I am always happy to see Mr. Simpson. He is not one of those regular salesmen, the kind who remind me of company lawyers. He is truly in love with the NATCA machines, has total faith in them, and is tormented by their defects and breakdowns. Their triumphs are his triumphs. Or, at least, that’s how it seems, even if it isn’t true—which for all practical purposes is the same thing.
Even aside from our business relationship, we could almost be called friends; however, in 1960, after he sold me the Versifier, I lost touch with him for a while. He was terribly committed to filling the demands for that highly successful model, working every day until midnight. He telephoned sometime in mid-August to ask if I was interested in a Turboconfessor, a portable unit, fast, in great demand in America and approved by Cardinal Spellman. I wasn’t interested and told him so flat out.
A few months later, without warning, Mr. Simpson rang my doorbell. He was beaming and, like a wet nurse with a newborn, cradled in his arms a corrugated cardboard box. He wasted no time with pleasantries. “Here it is,” he said triumphantly, “the Mimete: the copier we have always dreamed about.”
“A copier?” I said, barely concealing the wave of disappointment sweeping over me. “Sorry, Simpson, but I have never dreamed of a copier. What could possibly be better than those we already have and can swear by? Take this one, for instance. Twenty lire, a few seconds per copy, and they’re flawless; dry-functioning, no reacting agents, not one breakdown in two years.”
Mr. Simpson was not, however, easily dissuaded. “Any machine is capable, if you will pardon me, of reproducing something two-dimensional. This machine not only reproduces that which is two-dimensional but also things that have depth”; and with a politely offended air, he added: “The Mimete is a real copier.” He carefully extracted from his bag two mimeographed sheets of paper, the letterhead in color, and put them on the table. “Which is the original?”
I looked them over attentively. Yes, they were very alike, but then so were two copies of the same newspaper or two positives from the same negative.
“No, take a closer look. You will see that we have deliberately chosen for our demonstration material a thicker paper, with several foreign bodies in the mix. Furthermore, before duplication, we tore this corner here on purpose. Use the magnifying glass and take your time observing. I am in no hurry. I have dedicated this afternoon to you.”
At a certain place on one copy, a blade of straw was next to a yellow speck. In the exact same position on the second copy, a blade of straw was next to a yellow speck. The two tears were identical down to the last hair distinguishable by the magnifying glass. My distrust was mutating into curiosity.
In the meantime, Mr. Simpson had pulled an entire dossier out of his bag, Smiling, he said in his pleasing foreign accent: “This is my ammunition, my stock of twins.” The dossier contained handwritten letters, randomly underlined in various colors; stamped envelopes; elaborate technical drawings; multicolored childish sketches. Mr. Simpson showed me an exact replica, front and back, of each sample.
I carefully examined his demonstration materials: in truth, there was little room for improvement. The grain of the paper, every mark, every subtlety of color, had been reproduced absolutely faithfully. I noticed that even to the touch the copies had the same unevenness as the originals: the same oiliness to the pastel lines, the same chalky dryness of the tempera background, the stamps in relief. Mr. Simpson, meanwhile, continued his convincing pitch. “This is not about perfecting a previous model. The principle on which the Mimete is based is a revolutionary discovery of extreme interest, not only practically but conceptually as well. It doesn’t imitate, or simulate, but fully reproduces the object, creates another, identical one out of, so to speak, nothing . . .”
This gave me a start. My chemist’s gut lurched violently against the enormity of what he was saying. “Come on now! What do you mean, out of nothing?”
“You’ll have to excuse me. I let myself get carried away. Obviously, I don’t really mean out of nothing. I meant from chaos, from absolute disorder. Yes, that’s it, that’s what the Mimete does: creates order from disorder.”
He went out to the street and from the trunk of his car retrieved a small metal cylinder, similar to a liquid-gas tank. He showed me how it attached to the Mimete’s cell through a flexible tube.
“This is its feeding tank. It contains a rather complex mixture, the so-called pabulum, the nature of which, for the time being, has not been disclosed. As far as I could gather from the NATCA technicians during the training course at Fort Kiddiwanee, it’s likely that the pabulum is made up of unstable carbon compounds and other vital principal elements. It’s simple to operate: between us, I don’t know why it was necessary for them to summon all the sales agents to America from the four corners of the earth. You see? You put the object you want to reproduce in this compartment, and into this other one, which is equal in form and volume, the pabulum is introduced at a controlled rate. During the process of duplication, in the exact position of every single atom of the original object an analogous atom extracted from the alimentary mixture is fixed: carbon where there was carbon, nitrogen where there was nitrogen, and so on. Naturally, almost nothing was revealed to us agents about the mechanics of this reconstruction at a distance, nor did anyone explain to us how this enormous mass of information is transmitted from one cell to another. All the same, we were authorized to report that the Mimete imitates a recently discovered genetic process, and that the object ‘is related to the copy in the same manner that a seed is related to a tree.’ I trust that all of this makes some sense to you, and I beg you to excuse the secretive behavior of my firm, but you must understand, not all of the machine’s components have been patented yet.”
