The War in 2020

Soviet was nervous, after all.

Savitsky twisted a dial that might have been salvaged from an antique television set of the sort Ryder remembered from his grandmother's living room, where the device had delivered the world to a child snowed in on the Nebraska prairie.

The lines jumped on the response meter. The bright movement was startling in the darkness, and Ryder reacted as though he himself had received a slight shock.

The language flow reader registered a negative response. Savitsky quickly turned the 'pain' back down, and the green lines settled, trembling for just a moment, then resuming their smooth, flat flow.

'Well,' Savitsky said. 'Now we try again.'

He gave the dial a sharp turn.

The green lines fractured into jagged ridges and valleys, straining toward the borders of the monitor. But the interrogation support computers continued to report negative interaction.

Perspiration gleamed on Savitsky's forehead. He turned the control back to its zero position, and said, 'You know, when I was beginning my training, so many years ago, everything started with the theory of interrogating humans. I had not yet specialized in automation. That came later. Anyway, they told us that the breakdowns often came very suddenly, that it was important not to feel despair. You might think, oh, I am never going to break this subject. But you had only to persist. Because, in the end, everyone broke.' The Soviet stared out through the window, to where the miniature electronic brain lay still under the spotlights. 'It will be interesting to see if the same holds true for machines.'

Ryder followed his counterpart's stare. Certainly, there had been no visible change in the subject. Just a small, obviously inanimate black rectangle that looked as though it had been hewn from slate. Yet, he imagined that something about it had altered.

You need a good night's sleep tonight, he told himself.

'I'm going to break this bastard,' Savitsky said, his voice full of renewed energy. It was unmistakably the energy of anger.

The Soviet twisted the dial again, jacking up the intensity well beyond the previous level. Whatever the machine was doing, Ryder only hoped that it would not destroy the captive treasure for nothing. In the name of some arcane mumbo jumbo.

The green lines on the monitor went wild. There was, of course, no sign of movement, no physical reaction from the subject. But Ryder suddenly felt something unacceptable in the atmosphere, a change that he could not put into words but that felt distinctly unpleasant and intense.

The unexpected flashing of the language flow reader, where an interrogation's results were reported, made Ryder jump.

The screen merely read, 'Unintelligible response.'

But that was where it started. It was the beginning of interaction, a sign of life.

'Jesus Christ,' Ryder said. 'You're getting something, Nick.'

Beside him, the Soviet was breathing as heavily as if he had been delivering blows to a victim's head. He stared at Ryder as though he barely recognized him. Then he seemed to wake, and he turned the system's power down once again. The green lines calmed, but never quite regained their earlier straightness. They appeared to be shivering.

'I wonder,' Savitsky said, 'if our computers could understand the nature of a scream.'

He twisted the dial again, sharply. With a grunting noise that was almost a growl, he wrenched it all the way around, focusing on the captured computer brain out on the interrogation table with something that resembled hatred. He kept his hand tightly fixed to the control, as though he might be able to force just a bit more power out of it that way.

The green lines on the 'pain' register rebounded off the upper and lower limits of the screen.

It could not be true. Ryder refused to let himself believe it. It was only the result of too little sleep and bad nerves, of allowing oneself to become too emotional. It was crazy. But he could not help feeling that something was suffering.

Tonight, he promised himself, he wouldn't be such a stick-in-the-mud. He needed a few beers. To relax. To sleep.

Machines, Ryder told himself, do not feel pain. This is absurd.

Savitsky turned the dial down as though he were going to give the captured computer a respite, then, without warning, he quickly turned the intensity up to the maximum degree again.

Ryder felt an unexpected urge to reach out and halt the work of the other man's hand. Until he could get a grip on himself, sort things out.

You silly bastard, he told himself. It's just a machine.

And machines don't suffer.

Savitsky ignored him now. The Soviet was spitting out a litany of Russian words that could only be obscenities. He had bent himself over the control panel in an attitude of such tension and fury that Ryder expected the man to lash out with his fists.

The monitor registered a craze of green lines.

There is pain in these rooms, Ryder thought. He tried to catch himself, to tell himself yet again that machines do not feel pain, but as he watched the tiny captive brain he imagined he was watching a grimacing, sweating, agonizing thing.

He lifted his hand toward Savitsky, whose face had become almost unrecognizable.

Suddenly, the entire bank of computers whirled to life. The eruption of corollary light from monitors and flow screens indicated that the machines were working frantically, pushed nearly to their capacity. The control booth dazzled with light issuing from all angles in staccato bursts.

Savitsky remained bent over the dial, covering it with hands like claws.

The main language flow reader began to flash, announcing a message from another world. Then the flow of characters began, in the peculiar language of top-end Japanese computers, repeating the same simple message over and over again:

'Please. Stop.'

The data take was so voluminous that it quickly overloaded several of the Soviet storage reservoirs, and it kept coming, a deluge of information. But the two interrogators gave no sign of elation. They simply sat in the control booth without speaking to each other, without even acknowledging the other's presence. Each man was trapped in his own private weariness, his own confusion. Soon, linkages between data banks would need to be established, and superiors would need to be informed. The vast military bureaucracies would need to be moved to take advantage of the incredible range of opportunities that now presented themselves. But neither man was quite ready to start.

Finally, Ryder forced himself to climb out of the theoretical swamp through which he had been slopping, to consider the practical applications. There was a possibility of literally taking the enemy's war away from them. Their artillery could be directed to fire automatically on their own positions, their aircraft could be directed to attack their own troops. An entirely false intelligence picture could be painted for the enemy commander, lulling him to sleep until it was too late. The possible variations were endless. And there was only one catch: someone would have to sit down at a fully operative Japanese command console — the higher the level, the better — to infiltrate their network.

Ryder was confident. Nothing seemed impossible anymore. He felt his energy returning, compounding. He began to think about the best way to present the information to his superiors, to help them see the full possibilities, to get things going.

'Nick,' he said. When Savitsky did not respond, Ryder touched the man's knee. 'Nick, we've got to get moving.'

The Soviet snorted. He looked exhausted, as if he had not slept for days, for years. He had given everything he had, and now he sat drained, his tunic sweat-soaked.

There would be a thousand problems, Ryder realized. But he was confident that each could be solved.

Savitsky blinked as though something was bothering his eyes, then he looked away. His limbs, his hands appeared lifeless.

'Yes,' he said.