Semmant

by Vadim Babenko

  Later, quantum mechanics reminded me of itself again – when I felt that the essence of simulated reasoning was buried still deeper. I became surrounded with books, studied up on the biophysics of the brain, on the structure of neural membranes and the basics of how the synapses function. It was here that I was inspired – that is, I discovered how inspiration happens. How understanding occurs, the creative act itself. The nonlinear, the unquantifiable found its place in quantum entanglement, in the coherence of states. Hundreds of thousands of neurons sensed each other to form a single family, as it were – if even for the briefest millisecond. I imagined it, almost dreamt of it, and, in contradiction to the classics, assumed it was indeed possible in living cells. The neural layer in my models teemed with a myriad of combinations, an immeasurable multitude of variations gyrating in their feverish dance. It kept accelerating, and, at some point, the decoupling came, the waves collapsed, and the particles broke free of their bonds. The family of neurons produced thought!

  I understood: in the quantum collective are hidden the specifics of consciousness, intuition and enlightenment, latent free will, and common sense. It remained to guess how exactly bonding takes place; what is responsible for that instantaneous selection. I no longer considered the collapse of alternatives to be a problem. It was unavoidable – and soon its perfectly natural source became clear to me. Space itself, after all – through its geometry and curvature – determines when and how to bring order to the emerging chaos. It is a property of the universe with which it protects itself from disharmony, from local abnormalities in its structure. When the chaos becomes too great, it seems to say, “Enough!” Brain cell molecules move in microns to assert, “There it is, that’s correct.” And Bang! Thought is born.

  So I formulated the principle and now had only to calculate the determinative figures. Fretting and feeling my guilt, late one night I called that same professor from Manchester, the one who was the first to believe in me. The professor was not perturbed – not by the lateness of the call nor because I had previously turned renegade. He received with unexpected fervor the idea that the “Universe Metric” regulates thought – and mentioned useful things about changing the curvature of space through microscopic mass displacement. The concept of harmony being preserved by the universe itself was obviously to his taste: he was getting old and was afraid of death. And his assessments really helped – a month later I had completed a full mathematical model. I knew this was a breakthrough, a step beyond the horizon, beyond the boundary of the norm. Artificial intelligence became linked with the composition of the world!

  Then a stupid thing happened: I got involved in an affair that had nothing to do with me. By a funny coincidence, I became known in higher scientific circles. They heard about me and got excited, and invited me to a symposium where all the luminaries were gathered. This was a step toward recognition – in spheres I had never had any ambition to enter. I had no faith in them, quite justifiably. But here, for some reason, I took the invitation as a good sign. I did not need fame, but I decided that what I had done would come to life there, on a large scale.

  I remember how carefully I prepared, working on the abstract, making the slides. This was a new experience: I had never presented before at that level. I was looking forward to the discussions, the battles of opinion, and the intellectual tempest. But it turned out differently: they simply expelled me. They struck me such a blow that it was almost fatal.

  Summer came, an unusually hot one for Europe. The megalopolis where the event was held was choking in the blistering heat. It was choking on smoke too – the surrounding forests were ablaze, the peat bogs smoldered; the smog was dense and viscous. But I was not disturbed – either by the heat or the filthy air.

  Right from the airport I rushed to the conference hall; my lecture was one of the first. I remember my impatience, then the slight shiver when the chairman announced my name. I started from the very beginning – described synapses and neurons, and the family of entangled quanta – but soon, to my surprise, I heard the hall buzzing with a hum of displeasure. I thought then that my slides were not detailed enough. On the board, I began to draw the superposition of quasi-particles, the vectors of their states, and the directions of their spins. The din changed to hostile silence, the calm before a storm or an explosion. When I wrote out the Schrödinger equation – just to explain the concept – they looked at me as if I had made an obscene gesture. And when I started to talk about the complex numbers and even sketched the Argand diagram, the dignitaries could hold back no longer and became unhinged. They lashed out like a pack of animals, having recognized in me a serious threat.

