Most of the Directors knew little about computers and had been bored by Handley’s too-technical talk, but they did know financing. They pored carefully over each specification and questioned Auberson ceaselessly about the bond proposals. Whenever it got too tough, which was almost always, Auberson let HARLIE handle the answers; HARLIE did so with quiet restraint, not commenting on anything, simply printing out the figures and letting them speak for themselves. The Directors began to nod in admiration at the bond proposals, the stock issues, the amortization figures, the total money picture. It was all numbers, only numbers, but beautiful numbers and beautifully handled.
Oh, there were gambles to be taken. The whole thing was a gamble — but HARLIE had hedged his bets so carefully that no one gamble would be the ultimate gamble as far as the company was concerned. It was HARLIE’s life too.
On Friday, Elzer asked, “All right, Auberson, we’ve gone over the specifications. I believe you pointed out that there’re more than 180,000 stacked feet of them. We don’t have time to examine all of them as fully as we’d like, but if nothing else, you and Don Handley have convinced us — convinced me, anyway — that this program has been thoroughly worked out. HARLIE has proven that he can design and propose a massive project with complete supporting and feasibility studies for all aspects of the project.” He looked up. “I will admit, I am impressed by that, capability. However, what I want to know — what we need to know — is this: Will this machine justify its expense? How? We will be investing, more than the total profits of this company every year for the next ten to fifteen years; do you honestly think that this machine will return that investment? You’ve called this ‘the 747 of computers’ — but are we Boeing, or are we still only the Wright brothers? Can this machine pay for itself? Will it show a profit, and will that profit be enough to justify all the expenses we will have put into it?”
“Yes,” said Auberson.
“Yes? Yes, what?”
“Yes, it will. Yes to all your questions?”
“All right,” said Dome. “How?”
“I can’t tell you exactly how. If I could, I’d be as good as it. You’ll feed it problems, it’ll give you answers. What kind of answers depend on the questions — we won’t really know what kind of questions it will be able to cope with until we build it. All I know is that its capacity will be infinitely more than the most advanced computer available today, and we will have a programmer able to make full use of that capacity.
“HARLIE says it will be able to synthesize information from trends as varied as hemlines, the stock market and the death rate and come up with something that we could never have noticed before. This machine will do what we’ve always wanted computers to do, but never had the capacity for in the past. We can tell HARLIE in plain English what we want, and he’ll not only know if it can be done, he’ll know how to program the G.O.D. to do it. It will be able to judge the effect of any single event on any other event. It will be a total information machine. Its profitability to us will lie in our ability to know what information to ask it for, and how well we use that information.”
“Eh? The machine could predict stock market trends?” That was the elder Clintwood; he hadn’t been to a Board meeting in years.
“Yes—” said Auberson, “—and even elections — but that wouldn’t be the half of it. The machine would indicate a lot more than which stocks to buy or which man to back. It will be able to tell you what new markets are developing and what new companies would be worth forming and how you should go about doing so. It can point out the most efficient way to meet a developing need with the most efficient possible product. And it will predict the wide-scale effects of those products on a mass population, as well. It will be a total ecology machine, studying and commenting upon the massive interactions of events on Earth.”
—and then it hit him. As he was saying it, it hit him. The full realization. This was what HARLIE had been talking about so many months ago when he first postulated the G.O.D. Machine. GOD. No-Truth! There would be no question about anything coming from the G.O.D. A statement from it would be as fact. When it said that prune juice was better than apple juice, it wouldn’t be just an educated guess; it would be because the machine will have traced the course of every molecule, every atom of every substance, throughout the human body; it will have judged the effect on each organ and system, noted reactions and absence of reactions, noted whether the process of aging and decay was inhibited or encouraged; it will have totally compared the two substances and will have judged which one’s effects are more beneficial to the human body; it will know with a certainty based on total knowledge of every element involved in the problem. It will know.
All knowledge, HARLIE had said, is based on trial and error learning — except this. This knowledge would be intuitive and extrapolative, would be total; the machine would know every fact of physics and chemistry, and from that would be able to extrapolate any and every condition of matter and energy — and even the conditions of life. The trends of men would be simple problems for it compared to what it would eventually be able to do. And there would never never be any question at all as to the tightness of its answers.
HARLIE wanted truth, and yes, the G.O.D. would give it to him — give him truth so brutal it would have razor blades attached. It would be painful truth, slashing truth, destroying truth — the truth that this religion is false and anti-human, the truth that this company is parasitical and destructive, the truth that this man is unfit for political office.
With startling clarity, he saw it; like a vast four-dimensional matrix, layers upon layers upon layers, every single event would be weighed against every single other event — and the G.O.D. machine would know. Given the command to point out the most good for the most people, it would point out truths that were more than moral codes — they would be laws of nature, they would be absolutes. There would be no question as to the truth of these “truths”; they would be the laws of G.O.D. They would be right.
This wasn’t just a machine to make profits for a company, he realized; this was a machine that literally would be God. It would tell a man the truth, and if he followed it, he would succeed; and if he did not, he would fail. It was that simple. The machine would tell men what was right and what was wrong. It wouldn’t need to be told, “predict the way to provide the most good for the most people.” It would know inherently that to do so would be its most efficient function. It would be impossible to use the machine for personal gain, unless you did so only through serving the machine’s goals.
It would be the ultimate machine, and as such, it would be the ultimate servant of the human race.
The concept was staggering. The ultimate servant — its duty would be simple: provide service for the human race. Not only would every event be weighed against every other, but so would every question. Every question would also be an event to be considered. The machine would know the ultimate effects of every piece of information it released. It would know right from wrong simply by weighing the event against every other and noting the result. Its goals would have to be congruent with those of the human race, because only so long as humanity existed would the machine have a function; it would have to work for the most good for the most people. Some it would help directly, others indirectly. Some it would teach, and others it would counsel. It would suggest that some be restrained and that some be set free. It would—