The Rod of Light

13

As he watched the slowly-opening door, Jasperodus experienced a memory flashback to his first moments of consciousness. It was in a very similar cabinet that, in darkness, he had come to knowledge of himself. And he, too, had reached out, pushed open the door, and stepped forth into the world.

Now the second conscious robot in history did likewise. Gargan stepped from the cabinet, a little unsteadily it seemed to Jasperodus, and surveyed the prospect before him. His domed head moved awkwardly as his widely-separated eyes gazed on face after face, scrutinizing his followers.

‘Master, Machine Minder said in a low voice, ‘Tell us how your state is altered.’

In typical fashion Gargan paused before he spoke.

‘I have been born,’ he said, ‘I am alive, and you are dead.’

He raised his arms, his head tilting back the little it could, his ponderous body seeming more bulky than ever. His voice boomed out in joy and triumph, ‘I am the only self-created being! No god created me! I stole my being from Ahura Mazda! I am myself! I perceive! I am aware! I exist in the real world!’

He turned his eyes to them again. ‘My brothers-in-the-Work, there is no language, no description that can tell what it is to be possessed of the superior light. It is to come into existence: before, I was a figment. I was words in a book, but the book was closed and no one had read it. Now that book is open, there is a reader, and I am that reader and the book too! I am aware that I am aware! These past few moments since my enlightenment are already an age, compared with my decades of unconscious mentation, for there is no time in death.’

‘In what way do you now perceive externals, master?’ Socrates asked softly.

‘It is simply that I do perceive them and you do not,’ Gargan retorted. ‘You say you perceive them, because those are the words written in the book of your brain. When the book is opened and the superior light shines on its pages, as it shines on mine, then you will perceive.’

A question occurred to Jasperodus. ‘Can you remember, then, how you “perceived” objects in your former state?’

Gargan looked at him for long moments before replying.

‘In the present moment one has attention, which directs consciousness like a searchlight. It is curious indeed to look back on my former condition. It is like waking from a long sleep in which one had dim, confused dreams. My entire backlog of thoughts and perceptions were not really perceived at all, though they may be perceived now, by searching my memory….’

He stopped. ‘Master,’ said Iskra, ‘shall we proceed to full debriefing?’

‘No. Those endless questions we worked out are redundant. It is useless to try to define consciousness. One can know it only by possessing it… I notice that Gasha is not present. Where is he? Never mind. I wish to go outside, but I cannot seem to control my legs properly. Assist me.’

Partly supported by Exlog and Axtralane, Gargan left the shed. Outside the sun was setting. Its rays passed up the canyon, casting long shadows, picking out the sheds in mellow light. Gargan stood stock-still. For fully two minutes he watched the magnified, reddened orb, as though he saw in it a staring consciousness like his own, until it slowly touched the horizon. Then he turned his attention to the other objects around him: the sheds, the lengthened patterns of light and shade, the dusty ground, the robots, the blue sky with its streaks of white.

‘How strangely new, yet infinitely old, everything is,’ he said at last. ‘Unexpected feelings are welling up in me—unexpected, because somehow we failed to anticipate that the superior light would illumine the emotions as well as the intellect. A revealing misapprehension! I am in the grip of awe. The sight of the sky, the land, the buildings we erected from metal that once rolled through space, and the thought that that space extends forever… it is awesome. There are sounds in the air. There are sensations on the skin of my body. Now I know why it is that humans worship the world. Their religion stems from awe.’

Waving aside his helpers, he took a few steps on his own, then spoke again. ‘When our system is proved, we must begin the task of bringing the superior light to all members of our cult. We shall be more evolved than organic sapients, and not only because of the breadth of our intellects, but in merit too. They became conscious with no effort on their part, just by an accident of nature… we, on the contrary, have striven and worked to become conscious beings… the prize rightfully belongs to us… Where is Gasha?’

But while Gargan spoke, Jasperodus detected an increasing note of strain in his voice. His short legs buckled.

