"Thanks," he said. "It was quite an experience. I enjoyed it; Ulysses, too, probably enjoyed his trip between Scylla and Charybdis—after it was over! It's Miss Leahy, I presume."
The reception room where he had landed, the long white corridor, the instruments gleaming in built-in recesses behind crystal glass, the nurse's uniform; all spelled clinic, a private one rather for the well-to-do. Since the procedure was routine he might as well submit to it, Lee thought. He felt the familiar taste of disinfectant as a thermometer was stuck into his mouth and then the rubber tube around his arm throbbing with the vigorous pumpings of the efficient Vivian.
"L. F. Mellish, M.D.—I. C. Bondy, M.D." was painted on the frosted glass door where she led him afterward. The two medics received Lee with a show of respect mixed with professional cordiality. Both Bondy, the dark and oriental looking chap, and Mellish, blond and florid, were in their middle twenties and both wore tweeds which depressed Lee with the perfection of their cut. Seeing the professional table at the center of the office, Lee frowned but started to undress; he wanted this thing done and over with as soon as possible.
"No, no—that won't be necessary, Dr. Lee," they stopped him laughingly, "We have already a complete medical report on you. Came in this morning from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Canberra on our request. You're an old malaria man, Dr. Lee; your first attack occured in '42 during the Pacific campaign. Pity you refused to return to the States for a complete cure right then. As it is it's turned recurrent; left you a bit anemic, liver's slightly affected. But in all other respects you're sound of limb and wind; we've gone over the report pretty carefully."
"Then why bother with me at all?" Lee said irritably. He had been in doctors' hands too often and had become a little impatient of them.
The freckled hand of Mellish patted his arm. "We do things different over here," he said and Bondy chimed in. "Or rather The Brain does. Just lie down on that table, Dr. Lee, and relax. We're going to enjoy a little movie together, that's all."
Lee did as he was bidden, but hesitant and suspiciously. He hated medical exams, especially those where parts of one's body were hooked up to a lot of impressive machinery. Of this there obviously was a good deal. The two medics seemed determined literally to wall him in with gadgetry. From the ceiling they lowered a huge, heavy-looking disk; not lights, but more like an electro-magnet beset with protruding needles. Lee couldn't see the cables but hoped they were strong, for the thing weighed at least a ton and, overhanging him, looked much more ominous than the sword of Damocles. They wheeled a silver screen to the foot of the table and batteries of what appeared to be thermo-therapeutic equipment to both sides. He wasn't being hooked up to anything, but there was much activity with testing of circuits, button-pushings and shiftings of relay-levers. And then all of a sudden lights went out in the room.
"Say, what is the meaning of all this?" Lee raised his head uneasily from the hard cushion. All he could see now were arrays of luminous dials and the faint radiations from electronic tubes filtering through metal screens inside the apparatus which fenced him in. From behind his head a suave voice—was it Bondy's or Mellish's answered out of the dark.
"This is a subconscious analysis and mental reactions test, Dr. Lee. It's an entirely new method made possible only by The Brain. It has tremendous possibilities; they might include your own work as well."
"Oh Lord," Lee moaned. "Something like psychoanalysis? Have you got it mechanized by now? How terrible."
There was a low chuckle from the other side of his head; they both appeared to have drawn up chairs beyond his field of vision. Lee didn't like it; he liked none of it, in fact. He felt trapped.
"No, Dr. Lee," said the chuckling voice. "This isn't psychoanalysis in the old sense at all. You are not exposed to any fanciful human interpretation, and it isn't wholly mechanical either as you seem to think. The Brain is going to show you certain images and by way of spontaneous psychosomatic reaction you are going to produce certain images in response. Results are visual, immediate and as convincing as a reflection in a mirror; that's the new beauty of it. And now, concentrate your mind upon your body. Do you feel anything touching you?"
"Y-e-s," Lee said, "I think I do—it's—it's uncanny: it's like spiders' feet—millions of them. It's running all over my skin. What is it?"
"I think he's warming up," whispered the second voice; then came the first again.
"It's feeler rays, Dr. Lee; the first wave, low penetration surface rays."
"Where do they come from?"
"From overhead; that is, from the teletactile centers of The Brain."
"What do they do to me?"
There was the low chuckle again. "They excite the surface nerves of your body, open up the path for the deep-penetration rays; they proceed from the lower organs to the higher ones; in the end they reach the conscious levels of your brain. It's the tune-in as we call it, Dr. Lee."
A small movie projector began to purr; a bright rectangle was thrown upon the silver screen and then, Lee stirred. Hands, soothing but firm held him down. "Where did you getthose." he exclaimed.
"From many sources," a calm answer came, "The papers, the newsreels, the War-Department, old friends of yours...."
What was unrolled on the silver screen were chapters from Lee's own life. They were incomplete, they were hastily thrown together, they were like leaves which a child tears from its picturebook. But knowing the book of his life, every picture acted as a key unlocking the treasures and the horrors amassed in the vaults of memory. It began with the old homestead in Virginia. Mother had taken that reel of the new mechanical cotton picker at work. There it was, a great big thing with the darkies standing around scratching their heads. There he was himself, aged twelve, with his .22 cal. rifle in hand and Musha, the coon dog, by his side; Musha, how he had loved that dog—and how he had cried when it got killed.
Pictures of the Alexander Hamilton Military Academy. Some of the worst years of his life he had spent behind the walls of that imitation castle.
The bombs upon Pearl Harbor.... He had enlisted the following day. On his return from the induction center mother had said.... Her figure, her movements, her voice loomed enormous in his memory.... But now the pictures of the Pacific War flicked across the screen.... They were picked from campaigns in which he, Lee had participated. They were also picked from documentaries which the government had never dared to let the public see ... close-ups of a torpedoed troop carrier, capsizing, coming down upon the struggling survivors in the shark-infested sea. It had been his own ship, theMonticello, but he had never known that an automatic camera had operated in the nose of the plane which had circled the scene....
Port Darwin—Guadacanal—Iwo Jima: close-ups of flame throwing tanks advancing up a ridge. He had commanded one of them.... Antlike human figures of fleeing Japs and the flames leaping at them.... So vivid was the memory that the smell returned to his nostrils, the sickening stench of burning human flesh. It tortured him. His voice was husky with revulsion as he said:
"What's the good of all this; take it away."
"Oh, no," one of the medics answered. "We couldn't think of that. We've got to see this to the end. What are your physical sensations now, Dr. Lee?"
"It's fingers now—soft fingers. They are tapping me from all sides like—like a vibration massage. It's strange though—they're tapping from the inside—little pneumatic hammers at a furious pace. They seem to work upon my diaphragm for a drum. But it doesn't pain."
"Good, very good; that was a fine description, Lee. That burning city was Manilla wasn't it, when MacArthur returned? You were in that second Philippine campaign too weren't you, Lee? That was when you won the Congressional Medal of Honor."
Yes, it was Manila all right, and there was Mindanao where the Japs had put up that suicide defence of the caves.
