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!"