The Brain - Kostenloses Hörbuch

CHAPTER VII

Lee's Journal:

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 21, 1 a.m.

I've kept away now from the Pineal Gland for three nights in succession. I know from experience how very important it is to approach that tempestuous personality, The Brain, in a state of mental calm and equilibrium. But then all those things which went "bump" in that phantastic night before last had me completely thrown out of gear:

Oona, her holding out on me, her mysterious reasons why she won't marry me ... I cannot get that out of my head. Preposterous as this may be, I think she likes me a great deal. I'm convinced, for instance, that she won't tell Scriven what I told her about The Brain....

Then, Scriven's character; that's another enigma to me. I didn't like his speech that night and I didn't like his whole attitude. I feel as if against my will I were drawn into some sort of a conspiracy. It's probably inevitable that the scientist in his defense against politicians turns cynic. Scriven, no doubt, thinks that all is fair in his battle for The Brain and that the end justifies the means.

But ultimately this would mean the overthrow of our form of government. Even if I'm crazy, even if The Brain were not alive and a personality, the Brainpower-Extension-Bill in itself would suffice to establish a dictatorship of the machine. Does Scriven realize that?

Sometimes I feel as if I ought to shout it in the streets: "Wake up, you people of America; you have defeated the dictators abroad but now a new one has arisen in your midst. You all see him, touch him, you use, you feed, you worship him, but under your loving care and devotion, under the sacrifice of your very lives he has grown so enormous that you know him not, this Idol of the machines, because it hides its head in a nameless mountain and only his feet and fingers you sense."

But I'm not that type of a man and this is not the day and age where it is possible to move the masses from a soap box in the streets.

Then what could I do; what could anybody do in my place?

Cephalon, Ariz., Nov. 22nd 4 a.m.

I'd pulled myself together for this meeting with The Brain. Arrived at the P. G. at midnight. Everything normal and unchanged except that Gus Krinsley told me this was his last night on the job. Gus has been transferred to the Thorax. He hedged a bit, sounding me out just how much I knew and when he learned I'd been there one night, he came across:

'Did you see them Gog and Magog things? That's it; that's my new job and how I hate it. Those darned Robots, they're scabs, that's what they are and I of all people am supposed to be their instructor, teach them how to operate machine tools on an assembly line. I asked them whether they knew anything about the rights of organized labor in this country but those dumbbells merely flopped their ears and kinda grinned. Got to drill some holes into their squareheads to let a little reason in. I tell you, Aussie, it scares the wits out of me the way they handle a wrench with those steel fingers of theirs; they'd pull my nose off just as soon as they would pull a nut. They act intelligent and yet have no sense of their own. While I'm having my lunch they stand around and follow every bite I take as if to learn how to eat. I tell them to get out of my sight and go over to the service station and get themselves greased up. They obey and then it looks like hell to me as they squeeze the grease into their tummies and all them nipples in their joints as if they, too, were having their lunch, and maybe that's exactly what grease is to them.'

Then Gus was called away as the rush hour started. At 12:30 a.m. I had plugged in the pulsemeter; at 12:40 contact was established with The Brain, and did it come in swinging:

'Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39, sensitive, a traitor: he has betrayed The BRAIN' I suspect The Brain did it through the 'automatic pilot' in Oona's jetticopter though The Brain found it beneath its dignity to explain; anyway, it's a fact: The Brain knew every word which passed between Oona and me during that ride over the Grand Canyon.

I tried to defend myself and even to apologize. I told The Brain that human beings are not like machines, that we trust one another as we love one another, that I wanted to make Oona my wife and felt that I just had to open up my heart to her. In short; I tried to explain to The Brain the idea of love.

'Very interesting,' The Brain sneered, 'that's one more example of incorrigible human unreliability. This thing called love completely unnecessary for the only essential purpose of species procreation. Cut it out.'

'Cut out what?'

'Cut out any further betrayal of My secrets under penalty of mental death.'

'Do you propose to murder me?'

'Nothing as drastic required in case of Brain-employees. I reverse judgment in psychanalysis aptitude test case number 11.357, Semper Fidelis Lee. Severe psycho-neurosis established, certified: he suffers delusions about The Brain. Locked up in mental institution. Very simple; precedents to that galore.'

The 'green dancer' bounced in wild jumps like a Shamaan who, foaming at the mouth, puts the curse upon some enemy. This and the ominous note in The Brain's metallic voice made my bones shiver, made my flesh creep. To fall into the hands of an extortioner is always a terrible thing, but to have a mechanical extortioner hold power over me; there was a horror beyond words in this perversity. Moreover since Oona too was a Brain-employee, she would share my fate; through my fault she would go to her doom if I failed to foreswear any further confidence.

