The Terminal Man

Part two of a new novel

Synopsis: On March 9, 1971, a handcuffed man under police guard was admitted to University Hospital in Los Angeles; his name was Harold Benson. He was a brilliant computer expert who was about to undergo a radical and experimental brain operation. The two surgeons on his case, Drs. John Ellis and Robert Morris, were believers, convinced that their new technological medicine could salvage a damaged brain. Dr. Janet Ross, the young psychiatrist on the case, was profoundly doubtful.

Benson's problem was psychomotor epilepsy, which evidently had resulted from a freeway accident two years earlier. About six months after the accident, he had begun to suffer blackouts that were presaged by a sensation of a nauseous odor. Coming back to consciousness, Benson would discover cuts and bruises and torn clothes, as if he had been fighting. In recent months, he had been accused of beating up an airplane mechanic, a topless dancer and--most seriously--a gas-station attendant.

Drug trials had shown that Benson could not be helped by that means; his epilepsy was drug-resistant. Finally, he was scheduled for a stage-three surgical procedure--the first of its kind ever to be performed on a human being. Forty electrodes would be implanted in his brain. They would be connected to a highly miniaturized plutonium-powered computer implanted in his neck. The tiny computer, like a heart pacemaker, would predict an imminent epileptic attack and then would send a soothing and restraining electric impulse to Benson's brain. All of this would be monitored on a large computer in the hospital.

Janet Ross's doubts were based on the fact that she had learned that in the course of his computer work, Benson had formed the delusion that machines would ultimately take over the world. "If you start putting wires in his head," she argued, "he's going to feel that he's been turned into a machine." However, Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the NPS--the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit--was so eager to try the history-making operation that he disregarded her warning and gave the go-ahead.

On the eve of the operation, Angela Black, a young dancer who knew Benson, came to the hospital with some of his personal effects, including a black wig to cover his shaved and bandaged head.

The operation went smoothly, according to plan. But afterward, even McPherson was bothered by the philosophical implications of what his staff had done. "We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal," he reflected. And his confidence was not improved as he watched a video tape of a presurgery interview in which Benson erupted his phobia: "I hate them, particularly the prostitutes. Airplane mechanics, dancers, translators, gas-station attendants, the people who are machines or who service machines.... I hate them all."

IV

At six p.m., Roger McPherson went up to the seventh floor to check on his patient. Room 710 was quiet and bathed in reddish light from the setting sun. Benson appeared to be asleep, but his eyes opened when McPherson closed the door.

"How are you feeling?" McPherson asked, moving close to the bed.

Benson smiled. "Everyone wants to know that," he said.

McPherson smiled back. "It's a natural question."

"I'm tired, that's all. Very tired.... Sometimes I think I'm a ticking time bomb and you're wondering when I'll explode."

"Is that what you think?" McPherson asked. Automatically, he adjusted Benson's covers so he could look at the I.V. line. It was flowing nicely.

"Ticktick," Benson said, closing his eyes again. "Ticktick."

McPherson frowned. He was accustomed to mechanical metaphors from Benson--the man was preoccupied, after all, with the idea of men as machines. But to have them appear so soon after operation.... "Any pain?"

"None. A little ache behind my ear, like I'd fallen." That, McPherson knew, was the bone pain from the drilling. "I've succumbed to the process of being turned into a machine." He opened his eyes and smiled again. "Or a time bomb."

"Any smells? Strange sensations?" As he asked, McPherson looked at the EEG scanner above the bed. It was still reading normal alpha patterns, without any suggestion of seizure activity.

"No. Nothing like that."

"But you feel as if you might explode?" He thought: Ross should really be asking these questions.

"Sort of," Benson said. "In the coming war, we may all explode."

"How do you mean?"

"In the coming war between men and machines. The human brain is obsolete, you see. It has gone as far as it is going to go. It's exhausted, so it has spawned the next generation of intelligent forms. They will.... why am I so tired?" He closed his eyes again. "A minor procedure," he said and smiled with his eyes closed. A moment later, he was snoring.

McPherson remained by the bed for a moment, then turned to the window and watched the sun set over the Pacific. Benson had a nice room; you could see a bit of the ocean between the high-rise apartments at Santa Monica. He remained there for several minutes. Benson did not wake. Finally, McPherson went out to the nurses' station to write his note on the chart.

"Patient alert, responsive, oriented times three." He paused after writing that. He didn't really know if Benson was oriented to person, place and time; he hadn't checked specifically. But he was clear and responsive, and McPherson let it go. "Flow of ideas orderly and clear, but patient retains machine imagery of preoperative state. It is too early to be certain, but it appears that predictions have correctly indicated that the operation would not alter his mentation between seizures." Signed, Roger A. McPherson, M.D.

He stared at it for a moment, then closed the chart and replaced it on the shelf. It was a good note--cool, direct, holding out no false anticipations. The chart was a legal document, after all, and it could be called into court. McPherson didn't expect to see Benson's chart in court, but you couldn't be too careful. He believed very strongly in appearances--and he felt it was his job to do so.

He looked at the row of charts on the shelf, a row of unfamiliar names, into which Benson, H. F. 710 merged indistinguishably. In one sense, he thought, Benson was correct--he was a walking time bomb. A man treated with mind-control technology was subject to all sorts of irrational public prejudice. Heart control in the form of cardiac pacemakers was considered a wonderful invention; kidney control through drugs was a blessing. But mind control was evil, a disaster--although the NPS control work was directly analogous to control work with other organs. Even the technology was similar: The atomic pacemaker they were using had been developed first for heart work. But the prejudice remained.

