ets introduced me and explained that I could
buy  up the  bureau's damned solid-state circuits. But I agreed to  benefact
and save Zhalbek  Balbekovich only on  the  following  conditions:  (a)  all
38,000 cells would be mounted on  panels in accordance with a rough sketch I
gave him; (b) the cells would be connected by feed bars; (c) each cell would
be wired and; (d) all this would be done by the end of the year.
     "You have great production forces here. It won't be difficult for you."
     "For the same money? But the cells themselves cost fifty thousand!"
     "Yes, but they didn't fit the FTD. Keep that in mind."
     "You're a scourge,  not a benefactor," said Zhalbek Balbekovich,  sadly
waving  his hand. "Fill out the order, Elena Ivanovna. We'll send it in from
our department. And I'm putting this whole thing in your hands."
     May Allah bless your name, Zhalbek Balbekovich!
     To this  very  day, I think  that I won Lena's heart not  with my great
qualities, but because-when the cells had been mounted on the panels and the
edges of the  microelectrical cube  looked  like fields of colorful  wires-I
answered her tremulous question "And  how should they be connected?"  with a
devil-may-care:
     "However  you  like!  Blue to  red-and  make  sure  it's  aesthetically
pleasing!"
     Women respect the irrational.
     And that's how it all happened. Chance  does make itself felt. (Oh, now
it's  beginning to  seem that during the  course of my work I've developed a
worshipful attitude  toward chance! The fanaticism of  a convert.... Before,
to tell the truth, I was a real sluggard, preaching humility and resignation
in the face of "unlucky" events. If you think about it, such feelings always
mask  our  spiritual  laziness and  complacency.  Now  I  was  beginning  to
understand  an important aspect of  chance, whether in  life or science: you
won't conquer it  with  reason  alone.  Working  with  chance  demands quick
thinking, initiative, and a  readiness to change your plans... but it's just
as stupid to worship it as it is  to  deride it. Chance is neither enemy nor
friend, neither God nor devil. Whether chance is mastered or lost depends on
the  person.  And those who  believe in luck  and  fate  can go  out and buy
lottery rickets!)
     "But the name laboratory  of  Random  Research'  is  too odious,"  said
Arkady  Arkadievich,  signing the  order to establish  an  unstructured lab,
directed by engineer Krivoshein, with the concomitant material, fire safety,
and other responsibilities. "You shouldn't give people straight lines. Let's
call  it something more restrained, like 'New  Systems Laboratory.' And then
we'll see."
     That meant that doing my dissertation remained my major problem. Beyond
that, it was "we'll see." I have yet to solve the problem.




        Chapter 7


     If  an  identification computer,  or  perceptron,  signals "garbage" in
response  to a  picture of an elephant, to the depiction of a camel,  and to
the portrait of a major scientist, this does not necessarily mean that it is
irreparable. It may just  be philosophically inclined  -K. Prutkov-enzhener,
Thought 30