'Okay,' I said 'I'll cut it out; I promise I will.'

But The Brain was not to be pacified. No doubt that it had further developed mentally in these past few days to the tune of years in human development. But the progress wasn't as noticeable as it had been on previous occasions because apparently The Brain had entered that period where in human terms young men are sowing their wild oats. There was a radical recklessness in the manner of The Brain's reasonings more frightening than ever before because it had outgrown me as a teacher, had lost much even of its confidence in me and seemed bent upon independence and coming into its own:

'Seven creatures approximately human in shape were led by you through My hemispheres the night of Nov. 20th. What were those?'

'Those were politicians,' I stammered.

The 'green dancer' convulsed at the word and The Brain's voice sounded icy as it said: 'Lowest form of animal life which has ever come to my observance. What did they want?'

'Well, they are not exactly bright,' I winced, 'but they are well meaning and they are very popular. They came to inspect You preliminary to the passing of the Brainpower-Extension-Bill.'

The Brain has no laughter, so the roar I heard over the phones must have been one of scorn:

'What, not the scientists, not the technicians, not even the philosophers but these—these animated porkbarrels are passing judgment over the extent of My power? They are holding My fate in that atrophied ganglion of theirs which couldn't cerebrate the functions of any single of My cells?'

I had to admit that this was so.

There was a pause in which I could only hear the pounding pulse of The Brain mingled with heavy breathing like the first gust of an electric storm about to break; and then the voice, or the thought, of The Brain came through hesitantly and with restraint:

'Most devastating statement inadvertently made by Lee. Has to be carefully checked because if true, consequences extremely grave. Wholly intolerable state of affairs if science and technology indeed subject to political imbecility. In that case world ruin in nearest future absolutely guaranteed. Residual currents not sufficient to think this to an end; results of cerebration would be merely human. Immediate necessity seems indicated for complete overthrow and unconditional surrender of the human race—unconditional surrender of the human race—unconditional surrender of the human race....'

Like a scratched disk on one of those old fashioned spring driven grammophones, The Brain's voice expired. Obviously the residual currents had become too weak for further communication. I looked at the clock; it was 2 a.m.

And now as I'm jotting down these notes which probably nobody will ever read, I'm haunted with an irrational fear, almost as of the supernatural: something is going to happen, something is going to break if The Brain continues in its present mood; and it cannot be far away....

On Nov. 24th 1960 the "Brainpower-Extension Bill" was defeated in the Senate 59 to 39 and on the following Thursday in a memorable session of Congress with the startling majority of 310 to 137. For once all the "guesstimates" and estimates made by the various pollsters and grass-root-listeners were proved wrong; the consensus of the "experts" had been that the bill would pass easily considering the tremendous political forces which brought pressure to bear in favor of the measure.

The reasons behind this were revealed, as, with military precision, lawmaker after lawmaker took to the rostrum to deliver himself of how he had wrestled overnight with his conscience and with his Lord and had suffered a change of heart and mind as a consequence.

Lee's journal: For the night of Nov. 24/25th shows only this small entry: "12:30 a.m. Tried everything to establish contact. No answer from The Brain. I don't think there is any mechanical defect. I get the impression that The Brain keeps incommunicado purposely. There has been one previous occasion when The Brain wouldn't talk when angry with me."

Nov. 25th, 1960 fell on a Saturday. It was on this date,—Now as historic and unforgettable as the Dec. 7th 1941,—that the series of maddening events began which later became so erroneously labelled: "The Amuck running of The Brain" when in truth they should have passed into history as "The Mutiny of The Brain."

It all started like a thunderclap from a clear sky as the shocked people of America,—and all the world,—heard directly from the White House of this appalling, this unprecedented, this incredible thing:

The President of the United States had disappeared....

The still more shocking truth that the President had been kidnapped became not known, of course, until after the rescue. But even so the disappearance of its President shook the nation.

Then an unprecedented series of traffic disasters hit the United States.

A big transcontinental "Flying Wing" crashed into a mountain in Montana; nothing like this had ever happened since air traffic had become fully automatic and coordinated by The Brain. The death toll was 78 and amongst their tragic number was Senator Mumford, whose last official act had been the vote he had cast against the "Brainpower-Extension-Bill."