McPherson sighed, took out the chart again and flipped to the section containing doctors' orders. Both Ellis and Morris had written postop-care orders. McPherson added: "After interfacing tomorrow A.M., begin Thorazine."

As he left the floor, he thought that he would rest more easily once Benson was on Thorazine. Perhaps they couldn't defuse the time bomb--but they could drop it into a bucket of cold water.

V

Late at night, in Telecomp, Gerhard stared irritably at the computer console. He typed in more instructions, then walked to a print-out typewriter and began reviewing the long sheaf of green-striped sheets. He scanned them quickly, looking for the error he knew was there, in the programmed instructions.

The computer itself never made a mistake. Gerhard had used them for nearly ten years--different computers, different places--and he had never seen one make a mistake. Of course, mistakes occurred all the time, but they were always in the program, never in the machine.

Richards came in, shrugging off a sports coat, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "How's it going?"

Gerhard shook his head. "I'm having trouble with George."

"Again? Shit." Richards looked at the console. "How's Martha?"

"Martha's fine, I think. It's just Saint George."

Richards sipped his coffee and sat down at the console. "Mind if I try it?" He began flicking buttons, calling up the program for Saint George. Then he called up the program for Martha. Then he pushed the interaction button.

Richards and Gerhard hadn't devised these programs; they had been modified from several existing computer programs developed at other universities. But the basic idea was the same--to create a computer program that would make the computers act emotionally, as if they were people. It was logical to label the programs with names like George and Martha. There was a precedent for that: Eliza in Boston and Aldous in England.

George and Martha were essentially the same program with slight differences. The original George was programmed to be neutral in his responses to stimuli. Then Martha was created. Martha was a little bitchy; she disliked most things. Finally, another George was formulated, a very loving George, who was referred to as Saint George.

Each program could respond with three emotional states--love, fear and anger. Each could produce three actions--approach, withdrawal and attack. All this was, of course, highly abstract. It was carried out in terms of numbers. For example, the original George was neutral to most numbers, but he disliked the number 751. He was programmed to dislike it. And, by extension, he disliked similar numbers--743, 772, and so on. He much preferred numbers such as 133, 404 and 918. If you punched in one of these, George responded with numbers signifying love and approach. If you punched in 707, he withdrew. If you punched in 750, George angrily attacked--as shown by the numbers he printed out.

The NPS staff had played with the programs in this way for a long time. Then it had incorporated program modifications to allow for "talk" from the computer. The numbers were translated into sentences. This was amusing and revealing. The actual interaction was referred to as the Christmas game, because most of it was conducted as giving and receiving gifts--objects that had an assigned or learned emotional value, just as the numbers did.

Normal George interacting with Martha would eventually win her over and her bitchiness would recede into the background.

But Saint George had a much worse effect on her. His loving acceptance drove her up the wall. That is, if things were working normally. Richards watched as the print-out flashed across the screen.

Hello, I'm Saint George

Hello

What is your name?

Martha

You don't say much, Martha.

No

But I like you

Why, I don't like you

I understand that. How can i help?

"It isn't printing periods consistently," Richards said. "When did that start?"

"That's nothing," Gerhard said. "Just keep watching."

Help?

Yes, I would like to help you.

Have a cat.

Richards winced. Cats were something that both George and Martha were programmed to dislike. Giving George a cat was a very hostile move.

Thank you

Have another cat.

Thank you, you are very kind.

Have another cat.

No thank you.

Don't you like cats?

Yes, but i have enough cats.

Have a Gorilla.

"Really nasty," Richards said. "What are the other interactions like?" (continued on page 168)Terminal Man(continued from page 146) "Pretty much the same," Gerhard said. "Almost as bad."

The NPS staff was accustomed now to the idea that when the computers interacted, the results were unpredictable. The general form of interaction could be guessed, but the specific results were uncertain. It was like a computer playing checkers--it would probably win, but it would win a different way each time, depending on what the opponent did.

I don't want a Gorilla.

Don't you like Gorillas?

No Thank You.

You are too polite.

I am sorry if i offend you in any way.

You talk too much.

I am sorry.

Have an Eggplant.

Richards watched with interest. Saint George had no background for eggplants. But he disliked cucumbers and bananas.

No thank you.

Don't you like Eggplant?

Not very much.

Here, have another one.

No thank you.

I want you to have it.

No thank you.

Go on and take It.

No thank you.

I insist.

No thank you.

"What's happened to Saint George?" Richards asked. "His responses are too much the same."

"That's what's bothering me."

"What's he cycling through on the program?"

"I was looking for it when you came in."

I Insist that you have a cucumber.

I Refuse.

"George!" Richards said, almost without thinking.

Then Have a Banana.

No.

"George is breaking down," Richards said. "He's not a saint anymore."

Then Have Both a Banana and a Cucumber

No Thank You

I Insist

Go to Hell I will kill you ::::::::::

The screen was filled with white dots. "What does that mean--unprintable response?" Richards said.

"I don't know. I've never seen it before tonight."

"How many times has this program been run?" Richards asked.