  The close-knit group of trendsetters bore a striking resemblance to the Specialists from Basel. Most likely, I thought then, they would take vengeance on me for good – for the dozens of “grueling interrogations.” Though of course they weren’t attacking me out of vengeance. They were defending their territory, with all its riches – grants, status, public interest, the generous ministrations of attractive co-eds – from the intruder, the alien. Making it clear: they had no intention of sharing their prestige and possessions with anyone at all.

  That’s how it is in any science that cannot be proven by mathematics. The luminaries stand their ground to the death, tearing with their claws and gnashing their teeth. If I had come with something obscure, something ordinary and not laying claim to so much, they would have received me with paternal congeniality. They might have scolded me, or they might have coddled me briefly, then allowed me to perch somewhere on the fringe. But I stabbed at the very heart – having come out of nowhere, a complete enigma. The full wrath of the highfliers let loose on me, concentrated into one striking beam. There was no discussion – they would not allow me to say a word. They crushed me with the most refined demagoguery, manipulating, turning things inside out. Then they banished me: the microphone was simply shut off. The next lecturer was already shuffling up to the projector. My time was up, the time limit nonnegotiable!

  Later, I wandered to the taxi stand through a veil of poisonous smoke in a city that had long been sinking into its own detritus. It felt as though something really terrible had happened that morning. I was crushed, downtrodden – and it was not just me. The work I had done was openly ridiculed. They had proven that the world did not need me – not one bit!

  For the first time, I felt utter hopelessness. I was unprepared for the misery that enshrouded me. The burning sun was nearly at its zenith, scoured by haze, but knowing no mercy. I then understood: this must be what a cosmic disaster looks like. It’s as if we are falling into our star, losing our orbit, unable to resist the gravitational pull. Or the star itself, contrary to calculations, just now decided to spit out its last thermonuclear blast from the remaining hydrogen. One way or another, we’re out of time – as we always were, to tell the truth. All the efforts, all the attempts are in vain and will not be needed – ever, by anyone.

  And right then I felt that universal chaos was neither an abstraction nor a joke. It emphatically, impudently had just interfered in my life. I saw it in everything: in hostile stubbornness, in the heat suffocating all that lived, and even – later – in the streams of air beneath the wings of the airliner carrying me away. I imagined that here, this instant, sudden turbulence would throw us into a tailspin. I was expecting a catastrophe any second…

  A full hour after take-off passed before I tried to regain my senses. I tried to calm down and put everything in perspective. I even formulated for myself what I recently told my doctor at the clinic for psychos.

  “No offense. They’re just unfortunate. You’re luckier than all of them anyway!”

  “You know your strengths, what more do you need?”

  “Never bear ill will toward the talentless, the weak. Never hate or blame or despise them!”

  Much changed that day – both in me and in my life. I convinced myself to bear no malice, and this was a mistake. My courage was left with nothing to latch onto. The sensa
tion of hopelessness lodged in my consciousness, put down roots, and won space for itself. Even my passion for fulfillment subsided in its presence.

  Bitterly, I recalled fair-haired Natalie – for some reason more often than the rest. I tried to find a substitute for her; I met women, then dumped them right away, some even before I had slept with them. Wherever I worked now, everything ended in scandal. People hired me eagerly, expecting miracles from me – and, as always, I would start out well. But soon the subject would bore me to death and my colleagues would become repulsive. I would make scenes, engage in direct conflict. Several times, like in France, I had to leave before getting a result. Something snapped in me; I became intolerant and coarse. My friends withdrew, one by one; and my bosses didn’t know how to get along with me anymore. I was on a downward spiral that was closing in, but there was nothing to grab onto. A destructive impulse I could not hold back grew inside and burst to the surface. I saw in it the depth and power of a murky wave.

  I wanted to fight the whole world, to demolish everything in my path. I drank a lot and got into drunken brawls. It became easy for me to insult anyone for no reason. Bad rumors spread about me, many of them true. I stopped getting invited to join projects, interviews, or anything else. It got to the point that it was hard to make a living. I started to give private lessons – for the sons of Arab sheikhs or the progeny of the nouveau riche from Russia. It was the Russians in particular who pushed me to the very edge – and left me there, on the edge, barely keeping my balance.

