Part 4 (1/2)

- ”To a certain extent, yes. At least, I can always pour a gla.s.s of water out of a cloud.”

- ”OK, let's a.s.sume that you can always get yourself some water for free. But your house - even if we a.s.sume that it will be completely built by NanoTech and won't cost you a penny - it will still be standing on land, and a plot of land costs money, and that means that you still won't be able to build it, if you don't have any money!”

- ”Tell me Colonel, have you ever camped out? Ever put up a tent in a forest?”

- ”Suppose I did.”

- ”You didn't pay any money for the land you put up your tent on, did you?”

- ”But I put up the tent for one night only, while a house will stand there permanently!”

- ”Who said that a house must stand in one place permanently?”

- ”What on earth do you mean by that?” - asked the Colonel. The feeling that he had been dragged to the very brink of an abyss and was being forced to look down there, at another, frighteningly alien world, that feeling became almost unbearable.

- ”Our team of comrades have formulated for ourselves three rules of 'good' design practices that are most consistent with the NanoTech System capabilities. The first, and the most important rule is that things must be what we call 'living'.”

The Colonel opened his mouth to ask something, but Levshov had antic.i.p.ated his question: ”Let me explain what I mean. Take for example that very first VCR that we produced, the one that we a.s.sembled in the replicator. That one was an absolutely 'dead' thing. 'Dead' not in the sense that it didn't work - it actually worked perfectly - but it didn't hold a single living cyborg-bacteria, and that meant that it could not rebuild itself, couldn't change its own design, couldn't repair itself and so forth. It was a very ordinary thing, one of those things that we usually find all around us, the only difference being that it had not been built with machine tools at a factory, but rather had been a.s.sembled by cyborg-bacteria in a replicator. That was the only difference, and the difference lay not in the thing itself, but in its earlier history, which was absolutely immaterial from the standpoint of its consumer qualities.

Now, let's have a look at the VCR which I have just produced before your very eyes, the 1995 model. This one is already what we call a 'semi-live' product. It already incorporates quite a lot of living cyborg-bacteria. They provide power to this thing, they can even re-grow the video heads, if they get worn-out. However, this product also contains a lot of 'dead' parts, that, built by the cyborg- bacteria though they were, don't contain cyborg-bacteria themselves. And this means that this thing will never be able to instantaneously disappear, to decompose itself into individual cyborg-bacteria that could once again disperse.”

- ”Why would they need to do this?” - asked the Colonel, baffled.

- ”Don't you see it? As things stand now, you'll finish watching your video ca.s.sette, switch off the VCR, and it'll just be left standing in the corner gathering dust and occupying s.p.a.ce to absolutely no purpose, until you once again decide to watch something. How much more convenient it would have been if, for the time between the two viewing sessions, it had just disappeared, with the cyborg-bacteria that had been its building blocks re-a.s.sembling into some other thing, the one that you need at that specific moment in time. They could have become a part of a plate, a spoon, a toothbrush, a razor, a coat, a shoe, a chair for you to sit on, anything that you actually need at the current moment in time. And they would have left that thing as soon as the need for that thing is no longer felt, and they would have gone into a new thing, the one you are going to need at the next moment in time.

Look at this empty chair near me. Why does it have to stand here, while n.o.body is sitting on it? And nevertheless it does stand here and occupies s.p.a.ce. In a perfect world, it should have only appeared here if a third person came into this room. And this applies to the majority of things around us - we only use them one percent of the time, at best. But they occupy s.p.a.ce in our houses the whole one hundred percent of the time. Dead things demand that their owner dust them, maintain them in proper condition, and always take them with him every time he moves house. Oh, those moves! There seems to be nothing so terrible as moving house, and this terror can chain a man to one and only place of living forever. Dead things turn their owners into their slaves!

