin again when water re-entered the deposit.”’
Stone was gently clapping his hands. You had to hand it to Semyonov. ‘How fascinating is that? They discovered the reactor grade uranium, and realised that all they had to do was to force water into the ground, and they would have a permanent supply of nuclear energy, self-regulating, spouting right out of the ground. No wonder Lin Biao was interested.’
‘So what difference does any of this make?’ asked Carslake. ‘I mean, did they build the reactor or what?’
‘It looks like the discovery was reported to Lin Biao, and nothing was pursued after his death,’ said Stone. ‘Meanwhile, the spoil from the mine threw poisonous heavy metals around the crater and killed off all the trees and plants. That explains the barren crater. There was no nuclear test.’
‘Jeez,’ said Virginia. ‘No wonder they closed the place up. Anyhow, they blew up the workings in 1980 when they saw what damage the pollution had done.
‘What about the Machine?’ said Carslake. ‘Where is it? We have to go into a poisoned fucking mine?’
A grave, strained voice spoke from behind them. ‘The Machine is held in a cylinder, twenty inches in diameter.’ It was Semyonov. ‘As Virginia said, the mine is closed, the workings were blown in 1980. But the Machine and all its data are held in that cylinder. It’s five feet long and twenty inches in diameter. Half a mile below the ground.’
‘If the mine is blocked, how did it get in there?’
‘A shaft,’ said Semyonov. ‘We drilled a service shaft a half a mile deep and lowered the Machine into the deepest of the old workings. The shaft is barely twenty-two inches wide. That’s why the cylinder had to be so small.’
‘Hold on,’ said Carslake. ‘You’re talking about the whole of the information from the whole of the Internet here. Plus some incredible level of processing power to analyse it. How does it fit it something barely bigger than an office file server?’
‘Supercooled to minus two hundred. The most efficient, densest database ever built.’
‘It must eat the power,’ said Carslake. ‘How the hell do you supply that much power half a mile below ground? I didn’t see any power lines around the crater.’
‘I think we know the answer to that,’ said Stone. ‘There’s plenty of power down there already. It’s the reason he chose this mine, with it’s own nuke power source. Did you design all this, Semyonov? Or did…’
‘Correct,’ said Semyonov, voice still straining. They were coming in to land. ‘It designed itself. Even chose the location. Who knows what else it’s done in the weeks its been down there.’ There was a roar of the cool night air outside as the undercarriage deployed. ‘Carslake was right all along,’ said Semyonov. ‘There is an alien intelligence at the bottom of that hole. But I created it.’
It was still three hours before morning prayers when the black turboprop droned over the monastery. Panchen stirred, half-awake on the wood floor of his cell. There was a creak from the wooden boards of the corridor. A small creak, from a light body. Velvet steps. Panchen sat bold upright, his neck and shoulder muscles taught in the perfumed darkness. That tiny creak from the floorboards. He’d heard it before.
She slid past the door, and he smelt her soft musk. She spoke in Chinese.
Chapter 66–12:54am 14 April — Garze Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China
Lin Biao may be a footnote in history, but his many palatial bomb shelters and bunkers are dotted all over China. Some were let to ruin, some are museums, some curios, and one or two have even been turned into hotels. Lin Biao’s legacy. Now, there was one guy who was prepared for when the thermonuclear shit hit the fan.
Lin Biao’s fantastical apartments a few metres below the rocky surface had something of the Robert Oyang about them, except they were forty years old and very damp. Weird, impossibly ornate, and with a feeling that time had stopped.
Each chamber was hewn straight from the dark grey rock, including the enormous, high-ceilinged living area. Besides the living rooms there was a true warren of passages and tunnels down there, quite separate from where the mine workings would have been. It was like living in a movie set from Journey to the Centre of the Earth, except the lighting was worse. Much worse. And above all it was damp. Warm air space-heaters crouched like small jet engines in every room, droning away. It seemed to have no effect. Stone could see his breath in the large room, and rivulets of damp water ran down the walls. Whether it was condensation, or natural groundwater — it didn’t matter.
There were ancient, uncomfortable-looking sofas and easy chairs with lace and chintz. It had the feel of Beijing Fordidden City meets miner’s cottage, and it reminded Stone of his grandmother and her cold, unwelcoming “frontroom”. The one she “kept for best”. Which meant she never went in, and never lit the fire in there. “Kept for best” meant cold, musty and damp. Lin Biao’s underground palazzo had been “kept for best” for nearly forty years. The “bedrooms” were stone cells. Nicely furnished with high ceilings and narrow but comfy-looking beds. But damp, stone cells nonetheless. It must have been the height of luxury in the China of the Cultural Revolution. But now, above all, it was simply “kept for best”.
Stone joined Virginia in the vast main “reception” hall of Lin Biao’s underground apartments. ‘Let’s get that supercooled trashcan out of the ground and get out of here,’ said Virginia. ‘Steven’s not going to last much longer if we stay here.’
That was wishful thinking from Virginia. Semyonov wasn’t going to last much longer — period. Which was why they were all here. If Semyonov died without downloading and unlocking what was inside the Machine, it would be lost forever. Pioneering whole new fields of technology, but cut off, half a mile below the ground, thinking its great thoughts century after century.
Semyonov’s “cleantent” had been installed down there, underground, in the middle of Lin Biao’s apartments. It was in the cavernous reception room — a kind of hallway and living room combined, with high ceiling cut out of the rock, tens of metres below the surface.
Stone had to talk to Semyonov through the sheeting again. ‘What’s the score with the Machine down there? Do I just attach the cable and hoist it to the surface? It can’t be that simple.’
‘No,’ said Semyonov, panting. ‘It can’t.’ He had to breathe heavily, like an athlete before a race, desperately oxygenating hi
s blood for the supreme effort. Except for Semyonov the supreme effort was a short conversation with Stone. Semyonov spoke quickly, as if to get it out before he tired again. ‘The Machine is just over 100 kilograms, Stone, although it looks heavier. The meat of it is in a stack of fifty-three disks of gallium arsenide substrate. The processor is a hemispherical array of 2,048 synapse points, triggered by a high powered laser. That’s why we need the superconductor, and the cooling system. We finally got away from binary computing. There’s a small battery, mainly just to smooth the power supply. It’ll give us a few hours in hibernate mode once you’ve powered down.’ Semyonov paused breathing heavily once more from an oxygen mask to prime his lungs.
‘Down there, there are three elements to the equipment,’ said Semyonov. ‘First the cylinder of the Machine. Then, a heavy UPS unit. Uninterruptible power supply, like a huge stack of batteries. It takes the power from the nuke turbines, smooths it and feeds it into the Machine. Once you’ve powered down, it will have enough charge to bring it up the shaft to the surface, so long as you leave the power connected until the last minute.’
‘What’s the third part?’
Semyonov pump-primed his lungs again to reply. ‘The cooler. It’s a large unit producing liquid nitrogen to cool the Machine. Again, it’s powered by the nuke plant. You’ll see the power lines: all three parts are mounted on a kind of wheeled platform, so you can move them around together, though you’ll have to disconnect the main power from the reactor before you do.’