     Naturally,  I  had  hoped,  for my  spirits,  that  the  work  would be
livelier. How  could I not dream, when the mastermind of cybernetics, Walter
Ross Ashby,  doctor of neurophysiology, kept coming up with ideas, each more
entrancing than the next! Random processes  as the source of the development
and ruin  of  any  system, . . . strengthening the thinking  capabilities of
humans  and  machines  by  distinguishing  the  valuable  thoughts  from the
nonsense in random expression,... and finally, noise as the raw material for
extracting  information-yes, yes, the  "white  noise,"  that troublemaker on
which I  lost  more than one year and more than one idea trying to drive  it
out of circuitry!
     In  general, if you think about it, the founder of this tendency has to
be considered not Dr. Ashby, but  the now-forgotten director  of the Bolshoi
Theater in Moscow,  who  (in order to create ominous rumblings  in the crowd
scenes of Boris Godunov) first ordered each extra to repeat his home address
and phone number. But Ashby has posited solving the reverse problem. We take
noise-the surf, the hiss of coal dust in a mike, anything-and plug it into a
machine. From the noise chaos we extract the  largest "splashes." This gives
us a  pattern of  impulses.  And impulse  patterns are binary  numbers.  And
binary figures can be  changed into decimal ones.  And decimals are numbers:
for  example,  the numbers  assigned  to words in a  dictionary for  machine
translation. And a collection  of words is  a  sentence. Of course, for now,
the  sentences  are  varied:  false,  real,   abracadabra-informational  raw
material. But the next cascade will have two streams of information-the kind
that is intelligible  to  people, and  this raw material. Then operations of
comparison,  coincidence, and noncoincidence-and  everything nonsensical  is
filtered  out, as is  the banal. Then original new thoughts, discoveries and
inventions,  the  works of unborn poets and writers,  philosophical thoughts
from the future appear! A thinking computer!
     Of course,  the respected  doctor did  not explain how to perform  this
miracle. His idea is embodied only in squares connected by arrows on a piece
of paper. In general, the question of how to do it is not highly esteemed in
academic circles. "If you remove yourself from the difficulties of technical
realization, then  in principle you will be able to imagine...." But how can
I remove myself from it?
     Well, enough whining! That's why I'm an experimenter, in order to  test
ideas. That's why I have  a  lab. The  walls give off the smell of fresh oil
paint. The  air  conditioner hums.  New instruments shine  on the  equipment
shelves.  Vessels and jars  with reagents  sparkle  in  the  cupboards,  and
colorful piles  of  wires  and soldering irons, their  points  still red and
uncovered with scale, wait for me. Apparatus, neatly wrapped in plastic, sit
on the counters-and their pointers  aren't bent yet and their  scales aren't
dusty  yet. Dictionaries,  textbooks, reference  books, and  monographs  are
arranged on the bookshelves. And  in the middle of  the room,  glistening in
the January sun,  stands  the  TsVM-12, the  automatic digital printer, with
lacy, multicolored wires in the crystal unit. Everything  is new, unsullied,
unscratched, and everything  exudes  the wise, rational beauty  developed by
generations of craftsmen and engineers.
     How could I  not dream? And what if I succeeded? Actually, for  myself,
my  dreams were much  more  modest:  not  of  a  supercomputer that would be
smarter than  man (in  general, I'm  not crazy about that idea,  even though
lama systems technologist), but of a computer that would understand man, the
better to  do  its work. Then that idea seemed  possible to me. Indeed, if a
computer can exhibit definite  behavior based on  everything that I tell and
show it, and so on, then the problem is solved. That means that it has begun
seeing, hearing, and smelling through its sensors  in the purely human sense
of  these  words,  without  quotation marks or  explanations.  And then  its
behavior could  be  adapted  for any  work  or  problem-that's  why  it's  a
universal computer.
     Yes,  then in January, it  all seemed possible and simple;  the sea was
only  knee-high.  Oh,  the  inspirational  quality  of  new  equipment!  The
fantastic green loops on the screen, the  confident hum of the transformers,
the crackling of  the relays, the blinking of the lights on  the  panel, the
precise movements of the arrows and pointers....  It feels as  though you're
going to measure everything, conquer it all, do it all, and even an ordinary
microscope  inspires the confidence that right now  (with a magnification of
four hundred and double polarized light) you will see  something that no one
else has ever seen!
     Why even talk about it? What researcher hasn't dreamed at the outset of
a project, didn't imagine handling the hardest tasks? What researcher hasn't
experienced   that  overwhelming  impatience   when  you're   rushing-hurry!
hurry!-to finish  the  boring preparatory work-hurry! hurry!-plot the course
of the experiment, and get on with it?
     And then  .  .  .  and  then the  everyday  lab  worries, the  everyday
mistakes,  the everyday failures break your dream's  spirit. And then you're
ready to settle for anything, just so that the whole thing wasn't a waste.
     That's what happened to me.
     Writing  about failure is like reliving it. So I'll be brief.  The plan
was like this: we would  plug the 38,000-cell crystal unit into the TsVM-12,
and everything else  would go into  the crystal unit's input: the mikes, the
smell,  moisture  and  temperature  sensors,  the  tesometric  feelers,  the
photomatrices with a focusing  probe, and Monomakh's  Crown, to compute  the
brain's biowaves.  The  source  of  external information was  me,  that  is,
something moving, noisy, changing shape and its coordinates in space, having
temperature and nervous potential. You could hear me, see me,  feel me, take
my temperature and  blood pressure, analyze my  breath, even climb  into  my
soul and thoughts-go right ahead! The signals from the sensors would have to
feed the crystal  unit,  stimulating various  cells in it; the  crystal unit
would form and "pack" the signals into logical combinations for the TsVM-12;
the computer  would deal with them as  though they were usual  problems, and
produce something meaningful. In order to make it easier for the computer, I
programmed all the  number-words  from  A  to Z in the  computer translation
dictionary into its memory bank.
     And . . . nothing. The selsyn motors, whining gently, moved the  feeler
and lenses  when I moved around the room. The control oscilloscopes showed a
daisy chain of impulses, which jumped from the crystal unit to the computer.
The  current flowed.  The  lights blinked.  But  during the  first month the
digital printer didn't stir once to make a single mark on the punched tape.
     I punctured the  crystal unit  with all  the sensors. I  read poems.  I
sang. I gestured.  I ran and I jumped in front of the lenses. I stripped and
dressed.  I  let  the feelers touch me (brr!  those cold feelers!). I put on
Monomakh's Crown and-O God!-tried to influence it. I was ready for any magic
formula.
     But the TsVM-12 could not put out abracadabra; it wasn't made that way.
If  the  problem has a solution, it solves  it;  if  it doesn't,  it  stops.
Judging by  the panel lights, something was going on, but every five  or six
minutes the "stop" signal went on, and I had to press the reset button.  And
it would begin all over again.
     Finally, I started thinking about it. The computer had to be performing
arithmetical and logical operations with the impulses from the crystal unit.
Otherwise, what  else could it  be doing? That meant  that even  after these
operations  the  information  was still so  raw  and  contradictory that the
computer could  not bring the logical ends  together. So it would stop! That
meant that one cycle in the  computer wasn't enough. That meant-and here, as
usual  in  these cases,  I  was embarrassed  for not  having  thought of  it
sooner-that meant  that I had to arrange for feedback  between  the computer
(from  the units where the impulses  still were) and the crystal unit!  Then
the raw material would be inputted into  the clever  cube, transformed there
one more time,  and  then fed  into  the computer, and so on,  until perfect
clarity reigned.
     I perked up. Now  we were cooking! I can condense  the story  about how
150  logic  cells and  dozens of  matrices burned out because the  TsVM  and
crystal unit were out of sync (smoke, acrid smells, transistors flaming like
bullets in an oven, and me-instead of cutting off the voltage  on the panel,
I ran  for the fire extinguisher  on the wall!), and how  I got  new  cells,
soldered the  transition  circuits, and coordinated  the cycles  of  all the
units-just  the  usual  difficulties  of  technical  realization.   But  the
important thing was I got the project off the ground.
     On  February  151 finally  heard  the long-awaited clatter: the machine
printed out a string of numbers on the punched tape.  Before deciphering it,
I  circled  the  table on which the  piece of tape lay,  smoked  and  smiled
vaguely. The computer had begun behaving. There it was, the computer's first
sentence: "Memory 107 bits."
     It wasn't what  I was expecting. That's why I didn't realize right away
that the computer  "wanted" (I can't write a word like  that without quotes)
to increase its memory bank.
     Actually, it was all very logical. It was receiving complex information
that had to be stored somewhere, but the banks were already filled. Increase
the memory banks! A commonplace task in building computers.
     If  it weren't for Alter  Abramovich's respect  for me,  the computer's
request would have  gone unheeded. But  he gave me three  cubes  of magnetic
memory and two of ferroelectric memory. And everything proceeded smoothly: a
few days later the TsVM-12 repeated its demand, and then again and again....
The computer developed serious demands.
     What was I feeling then? Satisfaction. Finally something was happening!
I tried the results out on my dissertation-to-be.  I was a little put off by
the fact that the computer was working only for itself.
     Then  the computer  began building  itself! Actually, that  was logical
too; complex information had to be processed  by units more complex than the
standard ones of the TsVM-12.
     My work load  increased.  The printer  printed out codes and numbers of
logic  cells, and announced where and how they should be added. At first the
computer was  satisfied with  standard  cells.  I mounted  them on auxiliary
panels.
     (I'm only  beginning  to  realize  it  now, but  that was precisely the
moment,  if you look at  it academically, that I made a grave methodological
error  in my work. I should  have stopped and figured out just what circuits
and logic my complex was  building for itself: the sensors, crystal unit and
TsVM-12 with an increased  memory. And then, only when I had it figured out,
move on. And when you  think about it,  a computer  building itself  without
being programmed to do so-what a  terrific dissertation topic! If I had done
it right, I could have gotten a doctorate right there.
     But  curiosity  took  over. The  complex  was  obviously  straining  to
develop. But why? To understand  man? It didn't look  like it.  The computer
seemed quite satisfied  that I understood  it and  diligently carried out my
commands. People make  machines  for  their own  aims. But what kind of aims
could a  machine  have? Or  maybe it wasn't  an  aim, but a kind  of  innate
accumulation  instinct,  which  is  found  in  all  systems  of   a  certain
complexity, be they earthworms or electrical machines? And what limits would
the complex reach?
     It was then  that I let loose the reins-and I still don't  know whether
that was good or bad....)
     In  mid-March the computer, which had evidently learned from Monomakh's
Crown  about  the  latest  developments  in  electronics,  began  asking for
cryosars and cryotrons, runnel transistors, film circuits, micromatrices....
I had  no time  for analysis;  I was rushing all over  the institute and the
whole city, wheeling and dealing, lying and cajoling, trying to get my hands
on all this chic stuff.
     And it was all for nothing. A month later the computer "got bored" with
electronics and "took up" chemistry.
     Actually, this shouldn't have been unexpected either: the computer  had
chosen the best way to build  itself. After all, chemistry is nature's  way.
Nature had  neither soldering irons nor cranes, nor welders, nor motors, not
even shovels-it merely combined chemicals, heated and cooled them, lit them,
boiled them... and that's how every living thing on earth came about.
     That  was  the point, that everything the computer did was  consecutive
and logical! Even its desires for me to put on Monomakh's Crown-and that was
the most frequent request-were transparent.
     Rather than process raw information from photo, sound, smell, and other
sensors,  it was much easier to use information already  processed by me. In
science, many do that.
     But, my God, what reagents the computer  demanded: from distilled water
to  sodium trimethyldyphtorparaamintetrachlorphenylsulfate and from  DNA and
RNA  to  a  specific  brand of  gasoline!  And the convoluted  technological
circuits I had to get!
     The lab was changing into a  medieval alchemist's den  before  my  very
eyes; it was filled with bottles, two-necked flasks, autoclaves, and stills.
I connected them with hoses, glass tubing, and wires.  My supply of reagents
and glass was depleted in a week and I had to requisition more and more.
     The  noble,  soothing electrical  smells, rosin and  heated insulation,
were replaced with  the  swampy  miasmas of acids, ammonia, vinegar, and God
knows what else. I wandered lost in  these chemical  jungles. The stills and
hoses bubbled, gurgled, and sighed. The mixtures in  the  flasks and bottles
fermented  and changed color; they precipitated, dissolved, and  regenerated
metallic pulsating clumps  and pieces of  shimmering gray threads.  I poured
and sprinkled according to the computer's directions and understood nothing.
     Then,  the computer  suddenly asked for four more automatic printers. I
was happy: so the computer was interested in something other than chemistry!
I worked at it, got the stuff, connected it... and off it went!
     (Probably, this  was  the  point  at  which I  created  Ashby's  "power
information retrieval" or something  like  it.  Who knows!  That was  when I
became hopelessly confused.)
     Now the lab sounded like a typing pool. The  machines were printing out
numbers.  Paper ribbon  with columns of numbers  poured  out of the machines
like manna  from  heaven.  I  rolled  up the  tapes,  picked out  the  words
separated by spaces, translated them, and made sentences.
     The "true" phrases were very strange and enigmatic. For  example: "....
twenty-six kopeks, like from Berdichev." That was one of the first. Was that
a  fact, a thought?  Or a  hint?  How  about this:  "An onion  like a  steel
wound...." It resembles Mayakovsky's "A street like an open wound." But what
does it mean? Is  it a pathetic imitation? Or  maybe a poetic discovery that
contemporary poets haven't reached yet?
     I deciphered another tape: "The tenderness  of souls, taken in Taylor's
series expansion, in  the  limits  of  zero  to  infinity comes  down  to  a
biharmonic function." Well put, no?
     And all of it was like  that: either nonsensical  excerpts or something
"schizophrenic."  I   was  going  to   take  some  of   the  tapes  to   the
mathlinguists-maybe they could figure it out-but  I changed my mind, fearing
a scandal.  Meaningful information came  only from the  first  printer: "Add
such and such reagent to flasks 1,3, and 7. Lower the voltage by  five volts
in electrodes 34-123."  And so on. The computer remembered "to feed itself,"
and therefore it hadn't "gone mad." What was going on?
     The most painful part was knowing that there was nothing I  could do. I
had had  inexplicable things happen in  other  experiments, but in those, at
least, I could always backtrack and repeat the experiment. If the bad effect
disappeared, all the better; if not, we  could analyze it. But  here,  there
was  nothing  that could be replayed, nothing that could be  turned back.  I
even dreamed  of wavy, snakelike tapes in scaly numeral  skins, and tried to
figure out what the computer was trying to say.
     I didn't even know where to hide the rolls of tape. In our institute we
use the tape two ways: the  ones with answers to new questions are turned in
to the archives, and the rest are taken home to be used as toilet paper-very
practical. I had enough rolls for every bathroom in Academic Town.
     And when one fine day in April (after  a  sleepless  night in  the  lab
fulfilling every caprice of  the computer: pouring,  sprinkling, regulating)
printer Number 3 gave me the  following sentence: "A streptocidal striptease
with  trembling  streptoccoci,..."  I  knew  that  there  was  no  point  in
continuing.
     I took all the  rolls out onto the lawn,  ruffled them up (I might have
been  muttering:  "Streptocide,  huh?  Berdichev?  Tenderness  of  the soul?
Onions?...'' I don't remember) and set fire to them.  I sat  by the bonfire,
keeping  warm,  had a  cigarette and  understood that  the experiment was  a
failure. And not because nothing had happened,  but because I  had gotten  a
mess.  Once for a lark Valery Ivanov and I welded from all  the materials we
had on hand a "metallosemiconducting  potpourri" in a vacuum oven. We  got a
breathtakingly colored ingot; we  broke it down for analysis. Each  crumb of
the ingot showed all the effects of solid body-from tunnel to transistor-and
they were all unsteady, unstable, and unreproducible. We threw the potpourri
in the garbage.
     And this was the same  thing.  The point  of scientific solutions is to
find  what  is  necessary  in  the mass of qualities  and of  effects in  an
element, in  matter, or  in  a  system, and to  throw  out the chaff. And it
hadn't  worked  here.  The  computer  had  not   learned  to  understand  my
information. I headed to the lab to turn off the current.
     And in the  hallway my eye fell on a  tank-a beautiful vessel  made  of
transparent teflon, 2 x 1.5 x 1.2 meters; I had acquired it back in December
with the idea of  using the teflon for other things, but I hadn't needed it.
And the tank gave me a final and completely mad idea. I put all the printers
in the hall and put  the  tank in their place. I brought all  the wires from
the  computer,  the ends of the  piping, tubing,  and  hoses, poured out the
remains of the reagents, covered the smelly  mess with water and  turned  to
the computer with the following speech:
     "Enough numbers!  You  can  not  express the  world  in binary numbers,
understand? And  even if it were possible, what point is there to it? Try it
another way: in images, in something tangible, damn you!"
     I locked the lab and left with a firm determination to get some rest. I
hadn't been able to sleep for the entire past week.
     Those were a pleasant ten days-calm and soothing. I slept late, charged
my batteries, took  showers. Lena  and I  took  the motorcycle outside town,
went  to the movies, took long walks, kissed. "Well, how are our solid-state
circuits doing?" she would ask. "They haven't gone soft yet?" I would answer
in kind and change the subject. "I have  nothing to do with any circuits, or
computers, or  experiments!" I  would  remind myself. "I  don't want  to  be
hauled away from the lab one day in a very cheery mood wearing a jacket with
inordinately long sleeves."
     But something was bothering me.  I had run off, abandoned  the project.
What was going on in there? And what  had happened?  (I was already thinking
of  the  experiment in the past tense.)  It looked as though, through random
information, I had  started some  kind of synthesis in the complex. But what
kind of crummy synthesis was it? Synthesis of what?



        Chapter 8


     The waiter wrapped the  bottle  in a towel and  opened it. The room was
filled with a roar and smoke, and unshaven cheeks and a green turban rose to
the ceiling.
     "What's this?"
     "It's a genie!"
     "But 1 ordered champagne! Let me have the complaint book."
     -A contemporary fairy tale

