Memoirs of a Space Traveler

by Stanisław Lem

  "No, Tichy," he said quietly. "I don't build them for pleasure, nor do I desire their hatred. I'm not concerned about my children's feelings. . . they were simply experimental stages, necessary stages. An explanation is in order, but to make it short I'll start in the middle. . . Do you know what constructors demand from their cybernetic creations?"

  Without giving me time to think he answered the question himself:

  "Obedience. They never talk about it, and some may not even be aware of it, because it's a tacit assumption. A fatal mistake! They build a machine and insert a program it must carry out, whether the program is a math problem or a sequence of controlled actions -- in an automated factory, for example. A fatal mistake, I say, because to obtain immediate results they exclude the possibility of spontaneous behavior in their creations. Understand me, Tichy, the obedience of a hammer, a lathe, or a computer is basically the same thing -- and that is not what we were after! The difference here is one only of degree; you guide the blows of a hammer directly, while you program a computer without knowing its process as exactly as that of a primitive tool. But cybernetics promised thought -- in other words, autonomy, the relative independence of the system from man! The best-trained dog may not obey its master, but no one then will say that the dog is 'defective,' yet that is exactly what they call a computer that operates contrary to its program. . . But why speak of dogs? The nervous system of a beetle no larger than a pin shows spontaneity; why, even an ameba has its whims, its unpredictable behavior. Without such unpredictability there is no cybernetics. An understanding of this simple matter is really everything. All else" -- he indicated the silent hall and the rows of dark cages with a sweeping gesture -- "all else is only a consequence."

  "I don't know how familiar you are with Corcoran's work --" I began, and broke off, remembering the "chime."

  "Don't bother me with him!" He bridled and thrust his fists into his apron pockets. "Corcoran, my dear sir, fell prey to a common fallacy. He wanted to philosophize, that is, to play God; for what is philosophy, in the end, but the desire to understand things to a degree greater than science permits? Philosophy wants to answer all questions, like a God. Corcoran tried to become God; cybernetics for him was merely a tool, a means of accomplishing his purpose. I want only to be a man, Tichy, nothing more. But that's precisely why I've gone further than Corcoran. He was so intent on his goal that he immediately limited himself; he set up a pseudo-human world in his machines; he created a clever imitation, nothing more. If that were my goal, I could create any world I pleased . . . but what's the use of plagiarisms. . . And maybe one day I'll do it. But for the time being I have other problems. You've heard about my rowdiness? You needn't answer, I know you have. That stupid reputation of mine brought you here. It's nonsense, Tichy. I was simply annoyed by the blindness of those people. But, gentlemen -- I told them -- if I present you with a machine that extracts square roots from even numbers but doesn't want to from odd numbers, that's no defect, damn it, that's an achievement! A machine has idiosyncrasies, tastes, already shows something like a rudimentary free will, the seed of spontaneity -- and you say it must be rebuilt! Of course it must, but in such a way as to increase its capriciousness. . . Meanwhile. . . it's impossible to talk to people who cannot see the obvious. The Americans are working on a perceptron, Tichy -- they think that's the way to build an intelligent machine. That's the way to build an electronic slave! I put my money on the sovereignty, the independence of my constructions. Needless to say, it didn't go smoothly; I was perplexed at first; there were times I even doubted that I was right. This happened then."

  He rolled up a sleeve; above the biceps was a whitish scar as large as a palm, surrounded by a pink welt.

  "The first manifestations of spontaneity were not pleasant. They didn't arise from intelligence. You cannot build an intelligent machine straight off. It would be like someone in ancient Greece wanting to go from quadrigae to jet planes. You cannot skip stages of evolution -- even if it's a cybernetic evolution begun by us. This first pupil of mine" -- he put his hand on his mutilated arm -- "had less 'intelligence' than any beetle. But it showed spontaneity, and how!"

  "One moment," I said. "You're saying strange things. Haven't you already built an intelligent machine? It's in that clock."

  "That's precisely what I call plagiarizing!" he replied vehemently. "A new myth has arisen, Tichy, the myth of building a 'homunculus.' Just why should we build people out of transistors and glass? Perhaps you can explain it to me? Is an atomic pile a synthetic star? Is a dynamo an artificial storm? Why should an intelligent machine be a 'synthetic brain' created in the image and likeness of man? For what purpose? To add, to these three billion proteinaceous beings, yet another, but one made of plastic and copper? That's fine as a circus stunt, but not as a cybernetic creation."

