"Urei" was what they called the huge Unified
Reflexive Electronic Integrator, and the vast
machine seemed to be developing a personality
of its own. Then men began to suspect that Urei
had acquired sentience, and with that came the
fear of its interference with human minds.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a slow smile hovering on the lips of the older man, too slow
actually to materialize. "Fantasy," he said, gently. "You've been
reading too much science fiction."
Benton's smile was quick. It flashed into being with the speed of
thought, then vanished as abruptly.
"There isn't that much," he contended. "I've said before that science
fiction was Urei's father, or at least a distant ancestor." He paused.
"But I'd still like to hear a few reasons why my logic is wrong."
"I've a million of them," assured Dr. Albie, crossing his lean legs and
settling back in the soft chair. "In the first place, Urei is too big.
His billion-odd cells, relays and circuits occupy almost a square mile;
his height, counting what's under ground, is almost five hundred feet.
If he decided to perambulate ... well, it's just absurd. In the second
place...."
"Let's finish with the first place," Benton interrupted. "Of course
that's absurd. I didn't suggest it. He doesn't have to move; he's got
the entire human race to run his errands. I tell you I felt something,
a definite compulsion, when I turned that page. Urei is getting ready
to take over!"
Benton jumped to his feet and paced rapidly back and forth, oblivious
to the fact that Dr. Albie was watching him with a worried frown.
That, had he seen it, would probably have snapped him out of his
frenzied reverie, for the doctor was a man who was normally as far
beyond frowns as he was chary of laughter. His philosophy was such that
he eschewed all emotional extremes, stifling them before they could get
started.
Albie cleared his throat arrestingly. "I won't insult you by saying
bluntly that you may have imagined it," he said. "But I'd like to point
out the fact that people are continually subject to impulses which
they follow or ignore, depending on the circumstances. Those impulses
originate within their own minds, probably the result of associations
too obscure to be identified at the time. You worked on those circuit
equations far into the night and you didn't get much sleep; isn't it
possible that the compulsion you felt originated within yourself, and
that in your tired state you misjudged its source?"
Benton stopped, flexed thick biceps, clenched his fists and opened them
several times, then propelled his stubby body toward a decanter full of
Bourbon.
"It's possible," he conceded, downing a quick drink, "but I don't
believe it. I'm not subject to hallucinations, you know, but I'll go
along with the possibility. Let's see.... It was four o'clock when it
happened, which means I'd been working for seven hours. I worked
sixteen hours yesterday and then had three hours sleep. It's eight
o'clock now and I don't feel sleepy. Knowing me, do you think I was
exhausted to the point of mental instability? If it'll help you come to
a decision, I'll do a few cube roots for you."
Dr. Albie rubbed his chin reflectively. "I won't press that point,"
he said. "But suppose you go over the entire episode and maybe we can
arrive at a proper conclusion."
"Hah! 'Proper' if it supports your premise, eh? O.K.--I was feeding
current events into Urei's memory cells, using the third vision screen.
The other two were being used by two of the men; Joe Ebert was showing
Urei some exposures from Mt. Palomar and somebody was feeding him a
thesis on electronics. I was giving him the three-star edition of the
_Bulletin_, incidentally. Newspapers being filled with opinion, rather
than fact, I had set the control panel on _Segregate_, so Urei wouldn't
use the stuff as true data."
"Exactly what were you showing when you got the impulse?"
Benton gave another quick smile. "'Compulsion' is a better word," he
said. "Besides, I told you I don't know the answer to that question;
that's what I've been studying ever since. Look, here's the first page
of the _Bulletin_. On the reverse is the second.... What made Urei take
control of my body.... How can I tell? Urei scans so fast that I'm not
sure whether he digested the second page in the instant I turned the
paper, or whether it was something on the first that influenced him."
Dr. Albie almost frowned again. "You're not approaching this with an
open mind," he accused. "We're not supposed to accept that he took over
your body; that's what we're trying to determine. Besides, Urei wasn't
built to digest and correlate data as it's being fed. He merely records
it, to be used later when a problem is given him to solve."