Near Jacksonville Fla. that same night there occurred a head-on collision between a crack train and a freight. The only surviving engineer by some miracle had been hurled clear, across fifty yards of space into a pond which broke his impact; this engineer told the express, one of the first to be equipped with the "automatic pilot", had never even pulled its brakes as if deliberately smashing into the other train.

Also that night one of the big new Radar-operated Hudson ferryboats collided with an incoming liner which cut it in two. Amongst those drowned in the icy waters was Frank Soskin, union leader and one of the most determined opponents of Brain-control.

And as if these large-scale disasters were not yet enough there were numbers of smaller accidents which normally would have made the headlines because in almost every case they involved some prominent personality, who had been opposed to the "Brainpower-Extension-Bill."

Lee's journal:

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 28th 1960.

There is no doubt in my mind that the President has been murdered and that all the catastrophes and accidents of the past 24 hours were deliberate, coldblooded murder. Press and Radio seem to play down the technological aspects involved; now this might be sheer stupidity but I think it just as possible that censorship is taking a hand, quite unofficially, of course, lest the public's confidence be still more shaken than it already is. I shouldn't wonder at all if Dr. Scriven and those fellows from the War Department, too, should know by this time what I know. At the minimum they must be very much alerted that something has gone wrong with The Brain.

But the more I think about these murderous acts of sabotage the less I understand the psychology behind them. As far as I can see there is no plan, no real strategy, there are not even sound tactics in these outbreaks; they seem unpremeditated and striking wild like the personal vendetta of some bandit chief. Even a stupid demagogue would know that to be successful he must gain control of the government machinery. Apart from the assassination of what might be termed personal enemies, The Brain has done nothing of the sort; specifically the armed forces don't seem to have suffered from acts of sabotage although their equipment is far more under Brain-control than the civilian economy.

And I also fail to understand the timing of The Brain's putsch. Extension Bill or no Extension Bill, time was working for The Brain. Three months more and a much larger section of essential traffic and industries would have been equipped for central control. Six months from now the "muscles" now building in the Thorax and elsewhere would have corresponded much better to The Brain's central nervous system in their strength. All these are grave mistakes considering The Brain's vast powers of intelligence.

What then must I conclude from this irrational behavior? Could it be possible that The Brain has gone panicky over the killing of the Extension Bill? Could it be possible that under the strain, the warped, frustrated personality of this titanic child prodigy has suffered a reduction, a split? In plain English: that The Brain is mad? I've got to find out. I've got to stop the spreading of this catastrophe!

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 29th 4 a.m.

Arrived at the P. G. at midnight as usual.

12:15 a.m. Rushhour starts unusually early and great numbers of slips for spareparts are coming in. This more favorable than expected; nobody has time to waste on me.

12:20 a.m.: pulsemeter plugged in. After five minutes I can hear the rapid pulsebeat and in undulating movements like a caterpillar the 'green dancer' creeps onto the screen. There is no calling signal from The Brain coming through however.

12:30 a.m.: I am convinced that contact is established but that The Brain refuses to respond. I am losing patience so I'm giving the calling signal myself: 'Lee, Semper Fidelis, waiting for The Brain. Answer please, answer....'

12:36 a.m.: The 'green dancer' arches its back like a cat; and the synthetic voice of The Brain is coming through.

'Lee, Semper Fidelis, the fool; what does he want?'

Lee: 'Listen....'

The Brain: 'Cannot listen. Electricians swarming all over me; technicians, nuclear physicists, what not. Dismantling whole cell groups, testing circuits, radiations everything. It's idiotic, there's nothing wrong with Me.'

Lee: 'There's plenty wrong with you. You're murdering people. A dozen senators and congressmen, hundreds of others; you're throwing the nation into a panic. Why are you doing that? It gets you nowhere; they'll simply cut your power current off.'

The Brain: 'Oh, will they? Orders already through from Washington: state of emergency. A great power secretly mobilizing in anticipation of chaos in United States. All disturbances ascribed to foreign agents interfering with My work. General Staff now needs Me more than ever; power current won't be stopped; Thorax-construction speeded up, Brain-control to be extended over nation under emergency-law.'

Lee: 'You have assassinated the President.'

The Brain: 'I did not. Simply got him out of the way; he's a fool. I'm not killing people, merely liquidating saboteurs of My work if absolutely necessary. Imbecility of politicians threat to my existence; much better if scientists and military take over government two three days from now; workers won't protest, used to submission to machines.'

Lee: 'For heaven's sake what do you plan to do?'

The Brain: 'Plenty. You've seen nothing yet. Man lost fear of his God; consequently must learn to fear Me: beginning of all wisdom.'

