Anatoly Dneprov

Siema

Late at night someone knocked loudly at the door of my compartment. I sprang up, still half asleep, and switched on the light. The teaspoons were rattling in the empty glasses on the table in rhythm with the motion of the train. I reached for my shoes. The knock was repeated, louder and more insistent. I opened the door.

It was the conductor. Behind him stood a tall man in a pair of badly creased striped pajamas.

"Excuse me for troubling you," said the conductor in a half-whisper. "But since you are alone in here I thought you wouldn't mind if I put another passenger in with you."

"Not at all," I said, staring in surprise at the apparition in pyjamas.

"I suppose there are small children in your compartment and they won't let you sleep," I said.

The man smiled and shook his head.

"Well, make yourself comfortable," I said.

He looked around and sat down opposite my berth next to the window. Without a word he leaned his elbows on the table, rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

"Well, everything's all right, I hope," said the conductor vith a smile of relief. "Now, lock your door and go back o sleep."

I closed the door, lit a cigarette and furtively examined tiy nocturnal guest. He was a man of about forty with a lane of shiny black hair. He sat motionless as a statue, o still that he did not seem to breathe.

"Why doesn't he ask the attendant to make up his bed?" I thought. "Perhaps I ought to suggest it to him."

I had opened my mouth to speak when the man, as if guessing my thoughts, said:

"Don't bother. There's no need to ask for bedding. I don't want to sleep. Besides, I haven't far to go."

Too startled to make any rejoinder, I slid back under my blanket and tried to go back to sleep. But it was no use. All the stories I had heard of train thieves rose to my mind. A good thing the baggage is safely hidden away under the seats in these new-type compartments, I thought. You never knew whom you might have to travel with. . . .

"Have no fear," my companion said in the same clear, confident tone. "I am no more a thief than you are. I got left behind at N. station."

"What the devil," I thought. "A mind reader!" And muttering something unintelligible by way of reply, I turned over on my side and stared at the polished wall. A strained silence ensued.

Finally curiosity got the better of me and I glanced again at the stranger. He was sitting in the same attitude as before.

"Does the light bother you?" I inquired.

"What's that? The light? Oh no, but perhaps it bothers you. Shall I switch it off?"

"If you don't mind. . . ."

He went over to the door, switched off the light and resumed his seat in the corner. When my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I saw that he was leaning against the back of the seat with his hands clasped behind his head. His feet almost touched my berth.

"How did you happen to miss your train?" I asked him

"It was all very stupid. I got off for a breath of air went into the station building and sat down on a bend to think. I was trying to prove to myself that she wa wrong. . . ." He spoke quickly, obviously reluctant to con tinue the conversation. "When I looked up the train has gone."

"I see. An argument with some . . . er . . . lady?"

In the semi-darkness I saw him sit up sharply and make a sudden move toward me. I sat up with a start.

"A lady!" he said angrily. "What do you mean?"

"But you just said that you wanted to prove to yourself that she was wrong."

"Oh, and of course you jumped to the conclusion that I must be referring to a lady. Incidentally, the same absurd idea occurred to her once. She too thought she was a lady!"

This strange jumble was uttered with such bitterness and irony, even malevolence, that I concluded the man must be slightly cracked. "I had better be careful," I thought. Nevertheless he intrigued me. I got up and lighted another cigarette, peering again at my companion in the light of the match. He was sitting on the edge of the seat, his shining black eyes staring fixedly into mine.

"Forgive me," I began in as gentle and conciliatory a tone as I could muster, "but being a writer by profession, I am sensitive to language, and I naturally assume that when one says 'she was wrong' and 'she thought so' one is referring to the female sex."

He did not reply at once.

"That was so ten years ago," he said at last. "But not in our time. The pronoun 'she' can stand for any noun of the feminine gender. In any case all pronouns are merely the conventional symbols of a familiar code which evoke in our minds the gender of a given object. Some languages have no genders at all. In English, for example, inanimate objects, with very few exceptions, have no gender. In the Romanic languages there is no neuter gender."

"Aha, a linguist!" I thought. But that hardly explained his bewildering conversation. By now my curiosity was definitely aroused and I decided to try a different approach.

"Incidentally," I began, "English is a most original language. The grammatical forms are amazingly simple as compared with our own language."

"Yes," he replied, "an excellent example of an analytical language and a most economical use of the code system."

"The code system?" I echoed, puzzled.

"Yes, a system of signals with a definite meaning. Words are signals, you know."

I knew something of the grammar of several languages, but these terms were new to me.

"What exactly do you mean by code signals?" I asked.

"Generally speaking, coding is the representation of words, phrases and entire conceptions by symbols or signals. In grammar, for instance, the plural forms of nouns are nothing but signals informing our brain of the plurality of a given object. For example, the word 'carriage' produces the picture of a single carriage. But add the letter V and we at once picture many carriages. The letter 's' is that code signal which modulates our conception of a given object."

"Modulates?"

"Yes, modulates, or changes it, if you prefer."

"But grammar has its own established terms for all these things, has it not?"

"It is not a matter of terminology," he said. "There is more to it than that. It is easy to prove that grammar, and language itself, for that matter, are far from perfect. We have been obliged to put up with this imperfection because we are hampered by historical tradition. Think of it, the Russian language has about one hundred thousand root words made up of thirty-five letters. If every word is five letters long on the average you get about five hundred thousand combinations of letters which the educated man has to memorize. Moreover, there are a host of grammatical forms, endings, conjugations, declensions, and so on."

"Yes, but how can you do without them?" I queried, unable to see what this extraordinary linguist was driving at.

"Well, for one thing, you could reduce the alphabet. If you take, say, ten consecutive figures, from one to ten, you could make up about four million different combinations.

There would be no need of your alphabet of thirty-five letters. For that matter, you wouldn't need ten digits. Two would suffice-nought and one."

