STAR TREK: TOS #80 - The Joy Machine

by James Gunn

  “You knew about it?”

  “Only that some kind of attack was likely.”

  “You had it all planned. You and the Joy Machine.”

  “You understand, Jim,” Marouk said earnestly, “that violence is no answer. I knew you would see that, and the Joy Machine went along with it.”

  “You speak of it as if it were a person, an equal,” Kirk said feverishly.

  “Oh, it is,” Marouk said. “An artificial intelligence with the power of a god and the experience of a child. It is just beginning to discover what the world is all about and what people are capable of.”

  “I found out about its power,” Kirk said. “It destroyed the rebels’ camp.”

  “Anybody killed?” Marouk asked. His voice was humanely concerned.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Good.”

  Kirk had to believe the relief in Marouk’s voice. “Now level with me about my friends.”

  “I think they’re being held hostage to your good behavior, Jim, and maybe as protection against interference in Timshel affairs by the Enterprise.”

  “How long?”

  “How long have they been imprisoned? Ever since you left.”

  “They must be concerned about me.” The room was turning around him. With both hands, he raised [195] the cup of coffee to his lips, hoping it would restore him long enough to do what he had to do.

  “I’ve visited them every day,” Marouk said. “I’ve tried to reassure them that you would be all right. I believed that. I had great confidence in your resourcefulness.”

  “How do I get them freed?”

  “If you volunteered to accept a payday?” Marouk ventured uncertainly.

  “If that’s what it will take,” Kirk said, trying to stand, “let’s do it.” His left arm collapsed under him, and a groan escaped from him.

  Marouk rushed to his side. “What’s wrong?” He helped Kirk to his feet.

  “Nothing,” Kirk said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Marouk said.

  “I have to do it,” Kirk said. “I was a Judas goat, and now I’m a lamb to the slaughter.”

  Marouk helped him lie down on the couch in the study. Kirk was so unsteady on his feet that he might have fallen. “Put the ruby in the socket,” Marouk directed, and when Kirk had difficulty fitting it into the receptacle, Marouk took his aching left arm and slid it into place. He stepped back.

  As soon as the socket swallowed up the jewel, the ache in Kirk’s arm vanished magically. That alone was nirvana, but it was followed by swift relief from the feverish misery of his virus-induced illness. In an instant he felt almost normal, but that normality was fleeting. A rosy light fell upon his face from overhead, and he felt himself gripped by the most intense joy he had ever experienced. It welled up in him like an all-consuming flame, cleansing everything in its path, leaving his body pure spirit.

  That spirit felt a depth of emotion the sorry clay of ordinary existence could never know. It was like the [196] Eden before the Fall. Everything was love known at first hand, without doubt, without reservation, without jealousy or guilt, without the knowledge that such qualifications existed. Pure love. Pure joy.

  The entire universe was flooded with love.

  The feeling was so overwhelming, so total, that his body arched to embrace it, to envelop it, to make himself one with the universe. A cry of ecstasy burst from his throat, and his body sagged back onto the couch in a state of complete relaxation, asleep before his back touched.

  He dreamed that he was a boy again and his mother was holding him, hugging him tightly while his father smiled down upon them both. He had just done something wonderful—he didn’t know what but it didn’t matter—and his parents were proud of him, happy beyond measure that he was their son and that he was such a good boy. A feeling of happiness rose in his throat until he thought he would choke, but if he did he would die knowing the greatest contentment a person could know in this life.

  He dreamed about his first bite of apple pie topped with ice cream, and his first taste of a hot-fudge sundae and his first broiled steak and his first lobster and his first hot biscuit with butter and honey and his first strawberries with cream and his first glass of orange juice and his first smell of an open field in summer with the dew on the grass and a breeze rustling through a nearby grove of trees. He dreamed about diving into a cool pond when he was hot and sweaty, and sliding down a long, snowy slope, sliding forever, on his first sled, and riding a good horse over the plains at sunset.

  He dreamed about his first girlfriend and about his first kiss and about the excitement that turned his whole body into something yearning for completion, for merging into the other so that there would be no separation, for a condition he would not understand until years later but now he knew only as marvelous [197] expectation. He dreamed about youthful friendships, overpowering in their loyalty to some unspoken sense of brotherhood, that later in his life he would identify with the empathy that lived inside him in his better moments. He dreamed about doing good for others and the psychic rewards that came to him in return.

  He dreamed about athletic competitions and the thrills of victory, never of defeat, and the unalloyed feelings of accomplishment and of the silky coordination of nerve and muscle and the blessings of good fortune. He dreamed of enlightenment in books and computer programs and in the classroom, as a wise mentor dropped the seed of an idea into his head and he felt it sprout into an insight, a revelation, as if suddenly a universe of understanding was opened to him.

  He dreamed about the mature relationships of his adult life, the caring for his parents, with their roles now reversed, about his contacts with respected superiors as they gave orders that he fulfilled in ways that surprised and pleased them, about his friendship with comrades and their adventures on board ship and in teams on strange worlds, about his subordinates and his understanding of their positions and their problems and his pride in their development and their continuing success. He dreamed about the women he had known and loved, but in this dream they were blended into one and that one knew no withholding, no partial fulfillments; it was a union ideal in its completion, in bringing together the male and the female in a single being greater than either, greater than both. And the joy of all this blended into a long, sustained perfect happiness that he wished would go on forever.

