"No insult intended. Just listen. I'm a terrible chess player. Any
five-year-old could chatemeck--checkmate--me with his brains tied
behind his back. But this machine which I built, helped build, is the
champion chess player of the world. In other words, my brain has given
birth to a brain which can do things my brain could never do. Don't you
find that terrifying?"
"Not at all," I said. "_You_ made the machine, didn't you? Therefore,
no matter what it does, it's only an extension of you. You should feel
proud to have devised a powerful new tool."
"Some tool," he sneered. He was so drunk by now that I could hardly
understand what he was saying. "The General Staff boys in Washington
were all hopped up about that little old tool, and for a plenty good
reason--they understood that mechanized warfare is only the most
complicated game the human race has invented so far, an elaborate form
of chess which uses the population of the world for pawns and the
globe for a chessboard. They saw, too, that when the game of war gets
this complex, the job of controlling and guiding it becomes too damned
involved for any number of human brains, no matter how nimble.
"In other words, my beamish Boy Scout, modern war needs just this kind
of strategy tool; the General Staff has to be mechanized along with
everything else. So the Pentagon boys set up IFACS and handed us a
top-priority cybernetics project: to build a superduper chess player
that could oversee a complicated military maneuver, maybe later a whole
campaign, maybe ultimately a whole global war.
"We're aiming at a military strategy machine which can digest reports
from all the units on all the fronts and from moment to moment, on
the basis of that steady stream of information, grind out an elastic
overall strategy and dictate concrete tactical directives to all the
units. Wiener warned this might happen, and he was right. A very nifty
tool. Never mind how far we've gotten with the thing, but I will tell
you this: I'm a lot more scared today than I was three years ago."
So _that_ was the secret of MS! The most extraordinary machine ever
devised by the human mind! It was hard to conceal the thrill of
excitement I felt, even as a relative outsider.
"Why all the jitters?" I said. "This could be the most wonderful tool
ever invented. It might eliminate war altogether."
Len was quiet for a while, gulping his beer and looking off into space.
Then he turned to me.
"Steve Lundy has a cute idea," he said. "He was telling me about it
this afternoon. He's a bum, you see, but he's got a damned good mind
and he's done a lot of reading. Among other things, he's smart enough
to see that once you've got your theory of games worked out, there's
at least the logical possibility of converting your Eniac into what
he calls a Strategy Integrator and Computer. And he's guessed, simply
from the Pentagon's hush-hush policy about it, that that's what we're
working on here at IFACS. So he holds forth on the subject of Emsiac,
and I listen."
"What's his idea?" I asked.
"He thinks Emsiac might eliminate war, too, but not in the way a
Boy Scout might think. What he says is that all the industrialized
nations must be working away like mad on Emsiac, just as they did on
the atom bomb, so let's assume that before long all the big countries
will have more or less equal MS machines. All right. A cold war gets
under way between countries A and B, and pretty soon it reaches the
showdown stage. Then both countries plug in their Emsiacs and let them
calculate the date on which hostilities should begin. If the machines
are equally efficient, they'll hit on the same date. If there's a
slight discrepancy, the two countries can work out a compromise date by
negotiation.
"The day arrives. A's Emsiac is set up in its capital, B's is set up
in _its_ capital. In each capital the citizens gather around their
strategy machine, the officials turn out in high hats and cut-aways,
there are speeches, pageants, choral singing, mass dancing--the ritual
can be worked out in advance. Then, at an agreed time, the crowds
retreat to a safe distance and a committee of the top cyberneticists
appears. They climb into planes, take off and--this is beautiful--drop
all their atom bombs and H-bombs on the machines. It happens
simultaneously in both countries, you see. That's the neat part of it.
The occasion is called International Mushroom Day.
"Then the cyberneticists in both countries go back to their vacuum
tubes to work on another Emsiac, and the nuclear physicists go back to
their piles to build more atom bombs, and when they're ready they have
another Mushroom Day. One Mushroom Day every few years, whenever the
diplomatic-strategic situation calls for it, and nobody even fires a
B-B gun. Scientific war. Isn't it wonderful?"