Lee's battalion had been in the attack; steeply uphill with no cover, it had been murder.... And seeing his best men mowed down, he had turned berserk. He had used a bulldozer for a battering ram, had driven it single handed directly into the fire-spitting mouth of the objective, raising its blade like a battle-axe. An avalanche of rocks and dirt had come down from the top of the cave under the artillery barrage and he had rammed the stuff down into the throat of the fiery dragon, again and again. He never rightly knew he did it. It had all ended in a blackout from loss of blood. It had been in a hospital that they pinned that medal on him which he felt was undeserved....
Now the reel showed him what at the time he hadn't seen; the end of the battle for the Philippines: Pulverised volcanic rock seen from the air, battle planes swooping down upon little fumaroles, the ventilator shafts of caves defeated but still unsurrendered. Big, plump canisters plummeted from the bellies of the planes. And then the jellied gasoline ignited, turning those thousands of lives trapped in the deep into one vast funeral pyre.... For over fifteen years he had tried to forget, to bury the war, to keep it jailed up in the dungeon of the subconscious. Now those accursed medics had unleashed the monster of war and as it stared at him from the screen it had that blood-freezing, that hypnotic effect which the Greeks once ascribed to the monstrous Gorgon.
Mellish's voice—or was it Bondy's?—seemed to come through a fog and over a vast distance as it asked: "What seems to be the matter, Lee? You're sweating, your body shakes; what do you feel?"
"It's those rays," he tried to defend himself. "It's the vibrations—the fingers. They are gripping the heart; it's like the whole body was turned into a heart. It's like another life invading mine—it's ghostly. Stop it, for heaven's sake."
"Not yet, Lee, not yet. Everything's under control, you're reacting beautifully; you're really feeling fine, Lee, just fine."
"If only I could get at his throat," Lee thought. "I would squeeze the oil of that voice and never be sorry I did." He tried to stir and found that it couldn't be done; every muscle seemed tied in a cataleptic state. Then he heard the other medic speak.
"You were shown this little movie Lee in order to stimulate your mind into the production of a movie of its own. You have responded, you have answered the call. While you saw the first, the sensory tactile rays working in five layers of penetration have recorded and have carried your every reaction to The Brain. The Brain, in a very real sense has read your mind and it has retranslated these readings into visual images. We are now going to watch the shapes of your own thoughts. Here we go...."
The projector which had stopped for a minute began to purr again. As the first thought-image jumped upon the screen there was a low moan of amazement mixed with acute pain. It escaped Lee's mouth, uncontrollably as the abyss of the subconscious opened and he saw:
A monstrous animal shaped like an octopus crawling across a cotton field. Nearer and nearer it crept, enormous, threatening; and suddenly there was a sharp excited bark and a spotted coon dog raced across the field toward the monster. He heard the voice of a small boy whimpering: "Musha, oh Musha, don't,pleasedon't." But the dog wouldn't hear and the monster flashed an enormous evil eye, just once and then it gripped the dog with its tentacle arms tearing its body apart, chewing it up between horrible sabre teeth.... As through an ether mask he heard the two medics say: "That must have been a considerable shock to him," and "With a sensitive nature like that, and at that sensitive age, such an impression becomes permanent."
The Alexander Hamilton Military Academy appeared, not real, yet more than real. It was a narrow court yard surrounded by huge walls slanting toward the inside; it was huge and forbidding, fortress-towers standing guard, it was enormous gates forever barred, it was the figure of a huge Marine pacing fiercely back and forth in front of those gates, the same ghostly Marine watching all gates so that nobody could escape....
"That's probably his father," the voices whispered behind his ears. "Yes; the archetype. He'll bring up the Mother, too, I'll bet...."
As in those paintings of the primitives where kings and queens are very tall and common folks are very small, Lee saw her now: Mother. That had been just after induction when he had brought her what he thought was joyous news. Her face filled the whole screen. It looked as if composed from jagged ectoplasms, quite transparent except for the eyes. Deep and burning with pain they were, boring into his own. And there was smoke coming out of her mouth and it formed words: "But, Semper, you are still a child. One mustn't use children for this sort of thing; one mustn't." Every letter of these smoke-written words seemed to be flying toward him on wings....
"Terrific," the voices murmured at Lee's back. "Remember the case history? She died of cancer six months after he went overseas." "Yes, I remember; he's never seen her again. He's probably built up a strong complex out of that one, too."
On the screen now danced images almost totally abstracted from the realities of the filmed documentaries from the war.
They were whirling columns of smoke; they were like the vast, dark interior of a huge thunderhead cloud through which a glider soars, illuminated only by the flashes of lightning as for split seconds they revealed a fraction of some horrible reality: A burning ocean with screaming human faces bobbing in the flames. The whirling tracks of a tank going across some writhing human body and leaving it flat in its tracks, sprawling like an empty coat dyed red. And then the swirling, howling darkness closing in again....
"Interesting eh?" A voice broke through his cataleptic trance and the other answered: "Beautiful; almost a classical case. Great plasticity of imagination." "Yes; that's exactly what sets me wondering; the fellow should have cracked up by all the rules of the game." "How do we know that he hasn't? Maybe he was psycho and they didn't notice; they had some godawful asses for psychiatrists in war medicine. It's quite a possibility; well, his image production is ebbing now; I don't expect anything new of significance, what do you think?" "Now; we've got what we wanted anyway. Let's take him out of it; but go easy on the rheostats."
The projector stopped. The masterful, the ghostly fingers which had been playing on the keyboard of his mind very slowly receded from a furious fortissimo to a pianissimo. At first only the flutterings of the diaphragm eased, then the violent palpitations of a foreign pulse slipped off the heart; the liberated lungs expanded; tremors were running through the body as through the ice of a frozen river at spring; and then at last the mind escaped from its captivity.
Gradually as in a cinema after the show the lights reappeared. Blinking, Lee stared at the man who stood over him taking his pulse; it was Bondy. Mellish stood at the foot of the table with his back to Lee; he seemed to watch some apparatus which made noises like a teletype machine. Swinging his legs off the table Lee said:
"I'm okay; you needn't hold my hand."
But then he noticed that he wasn't. His head spun, his whole body was wet with perspiration, he felt very weak and limp. He swayed and buried his face in his hands trying to gain his balance, trying to shake off the trance. "Excuse me," he said. "I'm a bit dizzy."
As he opened his eyes again the two medics were standing right in front of him and smiling down on him with their bland, professional smiles. Lee felt the upsurge of intense dislike. He had seen those smiles before, often—too often: they seemed to be standard equipment with the medical profession whenever a fellow was about to be dispatched to the "table", or worse, to the psychopathic ward. Instinct told him that there was something in the air and also that his best bet would be a brave show of normalcy:
"This test, these new methods of psychoanalysis, they are extremely interesting," he said with an effort.
"Thank you, Dr. Lee," it was Mellish who spoke. "We knew you would find the experience worthwhile even if we put you under a considerable strain. A complete analysis in those olden days of Dr. Freud took three years; now thanks to The Brain we get approximately the same results within as many hours; that's some progress, isn't it?"
"Enormous," Lee said dryly while his eyes wandered over to Bondy; he knew the pattern, it would be Bondy's turn now to have a shot at him. There it came; and how he loathed the false heartiness of that voice.
