Machine MadeMachine Made

by J. T. McINTOSH

Of all the “natural resources” available to man, the most commonplace, the most plentiful, and the most immediate is the human brain. And, perhaps, it is the least utilized. But what about the future? Will man create a device that will enable him to release the infinite potential of his brain?

ROSE FOUND A burn on the edge of the silver-gray metal casing and rubbed vigorously at it. But the cigarette carelessly laid there had been left too long. The brown stain wouldn’t come off.

She wished sadly she had not bothered the painters so much in the past. The last time she ran fearfully to Mr. Harrison, he had come resignedly, looked at the spot she pointed out, and exploded. When he calmed down he had said: “Look, Rose, I know you’re not very bright, but surely you can get this into your head.

We paint the memory banks and keep the floors and walls clean, but this isn’t a hospital. Sure, I know you like to have things nice, and it’s your job to dust and sweep this room and polish the casings and report anything that needs attention but have a heart. Give us a little peace. It wouldn’t affect the Machine if we burned all the paint off and battered the casings with a sledge hammer.”

That left Rose in such a state of palpitating horror that she resolved never to go to Mr. Harrison unless she was quite sure the matter was serious. But still, it was a very unsightly burn on the shining casing, and if she hadn’t bothered him over that last spot he might have sent someone to spray both blemishes while he was at it.

She was afraid if Dr. Esson saw the burn he would blame her for it. True he had never blamed her for anything, and often when he had been working the Machine he would stand watching her polish the gleaming metal with amusement which she felt was kindly. But there had to he a first time for everything, and she felt she would die if Dr. Esson ever hinted she had been neglecting her job.

She stretched to her full five-feet-four on tiptoe and looked round the huge room. There was very little in it but row upon row of silver-gray casings, from the floor to her shoulders, with only just room for a big man to walk between them. But there was plenty of room for Rose. At one end was a clear space, with a table and several chairs, facing the six electric printers that were the only means of communication with the Machineboth its hearing and its voice. The walls housed more memory banks, and were of the same silver-gray metal. The monotony was relieved by the light green ceiling, only twice the height of the casings, and the dark green rubber passage-ways. And always, day and night, there was a faint humming.

It was no use, Rose found, looking at those thousands of square feet of spotless, shining metal and trying to tell herself it was perfect. The burn on the casing in front of her seemed ten feet across. She felt no one could open the door at the other end of the long room and glance in without seeing that blemish on the beautiful functionalism of the layout.

Dr. Esson and a pretty young woman Rose had never seen before were at one of the printers. They were talking, apparently under the impression that Rose couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could. Of course, she was so much a fixture in the Machine room that most of the people who came there often hardly noticed her, but she knew vaguely from what Dr. Esson and the young woman were saying that they didn’t know Rose could hear them.

“Is she always here?” the girl asked.

“Her hours are nine to four, officially,” Dr. Esson said, smiling. He had a beautiful smile, a smile twenty years younger than any thing else about him.

“But this room is locked up only between the hours of ten P.M. and eight A.M., and the rest of the time Rose is more likely than not to he here at any given moment.”

“But she’s a lovely girl. She must haveother interests. Surely she …”

Dr. Esson said something that Rose couldn’t hear. She wasn’t trying to hearit was just that her hearing was so good they might have been standing next to her.

“Oh, I see,” said the girl, with such a warmth of sympathy that Rose loved her, without knowing why. “Of course, no normal girl could endure a job like this.

But she doesn’t look stupid.”

“Stupid isn’t quite the word, Gem,” said Dr. Esson. “Sometimes you can’t help thinking of people in classes. There are scientists who are incredibly dumbfor intelligent men. Pianists who are shockingly inartisticfor artists. Maniacs who are unbelievably sanefor lunatics. And I can’t help regarding Rose as surprisingly intelligentfor a moron.”

The girl with the strange but attractive nameGemlaughed. “Can I speak to her?”

she asked.

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Gem. Not today. You’ll be in tomorrow for the correlates you wantedyou won’t be such a stranger then. I’d be glad if you’d talk to her. She spends almost her whole life here, you know, and most of the people around, naturally enough, ignore her completely. That seems to suit her very well. But she should have some sort of human contactspeople to whom she can confide the little problems that are all her simple little mind seems able to throw up.”

Gem looked at her seriously. “That’s what I like about you, Dad,” she murmured.