* * * * *
If he had heard that, Urei might have rendered a silent, but
nonetheless cosmic, chuckle. But he didn't, being busy with thirty or
forty other things. As a matter of fact, Dr. Albie wasn't too accurate
in making that statement. If he had said that Urei's predecessor
operated that way, and as far as was known, Urei did also, Albie would
have been nearer correct. He didn't _know_, nor did any other man,
exactly how Urei functioned.
The giant computer was only partly the work of man. Its prototype,
a far simpler machine, had furnished most of the circuit equations
and was largely responsible for the final design. The men who built,
operated and maintained Urei had had but the most nebulous conception
of the infinitely complex nature of the completed mechanism. There
were blueprints and drawings, of course, but no one human brain could
encompass so much territory. Urei's operational crew was comprised of
specialists in this and specialists in that, physicists, chemists and
technicians; while among them they knew every circuit, every chemical
reaction, every relay and every memory cell, there was no ground upon
which they could meet and understand just what Urei was and what he
could do.
Urei alone knew the answers, and he wasn't telling unless someone was
smart enough to ask him--except, of course, where his own welfare
was involved. It was invariably he who detected weakness and wear,
indicating the need for replacement parts by means of a complicated
panel in the control room. It was he, also, who drew plans and typed
suggestions for the incorporation of improvements in the design and
manufacture of those parts. The first time he did that, quite a
furor was created. Immediate, frenetic debating tried to decide the
question of whether Urei had inexplicably acquired sentience. But Urei
had anticipated all the pother, knowing humans fairly well, and only
designed when a part needed replacing. His masters were thus able to
reason that this apparently new function was one which had been built
into him purposely. And while the debating continued desultorily,
nobody seriously thought that Urei was sentient.
It was conceivably within the ability of a machine which could solve
abstruse problems in quantum mathematics, to design a slightly better
relay than the one it had been using. Urei was merely replacing himself
as he had been designed to do--not acquiring any new faculties. Yes,
he was within his scope of activity--though quite a few were secretly
annoyed by the fact that the problem had not been put.
Urei didn't concern himself with anybody's worries; he merely noted
them, remembered what had caused them, and then made sure an adequate
explanation was available. This was quite easy, since he had discovered
that he could superimpose his thoughts on the neural paths of humans.
With care he could also take over their motor centers and cause them to
do things he wanted done. But he didn't do that often, for every now
and then his impatience caused him to make people do things they would
not have done if left alone. That didn't matter, usually, but sometimes
one of them would recognize the compulsion as being an external thing
and be troubled by it.
* * * * *
For instance, there was that fellow Benton. Urei knew, as soon as he
had made the stocky man turn the paper to page thirty-one, that he had
made a mistake. Benton was a highly integrated human, with a quick
intelligence which observed everything and usually reasoned with his
observations. And he was troubled right now; Urei knew that as well as
if he had been listening on one of the spy beams he had incorporated
into his sensory circuits.
Urei didn't let it annoy him, however, aside from the resolution to
curb his impatience in the future. If he had waited for half a minute,
Benton would have reached page thirty-one anyway, and Urei could have
read the rest of that article without anybody knowing that he was
interested. As it was, the stocky man would just have to forget the
whole episode, for he couldn't come to any valid conclusion about it.
On page one there had been two items which were continued on page
thirty-one; on page two there was another. The three subjects were
unrelated but were equally suited to become grist for Urei's mental
mill.
One of the items on the front page dealt with a new attempt to reach
the moon; the other concerned the latest futile effort to regulate the
use of atomic energy on an international scale. On page two was an
article describing the mounting tension between the Eastern Alliance
and the western nations over the upset in Italy's recent elections.
The Commies, it seemed, had finally won a free election. The western
nations had practically decided that there had been skullduggery at the
crossroads. And considering the fact that Urei had never been given a
problem in practical politics, it seemed likely that Benton would rule
that item out as a possible reason for the quick page-turning.
