‘Three cheers for Vaman!’
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Jayant V. NarlikarThe Return of Vaman - A Scientific NovelScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-16429-8_4
Vaman
Jayant V. Narlikar1
(1)Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India
Jayant V. Narlikar
Email: [email protected]
1 The Monads
Laxman thought that even Guru would not be able to cope with the complexity of instructions needed for the making of Vaman as, once again, he encountered the verdict ‘Programme Error’ on his terminal. But from past experience he had learnt to respect Guru. Previous programme errors had turned out to be traceable to his own mistaken execution of Guru’s instructions. On each occasion Guru had correctly interpreted the Vaman code, as Laxman called it.
The complexity had increased as he progressed. There were occasions when he felt like giving up, but the tantalizing goal egged him on. That he was making a robot was now known all over the Science Centre. Like Guru, the robot was expected to be exceptional. But nobody knew in what way—certainly no one even imagined that a thinking, self-replicating robot was in the making.
‘How long before we may expect the incarnation of Vaman?’ asked Navin on one of those frustrating days.
‘A couple of weeks, at least. The hardware problems of his brain still need to be sorted out’, Laxman answered.
‘But how about your own work, Navin?’ Arul asked, knowing full well that this was the only way of diverting Navin from his questions.
He was right. Navin was at heart a research worker. He relished narrating how he had deciphered archaeological clues to reconstruct an era that was long past. As Navin embarked on his elaborations, Laxman broke in: ‘Navin! You have so much to say. Why limit it to canteen table talk? It is about time you addressed the entire staff of the Science Centre on all your finds.’
‘Absolutely!’ said Navin. ‘I am very keen to give a detailed talk so that I can share my excitement with others. I will do so once all my slides are made.’ And he rushed off on his errand.
‘Navin has changed’, Arul commented as his figure disappeared through the door.
‘Yes. The Major’s medicine has worked. He has decided to play ball. He has been dutifully conveying my false data on Guru’s CPU to Pyarelal. The Major threatened him with god knows what, but he has turned the corner’, Laxman replied.
‘I wonder what our friend Yamamoto will say once he realizes that he has been duped’, Arul mused.
‘It is not as simple as that, Arul’, Laxman smiled, for he was about to reveal his secret. ‘The information is so complex that it will take Yamamoto and his bunch of experts a considerable period to realize that it is basically defective. They will continue thinking that their implementation is at fault. And meanwhile, they have no option but to rely on what we supply them with. Indeed, Samant is hopeful that once Vaman’s reputation gets about, Shulz will pay us a visit … and walk right into a well-laid trap.’
‘But what is to prevent Shulz from operating from afar—he need not enter India. He has that agent of his, Pyarelal’, Arul retorted.
‘Samant does not think so, and I agree with him’, Laxman said. ‘Vaman will be a prize that Shulz cannot entrust to others—it is too important to him for that. It will be the supreme achievement of his nefarious career. Vaman will be the bait for Shulz.’
‘I hope you’re right, Laxman. I hope, too, that Navin has really turned over a new leaf. It is a dangerous game that Samant is playing’, Arul said.
‘May be you are right. In any case it is necessary for both of us to be very cautious. But as far as strategy is concerned, I leave it to the experts. Samant evidently knows what he is up to. Well, I must be on my way back to the drawing board, Arul.’
Laxman got up, but Arul remained seated, a thoughtful expression on his face.
The auditorium of the Science Center was packed to capacity. This was the occasion when the staff was to be briefed about the contents of the box which had started all the activity. Exactly at 5 p.m., Navin rose to give his presentation. He had come armed with slides and viewgraphs.
‘Friends,’ he began in a voice scarcely concealing his excitement, ‘this container at Gauribidnur is without doubt the greatest archaeological find ever. Of course, you are dazzled by the supercomputer Guru and looking forward to the arrival of Vaman. The technological fallout of the container is indeed fantastic, but to a person like me the past holds all the allure. So let me take you back to the ancient times when the people who left the container behind lived and flourished …
‘I was intrigued by them right from the day I set my eyes on the container. I will not bore you with technicalities, about the methods commonly used by archaeologists to interpret the relics they find. Instead I will give you the final outcome of my investigations in ready-made form. Those who want to know the why and wherefore of it may reserve their questions to the end.
‘I estimate that this civilization is about twenty thousand years old. All our so-called ancient civilizations—of Egypt, Babylon, China, or Harappa-Mohenjodaro—are modern compared to this one. People argue about the exact time of the Vedas. But even with the oldest quoted estimate, the Vedic era occurred much later than this civilization.
‘These people called themselves Monads, after Mona, the Earth in their language. It was a worldwide culture, transcending regional differences of geography. There were no nation-states, nor were there any tensions or quarrels between different regions. It was truly one family of people inhabiting our planet.
