The Cybernetic Brains Read online

  John remembered the name of that physicist—Carter Marien. Its strangeness had stuck in his mind. He thought of Carter Marien.

  Seventy-five years a prisoner in hell.

  They were dead, the cyberneticists said from the beginning. The activation of the neurons was no more than the jerking of a dead frog leg by an electric current.

  But what they had never learned was the nature of life and thought itself. They didn’t know that their activation according to the requirements of cybernetics was the equivalent of the preservation of life in these neuronic channels.

  The cyberneticists themselves would have been the first to grasp the horror of what had been done. But they couldn’t know. No one could tell them. The mute prisoners of darkness could never tell. They could only live—and hope for death.

  John’s vast pain seemed to be receding from the shores of his mind like some turbulent sea drying beneath a parching sky. The narrow retreat into which reason had fled was expanding, taking over the areas that had been burdened by torment. It was a sense of growth, of wellbeing and of peace. He didn’t understand it but he welcomed it and was glad.

  Only the thoughts of Martha served to shatter the peace that seemed within reach.

  They had signed contracts with the Institute of Cybernetics together. They had made the whimsical stipulation that their contracts could be sold only as a pair. That meant that if she had died she was somewhere in the giant properties of General Biotics. He knew that’s where he was by the formulas on the control chart. His process. Biotics had it.

  He remembered the heavy, smug face of Steward Thornton Henniger, who had happened in the Institute the day he and Martha signed.

  Henniger had laughed heartily with them. “My new employees! I’ve got an option on your contract, you know, and I’d double that contract price if I thought it would put you to work a year sooner. Our control has been waiting for five years for contracts like yours.”

  “Better not wait for us,” Martha had laughed. “You’ll die of old age. We intend to retire to a villa on Mars at ninety.”

  “Now look, you take good care of my property,” warned Henniger jovially.

  Before the accident John hadn’t thought much about the fact that the Institute of Cybernetics was extremely happy to receive such contracts as his and Martha’s. The cyberneticists themselves professed not to understand it fully but it made a difference, the kind of brain that was placed in an installation.

  One who had worked in chemistry all his life, as John and Martha had done, was a far better subject for control of a giant chemical plant such as General Biotics than was the brain of a non-worker. The expert’s brain could relay a far greater volume of control signals.

  Conditioning of neural patterns and synapses, the cyberneticists said. It sounded very good if you didn’t know that the brains still lived and carried the soul of a man within their cortex.

  He’d have to find out about Martha. He had to know if she had been imprisoned too. But there was no conceivable avenue of communication with the outer world.

  ALL the cries he had made during those first days, the screams he had uttered when realization of his fate overtook him—all that had been nothing but neural activity in accustomed patterns. There had been no sound, no sound at all, because he had no voice.

  There was nothing he could do to convey a single thought to the outside world. No movement he could make, no sound he could utter.

  Most of the prisoners must be mad by now, he thought. Years of solitude and sleeplessness—he knew there would never be sleep again for him. The chemicals that nourished his brain did away with the necessity for it but they did not wash away the fatigue of despair.

  Yet the sense of growth and stimulus of mental activity was increasing. Of itself it created a kind of panic because he did not understand it. He knew he had no right to any sense of peace. Madness and panic were the only normal states of a mind in such desolation.

  But somewhere within the far depths of his brain, so infinitesimal that he thought it must be only the sudden firing of a single neuron, a mighty sense of inevitable destiny seemed to be taking form. It whispered a thought that he struggled to reject but it grew.

  There was an answer, he thought. He knew not when nor how but someday he would be free of this prison. He was not helpless enough. It was not strong enough to hold him forever. He would break free and smash the system that towered upon the rotten foundation of slaves. If one man were to be a slave, then all must be—or else freedom for every one.

  They could go back to the electronic controls that had once broken down. It would mean that men would have to work again—a few scattered hours of their lives—but they could submit.

  And they would submit. Who would hesitate when he learned of the fate to which his luxury condemned a loved one or a friend? Who could think soberly of a son or a husband or a wife imprisoned for eternity in the tiny platinum box of a cybernetic control?

  It would have to be done with care, he thought. The public revelation could not be abrupt or without preparation. If it were, the whole structure of machines as well as controls might be set upon and destroyed by angry mobs.

  There would be a slow orderly replacement and gradual public education. The transition could be made smoothly if it were planned carefully.

  His own plant had not yet been shifted to his control. He understood a little of the process by which instructions passed from a complex magnetic tape to a reader that passed them on to the brain. In turn, the brain, through hundreds of thousands of feedback circuits, would perform relay functions to execute the instructions on the tape, just as millions of vacuum tubes had once done.

  He wondered what it would be like, that stimulus from the tape reader. He wondered if he would sense it as pain. He wondered if he could control it voluntarily—cause disturbances in the processes by the exercise of his own will. That didn’t seem possible. Others would have done it long before him. They would have destroyed their machines in wild rebellion.

