What happened to him? We can answer the question very definitely. After the bombing we made an extraordinary discovery. Surgery plane 17-M, which on the night in question was unoccupied, was gone. Vanished into thin air, as it would not have if it had been destroyed by bombs. That, in any case, was out of the question: it was on the outermost rim of the target area and would not have been severely damaged at all.
There is only one conclusion. One man had vanished, and one plane. Obviously the man had vanished in the plane. In an unauthorized flight. The first unauthorized flight ever known to EMSIAC. The first flight in which a man, by engaging in a desperate act of will, said no to an EMSIAC, the will machine.
This is not just the sentimental speculation of one man grieving for another. By no means. There is abundant evidence to support this theory. First, the psychological evidence: as his last notes indicate, Brother Martine’s mind was filled with the idea of saying no to EMSIAC, in some spectacular gesture or other, at the moment when he put his notebook in an ostentatious place and stepped out of the bunk plane. But that is not all. Among the survivors of the raid were a few of the men who were on radar-scanning and guard duty during the night, and two of them reported that, just a few minutes before the attack, they were startled to see a plane take off from a point on the northern edge of the encampment, precisely where 17-M was stationed. The reason for their surprise was, of course, that EMSIAC always informed them in advance of all flights scheduled during their period of duty, and they had been told nothing about this particular flight. The guards had no way of investigating, since EMSIAC’S red-flash emergency alert had already reached them and they had to take up their defensive positions. In the excitement of the next few minutes they quite forgot about the unscheduled flight, and recalled the incident only when we began to search for Brother Martine and 17-M.
More still. EMSIAC, of course, kept completely detailed punched-tape coded records of all units deployed on all fronts. Now, all these records were preserved in underground storage vaults, where they were instantaneously available whenever EMSIAC had occasion to consult its memory banks. These vaults were remarkably sturdy affairs, and just about all the reels of tape stored in them were found intact after Theo destroyed EMSIAC itself. And when we instituted a search, after the war, we found on one of these reels EMSIAC’S complete data on the peculiar movements of 17-M between the hours of 3:27 and 3:39 on the fateful morning of October 19, 1972. This roll of tape is now on view in the Library of Congress, preserved in a helium-filled glass case along with other mementos and documents pertaining to our great martyr—including, of course, his brown-and-white plastic fountain pen and the original manuscript of his immortal notebook.
What do we learn from the EMSIAC tape? Many, many things. That 17-M did take off from our Congo encampment that night, at exactly 3:27, on an unauthorized flight. That this was exactly two minutes after EMSIAC had begun to send out its red-flash alert to us about the impending attack. That, because the compartment of EMSIAC concerned with our flying hospital squadron was so heavily taxed at the moment with the problem of the alert, it did not have any circuits free to cope with the unauthorized flight of 17-M until several minutes later, just after the attack began. That finally, when its instructions to the pilot were ignored, EMSIAC at 3:38 took over the plane’s automatic pilot, which had been set on steep climb and a southeast course, and fixed it on a half-turn, preparatory to returning it to base; at the same time, considering this breach of discipline a matter of the utmost urgency, it switched from ticker-tape communication to electrovox and began issuing oral instructions to the pilot to return for court-martial. (Judging from the coded records, EMSIAC was momentarily confused by 17-M’s flight, an act of disobedience more flagrant than any it had so far encountered: two circuits backfired and blew before a course of action was decided upon, and it is clear that two or three times, when the electrovox began speaking, it stuttered.) That, a few moments before 3:39, EMSIAC’S self-protective batteries became aware that the EMSIAC receiving apparatus in 17-M was somehow being tampered with, that the container was being struck violently; the electrovox immediately assumed that the pilot of the runaway plane was attacking the communications system and began instructing him to desist, telling him that resistance was useless. That, at precisely 3:39, the communications box in 17-M went dead and all contact with the plane was lost.
