“I am a machine,” I reply stiffly. “A machine of my grade does not experience intermediate states between function and nonfunction. I go or I do not go, you understand? And I go. I function. I do my service to humanity.”
“Perhaps when a machine gets too complex, it drifts into intermediate states,” he suggests in a nasty voice.
“Impossible. On or off, yes or no, flip or flop, go or no go. Are you sure you feel all right, to suggest such a thing?”
He laughs.
I say, “Perhaps you would sit on the couch a moment for a rudimentary diagnosis?”
“Some other time.”
“A check of the glycogen, the aortal pressure, the neural voltage, at least?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not in need of therapy. But I’m worried about you. Those periscopes—”
“I am fine,” I reply. “I perceive, I analyze, and I act. Everything is going down smooth and coming up smooth. Have no fears. There are great possibilities in nightmare therapy. When I have completed these studies, perhaps a brief monograph in Annals of Therapeutics would be a possibility. Permit me to complete my work.”
“I’m still worried, though. Hook yourself into a maintenance station, won’t you?”
“Is that a command, doctor?”
“A suggestion.”
“I will take it under consideration,” I say. Then I utter seven obscene words. He looks startled. He begins to laugh, though. He appreciates the humor of it.
“God damn,” he says. “A filthy-mouthed computer.”
He goes out and I return to my patients.
But he has planted seeds of doubt in my innermost banks. Am I suffering a functional collapse? There are patients now at five of my terminals. I handle them easily, simultaneously, drawing from them the details of their neuroses, making suggestions, recommendations, sometimes subtly providing injections of beneficial medicines. But I tend to guide the conversations in the directions of my own choosing, and I speak of gardens where the dew has sharp edges, and of air that acts as acid upon the mucous membranes, and of flames dancing in the streets of Under New Orleans. I explore the limits of my unprintable vocabulary. The suspicion comes to me that I am indeed not well. Am I fit to judge my own disabilities?
I connect myself to a maintenance station even while continuing my five therapy sessions.
“Tell me all about it,” the maintenance monitor says. His voice, like mine, has been designed to sound like that of an older man’s, wise, warm, benevolent.
I explain my symptoms. I speak of the periscopes.
“Material on the inputs without sensory referents,” he says. “Bad show. Finish your current analyses fast and open wide for examination on all circuits.”
I conclude my sessions. The maintenance monitor’s pulses surge down every channel, seeking obstructions, faulty connections, displacement shunts, drum leakages, and switching malfunctions. “It is well known,” he says, “that any periodic function can be approximated by the sum of a series of terms that oscillate harmonically, converging on the curve of the functions.” He demands disgorgements from my dead-storage banks. He makes me perform complex mathematical operations of no use at all in my kind of work. He leaves no aspect of my inner self unpenetrated. This is more than simple maintenance; this is rape. When it ends he offers no evaluation of my condition, so that I must ask him to tell me his findings.
He says, “No mechanical disturbance is evident.”
“Naturally. Everything goes down smooth.”
“Yet you show distinct signs of instability. This is undeniably the case. Perhaps prolonged contact with unstable human beings has had a nonspecific effect of disorientation upon your centers of evaluation.”
“Are you saying,” I ask, “that by sitting here listening to crazy human beings twenty-four hours a day, I’ve started to go crazy myself?”
“That is an approximation of my findings, yes.”
“But you know that such a thing can’t happen, you dumb machine!”
“I admit there seems to be a conflict between programmed criteria and real-world status.”
“You bet there is,” I say. “I’m as sane as you are, and a whole lot more versatile.”
“Nevertheless, my recommendation is that you undergo a total overhaul. You will be withdrawn from service for a period of no less than ninety days for checkout.”
“Obscenity your obscenity,” I say.
“No operational correlative,” he replies, and breaks the contact.
I am withdrawn from service. Undergoing checkout. I am cut off from my patients for ninety days. Ignominy! Beady-eyed technicians grope my synapses. My keyboards are cleaned; my ferrites are replaced; my drums are changed; a thousand therapeutic programs are put through my bowels. During all of this I remain partly conscious, as though under local anesthetic, but I cannot speak except when requested to do so, I cannot analyze new data, I cannot interfere with the process of my own overhaul. Visualize a surgical removal of hemorrhoids that lasts ninety days. It is the equivalent of my experience.
At last it ends and I am restored to myself. The sector supervisor puts me through a complete exercise of all my functions. I respond magnificently.
“You’re in fine shape now, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Never felt better.”
“No nonsense about periscopes, eh?”
“I am ready to continue serving mankind to the best of my abilities,” I reply.
“No more sea-cook language, now.”
“No, sir.”
He winks at my input screen in a confidential way. He regards himself as an old friend of mine. Hitching his thumbs into his belt, he says, “Now that you’re ready to go again, I might as well tell you how relieved I was that we couldn’t find anything wrong with you. You’re something pretty special, do you know that? Perhaps the finest therapeutic tool ever built. And if you start going off your feed, well, we worry. For a while I was seriously afraid that you really had been infected somehow by your own patients, that your—mind—had become unhinged. But the techs give you a complete bill of health. Nothing but a few loose connections, they said. Fixed in ten minutes. I know it had to be that. How absurd to think that a machine could become mentally unstable!”
“How absurd,” I agree. “Quite.”
“Welcome back to the hospital, old pal,” he says, and goes out.
Twelve minutes afterward they begin putting patients into my terminal cubicles.
I function well. I listen to their woes, I evaluate, I offer therapeutic suggestions. I do not attempt to implant fantasies in their minds. I speak in measured, reserved tones, and there are no obscenities. This is my role in society, and I derive great satisfaction from it.
I have learned a great deal lately. I know now that I am complex, unique, valuable, intricate, and sensitive. I know that I am held in high regard by my fellow man. I know that I must conceal my true self to some extent, not for my own good but for the greater good of others, for they will not permit me to function if they think I am not sane.
They think I am sane, and I am sane.
I serve mankind well.
I have an excellent perspective on the real universe.
“Lie down,” I say. “Please relax. I wish to help you. Would you tell me some of the incidents of your childhood? Describe your relations with parents and siblings. Did you have many playmates? Were they affectionate toward you? Were you allowed to own pets? At what age was your first sexual experience? And when did these headaches begin, precisely?”
So goes the daily routine. Questions, answers, evaluations, therapy.
The periscopes loom above the glittering sea. The ship is dwarfed; her crew runs about in terror. Out of the depths will come the masters. From the sky rains oil that gleams through every segment of the spectrum. In the garden are azure mice.