  They were twins, very young girls, from faraway eastern Siberia. They didn’t like to study, but adored gin and tonics and an unabashed ménage a trois. We spent passionate hours in my Paris apartment, and they blew my mind with their identical pink asses and chiseled legs. When I was with them, I forgot about everything. It was a welcome release, as if the destructive whirlwind had lost all its strength. I just wanted this time to go on and on without end. I sensed that something dreadful was waiting beyond it, something from which there was no salvation.

  I lived then in an attic on the Rue Boucherie, and the chimeras of Notre Dame would watch us through the uneven curtains. The days rushed by; we saw each other more and more often and were increasingly insatiable. The twins became a single whole for me, indivisible from each other. They swore their love, and I responded in kind. I responded, and also wanted to become indivisible, indistinguishable…

  And then somehow I wound up with them in Marseille. They ditched me there, having hooked up with Greek sailors, and vanished without a word. Their father called and threatened me, though this was none of my doing. Chimeras protruded from behind every corner, and despair smothered me like a wet blanket. Then, at the port, some crooks mugged me brutally. It seemed the universe did not accept me and no longer wanted to keep me on. I saw again that chaos was everywhere, and I understood: chaos is death.

  There was a fleeting thought about ending my life. I mulled it over for a few hours as I lay on the threadbare couch in a hotel room I had no way to pay for. However, I was mistaken. The universe still had a lot in store for me. Late that night the telephone rang, and I heard the voice of Lucco Mancini. My path to a robot named Semmant had shortened by a thousand miles.

  Chapter 5

  Lucco Mancini had a velvet baritone. He was a swindler and a gambler; I understood that right away. But, as became clear later, his fraud did not cross the lines set by law. That year, he stumbled upon a profitable venture and committed himself to it zealously. He conned those who wanted to get rich quick, and his field of dreams – where the trees had bank notes instead of leaves – was the gold and currency market: the biggest casino ever built.

  The market! It was from Mancini in particular I first heard this word. And he was the first one to get me interested in looking for hidden connections within this world of bitterness and hope, fantastic riches and lives destroyed. Oh, Lucco knew the right way to get to anyone. With me he started by hinting at the most unsolvable of riddles, and that immediately caught hold of and stirred my soul, as well as my will. My responsive fulfillment sensor was triggered by this new challenge thrown out to it, like a bone to a hungry dog. I leaned against the wall, wiped the sweat from my brow, and began to ask questions. Lucco understood, and I understood, too: I was hooked.

  The industry of ensnaring naïve souls, so trusting in their Lilliputian avarice, blossomed into a magnificent flower. So many of them landed in the net – from everywhere, from all over the world. Our computer files were checkered with the flags of different nations, which Lucco, just for fun, used to mark the names of new victims. Almost all of them ended up the same – regardless of their cleverness or determination – and roughly in the same amount of time. I knew some were losing the last money they had, but I didn’t pity them one bit; this was their personal choice.

  Mancini’s companies, with their feelers spread all over the World Wide Web, grew by leaps and bounds. He even took on a staff of employees – for the first time in his life, he admitted – rented an office, hooked up phones and fax machines. Cute girls chattered away in five languages, retired salesmen with a financial past signed on for work again, fooling more heads day after day. The players’ money, of course, never reached actual trading desks – they just placed bad bets, and Lucco pocketed their losses. If any happened to win, he would honestly give them the earnings, and then find a reason to push them out of the game. Everything ran like clockwork. And maybe it’s still running now – I wouldn’t be surprised if Mancini has already gotten as rich as Croesus.

  He needed me to set up a new lure. The trading machine, as it was called, was an automatic market player, a smart program for making money around the clock without any hassles or sleep breaks. Its role was to give the desperate ones some last elusive hope, and to inspire shy beginners to be bold and daring, make them believe in themselves. Lucco saw good prospects in this and offered me generous pay. He just wanted everything to be done fast, even if it was rushed and slapdash. We squabbled a little but came to a compromise – between the real and the ephemeral, between a firm base and a foundation of air.