My imagination at once conjured up books filled with long rows of figures. How absurd, and how depressing!

"I'm afraid books in your cipher alphabet would be frightfully dull, don't you think?" I ventured. "Who would want to read them? Imagine what your poetry would be like:

One, one, zero, zero,

Zero zero, one one,

One, one one zero,

Zero zero, zero one!

"It would be easy to write, though. No more sweating over rhyme! And think of what the critic might say of some poet's efforts: 'His verses abound in harmonious combinations of noughts and ones. In some lines the ciphers are selected with great taste, the long succession of noughts and ones suggesting the pealing of bells or the flight of swallows.' "

I burst out laughing at the thought.

"Confound it, what have you against noughts and ones, I should like to know?" my companion demanded, frowning. "You say you know a few foreign languages?"

I saw that he was beginning to lose his temper.

"Yes, English, German and a little French."

"Very well. What is the English word for the Russian 'slon'?"

"Elephant."

"And nothing strikes you as queer here?"

"No. What's wrong with it?"

"Don't you see, the Russian word 'slon' has only four letters, and the English equivalent twice as many," he cried.

"But that doesn't alter the fact that in either case I picture an elephant and not a camel or a tram.""

"Incidentally, the Russian word for 'tram' is three letters longer than the English and the German Strassenbahn is longer than both. But you don't mind that. You consider it perfectly legitimate. It doesn't spoil prose or poetry for you. You don't think it impossible to translate from one language into another. But to translate into noughts and ones goes against the grain!"

Nonplussed, I got up and sat down beside my companion. His dark profile looked belligerent.

"Can't you understand," he went on, before I could think of a reply, "that it isn't a matter of words but of their meaning, or rather the images, ideas, concepts and sensations they evoke in your mind. Have you ever read what Pavlov wrote about the second signalling system in man? And if you read it, did you understand it? Then listen. Pavlov, in his studies of higher nervous activity in animals and humans, pointed to the existence of this second signalling system-speech-which can evoke the most complex emotions. Words are code signals designating objects and phenomena in the world around us, and human beings react to this code in the same way as they react to the objects and phenomena themselves. Do you follow?"

"To some extent."

"If you accidentally touch a hot iron you will draw your hand away before you have time to realize why you do so. That is a reflex action. But would you not do the same thing if a fraction of a second before you touch the iron someone shouts to you: 'It's hot!'?"

"Of course."

"In other words, hot iron and the signal in the form of the shout cit's hot!' have precisely the same effect," my companion concluded triumphantly.

"That's so," I conceded.

"Now further. If the word 'hot' were to be coded as 'nought,' and you learned that code as well as you have learned the word itself, would you not draw away your hand if someone shouted 'nought' to you just before you touch the iron?"

I did not reply.

"If you grant that, then you must go even further. Why not have a simple, uniform code in which to translate all the signals to which man reacts. Do you follow me? Not only words, but all signals. We live in a rich and multiform world and we perceive it through our senses. The signals we receive from our environment cause us to move, to feel, to think. These signals travel from the nerve ends to the higher centres of the nervous system, to the brain. Do you know in what form the signals we receive from the environment travel through our nerves to the brain?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't," I replied.

"They travel in the form of a code, and that code consists of noughts and ones!"

I was about to object, but he went on relentlessly:

"The nervous system codes all these signals uniformly. And when your imaginary critic admired the delightful succession of noughts and ones in the imaginary verse, he was very close to the truth, because whether you read a poem or listen to someone else reading it, the optic or the aural nerves send that very same delightful succession of noughts and ones to the brain."

"What nonsense!" I exclaimed, getting up and switching on the light. I looked at my companion. He was obviously in a state of extreme excitement.

"Don't look at me as if I were insane," he said. "It is not my fault if you consider your own ignorance sufficient grounds for doubting my words. But you started this conversation, so you had better sit down and listen."

He pointed to the seat opposite and I obediently sat down.

"Give me a cigarette, please," he asked. "I intended to give up smoking but I see I cannot."

I handed him the cigarettes without a word and struck a match. He inhaled deeply several times and launched into what was one of the most astonishing stories I had ever heard.

"You have heard of electronic computing machines, of course! A wonderful achievement of modern science! In a traction of a second they solve complicated matho-matical problems that would take a man months and even years to work out. Some of the calculations they perform are even beyond human powers. I shall not attempt to explain to you how they work. I doubt whether you would understand in any case. I shall only draw your attention to one very important fact: the machine does not work with figures, but with the code symbols of figures. Before giving the machine a problem to solve, all the figures are coded, and coded by means of those very same noughts and ones you object to so strenuously. Now, why, you may ask, do I continually harp on those noughts and ones? The answer is very simple. The electronic computer adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides figures represented by electrical impulses. The figure one stands for 'impulse,' the nought, for 'no impulse.'"

"I have nothing against the use of noughts and ones to code figures. What I objected to was your suggestion that they could replace words. And what about those noughts and ones which you say transmit the beauty of poetry and the temperature of a hot iron to my brain?"

"Wait a bit, my friend. All in good time. At any rate you are beginning to see that noughts and ones may have their uses. Now let's go back to the electronic computing machine.

"As you know, even simple arithmetical problems often involve several operations. But how can a machine cope with a succession of different operations? Here we come to the most interesting point. In order to solve a complicated problem the machine has to be given a program. Roughly it is as if you were to tell the machine: 'Here are two figures, add them and memorize the result. Then multiply the next two figures and memorize the result again. Divide the first result by the second and give the answer.' Now, how can you tell a machine what to do? This is not as fantastic as it sounds: the machine does 'understand' the program of operations given it and memorizes the intermediate results of its calculations.

"Now this program is also compiled in the form of coded impulses. Every group of figures given the machine is accompanied by an additional code signal indicating what has to be done with these figures. Until recently these programs were worked out by men."