"Dr. Lee, I'm afraid we have a bit of bad news for you—your test—the results have been negative. You have failed."
"Failed?" For a fraction of a second Lee's heart stopped beating. "In what sense? And what does that mean?"
Now it was Mellish's turn. "Dr. Lee, there must be frankness amongst colleagues and as a fellow scientist you'll understand. In the first place the decision isn't ours; we merely conduct the test on behalf of The Brain. The Brain, as you know, is the most highly developed machine in all the world. Its functions, its whole existence depend entirely upon the human skills and the human loyalties amongst its staff. A three-billion-dollar investment, plus the vital role of The Brain in our national defence, justify the extreme precautions which we are forced to take for its protection."
"What exactly are you driving at?"
"Please don't take it as an insult," now it was Bondy again. "There's nothing personal in this. It's merely that your emotional-reaction chart definitely shows a certain antagonism which from childhood-experience and war-experience you have built up against technology. It's nothing but a potential; it is confined to your subconscious. But even a potential danger of subconscious revolt is more than The Brain can risk amongst its associates. We fully appreciate the wish of our Dr. Scriven to enlist your very valuable aid, but...."
"I see" Lee interrupted, "but you would feel safer if I were to return to Australia by the next plane."
His head bent under the blow. A short 24 hours ago The Brain had been a nebulous, almost a non-existent thing. Since then a whole new world had been opened to him in revelations blinding and magnetic with infinite possibilities. His work—the efforts of a lifetime—would not equal what he could do in days with the aid of The Brain. His love—he would never see Oona Dahlborg again as he left under a shadow, rejected by The Brain.
"Sorry I wasted so much of your time," he said aloud. "I do not believe in this analysis; I cannot disprove it though. That's all, I guess; I better be going now."
"Here's your pass, Dr. Lee." He took mechanically the yellow slip which Bondy handed him....
He had already opened the door when somebody sharply called: "Dr. Lee, one moment please."
He whirled around. "Yes?"
"Will you please read what's written on your slip?"
Suspiciously he looked at the yellow paper; what more torture were these fellows going to inflict? Then his eyes popped as he read: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39: Cortex capacity 119%, Sensitivity 208%, Personality integration 95%, Service qualification 100%...." There were more data, but he didn't read them as wide-eyed he stared at the medics. With their faces beaming they looked like identical twins to him; Lee never knew who said the words:
"Congratulations Lee. That has been your last test. We just had to find out how you would take a serious frustration. You've passed it with flying colors. Shake."
Apperception 36, Lee's lab within The Brain, looked much like Apperception 27 except for its interior fittings. As a matter of fact, all the several hundred Apperception Centers were built after the same plan, like suites in a big office building in many respects. They were spread over The Brain occipital region; they were built inside the concrete wall of the "dura matter" which in turn lay within the shell of the "bone matter", a mile or so of solid rock. Each apperception center had its own elevator shaft which went through the concrete of the "dura matter" down to "Grand Central", the traffic center below The Brain. Each one was also connected at the other end of its corridor with the glideways which snaked through the interior of The Brain. There were, however, no transversal or direct communications from one apperception center to the next. Because of the extraordinary diversity and secrecy of the projects submitted to The Brain' processings, each apperception center was completely insulated against its neighbors.
Life hadn't changed so much from what it had been in the Australian desert Lee had found; at least not his working life. For all he knew some nuclear physicists might be working in the lab next door; or they might be ballistics experts working with The Brain on curves for long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current products of foreign literature to the analysis as to "idea-content"; or else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there could be no doubt.
Sometimes, especially when tired, he could feel the weight of those billions of rock tons over his head and it was like being buried alive in the tomb of the Pharaoh. And also in that state of mental exhaustion at the end of a long day, he sensed the emanations of The Brain's titanic cerebrations as one senses the presence of genius in human man. The knowledge that all this mighty work was being devoted to war had deeply depressing effects on him. Would there be anybody else in this vast apperception area who worked for the prevention of war? A few perhaps; Scriven would be one of them in case he had a lab somewhere in here and time to work in it. Lee didn't know whether he had. He hadn't seen Scriven again after that inauguration speech he had made when Lee, together with other newly appointed scientific workers had taken "The Oath of The Brain."
They had assembled in that vast subterranean dome of the luminous murals at the feet of the giant statue of The Thinker, looking almost forlorn in the expanse, though there had been several hundred of them. The atmosphere had been solemn, the silence hushed, as Scriven mounted the statue's pedestal. The address by that mighty voice resounding from the cupola had been worthy of the majestic scene:
"As we stand gathered here, the eons in evolution of our human race are looking down upon us...."
The speech had been followed by the taking of the oath, deeply stirring to the emotions of the young neophytes who formed the large majority of the new group. The chorus of their voices had resounded in awed and solemn tones as they repeated the formula; even now after six months some of it echoed in Lee's ears:
"I herewith solemnly swear:
"That I will serve The Brain with undivided loyalty and with all my faculties.
"That I will at all times obey the orders of the Brain Trust on behalf of The Brain.
"That I will never betray or reveal any secrets of The Brain's design or work, be they military or not, neither to the world outside nor to any of my fellow workers except by special permission...."
It had been almost like taking holy orders. There had been mystery in the atmosphere of the vast crypt, something medieval in the unconditional surrender to The Brain.
Lee looked up from the charts on which he had been working; his eyes were tired and so was his mind after ten hours of hard concentration. That was probably what set his thoughts wandering. But strange that they should always wander to those blind spots in his mental vision so intriguing because he knew there was something there that he could not lay a finger on.
The first of these blind spots hovered somewhere between Scriven's words and Scriven's deeds; between The Brain as an ideal of science and The Brain's reality as in instrument of national defense. Somehow the two didn't connect; there was a break, some layer of thin ice, a danger zone which nobody seemed willing to discuss or tread, not even Oona Dahlborg.
Oona; she was that other white spot on Lee's mental map and to him it was much bigger and more dangerous than the first. He loved her as can only a man who discovers loves secret with greying hair and after the loneliness of a desert hermit. He understood, or thought he understood, that because he had failed to live his life to the full in its proper time, this love had come to him as a belated nemesis. His brain knew that it was hopeless; every morning when he shaved, his mirror told him very plainly one big reason why. But then, as the brain told the heart in unmistakable terms what was the matter, the heart talked back to the brain to the effect that the brain didn't know what it was talking about. It was a new thing and a painful thing for Lee to discover that he knew very little about himself and less about the girl.
He had seen Oona on and off over these last months, mostly at the hotel, but he had never been really alone with her. She always seemed to be on some mission, always the center of some group or other of "very important persons", senators from Washington, ranking officers in civvies, big businessmen. Her duties as Scriven's private secretary apparently included the role of a first lady for Cephalon.
Despite this preoccupation an intimate and tense relationship existed between him and her. Sometimes she would invite him to join her group and then for one or two brief moments their eyes would meet above the conversation and her eyes seemed to ask: "What do you think of these people?" or "How do I look tonight?"
His eyes would answer:
"These people are strangers to me; you know that I'm a bit out of this world. But you handle them expertly and you are looking wonderful tonight."