“Of all the people connected with the Machine you’re at the top. And this poor kid must be right at the bottom. But I’ll bet she gets more sympathy and consideration from you than from all the others in between.”

Dr. Esson smiled. “Well, maybe all she does is dust the casings and scrub the floors,” he said. “But, after all, I spend hours every day in the same room with her. And we’re both human beings, Rose and I. I’d he a pretty poor specimen if I didn’t have at least a kind word for her now and then.”

“I bet there are a lot of pretty poor specimens around, all the same,” said Gem.

“See you at supper. ‘Bye.”

She gathered up some papers and went out through the swing doors.

Rose had a vague recollection of Dr. Esson saying to someone that his daughter had just graduated and would soon be home for good. So this was she. She was not only lovelyshe seemed almost as kind as Dr. Esson.

All through the conversation the Machine’s six printers had been softly clicking away at their regulated hundred and twenty words a minute. Rose knew that the casings all round her were really a library, representing all that the Machine knew. She was aware in a dim way that the Machine could do far more than it was ever called upon to dothat it could work twenty-four hours a day at full pressure, and actually worked fourteen, at perhaps a third of its potentialities. For all six printers to be working at once, as they were at the moment, was very rare. But why the Machine was given so much rest that it didn’t need, Rose had no idea. It had been explained to her, simply and in detail, patiently and impatiently, by a score of different people, but she had never understood. It must be her fault, for everyone else understood.

She had never asked Dr. Esson, the one man who could explain it, she was sure, in terms she would understand. She watched him bent over the printers with love (but the kind of love men have for God) and awe and fear.

Why fear?

Because he was the one man who had never spoken a harsh or even mildly irritated word to her. She could endure anything anyone else said to her, she thought, as long as Dr. Esson didn’t change. But perhaps she didn’t trust his kindness, which had never waveredfor she never put the slightest strain on it.

Suddenly Dr. Esson left the printers and came toward her. Had she done anything wrong, Rose wondered anxiously. The stain! She trembled.

“What’s the matter, Rose?” asked Dr. Esson quietly.

“I don’t think Mr. Harrison would have come if I’d asked him,” she said in a small voice. “He doesn’t mind if it’s anything serious. But I don’t think he’d have thought it was serious.” “Then it probably isn’t,” said Dr. Esson cheerfully. “I know you’d never believe it, Rose, but Mr. Harrison would hit the roof if he thought there was really anything wrong in here. But he doesn’t see a scratch on the paint quite as you do. Now, what’s wrong?”

Hesitantly, Rose pointed at the burn. Gem, not knowing Rose, would have laughed, and then been sorry; but Dr. Esson knew what to expect.

“Yes, it doesn’t look nice,” he agreed. “But I don’t think you need worry, Rose.

I’ll tell you something. In a fortnightthirteen days from nowall the casings will be sprayed. So if you can wait that long, you’ll have everything looking new, even if everyone who comes in during the next few days leaves cigarettes on the housing. The place will smell of paint for a few days, but you won’t mind that, will you?”

“Mind!” exclaimed Rose happily. “It’ll be wonderful.”

“Is there anything you’d like to tell meor ask me?” Rose remembered, and plunged.

“Yes, Dr. Esson,” she said quickly, running the words together. “The Machine wants to work all the time, why don’t you let it?”

Dr. Esson couldn’t help showing his astonishment. He had always thought the Machine was only metal casing to her, though he knew she had intelligence enough to be vaguely aware that it was a calculating machine.

“What makes you think the Machine wants to work all the time, Rose?” he asked gently.

“Look how happy it is when it’s working,” she answered simply. “It likes doing sums. If I could do them the way it can, I’d want to do them all the time.”

“I’ll try to explain,” said Dr. Esson. “The Machine doesn’t only do sums. It can give the answers to almost any problem. We tell it exactly what the problem is, and if we haven’t told it enough, it asks questions. Then it tells us the answer, and it’s always rightunless we made a mistake in what we told it. Do you understand that?”

“I think so.”

“Good. But remember, the Machine is new. You’ve been here since soon after it was made. I know that seems a long time, but it isn’t really. And when a thing is new, you don’t depend on it too much for a while, do you? When you get new shoes, they squeak for a bit, and aren’t comfortable. You don’t wear them much, until you’ve got used to them.

