Self-discovery

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