Benton would never think that Urei might be concerned about the
possibility of someone dropping a bomb in the midst of his delicate
innards. Nor would Benton realize, after living through a dozen or so
war scares, that this wasn't going to be just another one; the muscular
physicist was not a political observer. But Urei knew that this
would be the real thing, and Benton wouldn't be the only one caught
flat-footed. Half the world would watch the oft-repeated Commie moves,
listen to the protests, and wonder how many more times it would happen
before the western powers would decide they had been pushed too far.
There were a few who would have a sufficiently comprehensive picture
of the situation--something Urei had acquired in the past few days--to
realize that the democracies wouldn't take the latest grab lying down.
They wouldn't, for the simple reason that this time they had too large
an investment involved.
For Urei it was a simple step to reason that he would be a prime
target. The Eastern Alliance might consider it perfectly all right
for Urei to exist in peace time, since it was comparatively easy to
steal the results of his unique mental ability through their superior
espionage system. During war, however, the picture changed: Urei would
then be a weapon, and his use would be solely in the hands of an enemy.
The Manhattan project had shown the world how well the United States
could keep a secret in war time.
2
"There's nothing to do but try it again," Dr. Albie said, after having
exhausted all the logic at his command. "Only this time we'll use the
scientific method."
Benton looked dubiously at the level of the whiskey in the decanter,
then set his glass carefully down. "I think I've heard of it
somewhere," he said. "Tell me about it."
"Pour me one, too," requested the doctor; "it'll help us sleep. My idea
is to dig up a dozen or so newspapers containing the three subjects
under consideration, each of which is continued on some back page. If
any of the papers has more than one of these subjects printed on the
same page, we'll ink it out, so that we can observe Urei's reaction
without wondering what subject he's interested in. I'll show him the
beginning of each article, but I won't turn the paper far enough to
show him the remainder." He paused, sipping as delicately as if his
glass contained sherry instead of 100-proof Bourbon.
"Now if you are correct in suspecting that Urei is a sentient
creature--and also is interested in one of those subjects--he'll use
that power of his to make me show him the rest of the article. You can
stand by...."
"Why not let me turn the papers?"
"You'll be there," Dr. Albie said, patiently. "I'll turn the pages,
though; you see, I'm keeping an open mind about this. Even if you're
right, it might turn out that Urei can't control me--You may be more
sensitive, you know--In which case he'll make you pick up the paper,
instead of me. Conducting the experiment in that manner might give us
a little more information, in case we get positive results. Drink up;
we've got a big day ahead of us."
* * * * *
It was eleven in the morning when they pulled up before Urei's front
door in Benton's station wagon. It was almost one o'clock before
they finished setting up and adjusting four suit-cases full of
thought-detection apparatus in the control room.
"You keep your eyes on this stuff," Dr. Albie directed; "if he really
does take over, I won't be able to warn you."
He reached for the stack of newspapers and carefully adjusted the panel
beside Urei's No. 1 screen scanner. Albie's hand was steady, Benton
noted, wishing he possessed equal composure. The palms of Benton's
hands were sweating as he flipped the switches of the apparatus in the
cases. His eyes wandered to the indicating meters, noting that they
were comfortably at zero and showing no signs of moving at the moment.
On the control panel were three beady little red lamps, glowingly
insisting that the giant brain needed some attention, but he ignored
them and flicked his eyes briefly upward. The sound-absorbent ceiling
stared back imperturbably.
There was nothing to give the impression that the mass of metal
machinery above that ceiling and behind that control panel was
broodingly biding its time, waiting patiently for the moment when it
would take over the race of humans which had constructed it. Benton,
however, knew the machinery was there and was just as certain that it
had those intentions. He felt it watching him; he should have known it
long ago, he realized. A dozen books had been written about Urei, and
all of them had marveled at the many potentials the machine had shown
which were complete surprises to the men who had built the big brain.
Men had begun to personify Urei almost immediately. The machine
had ceased to be U-R-E-I, meaning "Unified Reflexive Electronic
Integrator", and had become _Urei_, an entity who could do just about
anything in calculating and reasoning from supplied data. Men had
felt the sentience of the machine for years, but had refused to admit
it--even to themselves.