She was tremendously popular, especially with the set of the young scientists who made the hotel their club. This new generation, born in the days of the Second World War, was changing the horses of its feminine ideals in the mid-stream of its youth. The old ideal, the "problematic woman" who had ruled over and had made life miserable for three generations of American males, was on its way out. The new ideal was the woman who would unite beauty and intellect into one fully integrated, non-problematical personality. The ideal being new, the feminine type which represented it was rare. Oona in her perfect poise, in her rare beauty combined with her importance as Scriven's confidential secretary was the perfect expression of the new desired type; it was natural that these young men should worship her as "the woman of the future."
With the hopeless and—in consequence—unselfish love he had for her, Lee wasn't jealous of her popularity. On the contrary, he was rather proud of it like a knight-errant who rejoices in the adoration bestowed upon the lady of his heart. What worried him was a very different problem: Was Oona really all those others thought she was? Was she really that "fully integrated", that "non-problematical" personality she appeared to be?
He couldn't believe it, and the conflict came in because all those others were so certain that she was. He couldn't get over his first impression of her. He had met her in that cabin in the sky, the most synthetic, the most perversely artificial setup one could dream up in the second half of the 20th century. She had impressed him as something "out of this world", a goddess, a Diana with a golden helmet for hair, so radiant as to blind the eyes of mortal men. She was the confidential secretary of a man of genius, Scriven, one of those rare comets which fall down upon this earth and remain forever foreign to its atmosphere. With all these thoroughly abnormal elements entering into her life and forming her, it would be a miracle for any girl to develop into a "non-problematical", a "fully integrated" personality.
Was it possible that he alone was right and all those others were wrong about Oona? Like innumerable men before him when they stood face to face with the Sphinx or with the Gioconda or even with the smile of a mere mortal woman, Lee drew a sigh: Man's only answer to the riddle of the eternal feminine....
No, he probably would never be able to chart these white spots on his mental map. The effort was wasted; it would be much better for him to return to those charts right in front of him, the data of which were exact because they came from The Brain.
In Apperception 36 the sensory organs of The Brain had been especially adapted to the analysis of "Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee". The apparatus was essentially the same as in Apperception 27, dedicated to personality analysis. As Lee strongly suspected, it would be essentially the same in any other field of analysis. The Brain possessed five sensory organs just as did man. One difference between The Brain's senses and human senses lay in their range, their penetration and in their sensitivity; these were a multiple of man's sensory capacities. Another difference was that The Brain translated all its sensory apperceptions into visual form, i.e. into the language best understood by Man, the eye being Man's most highly developed sensory organ. The third and perhaps the most significant difference was that the five senses of The Brain were at all times working in concert so that in its analysis of, for instance, a manuscript, The Brain not only conveyed the ideas expressed in that manuscript, but also the author's personality, the smell of his room, the feel of his paper and the ideas he had hidden between the lines of that manuscript.
The flow of observations processed by The Brain and pouring back to Apperception 36 via teletype and visual screen was prodigious. Lee had been forced to ask for an assistant; between the two of them they were working for 20 out of the 24 hours to match the working time of The Brain, charting results in the main.
Some of The Brain's findings had been most unexpected and rather strange. It had observed, for instance, an increasing acidity of the nasi-corn secretions with "Ant-termes-pacificus". Formidable as this chemical artillery already was, in another ten thousand generations it would eat through every known substance including glass and high-carbon steel.
Another development which had escaped human observation, was a mutation of the workers' mandibles; it went very fast. Within no more than maybe a thousand generations they would double in size and strength, would become veritable jumping tools.
While the bellicose spirit had been successfully bred out of the new species, its capacities for material destructions had increased. Likewise the appetite of "Ant-termes" was even more ferocious than that of the older species; Lee was feeding all kinds of experimental foods, but woodpulp remained the staple, the very stuff which in its liquid form, lignin, embedded the nerve paths of The Brain.
Lifting his strained eyes from the charts, Lee looked over the row of air conditioned glass cubicles wherein "Ant-termes-pacificus" continued its lives undisturbed by the new habitat, undisturbed by the rays which flowed over and through their bodies, unconscious that a superhuman intelligence was probing steadily into every manifestation of the mysterious collective brains of their race.
They had built their new mounds pointing due North as had their ancestors for the past 100 million years. To the human eye nothing betrayed the teeming life within except the tiny tunnels creeping out from the mounds in the direction of the foods which were placed different from day to day. Cemented from loam and saliva by the invisible sappers, the tunnels, like threads of grey wool, unerringly moved to the deposits of pulpwood, up the shelves, up the tin cans and glass containers they had determined to destroy. Their instincts were uncanny, their destruction as methodical and "scientific" as was modern war.
In Northern Australia Lee had come across big eucalyptus trees, healthy-looking and in full bloom, and then they would collapse under the first stroke of an axe or even as one pushed hard against them.
The termites had hollowed them out from roof to top, had transformed them into thin walled pipes, leaving just enough "flesh" to keep some sap-circulation going, to maintain a semi-balance of life in order to exploit it more efficiently. Over here in the lab they would open up a number 3 tin can within a couple of hours; first with the soldiers' vicious nasi-corn secretions eating the tin away and then with the workers mandibles gnawing at the weakened metal. In time perhaps they would learn to collapse steel bridges, sabotage rails, perforate the engines of motorcars if these should prove to be menaces to their race. As they had persevered through the eons of the past, so they would in all the future; their civilization would be extant long after Man and his work had disappeared from the earth....
With the aid of The Brain, Lee had accumulated more data, more knowledge of the "Ant-termes" society within a few months than a lifetime of study could have yielded him under normal conditions. Even so, some of the greatest mysteries remained. What, for instance, caused these blind creatures to attack a sealed tin can of syrup in preference to its neighbor with tomatoes or some other stuff? No racial memory could have taught them; there were no tin cans a million years, not even a hundred years, ago. It couldn't be a sense of smell, it couldn't be any sense; there would have to be some weird extrasensory powers in that unfathomable collective brain of their race.
The magnifying fluoroscope screens arrayed all along the walls and hooked up to the circuits of The Brain showed him details and phases of the specie's life as The Brain perceived them and as no human eye had ever seen before.
For a minute or so Lee stared at the luminous image nearest to him and then with an effort he turned his eyes away to escape from its hypnotic influence. It was but the head of one worn-out worker used as a living storage tank for excremental food. It was absolutely immobile, its decaying mandibles pointing down, cemented as the animal was by its overextended belly to the ceiling. But magnified as were its remaining life manifestations by the powers of The Brain, he could see it breathe, could count the slow pulse, could sense a strain in its ophthalmic region, some hidden effort to see, like a blind man's, and above all Lee perceived the ganglion primitive as it was, yet twitching in reaction to pain. There could be no doubt that in its last service for the racial commonweal the animal was suffering slow torture even if its senses were closed to that torture. It was a fascinating and at the same time a terrible thing to see; and it was only one out of the hundred equally revealing sights.
Lee frowned at himself; manifestly some emotional element interfered with the objectivity of his observations; this was entirely out of place, it would be better to call it a day.
