Free Semmant by Vadim Babenko Page B

though there was no one to hear. “Take a look! He’s powerful, yet he’s truly selfless. He shall learn much and become like you – but how unlike you he will become! How many light years he will outdistance you in his objectives; how firm he will be, how sure, how strong!”
    “He will not torture the others with his weaknesses – no, he possesses different traits. He won’t give in to the illusion that you so stubbornly value: the illusion of being needed by someone, of being close to someone, the illusion of love. Without it you are alone and unhappy, but, really, you aren’t capable of love. Only its shadow rustles her wings for you to hear as it’s carried away, taunting, in plain sight; and you – you are frightened and jump aside. It is fearful, fearful to venture – but I don’t blame you, I see how tough your life is. You traded everything for your piggish pleasures, and now you are confused, lost, and pitiful. And your descendants, they’re just the same. You like to think that salvation is in them, but things only turn worse. The circle closes in, and life passes even quicker than before.”
    “Yet here, behold, there is an escape from the impasse! There is an emissary from a new world; he will break the vicious cycle! His dissimilarity to the familiar may scare you at first; he may seem too different, alien, cold. But, otherwise, you would not believe in him, ever. What was too essentially human already discredited itself and its essence. One has only a single chance to deceive – and it has already been spent, this chance. That’s why a new face is needed – and hope will be born from the ashes. There, you see, even living molecules may suddenly change a little. The letters of the universal code will compose themselves in threes in a slightly unusual way. And then immortality may loom on the horizon – albeit far, far in the distance…”
    I felt like I was floating above the floor. At that moment, I probably really was ill. A flood of madness washed over me, a cloud of ether, an opium wave. I don’t know how much time elapsed before I regained consciousness and turned toward the computer. My hands shook, my shirt was drenched in sweat, but that meant nothing. The man in brown with the lamp in place of a head kept watching me from the screen, obediently awaiting a command or a sign. The man that was not a man. The robot. Semmant.
    I cursed myself for being idle. For delaying and running in place. Then I pulled the chair over, sat at the keyboard, and copied the file that had been prepared long ago into the special folder. It contained the first, utterly simple, exercise. The portrait window diminished in size, then blinked and disappeared. I understood he understood as well: enough initial excitement. To work, to work. The task was at hand.

Chapter 7
    T he next morning we got down to work for real. The metronome in the corner prodded me, setting the rhythm. Sometimes it seemed too fast, but I knew it wasn’t for me to judge. In due course, I provided Semmant with megabytes of data from electronic archives and then scoured them again and again. As soon as the arrow on the metronome slowed down, a special trigger hastened to signal the processing was finished, the input channel was empty. A melodious warble resounded through the apartment – there was not a minute to spare. Wherever it found me, I would rush to the desk and copy the next files. As I did this, I imagined the funnel of a volcano or a gigantic meat grinder; and there he was, an insatiable beast…
    Fortunately, there were enough facts to feed him endlessly. The world gathered up and openly kept mountains of information about its nature, about battling the most secret forces, continental shifts, the migration of the oceans. Oceans of everything that thirsts, upon which spears and teeth are broken, for which they fight without rules and betray without batting an eye.
    Data about market behavior over many decades had been stored