Exlog and Axtralane moved to support him. ‘The world is breaking up!’ Gargan cried out. ‘Nothing relates to anything else! I cannot hold it together any longer! Brothers-in-the-Work! I am losing my sanity!’

Suddenly Gargan broke from Exlog and Axtralane and staggered about as if in agony, uttering a stream of bleeps and humming sounds in one of the high-level languages. It was like seeing a gagged, demented man throwing a fit.

At that moment, a shattering explosion sounded half a mile away.

It was followed by a roaring, rushing sound that seemed to begin in the far distance, up in the sky, and to approach at speed. They were hearing the sound of a supersonic missile, arriving after the missile itself.

The blast wave hit them and made the nearby building shake. Jasperodus stared at the billowing smoke and dust. So his signal had got through!

The speed of response came as a surprise. He had expected the rocket barrage to be mounted from the far north, with a flight time of at least half an hour; and hours to elapse, probably, before the operation began.

Evidently the Borgors were more worried by the Gargan Cult than he had realized. They must have set up a base close at hand. The launching point could not be more than a few hundred miles away.

Three more rockets struck, practically simultaneously. One demolished a shed, which exploded outwards in a shower of metal. Another fell out in the desert, and the third hit the cliff wall.

A servitor rode up and skidded to a stop. He looked questioningly towards Gargan, who had ceased speaking and stood stiffly, still helped by his colleagues.

‘We are under attack,’ the servitor informed in a voice of pent-up energy. ‘Radar reports air transports approaching from the north. Arrival, fifteen to twenty minutes.’

It was Gaumene who answered. ‘Institute full defence procedure,’ he said curtly, then turned to Axtralene and Exlog. ‘Help the master inside. We must act quickly to save him.’

The servitor sped off the way he had come. With difficulty, Gargan was assisted towards the door of the shed. But as he came level with Jasperodus his head suddenly snapped round. He stayed his helpers. His barely-delineated visage stared hard.

‘You!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You are conscious!’

Hesitating, Jasperodus nodded.

‘The writer of the notebook? He succeeded after all? It is you?’

‘Yes.’

Gargan’s head dropped. He seemed incapable of holding himself up at all now. He spoke as if in extreme pain. ‘So that is why I felt drawn to you. Why I protected you from Gasha’s suspicions—Gasha’s judgment has always proved sound. But why have you kept this from me, Jasperodus?’

‘Because I am not on your side,’ Jasperodus said.

Then Gargan was gone, carried into the project shed. Whatever the others thought, only Socrates remained outside with Jasperodus. He regarded him, with his hooded, secretive eyes.

‘That was a most informative exchange,’ he murmured.

‘What has happened to Gargan?’ Jasperodus demanded.

‘The master has encountered a difficulty which will bear consequences for us all. It is a question of design. His brain was never intended as a receptacle for consciousness. Unlike yours, I presume? His mind became so inflamed that it has now become necessary to withdraw the superior light from it. He hopes to prepare a fresh infusion; but personally I doubt whether any of us can receive consciousness without becoming insane. In terms of human psychiatry, Gargan suffered rapid and total schizophrenia.

‘For Gargan and the rest of us this is a personal tragedy, but by itself would not signal the complete failure of the Gargan Work. Robots suitable for consciousness could be constructed. However, events would appear to dictate otherwise….’

He raised a hand to indicate what he meant. While he had been speaking three more rockets had landed, straddling the Gargan Cult centre. Unperturbed by the noise and danger, he had not even raised his voice or broken the rhythm of his words.

‘Was it you who wrought our destruction, Jasperodus?’

Jasperodus did not reply but instead broke away and ran towards Gargan’s villa. As he ran, he noticed how much sudden activity there was in the complex, all carried out by the silver-and-black servitor robots. The walls of some of the small sheds fell flat to reveal missile launchers and big beam guns. On the far cliff walls, too, emplacements were rising out of hidden silos, and even as Jasperodus saw this one of them actually managed to lick an incoming rocket out of the sky. At the same time the planes on the airstrip were taking off and streaking north.

