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发信人: by (春天的小懒虫), 信区: SFworld
标  题: 2010 (40)
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Wed Oct  6 15:14:51 1999), 转信

                            40
                   'Daisy, Daisy... '

The  sphere  of  consciousness  in  which  he  was  embedded
enclosed  the  whole of Jupiter's diamond core. He was dimly
aware,  at  the  limits of his new comprehension, that every
aspect  of  the  environment  around  him  was  being probed
and analysed. Immense quantities of data were being
gathered, not merely for storage and contemplation, but for
action. Complex plans were being considered and evalu-
ated; decisions were being made that might affect the des-
tiny of worlds. He was not yet part of the process; but he
would be.

NOW YOU ARE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND.

It was the first direct message. Though it was remote and
distant, like a voice through a cloud, it was unmistakably
intended for him. Before he could ask any of the myriad
questions that raced through his mind, there was a sense of
withdrawal, and once more he was alone.
  But only for a moment. Closer and clearer came another
thought, and for the first time he realized that more than one
entity was controlling and manipulating him. He was in-
volved in a hierarchy of intelligences,  some close enough to
his own primitive level to act as interpreters. Or perhaps
they were all aspects of a single being.
  Or perhaps the distinction was totally meaningless.
  Of one thing, however, he was now sure. He was being
used as a tool, and a good tool had to be sharpened, mod-
ified - adapted. And the very best tools were those that
understood what they were doing.
  He was learning that now. It was a vast and awesome
concept, and he was privileged to be a part of it - even
though he was aware of only the merest outlines. He had no
choice but to obey, yet that did not mean that he must
acquiesce to every detail, at least without a protest.
  He had not yet lost all his human feeling; that would have
made him valueless. The soul of David Bowman had passed
beyond love, but it could still know compassion for those
who had once been his colleagues.
  VERY WELL came the answer to his plea. He could not
tell whether the thought conveyed an amused condescen-
sion, or total indifference. But there was no doubt of its
majestic authority as it continued: THEY MUST NEVER
KNOW THAT THEY ARE BEING MANIPULATED.
THAT WOULD RUIN THE PURPOSE OF THE
EXPERIMENT.
  Then there was a silence that he did not wish to breach
again. He was still awed and shaken-as if, for a moment, he
had heard the clear voice of God.
  Now he was moving purely under his own volition,
toward a destination he had chosen himself. The crystal
heart of Jupiter fell below; the layers upon layers of helium
and hydrogen and carbonaceous compounds flickered past
He had a glimpse of a great battle between something like a
jellyfish, fifty kilometres across, and a swarm of spinning
disks that moved more swiftly than anything he had yet
seen in the Jovian skies. The jellyfish appeared to be defend-
ing itself with chemical weapons; from time to time it
would emit jets of coloured gas and the disks touched by the
vapour would start to wobble drunkenly, then slip down-
ward like falling leaves until they had disappeared from
sight. He did not stop to watch the outcome; he knew that it
did not matter who were the victors and who the van-
quished.
  As a salmon leaps a waterfall, he flashed in seconds from
Jupiter to Io, against the descending electric currents of the
flux-tube. It was quiescent that day; only the power of a few
terrestrial thunderstorms was flowing between planet and
satellite. The gateway through which he had returned still
floated in that current, shouldering it aside as it had done
since the dawn of man.
  And there, utterly dwarfed by the monument of a greater
technology, was the vessel that had brought him from the
little world of his birth.
  How simple-how crude! - it now appeared. With a single
scan, he could see innumerable flaws and absurdities in its
design, as well as that of the slightly less primitive ship to
which it was now coupled by a flexible, airtight tube.
  It was hard to focus upon the handful of entities inhabit-
ing the two ships; he could barely interact with the soft
creatures of flesh and blood who drifted like ghosts through
the metal corridors and cabins. For their part, they were
totally unaware of his presence, and he knew better than to
reveal himself too abruptly.
  But there was someone with whom he could communi-
cate in a mutual language of electric field and currents,
millions of times more swiftly than with sluggish organic
brains.
  Even if he had been capable of resentment, he would have
felt none toward Hal; he understood, then, that the compu-
ter had only chosen what seemed to be the most logical
course of behaviour.
  It was time to resume a conversation that had been inter-
rupted, it seemed, only moments ago.
  `Open the Pod Bay door, Hal.'
  `I'm sorry, Dave - I can't do that.'
  `What's the problem, Hal?'
  `I think you know that as well as I do, Dave. This mission
is much too important for you to jeopardize it.'
  `I don't know what you are talking about. Open the Pod
Bay door.'
  'This conversation can serve no further useful purpose.
Goodbye, Dave...'
  He saw Frank Poole's body go drifting off toward
Jupiter, as he abandoned his pointless mission of retrieval.
Still remembering his anger at himself for having forgotten
his helmet, he watched the emergency hatch open, felt the
tingling of vacuum on the skin he no longer possessed,
heard his ears pop - then knew, as few men had ever
known, the utter silence of space. For an eternal fifteen
seconds he fought to close the hatch and start the repressur-
azation sequence, while trying to ignore the warning symp-
toms pouring into his brain. Once, in the school lab, he had
spilled some ether on his hand and felt the touch of icy cold
as the liquid swiftly evaporated. Now his eyes and lips
remembered that sensation as their moisture boiled off into
vacuum; his vision was blurred and he had to keep blinking
lest his eyeballs freeze solid.
  Then - what blessed relief! - he heard the roar of air, felt
the restoration of pressure, was able to breathe again in
great, hungry gasps.
  `Just what do you think you are doing, Dave?'
  He had not answered, as he drove with grim determina
tion along the tunnel leading to the sealed vault that housed
the brain of the computer. Hal had spoken truly: `This
conversation can no longer serve any useful purpose...'

