John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

“Like Darwin’s universe,” Craine said, thinking aloud.

“Yes, very much like that,” Weintraub said. “Geological-time strata — layers on layers of program evolution; chance combinations and recombinations; occasional freak occurrences, as when some teenaged computer nut interfaces his Radio Shack with the monster and starts moving things around. And above all, of course — you’re right — no Programmer, pure blind mechanical survival of the fittest.”

“Interesting, all this,” Craine said.

There was a knock on the door. It opened two inches and, the same moment, Professor Weintraub called, “Come in!”

The door opened more and an intense, wild-looking man poked his head in. His hair and beard were red, as unwashed as Craine’s and vastly more tangled. One of the lenses in his round, steel-framed glasses had a crack with Scotch tape over it. His clothes were army surplus, or maybe the real thing — patches and stripes had been torn off the arms. He was carrying, clamped under his right arm, a large messy roll of printout. “You going to lunch, Murray?” he asked, hardly noticing Craine. His voice was oddly hoarse, and he at once cleared his throat.

Professor Weintraub raised his left arm, pushed the cuff back, and looked at his watch. With a leap of guilt, Craine looked at his own. “It’s nearly quarter to three, Frank. I ate hours ago,” Weintraub said.

“Oh,” the young man said, not surprised, exactly, not even quite registering. “Oh,” he said again; then, abruptly, “Listen, I got an incredible new feature—”

“Later,” Weintraub said with a smile, raising his hand like a policeman.

“Oh, sorry,” the red-head said. Now he turned to look at Craine, his expression like that of a man looking at a chimp at the zoo. “Sorry,” he said. He gave a little wave and backed out, closing the door.

Craine said, shifting his weight forward, preparing to rise, “I hadn’t realized how late it was getting. I’ve got to run. I want to thank you, Professor Weintraub. You have no idea—”

“Don’t mention it,” Weintraub said. “I hope it helps somehow. It’s been a pleasure, actually.”

“One thing,” Craine said, on his feet now. “Who was that fellow?” He aimed a thumb at the door.

“That was Britt — Frank Britt,” Weintraub said, and gave a just perceptible headshake, perhaps embarrassment.

“He’s a programmer?”

“Very much so.” He pushed back his desk chair and got to his feet, then came around to accompany Craine out. “He’s what you might call a computer bum — very special modern breed.” He laughed.

Though it was later than he’d thought — even if he left right now he couldn’t reach Elaine Glass by quarter to three, as he’d promised — Craine hesitated. “What do they do?” he asked.

“Why, they play with computers. That’s all they live for.” He made a vague, airy gesture with his plump right hand. “Dreamers — mathematical loonies.” When Craine went on waiting, his look still questioning, Professor Weintraub cocked his head, thought for an instant, then said: “When you talk about an ordinary engineer you’re talking about a man who’s, so to speak, impacted in the physical universe. What he does is ruled by its physical laws; in the end he can do only what may be lawfully done. When some device he creates doesn’t work, he can’t always know by his own reasoning alone whether he’s on the verge of success — some small adjustment — or hopelessly lost, wandered into some closet from which there’s no exit. He has to turn to his teachers, his colleagues, his books — appeal to real experience for some clue to what’s gone wrong. But the computer programmer is in a different situation. He creates a universe for which he alone is the lawgiver — or at least that’s his aim. And of course on a computer, it’s possible to create universes of almost unlimited complexity. One may create, for example, worlds in which there’s no gravity, or in which two bodies attract each other, not by Newton’s inverse-square law, but by an inverse-cube law, or in which time dances forward and backward in obedience to a choreography as simple or complex as one wills. Moreover, and this is the crucial point, systems programmed in this way can act out their scripts. They compliantly obey their laws and vividly exhibit their obedient behavior. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor has ever exercised such absolute authority or commanded such unswervingly dutiful troops. Obviously, power like that can be addictive.” Professor Weintraub shook his head again, at once quizzical and sad, and opened the door. “I’ll lead you to the front office,” he said. “Believe me, you’d never find it.”

“Yes, thank you,” Craine said. “You’re right, it’s quite a maze.” Looking down the sterile hallway, leading to other hallways at either end, he had no idea which direction he had to go. As Weintraub turned to the right, then hesitated, waiting for him, Craine said, “So this Britt’s one of the addicts.”

“Very much so. They’re everywhere, you know — wherever you find computer centers, which is to say in countless places in the United States and in virtually every other industrial region of the world … bright young men like Frank, there, of dishevelled appearance, usually with sunken, glowing eyes. They sit there at their consoles, arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, watching the typewriter ball, staring like the gambler who keeps his eyes riveted on the dice. When he’s not sitting there at the console, transfixed, the hacker — that’s what they call themselves, ‘hackers’—the hacker sits at a table strewn with computer printouts, poring over them like a rabbi demonically possessed by some cabalistic text. They work till they drop — twenty, thirty hours at a time. If they can arrange it, they have their food brought in to them — coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If you let them, they sleep on cots or bedrolls near the computer — but only a few hours, then back to the console or the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all show plainly how little they care about our so-called reality. They exist only through and for the computers. Compulsive programmers. Hackers, they call themselves. They’re an international phenomenon.” He caught Craine’s elbow as he started to turn left where they had to continue straight. “This way.”

“Ah, yes.” Quickly he asked, “Why do computer centers put up with them? They’re not working on real projects, if I understand what you’ve said—”

“They’re useful, that’s all. They’re like the ‘friendly’ parasites in the human body: they’re not part of us, exactly, but we can’t live without them. The hacker is usually a superb technician. He knows every detail of the computer he works on, its peripheral equipment, the computer’s operating system, and so on. He’s tolerated around the center because of what he knows and because he can write small subsystem programs very fast, that is, in one or two sessions of, say, twenty hours each. Before long, in fact, the center may find itself using any number of his programs. The trouble is — as you can guess from what I’ve said — a hacker will almost never document his programs once he stops working on them, with the result that a center may come to depend on him to teach the use of the programs, how to maintain them, and so on — programs whose structure only he — if anyone — understands.”

“I’m beginning to understand why you called this operation what you did at the start,” Craine said. “Bedlam.” They were now in the first room Weintraub had brought him into. He recognized the door that led to the reception room, the secretaries’ desks.