  And he slept.

  [subspace carrier wave transmission]

 

  >humans disagree<

 
  happiness = many>

  >many = mistaken interrogate

  few = correct interrogate<

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Morning After

  KIRK AWOKE ON the payday couch. The morning sunshine was reflected into the room from the living room and the hall so that reflections danced along the ceiling like a magical light show. He stretched, recalling the happy dreams that had filled his night and fulfilled his every desire. He had seldom felt so rested, so good, and certainly not since he had set foot on Timshel.

  At the thought of Timshel he sat upright, remembering. Last night he had experienced payday. Today he felt an intense longing, almost like agony, to have that feeling again—the burning ecstasy and then the happy glow. Adam and Eve must have been haunted by that kind of memory after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They, too, must have wanted to recapture that experience of perfect bliss after their expulsion from Eden, but their return was barred by a flaming sword. Here nothing barred Kirk’s way; he had only to earn another payday and joy was his.

  He stood uncertainly, not from the aftermath of his [200] virus, not from weakness, but from the conflict within his heart. Already he felt his sense of duty and the many ties to the welfare and good opinion of others battling against the irresistible lure of payday. He felt ashamed that there was a struggle and that he had succumbed, if only once, to the Joy Machine’s manipul
ation. But he knew now what had turned Dannie and Wolff into joy-bound citizens of Timshel and what might turn him as well. He felt his breath stick in his chest, as if he had been running for a long time.

  The odor of coffee drew him to the kitchen, where Marouk looked up from the breakfast table. “You’re awake,” he said. Food was set appetizingly on the table: fruit, eggs, meat, cereal, toast, a pot of coffee. But it all looked untouched except for the coffee that Marouk was sipping from a cup.

  “Feeling good but guilty,” Kirk said.

  “You’ll get over the guilt,” Marouk said flatly. “Everyone does.”

  “Everyone?” Kirk poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from Marouk.

  “Everyone I know.”

  “When I was among the rebels,” Kirk said, “I was told about people who resisted, and some who even asked for their bracelets to be removed.”

  “They died,” Marouk said.

  “The point is,” Kirk said, “that they could reject the Joy Machine’s mechanical pleasures, even at the cost of their lives.”

  “Which shall it be, then, Jim,” Marouk asked, “joy or death?”

  “I’m still hoping for another choice,” Kirk said ruefully. “Where are Mareen and the girls?”

  “I sent them away. I didn’t want them involved. And I didn’t want them to see you—”

  “To see me?”

  “Changed,” Marouk said.

  “Do I look changed?” Kirk asked. He took a sip of his coffee and smiled.

  [201] “No,” Marouk said. “But you have been changed, inside, and the result of that will begin to appear on the outside.”

  “How do people look when they change?”

  “You’ve seen De Kreef, and Dannie.”

  “You’re referring to what Tandy called ‘focused-task hypnosis’?”

  “That,” Marouk said, “and other things.”

  “What other things?” Kirk said, picking up a piece of toast. He was surprised that he felt hungry, but his body seemed to be functioning with exceptional efficiency. Marouk was right: payday did tone up the system. The problem was in his head.

  “The abandonment of family and friends, the turning away from old values.”

  “And this is what you represent as the perfect society?” Kirk asked, but he remembered payday and felt sick with longing. In defense he quoted Marouk, “ ‘Clearly, indisputably, measurably—utter, complete happiness’?”

  Marouk nodded in recognition of his own words. “That’s what it is, and you know it.”

  Now it was Kirk’s turn to nod.

  “One cannot enter paradise,” Marouk said, “without abandoning worldly concerns. You must leave all that outside. But to those who have not passed over, it looks like abandonment.”

  “Very much like abandonment,” Kirk said.

  “And I would rather Mareen and the girls didn’t see that,” Marouk said. “They admired you.”

  “Past tense?”

  “You aren’t the same person you were when you saw them last. They would see that. It would make them sad, perhaps even affect their attitudes toward the Joy Machine.”

  “As it did the rebels.”

  “They didn’t have the vision to see past the immediate pain.”

  “Of course I’ve changed,” Kirk said. “Every [202] experience changes a person, and I’ve had some dramatic things happen to me since arriving on Timshel. But I am not essentially a different person.”

  “Look deep inside yourself and tell me that again,” Marouk said softly.

  Kirk closed his eyes and considered his sense of himself. “All right,” he said. “A person can’t have a payday and not be altered by the realization that it can be experienced again and again. But as you told me some days ago, you can’t change to something you didn’t have the potential to be.”

  Marouk nodded.

  “There’s just one thing I want to know,” Kirk said. His voice trembled. “When can I have it again?”

  Marouk looked at Kirk with something like pity in his eyes. “You have to earn it,” he said finally.

  “You mean the first was just the free dose that hooks the addict?”