What does all this tell us about Brother Martine’s last moments? The subjective side of the picture is clear. Upon leaving the bunk plane, his mind brimming with agonized thoughts about Theo’s desperate injuries and the necessity for some nay-saying gesture against EMSIAC, he proceeded to the unoccupied 17-M; and there, at 3:25, he heard the red-flash alert coming from EMSIAC. In a split second he saw that his chance to say no to EMSIAC and affirm some human value had come, and he decided on his heroic course of action. He turned on the jets and took off at 3:27.
What was the meaning of this unprecedented action? It was, first of all, a defiance of EMSIAC’S express instructions to assume defensive positions. Clearly Brother Martine intended deliberately to disobey EMSIAC, for the reasons philosophically developed in the imaginary dialogue with Brother Theo. But the gesture was not simply negative; our hero was too idealistic a person to commit any act out of mere nihilism. No, he had something infinitely more noble in mind; as an intimate of his over the years, I can vouch for that. Brother Martine knew that in this desperate emergency his comrades were in the gravest danger, and he knew, with his entirely instinctive heroism, that he could make of his masterful no-gesture an act of ultimate bravery and self-sacrifice. Defying EMSIAC, he went forth entirely on his own, by his own self-willed decision, to do battle with the enemy bombers. It meant death for him, of course, but, just possibly, life for some of his comrades on the ground. And life for countless millions of others who, taking courage from him and stirred by the immortal words left behind in his notebook, might finally stand up to EMSIAC as he himself had done in one last blaze of glory.
This hypothesis clarifies the most puzzling aspect of those twelve minutes that shook the world. What about the strange blows on the EMSIAC communications box in 17-M? EMSIAC’S immediate conclusion was that the pilot was responsible; he was breaking discipline, he was a criminal, and therefore everything untoward which happened in his plane must automatically be the result of his criminality, part of the enormous crime. But that shows the fatal weakness of EMSIAC’S utterly logical police-mind. It simply could not grasp a matter of indiscipline which arose from motives beyond the realm of police mentality. It never occurred to EMSIAC that the occupant of 17-M, after an initial act of defiance, might go on to commit an act of stupendous, self-sacrificing humanity. And that the blows on the communications box might have eventuated in that act of humanity, rather than in further “criminal” excesses.
Our hypothesis makes sense of these blows. It was not Brother Martine hammering at the box, an utterly irrational, nihilistic act which was totally alien to his personality. Obviously he had, at 3:37 or thereabouts, engaged the enemy. No doubt he was immediately subjected to a merciless bombardment of torpedoes, shells, rockets, guided missiles, and everything else the enemy planes carried; and, no doubt, some of these missiles struck the communications box when they tore into 17-M’s interior. It was the enemy who was raining blows on EMSIAC! But EMSIAC, with its one-track police mind, infuriated over this one violation of discipline, could imagine only that the terrible “criminal” inside the plane was attacking it. There, indeed, is an irony which Brother Martine’s sensitive and complex mind would have savored to the full.
At exactly 3:39, we can assume, Brother Martine’s plane was badly hit, and he was wounded mortally—trying to destroy EMSIAC and save his comrades and all of mankind. Let us never forget it; Brother Martine’s last act was an affirmation of life and human goodness and a gesture of supreme contempt for EMSIAC and all the “Its.” It was an assertion of free will, of self-determination, of decision and decisiveness as against
all steamrollers. Brother Martine for all time dodged the steamroller—in one split second he snatched initiative back from the machine and reinstalled it in the human soul. By this one act alone, he spelled out the death sentence for EMSIAC and all such steamrollers.
What happened to the 17-M after 3:39? Brother Martine was certainly dead, or dying; the craft was badly damaged; it could hardly have stayed in the air for very long. Where could it have crashed? When Immob was established, one of the first M.E. projects we organized was a series of expeditions to search for traces of the plane in the Belgian Congo, Kenya, Tanganyika, the Rhodesias, and so on; every square foot of those territories was combed through, without results. It is out of the question, therefore, that the 17-M could have fallen anywhere on land.