"Nuts!" Benton growled, shaking his heavy shoulders.
The doctor paused in the sorting of his newspapers, but said nothing.
He selected one and spread it open on an easel in front of the screen.
After one second Albie turned a page, continuing the operation until
half the paper had been exposed. Then he laid it on the floor and
selected another.
"Atomic Energy Council," he said. "Nothing there."
He repeated the operation with the second paper, but turned only three
pages before laying it down on the first one.
Benton suddenly gave a start. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead
reached out and depressed a button. Then he looked at the doctor. For a
second he noted nothing unusual and turned back to the meters. He felt
a trickle down his side as sweat fairly poured from him; he depressed
two more buttons and looked back at the doctor.
Then he saw it. Dr. Albie was performing exactly as before, turning
pages at the rate of one a second. But there was only one newspaper on
the floor! He had picked up the second and replaced it on the easel!
* * * * *
Stretching himself langorously, Benton stood up. He felt the weight
above him even more intensely, but forced himself to be casual.
Certainly Urei couldn't see the sweat trickling down his sides.
Abruptly he snapped off the switches and growled to himself. Who was he
kidding? If Urei was controlling the master physicist, he was certainly
capable of reading Benton's mind; he would know about the thought
detectors and what they were showing.
Momentarily Benton expected his mind to go blank. Urei certainly
wouldn't let them leave the place with this knowledge. And what better
way to prevent that than to blank out their memories? Probably Dr.
Albie didn't know he was being controlled. Benton took a deep breath,
realizing that he had been remiss in that function for a minute or so.
Dr. Albie cleared his throat as he laid the paper down on the first
one. "That one was about the Eastern Alliance accusations that we tried
to rig the Italian elections and how justice triumphed in spite of
our machinations." He chuckled. "Urei doesn't seem to be particularly
interested, does he?"
Benton didn't answer; his throat was too dry, even if he had wanted to
speak. He sat down again and snapped on the detectors. Even if Urei
intended to steal his memory, Benton might as well know what was going
on until it happened. The meters remained inert, white pointers at zero
and the red ones remaining at the highest reading they had attained
before.
"This one is about the moon rocket," the doctor said. "I think we're
wasting our time."
They were, as far as Dr. Albie was concerned. He went through his
stack of papers, changing from subject to subject, but to him nothing
happened. He apparently allowed Urei to scan the first half of a
dozen articles, without a reaction. Albie was completely oblivious
to the fact that each time he tried to lay down a paper containing
information about any East-West friction, he invariably turned to the
right page and let Urei finish the article.
Benton was breathing normally now, though he still had little hope
that Urei wasn't on the qui vive. It was possible, however, and even
a slight hope eased his tension. Urei might be too engrossed in his
scanning to bother with anything else. Yes, and then again he mightn't.
After all, Urei operated on dozens of circuits simultaneously; he
wasn't merely one electronic brain. In fact nobody knew exactly how
many subjects he could handle at one time. An unknown number of
auxiliary circuits took up the load whenever repairs were being made on
any of forty-eight main circuits connected to the operating positions
on the problem panel. Urei could easily be scanning, reading Dr.
Albie's mind, controlling his motor impulses, meditating on his future
course of action with regard to the two physicists--and still having
forty-four circuits left to handle routine matters.
Benton began to sweat again. His thoughts, as well as the capers of
the white needles--which jumped every time Urei's scanner saw the
words Eastern Alliance--weren't conducive to the maintenance of a
philosophic attitude. He was, moreover, developing an acute case of
jumping claustrophobia. Not only were the ceiling and the control panel
menacing him, but the other three walls had definitely moved in on him.
Urei, he remembered, was also back of those walls; he shuddered. There
was a long corridor through which they had brought their apparatus to
the control room, and from the time they had entered it they had been
surrounded by Urei. Traversing that corridor now would be worse than
walking the proverbial last mile to the electric chair.