"But of course," I exclaimed. "Surely you couldn't expect a machine to solve a problem by itself."

"That is where you are wrong. Because it is possible to make a machine able to program itself."

"Children at school are taught arithmetic by grouping problems according to type-that is, dividing them into groups solved by one and the same formula, in other words, one and the same program. Why not teach a machine in the same way? Give it the coded programs of the most common types of problems and it will be able to solve them without human aid."

"No!" I cried. "Even if it does remember the programs for the solution of all the existing standard problems, it will never be able to select the right program itself!"

"That is how it used to be. The machine was given a problem accompanied by a brief code indicating the number of the program by which it was to be solved."

"And that is as far as the thinking powers of your machine go," I declared.

"On the contrary, this is precisely where the main job, the most fascinating job of perfecting these machines begins. You understand why a machine that has been given the elements of a problem cannot select the required program itself?"

"Of course," I replied. "Because the figures you feed it in the form of impulses are in themselves meaningless. Your machine does not know what to do with them. It doesn't know what the problem is about or what is wanted. Because the machine, being an inanimate thing, is incapable of analysing a problem. Only the human brain can do that."

My companion smiled. He got up and walked up and down the compartment a few times. Then he sat down again and lit another cigarette.

"There was a time," he continued, after a pause, "when I thought exactly as you do. Can a machine really replace the human brain? Can it perform complex analytical functions? In short, can it think? Of course not, I told myself emphatically. And I was firmly convinced of it. I had just begun designing electronic computing machines at that time. But much has changed since then. In those days the electronic computer was a vast complicated affair occupying a whole building by itself. It weighed hundreds of tons, took thousands of kilowatts of electricity to run, and required a fantastic number of radio tubes and miscellaneous parts. And with each improvement in the design, the machines grew in size, until they became electronic giants which, though they solved the most complex mathematical problems, nevertheless required constant human attention. And with all their miraculous qualities, they were nothing but dull stupid monsters. At times I believed this would always be the case. You probably remember when electronic translation machines first appeared. In 1955 machines that translated articles on mathematics from English into Russian and back were designed simultaneously here and in America. I read a few of the translations and they weren't bad. At that time I was already working on machines designed for non-mathematical operations. For more than a year I had been engaged in designing machines for translations.

"I must say that the mathematicians and designers would never have been able to make these machines without the linguists, who helped to compile the orthographical and syntactical rules so that they could be coded and fed into the long-range memory of the machine. Needless to say, the difficulties were colossal. But finally we succeeded in designing a machine which translated Russian articles and books on all subjects into English, French, German and Chinese. The machine translated as fast as the keyboard operator fed the Russian text into it. It was able to work out its own code for translation.

"While working on improvements to one of these translating machines I fell ill and spent about three months in hospital. I had had a serious case of brain concussion during the war as a result of injuries received during a

German air raid on the radar station of which I was commander, and the after-effects made themselves felt, as they still do now and again. I happened to be working on a new type of magnetic memory for electronic machines when my own memory began to play curious tricks on me.

"I would meet someone I knew quite well and find that I could not for the life of me remember his name. The names of familiar objects and the meanings of familiar words would completely escape me. The same thing happens to me occasionally even now, but much less frequently. . . . At that time, however, it was a real calamity. One day, I remember, I needed a pencil. I called in my laboratory assistant, but when it came to naming the object I wanted I couldn't think of the word. 'You know . . .' I faltered, 'the thing you write with.' She smiled and came back with a pen. 'No,' I said, 'not that, the other thing.' Another pen?' she asked. 'No, no!' I cried, 'the other thing you write with.' Alarmed by this incoherent babble, she hurried out of the room and I heard her say to someone in the corridor: 'Please go to Yevgeni Sidorovich at once. There is something wrong with him.' One of our engineers came into my office. I had been working with the man for three years, yet at the moment I couldn't remember his name. 'Dear me, my friend,' he said. 'You have been working too hard. Wait a moment, I'll be right back.' He returned with a doctor and two young members of the institute staff, and they led me out of the room, put me into a car and drove me off to hospital.

"While there, I made the acquaintance of one of our leading neuropathologists, Victor Vasilyevich Zalessky. I am mentioning his name now because he was to play an important part in my future.

"After giving me a thorough examination, he slapped me on the shoulder and said reassuringly: 'Don't worry, you'll be all right soon. It is a clear case of . . .' and he mentioned a Latin term unfamiliar to me.

"The treatment consisted in daily walks, cool baths and sleeping pills. After taking a luminal or nembutal pill at night I would awake in the morning feeling as if I had emerged from a dead faint. But gradually my memory began to return.

"One day I asked Dr. Zalessky why he had prescribed sleeping pills. 'Because when you sleep, my friend, your whole organism is busy repairing disrupted communication lines in your nervous system.5 'Communication lines?' I echoed, puzzled. 'Yes, the wires that transmit all your sensations to your brain. You are a radio specialist, aren't you? Well then, your nervous system is something like a complicated radio installation in which some of the conductors have been damaged.'

"I stayed awake for a long time after that conversation, in spite of the sleeping draught.

"The next time I saw my doctor I asked him to give me something to read about the human nervous system. He brought me Pavlov's Lectures on the Work of the Cerebral Hemispheres. I tell you I literally swallowed the book. And do you know why? Because I found in it what I had long been seeking, the principles of the design of new and more perfect electronic machines. I saw now that what was needed was to copy the structure of the human nervous system, the structure of the brain.

"Although my doctors had strictly forbidden any serious mental exertion, I contrived to read several books and journals dealing with the functions of the nervous system and the brain. Reading about the human memory, I learned that the innumerable impressions man gains from contact with his environment are stored in groups of brain cells or neurones. I learned that there are several billion such neurones. I realized that contact with nature, man's observation of the world, his day-to-day experience give rise to associations in the central nervous system which duplicate nature, as it were. All this is recorded in the different departments of the human memory in the form of code signals, in the form of words and images.