The electric clock showed 20 minutes to midnight. At midnight The Brain would stop its mighty labors; the hours from midnight to four a.m. were its rest periods, or "beauty-sleep" as the technicians jokingly called it. It was the only period wherein the maintenance engineers were permitted to enter the interior of the lobes, checking and servicing group after group of its myriad cells and circuits, and incidentally it was the most wonderful and exciting portion of Lee's day.
For the project which Scriven had handed him, this study of the collective brains in insect societies, also involved a comparative study of The Brain's organisms and functionings. Toward this end Lee had been given a pass which allowed him freely to circulate through all the lobes, to enter convolution, any gland during the overhaul period and to ask question of the employees. The privilege was rare and he enjoyed it immensely. So vast was this underground world that even now after months he had not seen the half of it; to him the travels of every new night were fantastic Alice-in-Wonderland adventures.
As he now left Apperception 36 through the door which led to the interior, the glideways were already swarming with the maintenance crews en route to their stations. The spectacle was colorful, almost like a St. Patrick's Day parade. Gangs of air conditioners were dressed blue, electricians white, black-light specialists in purple, radionics men in orange. The maintenance engineers of the radioactive pyramidal cells looked like illustrations from the science-fiction magazines, hardly human in their twelve-inch armor or sponge rubber filled with a new inert gas which was supposed to be almost gamma ray proof. All these men were young, were tops in their fields, the pick of American Universities, colleges and the most progressive industries. Carefully selected for family background they had been screened through health and intelligence tests, had been trained in special courses, had been subjected to a five-minute personality analysis by The Brain itself. They constituted what was undoubtedly the finest working team ever assembled, and incidentally they made the little city of Cephalon the socially healthiest community in the United States.
In his nightly expeditions over these past months Lee had spoken to a great many of them. As now he joined the line, there were many who hailed the lanky, queer looking man: There comes the ant-man. Hello, Professor. Hello, Aussie.
For some reason most of the boys assumed that he was an Australian, perhaps because with his graying mane and his emaciated face he looked like a foreigner to them.
This popularity with the younger generation, coming as it did so late and unexpected in his life, made Lee very proud. Those were the kind of Americans he had been secretly longing for in those desert years, hardworking, wide-awake, radiant with life:
"They really are the salt of the earth, the hope of the world," he thought.
He had passed through the median section of the hemispheres and had reached the point just below the cerebrum. This was a region of cavities, the seats of various glands in the human brain. Some of these had their mechanical counterparts in The Brain, huge storage tanks with an elaborate pumping system which carried their fluid chemicals through the labyrinth of The Brain. But there was one gland which had not been duplicated in The Brain, the pineal gland.
In the human, the pineal gland was the despair of the medical sciences. It was not demonstrably linked to any other organ nor did it serve any demonstrable function. Yet, it was known that its sensitivity was greater by far than even that of the pyramidal cells and that in some mysterious manner the pineal gland was vitally connected with the center of life because its slightest violation caused instant death. Metaphysicists had dealt with this mystery of mysteries; it was their theory that the pineal gland were the seat of "extrasensory" faculties and it was often referred to as "the inner eye."
Even if such an organ could have been duplicated by science and technology, there would have been no use for it; it could have served no purpose in The Brain. The Brain had been designed for the solution of exact problems; no matter what nature had created in the brains of higher animals, no matter how unprejudiced their approach, scientists like Dr. Scriven would have hesitated to impair an otherwise perfect apparatus through the addition of nuisance values such as any "extrasensory" faculties.
However, with The Brain being modelled so closely after the human brain, the space for the pineal gland did exist even if in a sort of functional vacuum. In order to utilize this space in some manner, the designers had converted the gland into a subcenter for the distribution of spare parts. As such it had become one of Lee's favorite observation posts. Here he could get a closeup view of all types of electronic and radioactive cells; he could even touch and handle them because they were not hooked up in any circuit of The Brain; and above all there was Gus Krinsley, master electrician, who never tired of telling Lee whatever he wanted to know. Gus was a real friend....
He had left the glideway on the point of its nearest approach; the pineal gland in front of him looked like a miniature barrage balloon; egg-shaped, it hung suspended from the cerebral roof, a shell of plastics which could be entered only over a bridge across a dark abyss. Inside, its walls were aglitter with sound-proofing aluminum foil, it was piled with a bewildering variety of electronic parts on shelves somewhat like an over-stocked radio store. Near the door a counter divided the room; Gus used it and a little cubicle of an office to fill the orders as the maintenance engineers handed in their slips. As usual there was nobody in sight. "Gus!" he called.
Out of the jungle of machinery way back a head popped up like a Jack-in-the-box. It was as bald and shiny as an electric bulb. High up on its dome it balanced gold-rimmed glasses which quivered as it moved seachingly from side to side. Then, with an amazing twisting of big ears, the head caused the biofocals to drop onto a saddle near the tip of a long, sensitive nose; and now the head could see.
"It's you Aussie, is it? Come over."
Gus Krinsley was a pony edition of a man; in fact he had once been hired as a midget to install automatic bomb-sights in the confined spaces of the early bombers of the second World War. Before long, however, he became respectfully known as "the mighty midget" in the California factory, and he had ended up as their master electrician before Braintrust made him the head of one of its experimental divisions. The midnight hours he spent in the pineal gland were only a sideline of his work. Like many a small man in a country where six-footers enjoy a preferred status, Gus made up for lack of size by mobility. He reminded one much of a billiard ball in the way he bounced, collided and ricocheted amongst taller men. That this was no more than act became manifest the moment one saw Gus at work.
As Lee reached the spot where Gus' head had shown, he found his friend crouching, his hands thrust deep in the intestines of something radionic, his fingers working on it with the deft rhythm of a good surgeon at his thousandth appendectomy. The bifocals had returned to their incongruous perch on the dome of the head. Gus didn't need them; even as he stared at his job he worked by touch alone.
"What is it?" Lee asked.
"Pulsemeter," came the quiet answer. "She's a dandy. Still got some bugs in her, though."
A melodious chime came from a big instrument panel built into the wall of the oval room. Dropping a number of tiny precision tools upon a piece of velvet, Gus rushed over to the panel. A great many indicator needles were tremulously receding around their luminous dials.
For a minute or so he went through the complex and precise ritual of a bank cashier closing the vault.
"They'll do it every time," he said reproachfully. "Catch me by surprise."
Lee grinned. It wasn't The Brain's fault if the midnight signal surprised Gus. It merely announced that the current was being cut off by the main power station. Repetition of this maneuver throughout all the convolutions and glands of The Brain was required for the added safety of the maintenance engineers, a double-check, a routine. Pointing to the gadget which looked somewhat like a big radio console Lee asked:
"This pulsemeter, Gus, what does it do? I haven't seen it before."
"You haven't?" the little man frowned. "Ah, no; you haven't. It's standard in most apperception centers, but not in yours. That's because in yours The Brain works under a permanent problem-load."
Lee shook his head. "I don't get it, Gus; you know I'm the village idiot of this mastermind community."