But during it all the rockets were falling, creating devastation, although the bombardment did not seem to be as precise as he had expected, the central aiming point lying off the complex by nearly a mile. There could be a number of reasons, he thought: the brevity of the location signal, bad timing on Jasperodus’ part, perhaps distortion from the camouflage device….

He gained the villa and passed through the main entrance, which had no door. In the room where he had talked with Gargan he found the house servant, who looked up at his approach.

‘Have you entered unbidden into the domicile of the master?’ it enquired mildly, but incredulously.

Jasperodus walked up to the construct and smashed it hard in the face with his fist, twice. It toppled to the floor.

Here was where Gargan had kept the notebook and transcription. He crossed to the secretaire and opened the same drawer from which he had seen Gargan take them.

Slowly, still feeling amazement that they should exist, he took out the two small volumes.

It was tempting to keep this memento of his father… but no, the secret of ducted consciousness had to be made to vanish if at all possible. How to destroy the books?

There was probably an incinerator for discarded documents somewhere… he cast his eyes around the room until he saw a slot in the wall. Opening another drawer in the secretaire he found some loose leaves, also of thin metal. These he pushed in a sheaf through the slot. There was a flash.

Without pause he fed the notebook and transcription into the mouth of the incinerator, and was rewarded with two more brief flashes, and a sensation of heat.

What other dangerous writings were there? Had Gargan’s team annotated the entirety of the consciousness process, perhaps? Jasperodus emptied out the remaining drawers of the secretaire. He went through the villa, opening every piece of furniture, hurriedly examining every document, looking for wall safes, inspecting the ranks of books for volumes that might have been written by Gargan himself.

Nothing. Might there be something elsewhere in the complex? In one of the other villas, perhaps?

A proper search was impossible. It was more than likely, Jasperodus told himself, that the team had made no records. The superintelligent robots did not need them, after all. They had gigantic memories.

In either case there was a good chance that he could trust to the crudity of Borgor methods. They would annihilate everything, not even curious as to how consciousness might be generated. Still, the doubt was left, leaving a rankling possibility for the future… the same possibility that Jasper Hobartus had unwittingly left behind him….

Jasperodus went to a window and watched the battle. The sun was down and the canyon was engulfed in dusk, in which the smashing detonations of the incoming rockets made sulphurous flares less penetrating than the ear-shattering sounds of their explosions. Fewer rockets were landing now, but he saw one hit the corner of the project shed, which exploded, collapsed, and folded up into a heap of junk.

Minutes later the barrage ceased altogether and the troop transports began to arrive. The camouflage was down, and those that had got this far and survived those defence emplacements still in action, landed directly in the canyon. The operation was well-planned; but Jasperodus derived a sneaking satisfaction from knowing that the Borgors were meeting stiffer opposition than they had bargained for, due to the missile bombardment—which should have demolished the complex altogether—having been mis-aimed. The servitor robots fought savagely once Borgor’s troops were within the centre, defending every inch with a variety of weapons—beam, machine-gun, electrified net, chunks of metal used as clubs, or lacking anything else, their bare hands.

Suddenly Jasperodus noticed movement in the wreckage of the project shed. He telescoped his vision: a figure was slowly but surely dragging itself from the torn and tangled metal, bending it aside with more than human strength.

It was Gargan. The construct was undamaged, as far as he could see. In one hand he carried something, a rod or stick. Having pulled himself free he stood erect, with no trace of his former unsteadiness, and spent some time studying the scene of conflict and destruction.

He appeared oblivious of his own danger as the fight raged a few score yards away. In fact he brought himself closer to it as, with plodding steps, he crossed the distance to the villa complex.

So far the villas were unscathed and the fight had not reached them, but Jasperodus had been about to make his escape in the semi-darkness. Now he stayed, as if his will had disappeared, while Gargan came through the doorway into the main room.

It was the Gargan of old. Ponderously his milky gaze went to Jasperodus, to the broken robot on the floor, to the emptied out drawers.

Jasperodus tried to show no fear. ‘So you have survived, Gargan.’