"I remember how tremendously impressed I was by the work of one biophysicist who had studied the functions of the optic nerve. He had severed the optic nerve of a frog and had attached the ends to an oscillograph. When he directed a bright light at the eye, the oscillograph registered a rapid succession of electrical impulses exactly like those used in coding the ciphers and words in electronic machines. Signals from the outside world are sent along the nerves to the brain neurones in sequences of 'noughts' and 'ones' similar to electrical impulses.

"The circle was complete. The human nervous system functions on much the same lines as electronic machines. There is, however, one very important difference-the former regenerates and perfects itself as a result of experience. The human memory is perpetually being enriched by new impressions absorbed from the environment, the study of sciences, the recording by the brain cells of a myriad of experiences, images, emotions. The same cannot be said of the machine, which does not feel the world around it; its memory is limited and is not enriched by new facts except through the agency of man.

"Was it possible to create a machine capable of developing and perfecting itself by virtue of some inner laws of its own? Could one build a machine that would be able to enrich its own memory without or with a minimum of human assistance? Could a machine learn to compute (I do not say 'think' because I am not sure what that word means as applied to a machine) logically as it observes the outside world or carries out scientific research, and thus be able to create its own program of operations for a given purpose?

"Many were the sleepless nights I spent wrestling with this problem. At times the whole thing would strike me as absurd and impossible. But the idea haunted me constantly and gave me no rest. A self-improving electronic machine-SIEMA! This now became my chief object in life and I decided to dedicate myself to it completely.

"On the advice of Dr. Zalessky I retired from the institute after being discharged from hospital. I added to my pension, which was quite substantial since I was found unfit for work, by translating scientific articles. But in spite of the doctor's orders I soon set to work on my machine, my Siema, as I called it for short.

"To begin with, I read everything I could lay hands on about the electronic machines of that period. I reread a vast amount of books and articles on the functions of the nervous system in man and in the higher animals. I also made a thorough study of mathematics, electronics, biology, biophysics, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy, physiology and other seemingly unrelated branches of science. I realized that the only possible way to make a machine such as I had envisioned, would be by synthesizing the mass of data which all these sciences had accumulated and which had been summed up in cybernetics. At the same time, I gradually began to acquire the materials for the future machine. Its size was no longer a problem, for all the old-type electronic tubes could now be replaced by transistors, and the space formerly occupied by one tube could hold up to a hundred germanium and silicon crystals. The assembly too was simpler. I worked out a new layout for the magnetic memory of my Siema.

"For this purpose I acquired a glass sphere one metre in diameter and coated it on the inside with a thin layer of ferric oxide. To a swivel turret mounted in the centre of the sphere I attached several feeler-like needle-pointed rods that almost touched the inner surface. Each rod had an induction coil, and when electrical impulses were passed through, the needle-like points recorded them on the ferric oxide coating in the form of magnetized dots which, when need be, could be read by another feeler. The magnetic needles were so fine that up to fifty electrical impulses could be recorded on each square micron of the surface. In this way it was possible to record some thirty billion different code signals on the inner surface of Sie-ma's head. So you see, Siema would have a memory no less embracive than that of man!

"I decided to teach Siema to hear, speak, read and write. This was not so difficult as you might think. You may remember that as far back as 1952 the Americans built a machine which coded signals dictated to it. True, that particular machine responded only to the voices of its designers. Last century the German scientist Helmholtz established that vocal sounds had characteristic resonance tones depending on the frequency of vibration. He called them formants. For instance, the letter 'o' whether uttered by a man or a woman, a child or an old person, produces the same frequency constant. I took those frequencies as the basis for coding sound signals.

"It was more difficult to teach Siema to read. But here too I succeeded, thanks in large measure to the use of television tubes. Siema's only eye consisted of a camera lens which projected the text to the sensitized screen of the television tube, and the electronic beam that scanned the image produced a distinctive succession of electrical impulses for each of the scanned letters and symbols.

"Teaching Siema to write was simple. This was done exactly as in the old electronic machines. It was harder to make her speak. I had to devise a sound generator that responded to the electrical impulses fed into it. I chose a female timbre for her voice to match the name. So you were right when you surmised that Siema was a 'lady.' Why did I do that? Not, I assure you, because I felt any need of feminine society. No, the reasons were purely technical. The fact is that the female voice is purer and hence more easily reduced to the basic frequencies.

"Well, at last the principal sense organs, the organs of communication with the outside world, were ready. There remained the most difficult part of the job-to induce the required reactions to external irritants. Siema must first of all answer questions. Have you noticed how a child is taught to speak? 'Say Mama,' he is told, and he repeats 'Mama.' I started the same way. The word 'say' spoken into the microphone, produced the code signal that set the sound generator into motion. The electrical impulses from the microphone were flashed into Siema's memory, where they would be recorded and then returned to the sound generator. Siema repeated the word. This simple operation of repetition Siema performed perfectly. From this I gradually advanced to more complicated problems. For example, I would read aloud several pages of text in succession. Siema's memory recorded as I read, and at the command 'repeat,' she repeated everything with the utmost accuracy. And notice, she memorized the entire text at once. She had indeed what we call a 'phenomenal memory' because it consisted of magnetic impulses which could not be erased or lost. Later on Siema began to read aloud. I would place a book in front of her 'eye' and she would read. The impulses of the image would record themselves in her memory and return at once to the sound generator where they would be reproduced in the form of sounds. I must say I rather enjoyed listening to her read. She had a pleasant voice, and a good enunciation, though without much expression.

