“He sought to subdue others by force, to set up colonies, and to enrich himself at the expense of the defeated.” Raj was trying to capture the course of his friend’s thoughts.
“Who stopped the spread of his idea?”
“India, the East, Raj was beginning to get the point.
“What’s the idea of the East?”
“Knowledge and spirituality.”
“That’s it! Jagdish raised his index finger and his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “Let’s take this as a basis. And add only one thing! Did you ask me for a piece of advice? It will be brief.”
Looking his friend in the eye, Jagdish lifted up his palm with straddled fingers to the level of his eyes and then slowly began to curl them into a fist and then slightly nodded his head, smiling.
“We’ll unite our efforts and set reason against force. I got your point, my friend,” Raj interpreted his gesture and nodded in consent.
“Keep me informed about the course of events, Raj. Every single detail will be of significance now.”
“Whenever I invite you by phone for a game of chess, you know what I really mean. It will be our secret sign, okay?”
“I see. Like Nestor from Atarva’s group says, “we’ll make it”.
The Scientific Center’s labs represented huge rings divided into segments pierced through by shafts of high-speed lifts in their central parts. These grand-scale remarkable facilities were located below the ground level. One of such underground sectors housed a lab where Atarva’s group was based at the time. Each one of its members had a separate room, but at the moment all of them gathered in the central room of their leader.
The whole internal space of his office was packed with racks containing equipment, prototypes of various strangely-looking devices resembling works of some futuristic designer on the subject of human brain discoveries.
It would be difficult for an outsider to make head or tail of all that pile of devices, prototypes of appliances, huge stacks of files over-packed with papers.
The central part of the room was occupied by an enormous table that clearly showed that the word “order” was seldom used by the owner of the room.
However, Atarva insisted that each and every thing was lying on its proper place and no one was allowed to touch anything so as not to disturb that system order, which would inevitably cause a change in the “positive flow of events”.
The members of his small group had long got accustomed to that peculiarity of the young scientist. There was a funny story about Atarva: once Asha, who was fond of jokes, asked Atarva where a report on some old prototype test was. Without a hitch, Atarva told her where she could find the required file. Then Asha enquired him about the color of the walls in his room, and Atarva stared at her in total confusion. But at the moment no one felt like joking.
Atarva’s group shifted into the room occupied by Asha. The reason for that choice was simple: the girl’s room was always in perfect order, free of any unnecessary things.
There was a round low table in the center with armchairs standing all around. The table was equipped with a holographic projector with voice interface. Asha’s room was always in semidarkness, with only one obscure lamp lighting up the narrow space above the table.
The atmosphere of the room inspired deep reflection.
For that reason it was there that the group had usually conducted their internal meetings since the first days of their work. In addition, the room was fit out with the silence field, which was quite a useful option, given the huge number of Curators poking their noses into the internal affairs of the Scientific Center.
“The materials that Nestor brought us amount to a significant discovery. A contact with the World Ocean and a deliberate exchange of information were recorded. The data obtained are to make a major impact on all spheres of human life. These are the facts.
Naturally, the forces controlling the society, including our Curators, wish to get this event under control, and as a result, the head of the contact project ended up in a mental hospital and his lab and equipment disappeared together with all reports. The fate of the rest of the personnel is unknown. And these are the facts as well!
Purely by chance, Nestor managed to leave the facility for a couple of days before all of us were switched over to the confidentiality mode.
And I believe that these events are interconnected! Those who stopped the disobedient scientists from pursuing their research in such a way are well aware that we have the data on that discovery. Nestor met his father and received his reports.
Therefore, they presume that we are now sitting and thinking of how to repeat the experiment on the contact with the Ocean Mind, as we may call it. Why have I made such an assumption? Knowing our psychological profiles, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine our actions with a certain degree of probability. There are special programs designed for that. Do you agree?”
Atarva stopped speaking for a while, giving a serious glance at his silent group.
“Please remember that what we have created is more than just a processor, in fact it is an artificially made rational being that is aware of its existence. And now this being is studying and comprehending the information accumulated by mankind over the whole period of its existence. For the time being, it is only studying the world and thinking. One of the customer’s requirements was to obtain access to such information.
Yesterday, we received an instruction from the Curators. I will read out the new requirements point by point. First, we are to limit the potential of our processor by ninety-nine percent. To do this, they suggested that we create some sort of complex locking algorithm and integrate it into the processor as its part.”
“Exactly like with the human brain! Asha remarked and spread her arms.
Atarva nodded in consent and continued. “It would be quite easy to technically perform this, but I convinced the Curators that it is a rather complex development and that it will require time. And now the most interesting point!
The second requirement is to create an access to all the capabilities of the processor, bypassing the limitations, only for a small group of people, whose genetic code will be an enter key as well as a set of conditions ruling out the possibility of the system hacking by unauthorized persons. In other words, only a few people on the planet must have access to the Super Brain!
While users will be communicating with this mind exactly through that lock-out program, naturally according to specific tariffs. This all will be presented as a major breakthrough in science! A plan of genius, isn’t it?
And now let’s talk about us: given the fact that the reasonable being we have created is a self-recovering organism and will not require any human interference in the future, after delivering our work to the customer we’ll become a redundant link which has the information that the customer would like to keep secret. Then it would be logical to presume that they would like to get rid of our group. I must confess that this bothers me, but we’ll discuss this later.
Therefore, we may have a couple of weeks left for the experiment, and we can use this processor to its full capacity until a lock will be integrated into it.
Who wouldn’t like to hack the Planet’s Noosphere! But once we start the experiment, we’ll become criminals from the point of view of the customer and the Curators! The consequences of such liberty may be very serious! While the result of our experiment may change the whole science on the Planet.
You are all aware of what will face us in case of a slightest leakage of information, aren’t you?”
“Nestor must carry on with the work of his father, and I have always chosen the path of Socrates and Giordano Bruno when it came to principles!” Asha shrugged her shoulders.
“Then I will proceed to the practical issues,” Atarva went on, “And here I’ve got a question! We’ll need Absolem’s resource. And there is certain difficulty here. The AI will not be able to keep that secret since Absolem will submit its regular report to the Curators, which will clearly show its involvement in our experiment. If this happens, all of us will face the fate of Nestor’s father, and that will be the best case scenario.”