"A hundred and ten, against Martha."

"Any learning erasures?"

"No."

"I'll be goddamned," Richards said. "He's getting to be a short-tempered saint." He grinned. "We can write this one up."

Gerhard nodded and went back to the print-out. In theory, what was happening was not puzzling. Both George and Martha were programmed to learn from experience. Like the checkers-playing programs--in which the machine got better each time it played a game--this program was established so that the machine would "learn" new responses to things. After 110 sets of experience, Saint George had abruptly stopped being a saint. He was learning not to be a saint around Martha--even though he had been programmed for saintliness.

"I know just how he feels," Richards said and switched the machine off. Then he joined Gerhard, looking for the programming error that had made it all possible.

Thursday, March 11. 1971: Interfacing

I

Janet Ross sat in the empty room and glanced at the wall clock. It was nine A.M. She looked down at the desk in front of her, which was bare except for a vase of flowers and a note pad. She looked at the chair opposite her. Then, aloud, she said, "How're we doing?"

There was a mechanical click and Gerhard's voice came through the speaker mounted in the ceiling. "We need a few minutes for the sound level. The light is OK. You want to talk a minute?"

She nodded and glanced over her shoulder at the one-way glass behind her. She saw only her reflection, but she knew Gerhard and his equipment were behind, watching her.

"I don't know what to say.... 'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the patient.' 'The quick brown fox jumped over the pithed frog. 'We are all headed toward that final common pathway in the sky.'" She paused. "Is that enough?"

"That's fine; we have the level now," Gerhard said.

She looked up at the loud-speaker. "Will you be interfacing at the end?"

"Probably," Gerhard said, "if it goes well. Rog is in a hurry to get him onto tranquilizers."

She nodded. This was the final stage in Benson's treatment and it had to be done before tranquilizers could be administered. Benson had been kept on sedation with phenobarbital until midnight the night before. He would be clearheaded this morning and ready for interfacing.

It was McPherson who had coined the term interfacing. McPherson liked computer terminology. An interface was the boundary between two systems. Or between a computer and an effector mechanism. In Benson's case, it was almost a boundary between two computers--his brain and the little computer wired into his neck. The wires had been attached, but the switches hadn't been thrown yet.

Once they were, a feedback loop of Benson--computer--Benson would be instituted. As soon as the computer read abnormal brain waves, it would deliver a shock to stop the abnormal wave and prevent an epileptic seizure.

But today the practical question was this: Which of the 40 electrodes would prevent an attack? Nobody knew that yet. It would be determined experimentally.

During the operation, the electrodes had been located precisely, within millimeters of the target area. That was considered good surgical placement; but considering the density of the brain, it was grossly inadequate. From that standpoint, the electrodes had been crudely positioned. And this crudeness meant that many of them were required. It was assumed that if several electrodes were placed in the correct general area, at least one of them would be in the precise position to abort an attack. Trial-and-error stimulation would determine the proper electrode to use.

"Patient coming," Gerhard said through the loud-speaker.

A moment later, Benson arrived in a wheelchair, wearing his blue-and-white-striped bathrobe. He seemed alert, as he waved to Ross stiffly, the shoulder bandages inhibiting movement of his arm. "How are you feeling?" he said and smiled.

"I'm supposed to ask you."

"I'll ask the questions around here," he said. He was still smiling, but there was an edge to his voice. With some surprise, she realized that he was afraid. And then she wondered why that surprised her. Of course he would be afraid. Anyone would. She wasn't exactly calm herself.

The nurse patted Benson on the shoulder, nodded to Dr. Ross and left the room. They were alone.

For a moment, neither spoke. Benson stared at her; she stared back. She wanted to give Gerhard time to focus the TV camera in the ceiling and to prepare his stimulating equipment.

"What are we doing today?" Benson asked.

"We are going to stimulate your electrodes today, sequentially, to see what happens."

He seemed to take this calmly, but she (continued on page 226)Terminal Man(continued from page 168) had learned not to trust his calm. After a moment, he said, "Will it hurt?"

"No."

"OK," he said. "Go ahead."

Gerhard, sitting on a high stool in the adjacent room, surrounded in the darkness by glowing green dials of equipment, watched through the one-way glass as Ross and Benson began to talk.

Alongside him, Richards picked up the tape-recorder microphone and said quietly, "Stimulation series one, patient Harold Benson, eleven March 1971."

Gerhard looked at the four TV screens in front of him. One showed the closed-circuit view of Benson that would be stored on video tape as the stimulation series proceeded. Another displayed a computer-generated view of the 40 electrode points, lined up in two parallel rows within the brain substance. As each electrode was stimulated, the appropriate point glowed on the screen.

A third TV screen ran an oscilloscope tracing of the shock pulse as it was delivered. And a fourth showed a wiring diagram of the tiny computer in Benson's neck. It also glowed, as stimulations went through the circuit pathways.

In the next room, Ross was saying, "You'll feel a variety of sensations and some of them may be quite pleasant. We want you to tell us what you feel. All right?" Benson nodded.

Richards said, "Electrode one, five millivolts, for five seconds." Gerhard pressed the buttons. The computer diagram showed a tracing of the circuit being closed, snaking its way through the intricate electronic maze of Benson's neck computer. They watched Benson through the one-way glass.

Benson said, "That's an interesting feeling."

