The God Machine Page 16

  All they knew was that they had received one more standard, normal, quite ordinary request for data on just one more of tens of thousands of different subjects. They did their jobs and fed the data requested to the computer banks.

  If it were possible, truly, for a cybernetics brain to exhibit an intensified interest in data, then we were unknowing witness to the stupendous event. In human terms 79 suffered the corrosive indigestion of curiosity. Impelled by our programming and testing, it suffered from acute lack of knowledge. It sensed it had wide gaps in understanding what had happened through Ed Taylor. Again, it's difficult, if not impossible at this stage of the game, to equivocate electronic programming with compulsion. Whatever the impetus, blindly or purposefully, the damned thing was functioning with the first signs of electronic awareness we all hoped might one day be realized. And it had happened when we were looking the other way.

  I read the reports Kim brought me. I felt as if they might suddenly turn to ashes right there in my hands. I looked up at Kim, beautiful, real Kim, and everything seemed more unreal. I couldn't even get excited over her being alone with me in my bedroom. It's difficult to become aroused when there's a cold trickle down the middle of your back.

  "For several days after the Taylor incident, 79 carried out intensive scanning. Not once, but repeatedly," Kim said, her face furrowed with concentration. "We confirmed this, of course, through monitoring. It's all there," she gestured diffidently at the reports spread out on the bed before me. "But there's nothing openly unusual in what 79 has been doing. It's all built-in response."

  Her hands fluttered nervously, and she reached for her third cigarette. Quite suddenly I became aware that Kim was exhausted. I took special notice of what I had missed: the tired lines in her face and the sag of her shoulders. I didn't say anything at the moment because I was stumbling after a crookedly wriggling finger of suspicion.

  I lit her cigarette and asked her to go on. "Something seems wrong, though," she said, worrying openly. "I don't know what it is. It's, well, the sort of thing you feel, a sixth sense . . ." Her voice trailed off, and for a long moment she stared vacantly. Then she shook herself, as if to cast away the doubts, and returned to the moment. And gave me what I needed most: information.

  "Everything else went normally," she said with distaste, "if you can consider 100 percent, absolutely nominal operation of the entire cybernetics system as normal. Maybe perfection has come early to 79."

  She shrugged, flicking ashes from her cigarette. "I don't know, but the computer has been running on all burners ever since the incident with Taylor."

  "That's a strange expression from you," I noted. "Sort of heretic for old Vollmer, isn't it?"

  She smiled crookedly. "He'd have fits if he heard me discussing his prize animal like this."

  I raised my brows. "Sounds like a mother instinct. I mean, the way you described the crotchety old bastard."

  "Uh-huh." She nodded. "I know. Ever since the blowup with Selig." She shrugged again. "But this isn't getting us anywhere, is it?"

  I smiled at her; no, it sure as hell wasn't. But the more I looked at her tired eyes, the less inclined I was to push the girl I loved. She took that problem out of my hands and returned to the business at hand.

  "Obviously," she said with a grimace, "we'd been deficient in certain areas of programming."

  "Like?"

  "Hypnotism, mesmerism, posthypnotic suggestion, alpha-wave patterns, and photic stimulation—should I continue with the list?"

  "You're joking, Kim!"

  She blew a kiss at me. "Trust me never to do that at this moment, darling."

  "I trust you," I said grimly, nodding my head. "I don't trust myself but I trust you. And I need you, because the deeper I get into this, the less I like it."

  "You're going to like it even less, Steve."

  I glared at her. "Don't leave me waiting at the altar. Let's have it in the basics."

  "As I said, 79 put out its requests for everything, and I do mean everything," she stressed, dead serious, "involving hypnotism, alpha-wave disturbances. All of it. And—"

  "Was the data supplied?"

  "Of course." She looked at me with surprise evident in her face. "Why shouldn't it have been?