  A sudden shift in the monotonous scene caught by the orthocon cells drew his attention. Someone had come into view before the panel. His back was toward the cells that gave vision to John’s brain but John would have recognized that broad back and blond mane anywhere.

  It was Al again. He was doing something to the panel.

  INSTINCTIVELY, John made an attempt to speak, to call out to Martha’s brother. It was done before his new knowledge could cancel the impulse.

  He sensed the neural commands going out—to organs that weren’t there, to lips that would remain forever silent. And the burden of disaster seemed to burst anew in his mind. Forcibly he shook it off, seeking the advantage of the new growth and well-being that had come into reach.

  Al turned then. His eyes looked directly into the orthocon cells as if he were looking into John’s face. For a moment John didn’t comprehend. It gave him the sick feeling of looking through a window behind which he would remain forever invisible.

  Then he saw what Al had been doing. Fastened to the panel was a sheet of paper with typewritten words. John looked at Al, sensed the sudden pleading that was in his eyes. Al’s throat was working, his lips half moving as if he could not hold back words that fought to be spoken.

  He focused quickly upon the paper that hung upon the panel. His vision caught at the first words.

  I know that you are alive, John.

  “Al—Al—” He didn’t try to fight the impulse to cry out. He felt the sensation of hot tears though he had no ducts to bear them.

  “Martha—tell me about Martha, Al”

  He read the words again:

  I know you are alive, John. I have suspected for months that the cybernetic brains still live but I dared not present the theory until I was sure. That’s why I tried to persuade you and Martha to cancel your contracts.

  I never dreamed, however, that anything like this would happen so soon. I don’t know yet what I can do for you. But I’ll find a way out for you,
John, I swear I will. Be patient and trust in me because I know that you are not dead.

  I’m going to the Board of the Institute. My data is complete. You’ve heard me speak of the adjustment collapse. Now you know what it is—the shock of recognition that your mind cannot endure. And it is proof of life. The electroencephalograph charts show it.

  It will not be easy to convince the political and economic members of the Board, but cybernetic brain control must be abandoned.

  Perhaps you don’t want to live, John. I can’t imagine what your feelings must be but somehow I’ll find a way to give you a voice. If you want to live for as long as you can I’ll try to make that living bearable. If not, the nutrient controls are easy to shut off.

  I hope it is some faint comfort just knowing that you are not alone and abandoned as all the others have been. Martha—

  Al suddenly snatched the paper and crushed it in his pocket. He turned and busied himself at the panel. The name of his wife burned in John’s mind but he had not read what Al had written concerning her.

  He cried out impotently, “Martha—Al! I didn’t get through. What of Martha?”

  He saw then the figure of Thornton Henniger. His vision grew blurry with unreasoning hate. He remembered that day when Henniger had said, “I’d double that contract price if I thought it would put you to work sooner.”

  But rage was not the way out, he told himself. It subsided in response to his self-command. He had no right but he felt a crazy elation, a power and a freedom that he had never known before.

  There would be a way out, he thought, and he believed it. It would take the working of a miracle but he was not alone any more. Al would help. Together they would find the strength to work that miracle.

  CHAPTER IV

  High Policy Murder

  THE Institute of Cybernetics was housed in a gray windowless block within the city of Warrenton. To Al it always looked like one of the cubes that housed a cybernetic brain, a cube expanded to a million times normal size with control cables extending to all the world.

  Now, as he approached the building again, he felt how terrifyingly accurate the analogy was. Under governmental authority the Institute held complete domination of cybernetic work in all the world.

  The Institute alone had authority to make contracts with individuals who wished to offer their brains for cybernetic use after their death. Only the Institute could release these contracts and the only recipients could be the government authorized plants which manufactured, the world’s goods or carried on other licensed activity.

  Chill gray dawn filled Al with a kind of apprehension as he looked up to tho expanse of those walls that housed the control center of the Welfare State.

  Welfare State, he thought bitterly. Perhaps it was no worse but certainly it was no better than the endless succession of dreams that man had dreamed since the beginning of time.

  He didn’t pretend to know the answer and he felt sure that no one else knew it. But he knew the philosophy of his time was a shallow thing, compounded of indolence and surfeited appetites. The right to subsidy which entitled a human being to the abundances of life from birth to death had not inspired depth of thought or broadness of comprehension. Each year there were fewer young people who chose to be workers upon achieving their independent subsidy.

  The one thing that might have saved the race from its present plight was interstellar exploration and colonization. But that feeble hope had been slaughtered by its monstrous siblings—for it too had been born in the same generation with cybernetics and the Welfare State.

  Men had reached as far as Pluto and for two generations or more there had been progress. A half dozen futile colonies had been planted, one on the Moon, two on Mars, three on Venus.