And now imagine a house built in the true spirit of NanoTech. At any given moment in time, only a few things exist in it physically. Actually, only those things that you need at that particular moment. And at the same time, there exist in it an infinite number of things - all the things in the world that have been entered into the NanoTech Network database are potentially present in that house, since any of them at any moment can be brought out of non-existence and be given a material form. And the NanoTech-type house itself , if you live in it alone, contains only one room, since you cannot simultaneously be in more than one room. And at the same time, potentially, it contains an infinite number of rooms, since that one and only room can indefinitely change its appearance and size, filling itself with all kinds of things, effectively transforming itself into a different room, into an infinite number of rooms. And as soon as you leave your house, it disappears or transforms, for example, into your car, or into a house for another man who was pa.s.sing by and decided that it would be a good idea to live in that place for a day. And if you, during your outing suddenly have a wish to find yourself back at home, your house will immediately reappear in front of you wherever you are.”

- ”Immediately? I find that hard to believe.” - said the Colonel - ”It took you almost four minutes to grow only one VCR.”.

- ”Let me repeat it once again - this VCR is a semi-live thing. It grows so slowly only because in this case we force NanoTech into reproducing a thing which was designed to be manufactured using an absolutely different method of production, that is, the serial industrial machine production method characteristic of capitalism. In this case we abuse NanoTech by making it operate in a manner which is completely inconsistent with its character. I have done this demonstration on purpose, so as to show you that in principle NanoTech can even cope with such difficult task as an almost perfect reproduction of things characteristic of a historically antecedent method of production. It is worth noting here that machine production cannot always cope with the task of reproducing, by its own means, things that are characteristic of an antecedent era - the era of master craftsmen working manually, the era of feudalism.

And now I'm going to give you a demonstration of a video system designed in the true style of NanoTech. Please note the difference in the time required for its manufacture.

This time I won't need much material, so I'll just use the bacteria that live inside my body.”

Levshov put his hands on the table, palms up, and suddenly the palms started to cover with a sort of perspiration, to glisten with little beads that began to quickly grow and turn whitish. The beads began to roll off onto the table, and in a second they merged into a single thin white sheet. Half a second later the sheet suddenly changed its color to deep black.

- ”So it's ready now. Two and a half seconds.” - said Levshov.

- ”What's ready?” - asked the Colonel.

- ”The video system is ready. Please, order the movie you want to watch.”

Only then the Colonel noticed that the sheet lying on the table was no longer black, but was glowing as if it were a computer screen, and on that screen a list of movie t.i.tles was slowly scrolling.

- ”We don't have a very wide selection yet.” - apologized Levshov - ”as of now, only a few hundreds of movies have been stored in the NanoTech Network memory, but we believe that as soon as the Network becomes accessible to the general public, the users will transfer to it everything that is now available on video ca.s.settes... Don't be shy, Colonel, choose a film t.i.tle and touch it with your finger!”

The Colonel warily poked at the t.i.tle of his favorite movie, the list of t.i.tles immediately cleared off the screen, and instead the Colonel saw the familiar movie characters, in full color and motion.

- ”I just can't understand where the sound is coming from.” - said the Colonel after a few seconds of viewing.

- ”The film soundtrack is fed directly to your auditory nerve, by-pa.s.sing the phase of its transformation into sound waves, which makes for the high quality of the sound, because there are no intermediaries, no loudspeakers which usually introduce sound distortion. Generally speaking, the picture could also be fed directly to the optic nerve, and this would be more consistent with the Third Principle of good design in the style of the NanoTech. The Third Principle says: always use only direct interface between the human nerve system and the NanoTech Network, without any intermediaries like human body's sense organs or muscles. In practical terms this means that if, for example, we design a automobile for the NanoTech, it should not have a dashboard - all the necessary information about the status of the car systems should be fed into the driver's optic nerve, to be superimposed on his actual field of vision. Also, such a car should not have a steering wheel or pedals - mental commands from the driver should be routed directly to the car's final controls, without any mechanical intermediaries. All this allows to radically simplify the design, and consequently, to considerably reduce the time needed to ”grow” a car.