* * * * *
By the time Len finished this peculiar speech, I'd finally managed to
get him out of the tavern and back into his car. I started to drive him
back to the Institute, my ears still vibrating with the hysterical
yelps of Armstrong's trumpet. I'll never for the life of me understand
what Len sees in that kind of music. It seems to me such an unhealthy
sort of expression.
"Lundy's being plain silly," I couldn't help saying. "What guarantee
has he got that on your Mushroom Day, Country B wouldn't make a great
display of destroying one Emsiac and one set of bombs while it had
others in hiding? It's too great a chance for A to take--she might be
throwing away all her defenses and laying herself wide open to attack."
"See what I mean?" Len muttered. "You're a Boy Scout." Then he passed
out, without saying a word about Marilyn. Hard to tell if he sees
anything of her these days. He _does_ see some pretty peculiar people,
though. I'd like to know more about this Steve Lundy.
* * * * *
_November 2, 1959_
I've done it! Today I split up the lab into two entirely independent
operations, K and N. Did it all on my own authority, haven't breathed a
word about it to the boss yet. Here's my line of reasoning.
On the K end, we can get results, and fast: if it's just a matter
of building a pro that works like the real leg, regardless of what
_makes_ it work, it's a cinch. But if it has to be worked by the
brain, through the spinal cord, the job is just about impossible. Who
knows if we'll ever learn enough about neuro tissue to build our own
physico-chemico-electrical substitutes for it?
As I proved in my robot moths and bedbugs, I can work up electronic
circuits that seem to duplicate one particular function of animal
nerve tissue--one robot is attracted to light like a moth, the other
is repelled by light like a bedbug--but I don't know how to go about
duplicating the tissue itself in all its functions. And until we can
duplicate nerve tissue, there's no way to provide our artificial limbs
with a neuro-motor system that can be hooked up with the central
nervous system. The best I can do along those lines is ask Kujack to
kick and get a wriggle of the big toe instead.
So the perspective is clear. Mechanically, kinesthetically,
motorically, I can manufacture a hell of a fine leg. Neurally, it would
take decades, centuries maybe, to get even a reasonable facsimile of
the original--and maybe it will never happen. It's not a project I'd
care to devote my life to. If Len Ellsom had been working on that sort
of thing, he wouldn't have gotten his picture in the paper so often,
you can be sure.
So, in line with this perspective, I've divided the whole operation
into two separate labs, K-Pro and N-Pro. I'm taking charge of K-Pro
myself, since it intrigues me more and I've got these ideas about
using solenoids to get lifelike movements. With any kind of luck I'll
soon have a peach of a mechanical limb, motor-driven and with its own
built-in power plant, operated by push-button. Before Christmas, I hope.
Got just the right man to take over the neuro lab--Goldweiser, my
assistant. I weighed the thing from every angle before I made up my
mind, since his being Jewish makes the situation very touchy: some
people will be snide enough to say I picked him to be a potential
scapegoat. Well, Goldweiser, no matter what his origins may be, is the
best neuro man I know.
Of course, personally--although my personal feelings don't enter into
the picture at all--I _am_ just a bit leery of the fellow. Have been
ever since that first log-cutting expedition, when he began to talk in
such a peculiar way about needing to relax and then laughed so hard
at Len's jokes. That sort of talk always indicates to me a lack of
reverence for your job: if a thing's worth doing at all, etc.
Of course, I don't mean that Goldweiser's cynical attitude has anything
to do with his being Jewish; Len's got the same attitude and he's
_not_ Jewish. Still, this afternoon, when I told Goldweiser he's going
to head up the N-Pro lab, he sort of bowed and said, "That's quite a
promotion. I always did want to be God."
I didn't like that remark at all. If I'd had another neuro man as good
as he is, I'd have withdrawn the promotion immediately. It's his luck
that I'm tolerant, that's all.
* * * * *
_November 6, 1959_
Lunch with Len today, at my invitation. Bought him several Martinis,
then brought up Lundy's name and asked who he was, he sounded
interesting.
"Steve?" Len said. "I roomed with him my first year in New York."