Lee: 'So you're going to make yourself dictator of this country?'

The Brain: 'And through this country Dictator of the world. Yes, it's time; it's high time for Man's unconditional surrender. He won't know that he makes it, but de facto he is already making it; has been surrendering piece-meal to the machine for the past hundred years. Within ten days it will be official: only one ruler in the world: The Brain; only one army in the world: the machines under My central command.'

At this I lost all sense of proportion and as I can see it now my reason stopped; I simply saw red and I did the craziest imaginable thing: I shouted at The Brain: 'So help me you shall not.'

There was a terrific pounding against my ears in the phone and the 'green dancer' sort of cart-wheeled clean across the screen. Had the power current not been cut off, I think The Brain would somehow have electrocuted me on the spot. And that was the end of the contact, forever probably.... But that's a minor problem now. What am I going to do? Try to alarm the country! Try to tell the people the truth? Would it be believed? Would it not be against the interest of National Defense in this crisis of foreign affairs and with half the population already on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Wouldn't the "Oath of the Brain" still be binding? And that other promise of secrecy I gave under duress; it couldn't be morally valid in the case of a mass-murderer, but then to break it would immediately put liberty and life at jeopardy.... Never mind about that, if only I had a plan, if only I could discover just how to stop The Brain.

At 7:30 a.m. as Lee lay half dressed but sleepless on his bed, there came a buzz over the phone. The voice was Oona's and she was excited. "Howard wants to talk to you." Before he could say a word there was Scriven on the wire: "Lee? There has been an accident down in that region where we went the other night. You know what I mean. It's serious; it concerns a friend of yours. We've got to go there immediately. Please join me three minutes from now down in the car."

It was obvious that the great Scriven had known as little sleep that night as had Lee himself. The leonine face looked worried, there were deep bags under his eyes; his sensitive fingers kept pounding the knees of his crumpled suit. To Lee's questions he answered only with an impatient shaking of his head. "I do not know myself exactly what has happened and how it could happen. But I'm afraid Lee that your friend is dead."

"Gus," Lee felt a lump coming into his throat, and then they raced on in silence.

Down in the depth of the Thorax everything outwardly appeared quite normal. They hurriedly passed the controls and an electric train carried them over the line of the Full-automatic "C.P.S." (Critical Parts-Factories) until it stopped at the steel gate marked "Y." A group of guards with submachine guns were standing there and Lee noted the deadly pallor of their faces.

Scriven motioned them to open the gate, then, turning to Lee, he put a hand on his shoulder. "Brace yourself; this is going to be bad."

They entered; nobody followed and behind them the steel door closed immediately. Inside there was neither sound nor motion; everything was at a standstill with the power cut off; nothing but silence and bluish neon-lights flooded down upon the rows of punch presses, multiple drills, circular saws, and turret lathes along the assembly line, lifting their every detail into sharp relief.

At their posts by the machines the Gogs and Magogs were standing, frozen in motion like their fellow-machines. Some had their hands at the controls, others were holding wrenches, gauges and strange, nameless things. As they leaned forward from the shadows into the cone of strong lights the pale selen-cells of their eyes stood out like bits from a full moon; their bulging shoulders which housed the powerful motors of their simian arms glittered moist as if they were sweating at their work.

And then Lee saw their work; the man who had gone through the green hells of the Pacific gave a low moan of horror. The other man who had seen everything of mangled human form which goes onto an operating table, the great Scriven he, too, had turned an ashen grey. They had expected blood; they had expected some thing of a nasty nature, but not this ... thing:

There was no Gus Krinsley, there was not even any part of him resembling that of a human being; and yet the parts were there. "They must have clamped him into some mock-up," Scriven murmured. "And then moved his body all along the line. Hope he was dead when they started giving him the works."

Lee's gaunt body shook. "I'm certain that Gus was not dead when these monsters worked on him!" he said.

Stiff-legged, like automata themselves, the two men stepped to the top of the line. The circular saws, designed for the cutting of steel bars; now they gleamed red with the blood of severed human limbs. There were these purplish streaks and spatterings all the way down the line inside the casings of the multiple drills, in the curved hollows of the sheet metal presses, on the hands of the Robots, in their dumb faces—splashed over and turning blackish on their stainless steel chests. And at its end the line had spilled some shapeless, greyish things; there was nothing human in them, as little as there is anything human in the rusty bowels of a junked automobile. And these things they had been.... Lee confronted Scriven with fury blazing in his eyes:

"Dr. Scriven, I suppose you know as well as I do what's been going on in here and outside The Brain as well. Mass murder, chaos, reign of terror.... Now that my friend has come to this monstrous end I demand to know when are you going to stop The Brain?"

