Self-discovery

I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with ordinary — meaningful and random — information. Just that. Because when it is programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. (“A new breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop's work in three minutes!” — because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention the number of months they prepared for that three — minute decision.)

Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn't planning on doing it the elementary way.

To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research, was no snap. It's no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute, Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet. Actually, he didn't realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to move into the operative expanses can work wonders.

So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds of manipulation, like “Dear man! we'll fulfill the plan and even win a prize, you'll see!”) Thirteen thousand for a TsVM — 12 computer. Another nine thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones, flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers, thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials of the brain using the SES — 1 system with four thousand microelectrodes, pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental “reading” arrays. basically, everything that turns sounds, images, smells, small pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents, laboratory glassware, chemical equipment — in case I ever wanted to employ chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I'm going to be completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I don't have to mention the fact that I didn't use any of the eighty thousand for personal effects.)

All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random signals from the sensors in order to send them to a “reasoning” computer — a piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several thousand switching cells. You can't get something like that even by written order — it doesn't exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers (diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn't have a blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my “I don't know what” and Lena…. Wait. Here I'm not willing to put it all down to chance. Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal unit… if you think about something day and night, you'll always come up with it, find or notice it.

Here was the situation: three weeks left 'til the end of the year; fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and I'm riding a bus.

“They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid — state circuits and then they found out they don't fit!” a woman in a brown fur coat was exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. “That's disgusting!” “Madness,” she agreed.

“Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department. But he ordered them himself!” “Just think of the gall!”

The words “fifty thousand” and “solid — state circuits” had gotten my attention. “Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?”

The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was sorry I had interrupted.

“ 'Not — ors' and flip — flops!” she answered hotly.

“What parameters?”

“Low — voltage — excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?”