Chapter III.XIV

Vitaly Ivolginsky

Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre)

Third Act — Qualquer ou Uma Grande Recompensa

Chapter III.XIV

“How long do we have to go?”, Galbraith asked the specialist.

“It’s better not to ask this question”, he answered evasively.

This means, the inspector thought, the institute is indeed located quite deep underground. Strange, very strange – why hide so carefully from human eyes what relates to computer technology?

“Would you mind telling me then who this Montesi you mentioned is?”, the inspector asked the question again.

“Pourquoi pas?”, exclaimed the silver-haired man in French. “This is exactly what we have prepared for beginners”.

“Curious. And how many people have you directed to the right path?”, the policeman said sarcastically.

“So far, not a singre one, you are the first to receive such an honour”, the Japanese raised his voice again.

Walking behind his companions, Galbraith quickly realized why he was the first guest of this institute – few people would want to go deep underground, inhaling the stale air and trying not to fall head over heels from the spiral staircase. The inspector had the feeling that he was descending into the Mariana Trench or, God forbid, to where the took place the actions of “Divine Comedy” by Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri…

“Montesi was an engineer-constructor”, meanwhile the specialist began, “who, from his school days, cherished the idea of ​​creating an eternal supercomputer”.

“What-what?”, Galbraith asked, not believing his ears.

“Eternal in that sense”, as if making a footnote, the silver-haired man said, “that the integrated circuits that form the basis of the machine do not wear out over time”.

“Of course, subject to operating conditions”, the Japanese inserted moralizingly.

“Mister Manabu is right, a supercomputer will not last a day if left in the rain, but who would come up with the idea of such an act of vandalism?”, the specialist agreed with the interlocutor.

“Well, yes…”, Galbraith said quietly.

“All in all”, the silver-haired man continued the story, “Montesi, as a student, moved from his native Chile to England, and in its capital he quickly found people interested in this”.

“Do you want to say that in London there were some naive technology manufacturers who took the word of some South American student and fulfilled his whims?”, the inspector asked incredulously.

“It is incredible but it is a fact”, the specialist said briefly.

“Why, pray tell, did this Montesi need to dig this shaft?”, Galbraith still could not take his interlocutor’s words at face value.

“Cold War”, the specialist answered just as tersely. “He did not want the intelligence services to interfere with his work”.

Well, yes, the policeman thought, it’s so obvious… But still, how did it happen that a project of such a scale remained unknown to the masses? For Galbraith, this was no less a mystery than the fact that he himself had somehow traveled back in time.

“Adrian Montesi with his charges”, continued the silver-haired, “in a couple of years created a prototype of a supercomputer. The development was carried out directly underground – workshops were erected there that assembled microcircuits, memory units and other components”.

“It sounds like a fragment from some fantastic story”, Galbraith couldn’t resist.

“The fierd of science in which we work wirr arways seem rike science fiction to the common man”, the Japanese added.

“Therefore, I will try not to use terms that will not be clear to you in any case”, the specialist noted.

“Thanks for your kind words”, the inspector replied sarcastically.

“The very first program that was recorded in the computer’s memory”, said the gray-haired man. “It was extremely primitive, there was no question of it simulating our world”.

“And now what, is he already simulating?”, their guest couldn’t help but grin.

“Don’t go getting too far ahead!”, the specialist said sternly.

Galbraith interpreted this remark as a positive answer to his rhetorical question. Curious and curious, he thought.

“Adrian Montesi eventually achieved his goal, and the computer could function forever and without stopping”, the silver-haired man said solemnly.

“And then he took his secret to the grave?”, Galbraith joked.

“Don’t blaspheme, Montesi is alive!”, the specialist exclaimed in fear.

“Okay, I was joking”, the inspector reassured the interlocutor.

“The inventor was so excited about his success”, continued the silver-haired man. “That at the end of the test run of the computer, he immediately rushed to The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom and registered the trademark “Mon-Tec”, which was short for “Montesi Technologies”.