‘There are two ways of estimating how advanced a civilization is. One method uses the measure of energy consumed by a civilization, not only to maintain its standard of living but also in the exchange and broadcast of information. On this scale, the Monads were a thousand times more advanced than we are now. For comparison, the gap between the Greek civilization of two millennia ago and us is about the same.
‘The second method estimates the total information content of the civilization in question. Knowledge per se can of course defy objective evaluation, but the language in which it is expressed lends itself to quantification. For those unfamiliar with computers and binary arithmetic, I will digress a little to explain this point.’
Navin paused to sip some water and then projected his first transparency on the screen. It showed positive (+) and negative (–) signs distributed in thirty-two rows, with five signs in each row:
He then continued.
‘On the screen you see thirty-two different alternatives for distributing pluses and minuses in five places. Why thirty-two? The answer is simple. Each of the five places has two alternatives, either a plus or a minus. Since each alternative for the first place can be combined with each alternative for the second and so on, there are in all 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 32 ways of arranging these signs.
‘What has all this to do with information, you may ask. Well, in a computer’s binary logic, the basic information consists of the alternatives ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to each question. These are my plus and minus signs. Each set of alternatives is called an information bit. What you see on the screen are the thirty-two different sets of alternatives of information available through five bits.
‘Now we can identify each of the quintets with a letter in the English alphabet together with six signs like the full stop, comma, etc. A four-letter word will thus need twenty information bits, and a ten-word sentence of forty letters, two hundred bits. A book of fifty thousand words will need approximately one million bits.
‘Let us estimate the total number of different books in the English language as around ten million, based on the inventories of the biggest libraries in the world. Their information content is around ten million million bits. Taking into account books in other languages and also the fact that other modes like pictures and music also carry information, the total information cont
ent of our civilization is no more than a million billion bits.
‘Again, this is about a thousand times more than what the Greeks had. The Monads, on the other hand, were a thousand times better informed than us!
‘However, their numbers were limited—no more than around a hundred million. Therein lay the cause of their prosperity. They could and did control their population and used the resources of our planet judiciously. Their colonies were typically of twenty to thirty thousand people. Their main energy sources were two: the direct exploitation of solar energy and the fusion reactors that our scientists are striving to construct today.
‘With this introduction I now show you the slides I got specially made based on the information supplied by the container. I will also give some factual information on the transparencies.’
So for the next hour Navin held forth brilliantly. His talk was followed by numerous questions, the last of which came from Arul: ‘Why did they bury this time capsule in Gauribidnur, of all places?’
‘As far as I can make out, this place was an important administrative centre for the Monads, one of the ten dotted all over the globe. They wanted to choose a site near an administrative centre and fulfilling certain conditions. The place had to be free from earthquakes, as this one is. The rock strata here are remarkably stable. So anything buried here would remain undisturbed. The Japanese location, for example, did not meet this criterion. Next, they wanted the underground water table to be very low—which ruled out their European centre near Holland. A third criterion was that the container should be well away from the seashore—satisfied here, but not by their centre in what we today call Florida … Well, the long and the short of it is that, after these and many other considerations, our spot right here turned out to be the best.’
‘Ah, that explains it’, Arul replied after Navin had finished.
‘Explains what?’ Navin asked.
‘Why did we discover the container here? My criteria for housing the gravity experiment were precisely these! On the basis of these I chose Gauribidnur as the best site. So our digging here and finding the container was not as great a coincidence as I had imagined’, Arul said.
After Navin’s talk, Arul and Laxman went over to the latter’s living quarters. Urmila joined them shortly afterwards.
‘And where have you been my little maid?’ Laxman asked.
‘Why, to the lecture, of course. Wasn’t it magnificent? Now I know why Navinji is so much in demand as a speaker. He can feel the pulse of the audience—what a contrast from my dear hubby’, Urmila answered, squeezing Laxman’s hand.
‘Laxman, it looks as if your talents are not appreciated at home’, Arul added jocularly.
‘I gave up lecturing to her long ago. She can’t understand even the simplest things on computers’, Laxman said.
‘Arul, you should ask your friend what he means by the “simplest”. His idea is to quote some obscure algorithm to start with and follow it up with totally incomprehensible questions’, Urmila put her case.
‘Well Madam, here is a simple question which even you can comprehend: when are we to get our coffee?’
‘I am like your computer, sir—I can execute orders only after you have given them. So you will have to wait fifteen minutes.’
As Urmila went into the kitchen, Laxman put on an LP of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Urmila’s return with the coffee brought the two scientists out of the respective reveries which the profound music had plunged them into.
‘Arul, perhaps you can answer my question in simpler language than my husband can’, Urmila asked, as they sipped the delicious ‘real’ coffee that no ‘instant’ version can ever emulate.
‘Go ahead, I will try’, Arul replied.
‘Navinji did not make one point clear … Why did the Monadic civilization, which was so advanced, become extinct?’