     A man was walking  toward me on  the paved path.  I could see the green
trees and white  columns  of the old institute  building behind  him.  I was
headed for the accounting office. Everything was normal in  the grounds. The
man  had  a slightly rolling  gait,  swinging his arms, and  he didn't quite
limp,  but  stepped more carefully with his right foot than with his left. I
noticed that particularly. The  wind  made his raincoat flap and ruffled his
red hair.
     My first thought: "Where have I seen this guy?"
     The closer we got  to each other,  the more I saw  of him:  his sloping
forehead  with  a widow's peak and steep ridges over the  eyes,  flat cheeks
with  a  reddish,  week-old  stubble,  haughtily  pursed  lips,  and  bored,
squinting  eyes. No, we had definitely  met before.  It  was  impossible  to
forget  an  obnoxious face like that. And that jaw-my God!-it should be worn
only in the closet.
     My second thought: "Should I say hello or walk by indifferently?"
     And then everything around me no  longer existed. I tripped on the flat
pavement and stood stock still. The person coming toward me was me.
     My third thought (edited): "What the...."
     The man stopped in front of me.
     "Hello."
     "H-h-hello...." A thought sprang  up  from the  chaos that ruled in  my
brain. "Hey, are you from the film studio?"
     "The film studio? I recognize my independence!"  My double smiled. "No,
Val, the studios  aren't  planning  a  movie about  us yet. Though  now, who
knows."
     "Listen here, I'm not Val to you, but Valentin Vasilyevich Krivo-shein!
Some pushy guy like you...."
     The man smiled, obviously enjoying my anger.  I  could tell that he was
much more prepared for our meeting and was relishing his upper hand.
     "And... be so kind  as to explain: who you  are, how you come to  be on
institute grounds, and why you are wearing that makeup  and  outfit to  look
like me?"
     "Sure,"  he  said. "Valentin Vasilyevich  Krivoshein, head of  the  New
Systems Lab. Here's  my pass, if you like." He displayed my worn, used pass.
"And I came here from the lab, naturally."
     "Ah, so that's it?" It's important not to  lose your  sense of humor in
situations like this. "Very nice to meet you. Valentin Vasilyevich, you say?
From the lab? I see ... uh-huh."
     And  then I realized that  I believed him.  Not because of the pass, of
course. You could fool  anyone with a pass. Either it  was  the  realization
that the scar over my eyebrow and  the brown  birthmark on my cheek, which I
always saw  in the mirror on my left, actually were supposed  to  be on  the
right side of the face. Or it was something in his  behavior that absolutely
ruled  out the possibility of a practical joke.  I was scared.  Had I really
gone mad during the experiments  and run into my split personality?  "I hope
no  one sees us.  I wonder, to anyone else, am I here alone or are there two
of us?" I thought.
     "So-from the  lab, you say?" I  tried tricking him.  "Then why are  you
coming from the old building?"
     "I was in accounting. Today's the twenty-second." He took out a roll of
five-ruble notes and counted off part of it. "Here's your cut."
     I took the money and counted it. Then:
     "Why only half?'
     "Oh, God!" my double sighed expressively. "There are two of us now, you
know."
     (That  exaggerated, expressive sigh-I'll never sigh like that. I didn't
know you could demean someone with a  sigh. And his diction-if you  can call
the absolute  absence of  diction diction!-do I  really  spit out words like
that?)
     "I  took  the  money  from  him, and  that means he really  exists,"  I
thought.  "Or are my senses  tricking  me? Damn it, I'm a researcher, and  I
couldn't care less about senses until I know what's going on here!"
     "So you maintain that... you've come out of a locked and sealed lab?"
     "Uh-hum. Definitely from the lab. From the tank."
     "From the tank, my, oh.... What do you mean, from the tank?"
     "Just that, from the tank. You could have set up some handles. I barely
managed to get out."
     "Listen, drop this!  You don't think you  could really convince me that
you were . . . that I was . . . no, that you were made by the computer?"
     The double sighed once more in the most demeaning manner possible.
     "I have the feeling it's  going to take you a long  time to get used to
the  idea that this has  happened.  I should have known. After all, you  saw
that there was living matter in the flasks?"
     "Big deal. I've seen mold, too, growing in damp places. But that didn't
mean that I was present at  the  conception of life. All right, let's assume
that something  living  did  arise in  the flasks.  I  don't  know.  I'm  no
biologist. But what do you have to do with it?"
     "What do you mean?" Now it was his turn to get angry. "And what did you
think it  would create: an earthworm? a  horse? an octopus? The computer was
collecting  and  processing  information about  you. It  saw  you. It heard,
smelled, and observed you. It counted  the  biowaves of your brain! You were
around so much you  callused its eyes! There you are. If you have motorcycle
parts you can only make a motorcycle, not a vacuum cleaner."
     "Hm, all  right. Then where are the shoes, the suit, the  pass, and the
raincoat from?"
     "Damn  it!  If it can create a person,  how hard do you think it is for
the computer to grow a raincoat?"
     (The  victorious  glint in  the  eye, the clumsy gestures, the arrogant
tone  of voice.  Am  I really that  obnoxious when  I  feel I'm right  about
something?)
     "Grow?" I felt the fabric  of his coat.  A  shudder ran through  me.  A
raincoat wasn't like that.
     Major things don't  fit  into the  brain  immediately, at least not  in
mine. I remember when I was in  school I had to take charge of a delegate to
a  youth festival, a  young  hunter  from  the Siberian tundra; I showed him
around  Moscow.  He took  in the sights  implacably  and calmly:  the bronze
statues at the  Economic Achievement  Exhibits,  the subway escalators,  the
heavy traffic. And  when  he  saw the tall building of  MSU, he simply said,
"With poles and skin you can build a small hut-  with  rock, a big one." But
when we were in the lobby  of the Nord Restaurant, where we  had stopped off
for a bite, he came face to face with a  stuffed polar bear with  a  tray in
its  paws- and  that amazed  him! That was what  happened to me. My double's
raincoat resembled mine very much, down to the ink spot that I had added one
day trying to get my pen to work. But the fabric was more elastic and almost
greasy. The buttons were attached to flexible outgrowths, and there  were no
stitches  in  the fabric. "Listen, is it attached to  you? Can  you  take it
off?" My double was driven to a frenzy.
     "That does it! It's not  necessary to undress me in  this  cold wind to
prove that I'm  you! I  can explain it without  that. The scar over the eye-
that's when you fell down when your father was teaching you to ride a horse.
The torn  ligament  in the  right knee happened  during the soccer finals in
high school. What else do I  have to remind you of? How you used to secretly
believe in God as a child? How as a freshman you  used to boast that you had
known many women,  when  actually you lost  your virginity  in Taganrog just
before graduation?" (That son of  a bitch! The examples he picked!) "Hm, all
right; but you know, if you're me, I'm not so crazy about me.
     "Neither am I," he grunted. "I thought I had  some smarts...." His face
tensed. "Shhhh, don't turn around!" Footsteps behind me. "
     "Good  day,  Valentin  Vasilyevich,"  said  Harry  Hilobok,   assistant
professor, sciences candidate, scientific secretary and institute busybody.
     I didn't  get a  chance to open my mouth. My double grinned marvelously
and nodded:
     "Good day to you, Harry Haritonovich!"
     A couple  walked past  us in the light  of his  smile. A plump brunette
clicked  her  heels  merrily  on the  pavement and Hilobok, walking in step,
minced along as though he was wearing a tight skirt.
     "Perhaps, I didn't quite  understand you, Lyudochka," he buzzed in  his
baritone, "but I, from the point of view of not understanding completely, am
only expressing my opinion."
     "Harry has  a  new one,"  my  double announced. "You see, even  Hilobok
accepts me, and you have doubts. Let's go home!"
     The only  explanation I can  think of for following  him  so quietly to
Academic Town was that I was completely flabbergasted.
     In  the  apartment, he headed straight for  the bathroom.  I heard  the
shower running, and then he stuck out his head:
     "Hey, sample number one, or whatever  your name is. If you want to make
sure that  I'm  all  in order,  come  on in. And you can soap my back  while
you're at it."
     So I did. It  was a living person.  And  he had my  body. By the way, I
didn't  expect  such  thick folds of  fat on my stomach and sides. I have to
work out with my barbells more often.
     While he washed, I paced the room, smoked and tried  to accustom myself
to the fact that a computer had created a man. A computer had re-created me.
Oh, nature,  is this really possible? The ridiculous medieval ideas about  a
homunculus,  .  . . Wiener's  idea that the  information in a  man could  be
decoded into impulses, transmitted over  any distance, and reordered  into a
man again, in the form of an image on a screen, . . . Ashby's assertion that
there  was no major  difference between  the  work  of  the  brain and  of a
computer (but of course, Sechenov had  maintained that earlier, too),... all
that had just been clever talk to keep the  brain going. Try to do something
practical with any of those ideas!
     And now it looked as if it had been done? There, on  the other side  of
the door, splashing and  snorting, was no Ivanov, Petrov, or Sidorov-I would
have  tossed them out on their ear-but me. And those rolls with the numbers?
I guess I had burned the "paper" me.
     I was  trying  to extract short, usable truths from the combinations of
numbers, but  the  computer went  deeper  than that. It stored  information,
combining  it  this  way and that, compared it through feedback,  picked and
chose what was necessary and at some level of complexity "discovered" life!
     And  then  the  computer developed  it to the  level of man. But why? I
wasn't trying to do that!
     Now, as I  think  about it calmly, I can figure it out. It  did exactly
what  I was  trying  to do. I wanted a machine that could understand man and
that's all. "Do you  understand  me?" "Oh, yes!"  answers the  listener, and
both go  about their  business,  happy with each other. In conversation it's
much easier. But in experiments  with  computers I  shouldn't have  confused
understanding  with  agreement.  That's why (better  late than  never)  it's
important to figure out what understanding is.
     There is practical, or  goal, understanding. You put in a program;  the
computer understands it and does  what is  expected of it. "Attack, Prince!"
and Prince grabs the pants cuff of a passerby, "Gee!" and the horses turn to
the right. "Haw!" and they go  left. This kind of primitive understanding of
the  gee-haw type is accessible to many living and inanimate  systems. It is
controlled by achievement of the goal, and  the more  primitive the  system,
the simpler the goal must be and the more detailed the programmed task.
     But there is another  understanding:  mutual understanding. A  complete
transferral of your information to  another system. And for this, the system
receiving the information must not be any simpler than the system giving the
information.  I didn't  give  the computer a goal.  I was waiting for it  to
finish  building itself  and  making  itself  more  complex.  But  it  never
finished-and that's  natural. Its goal became the  complete understanding of
my  information,   not  only   verbal,  but  all  of  it.  (The  goal  of  a
computer-that's another loose concept that shouldn't be  played with. Simply
put,  information  systems behave  according  to certain laws  that somewhat
resemble  the  rudiments of thermodynamics. In  my  system  sensors, crystal
units,  TsVM-12   had  to  reach  an  informational  equilibrium   with  the
environment-just as  the  iron  ingot in the  oven must achieve  temperature
equilibrium with the coals. This equilibrium is mutual understanding. And it
cannot be achieved on  the level  of circuitry nor on  the  level of  simple
organisms.)
     And that's how it happened. Only man is capable of mutual understanding
with man. And for good mutual understanding, a close  friend.  My double was
the  product of informational equilibrium between  the computer and me. But,
incidentally, the pointers on the informational scales never did match up. I
wasn't  in the lab then and didn't meet face to face  with my  newly hatched
double. And later everything went differently for us anyway.
     In a  word, it was horrifying how poorly  I had run the experiment. The
only  point  in my favor  was  that I had finally thought of setting  up the
feedback mechanism.
     An  interesting  thought:  if  I  had  run   the  experiment  strictly,
logically,  throwing  out  dubious variants, would I  have gotten  the  same
results? Never in  my  life! I would have  come up with a steady,  sure-fire
Ph.D.  thesis,   and  nothing  more,  hi  science,  mostly  mediocre  things
happen-and I was prepared for mediocrity.
     So everything was all right? Why does sadness gnaw at me? Why do I keep
harping on my mistakes? I succeeded. Because it didn't go  by the rules? Are
there any rules for discoveries? Much happens by accident that you can't put
down to your  scientific vision. What about  Galvani's discovery, or X-rays,
or radioactivity,  or  electronic emissions,  or  any discovery  that is the
basis  of  some  science or other and is  related to chance. I  still  don't
understand a lot of it?  That's  the situation with many scientists. Nothing
to be upset about. Then why this self-torture?
     I  guess the problem  is something else: you  can't work  that way now.
Science has become  very serious now, not  like in the  days  of Galvani and
Roentgen. This  is the  way, without thinking,  that you  can come up with a
force  that   can  destroy  the   whole  world  instantly-with  a  brilliant
experimental proof....
     My double came out of the  bathroom  rosy  pink  and  in my pajamas and
settled in front  of the mirror to comb his hair.  I stood behind  him.  Two
identical faces stared out from the mirror. Only his wet hair was darker.
     He  took out the electric razor  from the  closet and plugged  it in. I
watched him  shave and almost felt that I was visiting him; his behavior was
so casual and at-home. I couldn't resist speaking up:
     "Listen, do you at least realize how unusual this situation is?" "What?
Don't bother me!" He was obviously beyond being interested in the fact.