  These subjects were programmed before. As you know," she said with just a touch of impatience. "And you know as well there are limitations inherent in such programming. You can't spell out these subjects as raw data, Steve, and—"

  "I know, I know." I tried to brush the fog away from my eyes.

  "So there are gaps," she said, cross now. "And when the specific request is made, the purpose of the programmers is to pour everything into the request. Of course, we spelled it out with the customary precautions that much of what was being submitted amounted to experimental evidence only, that it must be separated from factual data. . . ." She waved her hand to indicate that I already knew whatever she had to say about procedures. She was right, of course; I knew.

  "But then something happened that no one expected," she said with her lips tight.

  I waited.

  "79 requested a demonstration of hypnotics."

  I boggled at that. "A demonstration?" I hoped I didn't sound as stupid to Kim as I did to myself.

  "Uh-huh." Her face was blank. Deliberately, controlled blank. She didn't want to interject her own evaluations as yet, and I was grateful for that.

  "Don't stop now."

  She rustled the papers in her hand. "Not simply a parlor-stage demonstration, of course. 79 can't see in that respect. The computer spelled out its request in a very specific manner. It wanted EEG

  hookups, all details of the individuals involved, aural input—the works. 79 wanted to be—ah," she stumbled over her words. "It wanted to be certain that nothing would be left out."

  "Did you query the intent?"

  Her eyes turned to stare into mine. "That I did, Steve, and—" Again she shrugged.

  "Well, what the devil happened!" I shouted.

  She ignored my outburst. "We received the response that the data of hypnotic experimentation were necessary to determine comparator balance against the impulsive conduct of humans in a complex social structure."

  I stared at her, my mouth open. I closed it, opened it again to speak, and succeeded only in continuing my stunned silence. Kim didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

  Because the whole thing was impossible. And because, in my absence, fearful of upsetting the steadily paced progress of the project, and completely off balance with such a response from 79, Kim ordered the technicians to comply with the request. They did. A whole series of hypnotic demonstrations, of alpha-wave-pattern distortion through photic stimulation, posthypnotic commands—the works.

  And always that incredible, flawlessly logical response as to why the hypnotic demonstrations—by word, light patterns, acoustic signals, and the rest of it—were so necessary.

  While 79 monitored, received, recorded and—for whatever reason—evaluated everything it obtained.

  ". . . the data of hypnotic experimentation were necessary to determine comparator balance against the impulsive conduct of humans in a complex social structure."

  Like hell it was!

  That alone should have tripped all the alarm signals. For a cybernetics brain even to give a reason of this nature was insanity. Electronic insanity. Later on we might discover what we had on our hands—evidence of electronically pathological deceit.

  Deceit?

  That in itself was impossible. Jesus, how could a cybernetics system in two-way communication with its programmers employ deceit?

  Unless, unless . . . the brain we had created was already judging its most important role, the one that it knew it must be called upon to fulfill.

  How to prevent a global lemming instinct.

  Or, to put it another way, mass suicide.

  If it were possible, if it were possible . . . that the superior analysis of the unemotional, flawlessly logical cybernetics brain could
anticipate the thermonuclear armageddon, and it provided us with the answers to what appeared inevitable if man continued on his present path of massive counterarmaments, could we then exploit this miracle of searching out our own inevitability and alter the course of future events? It was one thing to illogical, subjective findings of study teams and groups of men arrive at such conclusions based upon the notional, illogical, subjective findings of study teams and groups of men. But if the absolutely logical creature assembled by man showed the horrendous tomorrow, would not instinct, survival, self-preservation, cold logic dictate the changes that must be made?

  We hoped that 79 could play its part in such a seeking of the ultimate truth. But that still lay in the future, still awaited staggering loads of work.

  The programming had yet to take place.

  So how, how, could 79 already be involved in the answers to the questions we had yet to ask?

