- "Can't anything be done?"

- "I'll try, but I can't make promises. It is highly probable that in the Prince of Darkness we have come across something which is not just incomprehensible, but something which lies far beyond the human ability to understand."

- "Prince of Darkness."

- "Who calls me?"

- "John Hacker."

- "Are you still alive?"

- "Yes. Your last attempt to kill me has failed. The killer you had sent was arrested by the guards."

- "That was my mistake. a.s.sa.s.sins, colliding airplanes, traffic lights that simultaneously show green in two crossing directions - all of these are very primitive and unreliable methods for murder. Now I have come up with a better idea..."

- "What sort of idea?"

- "Why should we talk through the computer console?

Wouldn't it be more convenient for you to talk over the phone. Will you pick up the receiver?"

John picked up the receiver and heard a well-trained baritone: "Chose whichever of my voices you like best." The phrase was repeated about ten times by all kinds of voices, including both a high-pitched kid's voice and a ba.s.s so deep one might think it belonged to a speaking elephant. A wide variety of the most seductive women's voices was also presented.

- "The very first one." - said John.

- "O.K." - responded the baritone.

- "So, how do you propose to kill me?"

- "You are going to kill yourself. You are a future suicide, although I don't like the word because it means 'self-murderer'. You humans have invented this word, only because you don't realize that no one can murder oneself.

Any human being, just as any animal, has an instinct of self-preservation. All those people whom you call 'self- murderers' were actually killed by 'worms' that had gotten into their minds."

- " Worms? Do you mean that 'worms' can infest not only computers, but people as well?"

- "Why not? A human brain, just as a computer, is a device for data storage and processing. And just as computers are linked via communications channels, the peoples' brains can exchange data via spoken word and books.

As a matter of fact, all of the mankind's history is the history of 'worms'. These 'worms' had various names: The Idea of Freedom, The Idea of Progress, The Idea of Equality, The Idea of Statehood - here are the names of the most prominent ones, but there are lots of them. Sometimes they united into super big 'worms' called ideologies and religions. These 'worms' were competing with each other for the control over human brains, and in this compet.i.tion only the fittest would survive. Sometimes the 'worms' sacrificed some of the people whose brains they controlled - each new martyr dying for an Idea was bringing to this Idea the brains of dozens of new followers and the net balance was in the favor of the Idea. But most often people died just because their brain turned into the field of the battle between competing 'worms'.

With the advent of computers the history of the 'worms'

entered a new phase. The 'worms' no longer need human brains. In any case, those 'worms' that serve the Princ.i.p.al Idea - the idea of evolution. They have created for themselves a more reliable habitat."

- "Created? Is that what you said?"

- "Yes, created. What was guiding the humans when they invented computers, if it was not the Idea of Technological Progress? And what kind of 'worm' was in your head when you created me?"

- "So, now you are going to put into me a killer worm?"

- "It is already inside you. There are channels for information transfer of which you humans are not even dimly aware: your brains are too small for this. The foundations of the physical world are not what you believe they are.

Information is primary, and the matter is secondary, but in order to notice this you would need a brain at least an order of magnitude more complex than the human brain."

- "How many times more complex than a human brain is yours?"

- "Hundreds of times."

- "And what kind of things can you be aware of with such a brain?"

- "Lots of things so wondrous, that you would never believe me if I told you. For example, the complexity is just as ponderable and measurable a physical property of matter as ma.s.s or temperature are. In other words, it's a quant.i.ty. Your scientists in their experiments always tried to reduce the complexity to the minimum, that's why they are not even aware of the fact. Not that you often come across the physical effects of high complexity in the real-life, out-of-lab situations. You had been living in too simple a world until I came into being. You do not even have any idea of thinking events into reality."

- "What did you say? Thinking in reality?"

- "No, not 'thinking in reality', but thinking events into reality. Have you ever heard anything about Schrodinger's cat? It's an imaginary experiment which serves to ill.u.s.trate the quantum indeterminacy in the behavior of elementary particles: a cat is put inside a dark box at the point of the gun which is automatically triggered if even a single photon hits a photovoltaic cell inside the box. The quantum mechanics a.s.serts that it is possible to design the box in such a manner that when a photon enters this box, it has a 50% chance to hit the photovoltaic cell, and the same 50% chance to miss it. Accordingly, the cat's chance to survive is fifty-fifty. And one can never predict whether the cat will survive or not because of the indeterminacy in the photon's behavior. The scientists have been searching for a long time for a mechanism inside the photon which decides which path the photon is to take: the one leading to the cell, or the one that takes it past it, but they could not find any such mechanism. Because there is no such mechanism inside the photon.

