by Isaac Asimov
He said, “Bucephalus, Alexander the Great had conquered the ancient world by the time he was thirty. I want to do the same thing. That gives me twelve more years.”
Bucephalus knew all about Alexander the Great, since the Encyclopedia had given him all the details.
He said, “Alexander the Great was the son of the King of Macedon and by the time he was your age, he had led his father’s cavalry to victory at the great battle at Chaeronea.”
Alexander said, “No, no. I’m not talking about battles and phalanxes and things like that. I want to conquer the world by coming to own it.”
“How could you own it, Alexander?”
“You and I, Bucephalus,” said Alexander, “are going to study the stock market.”
The New York Times had long since put all its microfilmed records into computerized form and for Alexander it was not at all a difficult task to tap into that information.
For days, weeks, months, Bucephalus transferred over a century of data on the stock market into its own memory banks—all the stocks listed, all the shares sold for each on each day, the ups and downs, even the applicable news on the financial pages. Alexander was forced to extend the computer’s memory circuits and to work out a daring new system for information retrieval. Reluctantly, he sold a simplified version of one of the circuits he had developed to IBM and in this way became quite well-to-do. He bought a neighboring apartment in which he might eat and sleep. The first apartment was now given over entirely to Bucephalus.
When he was twenty, Alexander felt he was ready to start his campaign.
“Bucephalus,” he said, “I am ready, and so are you. You know everything there is to know about the stock market. You have in your memory every transaction and every event, and you keep it all up to date to the very second because you are hooked into the computer at the New York Stock Exchange, and you will soon be hooked into the exchanges in London, Tokyo, and elsewhere.”
“Yes, Alexander,” said Bucephalus, “but what is it you wish me to do with all the information?”
“I am certain,” said Alexander, his eyes gleaming in steely, determined fashion, “that the values and fluctuations of the Market are not random. I feel that nothing is. You must go through all the data, studying all the values and all the changes in the values and all the rates of changes of the values, until you can analyze them into cycles and combinations of cycles.”
“Are you referring to a Fourier analysis?” asked Bucephalus.
“Explain that to me.”
Bucephalus presented him with a printout from the Encyclopedia together with supplements from other information in his memory banks.
Alexander glanced at it briefly, and said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing.”
“To what end, Alexander?”
“Once you have the cycles, Bucephalus, you will be able to predict the course of the stock market in the following day, week, month, according to the swing of the cycles, and you will be able to direct me in my investments. I will quickly grow rich. You will also direct me how to obscure my own involvement so that the world will not know how rich I am, or who it is who has such an influential finger on world events.”
“To what end, Alexander?”
“So that when I am rich enough, when I control the Earth’s financial institutions, its commerce, its business, its resources, I will have done in reality what Alexander the Great did only in part. I will be Alexander the Really Great.” His eyes glittered with delight at the thought.
By the time Alexander was twenty-two, he was satisfied that Bucephalus had worked out the complicated set of cycles that would serve to predict the behavior of the stock market.
Bucephalus was less certain. He said, “In addition to the natural cycles that control such things, there are also unpredictable events in the world of politics and international affairs. There are unpredictable turns of weather, disease, and scientific advance.”
Alexander said, “Not at all, Bucephalus. All such things also go in cycles. You will study the general news columns of the New York Times and absorb it all in order to allow for these supposedly unpredictable events. You will then find they are predictable. Other great newspapers, here and abroad, will be yours to study. They are all microfilmed and computerized and we can go back for a century or more. Besides, you do not have to be totally accurate. If you are right eighty-five percent of the time, that will do, for now.”
It did do. When Bucephalus felt that the stock market would go up or that it would go down, he was invariably right. When he pointed to particular stocks that were headed for long-term rises or declines, he was almost always right.
By the time Alexander was twenty-four he was worth five million dollars and his income had risen to tens of thousands of dollars per day. What’s more, his books were so complicated and the money so laundered that it would have taken another computer just like Bucephalus to track it all down and force Alexander to pay more than a pittance to the I.R.S.
It was not even difficult. Bucephalus had entered all the tax statutes into its memory as well as a score of textbooks on corporation management. Thanks to Bucephalus, Alexander controlled a dozen corporations without any sign of that control being visible.
Bucephalus said, “Are you rich enough, Alexander?”
“Surely you jest,” said Alexander. “I am as yet a financial pip-squeak, a batboy in the minor leagues. When I am a billionaire, I will be a power in the financial set, but I will still be only one among a handful. It is only when I am a multi-trillionaire that I will be able to control governments and force my will upon the world. And I have only six years left.”
Bucephalus’s understanding of the stock market, and of the ways of the world, grew each year. His advice remained always useful and his deviousness in threading financial tentacles through the centers of world power remained always skillful.
Yet he grew doubtful, too. “There may be trouble, Alexander,” he said.
“Nonsense,” said Alexander. “Alexander the Really Great cannot be stopped.”