- ”You said it was the Third Principle. And what is the Second one?” - asked the Colonel.

- ”The Second Principle of good NanoTech-style design says: for a power source of the device you are designing always use the internal power of the cyborg-bacteria, and the power should always be generated at the same location where it is to be consumed. This allows to eliminate all the contraptions for transferring power within the device. For example, our semi-live VCR complies with the Second Principle only in part: the power is indeed generated inside it by cyborg-bacteria, but after that it has to be transferred to 'non-live' components, such as electrical motors, integrated circuits, and so on. That's why it has so many extra wires, levers and shafts serving the only purpose of transferring electrical and mechanical energy from one location to another. From the standpoint of the Second Principle, a much better design is the video system that you can now see on the table.” - Levshov nodded towards the glowing sheet, where the scenes from the Colonel's favorite movie still continued to unfold. - ”Each luminous dot on this surface is a cyborg-bacteria that itself generates the power for its own glow. That means that the power is consumed at the same spot where it is generated. This is only possible in a completely 'live' product.”

- ”So, if I understand you correctly,” - said the Colonel musingly - ”an automobile built in compliance with the NanoTech principles doesn't have any transmission, and the function of the engine is performed by the wheels themselves?”

- ”You got the idea absolutely right. And to completely visualize a NanoTech-style car, please remember that it always has just as many seats as it has pa.s.sengers and its trunk is never larger than the luggage it carries. And if you take into account the fact that it just doesn't make any sense to transport things that can always be grown at your destination, it means that usually such car doesn't have any trunk at all.”

- ”And all of this, all this things, cars, houses, all this will immediately become available to every human being on Earth as soon as you give a command to activate the system?” - asked the Colonel in a slightly trembling voice.

- ”In principle, yes, although it will take some time for the people to learn to use the system. But it's not very difficult, anyway. We have recently developed a graphic user interface, where the signals are fed directly to the user's optic nerve which results in the user seeing an illusory, or a ”virtual”, to use the current buzzword, s.p.a.ce, or rather a ”virtual store” filled with all kinds of things, where he can walk around and choose whatever he or she needs. After that it's just a matter of the user reaching for the chosen thing and grabbing it in virtual s.p.a.ce. The thing will immediately materialize...”

- ”That's not what I was asking about.” - interrupted the Colonel, impatience showing in his voice. He felt that the abyss had already opened up under his feet, and he was falling, falling, falling... - ”It's money. The money in your virtual shop - is it also virtual or is it real, after all?”

- ”You know Colonel, I just can't imagine what other explanations do you need. I've been speaking about this for an hour now, and you still don't seem to understand that there'll be no money at all. Think for yourself: who and for what purpose may need any money at all, when any one can get out of NanoTech any thing he or she may need, absolutely for free? Money will take its rightful place in museums as an evidence of a past-and-gone era in the history of mankind.”

In despair, the Colonel squeezed his head between his hands and fell silent. The world around him was coming down.

The Colonel had spent all his life to make a career for himself, to reach the position which allowed him, back in the days of the total chaos of late 1991, to grab hold of a certain amount of the Party's money, to transfer it abroad and stash it away in a Swiss bank account. This money was supposed to provide for a comfortable existence in his old age and a secure future for his heirs. All the terror he had to go through to do that, all the nerves and energy spent! And, as it turns out, everything was in vain?! The monstrous unfairness of this all was searing the Colonel's soul. His brain was in hectic search for a reb.u.t.tal.

- ”There can be no market without money, and the market is the only force that can fine-tune the required amount of production!” - spluttered the Colonel and immediately realized the stupidity of his remark.

- ”Why would you need to additionally fine-tune the production when everybody produces exactly what he needs, at the exact moment when he needs it, and in the exact quant.i.ties he needs?” - Levshov seemed surprised - ”The market forces are only needed to adjust the amount of production at that phase in the development of productive forces where things have to be produced before they are actually needed.”