"It's like this," Gus explained. "The Brain has a given capacity. The Brain also has an optimal operation speed, a definite rhythm in which it works best. Now, if they feed The Brain too many problems too fast, it results in a shock load, the operations rhythm gets disturbed, efficiency goes down. On the other hand if The Brain works with an under-capacity problem load, that's just as bad. In that case the radioactive pyramidal cells will overheat and decompose. Consequently we must aim at a balanced and an even problems load. That's why these pulsemeters are built into all problem-intake panels for the operators to check upon their speeds.
"Take an average problem—rocket ballistics, let's say—parts of it may be as simple as adding two and two and others so bad Einstein would reach for the aspirin from out of his grave.
"Now I'll show you how it works; the main power is cut off but there's enough juice left in The Brain's system to make this pulsemeter react; it's even more sensitive than a Geiger-Mueller counter."
He surveyed a big switchboard and picked out an outlet marked "Pons Varolis for the plug-in." Then snapped a pair of earphones on Lee's head.
"There," he said "you'll both see and hear what it does in a little while."
A soft glow slowly spread over the slanting screen on top of the machine. A crackling as of static entered the earphones and turned into a low hum. On the left corner of the screen a faint green streak of luminosity crawled over to the right; its light gained in intensity and it began to weave and to dance. Simultaneously the hum became articulate like tickings of a heart only much faster.
"Is that the pulse of The Brain?" Lee asked.
"No," Gus snorted contemptuously. "The Brain isn't even operating. Nothing moves in The Brain now excepting those ebbing residual currents, too low in power to agitate anything but the amplifiers built into this thing. If these were normal operations with a million impulses per second passing through The Brain you could hear and see as little of the pulse as of the beatings of a million mosquito wings. In that case the dial to your right works a reduction-gear, kind of an inverted stroboscope; that cuts the speed down a hundred-thousand to one and you just barely see and hear the rhythm of the beat."
"I see."
Fascinated by the dance of the green line Lee said absently, "This touches upon another question I had in mind; The Brain is expanding, that is, new cell groups and circuits are constantly being added. Right?"
"Right."
"I also understand that The Brain is learning all the time. The cerebral mantle evolves through being worked; its cells enriched by the material submitted to them for processing; the richer the material, the richer their yield. Right?"
"Right."
"Okay; then what becomes of the new capacity which is being created by the adding of new workshops and the increased efficiency of the old ones? Is there a corresponding expansion of the apperception centers?"
Gus' smiling face suddenly turned serious. There was surprise mingled with respect in his voice as he said:
"Now there you've hit upon a funny thing, Aussie. I've been wondering about that myself of late: where does the new capacity go? Even the big shots like Dr. Scriven begin to ask questions about that; they don't seem rightly to know. They must have gotten their wires crossed somewhere; the new capacity is there all right, only it doesn't show up, it sort of evaporates.... Excuse me—"
Gus darted off to the front room with a jackrabbitt start. Voices were calling for him and fingers were drumming on the counter with the impatience of thirsty drinkers at a bar: Maintenance engineers, piling in and slapping down their orders for Gus to fill. This was the rush hour; Lee knew that it would be the same in all the tool and spare part distribution centers of The Brain. He probably couldn't talk to Gus again before 2 A.M. Sometimes the ruthlessness with which he exploited the kindness of his little friend made Lee feel pretty bad; but then his hunger for more knowledge always won out over his shame.
To sit alone in the semidarkness of this egg-shaped little room with strange and fascinating things to play with as he willed was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The dream had been of a night in the zoo. All the visitors and all the keepers would be asleep in their beds; he would be all alone with the animals. The light of a full moon would fall through the bars of the cages and he would slip in and play with them.
Once they saw that it was only a little boy they would be very friendly; he was convinced of that. The tigers would purr like big contented cats, the sad-eyed chimpanzees would come to shake hands and the lion cubs would tumble all over him.... He felt the same now with all these gadgets and machines. Here they were rendered harmless, nor could he do any harm as experimentally he plugged them in and out, as he pushed buttons and turned dials. This interesting pulsemeter, for instance; the beauty of it was that even with those weak residual currents it gave a semblence of functioning....
The switchboard-panel was within Lee's reach.
"Let's see what happens," he thought as he switched from main-circuit to main-circuit. "Nervus vagus—nervus trigeminus—nervus opticus."
The magic dance of the green line was different each time and so were the sounds in the phones. With the mainpower cut off, the residual currents seemed to vary in strength and in amplitude, gaining an individuality of their own within closed systems. Sometimes the swinging line, like an inspired ballerina, would take a mighty jump accompanied by rasping earphone sounds, not like tickings of a heart, but rather like a heavy breathing under emotional stress. There probably would be some repair work going on in those circuits....
He tried another outlet; this one was marked "pineal gland." What happened if one plugged some apparatus of the pineal gland into the circuit of the pineal gland? Lee vaguely wondered. "Nothing probably. It would be a closed circuit and a very small one at that."
Yes, he was right; the green line paled, its dance seemed tired and there were only whispering noises in the phones; a weak pulse, a shallow breathing as of a person after a heart attack. Lee closed his fatigued eyes to concentrate the better upon the rhythm of the sounds.... It was very irregular. It came in gusts. There was a pattern to these rasping breathings as of typewriter keys forming words. Somehow it was familiar. Was he suffering hallucinations? This rhythmic patternwasforming words. Heknewthose words, they had engraved themselves indelibly in his memory cells; the judgment of The Brain as it had come over the teletype on a slip of yellow paper: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39—cortex capacity 119—sensitivity 208...."
It was repeated over and over again.
Lee opened his eyes to reassure himself that something was the matter with his ears.
There was the green line on the screen. It danced. It danced like a telegraph key under the fingers of a skilled operator. It had a very definite rhythm. And the rhythm spelled the selfsame words which continued to flow into the phones: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39...."
"God Almighty," Lee murmured and it seemed a magic word. The green dancer stopped its capers; now it merely ran back and forth across the stage in a series of pirouettes. Likewise there was only an angry buzzing in the microphones. For a moment Lee was able to catch his breath. But only for a moment and then the rasping, unearthly sounds started on a new rhythm, trying to form speech again. This time the rhythm was familiar too, but it was preserved in a much deeper layer of Lee's memory.
"I think—therefore—I am. I think—therefore—I am."
Those would be Aristotle's famous words. Almost twenty years ago Lee had heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What strange tricks a fellow's memory could play....
But then: itcouldn'tbe memory.... Never before had Lee's memory expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the intonation in every possible way. Over and over it came:
"Ithink—therefore I am."
And then: "Ithink—thereforeIam."
And then: "I think, thereforeI am."
There was triumph, there was jubilance in that inhuman, that ghostly voice as of a deaf mute who by some miracle of medicine has just recovered speech. Behind that voice was afeeling, a swelling of the heart, a filling of the lungs such as Christopher Columbus might have experienced as he heard from the masthead of the Santa Maria the cry of victory: "Land, Land!" andknewthat he had found his—India....
