Satisfied now that I have made the right connection, I allow the unit crouching behind the brush to dissipate its energy. In a moment it ceases to exist as an entity.
Almost it is as if I am Grannitt. I sit at his desk in his office. It is a glassed-in office with tiled floors and a gleaming glass ceiling. Through the wall I can see designers and draftsmen working at drawing desks, and a girl sits just outside my door. She is my secretary.
On my desk is a note in an envelope. I open the envelope and take out the memo sheet inside. I read it:
Across the top of the paper is written:
Memo to William Grannitt
From, the office of Anne Stewart, Director.
The message reads:
It is my duty to inform you that your services are no longer required, and that they are terminated as of today. Because of the security restrictions on all activity at the village of the Brain, I must ask you to sign out at Guard Center by six o’clock this evening. You will receive two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice.
Yours sincerely,
As Grannitt, I have never given any particular thought to Anne Stewart as an individual or as a woman. Now I am amazed. Who does she think she is? Owner, yes; but who created, who designed the Brain? I, William Grannitt.
Who has the dreams, the vision of what a true machine civilization can mean for man? Only I, William Grannitt.
As Grannitt, I am angry now. I must head off this dismissal. I must talk to the woman and try to persuade her to withdraw the notice before the repercussions of it spread too far.
I glance at the memo sheet again. In the upper right-hand corner is typed: 1:40 p.m. A quick look at my watch shows 4:07 p.m. More than two hours have gone by. It could mean that all interested parties have been advised.
It is something I cannot just assume. I must check on it. Cursing under my breath, I grab at my desk phone and dial the bookkeeping department. That would be Step One in the line of actions that would have been taken to activate the dismissal.
There is a click. "Bookkeeping."
"Bill Grannitt speaking," I say.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Grannitt, we have a check for you. Sorry to hear you’re leaving."
I hang up, and, as I dial Guard Center, I am already beginning to accept the defeat that is here. I feel that I am following through on a remote hope. The man at Guard Center says:
"Sorry to hear you’re leaving, Mr. Grannitt."
I hang up, feeling grim. There is no point in checking with Government Agency. It is they who would have advised Guard Center.
The very extent of the disaster makes me thoughtful. To get back in I will have to endure the time-consuming red tape of reapplying for a position, being investigated, boards of inquiry, a complete examination of why I was dismissed—I groan softly and reject that method. The thoroughness of Government Agency is a byword with the staff of the Brain.
I shall obtain a job with a computer-organization that does not have a woman as its head who dismisses the only man who knows how her machine works.
I get to my feet. I walk out of the office and out of the building. I come presently to my own bungalow.
The silence inside reminds me not for the first time that my wife has been dead now for a year and a month. I wince involuntarily, then shrug. Her death no longer affects me as strongly as it did. For the first time I see this departure from the village of the Brain as perhaps opening up my emotional life again.
I go into my study and sit down at the typewriter which, when properly activated, synchronizes with another typewriter built into the Brain’s new analog section. As inventor, I am disappointed that I won’t have a chance to take the Brain apart and put it together again, so that it will do all that I have planned for it. But I can already see some basic changes that I would put into a new Brain.
What I want to do with this one is make sure that the recently installed sections do not interfere with the computational accuracy of the older sections. It is these latter which are still carrying the burden of answering the questions given the Brain by scientists, industrial engineers, and commercial buyers of its time.
Onto the tape—used for permanent commands—I type: "Segment 471A-33-10-10 at 3X—minus."
Segment 471A is an analog shaping in a huge wheel. When coordinated with a transistor tube (code number 33) an examiner servo-mechanism (10) sets up a reflex which will be activated whenever computations are demanded of 3X (code name for the new section of the Brain). The minus symbol indicates that the older sections of the Brain must examine all data which hereafter derives from the new section.
The extra 10 is the same circuit by another route.
Having protected the organization—so it seems to me—(as Grannitt)—from engineers who may not realize that the new sections have proved unreliable, I pack the typewriter.
Thereupon I call an authorized trucking firm from the nearby town of Lederton, and give them the job of transporting my belongings.
I drive past Guard Center at a quarter to six.
There is a curve on the road between the village of the Brain and the town of Lederton where the road comes within a few hundred yards of the cottage which I use as camouflage.
Before Grannitt’s car reaches that curve, I come to a decision.
I do not share Grannitt’s belief that he has effectively cut off the new part of the Brain from the old computing sections. I suspect that the Brain has established circuits of its own to circumvent any interference.
I am also convinced that—if I can manage to set Grannitt to suspect what has happened to the Brain—he will realize what must be done, and try to do it. Only he has the detailed knowledge that will enable him to decide exactly which interoceptors could accomplish the necessary interference.
Just in case the suspicion isn’t immediately strong enough, I also let curiosity creep into his mind about the reason for his discharge.
It is this last that really takes hold. He feels very emotional. He decides to seek an interview with Anne Stewart.
This final decision on his part achieves my purpose. He will stay in the vicinity of the Brain.
I break contact.
I am back on the hill, myself again. I examine what I have learned so far.
The Brain is not—as I first believed—in control of Earth. Its ability to be an individual is so recent that it has not yet developed effector mechanisms.
It has been playing with its powers, going into the future and, presumably, in other ways using its abilities as one would a toy.
Not one individual into whose mind I penetrated knew of the new capacities of the Brain. Even the attorney who ordered me to move from my present location showed by his words and actions that he was not aware of the Brain’s existence as a self-determining entity.
In forty days the Brain has taken no serious action against me. Evidently, it is waiting for me to make the first moves.
I shall do so, but I must be careful—within limits—not to teach it how to gain greater control of its environment. My first step: take over a human being.
It is night again. Through the darkness, a plane soars over and above me. I have seen many planes but have hitherto left them alone. Now, I establish a no-space connection with it. A moment later, I am the pilot.
At first, I play the same passive role that I did with Grannitt. The pilot—and I—watch the dark land mass below. We see lights at a distance, pin pricks of brightness in a black world. Far ahead is a glittering island—the city of Lederton, our destination. We are returning from a business trip in a privately owned machine.