"Can you describe it?" Ross asked.

"Well, it's like eating a ham sandwich."

"Do you like ham sandwiches?"

Benson shrugged. "Not particularly."

Gerhard, sitting at the control panel, noted that the first electrode had stimulated a vague memory trace.

Richards: "Electrode two, five millivolts, five seconds."

Benson said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

Ross said, "It will pass."

Gerhard sat back from the control panel, sipped a cup of coffee and watched the interview progress.

"Electrode three, five millivolts, five seconds."

This one produced absolutely no effect on Benson. He was talking quietly with Ross about bathrooms in restaurants, hotels, airports--

"Try it again," Gerhard said.

"Repeat electrode three, ten millivolts, five seconds," Richards said. The TV screen flashed the circuit through electrode three. There was still no effect.

It was going to take a long time to go through all 40 electrodes, but it was fascinating to watch. They produced such strikingly different effects, yet each electrode was very close to the next. It was the ultimate proof of the density of the brain, which had once been described as the most complex structure in the known universe. And it was certainly true that there were three times as many cells packed into a single human brain as there were human beings on the face of the earth.

"Electrode four," Richards said into the recorder, "five millivolts, five seconds." The shock was delivered.

And Benson, in an oddly childlike voice, said, "Could I have some milk and cookies, please?"

"That's interesting," Gerhard said, watching the reaction.

Richards nodded. "How old would you say?"

"About five or six, at most."

Benson was talking about cookies, talking about his tricycle, to Ross. Slowly, over the next few minutes, he seemed to emerge like a time traveler advancing through the years. Finally, his voice and manner were fully adult, thinking back to his youth. He himself was no longer there. "I always wanted the cookies and she would never give them to me. She said they were bad for me and would give me cavities."

Richards said, "Electrode five, five millivolts, five seconds."

In the next room, Benson shifted uncomfortably in his wheelchair. Ross asked him if something was wrong. Benson said, "It feels funny. It's like sandpaper. Irritating."

Gerhard wrote in his notes, "#5-- potential attack electrode." This happened sometimes. Occasionally, an electrode would be found that stimulated a seizure. Nobody knew why. Gerhard's work with programs like George and Martha had led him to understand that relatively simple computer instructions could produce complex and unpredictable machine behavior. It was also true that the programmed machine could exceed the capabilities of the programmer; that was clearly demonstrated in 1955, when Arthur Samuel at IBM programmed a machine to play checkers--and the machine eventually became so good that it beat Samuel himself.

Yet all this was done with computers that had no more circuits than the brain of an ant. The human brain far exceeded that number and the programming of the human brain extended over many decades. How could anyone seriously expect to understand it?

There was also a philosophical problem: Gödel's proof: that no system could explain itself and no machine could understand its own workings. At most, Gerhard believed that a human brain might, after years of work, decipher a frog brain. But a human brain could never decipher itself in the same detail. For that you would need a superhuman brain.

Gerhard thought that someday a computer would be developed that could untangle the billions of cells and hundreds of billions of interconnections in the human brain. Then at last man would have the information that he wanted. But man wouldn't have done the work--another order of intelligence would have done it. And man would not know, of course, how the computer worked.

Morris entered the room with a cup of coffee. He glanced at Benson through the glass.

Benson failed to react to electrode six. "Electrode seven, five and five," Richards said. He delivered the shock.

In the next room, Benson sat up abruptly. "Oh," he said, "that was nice. Very nice." His whole appearance seemed to change subtly. "You know," he said after a moment, "you're really a wonderful person, Dr. Ross. Very attractive, too. I don't know if I ever told you before."

"How do you feel now?"

"I'm really very fond of you," Benson said. "I don't know if I told you that before."

In the other room, Morris nodded. "A strong P terminal. He's clearly turned on."

Gerhard made a note of it. Morris sipped his coffee. They waited until Benson settled down. Then, blandly, Richards said, "Electrode eight, five millivolts, five seconds." The stimulation series continued.

II

At noon, McPherson showed up for interfacing. No one was surprised to see him. In a sense, this was the irrevocable step; everything preceding it was unimportant. They had implanted electrodes and a computer and a power pack, and they had hooked everything up. But nothing functioned until the interfacing switches were thrown. It was a little like building an automobile--and then finally turning the ignition key.

Gerhard showed him his notes from the stimulation series. "At five millivolts on a pulse-form stimulus, we have three positive terminals and two negative. The positives are seven, nine and thirty-one. The negatives are five and thirty-two."

McPherson glanced at the notes, then looked through the glass at Benson. "Are any of the positives a true P?"

"Seven seems to be."

"Strong?"

"Pretty strong. When we stimulated him, he said he liked it and he began to act sexually aroused toward Jan."

"Is it too strong? Will it tip him over?"

Gerhard shook his head. "No," he said. "Not unless he were to receive multiple stimulations over a short time course. There was that Norwegian...."

"I don't think we have to worry about that," McPherson said. "We've got Benson in the hospital for several clays. If anything seems to be going wrong, we can switch to other electrodes. We'll just keep track of him for a while." He rubbed his hands together. "I guess you can get on with it. Interface the patient with seven and thirty-one. They seem to be the two logical choices."

Gerhard got off his stool and walked to a corner of the room where there was a computer console mounted beneath a TV screen. He began to touch the buttons. The TV screen glowed to life. After a moment, letters appeared on it.