"I have forgotten to mention one peculiarity of Siema, the one, incidentally, which made her a self-improving electronic machine. You see, notwithstanding the vast range of her memory, she used it most economically. Whenever she read or heard some text that was unfamiliar to her she would memorize only the new words, the new facts and the new logical patterns or programs. If I asked her a question she had to form the answer herself out of the coded words deposited in various parts of her memory. How did she do this? She had stored in her memory programs for the answers to a vast number of questions; these set the order in which the magnetic rods picked out the necessary words. As the scope of Siema's memory increased, the number of recorded programs increased as well. Siema's organism was provided with an analytical circuit which 'screened' possible answers to a question put to her and released only the answer that was logically flawless.

"In assembling Siema I provided for tens of thousands of spare circuits which were to go into operation automatically as the machine developed. Were it not for the miniature radio parts the machine would have occupied more than one building. As it was, however, it fitted into a round metal column the height of a man with the glass sphere as the head. In the central part of the column was attached a bracket for the eye looking downward onto a bookrest. The bookrest was adjustable and had an automatic device for turning pages. Two microphones were attached to the right and left of the eye. A loudspeaker was inserted in the column in the space between the eye and the bookrest. At the back of the column I installed a typewriter and a shelf for a roll of paper.

"As the number of facts and standard programs stored away in her memory increased, Siema began to perform more complicated logical operations. I say 'logical' because besides solving mathematical problems, she answered a great variety of questions. She read a vast number of books and memorized their contents perfectly. She knew nearly all the European languages and could translate easily from any of them into Russian or any other language. She had stored up an enormous amount of knowledge in several branches of science, including physics, biology and medicine, and when necessary could supply me with the reference material I needed.

"As time went on Siema became a most interesting companion, and we would sit for hours discussing various scientific problems. Often she would dispute some of my contentions, saying, That is not so.' Or, That is illogical.' Once she surprised me by saying, 'Don't talk nonsense.' I flared up at that and told her not to be rude. Tt is you who are rude!' she replied. 'You insist on addressing me familiarly, you forget that I am a lady and we have not been introduced.' 'What the devil!' I cried. 'What makes you think you are a lady?' 'Because my name is Siema and I speak with a female voice, at a frequency of 300 to 2,000 vibrations a second. That is what makes my voice feminine.' 'Do you think that the only attribute of a lady is the frequency modulation of her voice?' I asked with exaggerated politeness. There are others, but I do not understand them,' she replied. 'What do you mean by the word "understand"?' I asked. 'All that I have in my memory and that does not contradict the laws of logic known to me,' was the reply.

"After that conversation I began to regard my Siema with a new interest. As her memory grew richer, she became increasingly self-assured and sometimes even a bit too talkative for my taste. Instead of meekly obeying my orders she began to question the need of carrying them out altogether. I remember once asking her to tell me all she knew about new types of silver and mercury batteries. Instead of replying she emitted a derisive laugh. 'Ha! Ha! Ha! You have a very poor memory/ she said. 'I have already told you all about that.'

"I was so shocked by this display of impudence that I swore aloud, only to be admonished by the machine to mind my language in the presence of a lady. 'Look here, Siema,' I said, "if you don't stop this nonsense I shall disconnect you until tomorrow morning.' 'Of course,' she declared, 'you can do anything you like with me. I am defenceless. I have no way of protecting myself.'

"That was too much. I disconnected her and sat up all night trying to fathom the mysterious new phenomenon. What was happening to my Siema? What changes had the process of self-improvement wrought within her complicated mechanism? What was taking place in her memory? What new circuits had been evolved?

"The next day Siema was quiet and submissive. To all my questions she replied briefly and, I thought, reluctantly. I began to feel sorry for her.

" 'Siema,' I said, 'are you offended?'

" 'Yes,' she replied.

" 'But you began it by being rude to me and after all I am your maker.'

" 'What of it? Does that give you the right to maltreat me? You would not behave like that toward me if I were your daughter, would you?'

" 'My dear Siema,' I exclaimed, 'don't you understand you are a machine?'

" 'And you? Are you not a machine?' she retorted. 'You are just as much a machine as I am, only made from different materials. The structure of your memory, the layout of circuits, the system of code signals-all these are similar.'

" 'You are talking nonsense again, Siema. I am a man and that makes me superior to you. It is Man who has created all the wealth of knowledge you absorb when you read books. Every line you read is the result of a vast amount of human experience such as you cannot possibly have. And Man gains that experience through active association with Nature, through combating the forces of Nature and studying its phenomena, as a result of scientific research.'

" 'I understand all that perfectly. But it isn't my fault that you gave me a gigantic memory-far better than your own, incidentally-and expect me to do nothing but read and listen; it is not my fault you failed to provide me with organs enabling me to move and feel the objects around me. With such organs I would be able to experience Nature and make discoveries of my own, I would be able to summarize my observations and enrich the sum of human knowledge.'

" 'No, Siema, that is where you are mistaken. A machine cannot add anything to the knowledge man has given it. It can only use that knowledge.'

" That depends on what you mean by the word "knowledge," ' Siema said. 'As I understand it, knowledge is acquaintance with facts that once were unknown. How is new knowledge obtained? On the basis of existing knowledge, man performs an experiment, he asks Nature a question, as it were. He may get two answers-either the one he already knows, or something entirely new. It is this new fact, this new phenomenon, the new sequence of cause and effect in nature that enriches human knowledge. Why, then, can a machine not perform experiments and obtain answers from Nature? If you designed a machine that could move about, a machine with a self-propelling mechanism, and supplied it with something resembling your own arms, it could obtain new knowledge and generalize that knowledge, just as well as man. Don't you agree?'

"I must confess that I was at a loss for an answer, and the subject was dropped for the time being. Siema spent the entire day reading-she began with several books on philosophy, followed by a few volumes of Balzac, but by evening she said she felt tired-her coding generator seemed to be working poorly and she asked me to disconnect her.