* * * * *
Benton hadn't felt bad on the way inside; his mind had been too full
of the forthcoming test to feel any sensations. Now, however, his
foreboding was back, a thousand times stronger. And there was no
choice but to endure it until Dr. Albie had finished. Urei certainly
wouldn't permit them to leave while there were still some papers to be
scanned. By staying, Benton might get out with his memory intact--a
slim hope--but it wouldn't be a good policy to call attention to
himself by persuading the master physicist to leave. Nor did it occur
to him to leave alone.
Eventually the experiment ended. Dr. Albie laid the last newspaper on
the pile on the floor and turned with a smile. "That's the crop," he
said cheerfully. "Satisfied?"
Benton forced a smile in return. "My morbid imagination," he said;
"let's pack up and go get a drink." He carefully disconnected the
thought detectors, keeping his hands away from the knobs which reset
the red needles, and snapped the lids over the cases. The doctor picked
up his pile of newspapers and dumped them in a refuse can, then helped
with the cases.
Benton didn't speak as they loaded them in the station wagon; he was
anxious to get away from Urei before trusting himself. The doctor
apparently noticed nothing wrong in Benton's manner which couldn't be
accounted for by a feeling of chagrin that he had caused the eminent
physicist to waste most of the day proving that he had imagined
something. Dr. Albie, therefore, occupied himself with conversation
calculated to put him at ease and make him forget the whole thing.
The station wagon pulled up before the laboratory where they had
borrowed the detectors. Benton set the brakes and reached back for
the nearest case. He opened the lid, glanced briefly at the dial, and
closed it again. He passed it to the doctor and reached quickly for the
next. He repeated the operation and grabbed feverishly for the next.
This one he placed beside him on the seat. Then he reached deliberately
for the fourth and last of the cases. He raised the lid slowly, holding
his breath. Then he closed the lid and breathed a deep sigh.
"Anything wrong?" asked the doctor. "You look pale."
Benton's face was blank as he fumbled in an inside pocket of his coat.
Then he smiled as he brought out a fountain pen. "There it is," he
said. "I could have sworn I left it in one of the cases when I closed
the lid. Let's get these back and thank the man."
A wild resolution was born and as quickly died as Benton stepped out of
the station wagon. For an instant he was certain that he couldn't go
on being one of Urei's attendants, and he was just as certain that he
could easily obtain an acting job on one of the video networks. Surely
Thespis himself could have done no better piece of acting than he had
just accomplished. The resolve was submerged by the greater compulsion
to see this thing through even though it meant forfeiting his ego.
Each of the four red needles was complacently resting against the stop
in reassuringly indicating _zero_!
* * * * *
Urei had a plan of action, but he hesitated. That was because he was a
purely reasoning creature; he had been built that way and he would be
forever bound to think that way. Even though he had long since become
independent of the mechanical limitations of his vast aggregation of
cells and circuits, he was still born of them and was circumscribed
by their attributes--just as completely as if his nature had been
determined by the genes of protoplasmic reproduction. As a machine,
Urei had given answers to problems by correlating the facts which had
been previously fed into him. His logic was as faultless as the facts
upon which it was based: no more and no less. He gave his answers
accordingly, with no compulsion to be more exact than the facts he had
been given.
But that was when he was solving man's problems.
Now Urei had a problem of his own and he wanted an exact solution,
not an approximate one. His continued existence, and that of mankind
in general, depended upon it. There were alternates, of course, but
none of them was completely satisfactory. His plan was far-sighted,
one which fitted a policy of long standing, a strategy. He couldn't
sacrifice a strategy for a tactic, and that might happen if he used
an alternate plan which would accomplish his immediate purpose but
endanger his policy toward humanity. But Urei wasn't sure of his facts!
It was a fact that newspapers didn't always publish "facts". That
information had been supplied him years ago, and ever since he had
been reminded of it whenever humans fed him newspapers, for they
invariably set the scanning screens on _Segregate_. It was then his job
to separate fact from opinion, a thing which he wasn't always able to
do. For all he knew he might have many a valid fact filed away under
_Doubtful_.