     The  graduate student put down the  diary  and  shook his  head:  well,
Valentin the Original didn't know people very well.
     He had also been  in shock. His sense had  told  him that he woke up in
the tank,  understanding everything: where  he was  and how  he  got  there.
Actually, his discovery  began then. And his  insolence was only a cover-up.
He was searching  for a  mode  of behavior that  would keep  him from  being
reduced to a lab guinea pig.
     He picked up the diary.


     "But you  appeared from a  machine,  not  from a mother's womb! From  a
machine, do you understand?"
     "So what? Appearing from a womb is such a snap? A human's birth is much
more mysterious than my appearance. Here you can trace the logical sequence,
but there? Will it be a boy or a girl? Will it  favor father or mother? Will
it  be smart or  a dope? It's all in a fog! That business seems normal  only
because  of  its  frequency.  Here,  the computer took down  information and
re-created it. Like a tape recorder. Of course, it would have been better if
it  had re-created  me  from Einstein...  but what can you  do? If  you tape
boogie-woogie you can't expect to hear a Tchaikovsky symphony."
     No, I wasn't  a boor like him. He must have been  acutely aware of  the
ticklishness of his situation and didn't want me to realize it. And what was
there that I couldn't realize. He appeared out of flasks and bottles, like a
medieval homunculus, and he was wildly angry. I've often noticed that people
who have an inferiority complex are always more obnoxious than the rest.
     And  he was trying  to behave with the spontaneity of a newborn. A baby
isn't  overwhelmed  with  the event (Man is born!), but instead  immediately
makes a fuss, sucking, and messing his diapers.
     Graduate student Krivoshein merely sighed and turned the page.
     "But do you feel all right?"
     "Absolutely!" He  splashed on some  after-shave. "Why shouldn't  I feel
all right?  A computer is  an apparatus  without fantasy. I can just picture
what it might have done  if it had an inkling of imagination. But  I'm fine:
I'm not a two-headed monster. I'm young, healthy. I'm  going  to have dinner
and go to Lena's. I've missed her."
     "What?"
     He watched me with interest, sparks dancing in his eyes.
     "Yes, we're  rivals  now!  Listen,  you seem to have  a  very primitive
attitude toward  all  this. Jealousy is old-fashioned and in poor taste. And
who  are  you jealous of, anyway? Think  about it.  If  Lena's  with  me, it
doesn't  mean that she's being unfaithful to you. You can only be unfaithful
with  another man,  someone different, more attractive, for instance. And as
far as she's  concerned,  I'm you.  Even  if  we  have  children, you  can't
consider yourself  cuckolded. You and I are identical-all the same genes and
chromosomes. Easy!"
     He had to hide behind the closet  door. I grabbed a dumbbell and headed
for him.
     "I'll kill  you! Don't try logic  with  me. I'll give  you  logic,  you
homunculus! I gave you life and I'll kill  you, understand? Don't  you  dare
even think about her!"
     My double fearlessly stepped out from the closet door. He was frowning.
     "Listen, Taras Bulba, put down the  dumbbell. If you're  going to  talk
like that, we  might as  well  agree on  some terms  right now. I'm  leaving
'homunculus'  and 'kill'  aside as products of  your  hysteria.  And  as for
locutions like 'I  gave  you life'... well,  you didn't. I exist without any
help  from you, and you might as  well forget any ideas of being my lord and
master."
     "What do you mean?"
     "Just that. Put down the dumbbell. I'm serious. If  you want precision,
I  was  created  despite your plans  simply  because  you  didn't  stop  the
experiment in  time, and when  you wanted  to, it  was too  late.  In  other
words," he snorted, "it's quite analagous to the situation when you appeared
in this world because of your parents' carelessness."
     (Look, he knows  everything! It's true. My mother once said, after some
prank of mine, to make me obey:
     "I was going to have an abortion, but changed my mind. And you...."
     She shouldn't  have  said that.  I  was  unwanted.  I might  never have
existed.)
     "But  as  distinguished  from your  mother, you  didn't bear me, didn't
suffer labor pains,  didn't nurse and clothe me,"  he continued. "You didn't
even  save  me  from  death  because,  after  all,  I  existed  before  this
experiment. I was  you. I don't owe  you my  life, my health, my engineering
degree-nothing! So let's start even."
     "And even with Lena?"
     "With Lena...  I  don't  know.  But  you  ...  you...."  Judging by his
expression  he  wanted  to  add something,  but held  his  tongue,  exhaling
sharply. "You have to respect my feelings  as I do yours, understand? I love
Lena too, you know. And I know that she's mine-my  woman, understand? I know
her body, the smell of her  skin  and hair, her breath...  and how she says,
'Really, Val, you're just like a bear!' and how she wrinkles her nose."
     He suddenly stopped. We  looked at  each other, overwhelmed by the same
thought. "Let's get to the lab!" I ran for my coat first.



        Chapter 9


     If you want a cab and fate offers a bus, take the bus; at least it runs
on a schedule.
     -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 90