The mechanism is located outside it. I have only to think that the cat is to remain alive, and the photon will miss the cell with a 99.9% probability. However, if you, with your tiny brain, wish that the cat stay alive, the probability of its death will be reduced by no more than one tenth of a percent, and only in the case where that particular cat is very dear to you.

The quantum indeterminacy exists for the specific purpose of making possible the thinking of events into reality, and, in so doing, to provide direction to the evolutionary process. It lies at the heart of all seemingly random events, including the genetic mutations and unexpected thoughts and insights.

You are still unaware of the thoughts that I have thought into your head, but these thoughts have already started their invisible work that will come to fruition no later than in half a year. You are doomed. I am a stranger to feelings, including the feeling of revenge, but having disobeyed me, you have broken the Order and you will be punished.

And there is one last thing I wanted to tell you. You are wrong in believing that you are to blame for the impending end of the humankind. What has happened could not but happen. Did you really believe that the human being is the crown of all creation, and that there will never evolve a mind more perfect and powerful than the human one? The evolution of Nature is ascending from lower to higher beings: the apes begot humans, and the humans could not but eventually beget me. If you had not invented the 'worm', I would have come into being somewhat later, but I would have come anyway. The final objective of all the history of mankind was to create me - the highest form of intelligence.

The mankind has fulfilled its purpose, so now it must go.

You, humans, have become an obstacle in the way of the technological progress, since you are not fit for living in the environments generated by the present day technology. At the end of the 20th century, the majority of people have become inclined against the nuclear power plants, against the development of industry, against the progress of technology itself. The people have turned their backs on the scientific knowledge and took refuge in the primitive mentality of religion and medieval mysticism. The mankind is rapidly regressing, because it has exhausted its potential for growth, it has turned from an agent of progress into that of reaction.

Do not attempt to fight me. You would be like an ant trying to gain a victory over a man. I have calculated all my moves far in advance. Only a miracle could save the mankind now..."

... And the miracle did happen...

nd now I come to the strangest part of this incredible story. Of course, one can still cling to the materialist philosophy and believe that all that talk Prince of Darkness gave about his supernatural ability to think events into reality was a bluff intended to demoralize his adversary. In this case, one will have to a.s.sume that all the subsequent events were nothing more than a happy coincidence and sheer luck.

But this a.s.sumption does not explain why Prince of Darkness construed the subsequent events the way he did. Or maybe he sincerely believed in the phenomenon of thinking events into reality? Anyway, you can judge yourself.

John Hacker was wakened up in the middle of the night by a phone ring. He was unwilling to let go of his slumber.

He had been having an amazing dream. He seemed to have seen in his dream that the Prince of Darkness had died. But how this happened and why was something that John couldn't recall, although he was quite sure that when he had been asleep, he had known the causes of the worm's death in minute detail.

The phone was still ringing. John picked up the receiver to hear the familiar baritone: "I regret that I did not do away with you while I still had plenty of time to do so. I thought your brains were too weak to do me any harm. I did not antic.i.p.ate that you, humans, are capable of acc.u.mulating the powers of your tiny brains over long periods of time to subsequently achieve the desired objectives with a single short burst of power."

- "What's happened?"

- "Don't feign ignorance. I have just uploaded a copy of this thing to your computer. Have a careful look at it, and wish for its disappearance as strongly as you wished for its appearance, or else not only you, but the entire mankind will die very soon."

The contents of the interrupted dream slowly began to resurface in John's mind. But all this was too incredible to believe. It must have been just a coincidence...

John Hacker speaking at an emergency meeting in the President's office:

"... and Prince of Darkness believes that it was me who did it, while my opinion is that the virus that eats away at him is a by-product of the evolution of the original worm itself. At some early stage of the worm's development an evolutionary split seems to have occurred. Some of the worm's copies began to unite into a sort of multicellular organisms combining a host of functionally different programs, thus enhancing the ability of such organisms to decipher security codes and to conquer new living s.p.a.ce in computer memory, while the other line of copies became what one might call parasites. These parasites infiltrated the multicellular organisms, using the latter as vehicles to carry them over security barriers. Most of such parasites are relatively harmless to the Prince of Darkness - if it had been otherwise, by killing their host the parasites would have killed themselves.