Against every sane business practice, I was unable to hide my admiration. This was truly a technical revolution: organic synthesis at low temperature and pressure, order from disorder, silently, quickly, and cheaply. It was the dream of four generations of chemists.
“This wasn’t easy for them, you know. From what they tell me, the forty technicians assigned specifically to the Mimete project, having already brilliantly resolved the fundamental problem of directed synthesis, didn’t obtain anything for two years but mirror images, by which I mean reversed copies, which were useless. NATCA’s management was ready to put the machine into production anyway, even though it would have to be operated twice for every duplication, incurring twice the expense and twice the time. The first actual direct copy happened by chance, thanks to a providential error in assembly.”
“This story puzzles me,” I said. “Each and every invention that comes into existence is accompanied by widely circulated anecdotes claiming the happy intervention of chance. And these, in all likelihood, were initiated by the less ingenious competition.”
“Perhaps,” Simpson said. “In any case, there’s still a long way to go. You should know right from the start that the Mimete is not a rapid copier. To copy an object weighing around a hundred grams, at least an hour is required. There is another, rather obvious limitation: it is not possible to reproduce—or only imperfectly—objects that contain elements that are not present in the ingredients of the pabulum. Other, special pabula, more complete, have been made for particular needs, but it seems that there have been difficulties with some elements, mostly with heavy metals. For example”—and he showed me a delightful page from an illuminated manuscript—“it is still impossible to reproduce gilding, which, in fact, is missing from the copies. It is equally impossible to reproduce a coin.”
At this point, I gave a second start; but now it wasn’t simply my chemist’s gut reacting but the gut (coexistent and inextricably connected) of a practical man. Not a coin, but a banknote? A rare stamp? Or, more favorably and more elegantly, a diamond? Perhaps the law punishes “the fabricators and dealers in fake diamonds”? Do fake diamonds exist? Who could prohibit me from placing in the Mimete a gram or two of carbon atoms so that they would be honestly reconfigured in a tetrahedral arrangement, and then selling the result? No one: not the law, and not even the conscience.
With such things, it is essential to be first, since there is no imagination more industrious than that of men eager to make a profit. So I stopped hesitating, haggled somewhat over the price of the Mimete (which, by the way, was not excessive), obtained a 5 percent discount and payment to be made one hundred and twenty days after the end of the month, and ordered the machine.
The Mimete, together with fifty pounds of pabulum, was delivered to me two months later. Christmas was around the corner. My family was in the mountains and I had stayed in the city alone. I dedicated myself entirely to work and study. To begin with, I read the operating instructions carefully and repeatedly, until I had them very nearly memorized. I then took the first object that came to hand (it was a common game die) and prepared to reproduce it.
I put it in the cell, brought the machine to the prescribed temperature, opened the pabulum’s small calibrated valve, then settled down to wait. There was a soft buzz, and from the reproduction cell’s exhaust pipe came a weak flow of gas. It had a strange odor, similar to that of dirty babies. After an hour, I opened the cell: it contained a die exactly identical to the model in shape, color, and weight. It was warm, but soon cooled to the ambient temperature. From the second I made a third, from the third a fourth, without difficulty or impediment.
I was increasingly intrigued by the inner workings of the Mimete, which Simpson had been unable (or unwilling) to explain to me with sufficient precision. Nor had the instructions provided the slightest clue. I took off the hermetically sealed cover from cell B. Using a small saw, I made a window and fitted a glass plate over it, sealed it well, and replaced the top. I put the die back into the cell yet another time, and through the glass I carefully observed what occurred in cell B during the duplication. What occurred was extremely interesting: starting at its base the die formed gradually, in very thin layers, as if it were growing out of the bottom of the cell itself. Halfway through the duplication process, half the die was perfectly formed and it was easy to distinguish the wood and all its grains. It seemed reasonable to deduce that in cell A some analytic device “explored” by lines or planes the body to be reproduced, and transmitted to cell B the instructions for the establishment of the single particles, perhaps of the same atoms, extracted from the pabulum.
I was satisfied with the preliminary trial. The next day, I bought a small diamond and made a reproduction, which came out perfectly. From the first two I made another two, from four another four, and so on in a geometric progression until the Mimete’s cell was full. When the operation was finished, it was impossible to determine which was the original gem. In twelve hours of work I had obtained 2¹²−1 pieces, that is, 4095 new diamonds: the initial investment had been amply amortized, and I felt authorized to proceed with further experiments, both more and less interesting.
The following day, I duplicated without any problems a lump of sugar, a handkerchief, a train schedule, a pack of cards. The third day, I tried a hard-boiled egg: the shell came out soft and inconsistent (owing to a lack of calcium, I suppose), but the yoke and the white looked and tasted completely normal. I then obtained a satisfying replica of a pack of Nationals; a box of safety matches appeared to be perfect, but the matches wouldn’t light. A black-and-white photograph rendered an extremely faded copy, owing to a lack of silver in the pabulum. All I could reproduce of a wristwatch was the watchband, and, ever since the attempt, the watch itself has become entirely dysfunctional, for reasons I cannot explain.