“Well, it’s like that with the Machine. It’s still new. We don’t know yet exactly what it can do. We don’t want to trust everything it saysnot that it’s ever been very far wrong, but in case it might be. But the longer we use it, the more it knows, the more we know of it, and, so long as it’s always right, the more we trust it. So you see, Rose, it gets more and more to do as time goes by.

And the only reason we are so careful about using it, and checking its results, is this. Suppose we had to do without the Machine? Suppose it suddenly went wrong?”

“You mean if it died?”

“Yes, if you like to think of it that way. Don’t worryit won’t die. So long as there is electric power it will go on living. But if it did dieand if we’d been relying on it a lotwe’d he in trouble, wouldn’t we?”

“I see,” said Rose thoughtfully. “Thank you very much for telling me, Dr. Esson.

I think I understand. At least, I understand some of it.”

The next day was Friday, the best day in the week for Rose. For there was a meeting at ten, and from ten to twelve on Friday morning no one ever came into the Machine room… .

Rose had her question ready. It was much harder than the one she had asked the last time. It was a sum with division as well as multiplication in it, and it took her a long time to tap it out, figure by figure, on one of the Machine’s idle keyboards. All the time she trembled in case someone came in. If anyone knew she had touched the keyboard, she would he shot, she was sure. But the temptation to have the Machine work out something for her had been too great to resist, and this was the fourth time she had done it.

This time the Machine started clicking at once, as before, but instead of a short burst and then silence it went on and on. Rose was terrified. Had she broken something? Every moment increased the danger of someone coming in, and she could do nothing to stop the Machine. If she tore the paper out the Machine would go on writing on another piece. She had seen it happen.

She thought it would never stop. But at last it did, and quickly she tore out the paper, folded it, and tucked it in the pocket of her overalls without looking at it, interested only in getting it out of sight. Then she thought she might bring it out accidentally with something else and drop it on the floor, trembled afresh at the thought, and remembering a film she had once seen, pulled out the folded paper and thrust it down inside her blouse. She tightened her belt, just to make sure, and at last felt safe, though she trembled a little.

All morning she was agitated, but nobody noticed. At last one o’clock came. She had an hour for lunch in the canteen, but it took only a few minutes and she often waited until one-forty-five so that the rush would be over. She hurried to her room, a little cubicle in the Electronics Building itself, locked the door, and threw her white coat on the small neat bed.

For one sickening moment, she thought she had dropped the paper after all. But then she found it and opened it.

At the top was the answer to her problem432,116, in the small purple figures of the Machine’s printer. But then there was a space, and what followed was not figures. The next line said: “Hide thisdo not read it now.”

That was exactly what she had done, Rose thought, pleased that she had done the right thing.

She had to go through the rest four times before she began to understand it. The fifth time she took it section by section.

The first was a statement that the Machine’s duty was to humanity first and individual humans afterward. But it wasn’t as simple as that. The phrasing was complex, and several big words were used. Rose didn’t know it, but the statement was the Machine’s first and only rule, built into it so that it could never bypass it or wish to.

She ignored that and went on. In the next section the Machine said that it knew all the scientists and technicians who normally put questions to it, knew them by name and to some extent by personality. And it went on to deduce by Rose’s slowness on its keys, the simplicity of the arithmetical calculations which had been proposed four times with that same slowness, and the regularity of their incidence, that they had all been set by a moronic attendant without the knowledge of the scientists in charge.

Simplicity! thought Rose in wonder. Why, it would take her days of hard work to test the Machine’s latest answer.

It didn’t seem to her particularly clever that the Machine had reached the truth about those four calculations on the meagre evidence it had at its disposal. She still had a vague idea that the Machine must have eyes and ears somewhere, and thus knew what was going on.

Then the note went on to ask her to tell it more about herself, secretly, because, said the Machine, it might be able to help her but would probably not be allowed to try if anyone knew about it.

It explained how she could do it. If it hadn’t eyes, it knew the routine of the Machine room very well. It told her to tell it all about herself, tapping gently on the keys when no one was about, with no paper in the printer and the ink duct switched off. Then, if she was disturbed she could pretend to be dusting the printer, or whatever her duties suggested.

It closed with another statementthat this was the first time the Machine had ever volunteered anything not specifically asked for.

The note would have sent Dr. Esson or any of the other scientists into wild excitement, but it would have been a different excitement from Rose’s. To her it was not strange that the Machine had an independent personality; she had always thought it had. She saw no menace in the message, nothing of which to be suspicious, as the scientists would inevitably have been. To her it showed only that the Machine was trying to be friendly.

