Memoirs of a Space Traveler

“What can I tell you? It has neither protein, nor cells, nor metabolism. I accomplished this after an enormous number of tests. To put it briefly, I initiated a chemical evolution. Selection was to give rise to a substance that would react to every external stimulus with internal change, not only to neutralize the stimulus but to free itself from it. First I exposed the substance to heat, magnetic fields, and radiation. But that was just the beginning. I gave it increasingly difficult tasks; for example, I used definite patterns of electric shocks from which it could free itself only by producing a specific rhythm of currents in reply… In this way I taught it conditioned reflexes, so to speak. But that, too, was a preliminary phase. It soon began to universalize; it solved increasingly difficult problems.”

“How is that possible, if it has no senses?”

“To tell the truth, I don’t understand it fully myself. I can only give you the principle. If you put a computer on a cybernetic ‘tortoise’ and let it into a big hall, equipped with a quality-of-function regulator, you will obtain a system devoid of ‘senses’ but which reacts to any change in the environment. If there is a magnetic field somewhere in the hall exerting a negative effect on the operation of the computer, it will immediately withdraw and search for a spot where such disturbances do not occur. The constructor need not even anticipate every possible disturbance, which may be mechanical vibrations, heat, loud sounds, the presence of electrical charges — anything. The machine does not ‘perceive,’ because it has no senses, so it does not feel heat or see light, but it reacts as though it does see and feel. Now, that’s only an elementary model. The fungoid” — he put his hand on the copper cylinder, which reflected his image like a grotesquely distorting mirror — “can do that and a thousand times more. My idea was to create a liquid medium filled with ‘constructional elements,’ from which the original organization could draw and build as it wished. That’s how the fungoid arose.”

“But what is it exactly? A brain?”

“I can’t tell you that; we have no words for it. To our way of thinking it isn’t a brain, since it doesn’t belong to any living creature, nor was it constructed to solve definite problems. However, I assure you it thinks — though not like an animal or a human being.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s a long story. Allow me…”

He opened a door that was metal-plated and extremely thick, almost like the door of a bank vault; the other side was covered with sheets of cork and the same spongy material that supported the copper cylinder. In the next, smaller room there was also a light; the window was blocked with black paper, and on the floor, away from the walls, stood the same type of red copper vat.

“You have two…?” I asked, stunned. “But why?”

“A variant,” he replied, closing the door. I noticed how carefully he did so.

“I didn’t know which of them would function better. There are important differences in chemical structure and so on… I did have others, but they were no good. Only these two passed through all the stages of the selection process. They developed very nicely,” he went on, putting his hand on the convex lid of the second cylinder, “but I didn’t know whether that meant anything. They became quite independent of changes in their environment; both were able to guess quickly what I demanded of them — in other words, to react in a way that freed them from harmful stimuli. Surely you’ll admit that it’s something” — he turned toward me with unexpected vehemence — “if a gelatinous paste can solve with electrical impulses an equation given it by means of other electrical impulses…?”

“Of course, but as for thinking…”

“Maybe it’s not thinking,” he replied. “Names are not important here; the facts are. After a while both began to show increasing — what should I call it? — indifference to my stimuli, unless their actual existence was threatened. Yet my sensing devices registered exceptionally intense activity during this time, in the form of series of discharges.”

He took from the drawer of a small table a strip of photographic paper with an irregular sinusoidal line.

“Series of such ‘electrical attacks’ occurred in both fungoids, apparently without any external cause. I began to study the matter more systematically and discovered a strange phenomenon: that one” — he pointed to the door leading to the larger room — “produced electromagnetic waves, and this one received them. When I realized that, I noticed at once that their activity alternated; one was ‘silent’ while the other ‘broadcast.’ “

“What are you saying?!”