Before Arul could reply Laxman broke in: ‘Umi, your question is basically illogical. Navin’s talk was based on what he found in the container. Evidently, whatever was in the container was left by the Monads when they were alive and flourishing. How can you expect to know from that how they died? It is as ludicrous as expecting a person to write his own obituary.’
‘Arul, here you see an example of Laxman’s obscurantism.’
Arul, however, was thoughtful as he replied slowly. ‘Urmila, Laxman’s technical objection apart, your question is basically a valid one, and worrying at that. In the accounts found in the container we see a picture of a well run society. Evidently the Monads had to face some unexpected natural catastrophe. What could it have been? An ice age? A major earthquake? Or a volcanic eruption? Did a meteorite or a comet hit Earth? It had to be something that could not be overcome by the Monads with all their very advanced technology and meticulous planning.’
Laxman shook his head in disagreement. ‘Talk sense, Arul. Natural disasters can be catastrophic, I admit that. But a really big event like that is bound to leave a mark or two behind. Moreover, twenty thousand years is not really long enough to obliterate those marks. Why don’t we see any relics today?’
Laxman’s point was well taken. Arul had no answer. Why were the Monads wiped off the face of the Earth? The container, as Laxman had argued, would not be expected to provide the answer. How and where would they find it?
2 The Little One
‘Let us see how your little prodigy performs.’
The words were Navin’s, uttered in his typical half jesting tones. But like Arul, he too felt the excitement of the occasion. It was Vaman’s first trial performance.
The metre-long robot was lying flat on the work bench. Not far from him was a computer terminal for giving instructions, instructions that were to be conveyed to Vaman by microwaves. His brain had a receiver that could receive instructions and respond suitably.
‘Vaman, open your eyes.’ Laxman’s instruction appeared on the screen.
‘Bravo’, shouted Arul, greatly excited and pointing to the bench. Vaman had opened his eyes. He was staring straight up at the ceiling. ‘The little fellow responds even in his sleep’, muttered Navin, equally impressed.
‘Sit up’, was Laxman’s next instruction on the terminal. Slowly, Vaman performed an almost human action to heave himself into sitting posture.
‘My next instruction is more elaborate’, said Laxman as he typed furiously on the computer: ‘Slide to the north end of the table but take care not to fall off.’
Vaman began to slide to the correct end. He evidently had a built-in direction finder. But what was more important, he went so far that his centre of gravity was just within the edge of the table—the farthest he could go without falling off.
‘Get down’, Laxman winked as he typed the next instruction.
Vaman slid forward and fell clumsily to the ground. Laxman picked him up and put him back in his original sitting posture. He then issued the same instruction. How would Vaman respond now?
‘Fantastic!’ Arul really was impressed as he watched Vaman carefully get down and stand on the floor. ‘That is what I wanted to check! The fellow learns from his mistakes’, Laxman added by way of explanation to Navin who looked puzzled.
‘Let me play chess with him, then’ Arul said. In his student days he had reached the level of a ‘Master’ and would have scaled greater heights had he devoted more time to the game.
‘Surely. But in due course, Arul. We will explain to him the basic rules of the game, outline a few stratgies, brief him with a few famous games played by experts. Then we will let him loose on you’, Laxman said with a grin.
Laxman’s unstated expectations were realized. Having learnt the basic rules of chess and studied the styles of such great players as Alekhine, Capablanca, Fischer, and Karpov, Vaman rapidly improved his competence. He could learn from his mistakes and plan strategies several moves ahead. He lost or drew with Arul in their first ten encounters. As it turned out, he needed this experience to gauge his opponent’s competence. Having placed Arul on his own scale, Vama
n adjusted his game so that he scored a victory in their eleventh game. And from then on he never looked back.
Vaman also acquired increasing flexibility in operating his limbs. The commands issued by his ‘brain’ became more precise and his body responded accordingly.
The next major step to be followed according to Guru’s instructions was to train Vaman to respond to verbal orders from Laxman. The sound waves were converted to microwaves by Vaman’s ‘brain’ and interpreted for action. Thanks to the precise details followed in his make-up, even this complicated step worked out well. To identify Laxman’s voice, Vaman needed a password which Laxman would whisper before beginning his orders. No one else could give orders to Vaman.
It was not long before Vaman’s abilities became well known all over the Science Centre. From carpentry, to repairing TV sets or other electronic equipment, to gastronomical feats in the kitchen, Vaman picked up everything he was taught. Even sewing and darning were part of his repertoire. Nevertheless, another step remained before Vaman could become a von Neumann machine. He had to be taught to think for himself, to make his own decisions. Laxman was impatiently waiting to use one of the top secret packages in his possession to reach that stage. But, as he had promised Arul, he would have to consult Professor Kirtikar before taking such an important step.
His plan to have that crucial discussion with Arul and the Professor had to be postponed, however, thanks to an unforeseen interruption.
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