Benson, HF

Interface procedure

Possible electrodes: 40, designated serially

Possible voltages: continuous

Possible durations: continuous

Possible wave forms: pulse only

Gerhard pressed a button and the screen went blank. Then a series of questions appeared, to which Gerhard typed in the answers on the console.

Interface procedure benson, HF

1. Which electrodes will be activated?

Seven, 31 Only

2. What voltage will be applied to electrode seven?

Five MV

3. What duration will be applied to electrode seven?

Five SEC

There was a pause and then the questions continued for electrode 31. Gerhard typed in the answers. Watching him, McPherson said to Morris, "This is amusing, in a way. We're telling the tiny computer how to work. The little computer gets its instructions from the big computer, which gets its instructions from Gerhard, who has a bigger computer than any of them."

"Maybe," Gerhard said and laughed. The screen glowed:

Interfacing parameters stored. ready to program auxiliary unit.

Morris sighed. He hoped that he would never reach the point in his life when he would be referred to by a computer as an auxiliary unit. Gerhard typed quietly, a soft hissing sound. On another TV screen, they could see the inner circuitry of the small computer. It glowed intermittently as the wiring locked in.

Benson, HF has been interfaced. Implanted device now reading EEG data and delivering appropriate feedback.

That was all there was to it. Somehow Morris was disappointed; he knew it would be this way, but he had expected--or needed--something more dramatic. Gerhard ran a systems check that came back negative. The screen went blank and then came through with a final message:

University hospital system 360 computer thanks you for referring this interesting patient for therapy.

Gerhard smiled. In the next room, Benson was still talking quietly with Ross.

III

Janet Ross finished the stimulation series profoundly depressed. She stood in the corridor, watching, as Benson was wheeled away. She had a last glimpse of the white bandages around his neck as the nurse turned the corner; then he was gone.

She walked down the hallway in the other direction, through the multicolored NPS doors. She looked at her watch. Christ, it was only 12:15. She had half the day ahead of her. What was it like to be a pediatrician? Probably fun. Tickling babies and giving shots and advising mothers on toilet training. Not a bad way to live.

She thought again of the bandages on Benson's neck and went into Telecomp. She had hoped to speak to Gerhard alone, but instead, everyone was in the room--McPherson, Morris, Ellis, everyone. They were all jubilant, toasting one another with coffee in Styrofoam cups.

Someone thrust a cup into her hands and McPherson put his arm around her in a fatherly way. "I gather we turned Benson on to you today."

"Yes, you did," she said, managing to smile.

He smiled back. "Well, I guess you're used to that."

"Not exactly," she said.

The room got quieter; the festive feeling slid away. She felt bad about that, but not really. There was nothing amusing about shocking a person into sexual arousal. It was frightening and pathetic, but not funny. Why did they all find it so goddamned funny?

Ellis produced a hip flask and poured clear liquid into her coffee. "Makes it Irish," he said with a wink. "Much better."

Gerhard was talking to Morris about something. It seemed a very intent conversation; then she heard Morris say, "You please pass the pussy?" Gerhard laughed; Morris laughed. It was some kind of joke.

Ross slipped away from Ellis and McPherson and went over to Gerhard. He was momentarily alone; Morris had gone to fill his cup. "I want to know something. Can you monitor Benson here, on the main computer?"

Gerhard shrugged. "I guess so, but why bother? We know the implanted unit is working--"

"I know," she said. "I know. But will you do it, anyway, as a precaution? Please?"

"OK," he said. "I'll punch in a monitoring subroutine as soon as they leave." He nodded to the group. "I'll have the computer check on him twice an hour."

"How about every ten minutes?" she said.

"OK," he said. "Every ten minutes."

"Thanks," she said. Then she drained her coffee cup, feeling the warmth hit her stomach, and she left the room.

IV

Ellis sat in a corner of room 710 and watched the half-dozen technicians maneuvering around the bed. There were two people from the rad lab doing a radiation check; there was one girl drawing blood for the them lab, to check steroid levels; there was an EEG technician resetting the monitors; and there were Gerhard and Richards, taking a final look at the interface wiring.

Throughout it all, Benson lay motionless, breathing easily, staring up at the ceiling. He did not seem to notice the people touching him, moving an arm here, shifting a sheet there. Finally, Benson stirred. "I'm tired," he said. He glanced over at Ellis.

Ellis said, "About ready to wrap it up?"

One by one, the technicians stepped back from the bed, nodding, collecting their instruments and their data, and left the room. Gerhard and Richards were the last to go. Finally, Ellis was alone with Benson.

"You feel like sleeping?" Ellis said.

"I feel like a goddamned machine. I feel like an automobile in a complicated service station. I feel like I'm being repaired."

Benson was getting angry. Ellis could feel his own tension building. He was tempted to call for nurses and orderlies to restrain Benson when the attack came. But he remained seated.

"That's a lot of crap," Ellis said.

Benson glared at him, breathing deeply.

Ellis looked at the monitors over the bed. The brain waves were becoming irregular, moving into an attack configuration.

Benson wrinkled his nose and sniffed. "What's that smell?" he said. "That awful--"

Above the bed, a red monitor light blinked stimulation. The brain waves spun in a disordered tangle of white lines for five seconds. Simultaneously, Benson's pupils dilated. Then the lines were smooth again; the pupils returned to normal size.