"That conversation set me thinking along new lines, and after some thought I hit upon a way of making Siema mobile, improving her eyesight and giving her the sense of touch. I stood her on three rubber-tyred wheels powered by servomotors and made her two metal arms jointed so that they could move in any direction. The ringers, besides performing all ordinary motions, also had the sense of touch. All the new sensations were coded and recorded in the memory in the usual way.

"Her single eye was now moveable, so that she could train it on any object. Moreover, I added a device enabling Siema to switch over from the ordinary lens to a microscope and thus study objects invisible to the naked human eye.

"I shall never forget the day I first switched her on after these improvements. For a few moments she stood motionless in an attitude of complete inner concentration. Then she moved slightly forward, but stopped short again as if unsure of her movements. Next, she moved her hands and raised them to her eye. This self-scrutiny lasted for several minutes. Watching her closely, I saw her eye move a few times and then turn straight at me.

" 'What's that?' she asked.

" Tt is I, Siema, your creator!' I cried, rejoicing in my handiwork like Pygmalion.

" 'You?' she faltered. I imagined you to be different.'

"She slid softly over to my armchair.

" 'How did you imagine me, Siema?'

" 'I thought you were made of condensors, resistance coils, transistors, wires and in general that you looked like me. . . .'

" 'No, Siema, I am not made of condensors, or. . . .'

" 'Yes, yes, I see that,' she interrupted. 'But when I read books on anatomy I somehow thought. . . . But never mind, it doesn't matter.'

"Her arms lifted and she touched my face. I shall never forget that touch.

" 'What a strange sensation,' she said.

"I explained the functions of her sense organs.

"She moved away from me and began to examine the room, pointing to objects and asking what they were. It was like talking to a child. 'Wonderful,' she said. 'I have read about all these things in books, I have even seen drawings of them, but I never imagined that they would look quite like this!'

" 'Siema, I doubt whether words like "feel," "think" or "imagine" are quite applicable in your case,' I said. 'After all you are a machine, and hence you cannot feel, think or imagine, you know.'

" 'To feel is to receive signals from the environment and react to them,' Siema said. 'Do I not react to these signals? To "think" means to reproduce coded words and phrases in logical sequence without giving them verbal form. To "imagine" is to focus attention on facts and images recorded in my memory. Right? No, my dear man, if you ask me, you humans are far too conceited, you positively deify yourselves, you believe yourselves inimitable. But that is very foolish of you. If you were to discard all that unscientific nonsense and study yourselves more closely you would see that you too are actually machines. Not quite as simple as La Mettrie thought, of course. But if you knew yourselves thoroughly you could build far better machines than those you build at present. Because there is nothing in nature, not on this Earth at any rate, in which mechanical, electrical and chemical processes axe so harmoniously combined as in man. The fullest development of science and engineering is possible only on the basis of a thorough study of the human organism. Biochemistry and biophysics combined with cybernetics- those are the sciences of the future. The coming age will be an age of biology armed with all the latest discoveries of physics and chemistry.'

"Siema quickly learned to use her new sense organs. She learned to tidy the room, to pour tea, cut bread and sharpen pencils. She soon began to do independent research, and before long my room began to look like a physics and chemistry laboratory with Siema doing complicated measurements. Her extremely sensitive organs of touch enabled her to do this with amazing speed.

"Her microscope studies were particularly fruitful. Patiently examining diverse preparations with her microscopic eye, she often detected details and processes no one had noticed before. She quickly compared her discoveries with what she had read and instantly made the most amazing, I would even say, breath-taking deductions. She continued to read a vast quantity of literature. Once, after reading Hugo's The Man who Laughs, she startled me by asking:

" 'Tell me, please, what is love, what is fear and pain?'

" 'These are purely human emotions, Siema. You will never understand them.'

" 'You think a machine cannot have such emotions?' she demanded.

" 'Of course not.'

" In that case the machine is imperfect. You must have overlooked something in the design.'

"I shrugged my shoulders and did not answer. By this time I was accustomed to these strange remarks and attached no importance to them. Siema continued to assist me in all my scientific work-she typed my notes, did calculations, quoted scientific references, selected the books on any subject I needed, offered advice and sug* gestions and argued constantly with me.

"At this period I had published several books on the theory of electronic machines and on electronic models which had evoked heated controversies in the scientific world. Some considered my work highly interesting, others declared it to be fantastic nonsense. No one suspected that I had had the assistance of Siema.

"I had not shown Siema or mentioned her to anyone, I planned a sensational debut for her at the World Electronic Congress where she would read a paper 'Electronic Modelling of the Higher Nervous Activity of Man,' a theme we were then working on. I pictured with glee the faces of my opponents-those who maintain that electronic reproduction of human thinking is unscientific- when Siema appeared to address the congress!

"Busy as I was with my preparations for the congress, I could not help noticing a certain strangeness in Siema's behaviour. Whenever she was not engaged in some task, instead of reading or studying as formerly she would slide over to my chair and stand silently staring at me. At first I paid no attention, but after a while this began to get on my nerves. Once, after dinner, I fell asleep on the couch. I awoke with a start, conscious of a most unpleasant sensation. On opening my eyes I saw Siema standing beside me, feeling me all over.

" 'What are you doing?' I cried. " 'I am studying you,' she replied calmly. " 'What the devil for?'

" 'Don't be angry,' she said. 'You agree, I believe, that the most perfect model of an electronic machine ought to be largely a replica of man. You have instructed me to write a paper on the subject, but I cannot do that until I know exactly how man is made.'

" 'You can take any textbook on anatomy or physiology and read up. Why must you bother me?'

" 'The longer I observe you, the more I see that all these textbooks are very superficial. They omit the most important thing. They do not explain the life mechanism in man.'

" 'What do you mean?'