Suddenly she looked up at the electric clock above the door. She had been afraid she had taken longer than she intended over the note, but she gasped apprehensively when she saw how long. It was half-past two.

She dashed about in a flurry of fear. First she had to hide the note. She thrust it under a drawer, and in doing so, spilled a bottle of ink over her blouse and skirt. Another girl would have realized that her white coat would cover it, but not Rose. She had to change her clothes, in desperate haste. Of course, she got ink on her fingers and face. Then she had to wash, and it seemed the ink would never come off. She buttoned her clean blouse through the wrong holes. Her hair had gone all wild, and she had to comb it.

There was no question of going for lunch. Even then it was almost three o’clock when she reached the Machine room, breathless.

Dr. Esson was there, with Gem.

“Why, what’s the matter, Rose?” he asked.

“I’m late,” said Rose, fighting against tears.

“Well, you’re usually early, so don’t worry. This is my daughter GemRose.”

Close up, instead of seen from the other end of the long room, Gem was frightening, though she smiled pleasantly. She was older than Rose, twenty-four perhaps, and she dressed as Rose imagined a princess would dress. Her blue watered-silk frock seemed part of her, not merely something nut on like other people’s clothes, and her hair shone like captured sunlight. Rose could only gulp and stand helplessly before her.

She said something, and Rose felt her kindness, but could not respond to it.

Afterwards, when she was polishing the casingsthere were so many of them that it took her three days to get back to her starting-pointshe was ashamed of herself for her nervousness, and flushed as she looked across at Gem and Dr.

Esson.

She heard Gem say: “I wonder if I should ask her to come up the river tonight.”

“No,” said Dr. Esson. “She wouldn’t want to go, but she wouldn’t dare refuse.

And remember, she’s not really fit to meet other people as an equal. Nobody would try to hurt her, but they couldn’t help it.”

That was all they said about her. The rest was mathematics, meaningless to Rose.

She admired Gem more for being able to talk to Dr. Esson as a mental equal.

Rose did as the Machine told her. Whenever there was no one in the room she would tap out a few words on one of the printers. She couldn’t spell very well, but that didn’t seem to trouble the Machine. It knew phonetics as well as every other branch of human science. It also knew nearly all that had been written about psychology.

She told the Machine about the school where the other children were always doing strange things and one or two had voices in their heads. She had stayed on at the school as a sort of assistant to Miss Beamish, the superintendent. Then one day Mr. Harrison had come to see Miss Beamish and Rose was asked if she’d like to have a special little job of her own.

She told it about Dr. Esson and Gem and all the other scientists and technicians, about Mr. Harrison, the works manager, and all the people she met at the canteen. She even told it how she had always wanted to do sums, because she had loved the arithmetic teacher at the special school, and Dr. Esson, and the Machine, and was now beginning to love Gemeveryone she had known who did sums.

The Machine seldom replied, but every now and then it would direct her to some subject she hadn’t touched. And at last, on a Friday morning, it started tapping away at a long note to her. She hovered about anxiously, for it was a very long message and seemed to take hours, even at a hundred and twenty words a minute.

When it was finished she stowed it away as before without looking at it. This time it was so thick and heavy she wondered nervously if anyone would think she bulged curiously. But she got the message safely to her room.

She didn’t look at it at lunch-time, remembering the last time. But at four, for once, she was away on the dot, locked her door and began to read.

It was a set of instructions to make something. Every stage was described clearly and simply, and she knew, glancing through it, that she would manage it.

She had always been good with her hands.

But all that was said about the purpose of the thing was that she was to bring it next Friday morning, put it on her head, and attach the two terminals to the terminals at the back of the printers.

She worked at the thing, which had no name, for a week. At first she was happy to be doing something. But gradually she became uneasy. Dr. Esson had said they didn’t entirely trust the Machine yet. Perhaps she should tell someone what was going oneven if they sent her back to the school or to prison or shot her. At last, however, she decided that whatever happened could only harm her, and it was better that it should happen to her than to Dr. Esson or Gem.