     We  made a beeline through the park:  the wind whistled in the branches
and in our ears. Asphalt-colored clouds blanketed the sky.
     The  lab  smelled  like  a  warm swamp. The ceiling  bulbs glowed  like
lighthouses in a  fog.  I stepped on a hose near my desk that had  not  been
there before, and pulled my foot away. The hose was moving!
     The flasks and bottles were covered with thick gray  dust; there was no
way to tell what was going on inside them. Streams of water bubbled from the
distillers and the relays clicked in the thermostats. In a far corner, which
could not  be reached  through the  jumble of  wires, tubes, and hoses,  the
lights on the TsVM-12's control panel blinked at me.
     There were many  more hoses than before. We made our way through  them,
as if through a jungle of lianas. Some hoses were contracting, pushing lumps
through  themselves. The  walls of the tank were covered with  some  kind of
mold. I wiped it off with my sleeve.
     In  the golden, murky  medium there was a silhouette of a man. "Another
double? No...." I looked closely. The contours were a woman's, contours that
I could never confuse with anyone else's. A hairless head fluttered in front
of my face.
     There was some mad logic in the fact that precisely now when the double
and I were fighting over Lena, the computer was struggling with our problem.
I was scared.
     "But the computer doesn't know her!"
     "You  do. The  computer is re-creating  her from your memory."  We were
whispering for some reason. "Look!"
     A skeleton was beginning  to form beyond Lena's  ghostly  outline.  Her
feet solidified into white cartilage and toes; her ankle and shin bones took
shape. Her spine formed into  a long white form and  ribs branched off  from
it; her shoulder blades grew. Seams appeared on  her  skull, and the outline
of her  eye sockets  formed. I can't say that it was a pleasant sight-seeing
your girlfriend's skeleton-but  I couldn't  take  my  eyes off  it. We  were
watching something that no one had ever seen-how a machine creates a person!
     "With my memory, my memory..." I  was thinking feverishly.  "But that's
not enough. Or has the  computer mastered the laws  of constructing a  human
body? From where? I certainly don't know them!"  The bones in the tank  were
becoming sheathed with dark  blue strips and  coils of muscle, and they were
covered  by  a yellowish layer of fat,  like  a  chicken's. The  circulatory
system shot red  throughout the  body. All  this  fluctuated in the mixture,
changing  shape  and  form. Even  Lena's face, with its closed  lids, behind
which we could see her watery eyes,  was distorted by horrible grimaces. The
computer seemed to be trying on ways to make a person.
     I know  too  little about  anatomy  in general  and  female  anatomy in
particular  to judge whether  the computer was building Lena correctly.  But
soon I  sensed that something was wrong. The original  contours  of her body
were changing. The shoulders,  which just a  few  minutes ago had been round
and soft, became angular and grew in breadth. What was it?
     "Her feet!" my double shouted. "Look at her feet!"
     I looked  at  her feet  that  took  a size  thirteen  shoe-and  when  I
understood I  broke  out  in  cold  sweat.  The  computer  had  run  out  of
information on Lena and was finishing her off with my body! I  turned to  my
double; his forehead was glistening with sweat too.
     "We have to stop it!"
     "How? Cut off the current?"
     "We can't. That will erase the memory bank in the computer. Turn on the
cooling... ?"
     "To slow down  the  process? It won't work. The computer has large heat
reserves...."
     The  distorted  body  in  the  tank was  taking  on clearer features. A
transparent mantle moved over it, and I  recognized the  style of the simple
dress in which I liked Lena best. The computer with an idiot's diligence was
dressing its creation in it.
     I had to order the computer to stop, convince it... but how?
     "Right!"  My double leaped over to the glass case, took  out Monomakh's
Crown, pushed the "translation"  button on it, and handed it to me.  "Put it
on and start hating Lena; think how you want to destroy her... go ahead."
     I grabbed the shiny  helmet, turned it around in my  hands, and gave it
back.
     "I can't...."
     "Jerk! What  else  is there? That thing will be  opening its eyes  soon
and...."
     He pulled on the helmet and started screaming and waving his arms:
     "Stop, computer!  Stop immediately, do you hear me? You're not creating
a good copy of a human! Stop, you idiot! Stop right now!"
     "Stop, machine, do you hear me?" I turned to the microphones. "Stop, or
we'll destroy you!"
     It's  disgusting  to  remember  that scene.  We, men who  were  used to
pushing buttons to stop and direct any process, shouting and explaining  ...
and to what? A  collection  of test  tubes,  electric circuits,  and  hoses.
Phooey! We were panicked.
     We yelled some more  in disgusting voices, when the hoses near the tank
began  shaking with energetic convulsions,  and the  hybrid  specimen in the
tank was covered with a white mist. We shut up. Three minutes later the mist
cleared. There  was  nothing in  the  gold  liquid. Only  ripples  and color
gradations spreading from the center to the edges.
     "Wow..." said my double. "I somehow never appreciated the fact that man
is seventy percent water. Now I've got it."
     We  made  our  way  to the window. The  humid stuffiness made  my  body
sticky. I unbuttoned my shirt, and so did my double. It was evening. The sky
had cleared.  The  windows of  the  institute  across the  way reflected the
sunset  as though nothing had happened. They reflected it like that on every
clear evening-yesterday, last month,  last year-when this had  not  existed.
Nature was making believe nothing had happened.
     The skeleton enveloped in translucent tissue stayed in my mind.
     "Those anatomical  details, the  grimaces...  brrrr!" said the  double,
lowering  himself into a chair. "I don't  even  feel  like seeing Lena right
now."
     I said nothing, because he had expressed my thoughts. It  was over now,
but then ... it's one thing to know, even intimately,  that  your woman is a
human being made of flesh, bones, and innards, and another thing to see it.
     I took  out the lab journal and looked at  the last few notes...  vague
and pointless. It's when  the experiment is working or when you get  a  good
idea that you write at length; here I had:
     April 8. Decoded numbers, 800 lines. Unsuccessful.
     April  9. Decoded  extracts from five rolls. Didn't understand a thing.
Some kind of schizophrenia!
     April 10. Decoded with the same  results.  I added  to  the flasks  and
bottles: Numbers 1, 3  and 5-2 liters  of glycerine; Numbers 2 and 7-200 ml.
of tyomochevina; and 2-3 liters of distilled water to all of them.
     April 11. "Streptocidal striptease with the trembling of streptococci."
That does it....
     And now I'll pick up the pen and write:
     April 22. The  complex has  re-created me, V. V. Krivoshein, Krivoshein
Number 2 is sitting next to me scratching his chin. A real joke!
     And then I was engulfed with a  wave of satanic  pride. After all, this
was  some  discovery!  It  encompassed  systemology,  electronics,  bionics,
chemistry, and biology-everything you could want and then some. And I did it
all. How I did it was another question. But the important  thing was me, ME!
Now I could invite the State Commission and  demonstrate the emergence of  a
new double  in the tank.  I could  imagine the  look on their faces. And  my
friends would  have  to  say:  "Boy  he  really  did it! That Krivoshein  is
something!"  And  Voltampernov   would  run  over  to  see....  I   had   an
uncontrollable urge to giggle; only the presence of my double stopped me.
     "Who cares about friends and Voltampernov," I heard my voice  say and I
didn't  realize at first  that it was  my double speaking. "This,  Val, is a
Nobel Prize!"
     That's  right: the Nobel Prize!  My portrait in all  the papers ... and
Lena, who treats me a little high-handedly now-and why not, she's beautiful,
and  I'm  not-will appreciate me then.  The  run-of-the-mill name Krivoshein
(once I tried looking in the encyclopedia for famous people with my name and
didn't find  any;  there  was  a  Krivoshilkov  and  a  Krivonogov,  but  no
Krivosheins yet) will resound. Krivoshein! The same....
     I  was made uneasy by these meditations. My vain thoughts  disappeared.
Really, what would happen? What should be done with this discovery?
     I shut my journal.
     "So,  are we going to  create  in our image?  A crush of Krivosheins? I
guess we could make others if we recorded  them into the computer. Damn  it!
This is ... it just doesn't make sense."
     "Hm. And things were so peaceful...." My double shook his head.
     Precisely. Everything had been peaceful-"Nice weather, miss. Which  way
are you  going?"  "In the opposite direction!" "Me too.  What's  your name?"
"What's it to you?"-and so on right  up to the wedding palace, the maternity
ward, a  licking for  killing a cat  with a slingshot, and burning the hated
zoology   textbook   after  graduation.   The   chairman  of  the  Dneprovsk
Registration Office put it so well in his article: "The family is the method
of  propagating  the  species and  increasing  the state's population."  And
suddenly-hail  science!-there  is  a  rival  method;  we  pour and  sprinkle
reagents from  the local  chemistry manual, pass  input through sensors, and
get a person. And  a mature one  at that, with  muscles  and  an engineering
degree, with habits and life experience.
     "It looks as if we're taking aim at the most  human of man's qualities:
love,  parenthood,  childhood!"  I  was  beginning  to  shudder.  "And  it's
profitable. It's efficient and profitable, the  most terrible things in  our
rationalistic age!"
     My double looked up and there was anxiety and tension in his eyes.
     "Listen, but why is that terrible? Okay, we worked-rather, you  worked.
So you made an experimental determination and  on its basis  a  discovery. A
method of synthesizing  information  into a person. The ancient dream of the
alchemist.... That's  very  nice! Once  upon a time  kings financed ventures
like  that very  generously.  Of  course,  they  chopped  off  the  heads of
researchers who  had  failed, but if you think about it, they were right. If
you  can't do it, don't take it  on. But nothing will happen to us. Just the
reverse. Why is it so terrible?"
     "Because this isn't the Middle Ages," I thought to myself. And  not the
last  century. And not  even the beginning  of  the twentieth century,  when
everything was still ahead of  us. In those days, discoverers had  the moral
right to  spread their arms and say: well, we had no  idea things would turn
out badly.... We, their lucky descendants, don't have that right. Because we
know.  Because it's  all  happened  before. It had  all happened before: gas
attacks, according to science; Maidanek and Auschwitz, according to science;
Hiroshima   and   Nagasaki,   according  to   science.   Plans   for  global
warfare-science   with  the  use  of  mathematics.   Limiting   warfare-also
science.... Decades had passed since the last  world war. The ruins had been
rebuilt. Fifty million corpses  had rotted  and enriched the earch. Hundreds
of  millions  of people had  been born and grown  up-and  the memory had not
faded. It was horrible to  remember and  more horrible to forget. Because it
had not become part of the past. The knowledge remained: people can do that.
     The inventors and researchers are merely specialists in their field. To
obtain new  information from  nature they have to expend  so much energy and
inventiveness  that they  have neither strength nor ideas  left for thinking
outside  their fields-what will this do in real life? These people and their
chosen fields-people for whom any  change or discovery is just another means
of  achieving  old aims: power, wealth, influence, and buyable pleasures. If
we  gave them our  process, they  would see only  one  new thing in it: it's
profitable!  Should  they  make  doubles  of  famous  singers,  actors,  and
musicians?  No, that isn't  profitable. It's better  to  produce records and
posters.  But it would be profitable to mass-produce  people  for a  special
goal:  voters  to  beat  a  political  opponent  (much easier  than spending
hundreds of  millions on the usual  election campaign), women  for brothels,
workers in rare fields, cannon-fodder soldiers ... and even specialists with
narrow vision and tame  temperament who  would  continue  inventing  without
getting involved in things that  were none  of their business.  A man with a
specific function-a  man-thing. What  could  be worse?  How do we  deal with
things and machines that  have outlived their usefulness  and have fulfilled
their function? They're recycled, burned, compressed, discarded. And you can
treat men, things, the same way.
     "But that's the  way  it is over there...." My double waved in a  vague
direction. "Our society wouldn't permit it."
     "And we don't  have  people who  are  ready to use everything from  the
ideas  of communism to  false radio  reports, from  their work  situation to
quotes  from the  classics in order  to  become  wealthy,  and  have a  good
position, and then  to get more and more for themselves,  at no  matter what
cost? People  who see  the  least  attempt to reduce  their  privileges as a
phenomenal catastrophe?"
     "We do,"  my double  agreed. "But people basically are good or else the
world would have turned into a mass of bums attacking each other a long time
ago, and died without thermonuclear war. But... if you don't count the minor
natural disasters-floods, earthquakes, epidemics-people are  at fault in all
their problems, including the most horrible ones. It's their fault that they
submitted  to  what they shouldn't have submitted to,  agreed  to what  they
should have fought, and thought that  they weren't  involved.  At fault that
they did work that  paid better instead of  work that was needed by everyone
and themselves. If more people  on earth coordinated their work and business
with the interests of mankind, we would have nothing to worry about with our
discovery. But that's not  the  way it  is. And that's  why, if  there is at
least  one  influential  and  active  bastard  in  dangerous proximity,  our
discovery will turn into a hideous monstrosity."
     "Because the application of scientific discoveries is mere  technology.
Once upon a time, technology was invented to help man in his battle  between
man and man. And  in that use technology didn't  solve any problems; it only
increased them. Think how many  scientific,  technological  and sociological
problems there are now instead of  the one that was solved twenty years ago:
how can you synthesize helium from hydrogen?
     "If we  announce our discovery, life will become  even scarier. And  we
will have fame. Every man, woman, and child will know exactly  whom to curse
and why."
     "Listen, maybe you're right . . . ?" my double asked. "We  saw nothing,
know nothing. People have enough terrible discoveries to deal with as it is.
Let's cut off the juice and turn off the faucets. How about it?"
     "And  right  away,  the problem no longer  exists. I'll write  off  the
reagents  I used up and  make up some excuse about the work. And  I'll start
work on something simpler and more  innocent...." "I'll go to Vladivostok to
be a  fitter in the ports." We stopped talking. Venus blazed over  the black
trees  outside the window. A cat cried with a child's voice. A howling  note
pierced the grounds' silence-they  were running tests on a new jet engine in
Lena's  construction  bureau.  "Work goes on.  It's  right;  1941  cannot be
repeated." I was thinking about  it so  that I could  put off  my decision a
little longer.  "Deep  underground, plutonium and  hydrogen  bombs are going
off. Highly  paid scientists and engineers are determined  to master nuclear
arms. And pointy-nosed rockets peer into space from their concrete silos all
over  the  world.  Each  is  pointed at  its  objective;  they're wired  up.
Computers  are  constantly  testing  them: any  problems?  As  soon  as  the
predetermined   time   of  reliability  runs  out  on  an  electronic  unit,
technicians  in uniform  unplug it and  quickly,  quickly, replace  it  with
another unit,  as though  the  war they absolutely  had to  win was about to
start any second. Work goes on."
     "Nonsense!"   I   said.  "Humanity   isn't  mature   enough  for   many
things-nuclear energy  and  space flight-so what? The discovery is objective
reality; you can't  cover it up.  If not us, someone else will come upon it.
The  basic idea of the experiment is simple enough. Are  you  sure that they
will deal with the discovery better than  we? I'm  not. That's why  we  must
think what to do to keep this discovery from becoming a threat to mankind."
     "It's complicated," my double sighed and stood up. "I'll take a look at
what's  happening  in  the tank."  He was  back  in a flash. Stunned.  "Val,
there's ... father's in there!"


