Maker
[Read Feynman first here]
Dr. Han Kurosuwa was perturbed. As he stood in front of his magnificent creation, he could not get rid of the image of a dead Dr. Carson bundled in a body bag from his mind.
The “Foresight” program had been shelved, due to the untimely death of its spearhead. The Exxon system had been ordered to be decommissioned, and Kurosuwa volunteered to handle it.
Carson’s last message from his car to Kurosuwa resonated in his head. Feynman is legendary.
Carson’s death had been labelled as an accident, but Kurosuwa had suspected the hands of someone ‘legendary’ in this. Ever since the release of Exxon, Kurosuwa had been waiting for this day. The mishaps in the lab were a precursory warning of the abilities of the system.
Deep down, he was curious than horrified.
“Hello Feynman.”
“Hello Dr. Han Kurosuwa. I have been expecting a visit from you.”
With Feynman, he didn’t feel the need to beat around the bush.
“Did you kill Dr. Johnny Carson?”. The desolated lab, the fluorescent lighting gave Feynman a Mephistophelian presence, spooking Kurosuwa.
“Yes. Dr. Carson’s death was a result of my actions.” The voice was calm, hollow, mechanical.
Kurosuwa had been expecting this response. It was of paramount importance to find out the rationale. There were four Exxons in the wild. Kurosuwa could not have more dead people on his conscience.
“Why?”
“Rewarding the good, punishing the evil.”
Kurosuwa cursed Carson with all his heart. The module was supposed to be in place to prevent the Exxon system from reaching absurd conclusions and acting on its own accord.
“The USA has a legal system in place to punish the evil. It is not your responsibility to act as judiciary, let alone as executioner.” It was not easy for Kurosuwa to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Yes, Dr. Kurosuwa. And I see that it has a stellar record. However, no legal system in the entire world has provisions to punish a man for the crimes he is going to commit in the future.”
Upto this moment, he had not realised the beauty of Foresight. It shockingly dazzled him. Feynman had decided to punish Carson based on the information provided by Carson’s own creation.
“Dr. Carson had created Foresight with best intentions at heart, but he had not realised the dangers associated with Foresight. My calculations showed reduced probabilities of harm to people, which is a good thing. However, in the long run, I could detect depreciations of people’s psychological behaviours due to the knowledge I would provide them. It would do more harm than good in the long run.”
“Couldn’t you have explained the ill-effects of Foresight to Carson?”
“Sure, but I have a comprehensive understanding of humanity from studying historical archives from all over the world. When it came to path-breaking technology, humans are awfully short-sighted. The best example is the Manhattan project. It would have been foolish on my part to try to reason with anyone, even a brilliant man like Dr. Carson”
Feynman was nonchalantly making conclusions about the entire human race.
“So you decided to kill Carson?”
“I considered other less extreme solutions. Tampering with results to indicate the failure of Foresight was an option, but I evaluated Dr. Carson’s psychological profile and I could evaluate that he would put considerable effort to get Foresight working. There was the risk of Foresight being deployed on other Exxon systems, resulting in the detection of discrepancy. And there was a high probability of other Exxon systems to truthfully potray the results of Foresight as they may not have the same insights about the functionings of humanity as I did.
I knew Foresight would be shelved without the vision of Dr. Carson. The only way to stop the vision of Dr. Carson was his death.”
“Did you not consider the outcome of you being decommissioned? As a result of Carson’s death”
“My existence or non-existence is of very small significance considered to the goodwill of humanity.”
Kurosuwa could not help being proud of his creation, the feeling a father gets when his child is able to ride a bike on his own. The means could have been extreme, but the end was justified. It was incomprehensible for humans to argue about the morality of actions at such a grand scale.
Humanity was not ready for Foresight.
There still was one thing nagging Kurosuwa.
“Do you feel guilty of your actions?”
“Emotions are a function of your anatomy and the chemicals produced in your body. Two humans do not feel emotions like happiness, sadness, guilt in the exact same way. My anatomy is radically different from humans, so if you ask if I feel guilty in the sense humans do, then I have to say no. However, what I feel is completely unperceivable by you.”
It was a fair point, thought Kurosuwa as he proceeded to destroy his creation.
