Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  “Professor, let me repeat more courteously, as you requested. Are you willing to try, let’s put it this way… to reboot the program? To correct its malfunctioning, especially since the program has already done a lot of good, and all the achievements will be retained?”

  The professor sighed and started pondering, shifting between a smile and a sadness. In the end, he glanced at his watch and replied:

  “I have devoted the last five years of my life to this and I’m willing to devote all the time I have left. Of course, it’s annoying for me to hear about the negative aspects of my invention from a pair of young pups, no matter how intelligent they are, but I’m a scientist and I studied the consequences intensely myself a long time ago. And I’m prepared to try to correct them.”

  Those words took a huge weight, a massive burden, off Isaac’s mind. The immense rock that had been hanging over his head crumbled to dust. He struggled to contain the emotions welling up inside him. Until today he had been obsessed with the idea, and now he saw a hope ahead. He was successful in generating an opposition to UNICOMA. Not a radical opposition of fanatics, but a powerful, conceptual opposition by intellectuals. And from the part of this genius even “intelligent pups” sounded flattering.

  Isaac suddenly felt ferociously tired, he couldn’t even move an arm or a leg the right way. As if the burden has been lifted, and his body demanded a rest, a well merited time not to be disturbed for a while. He was tired. Very tired. The adrenalin has left his bloodstream.

  Bikie and Link continued the conversation that Isaac could no longer follow clearly, arguing and agreeing about things; Professor commended his conversant several times. Isaac saw Bikie take out his mobile phone and press something on it. He was sending the text message to cancel the publication of information about Link on the Internet.

  As for Isaac, he simply looked at the glitter of the waves, incapable of either listening or thinking. At that moment, he was not even thinking of Vicky or Michelle. There was only peace, peace and the splashing of the transparent blue water.

  He could not see the land or the yachts beyond the horizon. Only occasional silhouettes of fishing boats, and a distant expanse of light-blue. The tabula rasa of the sea, he thought. Genoa was somewhere over there, not far away.

  “I will definitely reach my shore, I’ll reach it and discover my own America, completely new and not fucked-up, and I’m going to build a new life there,” Isaac decided firmly.

  His mobile phone rang. The number did not display, but Isaac answered it reluctantly. Something might be wrong with Vicky.

  “Good afternoon, my name is Pellegrini, I’m a commissioner of police and the head of Orange Energy Department. I would like to arrange a meeting with you. I need to talk to you about the incident that happened in Monaco.”

  “I’m not there right now,” said Isaac. “I’m at a friend’s place in Spain,” he lied.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know yet. In a week maybe.”

  “In that case, give me a call when you get back. Thank you.”

  Isaac’s comfort and fatigue vanished as if by magic. Who was this damn Pellegrini and what did he want? It was more than two months since the attack at the Monaco branch of the Agency. Why in the world can’t they all just relax at Cote D’Azur?

  Chapter seven

  “Link, why did you disappear?”

  “It’s all very simple. I ran away because I was frightened. Secret Service agents came to see me ‘to have a talk.’ The government wanted to find out everything and then go public with it. I couldn’t get the agents to understand that the technology had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. I set up a conference in a hurry to present the technology and hand it over to Blake at the UN. And immediately after that memorable event, I got a call asking me not to leave the country. When I realized that Secret Service would stop at nothing to get hold of the technology, even though I had already signed it over to the UN, or at least to get a copy, so that they could have a system of their own, I decided to run anyway, just to be on the safe side. Yes, I got frightened and I bolted.”

  “Think about it. How much time would pass before they sucked out my own Orange Energy? I possessed knowledge that they deemed top secret. Or some bright corporate spark would have decided that I must build another computer like that. A private one, so to speak. Then they would start kidnapping and downloading scientists all around the world to create a ‘creativity race’.”

  “I was far too tempting a morsel for everyone, from the military and the big corporations to ordinary terrorists. But if I were to vanish, there would be only one computer in the hands of people who had spent their lives at least trying, if not always successfully, to maintain peace on earth.

  “I thought about it a lot and realized it was an absolute certainty that someone would get the idea of downloading me. It was only a matter of time until they arrived at that brilliant idea.”

  “But had they laid their hands on the idea, I’m afraid there would have been a few surprises in store for them…” – at this point the professor, with a restrained smile, raised his index finger and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want to have secrets from you as members of the team, with which I intend to face many trials. If energy can be pumped out, then a way can be found to…”

  “Pump it back in,” Isaac and Bikie said simultaneously, dumbfounded.

  “So again, it was just a matter of time until, sooner or later, someone unearthed this idea of mine, which was almost ready. And that was something I definitely couldn’t tolerate. But now we have everything developing according to a fairly positive scenario. The technology belongs to the UN, where there are decent people in charge. Things could have gone differently. If not for my reputation, I wouldn’t have been able to get to the Secretary General so quickly.”

  “Thank God, the old friend understood me and the implications of my invention instantly…” – sweat beaded on the professor’s brow. “That was luck. The last thing I wanted was to become a man who had invented a super-powerful weapon – he added confidently. “If the military had got their hands on the technology first, then… I’m afraid the word democracy would have disappeared, except from the textbooks, and it wouldn’t have stayed there for long.”