On the fourth day, I duplicated some beans and fresh peas and a tulip bulb, intending to test their germinative capabilities. I also duplicated 110 grams of cheese, a sausage, a loaf of bread, and a pear, and ate all of it for lunch without perceiving any differences with regard to their respective originals. I realized that it was also possible to reproduce liquids, as long as a container placed in cell B was of equal or larger size than the one holding the example in cell A.
The fifth day, I went up to the attic and searched around until I found a live spider. Certainly it was impossible to reproduce moving objects with any precision so I kept the spider in the cold on the balcony until it was numb. I then put it into the Mimete; after about an hour, I got an impeccable replica. I marked the original with a drop of ink, put the twins in a glass container, placed it on the radiator, and waited. After half an hour, the two spiders began to move simultaneously, and were soon fighting. They were identical in strength and ability and they fought for more than an hour without either gaining the advantage. Finally, I separated them into two distinct boxes; the next day each had spun a circular web with fourteen strands.
The sixth day, I disassembled, stone by stone, the garden wall and found a hibernating lizard. Its double, on the exterior, was normal, but when I brought it to the ambient temperature, I noticed that it moved with great difficulty. It died within a few hours, and I could confirm that its skeleton was rather weak: in particular the bones in its arms and legs were as flexible as rubber.
The seventh day, I rested. I telephoned Mr. Simpson and begged him to come over without delay. When he arrived, I told him of the experiments I had carried out (not the one with the diamonds, naturally), and with a tone and expression as seemingly relaxed as I could muster, I asked him a few questions and made a few suggestions. What was the exact status of the Mimete’s patent? Was it possible to obtain from NATCA a more complete pabulum? One that contained, perhaps in a small quantity, all the elements necessary for life? Was there a bigger Mimete available, a 5-liter size—capable of duplicating a cat? Or a 200-liter size, capable of duplicating . . .
I saw Mr. Simpson turn pale. “Sir,” he said. “I . . . I do not want to pursue this line of inquiry any further with you. I sell automatic poets, machines that calculate, take confessions, translate, and duplicate, but I believe in the immortal soul, believe myself to be in possession of one, and do not want to lose it. Nor do I want to collaborate in the creation of one . . . with the methods that you have in mind. The Mimete is what it is: an ingenious machine for copying documents, and what you are suggesting to me is, if you’ll excuse me, an obscenity.”
I was not prepared for such an intense reaction from the mild Mr. Simpson and I tried to persuade him to be reasonable. I showed him that the Mimete was something else, a good deal more than an office copier, and that the fact that its own creators didn’t realize it could be a windfall for myself and for him. I insisted on the dual aspect of its virtues: the economic, as a creator of order, and therefore of riches, and the, let’s say, Promethean, as a sophisticated new instrument for the advancement of our knowledge of vital mechanisms. In the end, I also obliquely mentioned the experiment with the diamonds.
But it was all futile. Mr. Simpson was very disturbed, and seemed incapable of understanding the significance of my words. In evident opposition to his own interests as salesman and employee, he told me these were “all fairy tales,” that he did not believe anything other than the information printed in the introductory brochure, that he was not interested either in adventures of the mind or in panning for gold, that, in any case, he wanted to be left out of the entire business. He seemed to want to add something else, but then bade me a curt goodbye and left.
It is always painful to break off with a friend: I had every intention of getting back in touch with Mr. Simpson, and was convinced that we could find common ground for an agreement, or maybe even a collaboration. Certainly I should have called him or written to him. But, as unfortunately happens in periods of intense work, I put it off day after day until, at the beginning of February, I found among my correspondence a flyer from NATCA accompanied by a terse note from the agency in Milan signed by Mr. Simpson himself: “We bring to the attention of the recipient a copy and translation of the NATCA bulletin here enclosed.”
No one can dissuade me from my conviction that it was the same Mr. Simpson who produced this missive on behalf of the company, spurred by his silly moralistic scruples. I won’t transcribe the text, as it is too long for these notes, but the essential clause went like this:
The Mimete and all the existing and forthcoming NATCA copiers are produced and put into commercial use with the sole aim of reproducing office documents. Our sales agents are authorized to sell them only to legally established commercial businesses or industries and not to private individuals. In any case, the sale of these models will take place only upon the declaration of the purchaser that he will not use the machine for:
reproduction of paper money, checks, bills of exchange, stamps, or any analogous object corresponding to a specific monetary value;
reproduction of paintings, designs, engravings, sculptures, or any other works of figurative art;
reproduction of plants, animals, human beings, alive or dead, or of any part of them.
NATCA declines all responsibility regarding its clients’, or anyone else’s, use of the machine if not in compliance with the declarations by the undersigned.
It is my opinion that these restrictions will not have much effect on the commercial success of the Mimete, and I will not hesitate to point this out to Mr. Simpson if, as I hope, I have the opportunity of seeing him again. It is incredible how people who are notoriously shrewd sometimes act in ways contrary to their own interests.