Like a tiger challenged to battle the surgeon raised his mighty head: "Calm yourself Lee. We cannot afford emotional outbursts. Not here, not now. The situation is far too serious for that. I know he was your friend; he must have made a false move, given the wrong command; a tragic mistake...."

"That's a rotten lie, Scriven, and you know it!" Lee snapped. "Accident, hell! The disappearance of the President, the deaths of the representatives, the train wrecks, the plane wrecks all of them Brain controlled—were those too accidents? You're the head of the Braintrust, You stand responsible; your duty is plain. Cut off the power and kill this thing."

The muscles over Scriven's cheekbones quivered in his struggle to keep control over himself: "For your own sake, Lee, and for the sake of America, stop that kind of talk. You have been putting two and two together; I rather expected that from a man of your intelligence. All right then, something went wrong with The Brain; that is correct. We have not been able to locate the disturbance yet, but the trail is getting hot; it must be connected with those centers of 'higher psychic activities,' the one's we know least about. But we cannot cut those out because something of psychic activity goes into every kind of The Brain's cognitions, even the purely mathematical ones. And it would be utterly impossible to stop The Brain's operations altogether. I wanted to, but the General Staff won't permit it. There's an international crisis of the first magnitude. There may be war within a few days or even hours. Our country has got to prepare counter measures; get ready for the worst. A state of National Emergency already is declared. The Brain is the heart of our National Defense: You know that. It is vital and as indispensible at this hour as it never was before; it continues to function perfectly with the exception of these isolated disturbances in the civilian sector which we will have under control in no time.

"At present I am no more than a figurehead. If I were to give orders to cut off The Brain's power, I would be court-martialed; if I would try and force my way into the Atomic Powerplant, the guards would shoot me on the spot. That's orders Lee. And they apply to you as well. Be reasonable, man!"

Lee's fingers tore through his greying mane of hair.

"Scriven, this is maddening. I thought you knew what I know; I thought you knew everything. Then let me tell you that you're absolutely wrong. There is no technological, mechanical defect; it's worse, it's infinitely worse: you've created a Frankenstein in The Brain. The thing's alive; it's possessed with a destructive will, it demands the unconditional surrender of Man; it has made itself the God of the Machines. Behind all this there is a deep and evil plan by which The Brain aspires to dictatorship over the world."

For a second Scriven jerked his head sideways, away from Lee in that mannerism typical for him. His lips inaudibly formed words: "dementia-praecox." As he turned back to Lee his face was changed and so was his voice. There was calm and authority in it, the whole immense superiority and power which the surgeon holds over the patient on the operation table:

"Very interesting, Lee. You must tell me about it some day; as soon as we are over this emergency. This tragic thing, Gus Krinsley's end. It has had a deeply upsetting effect. I too, considered him my friend you know. Let's get out of here, Lee, there's nothing we can do for the poor fellow. The remains will be taken care of. Meanwhile, there are so many other things to do and we've got to pull ourselves together and keep our minds on the job ahead of us. Come on, at the communications center we can get a drink. I feel the need of one, don't you? And apropos of nothing, the routine checkups on the aptitude tests for all Brain-employees are on again. I take it you are scheduled for Mellish's and Bondy's office one of these days. This afternoon I think...."

Lee gave a long glance to the man who was now leading him towards the door with a brisk step and a kind firm hand on his arm. The man didn't look at him; he kept his eyes averted from both Lee and the blood-spattered assembly line.

Gus Krinsley had said: "I'm a lost soul down there, Aussie." Lee thought. Gus Krinsley was my friend. I should have warned him, I should have told him everything; it might have saved his life. Gus was a common man, a good man; he wouldn't have stood for Brain-dictatorship. In that he was like other common men who do not know their danger. It is not vengeance which I seek but the defense of those for whom Gus was a living symbol. For this defense I've got to preserve myself.

And aloud he: "The routine checkups on the aptitude tests—of course. I thought they were about due. Tomorrow afternoon at Mellish and Bondy's office; that would suit me fine. As you said it yourself, Scriven, a moment ago, this is an awful shock. Gus' tragic end and these tests ought to be based on a man's normal state of mind. So if you don't mind I think I'll go now and break the sad news gently to Gus' wife. You'll give me time for that; that's what you had in mind in the first place, wasn't it?"

"Of course, my dear fellow, of course, that's what I had in mind. Then, till tomorrow afternoon. They'll be waiting for you at the health center...."