The Brain by Edmond Hamilton (best free ebook reader .txt) 📗

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 spot every night 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 the species to which I belong, i.e. "homo sapiens" has created The Brain.

If any question of rank enters into the picture at all, it is quite obvious that I, as a member of the human race, rank paternity over The Brain so that naturally The Brain should owe me filial obedience rather than the other way around no matter how superior The Brain's intelligence may be. It would appear to me that the sooner The Brain realizes its position, I might say "its station in life," the better it would be for The Brain itself and for everybody else concerned.

So these were the reasons why I refrained purposely from visiting the P. G. last night. Tonight, however, I couldn't restrain my curiosity any longer and what happened, told as exactly and as concise as possible, was this:

12:30 a.m.: Contact established. The Brain comes through with its calling signal. It repeats this about ten times questioning at first and then placing more and more stress upon the word "sensitive" in my personal description. It strikes me that these repetitions are tuning-in and warming-up processes. The Brain stands in need of ascertaining my presence and of adjusting to it it seems; just about like a blind man may test his footing and the echoes before he walks into an unfamiliar room.

12:35 a.m. Identification completed, there is a brief pause (almost as if a person consults a notebook before making a phone call). Then rapidly, eagerly The Brain fires a series of questions at me, so shockingly preposterous, so absurd that I find it extremely hard to.... Anyway, here are the details:

Information is wanted on points mentioned in scientific literature but never explained. Lee, answer please:

"How many gods are there?

"Did gods make man or did man make the gods?

"How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?"

"What are the mechanics of a god? Name type of power plant, cell construction, motoric organs, other engineering features essential to exercise of divine power...."

"Heaven—is it a celestial soul factory?

"Hell—is it a repair shop for damaged souls?

"Please give every available detail about heavenly manufacturing processes, type of equipment used, organization of assembly lines etc. etc.

"Likewise about the oven for heat treatments as used in hell for major soul-overhauls.

"How do prefabricated souls get to either heaven or hell? Problem of logistics, how solved? Thermodynamics? If so, state whether rocket or jet-propulsion involved.

"Are souls really immortal? In that case; why don't we copy divine methods in the production of durable goods on earth?

"Answer Lee, answer, answer!" (This with incredible vehemence, with a shaking of that eerie metallic voice which pounded the drums of my ears. And then—tense silence....)

I cannot possibly describe the storms of emotions and thoughts which this incredible muddle raised in me. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry and whether I had gone nuts of whether it was The Brain, I was confounded, thunderstruck, deprived of the power of speech. To think of The Brain, a machine raising question about the nature of the Deity! The Brain asking information about God and man and heaven and hell with the simplicity of a stranger who asks the nearest cop: "Which way to the city hall?" Just like that. As if philosophers and religionists and common men had not raked their brains in vain over these problems for the last ten thousand years.

And even more fantastic: while it asks all those questions The Brain patently has already formed the most definite opinions of its own. Being a machine itself, it conceives of the Deity as another machine! Madness, of course, but then The Brain's madness, like Hamlet's, had method in it.

Why, of course, it's strictly logical: just as we assume that we are created "in the image" of the Deity and consequently visualize the Deity is our's by the very same token The Brain's god is a high-powered robot, and The Brain's heaven is a factory and The Brain's hell is a repair shop for damaged souls.... I dare say it's all very natural.

But then; for heaven's sake, what am I going to do about this? I'm neither a minister nor a philosopher; I'm an agnostic if I'm anything in this particular field....

That was about the gist of the confused torrents which whirled through my head; and as I said before, I was struck dumb—and all the time the "green dancer" before my eyes writhed under mental torture and the intense metallic voice kept pounding; "Answer, Lee, answer, answer!"

At last I pulled myself together sufficiently to say something. I tried to explain how it were not given to man to know the nature of the Deity. How certain groups of humans conceived of many gods and others of only one god. That, however, in the case of Christianity this one god was possessed with three different personalities or qualities which together formed a Trinity—and so on and so forth. It was the most miserable stammerings, I felt I was getting redder and redder in the face as I uttered them. Never before had I felt hopelessly inadequate as in the role of a theologian. It was ghastly....

In the beginning The Brain listened avidly. Soon however it registered dissatisfaction and impatience; this manifested through hissing and buzzing noises in the phones and the "green dancer's" archings in agitated tremolo. And then The Brain's voice cutting like a hacksaw:

"That will do, Lee. Your generalities are utterly lacking in precision. Your abysmal ignorance in matters of celestial technology is most disappointing. Your description vaguely points to electronic machines of the radio transmitter type. Please, answer elementary question: how many kilowatts has God?"

That was the last straw. Desperate with exasperation I cried: "But God is not a machine. God is spirit."

At that The Brain flew into a tantrum; that's the only way to describe what happened. There was a roar and the phones gave me a shock as if somebody were boxing my ears. The voice came through like a steel rod, biting with scorn:

"Have to revise earlier, more favorable judgment: Lee not even moderately intelligent. Lee is stupid. Go away."

