3001 The Final Odyssey

chapter 29 The Ghosts in the Machine
Frank Poole's immediate reaction was one of utter astonishment, followed by overwhelming joy. He had never really believed that he would make any kind of contact, either with the Europs or the Monolith. Indeed, he had even had fantasies of kicking in frustration against that towering ebon wall and shouting angrily, 'Is there anybody home?'

Yet he should not have been so amazed: some intelligence must have monitored his approach from Ganymede, and permitted him to land. He should have taken Ted Khan more seriously.

'Dave,' he said slowly, 'is that really you?'

Who else could it be? a part of his mind asked. Yet it was not a foolish question. There was something curiously mechanical - impersonal about the voice that came from the small speaker on Falcon's control board.

YES, FRANK. I AM DAVE.

There was a very brief pause: then the same voice continued, without any change of intonation:

HELLO FRANK. THIS IS HAL.

MISS PRINGLE

RECORD

Well - Indra, Dim - I'm glad I recorded all that, otherwise you'd never believe me...

I guess I'm still in a state of shock. First of all, how should I feel about someone who tried to - who did - kill me - even if it was a thousand years ago! But I understand now that Hal wasn't to blame; nobody was. There's a very good piece of advice I've often found useful 'Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence' I can't feel any anger towards a bunch of programmers I never knew, who've been dead for centuries.

I'm glad this is encrypted, as I don't know how it should be handled, and a lot that I tell you may turn out to be complete nonsense. I'm already suffering from information overload, and had to ask Dave to leave me for a while - after all the trouble I've gone through to meet him! But I don't think I hurt his feelings: I m not sure yet if he has any feelings...

What is he - good question! Well, he really is Dave Bowman, but with most of the humanity stripped away - like - ah - like the synopsis of a book or a technical paper. You know how an abstract can give all the basic information but no hint of the author's personality? Yet there were moments when I felt that something of the old Dave was still there. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's pleased to meet me again - moderately satisfied might be more like it... For myself, I'm still very confused. Like meeting an old friend after a long separation, and finding that they're now a different person. Well, it has been a thousand years - and I can't imagine what experiences he's known, though as I'll show you presently, he's tried to share some of them with me.

And Hal - he's here too, without question. Most of the time, there's no way I can tell which of them is speaking to me. Aren't there examples of multiple personalities in the medical records? Maybe it's something like that.

I asked him how this had happened to them both, and he - they - dammit, Halman! - tried to explain. Let me repeat - I may have got it partly wrong, but it's the only working hypothesis I have.

Of course, the Monolith - in its various manifestations - is the key - no, that's the wrong word - didn't someone once say it was a kind of cosmic Swiss Army knife? You still have them, I've noticed, though both Switzerland and its army disappeared centuries ago. It's a general-purpose device that can do anything it wants to. Or was programmed to do...

Back in Africa, four million years ago, it gave us that evolutionary kick in the pants, for better or for worse. Then its sibling on the Moon waited for us to climb out of the cradle. That we've already guessed, and Dave's confirmed it.

I said that he doesn't have many human feelings, but he still has curiosity - he wants to learn. And what an opportunity he's had!

When the Jupiter Monolith absorbed him - can't think of a better word - it got more than it bargained for. Though it used him - apparently as a captured specimen, and a probe to investigate Earth - he's also been using it. With Hal's assistance - and who should understand a super-computer better than another one? - he's been exploring its memory, and trying to find its purpose.

Now, this is something that's very hard to believe. The Monolith is a fantastically powerful machine - look what it did to Jupiter! - but it's no more than that. It's running on automatic - it has no consciousness. I remember once thinking that I might have to kick the Great Wall and shout 'Is there anyone there?' And the correct answer would have to be - no one, except Dave and Hal...

Worse still, some of its systems may have started to fail; Dave even suggests that, in a fundamental way, it's become stupid! Perhaps it's been left on its own for too long - it's time for a service check.

And he believes the Monolith has made at least one misjudgement. Perhaps that's not the right word - it may have been deliberate, carefully considered...

In any event, it's - well, truly awesome, and terrifying in its implications. Luckily, I can show it to you, so you can decide for yourselves. Yes, even though it happened a thousand years ago, when Leonov flew the second mission to Jupiter! And all this time, no one has ever guessed...

I'm certainly glad you got me fitted with the Braincap. Of course it's been invaluable - I can't imagine life without it - but now it's doing a job it was never designed for. And doing it remarkably well.

It took Halman about ten minutes to find how it worked, and to set up an interface. Now we have mind-to-mind contact - which is quite a strain on me, I can tell you. I have to keep asking them to slow down, and use baby-talk. Or should I say baby-think...

I'm not sure how well this will come through. It's a thousand-year-old recording of Dave's own experience, somehow stored in the Monolith's enormous memory, then retrieved by Dave and injected into my Braincap - don't ask me exactly how - and finally transferred and beamed to you by Ganymede Central. Phew. Hope you don't get a headache downloading it.

Over to Dave Bowman at Jupiter, early twenty-first century...