The hypothesis soon arose that the plane could not have disappeared so completely unless it had dropped into a body of water. Which one? The Indian Ocean, off the coast of Somaliland or Kenya or Tanganyika? We soon ruled out that possibility—a jet as badly damaged as the 17-M must have been could hardly have remained airborne long enough to make such a trip. But—there was another body of water, a very large one, over two hundred miles long, much closer to the encampment: Lake Victoria, in northern Tanganyika Territory! Less than four hundred miles from the scene of that historic battle, this lake lies directly east-southeast from the scene, which is exactly the course the 17-M was flying.
There is no more mystery: the 17-M lies at the bottom of Lake Victoria, and within it are the remains of Brother Martine. For the last several years Immob’s top-priority M.E. project has been the Victoria Dredging Project: we have already probed more than half of the lake’s bottom, and before too long, we can rest assured, we shall find Brother Martine’s remains and give them a hero’s grave. Yes, it was in these peaceful blue waters, in the shadow of snowcapped Mt. Kilimanjaro, that our martyr came to the end of his anguish.
We need not weep for him. Let us, rather, eternally honor the memory of this true messiah for the inspiring symbolism of the way he chose to die. He not only died for us, he left behind a lesson for all men in how to live. He is not gone; he has but become the ocean; let us humbly drink.
—Helder.
1 Babyface: Teddy Gorman (Theo). Even when he was unconscious and close to death, there was about his face something shining and incorruptible which came through the blood and grime. It was this, no doubt, which prompted Brother Martine to use such a term of endearment. —Helder.
2 The comparison is too complimentary: Brother Martine’s friendship sometimes blinded him to my shortcomings. The truth of the matter is that, during all the months I worked with young Teddy Gorman in Tri-P (the Peace Pledge Program) I found his selfless ardor a constant source of inspiration, but hardly equaled it myself. —Helder.
3 A brilliant and insightful suggestion, entirely characteristic of Brother Martine’s quick grasp of the profoundest spiritual truths. After the war, when Teddy Gorman and I began to organize the peace movement again, I reminded him of these words and pointed out that, since Martine had given him his life, it was only fitting that our great martyr should be allowed to give him his name too. From that time on he has been known by the infinitely more meaningful name of Theo. —Helder.
4 I apparently neglected to mention to Brother Martine that I too suffered quite badly from insomnia in those days. On the night of October 18, although Brother Martine could not possibly have known this, I was able to sleep only thanks to a triple dose of barbiturates. —Helder.
5 Here and there Brother Martine expresses himself in a gruff soldier’s vernacular. The form of such references must not be confused with their content: what looked like sheer viciousness on the surface was, more often than not, tremulous love underneath, a love which we found it hard to express forthrightly under the brutalizing circumstances of war. Not the least argument against war is precisely this, that it does not allow men to express their love for each other warmly and directly. —Helder.
6 I did sometimes have considerable difficulty in nocturnal breathing, due to a severe sinus infection which produced a chronic post-nasal drip and catarrhal congestion of the upper respiratory tract. I had mentioned this condition to Brother Martine once or twice, but apparently he had forgotten it. —Helder.
7 The passage in question, from Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, reads as follows:
“Mr. Shannon has presented some reasons why his researches may be of more importance than the mere design of a curiosity, interesting only to those who are playing a game. Among these possibilities, he suggests that such a machine may be the first step in the construction of a machine to evaluate military situations and to determine the best move at any specific stage. Let no man think that he is talking lightly. The great book of von Neumann and Morgenstern on the theory of games has made a profound impression on the world, and not least in Washington. When Mr. Shannon speaks of the development of military tactics, he is not talking moonshine, but is discussing a most imminent and dangerous contingency.” —Helder.