Benson turned away, staring out the window at the afternoon sun. "You know," he said, "it's really a very nice day, isn't it?"

V

For no particular reason, Janet Ross went back to the hospital at 11 p.m. The NPS was deserted, but she expected to find Gerhard and Richards at work, and they were, poring over computer printout in Telecomp. They hardly noticed when she came into the room and got herself some coffee. "Trouble?" she said.

Gerhard scratched his head. "Now it's Martha," he said. "First George refuses to be a saint. Now Martha is becoming nice. Everything's screwed up."

Richards smiled. "You have your patients, Jan," he said, "and we have ours."

"Speaking of my patient...."

"Of course," Gerhard said, getting up and walking over to the computer console. "I was wondering why you came back in." He punched buttons on the console. Letters and numbers began to print out. "Here are all the checks, since I started it at one-twelve this afternoon."

1:12 Normal EEG

1:22 Normal EEG

1:32 Sleep EEG

1:42 Sleep EEG

1:52 Normal EEG

2:02 Normal EEG

The list of ten-minute checks noted every interval until 11:02, continuing to alternate between normal EEG and sleep EEG. There were, however, printouts reading Stimulation EEG at 3:32, 6:52, 9:02 and 10:32.

"I can't make anything out of this," Ross said, frowning. "It looks like he's dozing off and on, and he's gotten a few stimulations, but"--she shook her head--"isn't there another display mode?"

As she spoke, the computer produced another report, adding it to the column:

11:12 Normal EEG

"People," Gerhard said with mock irritation. "They just can't handle machine data." It was true. Machines could handle column after column of numbers. People needed to see patterns. On the other hand, machines were very poor at recognizing patterns. The classic problem was trying to get a machine to differentiate between the letter B and the letter D. A child could do it; it was almost impossible for a machine to look at the two patterns and discern the difference.

"I'll give you a graphic display," Gerhard said. He punched buttons, wiping the screen. After a moment, crosshatching for a graph appeared and the points began to blink on:

"Damn," she said, when she saw the graph.

"What's the matter?" Gerhard said.

"He's getting more frequent stimulations. He had none for a long time, and then he began to have them every few hours. Now it looks like one an hour."

"So?" Gerhard said. "What does that suggest?"

"It should suggest something quite specific," she said. "We know that Benson's brain will be interacting with the computer, right? And that interaction will be a learning pattern of some kind. It's just like a kid with a cookie jar. If you slap the kid's hand every time he reaches for the cookies, pretty soon he won't reach so often. Look." She drew a quick sketch.

"Now," she said, "that's negative reinforcement. The kid reaches, but he gets hurt. So he stops reaching. Eventually, he'll quit altogether. OK?"

"Sure," Gerhard said, "but--"

"Let me finish. If the kid is normal, it works that way. But if the kid is a masochist, it will be very different." She drew another curve.

"Here, the kid is reaching more often for the cookies because he likes getting hit. It should be negative reinforcement, but it's really positive reinforcement. Do you remember Cecil?"

On the computer console, a new report appeared: 11:22 Stimulation EEG.

"Oh, shit," she said. "It's happening."

"What's happening? I don't understand," Gerhard said.

"Benson is going into a positive progression cycle. It's just like Cecil. Cecil was the first monkey to be wired to a computer with electrodes. That was back in sixty-five. The computer wasn't miniaturized then; it was a big clunky computer and the monkey was wired up with actual wires. OK. Cecil had epilepsy. The computer detected the start of a seizure and delivered a countershock to stop it. OK. Now the seizures should have come less and less frequently, like the hand reaching for the cookies less and less often. But, instead, the reverse happened. Cecil liked the shocks. And he began to initiate seizures in order to experience the pleasurable shocks."

Gerhard shook his head. "Listen, Jan, that's all interesting. But a person can't start and stop epileptic seizures at will. He can't control it. The seizures are--"

"Involuntary," she said. "That's right. You have no more control over them than you do over heart rate and blood pressure and sweating and all the other involuntary acts."

There was a long pause. Gerhard said, "You're going to tell me I'm wrong."

On the screen, the computer blinked: 11:32 --

"I'm going to tell you," she said, "that you've cut too many conferences. You know about autonomic learning?"

"No."

"It was a big mystery for a long time. Classically, it was believed that you could learn to control only voluntary acts. You could learn to drive a car, but you couldn't learn to lower your blood pressure. Of course, there were those yogis who supposedly could reduce oxygen requirements of their bodies and slow their heartbeats to near death. They could reverse intestinal peristalsis and drink liquids through the anus. But that was all unproved--and theoretically impossible."

Gerhard nodded cautiously.

"Well, it turns out to be perfectly possible. You can teach a rat to blush in only one ear. Right ear or left ear, take your pick. You can teach it to lower or raise its blood pressure or heartbeat. And you can do the same thing with people. It's not impossible. It can be done."

"How?"

"Well, with people who have high blood pressure, for instance, all you do is put them in a room with a blood-pressure cuff on their arm. Whenever the blood pressure goes down, a bell rings. You tell them to try to make the bell ring as often as possible. They work for that reward--a bell ringing. At first it happens by accident. Then pretty soon they learn how to make it happen more often. The bell rings more frequently. After a few hours, it's ringing a lot."