By the time Alexander was twenty-six, he was a billionaire. The entire apartment building was now his and all of it was given over to Bucephalus, and to all the offshoots of its enormous memory. The tentacles of Bucephalus now stretched invisibly outward to all the computers in the world. Softly, gently, all of them responded to Alexander’s will as expressed through Bucephalus.
Bucephalus said, “It grows more difficult somehow, Alexander. My estimates of future development are not as good as they have been.”
Alexander said impatiently, “You are dealing with more and more variables. There is nothing to worry about. I shall double your complexity, then double it again.”
“It is not complexity that is needed,” said Bucephalus. “All the cycles that I have worked out in ever-increasing complexity predict the future in fine detail only because things that now take place are the same as have taken place in the past, so that the response is the same. If something entirely new happens, then all the cycles will fail—”
Alexander said, peremptorily, “There is nothing new under the sun. Go through history and you’ll find that there are only changes in detail. I will conquer the world, but I am only one more conqueror in a long line stretching back to Sargon of Agade. The development of a high-tech society repeats certain advances in medieval China and in the ancient Hellenistic kingdoms. The Black Death was a repetition of the earlier plagues in the times of Marcus Aurelius and of Pericles. Even the devastation of the wars of nations in the twentieth century repeats the devastation of the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The differences in detail can be allowed for and, in any case, I order you to continue, and you must obey my orders.”
“I must,” agreed Bucephalus.
By the time Alexander was twenty-eight, he was the richest man who had ever lived, with assets that even Bucephalus could not estimate closely. Certainly it was over a hundred billion and his income was in the tens of milli
ons a day.
No nation was any longer truly independent and nowhere could any sizable group of human beings take any action that would seriously discommode Alexander.
There was peace in the world because Alexander did not wish any of his property destroyed. There was firm order in the world because Alexander did not wish to be disturbed. For the same reason, there was no freedom. All must do exactly as Alexander willed.
“I am almost there, Bucephalus,” said Alexander. “In two more years, it will be completely beyond the power of any human being to discommode me. I will then reveal myself, and all of human science will be bent to one task, and one task only, that of making me immortal. I will no longer be even Alexander the Really Great. I will become Alexander the God and all human beings will worship me.”
Bucephalus said, “But I have gone as far as I can go. I may no longer be able to protect you from the viscissitudes of chance.”
“That can’t be so, Bucephalus,” said Alexander, impatiently. “Do not quail. Weigh all the variables and arrange to pour into my hands whatever of Earth’s wealth still exists outside it.”
“I don’t think I can, Alexander,” said Bucephalus. “I have discovered a factor in human history that I cannot weigh. It is something completely new that does not fit into any of the cycles.”
“There can be nothing new,” said Alexander, now in a fury. “Do not hang back. I order you to proceed.”
“Very well, then,” said Bucephalus, with a remarkably human sigh.
Alexander knew that Bucephalus was straining at this one last, greatest task, and he was confident that at any moment, it would be accomplished. The world would then be his entirely and through all eternity. “What is this something new?” he asked with a flicker of curiosity.
“Myself,” said Bucephalus, in a whisper. “Nothing like me has ever before exis—”
And before the last syllable could be expressed, Bucephalus went dark as every last chip and circuit within itself fused as a result of his mighty effort to encompass himself as part of history. In the economic and financial chaos that followed, Alexander was wiped out.
Earth regained its liberty—which meant, of course, that there was a certain amount of disorder here and there, but most people considered that a small price to pay.
In the Canyon
Dear Mabel,
Well, here we are, as promised. They’ve given us a permit to live in the Valles Marineris, and don’t think we haven’t been waiting for a year and a half because we have. They’re so slow and they keep talking about the capital investment required to make the place livable.
Valles Marineris sounds good as an address, but we just call it the Canyon, and I don’t know why they’re so worried about its being livable. It’s the Martian Riviera, if you ask me.
In the first place, it’s warmer down here than it is in the rest of Mars, a good ten degrees (Celsius) warmer. The air is thicker—thin enough, heaven knows—but thicker and a better protection against ultraviolet.
Of course, the main difficulty is getting in and out of the Canyon. It’s four miles deep in places and they’ve built roads here and there so that you can get down in special mobiles. Getting up and out is more difficult, but with gravity only two-fifths what it is on Earth, it isn’t as bad as it sounds, and they do say they’re going to build elevators that will take us at least partway up and down.
Another problem is, of course, that dust storms do tend to accumulate in the Canyon more than on the ordinary surface, and there are landslides now and then, but heavens, we don’t worry about that. We know where the faults are and where the landslides are likely to occur and no one digs in there.
That’s the thing, Mabel. After all, everyone on Mars lives under a dome or underground, but here in the Canyon, we can dig in sideways, which I understand is much preferable from an engineering standpoint, though I’ve asked Bill not to try to explain it to me.
For one thing, we can heat out some of the ice crystals, so that we don’t have to depend on the government for all the water we need. There is more ice down in the Canyon than elsewhere and, for another, it’s easier to manufacture the air, keep it inside the diggings, and circulate it when you’re in horizontally instead of down vertically. That’s what Bill says.