8 In this passage from Strategy in Poker, Business and War:
“In military affairs the theory of games is . . . highly developed and exact. Its application in military science is one of the pre-occupations of the U. S. Air Force’s ‘Project Rand,’ which is now conducted by the Rand Corporation. . . . The theory has also been taken up by the Navy and is having its Army genesis in the ‘Eisenhower Advanced Study Group.’ The military application of ‘Games’ was begun early in the past war, some time in fact before the publication of the complete theory, by ASWORG (Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group, predecessor of the Navy’s present Operations Evaluation Group.) Mathematicians in the group had got hold of von Neumann’s 1928 paper on game theory. The success of their work led to the present Naval and Air Forces applications, which are hidden behind military security. . . .” —Helder.
9 This is Père Dubarle’s comment, with Martine’s brackets as he inserted them in his copy of the text:
“Can’t one imagine a machine to collect this or that type of information, as for example information on production and the market [as for another example: war]; and then to determine as a function of the average psychology of human beings, and of the quantities which it is possible to measure in a determined instance, what the most probable development of the situation might be? Can’t one even conceive of a State apparatus covering all systems of political decisions [not to mention military decisions]. . . . At present nothing prevents our thinking of this. We may dream of the time when the machine à gouverner may come to supply—whether for good or evil—the present obvious inadequacy of the brain when the latter is concerned with the customary machinery of politics [or war]. . . . The possibility of playing machines such as the chess-playing machine is considered to establish this. For the human processes which constitute the object of government [or war] may be assimilated to games in the sense in which von Neumann has studied them mathematically. . . . This is a hard lesson of cold mathematics, but it throws a certain light on the adventure of our century: hesitation between an indefinite turbulence of human affairs and the rise of a prodigious Leviathan. In comparison with this, Hobbes’ Leviathan was nothing but a pleasant joke. . . .” —Helder.
10 In the following paragraph:
“The steps between my original suggestion of the chess-playing machine, Mr. Shannon’s move to realize it in the metal, the use of computing machines to plan the necessities of war, and the colossal state machine of Père Dubarle, are in short clear and terrifying. Even at this moment [1950!], the concept of war which lies behind some of our new government agencies, which are developing the consequences of von Neumann’s theory of games, is sufficiently extensive to include all civilian activities during war, before war, and possibly even between wars. The state of affairs contemplated by Père Dubarle as one to be carried out by a beneficient bureaucracy for the sake of humanity at large, is quite possibly being planned by a secret military project for the purpose of
combat and domination. . . .” —Helder.
11 I shall always treasure this evidence of Brother Martine’s concern for me. Naturally, the feeling was reciprocal. In those difficult days my thoughts were never far from my comrade; if I had not taken such a heavy dosage of barbiturates I would have been awake at that very moment, sharing his agony of mind. —Helder.
12 This remark leads me to believe that, after all, Brother Martine did remember, at least faintly, that my difficulty in breathing was caused by a chronic congestion in the upper respiratory tract. —Helder.
13 The most important paragraph in the history of recorded speech. This is the first reference in literature to the Steamroller. —Helder.
14 I shall always be proud to think that in some small and humble way, even if only by my presence at this historical moment, I helped to inspire the brilliant observations which follow. —Helder.
15 First appearance of this phrase in the world’s literature. —Helder.
16 In all fairness to Brother Theo I should perhaps mention that he never actually expressed himself in this uncouth manner: he was always a most proper and well-spoken young man. Brother Martine obviously had no way of knowing about Theo’s grace and gentility. —Helder.
17 Note this passage well: here, for the first time in human thought, the concept of voluntary amputeeism is being formulated. But a question arises: why did Brother Martine link this new humanist strategy to the idea of masochism? Did he really mean that voluntary amputeeism was nothing more than a device for satisfying some deep-seated human need to suffer and be maimed, without the traditional mechanics of bloody steamrollering war? The ironic formulations used here might lead the reader to such a conclusion—but that would be to overlook completely the delicate and complex personality behind these formulations. The references to “masochism” must be taken as a jocular touch, designed to lighten a profound and heartfelt idea—a program for the salvation of the human race: Immob.
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