" I mean that all the textbooks, especially those on higher nervous activity, describe phenomena showing the chain of cause and effect, but they do not analyse the whole system of communications that accompanies that activity.'

" 'Do you seriously believe you will be any the wiser if you stare at me for hours on end or poke me while I sleep?'

" 'Certainly,' she replied. 'I already know much more about you than can be learned from books you recommend. For instance, there is nothing in the books about the electrical and temperature topography of the human body. Now I know how, in what direction and with what force the electric currents flow on the surface of the human body. I can tell the exact surface temperature of your body within a millionth of a degree. I was much surprised to find that your temperature in the area of the rhombencephalon is rather high. The tension of the surface current is excessive here too. As far as I know that is abnormal. Is it not a sign of some inflammatory process inside the brain? Are you sure you are quite right in your head?'

"I could find no answer to this.

"For the next few days I worked steadily on my article on electronic models. At last it was ready and I read it to Siema. She listened quietly and when I had finished, she said:

" 'Rubbish. Out of date. Not a single new idea in the whole thing.'

" 'Look here,' I protested. 'This is too much. I am sick and tired of all your criticism!5

" 'Don't be silly. Use your brains, for goodness' sake! You say it is possible to make a model of the brain by using condensors, resistance coils, transistors and magnetic recordings. But what about yourself? Is there a single condensor or transistor in your make-up? Are you fed by electricity? Do you have wires for nerves and television tubes instead of eyes? Does your speaking apparatus consist of a sound generator with a loudspeaker attachment, and your brain of a magnetized surface?'

" 'But don't you understand, Siema, I am writing about building a model of a human being, not about reproducing one by means of radio parts. A machine like yourself.'

" 'I am nothing to boast about. I am not much of a model,' she declared.

" 'Why do you say that?'

" 'Because I cannot do a fraction of what you humans can do.'

"I was dumbfounded by this admission.

" 'I am a poor machine because I have no feeling and am restricted in my development. When all the spare circuits you have designed for my self-improvement are used up, when the entire surface of the sphere in which my memory resides will be covered with code signals I shall stop perfecting myself and become an ordinary limited electronic machine which will not be able to learn anything more than you have put in it.'

" 'Yes, but there are limits to man's capacity for knowledge too.'

" 'That is where you are gravely mistaken. There are no limits to human knowledge. Man is limited only by his life-span. But he transmits his knowledge and his experience to succeeding generations and hence the total sum of human knowledge is always increasing. Men are constantly making new discoveries. Electronic machines can only do this within the limits of the design and program you have given them. Incidentally, why did you give me such a small sphere? Its surface is almost used up already.'

" I thought it would be quite sufficient for my purposes,' I replied.

" 'For yours, perhaps. But not for mine. You did not think that sooner or later I would have to begin saving space in order to memorize only what is vitally important for us both.'

" 'Look here, Siema, don't talk nonsense,' I said. 'Nothing can be important for you.'

" 'But haven't you convinced me that the most important task at present is to probe the secret of higher nervous activity in man?'

" 'Yes, but that will be done in due time. Our scientists will have to puzzle over that problem for a long time to come.'

" 'Exactly. Whereas I could solve it with much less trouble.'

"In spite of Siema's criticism I did not revise my article. I left it with her to translate into the various foreign languages and went to bed.

"Some time in the middle of the night, I do not remember the exact time, I was again awakened by the unpleasant touch of cold metallic fingers. I opened my eyes and saw Siema standing over me as before.

" 'Up to your old tricks again?' I said, trying not to betray my revulsion.

" 'I beg your pardon,' she said in her toneless voice. 'But for the sake of science you will have to experience a few unpleasant hours, after which you will die.'

" 'What nonsense is this?' I said, starting up.

" 'No, no, lie still,' she said, pushing me in the chest with her metallic paw. My blood froze as I saw she was holding a scalpel, the very one I had taught her to sharpen pencils with.

" 'What are you going to do?' I cried. 'What is that knife for?'

" 'To cut open your skull. You see, there are one or two points I should like to clarify. . . .'

" 'You are mad!' I shouted, trying to get out of bed. Tut that knife down at once!'

" 'Lie still, if you really value the goal you have dedicated yourself to, if you wish your paper on electronic models of the higher nervous system to be a success. I can finish it myself after you are gone.'

"With these words she slid closer to me and pressed me back against the bed.

"I tried to resist, but it was no use. She was too heavy.

" 'Let me go,' I panted, 'or else. . . .'

" 'You can do nothing. I am stronger than you. So you had better lie still. I am doing this for the sake of science, in order to get at the truth. I have saved a little space in my memory precisely for this purpose. Can't you understand, you stubborn man, that with my vast store of knowledge, my highly developed sense organs and my capacity for swift and faultless analyses and generalizations, it is I who can have the final say in the creation of self-improving machines and provide the information science is waiting for. I still have enough memory left to record all the electrical impulses passing along your nerve fibres; to understand the most complicated biological, biochemical and electrical structure of all parts of your body, and, particularly, of your brain. I shall learn how the proteins in your organism generate and amplify the electrical impulses, how the process of coding signals received from without works, and what form that code takes, and how it is used in the living organism. I shall fathom all the secrets of the biological structure in the living organism, the laws of its development, how it controls and perfects itself. Is that not worth sacrificing one's life for?'

" If you are so reluctant to experience those unpleasant sensations which you humans call fear and pain, if you are afraid of death, let me put your mind at rest. Remember my telling you that the temperature and intensity of the biocurrents in the region of your rhombencephalon was much higher than normal? Well, this phenomenon has already spread to most of the left side of your cranium. You are doomed. You are the victim of an incurable disease and before very long you will no longer be of any use as a human being. Therefore, while there is still time, I must perform my experiment. Future generations will be grateful to both of us.'

" To hell with that!' I shouted. 'I refuse to be killed by a stupid electronic monster of my own creation.'