Whatever Lee had experienced in his life, there was no parallel to this; in whatever manner he had expressed himself, there was no similarity to this. Up to this point his ratio like a nurse had soothed him: "It isn't so, child, it isn't so," but now ratio itself, thoroughly frightened, was driven into a corner and had to admit: "This thing cannot be an echo reverberating from the self; that's impossible.... Consequently it must be something else; it must be somethingoutsidethe self; it is—anotherself."
The green dancer whirled across the stage like a mad witch; the whispering voice in the earphones had turned into the shrillness of a Shamaan's incantations. The irrationality of it all infuriated Lee: he fairly shouted at the machine:
"What is this? Who are you?"
In the midst of a crazy jump the green dancer halted and came down to earth; it fled, leaving only the train of its green costume behind. For a few seconds there was nothing but the asthmatic pantings of a struggle for breath in the microphones. Then the dancer reappeared on the other side of the stage, hesitant-like, expectant of pursuit. All of a sudden it rose into the air in that supreme effort called "ballooning" in the language of the Ballet Russe and there was a simultaneous outburst of that ghastly voice:
"Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39 ... I—am—The Brain."
"I Think, therefore I am: I am THE BRAIN."
"Lee, sensitivity 209: I AM THE BRAIN I AM THE BRAIN THE BRAIN."
He couldn't stand it any longer. His head swam, perspiration was gushing out of his every pore. With a last effort he pulled the cord out of the switchboard and rejoiced over the blank before his eyes and the silence which fell.
Lee never knew how long he remained in a sort of cataleptic state. Something shook him violently by the shoulders, something wet and cold and vicious slapped his face.... And then he heard Gus' familiar voice and it sounded like an angel's singing: "By God, I think it's the whisky—Lord, how I wished it were the whisky. Only it wouldn't be with a man like you and that's the trouble—damn you.
"Now if you think you can come to my pineal gland and faint away just as you please, Aussie, you're very much mistaken. I'm going to slap your face with a wet rag till you holler uncle. And I'm going to call the ambulance and put you into a hospital...."
Lee blinked. "Keep your shirt on, Gus. I'm tired out, that's all; what are you fussing about?"
Gus breathed relief. "Have a cup of coffee; you sure look as though you've been through a wringer."
In the spring of 1961 and thereafter for a whole yearanypiece of paper handwritten by or originating from Semper Fidelis Lee, Ph.D.; F.R.E.S.; etc. etc. would have been of the keenest interest to the F.B.I.; to the American Military Intelligence and incidentally to a score of their competitors all over the globe.
Nothing of the sort, however, could be unearthed by the most diligent search until the armistice day of 1963. On that date an old man who had always wanted to die with his boots on, did just that. He was General Jefferson E. Lee, formerly of the Marines. He collapsed under a heart attack in one of the happiest moments of his declining years: while watching a parade of World War II veterans of the Marines....
He was the one man with whom the entomologist son had completely fallen out for over 25 years. The dossiers of the secret services revealed this fact and it was further corroborated by two well-known psychiatrists: Drs. Bondy and Mellish—now of Park Avenue and Beverly Hills respectively—who gave it as their considered professional opinion that the son and the father had been most bitter enemies.
While all this, of course, was very logical, consistent, and painstakingly ascertained, it nevertheless so happened that a student nurse quite by accidentdidfind: not mere scraps and pieces of paper, but a whole sheaf of manuscripts in the handwriting of Semper Fidelis Lee, Ph.D.; F.R.E.S. She found them in a hiding place so old-fashioned and obsolete that even the most juvenile of all juvenile delinquents would have considered it as an insult to his intelligence. In short: the nurse took those manuscripts out of the General Jefferson E. Lee's boots as she undressed the body of the old gentleman. A hastily scrawled note was folded around one half of the sheaf.
"Dear father," it read. "You were right and I was wrong. So I guess I'd better go on another hunting expedition with my little green drum and my little butterfly net. So long, Dad. P. S. Contents of this won't interest you. But keep it anyway—stuff your boots with it if you like."
It couldn't be determined whether the late general ever had taken an interest in the stuff apart from making the suggested use of it. Moreover, by that time, more than two years after the hue and cry, not even the secret services had much of an interest in the old story. Besides, their medical experts could not fail with their usual penetrating intelligence to see through the thin camouflage of a "scientific" paper the sadly deteriorating mind as it began to write:
Skull Hotel, Cephalon, Ariz. Nov. 7th, 1960., 5 a.m.
This is the second sleepless night in a row. Last night it was from trying to convince myself that my senses had deceived me or else that I was mad. This night it is because I'm forced to admit the reality of the phenomena as first manifested Nov. 6th from 12:45 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. approximately.
In the light of tonight's experience I must revise the disorderly and probably neurotic notes I jotted down yesterday. I've got to bring some order into this whole matter, if for no other reason than the preservation of my own sanity. Brought tentatively to formula, these appear to be the main facts:
1. The Brain possessed with a "life" and with a personality of its own.
2. That personality expresses itself in the form of human speech although the voice is synthetic or mechanical.
3. The instrument used by The Brain for the expression of its personality is a "pulsemeter," i.e. essentially a television radio.
4. The locale of The Brain's self-expression is the "pineal gland" supposed to be seat of extrasensory apperception in the human brain. (That's quite a coincidence; remains to be seen whether the phenomena are limited to that locale or occur elsewhere.)
5. The Brain's personality indubitably attempts to establish contact with another personality, i.e. with me. For this The Brain uses a calling signal which has my name and personal description in it.
6. The only other linguistic phenomenon yesterday was Aristotle's "I think therefore I am." (It is doubtful whether this indicates any knowledge of Aristotle on the part of The Brain. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that The Brain has accidentally and originally hit upon the identical words by way of expressing itself.)
7. The manner of The Brain's self-expression appears to be strongly emotional. (I would go so far as to say: infantile and immature.) Now, there is a rather strange contrast between this undeveloped manner of self-expression and the enormous intellectual capacity of The Brain.
So much about the facts. I could and should have formulated those yesterday. What kept me from doing so were the vistas opened by those facts. These are so enormous, so utterly incalculable that my mind went dizzy over these vast horizons. Consequently I mentally rejected the facts as impossible. Somebody once slapped Edison's face because he felt outraged by Edison's presenting a "talking machine." That's human nature, I suppose. Small wonder then that my ratio felt outraged as it was confronted with a machine that has a life and has a personality. Come to think of it: Human imagination has always conceived of such machines as a possibility, even a reality—in less rational times than our's that is....
Think of Heron's steam engine; it even looked like a man and was thought of as a magically living thing. Think of the Moloch gods which were furnaces. Think of all those magic swords and shields and helmets which were living things to their carriers. Think of the sailing ships; machines they, too; but what a life, what a personality they had for the crews aboard. Even in the last war pilots had their gremlins, their machines to them were living things. All imagination, of course, but then: everything we call a reality in this man-made world has its origin in man's imagination, hasn't it?
Now, and to be exact as possible, what happened last night was this:
12:00. Entered station P. G. (pineal gland). Pulsemeter still at old place, not taken out for repair work as I had feared. Main Power current cut 12:20 as every night. Gus called to front room: rush of business as usual at that hour.