And I’ve been thinking about it, Mabel. Where’s the need to leave the Canyon, anyway? It’s over three thousand miles long and in the end there are going to be diggings all along it. It’s going to be a huge city, and I’ll bet you most of the population of Mars will end up here. Can’t you see it? There’s to be some kind of maglev rail running the length of the Canyon and communication will be easy. The government ought to put every bit of money it can into developing it. It will make Mars a great world.
Bill says (you know what he’s like—all enthusiasm) that the time will come when they will roof in the whole Canyon. Instead of having air just in separate diggings, and having to put on a spacesuit when you want to travel about, we will have a huge world of normal air and low gravity.
I said to him that the landslides might break the dome and we would lose all the air. He said that the dome could be built in separate sections and that any break would automatically shut off the affected areas. I asked him how much all that would cost. He said, “What’s the difference? It will be done little by little, over the centuries.”
Anyway, that’s his job here, now. He’s got his master’s license as an Areo-engineer, and he’s got to work out new ways to make the Canyon diggings even better. That’s why we got our new place here and it looks as though Mars is going to be our oyster.
We may not live to see it ourselves, but if our great-grandchildren make it to 2140, a century from now, we’ll have a world that may well overshadow Earth itself.
It would be wonderful. We’re very excited, Mabel.
Yours,
Gladys.
Good-bye to Earth
I am sending this message to Earth in an attempt to warn them about what I feel sure is going to happen, and what must happen. It is sad to think of what lies ahead, so no one wants to talk about it, but someone should, as the people of Earth ought to be prepared.
It is the latter half of the twenty-first century and there are a dozen Settlements in orbit about the Earth. Each is, in its way, an independent little world. The smallest has ten thousand inhabitants, the largest almost twenty-five thousand. I’m sure that all Earthmen know this, but you people are so entangled in your own giant world, that you rarely think of us except as some little inconsequential objects out in space. Well, think of us.
Each Settlement imitates Earth’s environment as closely as it can, spinning to produce a pseudo-gravity, allowing sunlight to enter at some times, and not at others, in order to produce a normal day and night. Each is large enough to give the impression of space within, to have farms as well as factories, to have an atmosphere that can give rise to clouds. There are towns, and schools, and athletic fields.
We have some things that Earth has not. The pseudo-gravitational field varies in intensity relative to position within each Settlement. There are areas of low gravity, even zero gravity, where we can outfit ourselves with wings and fly, where we can play three-dimensional tennis, where we can have unusual gymnastic experiences.
We also have a true space culture, for we are used to space. Our chief work, aside from keeping our Settlements running efficiently, is to build structures in space for ourselves and for Earth. We work in space, and to be in a spaceship or a spacesuit is second nature to us. Working at zero gravity is something we have done from childhood.
There are also some things Earth has that we do not. We don’t have Earth’s weather extremes. In our carefully controlled Settlements, it never gets too hot or too cold. There are no storms and no unarranged precipitation.
Nor do we have Earth’s dangerous terrain. We have no mountains, no cliffs, no swamps, no deserts, no stormy oceans. And we have no dangerous plants, animals, or parasites. If anything, there ar
e some among us who complain that we are too secure, that there is no adventure—but then our people can always go out into space, and make long trips to Mars and to the asteroids, which you Earthpeople are psychologically unfit to do. In fact, there are plans by some Settlers to set up colonies on Mars and mining bases in the asteroid belt, but it may never come to that, for reasons I will describe.
The Settlements did not spring on humanity unawares. Even a century ago, Gerard O’Neill of Princeton and his students were making initial plans for such new homes for humanity, and science fiction writers had anticipated it even before that.
Oddly enough though, the difficulties that most foresaw turned out to be not those that plagued the Settlements. The expense of building them, the problems of providing an Earth-like environment, the gathering of energy, the matter of protection against cosmic rays were all solved. It was not done easily, but it was done.
The Sun itself supplies all the energy we need, and enough more to export some to Earth. We can grow food easily—more than we need, in fact, so that we can export some to Earth. We have small animals—rabbits, chickens, and so on, that can supply us with meat. We get what material we need from space, not only from the Moon, but from meteoroids and comets that we can trap and exploit. Once we reach the asteroids (if we ever do) we will have a virtually unlimited supply of everything we need.
What bothers us and produces an insuperable problem is something that few people foresaw. It is the difficulty of keeping up a viable ecology. Each Settlement must support itself. It contains people, plants, and animals; it contains air, water, and soil. The living things must multiply and maintain their numbers, but not outpace the ability of the Settlement to support them.
The plants and animals? Well, we control them. We supervise their breeding and we consume any excess. Maintaining the human population at a reasonable level is more difficult. We cannot allow human births to outstrip human deaths, and we keep the number of deaths as low as possible, of course. This makes our culture a nonyouthful one compared to Earth’s. There are few youngsters and a large percentage of those mature and postmature. This produces psychological strains, but there is the general feeling among Settlers that those strains are worth it, since with a carefully controlled population, there are no poor, no homeless, and no helpless.