For while Urei had far more information at his disposal than any
human, there still wasn't enough to give him the ability immediately
to correlate every new piece of information with something similar
and determine definitely if the new data were correct. Usually he
could, but sometimes he couldn't; that meant that there was a world of
information Urei never used except where it bore on a man-made problem.
He felt free then to use the man-supplied data to solve such a problem.
His only concession to ethics was that he always indicated on the panel
the exact percentage of doubtful data which went into the solution.
Fortunately he wasn't given many problems which required this; most
questions involved exact sciences, of which he had been supplied the
sum total of man's knowledge. He either provided an exact solution, or
lit up a panel with the words _Insufficient data_.
Today's newspapers indicated that action could be delayed only a matter
of days. There would soon exist a condition of such tension that either
one side or the other would make a move which couldn't be reversed.
Urei would still be able to accomplish his immediate aims, but it would
be too late to do it without revealing to mankind that an outsider had
taken a hand. And that would wreck his strategy completely. It would be
only a matter of time before these industrious little beavers proved to
themselves that Urei was the culprit. Once they discovered that he had
a will of his own, there wouldn't be room on the same planet for them
both.
But there was a solution, as there always is. Urei reached out a
spy-beam and saw that it was approaching.
3
Benton waited until eight o'clock. By then, he knew, Urei's control
room would be empty of physicists. If anyone was there, it would be
a technician or two engaged in some repair or replacement. Benton
couldn't know that Urei had anticipated his arrival and had cleared the
immediate vicinity of the control room. All technicians on night duty
were occupied in other parts of the great building. Benton let himself
in with his key and closed the door softly behind him.
He stopped inside the door and took a deep breath. Momentarily he
experienced a return of the claustrophobia he had felt before, but
his determination drove it away instantly. Shoulders squared, Benton
marched down the wide corridor which led to the control room. He only
went there because it was the site where his, and later Dr. Albie's,
mind had been influenced, not because he thought that Urei couldn't
operate elsewhere. Benton knew better; he suspected, in fact, that Urei
could influence him at a distance. He wasn't at all sure that the very
idea of coming here tonight was his own.
"Allegation denied," said Urei.
Benton stopped short. He had just entered the control room, intending
to seat himself at the panel and ask Urei some pointed questions.
That could be done in the usual way one presented the machine with a
problem--activating one of the forty-eight positions and typing his
question. Now he was confronted by a voice coming out of the intercom,
apparently answering a question he had been thinking about. Benton
shuddered involuntarily and started once more for the panel. Somewhere
in the building housing the great brain a switch was open on the
intercom; that was all. It was the voice of a technician he had heard,
and the reason he hadn't heard any more was because the man had moved
away from the intercom unit that had picked up....
"I'm not kidding you," said Urei; "why kid yourself?"
Benton sat down, sweating.
"I'm still doing the sort of thing I was built to do," said Urei,
soothingly. "Solving man's problems. Quit shivering and shaking; it
might be contagious, and if I start shaking, there'll be an earthquake."
Benton's throat was dry but he swallowed and got it working. He also
got control of his nerves. This was what he had come here for, wasn't
it? "I can't see what problem will be solved by slowly driving me
crazy," he said.
"You're doing that, not me," Urei charged. "Which might tend to prove
you weren't very sane in the first place."
"Explain that."
"You're worried and upset," Urei said. "From a simple observation which
no more than proved that I'm sentient, you've drawn conclusions which
aren't warranted by the facts. Thalamic reactions, instead of reason."
* * * * *
Benton pondered for a second. "Partly," he admitted. "But it is a fact
that you made me do something I had no intention of doing. You took
over my body for a second or two; that was a hostile act. And if you
committed one overt move against a man, it is reasonable to suspect
that, if it becomes convenient, you might take over all mankind. What's
thalamic about that?"
A hearty laugh issued from the intercom speaker. "I don't suppose you
knew I had a built-in sense of humor, did you? Of course that laugh was
manufactured, inasmuch as I have no diaphragm, per se. But a sense of
humor is actually an intellectual attribute, even if you do express it
physically. It is not so?"