  Our collaboration continued for a year. I settled down in that year, as if I had reached an accord with something inside myself. The destructive impulse was replaced by a familiar thirst: to create, not to destroy; to look deeper, to get to the bottom of things. Auto-trading made it possible to escape from reality, of which I had had more than my fill. It seemed to me then: I could live my life fenced off by a set of structures and formulas, returning to the real world only occasionally for a little shred of pleasure, which no one could do without.

  For Mancini, I earned my wages in full. He found himself the owner of a dozen gadgets, each of which possessed its own style. They gained popularity and followers, passionate supporters who remained faithful even when the markets changed and the tactics that had previously worked suddenly led to huge losses. This was precisely what Lucco was hoping for, and his hopes invariably materialized into profit. As for me, I was indifferent. I had no concern for the fate of others. However, the market as such – and not just its currency sector – suddenly aroused my genuine interest.

  It unexpectedly reconciled me again with people and realities full of imperfections. I wanted to comprehend its laws – as if peering into the secrets of the world which, I felt, were still hidden from my probing eye. I sensed an unbreakable link – between the syncopes of the trading rhythms and the nervous convulsions of human souls. In the interlacing of intentions and desires, I saw the most sophisticated of patterns. The scribbling of countless charting pens, like the autographs of a terrifying force, beckoned with their own special code. It suddenly seemed to me: here it is, the abstraction of all abstractions. The transcendence of the best and the worst – of hope, futility, desperation…

  Furthermore, the disarray of the universe dominated the market space, sounded at the top of its voice, but, at the same time, it was locked in a confining cage. There it raged, but could not escape through the ba
rs. Its territory was localized. Everyone knew its boundaries; and therefore, it – the disorder – could be subject to scrutiny from the outside. I finally had the ability to study it, dissect and classify it, break it down into its smallest components. This was my chance – if not to settle the score, then at least to challenge it to a duel.

  “Insolence!” everyone would say, but I trusted in myself and knew: I had something to depend on. I believed in my habit of brushing off simplifications. It was clear to me why so many were caught in enterprising Lucco’s net: it seemed there was nothing simpler than currency charts and diagrams. Everyone thought he really understood them well. The disorder bound up in the graphs and schemes seemed to rear its recognizable head, a visage of the chaos of nature all around us – in the clouds, in the windblown trees, in the waves of the sea. The beginners were enticed by the market’s familiar, almost tame appearance; they rushed into predictions, being mistaken about the very same thing. The illusory orderliness beckoned to them like a phantom; they wanted simplicity, smooth sailing – and that’s when they encountered a fiasco. The market punished them severely – like nature herself punished those who planned to subdue her, restrain her, force her to serve.

  As for me, I knew how this happened. How the tiniest differences in estimates and opinions would quickly lead to a non-linear explosion, to a complete reversal of outcomes, to a quick and brutal loss of money. I saw this and surmised the problem could be approached differently. The chaos did not destroy me, though it showed its strength. By the same token, it gave more strength to me. I knew I had a weapon, and I was eager to put it to use.

  Once I finished off the next automatic trader, I cut the project short and declared I was leaving. Lucco was inconsolable and promised me the moon, but my interest in him had already dissipated. To his credit, he gave me a solid bonus and very nearly shed a tear when we parted ways at the airport. I explained my departure with personal reasons – and quite by happenstance, one of the twins, whom I had forgotten to think about, appeared out of nowhere to announce she could not live without me. I was cold and somewhat rude, having not forgiven her for the Marseille saga, but she endured it and spent a few months with me – as far as I know, she didn’t cheat on me even once. We probably would have kept living together – and then everything might have turned out differently – but her cruel Siberian father tracked us down on the seacoast of Spain, and simply took her by force while I was playing tennis two steps from the house.