- ”Without money there'll be no incentive for increasing the efficiency of labor!” - persisted the Colonel.

- ”Whose labor?” - asked Levshov, surprised - ”The labor of cyborg-bacteria? Since it's them who'll be doing all the work.”

- ”What I mean is creative work. There'll still have to be somebody who'll be inventing new things for NanoTech, otherwise the progress will stop. Does it make any sense for an inventor to work, if his invention won't in the end give him any advantage over the rest of the people?”

- ”You know, Colonel, I think you are seriously mistaken about the motives behind creative work of an inventor. The desire to create is a need deeply rooted in every human being. This need exists not only because in satisfying it one may gain some advantages for oneself, but also because of the very fact that a human being has a brain which needs a workout from time to time, just as muscles do. Just as you'll never be able to sit in an unchanging posture for hours - you'll finally need to stretch your legs - your mind also needs stretching from time to time. The brain wants to work just because it exists, however, under the existing method of production, only a chosen few can afford the luxury of brain-streching, while most of the other people have to earn their living by doing purely mechanical mind- numbing jobs. Under capitalism only a few lucky ones can afford to do some creative work, but even they are forced to sell their creative products in order to be able to buy their freedom from mechanical work. In contrast to this, NanoTech opens up the possibility of doing creative work to every person on Earth, and also allows any person to immediately use the creative products of any other person. I think that as a result of this we are going to see a creative progress like we could never imagine under capitalism.”

The Colonel would not give up: ”I just don't want to listen to all this babble about mind-stretching, need for creativity, and the like bulls.h.i.+t. The people won't understand your system and won't accept it, because the motive force behind the progress of the human race has always been and forever will be the desire of each individual to get ahead of his neighbor, to become richer then his neighbor, more powerful than his neighbor, to become famous and make his neighbor green with envy, to buy things which only you can buy and never your neighbor. You want to destroy all this, to let everybody have anything he wants, but the people will never accept such a state of affairs where n.o.body can envy anyone. If this happens, n.o.body would want to live at all, because there would be nothing to live for! Imagine a typical everyday situation: one guy, let's call him Kolya, strolls down the street and meets his friend, let's call him Vasya, and says to him: 'Come and visit my place, I want to show you something. Show what? Just come and you'll see.' And it turns out that Kolya has, for example, a luxury model VCR, a genuine Panasonic from j.a.pan, and Vasya does not have anything like that! And Kolya also has video ca.s.settes, direct from US, with the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and Vasya still has none of these! And that's what makes Kolya happy! And that's why he needs a VCR and ca.s.settes! He doesn't really need these idiotic blockbusters! He needs the satisfaction of knowing that he is superior to Vasya! But if Vasya were to have the same VCR, and the same movies, why would Kolya need a VCR at all, if this VCR doesn't help him to become superior to Vasya? Why would he torture himself watching these idiotic movies? And, on the other hand, why would Vasya want to have a VCR, when Kolya, Petya, whoever, can at any moment obtain the same VCR for themselves? You have invented an absolutely useless thing, Mister Levshov. The people won't understand you.”

- ”People? What do you know about people, Colonel? Do you know how many people on planet Earth are starving?

Physically starving, and can actually die of starvation.

NanoTech can feed them and save them from death. Do you know how many illiterate people are there on Earth? Really illiterate people, people who cannot read, people who are denied all the wonderful treasures of knowledge acc.u.mulated by our civilization? NanoTech can open up to them these treasures. And a VCR, as a means of obtaining knowledge, could be very helpful in doing this. But when the age of NanoTech arrives, neither a VCR, nor any other thing will ever be the means of establis.h.i.+ng Kolya's superiority over Vasya, or Vasya's over Kolya. The time of apish games is over. And, I hope, forever.”