  But that was all. Four or five ships a year still went out but the voyagers were regarded as rather atavistic and somewhat stupid. The Welfare State had smothered whatever it was that made men look up to the stars in the first place.

  Instead there were such fantastic things as the current ridiculous Society for Artificial Dangers, which was springing up in all sections of the land. They typified the things that men would do with workless hands and unobligated minds.

  It would be a good thing, perhaps, to jolt these minds, he thought. To shock them with the realization that cybernetic brain control was through, that there would have to be a permanent labor force many times the total now available in order to care for the electronic-controls. Maybe they could be recruited and rotated by legal procedure. He didn’t know and he didn’t care.

  It was a sick system. He had never known any other, but history told of better times, times when a man had to do more than open his mouth and hold out his hands to have them filled. He sensed the possibility that his revelation might eventually mean the collapse of the Welfare State. If so it would be but the end of a wretched system of unearned leisure and wasted humanity.

  He shuddered in the cold drizzle that had started and drew his coat tighter. Few were walking on the surface today. Most of the citizens preferred the warm luxury of the subway walks and gardens and swift cars that would take them effortlessly from building to building.

  He crossed the street with head lowered against the wind and entered the Institute building. Inside the pleasantly perfumed air and the spacious garden of the central lobby were like a different world. A score of workers of the Institute were at ease about the garden.

  Al waved brief greeting to the group, ignoring the smiles of those who glanced at his coated figure and turned down hat. Even they considered anyone out on such a day an eccentric.

  In his own suite of offices and laboratories he found two of his six-man lead staff already at work. Ross Carl, head of the group, and Mahlon Folger were young, serious and imaginative.

  “Board’s been calling you for the last ten minutes,” said Ross. “I didn’t know they were meeting today.”

  Al shrugged out of his coat. “Neither did they—until late yesterday. I called it. But I’ve got another ten minutes. They can stew.”

  The two assistants, standing in the doorway of his office, looked solemn. “You’re putting our research on the table this morning?” said Ross.

  Al nodded. He moved to the desk and arranged the papers he needed. He looked up at them momentarily, his hands resting on the desk. “I don’t mind telling you I’m scared,” he said. “There’s no telling what kind of explosion may result.”

  “You ought to know something I just came across,” said Ross hurriedly. “I didn’t know about the meeting or I would have spoken to you before, though I wasn’t sure until last night.”

  “What is it?”

  “Records—I was down there looking for something else and I found evidence that every contract with Board members had been canceled. There doesn’t seem to be a single one in force any more.”

  Al stared at him. “It could mean they know.”

  “When were these cancellations made?”

  “About three years ago—all within a couple of days of each other.”

  “That long!” Al whispered. “And they’ve done nothing if they really do know—”

  “Wouldn’t it be better for you to wait?” suggested Mahlon. “They could even know more about it than we do.”

  “We’ve already waited too long,” Al said bitterly. “I learned whose contracts General Biotics are using—Martha’s and John’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” murmured Ross. “I guess we did wait too long.”

  “As a precaution,” said Al, “I want you to gather every note and scrap of data pertaining to this research. While I’m up there you take it out to my house and tell my wife to hide it in my study.

  “If there should be any attempt at suppression we’ll make ourselves heard elsewhere. They can’t do worse than throw me out of the Institute if they don’t like what I have to say.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” said Ross. “Good luck.”

  The Board was composed of three separate sections.
There were representatives of government who knew nothing of science in general or cybernetics in particular. There were economists equally ignorant of all but the planned flow from the cornucopia of the Welfare State. And there were cyberneticists, chiefly older administrators who had done good research in their youth.

  These sensed little of either the political or economic force of their work. They chafed under the incessant pressure from their fellow members that held them from fantastic experiments they would like to have performed with the materials at hand.

  Dr. Albert Demming was a unique species on the Board. He had done enough research to qualify him for highest standing in the scientific world. And he had done enough engineering to warrant respect when he spoke of political and economic aspects of cybernetics.

  He glanced at the time as he walked towards the conference room at the end of the hall from where the elevator had deposited him.

  His neatly-planned arguments were tumbled in disarray in his mind by the fact that Ross had uncovered. What could the cancellation of all Board contracts mean—what, except they knew the truth about the brains? In that case he must be dealing with monsters.

  AND, if it were so, why had they hidden it from him and him alone? He was one of them. As Engineering Advisor he was a full-fledged member of the Board.

  Yet he seldom approached the conference chamber without a fleeting sense of discomfort. He was an engineer—he did not belong in the same arena with politicians and economists and policy makers.

  Today he felt no guilt. But he felt fear.

  They were seating themselves about the massive conference table as he entered. The cool green walls of the chamber seemed chill. The long yellow table about which they would sit loomed like a dread gladiatorial pit.

  Some of the cyberneticists were waiting and talking near the door until he came. He shook hands with the half dozen nearest.