Tom Aston - The Machine

Stone believed him. But there was more to it. ‘You would have been arrested if you stayed in the US,’ he said. ‘You had to flee the US, because you’d built the Machine, and you tried hard, but failed to persuade SearchIgnition to switch it on. The lawyers wouldn’t allow it, because what the Machine does is illegal in the US, isn’t it? Or maybe they found out that you’d buried another copy of the Machine deep under the mountains in China as an insurance policy? Uncle Sam was never going to be happy about that. It it’s been working for months already, hasn’t it? Where’s the other one? Snuggled up in amongst your SearchIgnition servers in Colorado? Did you ever even switch it on?’

‘Fucking lawyers wouldn’t allow me to switch it on in the US,’ said Semyonov dismissively. ‘It’s a world-changing development. Historic. Yet all those guys can think of is their “corporate liabilities”. Protecting their sorry, Harvard-educated asses.’

‘Come on, Semyonov. If you run away to China, Uncle Sam wants to know what you’ve been up to. Your government was never going to sit idly by. The FBI and SearchIgnition have over a hundred software analysts trying to figure out the code and algorithms running your search engines.’

‘They haven’t even cracked the encryption,’ said Semyonov with a sneer. ‘And when they do they’re in for a whole new world of pain trying to figure out how the programs work.’

‘Like a crossword puzzle in a language you can’t even imagine?’ said Stone.

‘Worse. Things have moved on, Stone. This isn’t the kiddie programs I wrote in prison. No more Chinese characters. This is many levels above that. They may as well try to analyse a rock.’

‘The Machine is even worse than the search engine technology, I’m guessing.’

‘Much worse,’ said Semyonov, croaking. ‘Last time I looked, it had been upgrading itself. I could barely figure it out myself, and I built it. That was weeks ago.’

‘It’s bringing itself up to sentience?’

‘Possibly,’ said Semyonov. No wonder he wanted to get his hands back on it.

‘But I still don’t get how it works,’ said Virginia, almost to herself. ‘I get that it’s a computer that comes up with these ideas.’

‘More than ideas. Breakthroughs, my dear — detailed plans and blueprints. It comes up with new devices, new chemicals, new processes to make them, new alloys, materials… It’s simply sweats great ideas. They’re coming out every few seconds. Even Oyang couldn’t use more than a fraction of them.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Virginia. ‘How does it know anything to start with? How is the Machine producing all this technology just by sitting there in a hole in the ground, thinking to itself? How does it even know what people want?’

Semyonov was sitting in the sterile plastic underclothes. The blood was slick and damp on the inside, the red clearly visible through the blurred sheeting. Then he began to put on light cotton shirt and trousers with the male nurse.

‘Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘Your friend Steven here pretty much invented Internet search technology. Semyonov’s search engine technology basically sucks up the whole of the Internet and indexes it, so that people can find things. Semyonov took all that information — the whole of the Internet — and packed in into the Machine. That Machine was loaded up with a copy of every page, of every web site, every research paper, every engineering textbook, every marketing blurb, idea, and sci-fi story in existence. It takes all that and munches through it, making connections. The Machine has one purpose: to take that planet-full of information and ideas, fit it all together, and come up with new ideas,’ said Stone, still staring through the plastic at Semyonov. ‘It looks like it worked pretty well.’

‘And Oyang?’ asked Virginia.

‘Oyang was on the take,’ said Stone. ‘He blew the whole thing wide open by cherry picking ideas, getting patents and selling them. Some of the weapons he manufactured in that place in Shanghai. It was never going to go unnoticed. Now thanks to Oyang, everyone who has any notion of what the Machine can do, wants to get their hands on it. China, the US, Russia…’

‘But without me, they’re wasting their time,’ said Semyonov. ‘I’m impressed, though. That you figured it out.’ Behind the curtain, he was weakly trying to clap his bleeding hands together.

Stone was impressed too. He was astonished. He wouldn’t have managed it without Carslake — he was a dark horse.

The big white man was suffering, forced to wear clothes and make-up for the trip. It was irritating, painful. He seemed buoyed nonetheless. Perhaps he felt unburdened. ‘For your information,’ said Semyonov after a while, ‘There is nothing down there in that mine that is new or special to me. Just something I want to get out. There are problems down that hole which I never suspected. But congratulations. You have just volunteered to help me go to the Machine and bring it out.’ Semyonov struggled to his feet and stood gasping for breath. ‘I suppose I should feel gratitude. But these days, that emotion does not come easily to me. We must go,’ he said. ‘The clothes and make-up are itching and irritating. But not yet excruciating as they will be in a couple of hours. When we arrive at the crater, Virginia will explain what must be done. We may as well get on with it. Time is not exactly on my side.’

Finally, finally, Stone was beginning to see where Semyonov was coming from. He wasn’t an evil man — just obsessed. There are people who start a business, or take up a sport. They start off by giving it their all. Some people’s commitment tails off, but others plunge in and give it more than their all. There are millions of people who neglect their partners and kids for their work — not because they are bad people, but because their work takes over. It defines them, and they love it. They spend less and less time with their families and even when they do see their kids they’re thinking of their work. If things get in the way of that one thing in their lives, it frustrates them like hell.

Semyonov’s frustration must be a thousand times greater. For outside of his work, his programming, his achievements — he had nothing. No woman, no child, nothing to enjoy. He was in constant pain and he was going to die. He’d neglected everything — friends, relationships, now even his business empire at SearchIgnition. He'd let it all go. All he wanted was the Machine — to give it to the world and show how brilliant he was. He’d tried to do it in the US, but SearchIgnition’s lawyers had stopped him. So now he’d placed a copy deep below ground in China. And if he couldn’t get it out of there, everything his brilliant mind had ever done would have been for nothing.

They had flown by helicopter to Ningbo, to be met by Semyonov’s personal airliner.

Semyonov’s Chinese-made MA600 airliner was painted matte black. Which suggested he only travelled at night. The plane had followed the silver banner of the Yangze westwards, past the brightly lit cities and towns, on past the Brocade City, and now they were over the black wilderness of Western Sichuan.

Stone, Virginia and Carslake sat up front, while Semyonov was on a gurney to the rear with a small medical team.

‘Underground nuclear tests? Shoot! I hope not,’ said Virginia. She was trying to explain the layout of the crater, without even having seen it herself. She’d listened to Semyonov and made notes on lined paper in her All-A student’s handwriting. Now she was relaying the information to Stone and Carslake.

‘The monks said there’d been nuclear tests,’ said Stone. ‘Why else would that huge circle of ground be barren?’