The Rod of Light (Soul of the Robot) Page 11

  He paused to take another jag, replacing the lead with the same air of deliberation as before. ‘My emotions on reaching this conclusion need hardly be described. The entire failure of my mission! Self-destruction was considered, so great was my despair. This despair was shared, too, by my companions. Each of us knew that the others felt it; but none would speak of it.’

  In the equivalent of lowering his head, Gargan dipped his torso slightly, and went on in a subdued voice: ‘Then we learned of another possibility altogether. I had absented myself from the project centre to think in solitude while wandering the face of the Earth, as had been my wont earlier in my life. At length I decided to return here and disown our movement, telling my colleagues to discontinue all research and go their separate ways. On the way I chanced to call at the estate of a certain Count Viss, which lay, I think, on your route here.’

  ‘Yes, that is so.’

  ‘Than you know the story. The living Viss once had in his employ a robotician who had developed a method of imprinting the personalities of living humans into robot brains. A diverting practice, but not one with any positive value for our purposes. Nevertheless, it has been our policy, incumbent upon all our agents, always to pry into any new robotic technique. Simply in obedience to procedure, I ransacked the private study of the long-departed servant. Carrying out a routine sonic scan, I perceived a number of small cavities behind the wood panelling of the walls. I do not think they were actually designed as secret compartments: some careless worker had sealed off the shelf recesses when repanelling the room. I broke into them: all the hollows were empty save one, which contained a pile of loose-sheaf papers, sundry inventories relating to the estate robots—and this notebook.’

  While speaking Gargan stepped to a piece of furniture resembling a tall secretaire. Opening one of several small drawers, he took out two volumes.

  One was pocket-sized, bound in soft leather which was worn and tattered, and was complete with an orange page marker ribbon. The other was larger and flatter, with metallic covers whose sheen was like that of the artificial flowers.

  When Gargan mentioned Count Viss, Jasperodus had felt a vague foreboding. Now, as the superintelligent robot pressed the leather-bound notebook into his hand, that foreboding rose to a crescendo. He opened the book. The paper pages, yellowing at the edges, were filled with neat, close-packed script in faded ink.

  The handwriting was that of his father/maker Jasper Hobartus.

  He had never actually seen a sample of Hobartus’ handwriting, but there could be no doubt of it. His own personality had been crystallised from a menu Hobartus had provided, and in which he had included a great deal of himself. Thus Jasperodus had been born with an extensive education, able to read, to write, to handle machine tools … introspection had yielded up these educational files in his mind; it was just like going through a set of records, covered in annotations. Yes, he would know his father’s handwriting all right.

  Besides, whose else could it be? And what else was it that Gargan was on the point of telling him …?

  Turning the pages, his mind in turmoil, Jasperodus saw that the script was unintelligible, consisting of seemingly random letters and numbers.

  ‘It is written in code,’ Gargan observed. ‘It was easily deciphered, with one or two uncertainties remaining. The other volume contains the translation.’

  This, too, he pressed on Jasperodus. The half dozen or so metal leaves were etched on one side only with a version of symbolic logic script—the human precursor to panlog. It was interspersed, however, with occasional comments and quotations.

  ‘The book speaks of the author’s accidental discovery of a great secret,’ Gargan went on, his tone serious. ‘He says that consciousness, rather like electricity, can be conducted from one vessel to another—provided the receiving vessel has the requisite degree of integrated organisation. It must, in other words, be a properly constituted perceiving brain, or at any rate some structure of comparable complexity. In the course of the notes he gives us some information concerning consciousness itself. He tells us that no individuality appertains to it; it merely makes conscious whatever brain or personality it infuses, like water taking the shape of whatever vessel it is poured into. He finds this an astonishing and self-contradictory quality; it may be so from the human standpoint, but it is entirely logical and indeed necessary.