“Somehow this act does not fit with the way he previously hid his developments from the intelligence services”, Galbraith noticed the discrepancy.

“Eidorian Monteshi was a very passionate gaijin”, the Japanese made an excuse. “No one courd understand what was going on in his head”.

“Why do you both talk about him in the past tense?”, their guest could not help but ask.

“You should know it”, the specialist said, “when Montesi registered the trademark, he spoke at an international congress. The only one who was interested in the Chilean’s invention was professor Makoto Shugarami”.

Galbraith could not help but think that apparently all the other scientists who were at that congress considered this South American engineer crazy and did not believe his story about an eternal supercomputer. And who would believe…

“Makoto-san buirt a theory”, the Japanese began enthusiastically, “that computer programming is something rike human training, when the resurt shourd not be an automatic machine that executes the program embedded in it, but an artificiar interrigence that courd think and think on its own, without operator intervention”.

“Well, is a strong word”, Galbraith involuntarily praised the young interlocutor.

“Aras, in his homerand Makoto-san had a bad reputation, scientists despised him and carred his thoughts as empty chatter”, continued the Asian with a terrible accent.

“Huh, a typical story about an unrecognized genius”, muttered the policeman.

“And therefore, when the professor rearned about the creation of Eidorian Monteshi, he fert that with this gaijin he wourd be abre to rearize his dream of creating an artificiar worrd”, having said this, the Japanese began to breathe heavily as if in divine awe.

There was something strange in this union of a Chilean engineer and a Japanese programmer… But such is the world, two souls found each other, and it was pointlessly for Galbraith to argue with this.

“Makoto showed Montesi a prototype of his program, which, based on the information entered into it, produced quite meaningful sentences in response”, the specialist took over the narrator’s initiative.

“It’s rike when a baby repeats an adurt’s actions”, his Asian companion explained.

“Do you want to say that some unknown Japanese professor developed the von Neumann model and achieved success in it?”, asked Galbraith.

“Unknown is a relative concept”, the silver-haired man noticed. “Do you know who Thomas Kite Sharpless is?”

“How should I know?”, the policeman did not understand the hint.

“If you were interested in computers, you would know that this is the chief programmer of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer”, the specialist said in the tone of a mentor.

“All right, you’ve got it”, Galbraith surrendered.

There was silence for a couple of minutes. All three – the inspector, the gray-haired man and the Japanese – continued to descend down the poorly lit spiral staircase, and it seemed that there was no end to this descent. Galbraith was surprised to note that during all this time he was never out of breath – apparently, the spiral movement put virtually no strain on his legs.

“Makoto’s program delighted Montesi so much”, after three minutes the silver-haired man continued. “That he, without thinking twice, appointed a Japanese professor to the post of major programmer of his supercomputer”.

“Makoto-san took with him a staff of his emproyees, among whom was your humbre servant Manabu”, the Japanese said with dignity.

“Within two months”, the specialist spoke, “a team of Japanese programmers worked hard and eventually demonstrated their work to Montesi”.

“Eidorian Monteshi was so amazed by my teacher’s unprecedented resurts”, his Asian companion immediately intervened. “That he bowed to his genius and handed over the entire project to him”.

“But where did he go?”, Galbraith asked a question.

“Montesi left the “Mon-Tec”, the specialist said, “but before leaving, he asked the professor for a favor”.

“What was it?”, the inspector did not let up.

“He had two requests”, continued the silver-haired man. “So that they completely forget about it and at the same time change the brand”.

“And what were the successes?”, the policeman was surprised by these demands of the Chilean.

“Mon-Tec” has been re-registered under the new name, “Makoto Computerization Institute”, the gray-haired man said a word already familiar to Galbraith.

“But no one courd forget about Eidorian Monteshi himserf”, the Japanese inserted the word.

Well, of course, Galbraith thought, after all, the fact that this man created technology that can work forever is much more significant than some kind of program.