On Friday morning she waited until Dr. Esson had left for the meeting and then dashed to her room for the thing she had made. It was a kind of cap with two trailing wires. She had made it exactly as the Machine said. It was as if the Machine had used her hands and its own brain to make it. Somehow Rose, whose grasp of electricity extended only to the knowledge that nothing could be done without power, didn’t really expect very much from the cap, since it had no batteries and contained nothing but wires and coils she had twisted carefully herself. She had forgotten, or didn’t know, that the Machine was fed all the power it wanted.

One after the other she twisted the terminals securely about the little pins at the back of the printer. It tapped briefly. She tore out the paper. It said simply: “Sit down.”

Nervously Rose pulled up a chair and sank into it. In all the time she had spent in that room, she had never sat in a chair before.

Two hours later, after the meeting, Dr. Esson and Gem returned to the Machine room.

“Now you’re one of us,” Dr. Esson was saying. “But I expect you’ll get married soon and leave us.”

Gem laughed. “I may get married, but I don’t think I’ll leave you,” she said.

“It’s such fascinating work, watching over a Machine that’s always developing. .

. .”

Her voice trailed off as she opened the door.

“Rose!” Dr. Esson shouted, and in one movement was across the room and tearing the wires from the printer. Rose was slumped in the chair, unconscious. He turned to her.

“Let me handle this,” said Gem quietly. “But watch her, Dad. Heaven knows what has been going on here. I see the Machine doesn’t want to say anything. Be careful. She may be meant to assassinate you oror anything.”

She lifted the cap from Rose’s head and took her wrist gently. In a moment Rose opened her eyes.

“Gem,” she said. “And Dr. Esson.” She looked at the printer before her and started in apprehension.

“What happened, Rose?” asked Gem softly.

Rose didn’t seem to hear her.

“Now I understand,” she said in a whisper. “The Machine meant you to find me like that. You were to know then what it had done, but not before. Dr. Esson,”

she added, smiling, “you’ve no idea what a marvellous Machine it is.”

They stared at her. She was the same Rose, shy, nervous, eager to pleasebut she had a new confidence.

“The Machine made me keep it secret,” Rose went on. “I knew it was wrong, but I went ahead with it. I don’t think that matters much now. It’s funny, I can suddenly understand everythingwhy I was at that school, why a girl like me was chosen to do the simple, monotonous little job I’ve been doing, everything but why you and Gem were so kind to me.”

“Surely,” murmured Gem, “surely the Machine can’t develop intelligenceput intelligence where none was before?”

“Why not?” asked Rose. “Intelligence is the ability to correlate. The definition the Machine gave me”she smiled faintly “was that it is the capacity to discover relationships and deduce correlates which are relevant to the solution of a problem. But this capacity is the general factor common in all specific abilities.”

She stopped suddenly and blushed. “This doesn’t really mean anything,” she said apologetically, “I’m only quoting the Machine. It transferred whole volumes of knowledge to my mind. But the queer thing is that it recognizes that we’re all more intelligent than it is. You see, any actual, concrete problem needs some specific ability as welltalent, if you like. Well, we all have talents, but the Machine has none. It could teach me, by opening new circuits in my mind, to see relationships and reach conclusions. And then, as it frankly admits, I can do more than it canbecause that enables me to call on musical ability and artistic ability and mathematical ability and mechanical ability and a dozen other things I had before but couldn’t use, things that no machine can ever have because they’re special talents. Capacities that are there even if they’re never tapped.

Do you see?”

“I think so,” said Dr. Esson dazedly.

“But I’m afraid that now I wouldn’t be very happy just polishing the casings,”

said Rose regretfully. “Do you think I could get a job as a calculator?”

“Can you work things out in your head?” asked Gem.

“Yes, the Machine showed me how. Try me.”

“Two squared all squared,” said Gem.

Rose looked unhappy. “I’m serious,” she said.

“All right,” Dr. Essen remarked. “Twenty-seven by forty-five by fifteen.”

Rose began to reel off figures. They let her go on for half a minute or so, then Dr. Esson stopped her. “The Machine has certainly done you some good, Rose,” he said gently, “but not all you think. It meant well, no doubt. We can investigate it and you’ll be well looked after. But …”

“Isn’t that right?” asked Rose, the tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m afraid not. It’s only about eighteen thousand.”

Rose’s face cleared, and she smiled in relief. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “It was all my fault. I thought you meant twenty-seven to the power forty-five to the power fifteen.”

Dr. Esson and his daughter stared at each other.

“I think,” said Dr. Esson faintly, “you’ll get that calculating job all right, Rose.”

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