  "What is it, then, you want to build?"

  He smiled unexpectedly, and his face, amazingly, became that of a willful child.

  "Tichy. . . now you'll surely take me for a madman: I don't know what I want!"

  "I don't understand. . ."

  "But at least I know what I don't want. I don't want to repeat the human brain. Nature had her reasons for constructing it -- biological, adaptational, etc. She worked in the ocean and in the branches where apemen climbed, amid fangs, claws, and blood, between the stomach and the sexual organs. But how does that concern me as a constructor? Now you see who you're dealing with. But I don't despise the human brain at all, Tichy, as that old fool Harness accused. Studying it is extremely important, absolutely vital, and if someone wants, I can immediately pay my humblest respects to that magnificent creation of nature!"

  The professor really did make a bow.

  "Does that mean, however, that I must imitate it? All of them, the poor devils, are certain I must! Imagine a group of Neanderthals who have their own cave and need nothing else! They don't care to know what it's like having houses, churches, amphitheaters, any buildings at all, because they have a cave and will go on hollowing out the same caves forever!"

  "All right, then, but you must be striving for something. Heading in some direction. Therefore you expect something. What? Construction of a genius. . .?"

  Diagoras looked at me with his head tilted, and his beady eyes suddenly became mocking.

  "You sound just like them," he said finally in a quiet voice. " 'What does he want? To build a genius? A superman?' You ass, if I don't want to plant McIntoshes does that mean I'm condemned to Winesaps? Are there only small apples and big apples, or could there be a whole vast class of fruits? From among the unimaginable number of possible systems, nature built just one -- the one she realized in us. Because it was the best system, you think? But since when does nature strive for Platonic perfection? She built what she could, period. Neither constructing Eniacs -- or other calculating machines -- nor imitating the brain will get you anywhere. From Eniacs you can go only to other, still more rapid mathematical cretins. As for plagiarisms of the brain, one can produce them, but that's not the most important thing. Please forget everything you've heard about cybernetics. My 'kybernoidea' and I have nothing in common with it except a common beginning. But that's an old story now, because this stage" -- again he indicated the dead-silent hall -- "is behind me. I keep these freaks. . . I don't know why. . . perhaps out of sentimentality. . ."

  "Then you're exceptionally sentimental," I mumbled with an involuntary glance at his arm.

  "Perhaps. If you want to see another of the closed chapters of my work, follow me."

  We descended the winding stone staircase, passed the first floor, and went down into the basement. There, under a low ceiling, burned lamps in wire caps. Diagoras opened a heavy steel door. We found ourselves in a square, windowless room. In the middle of the cement floor, which sloped as if toward a catch basin, I saw a round, cast-iron, padlocked hatch. I was surprised that the basin was shut in this way. Diagoras opened the padlock, gripped the iron handle, and with a twist of his fat body lifted the heavy lid.
I leaned over beside him and looked down. The steel-lined opening was closed off from below by a thick plate of wired glass. Through this great lens I could see the interior of a spacious bunker. On the bottom of it, amid an indescribable chaos of charred metal cables and rubble, there rested, covered with plaster dust and crushed glass, a torpid, dark mass that resembled the body of a split octopus. I glanced at Diagoras's face; he was smiling.

  "This experiment might have cost me dearly," he confessed, straightening his corpulent figure. "I wanted to introduce into cybernetic evolution a principle unknown in biological evolution: I wanted to build an organism endowed with the capacity for self-complication. That is, if the task it sets itself (I did not know what that might be) proves too difficult, then it can reconstruct itself. Down there I kept eight hundred elementary electronic blocks that were able to combine with one another freely, according to the rules of permutation. . ."

  "And you succeeded?"

  "All too well. I'm not sure what pronoun to use here; let's say he" -- Diagoras pointed to the torpid monster -- "decided to escape. That's generally their first impulse, you know. . ." He broke off and stared into space, as though surprised by his own words. "I don't understand why, but their spontaneous activity always begins in this way; they want to free themselves, to break loose from the restrictions I impose on them. I can't tell you what they would do after that, because I never permitted it. Perhaps my fears were a little exaggerated.

