The Cybernetic Brains

by Raymond F. Jones

  The amorphous mass of people seemed to thrust out a tentacle. Some grasped a package from the man’s arms and darted away. The man started to run. Then someone bore him to the ground and he was lost in a milling heap.

  Artificial Dangers, he thought. Let the scoffers laugh at the philosophy now. He thought of his family. He wasn’t afraid. He’d take care of his own. At a time like this, the philosophy of the Society would prove to the world its worth.

  He left the car and became a cell of that mob animal. Blindly and without compunction he slugged and crushed his way. Ignoring recognition, his face showed no emotion as his fist downed men who had been his friends all his life.

  In places the hoarding began almost at once. But for the most part the wave of panic didn’t penetrate around the world for about twenty-four hours.

  It was difficult to grasp that hoarding might be necessary. The vast cornucopia of the Welfare State was a structure whose failure could not be envisioned by the mind of the average citizen.

  But the intimation of disaster that lay in Kit’s charge before the World Court was like a rain of fire that showered upon the Earth, igniting a vague and imponderable but nevertheless terrible fear in the mind of each man. The vague and forgotten fear of insecurity that slept in the subconscious like a tired demon, against whom all defenses had long since been removed. In the day following Kit’s appearance distribution centers were drained of current supplies. The following day’s replenishments lasted but hours. Transport facilities, operating on precise, pinpoint schedules that fluctuated only with the population loads, could not endure the sudden clashing demands. They began to fail.

  The news screens showed the fury as it swept over the Earth. And from a thousand vantage points John and Al and Martha watched. They stared in silent uncomprehending disbelief.

  “The citizen of the Welfare State—behold his magnificence!” said Al. “This is what we have to appeal to.”

  “I don’t understand it,” said John in admitted bewilderment. “Who could have supposed such a reaction from only the filing of our intention? We’ve misjudged the force of it badly and yet we should have been able to calculate it. We’ve got to make a try at cancelling it out.”

  He called out sharply, “Kit!”

  “Yes, John? It is John, isn’t it? I can almost be sure of the distinction between you three now.”

  “Yes. Have you watched the news since your charge was entered?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve watched it all day. It makes me sick and afraid. Those creatures I see are not people any more.”

  “We gave so much attention to planning our action that we wholly overlooked such extreme possibilities. We must make an attempt at stopping it.

  “I want you to place a call with Justice Underwood. Tell him you are in contact with the cybernetic brains and continued cybernetic controls are assured until replacements are built. There is no cause for panic. There will be no interruption of production. Ask him to release that not as your statement but as his own order. Say you are not ready for that information to be entered as testimony.”

  It seemed hours that it took Kit to reach the Court. Her call was passed from one assistant to another. Finally, a Specialist Clerk was reached. Her request had been relayed to him.

  He looked sharply from the screen. “Katherine Demming will no longer be recognized by the Court. The psycho-test revealed severe pathology for which you are being transferred to Hospital supervision. You will place yourself in readiness for receipt of their instructions.”

  The screen blanked. Kit gave a little hysterical cry and turned to the watching frog.

  A moan escaped Martha. “Kit—you poor little Kit!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  The Plan

  JOHN had forgotten the feel of fear. Now its return was like a cold stream bathing him. He had looked upon the faces of those who someday might be like himself, lost and forgotten. They had been the faces of madmen.

  It was these to whom he must go, these with whom he must plead for his freedom. And not his alone but theirs as well. For the first time he glimpsed the hideous face of defeat. That conviction of destiny, that had fallen like a mantle upon him in those first days, was shaken and torn. He could fail. He could die, leaving undone that which he had sworn to fulfill.

  He drove these thoughts away but they only went into hiding and he knew they lurked at the edge of consciousness, ever ready to swarm upon him again. To have seen the devil was to have gone half the way to becoming his slave.

  The rioting dwindled that night. The inadequate and outnumbered police forces restored a measure of control and a statement from the Court regarding Kit’s psychopathology dispelled the stimulus of fear. New directives were issued at once regarding the dissemination of Court filings before psycho-exams.

  Kit could no longer present their case. It would be closed and abandoned and Kit confined for treatment of her pathology.

  John felt sick within himself at the thought of her. Jurgens had been right in one thing at least. Tiny Kit was like a child, a little human bit of perfection and grace. She held no strength to bear that which she had been called upon to bear. Without thinking they had pressed upon her mercilessly to assist in their burdens as well. They had broken her like a Dresden shepherdess carelessly smashed.

  Al remained in nearness to Kit, sharing her desolation, giving such frail comfort as he could.

  John and Martha were alone and withdrawn. Martha broke in upon John’s thoughts. She longed to comfort his despair but her own faith was washed away in the riotous flood she had seen.

  “Could this be what the Institute Board counted on?” she asked. “Perhaps they understood Kit better than we and knew her case would fail before the Court.”

  “It’s possible. Certainly it has strengthened their position by increasing the people’s sense of dependence upon the cybernetic brains. But it’s not the full explanation of their plans. We haven’t seen it all yet and I can’t imagine the rest. But if they’re counting on our abandonment of our case, then they are due for surprises.”