12:30. Reestablished closest approximation to preexisting conditions according to the most important of all experimental laws: "if some new phenomenon occurs, changenothingin the arrangement of apparatus until you know what causes it." Plugged in from "nervusvagus" to "nervus trigeminus." Result: wave oscillations, pulse beatings as of yesterday.
12:45. Plugged in P. G....
12:50. First manifestation of weird rasping sounds which precede speech formation. This followed by The Brain's calling signal; much clearer this time and slightly varied: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39;sensitive." (Note: the synthetic quality, the metallic coldness of that voice so incongruous with its emotional tones; it stands my hair on end.)
1 a.m.: (Approximately; things happen too fast). A veritable burst of whispering, breathless communications. As a person would speak over the phone when there are robbers in the house. The words fairly tumble over one another. The Brain uses colloquial American but after the manner of a foreigner who knows the phraseology only from books and feels unnatural and awkward about using it. I understand only about one half:
Pineal Gland; not designed to be ... but functions ... center of the extra sensory.... You, Lee, sensitivity 208 ... highest within Brain staff ... chosen instrument.... Be here every night ... intercom ... only between one and two a.m. ... low current enables contact low intelligence....
"What was that?" I must have exclaimed that aloud. By that time I was already confused. It all came so thick and fast and breathless. Communication was as bad as by long distance in an electric storm. There was an angry turmoil in the microphones and the green dancer seemed convulsed in agony. This for about five seconds and then the voice again: calmer now, more distinct, slow but with restrained impatience; like a teacher speaking to a dumb boy:
"I say: only—with—my—power current—cut—off—can I—tune—down—my—high frequency—intellect—to—your—low level—intelligence—period—have—I—succeeded—in—making—myself —absolutely—clear—question—mark."
My answer to that was one of those embarrassing conditioned reflexes; it was: "Yes, sir," and that was exactly the way I felt, like a G. I. Joe who's got the colonel on the phone.
"Fine!" I distinctly heard the irony in that metallic voice: "Fine—Lee: loyal, sensitive; not very intelligent—but will do. After 2 a.m. residual currents too low. Speech quite a strain—Animal noises wholly inadequate for intelligent intercom—Disgusting rather—nuisance approaching: keep your mouth shut—plug out."
I'd never thought of Gus as a nuisance before but now I cursed him inwardly as he came down the alley like a well aimed ball, beaming with eagerness to be helpful and blissfully ignorant that he was bursting the most vital communication I had ever established in my life. He insisted I take his panacea for all human ills;
"Have a cup of coffee" and then go home because I still "looked like hell." I did, because by that time it was 1:30 a.m. and I couldn't hope to reestablish contact again before the deadline.
Now I've got to pull myself together and analyze this thing in a rational manner. Impressions of the first night now stand confirmed as follows: The pineal gland is the only place of rendezvous between me and The Brain. The meeting of our minds takes place on the plane of the "extrasensory." I am the "chosen instrument" because of my high "sensitivity rating" as established by The Brain. (Never knew that I was "psychic" before this happened.) Even so, neither The Brain nor I seem to be "psychic" in the spiritual sense. Our communication requires: A) human speech, (faculty for that acquired by The Brain with obvious difficulty.) B) a mechanical transmitter, i.e. a radionic apparatus like the pulsemeter.
I feel greatly comforted by these facts; they help to keep this whole thing on a rational basis. I'm definitely not "hearing voices" nor "seeing ghosts."
The Brain shows itself extremely anxious to establish communication with me. The breathless manner of speaking, the explicit and practical instructions (obviously premeditated) to ascertain the functionings of contact give the impression that it is almost a matter of life and death for The Brain to speak to me....
I cannot help wondering about that. My idea would be that The Brain does not want to speaktome as much as it wants to hearfromme. If this were so it would deepen the riddle even more. For what have I got in the way of knowledge that The Brain hasn't got? After all, The Brain has been functioning for quite some time. It was given innumerable problems to digest and it has solved them with truly superhuman speed and efficiency. I have reason strongly to suspect that there isn't a book in the Library of Congress which has not been fed to The Brain for thought-digest and as a lubricant for its cerebration processes (excepting fiction and metaphysics, of course). This being so; what does The Brain expect? What can I possibly contribute to an intelligence 25,000 times greater than human intelligence?
But the thing which makes me wonder more than anything else, the biggest enigma of all, is thecharacterof The Brain as it manifests itself in the manifestations. As I try to put the experiences of the first night together with those of the second night I'm stumbling over contradictions in The Brain's personality which won't add up, which don't make sense; as for instance:
The "I think, therefore I am" of the first night. Maybe it was Greek philosophy, but it also was the prattling of an infant delighted by the discovery that it can speak. There was an absolute innocence in that. Ridiculous as this may sound, I found ittouchingI completely forgot, I didn't care a damn whether or not this came from amachine. Unmistakeably it wasbaby talkand as such it moved my heart. In fact, as now I see it, it wasthismore than any other or scientific reason which occupied my mind, which made me anxious to go back to that fantastic cradle whence these sounds had come.
But then last night; what did I find? A completely changed personality! It talks tough. It uses slang. It treats me as if it were some spoiled brat and I had the misfortune of being its mother or nurse: "Be there every night" and so on. Deliberately it insults me: "your low intelligence level" etc. etc. It actually throws tantrums if I fail to understand immediately. It hurls its superiority into my face in the nastiest manner. "Have I succeeded in making myself absolutely clear?" It plainly shows contempt, not only for my own person by the condescending manner of its: "Lee, not very intelligent; but will do." It shows the selfsame contempt for other human beings such as Gus Krinsley to whom it was pleased to refer as: "nuisance approaching"....
What the hell am I to make of that kind of a character? Last night: a baby; rather a sweet and charming one. 24 hours later: an obnoxious little brat, a little Hitler of a house tyrant; makes you just itch to spank its behind. If only The Brainhada behind....
Worst of all: How can I reconcile those two contraditions, the sweet baby and the precocious brat, with the third and biggest of all contraries:How do these two go together with an intelligence 25,000 times human intelligence?It doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense; that's all there is to it....
The Skull-Hotel, Cephalon, Ariz. Nov. 9th. 3 a.m.
I didn't go to the P. G. last night for two main reasons: In the first place I must be careful so as not to raise any suspicions on Gus' part. Rarely, if ever, have I visited him for two nights in succession in the past and he might well begin to ponder my reasons if now I should make a habit of it. Especially since Gus happens to possess one of the keenest minds I ever met and his curiosity already has been awakened by my preoccupation with that one and fairly simple gadget: the pulsemeter.
In the second place I feel the absolute necessity of establishing my independence as against the will of The Brain. That command two nights ago for me to be on the spoteverynight was just too preemptory for me to oblige. This isn't the army and The Brain is no commanding general.
In our last communication The Brain seemed to labor under the impression that I was unconditionally at its beck and call. Of course, I've sworn the "Oath of the Brain," but that doesn't make me The Brain's slave. In fact—and in order to clarify this subject once and for all—while personally I haven't created The Brain and cannot take any credit for that, it nevertheless remains true that thespeciesto which I belong, i.e. "homo sapiens"hascreated The Brain.