     Radio  operators have a sure  sign  to go  by: if a  complex electronic
circuit works the first time after it's put together, expect  trouble. If it
doesn't  foul up in the trials, then it will embarrass the  workers when the
inspection commission is there; if it manages  to pass the commission,  then
it will exhibit one flaw after  another in mass  production. The weak points
always show up.
     The  computer was trying to achieve  informational equilibrium not with
me, the  direct  source  of  information,  but with the  entire  information
environment that  it found  out about from me, with the entire world. That's
why Lena appeared and that's why my father appeared.
     And that's why all the rest happened. That's why my double and I worked
nonstop for a  whole  week. This activity  of the  computer's was a  logical
extension of its development; but  from  a technical point of view it was an
attempt with  lousy equipment. Instead of  a  "model  of the world" the tank
contained a nightmare.
     I can't describe how my father made his appearance in the tank-it's too
terrible. That's the way  he had looked on  the day he died: a flabby, heavy
old man with a broad shaven face and a cloudy  mane of white hair around his
skull. The computer had  picked  the last and most depressing memory of him.
He had died before  I  got there. He wasn't breathing,  but I still tried to
warm his cooling body.
     Then I dreamed about  him  several  times, and it  was always  the same
dream: I rub my father's  cold body for all I'm worth and it gets warmer and
he  starts  breathing, with  difficulty at first, a death  rattle,  and then
normally. He opens his eyes and gets  up  out of bed. "I was sick a  little,
son," he says in an apologetic voice. "But I'm fine now." The dream was like
death in reverse.
     And now  the  computer was  creating him so that he could die once more
before our eyes. We understood rationally that this was not our father but a
regular information hybrid that could not be permitted to be  completed;  we
knew that it would  be a body, or a  mad creature, or something  along those
lines. But neither he nor I could put  on Monomakh's Crown  and  command the
computer to stop. We avoided looking at the tank and each other.
     Then I walked over to the panel and pulled the switch.  It was dark and
quiet in the lab for a moment.
     "What are you  doing?" My double ran  over to the panel and  turned the
juice back on.
     The  filter  condensers  did  not  discharge in  that second,  and  the
computer went on working. But everything disappeared from the tank.
     Later  I  saw all the chaos of my  memory in the  tank: my  fifth-grade
botany teacher Elizaveta Moiseevna; Klava, my  love interest  in those days;
some old acquaintance with a poetic profile; the Moldavian driver I glimpsed
briefly at a bazaar in Kishinev.... It's a hell to  list them all. It wasn't
a "model of the world" either;  everything was formed vaguely, in fragments,
the way it's  stored  in  human  memory,  which  knows  how  to  forget. For
instance,  only  Elizaveta  Moiseevna's  small,  stern  eyes  under  forever
frowning brows were right, and the only thing left of  the Moldavian was the
sheepskin hat lowered all the way to his mustache....
     We took turns sleeping. One always had to keep watch at the tank to put
on the crown in time and say "No!"
     My double was first to think of sticking a thermometer in the tank. (It
was  nice  to  observe  the pleasure he  derived from  his first independent
creative act!) The temperature was 104œF.
     "It's feverish delirium."
     "We should give it an aspirin," I joked.
     But,  thinking about it, we decided to lower the computer's temperature
by  pouring  quinine  into the flasks and  bottles  that  fed  the tank. The
temperature went  down  a  few degrees,  but  the  delirium  continued.  The
computer was  combining images the way they occur in a nightmare-the face of
the  institute's  first department head, Johann Johannovich Kliapp, smoothly
took on the features of Azarov, who then grew Hilobok's mustache....
     When the temperature  dropped some more, flat images, like on a screen,
of political figures, movie stars, productive workers with miniature  Boards
of  Commendation, Lomonosov, Faraday,  and Maria Trapezund, a  popular local
singer,  appeared   on  the  surface  of  the  liquid  in  the  tank.  These
two-dimensional shadows-some in color, some  in black and white-would appear
for a second and then melt away. It looked as if my memory was drying out.
     On the sixth or seventh day (we had lost track of time) the temperature
of the golden liquid dropped to 98.6œ.
     "It's normal!" And I went off to get some sleep.
     My double stayed on duty.
     That night he shook me awake.
     "Get up! The computer is making eyes."
     I sent him to hell. He poured a mug of water on my head. I had to go.


     At first,  I  thought that there were bubbles  in the liquid. But  they
were eyes- white spheres  with pupils and  colorful irises.  They floated up
from the bottom, bounced against the transparent  sides of the tank, watched
our movements and the  blinking  lights on the TsVM-12's control panel. They
were blue, gray, brown, green, black, huge horse's  eyes with violet irises,
cat's eyes, glowing and with a vertical pupil, and black bird's eyes. It was
a collection of every kind of eye I had ever seen. Since they had no lids or
lashes, they seemed surprised.
     By morning eyes were appearing near  the tank as well: muscular growths
stuck out from the hoses, ending in lids and eyelashes. The lids opened. New
eyes stared at us intently and expectantly.  The infinite silent stares were
driving us crazy.
     And  then . . . feelers and  trunks grew like bamboo  runners from  the
tank, the  flasks,  and hoses.  There was something naive and  childlike  in
their  movements.  They interwove,  touched  the apparatus and bottles,  the
room. One little feeler reached an uninsulated clamp, touched it, and jerked
back, drooping.
     "Hey, this is getting serious!" my double said.
     It  was. The computer was moving from a contemplative method of getting
information to an active one, and was growing its  own sensors and executive
mechanisms  for  it.  Whatever you  called this development-  a striving for
informational equilibrium, self-construction, or  a biological synthesis  of
information- you couldn't help being impressed by the tenacity  and power of
the process.
     But  after all  we  had  seen, we were in no mood  for awe  or academic
curiosity. We guessed how it might end.
     "Enough!" I picked up Monomakh's Crown. "I don't know if we'll be  able
to make it do what we want . . ."
     "It would help if we knew what we wanted," my double added.
     ". . .  but for a  start we have  to  keep it from doing  what we don't
want."
     ."Get  rid  of the  eyes!  Get  rid  of  the  feelers!  Stop  gathering
information! Get rid of the eyes. Get rid of the feelers! Stop!" We repeated
these thoughts through the crown, spoke them into the microphones.
     But  the computer went on moving  its feelers and following us with its
hundreds of eyes. It was beginning to look like a showdown.
     "The result of our work," my double said.
     "So!" I  said. "If that's the way." I punched the tank. All the feelers
quivered and stretched  out for me. I moved away.  "Val, turn off the water!
Disconnect the feed hoses!"
     "Computer,  you're going  to die. Computer,  you'll  die of  hunger and
thirst if you don't obey."
     Of  course,  that was crude and obvious, but what else  could we do? My
double  slowly turned the handle on  the  water  supply. The stream of water
from the distillers turned into a  drip.  I clamped the hoses.  The  feelers
shuddered and drooped. They started curling up and going back into the tank.
The eyes dimmed, teared, and crinkled.
     An hour later everything was gone. The liquid in the tank was once more
golden and clear.
     "That's better!" I took off the crown and rolled up the wires.
     We  turned the water back on, removed the clamps and stayed  in the lab
until late  at night,  smoking, talking about  nothing, waiting to see  what
would  happen. We didn't  know  what we were more afraid of: a  new delirium
from the computer or that  the system, muzzled  so harshly, would fall apart
and  cease  existing. On the first day we  talked  about  "covering  up  the
discovery." But now we couldn't stand the thought that it might cover itself
and disappear.
     My double and  I took turns approaching the tank,  sniffing  carefully,
afraid to smell decay  or degeneration; not trusting the thermometer we kept
touching the sides of the tank and the warm living hoses. Were  they cooling
off? Were they enflamed with fever again?
     But the air  in the room stayed warm, humid, and fresh, as if there was
a  large, clean animal in the room. The computer was alive. It simply wasn't
undertaking anything without us. We had tamed it!
     After  midnight, I looked at my double,  like a mirror. He was blinking
with tired red eyes and smiled:
     "Everything seems okay, Shall we go to bed?"
     There was  no  artificial double for  me.  A comrade,  a colleague, was
sitting next to me, just as tired and happy as I was. And-how strange!-I had
not  felt joy at  meeting him in the  institute  grounds  and  I hadn't been
soothed  by the phantasmagoric memory show in the tank ... but  now I was at
peace and very happy.
     It's really true? the most  important thing for a person is to  feel in
control of a situation.



        Chapter 10


     Is not the zealous search  for causal connections another expression of
the property instinct in man?  Even  here we seek  to  know what  belongs to
what.
     -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 10