“Did he really leave of his own free will?”, he became suspicious.

“Makoto-san personarry begged Eidorian Monteshi-kun not to abandon his brainchird, but the gaijin was adamant”, as if making excuses, the Asian said

“Okay, so what happened next?”, the inspector ignored this expatiation.

“When the staff of the institute was headed by Makoto Shugarami”, the specialist started talking again. “All participants began working on the creation of “Makoto’s Chest”, that’s what the professor himself called his creation”.

“And what did the programmers put in this chest?”, Galbraith asked ironically.

“All kinds of information began to be entered into the supercomputer memory blocks”, the silver-haired man began to list. “Starting from sciences such as algebra or philosophy and ending with such small things as prices for tickets to Africa or a top list of the best perfumes for young girls”.

“I’ve never heard so much codswallop”, said the inspector. “Why fill a supercomputer with all sorts of nonsense?”

“Makoto-san wanted”, the Japanese started, “for a computer to have so much information about our worrd, to buird a his virtuar copy based on it”.

Galbraith thought that this idea is like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, after all, the world that surrounds people consists of so many little things that collecting this information alone should take decades. But ways of scientists are inscrutable… The inspector even admitted that Professor Makoto apparently had some health problems that could not allow him to conceive an heir, and so the professor decided to create a electronic child from relays and lines of code. At the moment when this thought occurred to Galbraith, suddenly a bright light hit his eyes. The policeman immediately stopped and involuntarily shielded himself from the light.

“Well, here is our institute”, he heard the solemn voice of the silver-haired man.

The inspector’s ears heard distant shouts and someone’s cheerful negotiations, but he could not make out the words – people were speaking in a language he did not understand. After a few minutes, his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, adapted to the white light of the fluorescent lamps hanging on the ceiling and gradually Galbraith began to distinguish the interior surrounding him.

He and his two companions were now standing in the middle of a long corridor with gleaming metal walls, stretching into the distance and getting lost around a bend. People passed by the three of them, who in the eyes of the policeman were like two peas in a pod, for they were all wearing white coats thrown over their casual clothes. Passers-by glanced at him, but did not stop and moved on. Suddenly Galbraith noticed how one of them slowed down slightly and turned to his helpmeet:

“Manabu-kun no tonari ni tatte iru kono baka wa daredesu ka?”, this onlooker said in Japanese.

“Kore ga watashitachi no gesutoda to omoimasu”, his fellow answered.

The young men passed by Galbraith, who continued to stand in one place. He soon realized the reason why everyone was looking at him like that – apart from the specialist who worked here, the inspector was the only Europoid who, among the crowd of Japanese, looked like an alien from another world.

“Excuse me, what did these gentlemen say?”, he turned to Manabu.

The scientist looked at the inspector.

“These two said”, Manabu began to translate, “that they are very preased to wercome a distinguished guest to our institute!”

The mischievous light that burned in the Japanese’s eyes made Galbraith doubt the correctness of this translation for a split second, but he did not care whether Manabu correctly conveyed to the foreigner the meaning of his colleagues’ fleeting remark. Then he suddenly became interested in how such a large number of people could end up underground.

“By the way, do they live here or…”, he asked.

“Only working”, the specialist said briefly.

“And how do they get here?”, asked Galbraith.

“By taxi…”, the silver-haired man began, but the inspector interrupted him.

“I mean how they go underground”, the policeman specified.

It would be strange, he thought, if all these scientists spent more than an hour getting to their workplace.

“By the elevator, of course”, the specialist answered.

“What, these Japanese don’t lose consciousness while they’re coming down here?”, Galbraith recalled the phrase of his interlocutor when he dissuaded him from the elevator.

“Physicar training”, Manabu responded automatically.

“Somehow these scientists don’t look like people involved in sports”, Galbraith thought, looking at his interlocutors and at the slender and subtle young men in dressing gowns passing by.

“Maybe it’s just a matter of habit?”, said the inspector.

“And that too”, nodded the specialist.