Semmant by Vadim Babenko Page B

faster – it seemed the whole planet was already bathed in flames fueled by banknotes and gold coins. And when the last failed broker was ready to believe the fun would last forever, when he made a foolish bet with the wild hope he would finally get lucky, then suddenly events would occur that were imperceptible at first glance. A few smart ones would flee from any risk right here, go underground, dig in deep, while the ship continued to run into the very eye of the storm, and only in the midst of ten-meter waves would the passengers understand the party had come to an end. The rest is well known: panic, women’s screams, fights for the lifeboats. The recession would escalate quickly as all went downhill. The culprits would be sought here and there. They would be found and shamefully exposed, but that didn’t make it better for anyone.
    The nouveaux riches would go under or turn poor. Yesterday’s rich would tuck in their tails, dump their mistresses, and reflect upon things eternal – during long evenings when the family turned away from them too, as if they had already lost forever. Little was left: cheap brandy in the office – in solitude, in heavy meditation – thoughts of impending death, loathing toward all. The stock exchanges would turn into epicenters of universal grief. On the roofs of banks that touched the sky, shades wandered, looking downward, struggling against the desire to jump to the asphalt – or else giving in to it. The most cautious and timid, those who had been ridiculed only a month before, had now become prophets. Their colleagues hung on every word, sadly comprehending at the same moment: nothing could help them now…
    Greed, brief euphoria, and inevitable payoff – this and much more I translated into the language of dry numbers. All the components of success and failure were embodied in formal structures. Some things, of course, could not be expressed in digits, so I tried to be as clever as possible, turning to pictures, symbols, signs – not even certain Semmant would understand me. At times, in despair, I simply shoved pages of random text at him, hoping in my heart he would catch at least something, even a small gist.
    I thought he would again demand more external memory, but no, this did not happen. The level of his inquiries became notably higher. He started to acquire his own personal “facilities” – I bought him decoders and converters, statistical and mathematical packages, image recognizers and data processing systems. Judging by the metronome, he was laboring at full strength – without resting; indeed, without any pause. Sometimes I would take a look at the code structure. There, as before, everything changed – every day, if not every hour – according to completely incomprehensible rules. I noticed only that he was transferring fragments of his “brain” from disk to disk, from one place to another, complicating the mosaic, altering all connections. This was a good sign, the right developmental process. Obviously, he was building his own picture of the world, his abstraction of everything else – at least so I wanted to think. Just one thing bothered me: I realized the medium in which my robot lived was too inconstant and scattered. I could not grasp its static condition; nor could I make a copy of him, even the most basic backup – to preserve him, to save him in the event of an unforeseen disaster. This did not quite match the concept of eternity I had in my head, but I decided I would think up something later.
    That Semmant was becoming “smarter” there could be no doubt. His initial insatiability, when he was demanding more and more, was replaced by thoughtful selectiveness, precise penetration to the depths. If before he had requested only “data,” sometimes specifying just a rough time interval, presently, he was interested in specifics – down to the price of particular stocks on the Taiwan exchange some fifty-six weeks ago. Many questions now had