What Thin Partitions Read Free Page A

stimulations?” I prompted.
    "Well, perhaps we go a little farther afield for that,” he said honestly, “in that we introduce foreign substances. We add other chemicals to it to slow down its oxidization rate-or stop it entirely-inhibitions. We add other substances to speed up the rate, as quick driers in paints. Perhaps it's a little far-fetched, but not essentially different from adrenalin being pumped into the bloodstream to make the brain act at a faster rate. The body has quite a few of these glandular secretions which it uses to change the so-called normal mental processes."
    "Where do we go from there?” I asked, without committing myself. But he was not through with his instruction.
    "I fail to see any essential difference,” he looked me squarely in the eyes, “between a stored impulse in a brain cell, a stored impulse in a mercury tube, a stored impulse in an electronic relay, or for that matter a hole punched in an old-fashioned tabulator card."
    I pursed my lips and indicated I could go along with his analogy. He was beginning to talk my language now. Working with its results constantly, I, too, was not one to be impressed with how unusually marvelous was the brain. But I murmured something about relative complexity. It was not entirely simple either.
    "Sure, complexity,” he agreed. He was becoming much more human now. “But we approach any complexity by breaking it down into its basic parts, and each part taken alone is not complex. Complexity is no more than arrangement, not the basic building blocks themselves."
    That was how I approached human problems and told him so. We were getting to be two buddies now in a hot thinking session.
    "Just so we don't grow too mechanistic about it,” I demurred.
    "Let's don't get mystical about it, either,” he snapped back at me. “Let's get mechanistic about it. What's so wrong with that? Isn't adding two and two in a machine getting pretty mechanistic? Are we so frightened at that performance we will refuse to make one which will multiply three and three?"
    "I guess I'm not that frightened,” I agreed with a smile. “We're in the computer business."
    "We're supposed to be,” he amended.
    "So you want time and money to work on a chemical which will store impulses,” I said with what I thought was my usual brilliant incisiveness. I began to remember that Sara probably had little Jennie Malasek outside by now, and that was an unfinished problem I had to handle tonight.
    "No, no,” he said impatiently and rocked me back into my chair, “I've already got that. I wouldn't have come in here with nothing more than just an idea. I've been some years analyzing quantitatively and qualitatively the various chemicals of brain cells. I've made some crude syntheses."
    He placed the cylinder on the desk. I looked at the long dark object; I looked particularly at the oily shimmering liquid inside the unbreakable plastic case. It caught the light from my window and seemed to look back at me.
    "I want,” he continued, “to test this synthesis by hooking it up to a cybernetic machine, shooting controlled impulses through it, seeing what it will store on one impulse and give up on another. I simply want to test the results of my work."
    "It will take a little doing,” I stuck my neck out and prepared to go to bat for him. “The human mind is not as logical or as accurate as a machine. There are certain previous arrangements of impulses stored in certain brains which will cause the mouth to say ‘No!’ I'll have to do some rearranging of such basic blocks first."
    I was grinning broadly now, and he was grinning back at me.
    He got up out of his chair and walked toward my door. “I'll leave the cylinder with you,” he said. “I read in a salesmanship course that a prospect will buy much easier if you place the article in his hands."
    "What were you doing, studying salesmanship?” I asked, still grinning.
    "Apparently it was justified,” he said cryptically, and walked