Page 31 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

The Golem of NASA

Horrified, he read the names.

TARGET(1)=SOLOMON,GABRIEL
TARGET(2)=KHAZAK,MORDECAI
TARGET(3)=MADAMAS,ABU-FUL
TARGET(4)=EL-MALIK,SHEIKH
TARGET(5)=NOZUR,YASIR

And then he saw it: the Pandora flaw. The golem had to
eliminate its creator. The logic was irrefutable: Gabe, and Gabe alone,
could intervene in the sequence of events, blow the whistle on
himself, disconnect his parasitic programming from ZAPSAT
control, and prevent the golem from saving hundreds of
thousands of Jews—according to its implacable analysis. His own
electronic profile gave the golem enough information to identify him,
to track him as he moved from one well-documented location to
another. It also indicated the level of emotional stress he could
endure before cracking, and, no doubt, the outrage he would
experience upon seeing General Khazak liquidated. So he had to be
first on the list. It made perfect sense, according to the rules of
evidence and principles of judgement Gabe had encoded.
But he was alive and Khazak was not! He wracked his brain,
bringing back to consciousness all the constraints and exception
bypasses determining the golem’s actions. If target one were not
available for what?—two days?—then target two would be
sought instead. And it had been overcast and rainy every day
since he had activated the golem. His head had been covered,
protecting him from the wrath of his mechanical deity; he did not
recognize how that resembled the unconscious hope of generations
of his co-religionists that yarmulkes could deflect the lightning bolts
of Yahweh. ZAPSAT could not find him, but Khazak was out in the
Mediterranean sunshine, bald spot exposed to the heavens. The
golem had been thwarted in its search for the prime target by an
accident of meteorology; and its directive was then to go after the
next one on the list and return later to the hunt for the first. Gabe sat
back in his chair and exhaled slowly and deeply.

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