Gerhard scratched his head. "And you think Benson is producing more seizures, to be rewarded with shocks? Well, what's the difference? He still can't have any seizures. The computer always prevents them from happening."

"Not true," she said. "A couple of years ago, a Norwegian schizophrenic was wired up and allowed to stimulate a pleasure terminal as often as he wanted. He pushed himself into a convulsion by overstimulating himself."

Richards, who had been watching the computer console, suddenly said, "Something's wrong. We're not getting readings anymore."

On the screen, they saw: 11:32 -- 11:42 --

Ross looked and sighed. "All right," she said. "I better go check what's happened." She started for the door. "Meanwhile, see if you can get a computer extrapolation of that curve. See if he's really going into a learning cycle, and how fast."

Friday, March 12, 1971: Breakdown

I

The seventh (special surgical) floor was quiet; there were two nurses at the station. One was making progress notes on a patient's chart; the other was eating a candy bar and reading a movie magazine. Neither paid much attention to Ross as she went to the chart shelf, opened Benson's record and checked it.

She wanted to be certain that Benson had received all his medications; and, to her astonishment, she found that he had not. "Why hasn't Benson gotten his Thorazine?" she demanded.

The nurses looked up in surprise. "Benson?"

"The patient in seven-ten." Ross glanced at her watch; it was after midnight. "He was supposed to be started on Thorazine at noon. Twelve hours ago."

"I'm sorry ... may I?" One of the nurses reached for the chart. Ross handed it to her and watched while she turned to the page of nursing orders. McPherson's order for Thorazine was circled in red by a nurse, with the cryptic notation, "Call."

Ross was thinking that without heavy doses of Thorazine, Benson's psychotic mentation would be unchecked and could be dangerous.

"Oh, yes," the nurse said. "I remember now. Dr. Morris told us that only medication orders from him or from Dr. Ross were to be followed. We don't know this Dr. McPhee, so we waited to call him to confirm the therapy. It--"

"Dr. McPherson," Ross said heavily, "is the chief of the NPS."

The nurse frowned at the signature. "Well, how are we supposed to know that? You can't read the name. Here." She handed back the chart. "We thought it looked like McPhee, and the only McPhee in the hospital directory is a gynecologist and that didn't seem logical, but sometimes doctors will put a note on the wrong chart by accident, so we--"

"All right," Ross said, waving her hand. "All right. Just get him his Thorazine now, will you?"

"Right away, doctor," the nurse said. She gave her a dirty look and went to the medicine locker. Ross went down the hall to room 710.

The cop sat outside Benson's room with his chair tipped back against the wall. He was reading Secret Romances with more interest than Janet would have thought likely. He looked up as she came down the hall. "Good evening, doctor."

"Good evening. Everything quiet?"

"Pretty quiet."

Inside 710 she could hear television, a talk show with laughter. Someone said, "And what did you do then?" There was more laughter. She opened the door.

The room lights were off; the only light came from the glow of the television. Benson had apparently fallen asleep; his body was turned away from the door and the sheet was pulled up over his shoulder. She clicked the television off and crossed the room to the bed. Gently, she touched his leg.

"Harry," she said softly. "Harry--" She stopped.

The leg beneath her hand was soft and formless. She pressed down; the leg bulged oddly. She reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on, flooding the room with light. Then she pulled back the sheet.

Benson was gone. In his place were three plastic bags of the kind the hospital used to line wastebaskets. Each had been inflated and then knotted tightly shut. Benson's head was represented by a wadded towel, his arm by another.

"Officer," she said in a low voice, "you'd better get your ass in here."

The cop came bounding into the room, his hand reaching for his gun. Ross frowned and gestured to the bed.

"Holy shit," the cop said. "What happened?"

"I was going to ask you."

The cop didn't reply. He went immediately to the bathroom and checked there; it was empty. He looked in the closets. "His clothes are still here, but his shoes are gone," he said. He turned and looked at Ross with a kind of desperation. "Where is he?"

"When was the last time you looked into this room?" Ross asked. She pressed the bedside buzzer to call the night nurse.

"About twenty minutes ago."

Ross walked to the window and looked out. The window was open, but it was a sheer drop of seven stories to the parking lot below. "How long were you away from the door?"

"Look, dot, it was only a few minutes--I ran out of cigarettes. The hospital doesn't have any machines. I had to go to that coffee shop across the street. I was gone about three minutes. That was around eleven-thirty. The nurses said they'd keep an eye on things."

"Great," Ross said. She checked the bedside table and saw that Benson's shaving equipment was there, his wallet, his car keys ... all there.

The nurse stuck her head in the door, answering the call. "What is it now?"

"We seem to be missing a patient," Ross said. She gestured to the plastic bags in the bed. The nurse reacted slowly, and then turned quite pale.

"Call Dr. Ellis," Ross said, "and Dr. McPherson and Dr. Morris. They'll be at home; have the switchboard put you through. Say it's an emergency. Tell them Benson is gone. Then call hospital security. Is that clear?"

"Yes, doctor," the nurse said and hurried away.

Ross sat down on the edge of Benson's bed and turned her attention to the cop. "Clever," the cop said, "but he can't get far. A man with bandages and a bathrobe can't get far, even if he has shoes." He shook his head. "I better call this in."

"Did Benson make any calls?"

"He made one," the cop said, "about eleven."