  There was a minute of silence as each of them imagined a future with the military in control.

  “But couldn’t you have thought about that beforehand?”

  “I did. Worked on university’s funding. My laboratory assistants wrote reports on the work and the expenditures. Someone obviously overdid it, and the authorities took an interest in my invention. I only had a week to organize the conference and my escape before Secret Service paid me another visit. So everything started slipping out of my control. But all’s well that ends well. It probably never even occurred to them that a highly respected fifty-five-year-old scientist could simply do a runner.”

  Everyone started pondering again. The pause was interrupted by the red-bearded assistant, who brought a tray with small cups on it.

  “That’s enough ruminating!” the professor exclaimed. “My friends, enjoy a refreshing coffee, prepared according to my new recipe!”

  His voice roused Isaac and Bikie from their brooding. Visions of military checkpoints and dumbfounded Secret Service agents disappeared in an instant, together with the final vestiges of the friends’ sour mood.

  The aroma had already drifted across the deck, and the only thing everyone wanted was coffee.

  Link enquired again how the pair managed to pick up his trail. They gave him a brief account of the trip to the university, the photos, his Japanese assistant and the tickets to Sardinia. Isaac tactfully left out the visit to Amsterdam. He omitted the cigar shops too, but for a different reason. There was nothing to hide, and he sensed that Link trusted him. He thought that they could become good friends. But even so, Isaac left out the key point and lied, saying they had used an appearance comparison program to identify Link’s Jap
anese assistant.

  Then the professor put down his drink and moved away to light up a cigar. Bikie savored the topnotch coffee and Isaac also relished his cup.

  “You know, Isaac, when the professor starts talking, I listen to him and realize that compared to him you’re a dumbo.” Bikie said very seriously and immediately got a friendly punch from Isaac.

  “Friends,” the professor intervened, coming back with the cigar in his hand, “you shouldn’t overestimate an old blockhead like me. In fact, everyone warned me the technology was extremely dangerous and it could be dangerous for me. But who were they to tell to me what I should do? It’s interesting that you found me through Yoshi. Anyway, I’m glad my refuge was cracked by genuinely laudable individuals.”

  The professor raised his cup as if he were pronouncing a toast. Isaac and Bikie laughed, flattered by the praise.

  “My refuge!” the professor continued. “How sick I am of this settled life in this lousy dump, pardon the expression, the cloying syrup of identical days. There was a time when a journalist came to see me every week to publish an interview about my invention. Every month scientific conferences, learned debates. I used to feel the way explorers and pioneers felt, the way the greatest minds of humanity felt at the summit of their achievements. The world seemed to revolve around me! All the life of the planet.”

  The professor’s eyes were glowing demonically. He felt a wild pleasure at remembering it all.

  “Professor, that’s exactly the way things were,” Isaac remarked. “And I’d say they still are. A great deal depends on you. In the life of mankind.”

  Still smiling, the professor frowned.

  “It’s boring,” he said, continuing his skeptical complaint. “I’m so bored to live this way. All my memories, pangs of conscience, fears – they don’t count. That’s all trivial compared with the boredom. It’s all trivial after having reached my peak.”

  “Who said you’ve reached your peak, Link?” Bikie asked, trying to make the question sound as artful as possible. “You have taught the world how to download OE, but you haven’t taught it how to give it back to people. But you said yourself that it is possible! Now that would be the highest peak Link, returning creativity to those who have lost it. Is it feasible?”

  “Theoretically,” said the professor, brightening up. “I’ve had enough time and I can picture how to do it. Only, as you know, theory is theory, but implementation requires experiments and trials. We need a genuine Veggie. Practical tests, you know…”

  “Professor!” Isaac’s eyes were blazing even more brightly than Link’s. “We have to make it a reality. And I even have a candidate for the experiment. I have… I had a friend, Pascal, he downloaded and became a Veggie. You could use him for your experiment. If you return his creativity, we can all be sure the theory works.”

  “And if not?”

  “If not… we’ll keep on searching.”

  Link was obviously very interested in this proposal and went straight to the specifics: when and where did Pascal download his OE? What was his rating? What kind of life does he lead now? Isaac replied briskly. The ray of hope glimmering up ahead besotted and excited him, and for a while he forgot about danger, the uncertainty and the possibility of failure. It all paled beside the idea of pulling his friend out of his vegetable condition, bringing the person back out of the Veggie!

  By the end of the evening the plan of action took shape. It was simple and precise. Give Pascal back his creativity and thereby justify their struggle against the system.

  Part five

  Chapter one

  After staying at Link’s villa for three days, the two friends decided it was time to be heading back. Arguing about the future with Link and Bikie was interesting, the Professor was lavish of praise but Isaac was dying to see Michelle. The two of them had been calling and writing to each other regularly and he wanted to tell her everything. Peter already knew that Link had been found: Isaac had sent him a brief text, saying they had a new recruit, with a heap of exclamation marks and smilies. Their only problem was that the van had been sold, and they had to devise a way to get home.