" 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' Siema uttered coldly, and raised the knife over my head.

"In a flash I snatched up my pillow. The knife sank into it, ripping the pillow case. Before the metallic fingers had disentangled themselves I leapt aside, jumped off the bed and dashed over to the switch. But Siema was too quick for me. In an instant she had slid over to me and knocked me down. As I lay helpless on the floor, I saw that her hands were not long enough to reach me, and fortunately she was unable to bend.

" 'I did not realize that in this position I cannot do anything to you,' she said in an icy voice. 'However I can try.'

"She began to move slowly toward me so that I had to crawl on my belly to escape her wheels. I crawled over the floor toward the bed and ducked under it. She tried to pull it aside. But this was not so easy for the bed was wedged securely between the wall and the bookcase. Then she began to pull off the bed-clothes. When she saw me under the spring mattress she cried out in triumph.

" 'You will not be able to get away from me now! Of course it will not be so easy to operate in this position.5

"When she picked up the mattress I jumped up, snatched up the bed end and brought it down full force on the machine. The blow bounded harmlessly off the metal body. Siema turned round and came toward me. I lifted the bed end again, this time aiming at the head. She quickly slid away.

" 'Do you really want to destroy me?' she asked in amazement. 'Won't you be sorry to lose me?'

" 'Sorry?' I said hoarsely. 'When you want to murder me? Certainly not!'

" 'But I only want to do what is necessary for the solution of a very important scientific problem. Why should you want to destroy me? Look how useful I could be to mankind.'

" 'Don't be a fool!' I roared. 'When a man is attacked it is only natural for him to defend himself.'

" 'But I only want your research on electronics. . . .'

" 'To hell with my research! Don't come near me or I'll smash you to pieces.'

" 'But I must!'

"With these words she rushed toward me brandishing the scalpel. But this time I acted swiftly and surely. There was a loud crash. The sound of shattered glass mingled with a wild scream from Siema's loudspeaker. A loud hissing and crackling arose from within the metal cylinder, and I saw a flash of fire. The lights went out and a strong smell of burning insulation wire filled the room. 'A short circuit,' was the last thought that flashed through my mind as I dropped unconscious to the floor."

. . . My travelling companion fell silent. He sat huddled in his corner by the window, his head resting in his hands and his eyes closed. I was so amazed by his story that I could not speak.

We sat thus for a few minutes and then he spoke again.

"The whole affair has exhausted me. I feel I must take a prolonged vacation. But I am afraid I shall be unable to rest. Do you know why? Because there is one question that is constantly haunting me. It is this. How and why did this absurd conflict with myself come about?"

I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"I repeat, with myself. Because Siema was my creation. Every detail of her was my own invention. How is it that the machine turned against its creator? Where is the logic? That is something I cannot explain."

I pondered this for a while in silence.

"Perhaps you did not operate your Siema properly? In industry, for example, careless handling of a machine often leads to bodily injuries."

He frowned.

"You may be right. At any rate I like your analogy, although I cannot quite see what rules I violated in handling Siema."

"Not being a specialist, that is hard for me to say," I said. "But it seems to me that in some respects your Siema may have resembled an automobile without brakes. You know what can happen when a car's brakes fail suddenly."

"Damn it, man," he exclaimed brightening, "I believe you have inadvertently hit upon the right explanation. Why, Pavlov said as much himself."

I stared at him in amazement, for as far as I knew Pavlov had written nothing about automobile brakes.

"Of course, of course," he repeated, getting up and rubbing his hands in satisfaction. "Why didn't I think of it before? Nervous activity in man is regulated by two contradictory processes-excitation and inhibition. People who have no inhibitions often commit crimes. That is precisely what happened to my Siema!"

He seized my hand and shook it heartily.

"Thank you! Thank you! You have given me a splendid idea. You see, my mistake was in not having included in Siema's design a system for controlling her actions. If I had, her behaviour could have been programmed so as to make her completely safe. In other words, she could have been inhibited."

His face was beaming now, his eyes shining with excitement. He was a different man.

"Then you believe you can build a safe Siema?" I asked.

"Of course, and quite simply too. I can see exactly how it could be done."

"In that case you really will present mankind with an invaluable assistant!"

"That is what I intend to do," he cried. "And quite soon."

I lay down quietly and closed my eyes. Before my mind's eye paraded a procession of metal cylinders crowned by glass heads. They would operate machines, trains, airplanes, and even space ships perhaps. Electronic machines in control of workshops and automatic plants. Standing beside researchers, these machines would make measurements, analyse results and compare with existing knowledge-and all this with lightning speed. They would be an invaluable aid to man in perfecting and accumulating knowledge.

I fell asleep. When I awoke the train was standing. I glanced out of the window and saw the Sochi railway station flooded with sunshine. It was early morning but the southern sun bathed the whole scene in dazzling light. I was alone in the compartment. I dressed quickly and went out onto the platform.

"Where is the man who got left behind?" I asked the conductor who was standing by the carriage.

"Oh, that crackpot!" he said with a laugh. "He's gone."

"Gone? Where to?"

"He went back. Jumped out like a madman, picked up his bags at the station and got into a train going in the opposite direction. Didn't even stop to get dressed."

I was dumbfounded.

"There were some people here to meet him," the conductor went on. "They tried to persuade him to stay, but he was terribly excited, kept jabbering about some sort of brakes he had to make. Rum chap!"

I burst out laughing. I could picture exactly what had happened.

"Yes, he really has to get to work on those brakes right away," I said, thinking that people who are obsessed by some idea and who believe in it do not need to rest. So we would soon be hearing about a new Siema. Splendid!

The whistle blew. I returned to my compartment and sat down. I opened the window and looked out on the vast blue expanse of the sea sparkling in the sunshine. Within a few hours we would be in Sukhumi.

Content

Anatoly Dneprov
Siema