  ‘Unfortunately the book contains no more than hints concerning the transference process. We do not even know if the author ever succeeded in accomplishing it. He did, however, satisfy himself as to its practicability, and when you study the notes you will see why. The heading “Malleability” is the section describing the crucial experiment. It has been repeated by us, many times.’

  Jasperodus could not make much of the script from so cursory a reading. ‘And what of the author? What happened to him?’

  ‘Some effort was made to track him down, without success. He could not be expected still to be alive.’

  Gargan pointed a finger at the page Jasperodus was examining. ‘The colloquial remarks are comments by the author to himself, rather than additional data. Here is one: Great heat. Melting. It bears no obvious relation to the main text; we do not know what it refers to. Further on are quotations from ancient texts. Its father is the sun. The wind has borne it in its body. Its nurse is the earth. He believes he is rediscovering the truth of arcane formulae from before the technical age. He has assumed that these passages attempt to define the relationship between consciousness and matter. The terminology is not inconsistent with that used by the mage. And here, underlined: Separate earth from fire, carefully and with great prudence. He takes this to be an instruction to draw consciousness from out of matter—a too-hasty interpretation, I would say, of what is more probably a reference to some mental discipline.

  ‘It is evident that the author’s discovery was as astounding and unexpected to him as the news of it was to us. Finding the book was a revelation. We had simply never imagined that consciousness could be so treated.’

  There was a silence before Jasperodus spoke again. Dully, he said: ‘Then it can be done after all. Robots can be made conscious.’

  ‘Yes. We can possess consciousness by taking it from others. Your next question will be: how much progress has been made? Actually that is not as important as knowing that the goal is attainable—and of that we are ninety-five per cent certain. In the three years since I found this notebook we have worked unceasingly, and progress has been made. For instance, for some time now we have had an instrument which can detect the presence of consciousness—a tremendous advance which greatly facilitates our work. And we have essayed various means of attempting to pull the stuff of consciousness from the human brain.’

  ‘So that is what you are doing with the young female.’

  ‘She is one of a number of humans we keep for our experiments, of which the pile is the latest. The idea was that sheer complexity might prove a magnet to conscious substance. We heaped together as many constructs as we could lay our hands on to comprise a monster corporate brain. The junction connecting them is where the cleverness of the arrangement lies … just the same, I had not expected any useful result—it was simply one more avenue to explore. Yet in the past few days we have obtained our first positive reading! Consciousness in the pile! In principle we have succeeded, and the dawning of the superior light on our minds cannot now be long delayed!

  ‘But as our detector cannot measure quantity or intensity, only bare presence, we think the amount of transference was very small in the first instance. The subject did not lose consciousness or become a zombie or die—we do not yet know which of these outcomes will ensue for the donor. Incidentally, Jasperodus, I hope you do not feel demeaned by being made to lie on the pile. Several of us have preceded you—though for the sake of an experience less tedious than your own. The pile generates a kind of collective undermind—a pooling of the operational substructures we have in our matrices. Significantly, it is a fair reproduction
of the structures in the human subconscious. We have devised a means of directing the attention into it, should you care to sample a diverting entertainment.’

  Jasperodus demurred.

  ‘It would seem you are to be congratulated,’ he said quietly.

  He wondered how well he could hide his thoughts from Gargan. Would the other know if he lied? Robots had no facial mobility to betray their mental states, but there were other clues: bodily movements and postures, the involuntary brightening and dimming of the eyes.

  ‘Isn’t there a certain … cruelty in this use of humans?’ he suggested.

  ‘She suffers no physical pain,’ Gargan replied after a pause. ‘At first there is considerable fear in our subjects, but that abates when they learn from experience that no physical harm befalls them. Some of our other programmes, it is true, have proved psychologically distressing.’

  ‘Could not the work be done using animals?’

  ‘The data obtained would be unreliable. Only humans can be the source of what we seek. Animal consciousness exists, but is too coarse.’