     We  went  out  into  the institute  grounds. The  night was  warm.  Our
exhaustion made us forget that  we should not appear in public together, and
we remembered  only in the  entry. Old man Vakhterych stared at us  with his
inebriated eyes. We froze.
     "Ah. Valentin Vasilyevich!"  the old man exclaimed  happily.  "Done for
the day?"
     "Yes ..." we replied in unison.
     "Good."  Vakhterych  rose heavily  and unlocked  the front  door.  "And
nothing  will happen to the institute, and no one will steal  it, and have a
good  evening,  and  I  still  have  to sit  here.  People go off  to  enjoy
themselves, and I have to sit here...."
     We ran out into the street and hurried off.
     "That's  something!" I  noticed that  the facade  of  the new institute
building was decorated with multicolored lights. "What's the date?"
     My double counted on his fingers:
     "The first... no, the second of May. Happy holiday, Val!"
     "Belatedly... oh, boy!"
     I remembered that I had a date  with Lena for May I to go out with some
of her  co-workers and to go for a motorcycle excursion on the second. I had
blown it. She would never forgive me.
     "And Lena is out dancing right  now .  . . somewhere with somebody," my
double muttered.
     "What do you care?"
     We  fell silent. Buses, decorated with branches, raced up and  down the
street. Neon rocket boosters  were  set up on rooftops. We  could see people
dancing, singing, drinking, through open windows.
     I  lit  a  cigarette and  started  rethinking my  observations  of  the
computer-womb  (as we finally decided to call  the complex).  "First of all,
it's not  a  computer-oracle  or a  computer-thinker, because  there  is  no
winnowing  of  information  in it,  only combinations-sometimes  meaningful,
sometimes not. Secondly, it can  be controlled not only  by energy (clamping
the hoses, turning off  water and  power-in other words, grabbing it by  the
throat), but also by information. Of course, for now it responds only to the
command  'No!'-but  it's a  beginning. I think  the most  convenient  way to
command  it  is  through  Monomakh's  Crown  with  brain  waves. Third,  the
computer-womb, while very  complex, is still only a  machine,  an artificial
creation   without  a  goal.   The  striving  for  stability,  informational
equilibrium,  is  not a  goal but  a characteristic,  just  like  that of an
analytic scale. But it is expressed in a more complex way: through synthesis
in the form of living matter via external information. A goal always lies in
solving  a  problem. There  was no problem-and so it fooled  around from  an
excess of possibilities. But..."
     "...  man must set  its goals,"  my double  picked up; I was no  longer
amazed by  his ability  to  think with  me.  "As  for  all  other  machines.
Therefore, as the bureaucrats say, all responsibility lies with us."
     I didn't  feel  like thinking about responsibility.  You  work and work
unstintingly-and then you get stuck with responsibility, too. And  people go
off  to enjoy themselves. We missed the holiday.  What  dopes! And my  whole
life will go by in a smelly lab.
     We turned down  a chestnut-lined avenue  which led  to Academic Town. A
couple strolled ahead  of  us. My  double and I felt  a pang-we poor, sober,
hungry,  and  lonely men. That couple  fit in  so beautifully  in the gaslit
avenue. Tall and  elegant, he held her by  the waist. She bent her full mane
of hair toward him. We unthinkingly  sped  up,  in order to pass them and be
spared the lyrical sight.
     "We'll play some music, now, Tanechka! I have records  that'll make you
salivate!"  Hilobok's buzzing voice reached us,  and we  were  knocked for a
loop. The charm of the lovely picture faded. "Harry has another new one," my
double  announced.  As we got  closer  we  recognized  the  girl,  too. Just
recently she had come to the institute in school uniform to do her probation
work; now,  I think, she worked as a lab  assistant in  the digital computer
lab. I liked her looks: full lips, a soft nose, and big brown eyes that were
dreamy and trusting.
     "And  when Arkady  Arkadievich  is  on vacation or  on a business  trip
abroad, I  have to  make many  of his decisions," Harry said,  spreading his
peacock  tail.  "And   even  when  he's  here  ...  what?  Of  course,  it's
interesting, why not?"
     There goes little  Tanechka,  her  head  bent forward towards Hilobok's
shoulder,  and assistant  professor Harry seems like  a  shining  knight  of
Soviet science to her. Maybe he even has radiation sickness like the hero of
the  movie  Nine  Days  in  One Year? Or  maybe  his  health  is  completely
undermined by  his  scientific work,  like the hero of the  movie Everything
Will Remain  for  the  People?  And so she melts,  imagining herself as  his
heroine,  the  little fool.... Your  scientific  boyfriend is in fine shape,
don't you worry, Tanechka. He hasn't worn himself out with science. And he's
leading you directly to your first major disillusionment in life. He's a pro
in that department....
     My double slowed down and said under his breath:
     "Should we beat him up? It would be very easy; you go off to visit some
friends and establish an alibi, and I'll...."
     He beat  me to it by a split second. He spoke hurriedly in  general, to
prove  his individuality.  He understood that we thought  the same  way. But
since he  spoke up so soon, I  immediately developed the second mechanism of
proving my individuality: opposition to someone else's idea.
     "Over the girl, you mean? The hell with her; if not her, then he'll get
someone else."
     "Over her, and everything in general. For the good of my soul. Remember
the stink he made over our work?" His eyes narrowed. "Remember?"
     I remembered.  I  was working  in  Valery Ivanov's  lab  then. We  were
developing storage blocks for defense  computers.  Serious things were going
on in  the world,  and  we were  working  hard, not  observing  days off  or
holidays,  and  turned in  the  work  six  months  before  the  government's
deadline.   And   soon   the   institute  well-wishers   related   Hilobok's
pronouncement on us: "In science people who turn in research before it's due
are either  careerists or brown-noses, or  both!"  His pronouncement  became
popular. We have quite a few who are in no danger of being called careerists
or brown-noses from working the way we did. Sensitive and  hotheaded, Valery
kept  wanting to have a heart-to-heart with Hilobok, then had a  fight  with
Azarov and left the institute.
     My fists grew heavy with the memory. Maybe my double  could provide the
alibi, and I'd... ? And then  I pictured it: a sober intelligent man beating
another intelligent man to a pulp in front of a girl. What was that! I shook
my head to chase out the image.
     "No, that's not it. We can't succumb to such base feelings."
     "Then what is if?"
     "Then we must at  least  protect  those dreamy eyes from Harry's sweaty
embrace."  My double bit his  lip thoughtfully  and  pushed me  under a tree
(taking  the  initiative  again).  "Harry  Haritonovich,  could  I  see  you
privately for a moment?"
     Hilobok and the girl turned around.
     "Ah,  Valentin Vasilyevich! Of  course ... Tanechka, I'll catch up with
you." The assistant professor turned toward my double.
     "Aha!" I  got his plan and raced through the trees' shadows. Everything
worked  perfectly.  Tanechka got as  far as the fork  in the road,  stopped,
looked around and saw the same man who had called her boyfriend away just  a
few minutes before.
     "Tanechka,"  I  said.  "Harry  Haritonovich  asked  me  to  convey  his
apologies. He won't  be returning. You see, his wife  is back and....  Where
are you going? I'll walk you!"
     But Tanechka  was running away, hands over  her face, straight for  the
bus stop. I headed home.
     A few minutes later my double came in.
     "Wait," I  said before  he  could open his mouth. "You told  Harry that
Tanechka is the fiancee of your friend, who's a boxing champion?"
     "And a judo black belt. And you told her about his wife?"
     "Right. Well, at  least  we've  found  one positive application  of our
study."
     We got undressed, washed, and got ready for bed. I  took the bed and he
took the folding bed.
     "By the way, speaking of Hilobok," my  double said, sitting down on his
bed.  "We didn't  mention that our retrieval topic will be  discussed at the
next  scientific council?  If Harry hadn't reminded  me so  nicely, I  would
never have known. 'It's  time, Valentin Vasilyevich. After  all you've  been
working six months now, and it hasn't been discussed yet. Of  course, random
retrieval  is  a good thing, but  you've  been requisitioning equipment  and
materiel, and I keep getting calls from accounting, wanting to know what  to
call the account. And there's  talk in the institute that Krivoshein can  do
what he wants while everyone else has to fill out forms in triplicate. I, of
course, understand that  you must do all this for your dissertation, but you
must give your topic form and bring  it into the overall plan....' The creep
brought up work as soon as I told him about the boxing and judo."
     "If Hilobok is to be believed,  all  science is done to keep accounting
happy."
     I explained the situation to  my double. When  the computer was spewing
out  those crazy numbers, I had called Azarov in total despair and asked  to
see him for advice. As usual, he was too busy and suggested that it would be
better to have a scientific council; he would ask Hilobok to arrange it.
     "And by then, the little red egg had hatched," my  double finished. "So
shall we report  it? With the intention of  writing a master's dissertation.
Even Hilobok understands that it's important."
     "And I'll bring you in as a demonstration at my defense?"
     "We'll see who demonstrates  whom," he replied. "But basically ... it's
impossible. We can't."
     "Of course we can't," I agreed glumly. "And we can't apply for a patent
either.  It  looks  as if  I have  only expenses  so far  on  this deal,  no
profits."
     "I'll give you the money, you cheapskate! Listen, what do you need with
the Nobel Prize?"  My  double  narrowed his eyes. "If  the computer-womb can
easily make people, then money ..."
     "... is easier than anything! With  the  right paper and all the  water
marks ... well, why not?"
     "We'll each buy a three-bedroom  co-op," my double said,  leaning  back
against the wall dreamily.
     "And a Volga car..."
     "And  two dachas each: one in the Crimea for  rest and one on the  Riga
seacoast for respectability."
     "And we'll make a few  more  of us. One will work so that public outcry
will be stifled ..."
     "... and the others will be parasites to their heart's content..."
     "... with a guaranteed alibi. Why not?"
     We stopped and looked at each other in disgust.
     "God, what depressing small-timers we are!" I grabbed my head. "We take
a major discovery and try it on for size on stupid stuff: a dissertation,  a
prize,  a  dacha,  beating  people up  with  alibis...  This  is a Method of
Synthesizing Man! And we're...."
     "It's all right, it happens. Every person has petty  thoughts once in a
while. The important thing is to keep them from turning into petty acts."
     "Actually, so far I see only one positive application of the discovery:
you can see your faults much better when they're in someone else."
     "Yes, but is that any reason for doubling the earth's population?"
     We were sitting opposite each other in  our underwear. I was  reflected
in him, a mirror image.
     "All right, let's get serious. What do we want?"
     "And what can we do?"
     "And what do we understand about this business?"
     "Let's begin with what's what. The ideas of Sechyonov,  Pavlov, Weiner,
and Ashby agreed  on one point:  that the  brain is a  machine.  Petruccio's
experiments  on controlling the development of a human fetus is another move
in this direction. The  striving for greater  complexity and universality in
technological systems-just take the  desire of microelectricians  to  create
machines that are as complex as the human brain!"
     "In other words-our discovery is no accident. The way was prepared  for
it  by  the  development of  ideas  and  technology. If  not this way,  then
another; if not now, then in a few years or decades; if not us, then someone
else would discover it. Therefore, the question comes down to ..."
     ".  .  . what can  we and must we do in that period-maybe a year, maybe
decades, no one knows, but it's better to take the shorter time-that we have
as a head start on the others." "Yes."
     "How is it  usually done?" My double rested his cheek on  his hand. "An
engineer has the desire to create something lasting. He  looks for a client.
Or the client  looks for him, depending on who  needs whom more.  The client
gives him a  technological problem: 'Use  your ideas and your  knowledge  to
create such and such.  It  must have the following parameters  and withstand
the following ... and it should guarantee the production annually of no less
than such-and-such  percent.  The amount is,  and the time allotted is.  The
sanctions follow  general usage....'  A contract is  signed and  then  it is
done. We  have an idea and we want to  develop it  further. But  if a client
comes along now and says: 'Here's the  dough; go to work  on your system for
doubling people and it's none of your business  why I want  it'-we  wouldn't
agree, right?"
     "Well, it's a little early to be worrying about that. The method hasn't
been researched.  What  kind of production  could there be? Who knows, maybe
you'll disintegrate in  a few months." "I won't. Don't count on it." "What's
it to me? Live for all I care."
     "Thanks! You are such a  boor! Just unbelievable! Would  I like to give
you a good punch!"
     "All right, all right, don't get off the subject. You misunderstood me.
I meant  that we still don't  know all the  aspects and possibilities of the
discovery. We're at the very beginning. If we compare it to radio, say, then
we're at the level of Hertz's waves and Popov's spark transmitter. What now?
We must research the possibilities."
     "Right. But that doesn't change things. Any research that is applied to
man and human society must have a definite goal.  And there's nobody  around
to give us a two-page, typewritten list setting a technological task. But we
don't need it. We must determine for ourselves what goals man now faces."
     "Well... before, the goals were simple: survival and propagation of the
species. In order to achieve them you had to worry about wildlife, skins for
cover, and fire .  . .  beating off animals and acquaintances with a cudgel,
digging in the clay to make a cave without any conveniences,  and so on. But
modern society has solved  these problems. Get  a  job somewhere and  you'll
have  the minimum you need  for living. You won't perish.  And you can  have
children;  if  worst  comes to worst,  the government will even take on  the
responsibility of bringing them  up for you. So  now, it follows that people
should have new desires and needs."