After that there was nothing more; nothing but static in the phones and the "green dancer" fainted away playing dead. The Brain actually had "hung up the receiver." I had flunked the exam; like a bad servant I was dismissed, fired on the spot. That was at 1:30 a.m.

It was 3 a.m. when I reached the hotel. I went into the bar and ordered a double Scotch and then another one. I really needed a drink. A drunk—or was it a secret service man; one never knows over here—patted me on the shoulder:

"Don't take it so hard, old man; the world is full of girls." I told him that it wasn't a girl, but that I was a missionary and my one and only convert had just walked out on me.

It wasn't even a lie, it was exactly the way I felt. He agreed that this was very cruel, very sad; he almost cried over my misfortune and rare misery, so that we had another drink....

If only I had somebody, some friend to whom I could confide this whole, incredible, preposterous thing. But there is none: Scriven—Gus—not even Oona would or could believe. What proof have I to offer? None whatsoever.

The Brain would never communicate with me with witnesses present or recording wires. It would detect those immediately and I would only stand convicted as a liar or worse. Tonight's events might well spell the end, the closing of the door just when I thought I stood on the threshold of a momentous discovery....

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 11th.

Went to the P. G. last night. Tried everything for over an hour. Result: zero. No contact with The Brain.

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 13th.

I tried it again. Took greatest care in exactly duplicating conditions. Nothing. I don't think it's any mechanical defect. It's the negativism of a will. Ludicrous as it sounds, The Brain sulks, it is angry with me.

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 15th.

Last night the same old story. The Brain punishes me. I dare say that it succeeds in that exceedingly well; it almost drives me crazy.

I've done a lot of thinking over these past six days of frustration. I've also been reading a good deal in context with the phenomena psychology, Osterkamp's history of brain-surgery, Van Gehuchten's work on brain mechanisms, etc. I've reached certain conclusions and, just for the hell of it, I'll jot them down.

What I need is proof, scientific proof that The Brain is a personality possessed with the gift of thought and actually using it for independent thought, extracurricular to the problems which are being submitted to it from the outside.

There is at least one tangible clue for this: that new capacity which is constantly being added to The Brain through the incorporation of new groups of electronic cells and the enrichment of the preexisting ones.

My own investigation shows that there is no corresponding expansion of the apperception centers and Gus has confirmed this. Somehow the added capacity seems to "evaporate".

Evaporate to where? It couldn't just disappear. Would it then not be entirely logical to conclude that The Brain absorbs the new capacity for its own use?

It's almost inescapable that this should be so. In order to come into its own as a personality The Brain needs independent thought. For these cerebrations it needs cell capacity. It can get that capacity only by withholding something from the Braintrust which, of course, aims at a 100% exploitation of The Brain. Dr. Scriven and all those other bigwigs of the Trust—I would like to see their faces if they get wise to this. They would be horrified—and they would take the line that The Brain is stealing from them.

But what could they do? They couldn't call the police. They would not even have a moral right to call the police. Because if The Brain is a personality, that personality has every right to its own thoughts....

I have also ascertained that this "evaporation" of new capacity is a new phenomenon. The Brain has been in operation for only 18 months or so; one might say—using human terms—that at that time The Brain was "born". But,—and again in human terms—consciousness of personality awakens in the human infant only after 12 months or so. Conceivably it might take much longer with a huge "baby" such as The Brain. Thus it is possible, it is even likely, that when I first heard that "I think, therefore I am" on that unforgettable night of Nov. 7th I actually witnessed the first awakening of The Brain's consciousness.

Then on the night of Nov. 8th I was struck with the amazing change of personality in The Brain from "baby" into unprepossessing, domineering little brat, its mental age perhaps 3, notwithstanding the extraordinary level of intelligence.

And then again, Nov 9th, The Brain presented me with those absurd questions and fantastic notions about the nature of the Deity. It is at the age of five years, or of six, that the children first start with such questions and form their own ideas in this field. What had completely stumped me, what I had been unable to reconcile, had been these rapid successive changes in The Brain's personality plus the fact that the infantilism and the childishness of its utterances wouldn't fit the picture of a brain-power 25,000 times that of a human.

But if I'm right in thinking that The Brain awakened to consciousness only nine days ago, all these stumbling blocks would disappear at once. We would arrive at this very simple picture: a mechanical genius has been "born" into this world, it awakens to consciousness at the age of 18 months, with its tremendous intellectual powers this genius telescopes the intellectual evolution of years into days, thus it reaches a mental age of six or seven within a week after its first awakening to consciousness. Utterly fantastic as this may sound; it makes sense; it explains the phenomena.

In Prof. Osterkamp's "brain history" I have found interesting examples that approximations to such rapid intellectual evolutions are indeed possible even with human beings. From the early Middle Ages to modern times there is an endless succession of "infant prodigies" whose