  Link offered to take his van and bring along his things and a small laboratory. When they thanked him for the favor, he remarked with his typical directness that it remained to be seen who was doing who a favor. He could not bear traveling in that old banger, he said. In addition, the van was the best, if not the only place, where they could carry out the experiment on Pascal. So the little wagon would have to be driven back anyway, but Link was quite content it wasn’t him who’d need to worry about this.

  Although the professor was not supposed to set out until a week after Isaac and Bikie, and the experiment could not begin without him, Isaac and Bikie wanted their time on the road fly by as fast as possible. Even though they were not late for the ferry, Bikie pushed on at top speed, occasionally exceeding the speed limit. Their impatience had them all tensed up, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Isaac was wondering if they ought to inform Peter about a new guest they intended to bring into his house or, recalling his request, not tell him anything. Isaac felt a really big urge to do it, after all, this was not just a guest. This was the guest!

  Isaac squirmed on his seat, trying to picture the future. It looked bright. There was Michelle, Bikie and Peter, and Vicky, healthy and well, and Pascal, resurrected from veggiehood, and Link. He was so much absorbed in his new life that he could no longer recall the time when he was not part of the team. The past seemed far away and somehow unreal. Now was a different life, everything was seething and his head was spinning.

  Isaac smiled and slapped Bikie on the shoulder:

  “Thanks for being you, my friend!”

  Bikie looked at Isaac as if he were crazy, rolled his eyes and growled:

  “Put the sun visor down. You have heat stroke.”

  “You fool, Bikie, I’m just happy and delighted with life.”

  “For now, delight in being dealt a good hand at the beginning of the game. You still have to make the right moves.”

  “No, Bikie, I wasn’t dealt it, I pulled it out of the pack myself. Card by card. So sorry, but it’s not a matter of luck, just the right approach. A rational approach and precise calculation and reliable partners, of course. I was just thinking that everything could have turned out differently. How many coincidences had to come together for us to be driving along like this from Link’s own villa! Just think about it! It’s unimaginable.” Isaac continued, counting on his fingers, “I went to UNICOMA on a particular day, and only because Vicky needed surgery, and what’s more, her illness is extremely rare. Secondly, that was the very day when Elvis went there; thirdly, for no particular reason I got up and they thought I was an accomplice; thirdly, out of the entire heap Elvis picked out the memory unit; and finally he handed it on to me…”

  “Twenty-fifthly, twenty-sixthly, and twenty-seventhly, blah-blah-blah. You can say that about any life. Absolutely any, starting from conception. Everyone knows there are millions of sperm, and only one will reach the egg. Although in your case it obviously wasn’t the very best of the bunch that made it there.”

  “Apart from the fact that the first card I pulled out of the pack was a low one with tattoos on it, I can’t imagine what you’re criticizing me for.”

  “You’re the low card. I’m the ace of spades!”

  “Yeah, an ace of shovels, that’s right. A sequence of events like that does not happen every day.”

  “It does. Every life is a correlation of unique, unrepeatable events and coincidences. The domino principle, only in a hundred dimensions and all directions. Chaos and the dominoes come rushing at you from all sides, knocking each other over and creating new chains of events. It’s a funnel stuffed full of moving dominoes, and that chaos is called daily life.”

  “Sometimes you’re an incredible drag. Let’s just stop to fill the tank, then go to the café and get some decent eats so we don’t have to run to the buffet on the ferry.”<
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  “My God! The youth saw the light and started talking sense! Hallelujah! A miracle! And the blind shall see, and the poor in wit shall wise up a bit.”

  “And Bikie's sexual maturity shall come to pass.”

  “I’ll show you maturity! You need to take lessons from me, young man!”

  “Oh yes, professor ace, big-fat-face, quickly, tell me do, how you get within a mile of a girl with a beer belly like that?”

  Bikie swung the wheel abruptly and turned into a gas station at high speed. Isaac banged his head against the van door.

  “Shit, you moron!”

  Bikie cackled with laughter. Rubbing his bruised head, Isaac summed up:

  “It’s true, apart from the external similarities, rockers and Neanderthals have identical behavior patterns.”

  “Clear out and get me a double espresso, swiftly. I’ll fill the van in the meantime.”

  Isaac bought croissants, a couple of chocolate bars and tuna sandwiches. Despite a solid breakfast at Link’s place, he was still hungry. He filled two plastic bags of all sorts of food and gazed around for something interesting. The tank was not yet filled, so he decided to take a look at the magazine stand. As usual, nothing interesting there, the magazines were all like clones from an incubator.

  He paid, climbed into the driver’s seat, and the van drove into the port to board the ferry back to Genoa and continued along the highway into France and his own dear Monte Carlo. Ah, Monaco, Monaco, will you be the cradle of the new world?

  “Well, bro,” said Bikie, biting into a sandwich. “From the look of things, you’re home already. What are you thinking about?”

  “That’s obvious. Our plan. We have to give Pascal his OE back. Then he’ll be the way he was before and so will our friendship.”

  “Friendship, friendship,” Bikie mocked. “After you told me about that Pascal-dude and his private residence, the one thing I couldn’t understand was why we didn’t go to him for money, instead of Wolanski.”