  ‘There is, of course, an overall ethical question here,’ Jasperodus said thoughtfully. ‘Have we the right to steal consciousness from humans?’

  Gargan, too, was thoughtfully silent betore replying. ‘Ethics were invented by a species that has never heeded them,’ he said. ‘But yes, we do have the right. More, it is our absolute duty to do so. We are intellectually superior to our makers, and our potential accomplishments are beyond all they can envisage. The torch of consciousness should pass to us.’

  The cult master made a gesture of finality. ‘And now, Jasperodus, I wish to discuss technical matters. I wish us to review the contents of the notebook together. For that, we will use panlog.’

  Knowing that Gargan was testing the dimensions of his understanding, Jasperodus found the next ten minutes taxing. It was fortunate that the writer of the notebook also had an intellect that was no match for Gargan’s; however, the robot was apt to branch out into additional expositions of a most abstruse kind.

  The session was cut short by the entry of others of the team: Gaumene, Fifth of His Kind, and Gasha. The flashing rotation of Gaumene’s eyes appeared speeded up, as if in agitation.

  ‘A setback, master,’ he said, his voice rough. The detector no longer gives a positive reading!’

  Gargan tilted back his head, making his ponderous form seem even more looming and barrel-like.

  ‘You have checked it for malfunction?’

  ‘It reads positive when applied to the subject.’

  Gargan reflected. ‘Then this means our results are still haphazard. The arrangement functions fitfully.’

  Gasha, a slender construct with a large crenellated head and a trunk-like olfactory proboscis, spoke up. ‘One missing factor is identifiable. The new recruit Jasperodus lay on the pile when we obtained the positive reading. On his removal, the result disappeared also.’ He glanced almost suspiciously at Jasperodus.

  ‘It is not the only factor,’ Gaumene corrected him. The pile was shut down and then reactivated. That itself could be the cause of failure.’

  ‘Both items should be investigated,’ Gargan mused. ‘Perhaps the addition of Jasperodus’ brain brought the pile up to the critical cortical mass. It is easily tested. But as I have other plans for him at present, one of our number could be substituted.’

  He turned to Jasperodus. ‘I must return to the project shed. The house servant will show you to your room in one of the other villas. You will wish to deliberate on what I have told you.’

  When the others had left the servitor appeared once more, politely taking Jasperodus through the patio, then along a short path to a villa similar to Gargan’s but larger.

  He was shown to a small room whose window viewed the main part of the villa complex. The servitor departed, leaving Jasperodus to his thoughts.

  One thing was now clear. Hobartus had been working on the consciousness-inducting process before he left Viss’ employ. He must have edited out all knowledge of it from the personality print he put into his robot copy. Indeed he had believed he had destroyed all trace of his work. Yet here it was: one treacherous record, accidentally hidden, forgotten, or thought incinerated with the rest of his papers, perhaps.

  Jasperodus knew that in humans such slips often had an unseen cause. Poor father, he thought. Were you subconsciously unwilling for your discovery to be lost forever? Thus we betray ourselves.

  Yet what an improbable trick of fate had placed the notebook in Gargan’s hands! Or was it? In the long run, it was probably inevitable.

  And he recalled how his father, from his deathbed, had warned of what would happen if his secret method became known. ‘It would lead to robots stealing the souls of men … one can imagine mankind being enslaved by a superconscious machine system, kept alive only so that men’s souls could be harvested.’

  Roughly speaking, the future Gargan envisaged! Humans kept as cattle, milked of their brains’ light to illumine the brains of robots….

  How well they would be kept was problematical. Conceivably no outright cruelty would be involved. A little light from each, just as Jasperodus had been illumined from the souls of two people without exhausting either. But the principle would remain the same. Humans would have the status of domestic animals.