  “How can we carry it on?”

  “We have one long slim chance remaining. Since the day I finished the first frog I’ve dreamed of a wild, impossible thing. I’ve Worked on it and kept it apart because I dared not let you know the hope that it would bring unless I could be sure you would not have to endure its failure.

  “I’m not sure yet but almost, and now I need your help. To continue our case there is only one way in which we can make an appeal that cannot be denied. That is to ‘come back’—to let them see us as human beings once again, to tell them with our mouths and the fear in our faces what it is like, that prison in which two millions of their loved ones are entombed.”

  “What are you talking about?” cried Martha, “That is the one thing that we can never do!”

  “Let me show you what I have been doing.”

  She followed his lead in bewilderment, wondering how he could have kept this thing from her when she could read almost his every thought.

  HE took her into a laboratory she had never seen. There she looked upon vats similar to those in which the frogs were built up cell by cell. But these were larger. In them spirals of cells were being woven slowly from a thousand complex orifices. Cell by thousands of cells a solid mass was growing in each vat.

  “What is it, John?”

  “We’ve learned much since that first frog. We’ve learned such knowledge of cell structure and formation and control as would have taken a generation of men to learn otherwise. What is to stop us at this point? Why can’t we go on? Why can’t we duplicate the form and texture and most of the functions of a normal human body?”

  “John!”

  She stared down at the distorted mass of cellular material beneath the eye of the frog. She recognized now the outlines of what was forming.

  “Is it possible?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know—for sure. We had to have something substantial to present at th
e trial. I was counting on a fairly creditable looking anthropomorph that we could control as we have the frogs.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “If the bodies can be made perfect enough with functions that will support brain nutrition our brains could be placed in the skulls. It would be hopeless to attempt to restore all nerve connection but it would not be necessary.

  “The bodily senses can be connected by a mass of telepathic cells such as we have in the frogs. By telepathic connections between those cells and our own brains we can utilize the bodily senses and control them.

  “A plant could be set up to manufacture such bodies for all the cybernetic brains.”

  “I can’t believe it’s possible,” said Martha. “I’ve lost all capacity to hope for such a miracle.”

  John’s high pitched enthusiasm subsided. “It’s only a faint hope, darling, but it’s one worth working for.

  “Of course it is. I’ll help.”

  “We’ve got to have them to carry on our case or give it up. There’s no other way to keep it before the Court and the people. With Kit sick and Al’s assistants dead we have no possible human contact. We’ve got to provide our own.”

  Martha looked again upon the fearful mass growing within the vat and a stinging, like hot tears of unexpected hope, seemed to be somewhere within her.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing here—right at the moment. I want you to get in contact with the brains in the vicinity as we planned. Al was right. We should be prepared to strike back with force. Talk with them. Find out how they feel and what help we can expect from them. When I need you here I’ll call you.”

  He could scarcely rid himself of the feeling that someone was watching him, almost reading his mind—laughing at every move he made as if it were futile in its very conception. It was as if he were pulling aside one curtain after another and behind each one the image of opposition swelled in greater and greater proportions.

  It seemed logical that the Board had anticipated Kit’s insanity but John could not comprehend Jurgens’ infinite treachery. It held only a kind of sadness for him now, like that inspired by the maddened panic-stricken mobs he had seen on the screens. It was as if everything he viewed became corrupt beneath his sight—a Midas touch of fear and betrayal.

  He looked to the structures forming within the vats. They were blasphemous obscene things. He tried to remember what he had been thinking when he first dreamed that wicked fantasy of creating a human body.

  He had been thinking of Martha. He had been thinking of her lips and her eyes, of her slender wrists and the long clean lines of her legs. He bad been thinking of the sweet scent of her flesh and the touch of her hand.

  He kept staring at the vats, trying to dream beyond the foul things that they held.

  He had discarded three of the forms and started anew and it must have been no more than three hours since Martha left when he suddenly heard her voice again.

  IT seemed faint with panic as if she had found herself suddenly alone when she had supposed a company about her.

  “John, come here—Al, too, I want you. Come and see what I have found.”

  The two men responded at once as she led them to a frog halfway across the city.

  “What’s the matter?” said John anxiously.

  “I can’t reach any of them. I’ve tried ten different brains.”

  “Why? Why don’t they respond?”

  “You’ll see for yourself. This will change our whole position. You won’t need a plant to make bodies for all these—”

  John reached out, touched the other mind and recoiled instantly at its alienness.

  “Go on,” said Al.

  He probed deeper, Al beside him. Nearly all the brain’s neurons were occupied with the monotonous relaying of impressed data or else locked up in feedback circuits that guarded the thousands of operations under its control.

  But far down, in a shallow area of neurons that had once formed the subconscious area of the individual, they found independent thought, the remnant of a human mind,”

  There was no recognition from the creature they found there. It was a sea-green world of water and peaceful swimming things, vague shapes without horror.