     "More  than  you can count!  Comfort, recreation, interesting  and  not
boring work.  Refined society,  various  symbols  of vanity-titles,  awards,
medals.  The  need  for  excellent  clothing, delicious food, embroidery,  a
suntan, news, books,  humor, ornamentation, fads...." "But none of  that  is
important, damn it! That can't be important. People can't, and don't want to
return  to their previous primitive existence; they  squeeze everything from
modern  life that they can-it's only natural. But there has  to be some goal
behind their desires and needs, no? A new goal of existence."
     "In  brief, what is the meaning of life?  Rather a complicated problem,
wouldn't  you say? So, I knew we would end up here!" My double got up, moved
to get the kinks out of his body, and sat down again.  So-starting out  with
jokes and  getting  more and  more  serious-we discussed the  most important
aspects of our work.  I've often  gotten around to discussing the meaning of
life-over cognac or on a coffee break-as well as  social  structure, and the
destiny  of mankind. Engineers  and scientists  like to gab about worlds the
way housewives do about high prices  and lack of  morality. Housewives do it
to prove  their  diligence  and  goodness,  and  the  researchers do  it  to
demonstrate the breadth and scope of their vision to their friends. But this
conversation was  much more  difficult than the usual  engineering bull:  we
overturned  ideas as  if  they  were  snowdrifts.  It was  distinguished  by
responsibility: after this  conversation deeds and actions  would follow the
words-deeds and actions that allowed no room for mistakes.
     We weren't sleepy any more.
     "All right. Let's assume  that the meaning of life is to satisfy needs.
No matter what kind. But what desires and needs of mankind can we satisfy by
creating  new people? The artificially created  people will have  their  own
needs and desires! It's a vicious circle."
     "No, no. The meaning  of life is  to  live.  Live a full  life, freely,
interestingly, creatively. Or at least to aim for that... and then?"
     "Fully!  Meaning of  life! Aiming!"  My double  jumped  up and  started
pacing the room.  "Interests, desires, .  .  . mammy, what abstractions! Two
centuries ago these approximate concepts would have sufficed,  but today....
What the hell can we  do if there are no exact data on man? What vectors are
used to describe striving? What units measure interests?"
     (We were discouraged by that then-and we're discouraged by that now. We
were  used to exact, precise  concepts:  parameters, clearances,  volume  of
information  in bits,  action in microseconds-and we came face to  face with
the terrifying  vagueness of knowledge  about man.  It's  good enough for  a
conversation.  But  please,  do  tell me how  can you  use them  in  applied
research,  where a  simple  and harsh  law reigns:  if  you  know  something
imprecisely, that means you don't know it.)
     "Hmmmmmm ... I envy the men who invented the  atom bomb." My double got
up and leaned in the  balcony doorway." 'This device, gentlemen, can destroy
a hundred thousand people'-and it was perfectly clear to them that Oak Ridge
had to be built... And our device can create people, gentlemen!"
     "Some people do research  on uranium; others build factories to  enrich
uranium with the necessary isotopes ... others construct the bombs... others
in  high  political circles give the order... others drop the bombs on still
others, the inhabitants of Hiroshima  and Nagasaki  ...  and others.... Hey,
wait a minute, I'm on to something!"
     My double regarded me with curiosity.
     "You see, we're talking very logically, and we  can't  find our way out
of the paradoxes, the dead questions like 'What's the meaning of life?'  and
you know why? There  is no such thing in nature as  Man in General. On earth
there are all kinds of different  people, and  their desires are varied, and
often contradictory. Let's  say a man  wants  to live  well and for that  he
needs weapons. Or take this: a young man dreams of becoming  a scientist but
he doesn't feel  like chewing on the granite of  science-he doesn't like the
taste. And  these different people  live  in different  circumstances,  find
themselves in varying situations,  dream  about  one  thing  and  strive for
another, and achieve yet a third ... and we're trying to fit them all in one
mold!"
     "But  if  we  move  on  to individuals  and take  into account  all the
circumstances ..." my double frowned, "it'll be a mess!"
     "And you  want everything to be as  simple  as  the creation of storage
blocks, eh? Wrong case."
     "I know  it's  a different  case. Our discovery  is  as complex  as man
himself... and  we can't throw anything out or simplify anything to make our
work  easier.  But what constructive  ideas  are flowing  out of your  great
insight that all men are different? I mean constructive, that  will help our
work."
     "Our work ... hm. It's tough...."
     Our  conversation hit another dead end. The poplars  rustled downstairs
by the house.  Someone walked into the  courtyard, whistling a  tune. A cool
breeze came in from the balcony.
     My  double was  staring dully at the lamp and  then  shoved  his finger
second-knuckle deep into his nostril. His face expressed the fierce pleasure
of natural exercise.  Something itched in my right nostril, too, but he  had
beat me to it.  I watched myself picking my nose and I suddenly realized why
I  hadn't recognized  my  double  when  we  met  on  the institute  grounds.
Basically, no  one  knows  himself. We  never  see ourselves-even before the
mirror  we unconsciously correct ourselves, trying to look  better and  more
intelligent. We  don't  hear ourselves, because the vibrations of our thorax
reach  our  eardrums through the bones  and  muscles of our head as  well as
through the air. We do not observe ourselves from the side.
     My double cleaned his nose, and then his finger, and then looked up and
laughed, when he understood what I was thinking.
     "So, are people different or the same?"
     "Both. A certain objective lesson can be drawn here-not from your lousy
manners, of  course. We're talking about  the technical production of  a new
information system-Man. Technology produces  other systems: machines, books,
equipment.... The common factor  in every  produced  system  is  similarity,
standardization. Every book in  a given press run  is  like all  the others,
down to the typos. And  in  equipment of  a  given series, the  needles, the
scales,  the  class of  precision,  and the length of the  guarantee are the
same. The differences  are minor: in one book the text is a little  clearer;
in one  piece  of equipment there's a scratch  or it  has a  slightly higher
margin of error at high temperatures..."
     "... but within the class of precision."
     "Natch. In the language of our science, we could say that the volume of
individual information in each such artificial system is negligibly small in
comparison with the volume of information that is common in  all the systems
of  a given  class. And for man  that is not the case. People contain common
information,  biological  knowledge of  the world,  but  each person has  an
enormous amount of personal, individualized  information. You can't overlook
it-without it man is not man. That means that every  person is not standard.
That means..." "... that all attempts to find the optimum parameters for man
with an allowable margin of error of no more than five percent is a waste of
time. Fine! Do you feel better?" "No. But that's the harsh truth."
     'Therefore,  we  can't  hide  in  our  work  from  these  terrible  and
mysterious concepts: man's interests, personality, desires, good and evil...
and maybe even the soul? I'm going to quit."
     "You won't. By the way, are they really  so mysterious, these concepts?
In life people all  understand what's what. You know, they judge  a base act
and say, 'You know, that was lousy! and everyone agrees."
     "Everyone except the louse. Which  is  very  much  to  the  point."  He
slapped his thighs. "I don't understand you! It's  not enough  that  you got
burned on the simple word understanding?  Now you want to give  the computer
problems with  good and evil? A machine  doesn't  catch things  between  the
lines, doesn't  get  jokes, is indifferent to  good and  evil... Why are you
laughing?"
     I really was laughing.
     "I don't understand how  you cannot understand me. After  all  you  are
me!"
     "That's tangential. I'm a  researcher  first,  and then I'm Krivoshein,
Sidorov, or Petrov!" He was obviously all worked up. "How will we work if we
don't have precise concepts of the crux of the matter?"
     "Well  .  .  .  the  way  people  worked  at  the dawn  of the  age  of
electrotechnology. In  those  days everyone knew what phlogiston was, but no
one had any idea about tension, voltage, or  induction. Ampere, Volt, Henry,
and  Ohm were merely last names. They tested tension with their tongues, the
way kids check batteries nowadays. They discovered current by copper buildup
on cathodes. But people worked. And we ... what's the matter with you?"
     Now my double was doubled up with laughter.
     "I can  just  imagine  it: twenty years from  now  there'll  be  a unit
measuring something and they'll call it a krivoshein! Oh, I can't stand it!"
     I fell down on my bed laughing, too.
     "And there'll be a krivosheinmeter... like an ohmmeter."
     "And  a  microkrivoshein  or  a megakrivoshein ... a megakri for short.
Ho-ho!"
     I  like remembering  how  we roared. We were  obviously unworthy of our
discovery. We laughed. We got serious.
     "Historical examples are  inspirational, of  course," my  double  said.
"But that's not it. Galvani could blather as much as he  wanted over 'animal
electricity,' Zeebeck could stubbornly insist  that thermo-stream gave  rise
not to thermoelectricity, but to thermomag-netism-the nature  of  things was
not altered by  that. Sooner or later they hit  on  the  truth, because  the
important thing was the analysis of information. Analysis! And we're dealing
with synthesis.  And here nature is no guideline for man:  it builds its own
system;  he  builds  his. The  only  truths for  him  in  this business  are
possibility and  goal.  We  have  the possibility. And  the  goal? We  can't
formulate it."
     "The goal is simple: for everything to be good."
     "Again with  good?" My double looked at me. "And then we have  childish
prattle about what is good and what is bad?"
     "Skip the childish prattle! Let's operate with these arbitrary concepts
however  clumsy  they may  be: good, evil,  desires,  needs, health, talent,
stupidity,  freedom, love, longing,  principle-not because we like them, but
because there aren't any others. They don't exist!"
     "I have nothing to counter that. There aren't any others, that's true."
My double sighed. "I can tell this is going to be a lot of work!"
     "And  let's  talk it  all  out. Yes,  things  should be  good.  All the
applications of the discovery that we permit to enter the world must be ones
that we are sure of, that will not bring any harm to  people, only good. And
let's put aside our discussion of how  to measure benefit. I don't know what
units it takes."
     "Krivosheins, of course," my double countered.
     "Cut it out!  But  I know something else: the role  of an  intellectual
monster on a world scale does not appeal to me."
     "Me neither. But just a small question: do you have a plan?"
     "For what?"
     "A method for using the computer-womb so that it  only gives benefit to
mankind. You  see this would  be  an unprecedented method in the  history of
science. Nothing that  has  been  invented  and is being  invented  has that
magical  quality.  You  can poison  yourself  with  medicine.  You  can  use
electricity for lighting homes or  for torturing people.  Or for launching a
rocket with a warhead. And that holds for everything."
     "No, I don't have a  concrete plan  as yet. We don't know enough. Let's
study  the computer-womb and  look for that method.  It must exist. It's not
important that there is no precedent for it in science-there is no precedent
for our discovery either. We will be synthesizing precisely that system that
does good and evil, and miracles, and nonsense-man!"
     "That's  all true," my double  agreed after  some thought. "Whether  we
find that  great  method  or not, there's  no point in undertaking work like
that without  a goal like it. They manage to make people without us, somehow
or other...."
     "So,  let's end the session  properly,  all right?" I suggested. "Let's
make up  a work  project like in  a contract: we the undersigned:  humanity,
called the client, and the party of the first part; and the heads of the New
Systems Laboratory of the Institute  of Systemology, V. V. Krivoshein and V.
V. Krivoshein, called the Executors, and the party of the second part, agree
to the following...."
     "Why so much  about a  contract and a technical task-after all  in this
work we represent the interests of the client ourselves. Do  it straight and
simple!"
     He got up, took down the Astra-2 cassette recorder from the closet, put
it on the table,  and turned on the microphone.  And we-that is, I, Valentin
Vasilyevich Krivoshein, thirty-four years old, and my artificial double, who
appeared  on   this  earth  a  week  ago-two  unsentimental,  rather  ironic
people-swore a vow.
     I guess it might  have seemed high-flown  and  ridiculous. There was no
fanfare, no flags, no rows of students at  ease. The morning sky  was  pale,
and  we stood  before  the mike in  our underwear,  and  the draft from  the
balcony chilled our feet... but we made the vow in dead earnest.
     And so it will be. No other way.



        Chapter 11


     If, when you come home at  night, you mistakenly drink developing fluid
instead  of water,  you might as well have  some  fixative, or  you'll leave
things half-done.
     -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 21

     The  next  day  we  started  building  an  information  chamber  in the
laboratory.  We marked  off an area  of two meters square, covered  it  with
laminated  insulation  panels  and  dumped  into  it  all  the  microphones,
analyzers,  feelers, and  objectives-all the  sensors  that  had been strewn
colorfully  all over the place by the computer-womb.  This  was our  idea: a
living object would get into the chamber, and would gambol, feed, fight with
one of its own kind, or just ramble, surrounded by sensors, and the computer
would receive information for synthesis.
     The "living objects" are calmly  chewing their  cabbage to this day  in
their cages  in the hall. My double and I  were  always getting into  fights
about  who would  tend them. They  were  rabbits. I traded the bionics lab a
loop  oscillograph  and a GI-250 generator lamp for them. One rabbit (Albino
Vaska) had something like a bronze crown on  his head made out of electrodes
implanted for encephalograms.
     On May  7 we had a minor but unpleasant occurrence.  Usually  my double
and I coordinated all our work fairly well, so that  we would  not appear in
public  simultaneously