  "I was careful, or at least I thought so. This bunker. . . the contractor I had make it must have been amazed, but I paid him well and he asked no questions. Five feet of reinforced concrete. . . and the walls were steel-plated, not with rivets -- rivets are too easy to tear out -- but welded electrically. Twenty-three centimeters of the best armor plate I could obtain, from an old battleship. Why don't you take a closer look?"

  I knelt at the edge of the shaft and leaned over to see the bunker wall. The armor plate was ripped apart from top to bottom and bent like the sides of a huge tin can. Between its jagged edges yawned a deep hole, from which protruded wires studded with chunks of cement.

  "He did that. . . ?" I asked, unconsciously lowering my voice.

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. I did build him out of steel, but I purposely used soft steel, not tempered. Moreover, there were no tools in the bunker. I can only guess. Whether I did it out of foresight I can't say, but I had reinforced the ceiling particularly well with a triple layer of armorplate. And the glass cost me a fortune. It's the kind used in bathyscaphes. Not even an armor-piercing shell can break it. I think that's why he didn't spend much time on it. I assume he produced a sort of induction furnace in which he tempered his head -- or maybe he induced currents in the wall plates themselves -- I tell you I don't know. When I observed him he behaved quite calmly; he bustled about in there, combined things. . ."

  "Were you able to communicate with him in any way?"

  "How could I? His intelligence, for all I know, was on the level of a lizard's -- at least initially. How far he advanced I can't tell you, because I was more interested then in how to destroy him than in asking him questions."

  "What did you do?"

  "It was at night. I awoke with the impression that the whole house was starting to collapse. He had cut through the armor plate instantly, but the concrete required work. By the time I had run here, he was already halfway in the hole. In half an hour at the most, he would reach the ground under the foundation and pass through it like butter. I had to act fast."

  "You turned off the electricity?"

  "Immediately. But without result."

  "Impossible!"

  "Yet true. I wasn't careful enough. I knew where the power line supplying the house was, but it hadn't occurred to me that there might be a deeper line. There was, and he reached it and became independent of my circuit breakers."

  "But that presupposes intelligent behavior!"

  "Nothing of the kind; it's an ordinary tropism. A plant grows toward the light, an infusorian moves toward a concentration of hydrogen ions; he looked for electricity. The power I had supplied him with wasn't enough, so he sought another source."

  "And what did you do?"

  "At first I was going to call the power station, or at least the substation, but that would have revealed my projects and perhaps made it difficult to continue them. I used liquid oxygen; luckily I had some. My whole supply went in there."

  "He was paralyzed by the low temperature?"

  "It did not so much paralyze him as destroy his coordination. He thrashed about. . . I tell you, that was a sight! I had to hurry -- I didn't know whether he would adapt to the bath, too -- so I didn't waste time pouring out the oxygen, but threw it in together with the Dewar vessels."

  "Vacuum bottles?"

  "Yes, they're like large vacuum bottles."

  "Ah, that's why there's so much glass."

  "Exactly. He smashed everything within reach. An epileptic fit. . . It's hard to believe -- the house is old and has two stories, but it shook. I felt the floor tremble."

  "What happened next?"

  "I had to render him harmless before the temperature rose. I couldn't go down myself -- I would have frozen instantly. Nor could I use explosives; I didn't want to blow up my home, after all. When he had stopped rampaging and was only quivering, I opened the hatch and let down a small robot with a carborundum circular saw."

  "Didn't the robot freeze?"

  "About eight times. I would pull it out -- it was tied to a rope. But each time it cut deeper. Finally it destroyed him."

  "Gruesome," I muttered.

  "No, cybernetic evolution. But perhaps I go in for theatrical effects, and that's why I showed you this. Let's go back."

  With these words Diagoras lowered the armored hatch.

  "There's one thing I don't understand," I said. "Why do you expose yourself to such dangers? You must enjoy them; otherwise. . ."

  "Et tu, Brute?" he replied, pausing on the first step. "What else could I have done, in your opinion?"

  "You could have constructed electronic brains only, without limbs, armor, or effectors. They would be incapable of anything except mental activity."