  Cybernetics systems, even the exquisitely far-out bastardization we had created in 79, are not devious. Not by nature or by intent. It wasn't just hard or impossible to explain the answers Kim received from 79 when she programmed the query on the requests for extensive data and human experiments under hypnosis. It was . . . well, so wholly unexpected it defied explanation.

  Except—and the thought tantalized and drove me crazy— maybe, just maybe, its answer was considered on the basis of its own reasoning, as completely pertinent. The only possible answer. How about that, Steve Rand? Maybe you were missing the point! Maybe, again just maybe, this was the one valid response to which 79 might have resorted, and . . .

  Oh, hell, it was all too much at once. I still had that unsettling feeling that shadows were nibbling at the edges of my mind. I had a great deal on which to catch up, because the hypnosis experiments had been going on for nearly three weeks.

  I wanted desperately to get back in harness, to crawl around the control panels, to talk with the technicians, to study the equipment and the systems. And to badger the bloody damned electronic brain directly, in a brain-to-brain confrontation.

  Ten days later I got everything I wanted, and more.

  In spades.

  24

  I clumped my way noisily through the corridors that led to the alpha test section. "Clumped" was the best I could do. This was my third day on a cane, and I still didn't have my legs back for any real mobility. My left leg remained stiff and a bit more painful than I thought it would be, although the doctor insisted that most of the pain lay above the eyebrows and that I was sympathizing mightily with myself.

  Perhaps he was right. I took a mild painkiller and did my best to get around under my own steam, even if I did stumble about like a stiff-legged sailor trying to get his land legs. Despite the awkwardness and the pain, it felt marvelous to be back in harness. The sound and the smell of the cybernetics complex were the best of all medicines.

  I'd already spent a full day at work in my office, stiff-legging it around to the various departments, letting myself be seen and heard by my staff. For the long hauls I wasn't that stubborn to refuse the use of a motorized wheelchair. Hell, it was a fifth of a mile between some sections, and I couldn't see myself dragging along all that distance just to prove I was a real sport about getting back to work.

  Now it was late, past midnight, and the project went along with a reduced staff. We were off the three-shifts-a-day schedule, what with most of the basic programming and experiments completed. At midnight we broke down to a bare skeleton staff in order to prepare new tests, clean up old work, make adjustments and repairs to facilities and equipment.

  The corridors were ghostly silent except for the barely discernible background sigh of air-conditioning systems. It could have been lonely, but I enjoyed every moment, the long lighted spaces ahead of me, the test cubicles gleaming softly in subdued light. I had no real purpose in dragging myself around like this. It was a matter, I suppose, of letting myself get the feel and taste of things. And I'd had all I wanted of hearty hellos and greetings and the well-intentioned but stale cliches about the accident.

  Now I had peace and quiet, the serenity of a vast and epochal effort at its quiet moment. I worked my way slowly down a light-green corridor. To my left were the numbered administrative offices with the personnel names and department identifications printed neatly on the doors. Along the right of the wide corridor stretched row after row of the test cubicles, each in a pale blue light that signified equipment shutdown. I was about to return to my office for the powered wheelchair and hustle myself off to the main entrance where a limousine would be waiting for me—a car big enough for me to stretch out my leg without banging it against the back of the front seats—when I heard something. At the same moment I noticed that one test cubicle far down the corridor had more than the pale blue light normally marking each cubicle along the corridor row.

  Some idiot's left the lights on, I assumed. I grinned. The "turn out the lights" syndrome from the former administration in Washington still pervaded official programs. I decided to walk to the end of the hall and save some technician a chewing-out in the morning.

  Before I had moved a foot, the grin on my face disappeared. Quickly. Because more than light came from the cubicle that held my attention. There was also sound. And no one was scheduled to be working this late. If they were, they had failed to post the project sheets in the main office. At first I couldn't make out the sound. The cubicle door was, I guessed, only slightly open, and the echoes in the corridor muffled whatever it was I heard.