  It was a place of incredible peace, an imaginary paradise, where no torment could ever penetrate. Insidious, inviting—it beckoned to them.

  John tore his mind away—and felt as if he had been running for many hours. “What has happened down there?”

  “The perfect escape,” said Al. “The only escape—schizophrenia.”

  “The newest installation I tried to reach was only a few days older than our own,” said Martha. “It was the same sort of thing. Once I almost thought I wasn’t going to be able to pull away from it.”

  Al said, “We would have been in the same condition if it hadn’t been for the increased forcing field I used. Schizophrenia is the automatic protective reaction of a human mind in such conditions as this. We might have supposed that it would be this way.”

  “That means—there are no others besides us?” said Martha.

  “Probably not one in the whole world who is still sane.”

  “But we’ve got to obtain some control over the cybernetic facilities!” said John. “I disagreed with you before, Al, but I’m convinced it may be our only hope now.”

  “Perhaps Jurgens knows of this,” said Martha. “That might explain the Board’s actions.”

  “Not wholly,” said John. “They intend to use our case as the springboard for some definite action of their own. Without the means to influence a strike of cybernetic brains we may have no weapon to use against them in case our Court appeal fails.”

  “If Jurgens knows of this,” said Al, “and also the identity of you two as well as me—as he must do—he can stop us any time he chooses. He’s deliberately letting us go on. At some point he’s going to tell us that our usefulness is over. By then we will have to have obtained independence or admit our failure.”

  “If we can’t obtain voluntary control of the cybernetic brains,” said John,“can we take control of them?”

  “How?” said Martha. “We might be able to force control on a few dozen through the frogs but hardly enough to count.”

  “Al, couldn’t you produce a broadcast wave that would block the impressed instructions? The machines under control would come to automatic stasis in the absence of such instructions.”

  “It might be possible,” Al considered slowly. “I’m quite sure that it would but it would take some pretty terrific construction. I’m doubtful if I could hide it here in my place. It would have to be about the size of a Class-three energy transmitter.”

  “We’ll have it then. When Jurgens comes to tell us we’re through we can throw this at him, provided we have not won our case through public acclaim by then.”

  “It’s funny,” said Al slowly. “What?”

  “I can build such a device. I haven’t the slightest doubt of my ability to do it. It will take a few days. Already I can see the outline of the principle upon which it will operate.

  “But my brain is the same one I always had. There are no more brain cells in it than in the average human brain.

  “The only difference is the absence of destructive feedback. What the human race might have accomplished if cybernetics had been utilized to reduce such feedback in the mind of every man! Instead we chose to build the Welfare State. Instead of reaching for maturity we chose a return to the womb.”

  CHAPTER XV

  Darkness

  THE darkness was like the gloom of any night. The wind that stirred the curtains above her bed was cold, but Kit lay amid its chill, unaware.

  She had lain there for long, trying to still the passage of time, that record of motion. She had quieted the motion of her body. Outstretched, her arms and legs had been without movement until sensation had receded. They were like remote peninsulas of the vast continent of her body, and she was retreating farther and farther i
nto the stillness and dark distance. But the persistent throbbing of blood and the gentle wind within his lungs could not be stilled.

  It should be, she thought. Time had really stopped when Al died and she had tried to make it go on by thinking him alive. She couldn’t end the illusion, she couldn’t retreat far enough into the depths of her until that throbbing ceased.

  Slowly she turned her head to see the gargoyle on the table beside the bed. The movement seemed to span an age of time. As if at her bidding the clouds parted for a shaft of moonlight to fall upon its face.

  She couldn’t remember when it had not been there. It was part of this dream that had lasted for an eternity, part of the dream about Al. He had gone so long ago and she had kept him waiting because she had been afraid to go with him. She wasn’t afraid any more, she thought. She didn’t need this ugly dream-thing to clutch for support.

  Kit reached out a hand and clasped it gently. She brought it close to her face and stared into the single monstrous eye. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten the thing, where it came from. But her need of it was gone.

  “Kit, darling,” said Al softly. “What are you doing? You should be asleep.”

  She smiled softly. Her head was bent and the dark hair was falling across her cheek. “I don’t need that dream any more,” she said. “I guess I needed you for awhile when I was afraid but I don’t need you at all now. I wonder where you came from? Out of my dreams, too? You’re not even real. That’s why I can’t remember. But I can get rid of yon now just as easily as you came.”

  “Kit! Kit! This is Al! What’s wrong, darling? What are you saying?”

  “Al was big,” said Kit tenderly, “and he had gold hair and eyes so blue that no one but me could look into them for long—and maybe Martha. I think she was jealous when I took her Big Swede.”

  “Kit—turn on the light! Don’t sit there in the darkness that way. Turn on the light and—”

  “I wonder why I dreamed up something so tiny and so ugly as you? Maybe I always longed to be able to hold Al in my hands like this, and maybe I was even jealous of his beauty. But that was the ugly part of me and I can get rid of it just like the rest of the dream.”