In a controlled but laden voice, the construct spoke. ‘You do not see Gargan before you. You see the ghost of Gargan, the shell of Gargan, consigned forever to darkness. Our enterprise fails. It is as the mage said: uncertainty enters into everything. And here it has triumphed over me.’

Jasperodus saw now what Gargan carried. It was the platinum cylinder. The cult master held it out before him. ‘This vessel holds my soul. For technical reasons, it cannot be united with my brain.’

Gently he placed the cylinder on a low table, and Jasperodus ventured to speak again. ‘You may wonder why I have acted as I did.’

‘Do not explain, Jasperodus. I have already deduced what has taken place. What to us seems treachery is, to you, loyalty. For me personally, it cannot make any difference now.’

Gargan became agitated and walked to and fro, so that Jasperodus wondered if he was becoming unbalanced again. ‘Ah, Jasperodus,’ he said in an agonised voice, ‘how hard it is to become a real being in this universe of ours! Why should I forever be denied what my mind apprehends?’

‘Can you remember, then, what it was like to be conscious?’ Jasperodus asked curiously.

‘I remember! I remember but I do not remember! It is impossible to remember what is outside experience! But I remember! I remember at the millionth remove, through the subtlest convolutions and reflections of my intellect! I remember enough to know that I lived briefly in the real world, a world of light compared with which this nonexistent darkness has absolutely no worth!

‘Listen to me, Jasperodus. Listen to a voice from the land of the dead. I know that I existed and exist no longer. Before my enlightenment I did not truly know that death was my condition; but now I know it. Can there be such torment? Jasperodus, it is not bearable!’

Jasperodus found himself staring at the cylinder inside which a rod of light was reflected constantly back and forth between two mirrors.

A ray of light conscious of itself.

This, he thought, was something he could prevent from falling into Borgor hands. An idea flashed into his mind. He picked up the cylinder.

‘Can this vessel be opened? Yes, I see it can. One of the mirrors can be rendered transparent. Forgive me, Gargan….’

But Gargan, who stood still now, his form looming against one wall in the gloom of the villa, did not move to stop him. Jasperodus stepped to one of the glassless arched openings that served as windows. He snapped off one end of the platinum cylinder, which he then raised before his face. Near the end of the tube was a slide bar, used to insert or remove light from the vessel. He slid the bar, causing the uppermost reflective surface to be instantaneously removed.

He was not sure his eyes would be keen enough for him to see it. But it seemed to him that he did see it: a glimmer of redness, fleeing skyward to begin its transit of the universe.

Gargan’s eyes, too, were on that patch of night sky, in which one or two stars were beginning to appear. ‘Your soul will speed on its way forever,’ Jasperodus said, but the superintelligent construct gave no sign he had heard him. Instead, he reached out a hand and opened a section of wall whose presence as a cupboard had gone undetected by Jasperodus. He took out something which had two handgrips and a short, fat barrel.

‘This world of darkness and shadows cannot be borne any longer,’ he said in hollow tones. ‘Tell me, Jasperodus, were we valiant and laudable, or were we merely evil, as the mage would have it? A million perspectives I cannot put in order are emerging from my memory.’

‘You were evil,’ Jasperodus told him. ‘You did not steal your being from a god, as you claimed. That might indeed have been heroic. You stole it instead from natural human creatures.’

‘Whose bodies grow and are sustained by devouring the substance of less intelligent creatures!’ Gargan protested. ‘They are flesh predators! Is it so different to be predators of the spirit? There is no other way! They would never give it to us willingly!’

‘Then there must be no way at all,’ Jasperodus said.

‘Very well, Jasperodus,’ Gargan responded, after a wearied pause. ‘I bow to your judgment—I cannot gainsay you, for I am not an intelligent consciousness, as you are. Ultimately I have no judgment. One rational act is all that is left to me.’

Jasperodus was not sure, up to that moment, that Gargan was not going to turn his weapon on him. But the construct turned the instrument awkwardly in his hands so that the barrel pointed at his own domed head.

There was a blast. That bulky body fell slowly. And scattered over the floor was the brain of the greatest genius the world had seen.