  Stiff leg dragging, I pushed my way along the corridor, trying not to quicken my pace but compelled by some mysterious feeling of urgency. I was almost there—by now I could see that the lights from the cubicle were flickering; that surprised me even as I noticed it. At the same moment I recognized the sounds.

  Then I recognized the voice.

  And my skin went cold.

  I hurried along, trying not to make noise. I felt silly; what the devil was I being so secretive about! I didn't know, but even as cursed myself for my crude skulking I knew I was going to reach that cubicle with a minimum of sound to announce my presence.

  Outside the cubicle study window—the door was open about an inch or two and I didn't want to push it open all the way, at least not yet—I stared into the test chamber. I listened to the voice, the same voice that had attracted my attention at the far end of the corridor, that drew me here like a magnet, that finally became clear to me. The voice I recognized.

  The voice of 79.

  I must have been holding my breath. I felt as if a giant hand were squeezing my chest. I fought for air, sucking it in with a strange rattle in my throat, while I tried to absorb the macabre scene displayed to me through the observation glass. Along the vertical control panel that constituted the far wall of the test cubicle, mixed in with the controls, dials, and different instruments that we used for our tests and for programming, was a single glass panel about two feet on each side. I'd never seen this installation before.

  I'd never even known about it. I kept looking at it, utterly absorbed, fascinated.

  I tried to focus my eyes. I couldn't. The wide panel heaved with light. I'd never seen or known anything like it before. Light that swirled and coruscated, that rose and fell with unbelievable depth and dimension to it. Colors shifting softly, an interweaving sigh of hues. It moved; always it moved. It reached out to me and drew me toward it as if I were floating, disembodied, levitating through glass, through the walls, drawn to it, looking down and down and down . . . light shimmering, a glowing, pulsating, living heart of light, soundless music and an abyss without end with swirling walls of light and color and . . .

  Pain ripped my leg. I cried out with the sudden agony as my left leg collapsed beneath me and brought me crumpling to the floor of the corridor. Instantly a gnarled, twisting ball of pain exploded between my eyes, behind my skull, within my brain. I found myself again gasping for air. I heard a weak moaning, and realized with cottony-mouthed fear that the sound came from me. />
  What in the name of God had happened? That light. Good Lord, that light . . .

  It came to me in a rush. I didn't believe it and at the same instant I knew I did. It was too crazy not to be true. It was too impossible not to be real.

  It was. My broken leg had saved me. Funny, isn't it? I said that to myself, and the voice shrilling inside my mind was as shaken as my conscious thoughts. My broken leg had saved me.

  That light . . . hypnotic. Oh, that son of a bitch of a machine had learned its lessons well! A hypnotic light, to snare easily and softly and in webs stronger than steel any man subjected to the light.

  Every stitch and facet of information on hypnosis had been fed into 79. It knew hypnosis better than any man living or who had ever lived. It learned its lessons not merely from accumulated data and from reports and from the excellent programming of the staff technicians. It had been privy to what went on within the brain of a human being all through the process of hypnosis! It didn't guess; it knew. Much was still a mystery—insufficient data, if you please—to the great cybernetic brain. But monitoring human activity within the brain as it had done, it knew precisely just what was needed through optical stimulation and other means to place a human being into a hypnotic trance.

  And I had stood there like the great unknowing idiot that I was and stared at the light and even from where I stood, through the observation glass, seeing the light at an odd angle, it had dragged me into the abyss of hypnotic trance. I had forgotten, consciously or otherwise, that I had a leg only recently mending from two fractures and that I was tired; I had been placing a heavy load on that leg. And because I forgot, drowning heedlessly in that light, I placed my weight on the leg. Well, the circuits to my brain were still open. I wasn't completely under the influence of that light when the pain shrieked through my body, and thank God for that. Because I collapsed, ripped by my own personal, sweet agony, crumpled on the floor, sobbing, and safe. That's when the bomb went off behind my eyes, when I had that second great knot of pain within my mind.