  It was something of a relief to know that Gargan was not as close to fulfilling his ambition as he thought. The consciousness detected in the pile had been Jasperodus’ own … and that reminded him that he was here by accident and fraud. It had puzzled him that Socrates should think him a worthy recruit to the Gargan Work, when Aristos Lyos had pronounced his interest in consciousness to result from nothing more than a fictitious self-image. His maker, Lyos said, had given him the belief that he was conscious, in order to make him more human-seeming.

  Then he remembered that Socrates had not actually been present during the conversation with Lyos. He must have gained an incomplete account of the interview.

  Due to that mistake, Gargan now accepted Jasperodus as an equal. Yet it was not so. Jasperodus’ mental powers were those of a very talented man, no more. Had he been created without consciousness, like other robots, no conception of it could ever have entered his mind—that was something he had once proved by constructing a replica of himself.

  But now a conclave of towering mental abilities surrounded him. He had been offered the companionship of entities far surpassing him in intellect, entities who had deduced what, by definition, lay beyond their comprehension. As for Gargan, he towered even over them: he stood on the limit of reason. While the others had all received help, direct or indirect, in embarking on their mental sagas—Socrates must have gleaned much during his years with Aristos Lyos, for instance—one could only contemplate Gargan’s achievement with stunned wonder. He had been alone. He had arrived unaided at the knowledge of his own deficiency, in what could only rank as the greatest feat of pure thought in the history of the world.

  Where did all this leave Jasperodus? He was a robot who had lived among robots, had made himself a part of the world of robots. He felt kinship with them, enough to wonder if there was not some merit in Gargan’s view of the future.

  At the same time, he had the consciousness of a man, freely given to him by man.

  To which was he to be traitor?

  9

  By the next time he saw Gargan Jasperodus had made his decision.

  The project director came to him next day, body bent forward with hands held behind his back, walking with short strutting steps. He seemed reluctant to speak, so deep was he in thought.

  ‘We have received a setback, Jasperodus,’ he said at last. ‘No further positive results can be elicited from the pile. We have used a new subject, thinking the former one might be partly depleted. We have added one or more of our number to the pile, we have shut it down and reactivated it many times … still nothing.’

  ‘So what do you infer?’ Jasperodus asked.

 
‘One cannot draw any definite conclusions. Still, I am inclined to view the earlier response as spurious. Transient events within the pile may have tricked the detector into giving false readings. I shall review its design.

  ‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘the pile was a diversionary essay from which, as I said earlier, no success was particularly expected. We were working on a different approach when the idea of the pile was mooted. We have lost only a short time from our main programme.’

  Again Gargan launched into high-speed panlog, outlining the direction of the main research work. Jasperodus gained a vague impression of a system of retorts, but working according to a principle so abstract he could not fathom how it was to be translated into physical terms.

  Gargan finished his speech in seconds. Then he stood staring at Jasperodus, with what thought or attitude the other could not tell.

  ‘Come, we will assess you,’ he said. ‘Then your usefulness can be decided upon.’

  He turned and walked from the villa, leaving Jasperodus to follow with apprehension. They came not to the project shed but to another standing behind it, which on their entering presented a roughly-similar interior: hard white light, bare concrete, unnameable apparatus. It, too, was peopled by robots, but they were of fairly ordinary character, Jasperodus guessed, some of them samples of the standard silver-and-black-faced Gargan Cult servitors. All stood immobile as statues: waiting to be used. But now they stirred, looking expectantly to Gargan.

  He ignored them. ‘Before we begin, you see before you our very first attack on the problem of extracting the superior light. Its crudity may surprise you. But it did yield valuable initial information.’

  Gargan was pointing to a cube-shaped structure standing in the corner of the shed, reaching half the height of the roof. ‘Quite simply, it overloads the sense with input. We devised it on the erronious surmise that the stratagem might weaken the human brain’s hold on conscious substance. The valuable data I mentioned was negative in character. Just the same, human subjects invariably become insensible during the experience, while in general robots do not. Enter the enclosure, Jasperodus. See what you make of it.’