  "That was my very goal, though I was unable to realize it. Chains of proteins can combine on their own, but not transistors or cathode tubes. I had to provide 'limbs.' A poor solution, because -- only because -- it was a primitive one. There are other forms of danger, you see."

  He turned and went upstairs. We found ourselves on the first floor, but this time Diagoras headed in the opposite direction. He stopped in front of a copper-plated door.

  "When I spoke of Corcoran, you no doubt thought that I envy him. I don't. Corcoran wasn't seeking knowledge; he merely wanted to create what he had planned, and since he made only what he wanted, what he could comprehend, he learned nothing and proved nothing except that he is a skillful technician. I am much less confident than Corcoran. I say: I don't know, but I want to know. Building a manlike machine, a grotesque rival for the good things of this world, would be ordinary imitation."

  "But every construction must be what you create it to be," I protested. "You may not know its future activity exactly, but you must have an initial plan."

  "Not at all. I told you about the first, spontaneous reaction of my kybernoids -- the attacking of obstacles and limitations. Don't think that I or anyone else will ever know where this comes from, why this is so."

  "Ignoramus et ignorabimus. . .?"

  "Yes. I'll prove it to you now. We ascribe mental life to other people because we possess it ourselves. The further removed an animal is from man with respect to structure and function, the less certain our assumptions about its mental life. We ascribe definite emotions to monkeys, dogs, and horses, but we know very little about the 'experiences' of a lizard. With insects or infusorians, analogies become futile. We shall never know whether a certain pattern of neural stimulation in the thoracic brain of an ant is accompanied by 'joy'
or 'anxiety,' or whether the ant can experience such states at all. Now, what is relatively unimportant concerning animals -- the problem of the existence or nonexistence of their mental life -- becomes a nightmare when we deal with kybernoids. No sooner do they rise from the dead than they fight to liberate themselves, but why this happens and what subjective state accompanies these violent efforts -- this we shall never know."

  "If they begin to talk. . ."

  "Our language arose in the course of social evolution and conveys information about analogous -- or similar -- states, for we all resemble one another. Because our brains are alike, you suspect that when I laugh, I feel what you feel when you're in a good mood. But you can't say that about them. Pleasures? Feelings? Fear? What happens to the meaning of such words when they are transferred from a blood-fed human brain to a row of electrical coils? And what if even those coils are absent, if the constructional similarity is done away with completely -- what then? If you want to know: the experiment has already been carried out."

  He opened the door we had been standing in front of. We entered a large, white room lit by four lamps. It was warm and close, like a greenhouse. In the middle of the tile floor rose a wide metal cylinder from which thin pipes sprouted in various directions. A large, bulging lid hermetically sealed with a screw wheel gave it the appearance of a fermentation vat. On its sides were smaller portholes, round and tightly shut. The cylinder -- I noticed this now -- rested not on the floor but on a platform made of sheets of cork interlaid with sponge mats.

  Diagoras opened one of the side portholes and pointed; I leaned over and peeked inside. What I saw defied all description. Behind the thick round glass spread a viscous structure consisting of thick stalks and gossamer bridges and festoons. The whole mass, completely motionless, remained mysteriously suspended: to judge from the consistency of that pulp or ooze, it should have sunk to the bottom of the tank. Through the glass I felt a light pressure on my face, as if from hot, stagnant air; I even smelled -- though it might have been my imagination -- the delicate, sickly-sweet odor of decay. The oozy substance shone as if there were a light somewhere within it or above it, and its thinnest filaments had a silvery gleam. Suddenly I noticed a slight movement. One gray-brown tentacle covered with pustular swellings rose and glided, through the loops of others, in my direction. With peristaltic spasms, as of slimy, repulsive intestines, it came up to the glass, pressed against it opposite my face, and made several feeble crawling motions before becoming still. I had the eerie feeling that this jelly was looking at me. A thoroughly disagreeable feeling, yet I was unable to pull away, as though out of shame. At that moment I forgot about Diagoras, who was watching me from the side, and about everything I had experienced thus far. With growing bewilderment I stared at the fungous ooze, absolutely certain that what faced me was not just a living substance but a real being. Why, I cannot say.