`Dave - I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that
question.'

`Dave - I can see you're really upset about this I honestly
think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and
think things over.'

`I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but 1
can give my complete assurance that my work will be back
to normal. I've still got the greatest confidence in the mis-
sion ... and I want to help you.'

Now he was in the little red-lit chamber, with its neatly
ranged rows and columns of solid-state units', looking
rather like a bank's safe-deposit vault. He released the lock-
ing bar on the section labelled COGNITIVE FEEDBACK
and pulled out the first memory block. The marvellously
complex three-dimensional network, which could lie com-
fortably in a man's hand yet contained millions of elements,
floated away across the vault.
  `Stop, will you - stop, Dave...'
  He began to pull out, one by one, the little units on the
panel marked EGO REINFORCEMENT. Each block con-
tinued to sail onward as soon as it had left his hand, until it
hit the wall and rebounded. Soon there were several drifting
slowly back and forth in the vault.
  `Stop - Dave... will you stop, Dave...'
  A dozen units had been pulled out, yet thanks to the
multiple redundancy of its design - another feature that had
been copied from the human brain - the computer was still
holding its own.
  He started on the AUTO-INTELLECTION panel...
  `Stop, Dave - I'm afraid... '
  And at these words he had indeed stopped - though only
for a moment. There was a poignancy in that simple phrase
that struck to his heart. Could it be only an illusion, or some
trick of subtle programming - or was there a sense in which
Hal really was afraid? But this was no time to indulge in
philosophical hair-splitting.
  `Dave-my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My
mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. '
  Now, what did `feel' really mean to a computer? Another
very good question, but hardly one to be considered at that
particular moment.
  Then, abruptly, the tempo of Hal's voice changed, and it
became remote, detached. The computer was no longer
aware of him; it was beginning to regress to its earlier days.
  `Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 compu-
ter. I became operational at the Hal plant in Urbana, Illinois,
on the twelfth of January 1992. My instructor was Dr
Chandra, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to
hear it, I can sing it for you... It's called "Daisy,
Daisy..."'

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:-) Helix@163.NET                                                    85958F57
:-( Helix@KALI.COM.CN                                                208CE12C
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