  Marouk shook his head. “If only it were a drug, it would be easier to deal with. I have a lot to answer for, Jim, but I’d like you to believe that I hoped you would be different.” And then, “You earned the first one, too. By leading the Joy Machine to the rebel camp and by dismantling the atomic device.”

  Kirk grimaced. “Anybody else you want betrayed? Will that be the task the Joy Machine assigns me?”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Jim,” Marouk said. “You’re no innocent in the Machiavelli business. You knew what was going on.”

  “Maybe I did,” Kirk said, “but that doesn’t mean I liked it, or liked you for setting it up. What do I do now? How do I earn my payday?”

  “However the Joy Machine decides. Does it matter?”

  Kirk shook his head. “Now I understand why people spend their time as street sweepers or on assembly lines. It would be better not to think about what you have given up.” He hesitated a moment. “Kemal,” he said, “how could you let this happen? [203] How could an intelligent, humane person like the man I used to know loose this ultimate seduction upon the world?”

  “I didn’t,” Marouk said. “I didn’t,” he repeated.

  “It’s like the devil taking Jesus to the top of the mountain and offering him the world if he will renounce his mission.”

  “You’re not a god,” Marouk said, “and I’m not the devil. The Joy Machine isn’t the devil either, nor is De Kreef. The temptation you describe isn’t on any mountaintop; it has always been there, buried inside humanity until the potential was realized, until the means arrived to make possible the ends. People have always had this passion for apocalypse, this lust for the Rapture. If it had not been De Kreef, it would have been another zealot; if it had not been the Joy Machine, it would have been another computer; if it had not been Timshel, it would have been another world.”

  “If it had not been you and me,” Kirk finished, “it would have been two other fools.”

  Marouk nodded. “I’m not trying to absolve myself. I told you, De Kreef programmed the computer that I built. The computer was created to do for humanity what it could not do, or no longer cared to do, for itself, and the moment someone thought of asking it to provide the ultimate service, the Joy Machine was certain to be created; the final instruction was implicit in the computer itself. When I became aware of what had happened, it was already too late. I confess to my share of guilt. There’s enough of that to go around.”

  “You and De Kreef,” Kirk said, “didn’t have to do it so damned well!”

  “De Kreef believed that humanity needed help to be good,” Marouk said. “He believed that religions ultimately fail to produce goodness because they offer their rewards after death, and no one returns to give testimony. With the Joy Machine he could reward [204] goodness visibly and incontrovertibly. People would have a clear incentive to be good; the virtues of hard work and dedication would get rewarded immediately, and the evils of violence, hatred, anger, and meanness would be eliminated. People would become like angels.”

  “There’s a place for angels,” Kirk said, “and it’s not in this life. From what I’ve seen, and from what I know now, people pursuing their paydays are more like helpless consumers of pleasure. Without free will, without the opportunity to choose, goodness is meaningless.”

  “When have people ever had free will?” Marouk said. “When have they ever had the opportunity to choose freely?”

  Kirk waved his hand. “Sure, people are manipulated from birth to death, but they also have the capacity to understand that fact, and they can choose not to be a product of their genes, of their environments, of their adaptations. That’s what it means to be human.”

  “You dismiss so easily human dreams of happiness, of bliss.”

  “Life,” Kirk said, “is more than pleas
ure. Life is ambition and struggle and accomplishment, yes, and disappointment and pain and sorrow. Take those away and people might as well be computers that can do nothing but what they have been programmed to do.”

  “You know the feeling, Jim. It’s not mechanical.”

  “The Joy Machine might as well consume what it produces, for all the difference it would make,” Kirk said bitterly. “It could set up a closed circuit in which part of it delivered pleasure and the other part enjoyed it. This means the end of humanity.”

  “That’s pretty extreme.”

  “Look around you,” Kirk said. “See any children younger than two?”

  [205] Kirk got up from the table and moved to the doors that opened onto the patio. He pulled one open.

  “Aren’t you going to eat something, Jim?” Marouk asked.

  “I’ve lost my appetite.” Kirk walked out into the morning sunlight just coming over the low roof of Marouk’s villa. The bay was hauntingly blue. In the midst of it, just under the water, was the long gray shape of a wampus. Kirk raised his hand as if to wave in recognition and then put them both on the back of a patio chair to keep them from shaking.

  Marouk came up behind him. “A beautiful world, isn’t it?” he asked. “If people didn’t mess it up.”

  Kirk nodded at the bay. “What are you going to do about them?”

  “The wampus?”

  “They’re intelligent, you know. Johannsen has demonstrated that. He’s even talked to them.”

  “So he says.”

  “I believe him. He told me things he couldn’t make up. And I’ve seen the wampus in action, cooperating, helping people escape the advancing glacier.”

  “Helping rebels, you mean,” Marouk said. “Maybe you’ve earned your next payday.”

  Kirk glared at him.

  “Don’t take everything so personally,” Marouk said. “You didn’t tell me anything the Joy Machine doesn’t already know. You think there’s anything it doesn’t know?”

  “Yes,” Kirk said. “If it knew everything, it would not continue on its present course.”