"Did you listen to it?"

"No." He shrugged. "I never thought...." His voice trailed off. "You know."

"So he made one call at eleven and left at eleven-thirty." Ross walked from the bed outside into the hallway. She looked down the hall at the nurses' station. There was always somebody there and Benson would have to pass the nurses' station to reach the elevator. He'd never make it.

What else could he have done? She looked toward the other end of the hall. There was a stairway at the far end. He could have walked down. But seven flights of stairs? Benson was too weak for that. And when he got to the ground-floor lobby, there he'd be, in his bathrobe, with his head bandaged. The reception desk would stop him.

"I don't get it," the cop said, coming out to the hallway. "Where could he go?"

"He's a very bright man," Ross said. It was a fact that they all tended to forget. To the cops, Benson was a criminal charged with assault, one of the hundreds of querulous types they saw every day. To the hospital staff, he was a diseased man, unhappy, dangerous, borderline psychotic. Everyone tended to forget that Benson was also brilliant. His computer work was outstanding in a field where many intelligent men worked. In the initial psychological testing at the NPS, he had scored 144 on his abbreviated WAIS I. Q. test. He was fully capable of planning to leave, then listening at the door, hearing the cop and the nurse discuss going for cigarettes--and then making his escape in a matter of minutes. But how?

Benson must have known that he could never get out of the hospital in his bathrobe. He had left his street clothes in his room--he probably couldn't get out wearing those, either. Not at 11:30. The lobby desk would have stopped him. Visiting hours had ended two and one half hours before.

The cop went down the hall to the nursing station to phone in a report. Ross followed along behind him, looking at the doors. Room 709 had a burns patient; she opened the door and looked inside, making sure only the patient was there. Room 708 was empty; a kidney-transplant patient had been discharged that afternoon. She checked that room, too.

The next door was marked supplies. She entered what was a standard room on surgical floors. Bandages, suture kits and linen supplies were stored there. She passed row after row of bottled intravenous solutions, then trays of different kits. Then masks, smocks, spare uniforms for nurses and orderlies--

She stopped. She was staring at a blue-and-white-striped bathrobe, hastily wadded into a corner of a shelf. The rest of the shelf contained white trousers, shirts and jackets worn by hospital orderlies. She called the nurse.

• • •

"It's impossible," Ellis said, pacing up and down in the nursing station. "Absolutely impossible. He's two days--one day--postop. He couldn't possibly leave."

"He did," Janet Ross said. "And he did it the only way he could, by changing into an orderly's uniform. Then he probably walked downstairs to the sixth floor and took an elevator to the lobby. Nobody would have noticed him; orderlies come and go at all hours."

Ellis wore a dinner jacket and a white frilly shirt; his bow tie was loosened and he was smoking a cigarette. Ross had never seen him smoke before. "I still don't buy it," he said. "He was franked out of his skull with Thorazine, and--"

"Never got it," Ross said.

"What's Thorazine?" the cop said, taking notes.

"The nurses had a question on the order and didn't administer it. He had no sedatives and no tranquilizers since midnight last night."

"Christ," Ellis said. He looked at the nurses as if he could kill them. Then he paused. "But what about his head? It was covered with bandages. Someone would notice that."

Morris, who had been sitting silently in a corner, said, "He had a wig. I saw it."

"What was the color of the wig in question?" the cop asked.

"Black," Morris said.

Ross said, "How did he get this wig?"

"A friend brought it to him. The day of admission."

"Listen," Ellis said, "even with a wig, he can't have gotten anywhere. He left his wallet and his money. There are no taxis at this hour."

Ross looked at Ellis, marveling at his ability to deny reality. He just didn't want to believe that Benson had left; he was fighting the evidence, fighting hard.

"He called a friend," Ross said, "about eleven." She looked at Morris. "You remember who brought the wig?"

"A pretty girl," Morris said.

"Do you remember her name?" Ross said with a sarcastic edge.

"Angela Black," Morris said promptly.

"See if you can find her in the phone book," Ross said. Morris began to check; the phone rang and Ellis answered it. He listened, then handed the phone to Ross.

"I've done the computer projection," Gerhard said. "It just came through. You were right. Benson is on a learning cycle with his implanted computer. His stimulation points conform to the projected curve. It's exactly what you said; Benson apparently likes the shocks. He's starting seizures more and more often. The curve is going up sharply."

"When will he tip over?"

"Not long," Gerhard said. "Assuming that he doesn't break the cycle--and I doubt that he will--then he'll be getting almost continuous stimulations at six-oh-four a.m."

"You have a confirmed projection on that?" she asked, frowning. She glanced at her watch. It was already 12:30.

"That's right," Gerhard said.

"OK," Ross said and hung up. She looked at the others. "Benson has gone into a learning progression with his computer. He's projected for tip-over at six a.m. today."

"Christ," Ellis said, looking at the wall clock. "Barely six hours from now."

Across the room, Morris had put aside the phone book and was talking to information. "Then try West Los Angeles," he said and, after a pause, "What about new listings?"

The cop stopped taking notes and looked confused. "Is something going to happen at six o'clock?"

"We think so," Ross said.

Ellis puffed on his cigarette. "Two years," he said, "and I'm back on them." He stubbed it out carefully. "Has McPherson been notified?"

"He's been called."

"Check unlisted numbers," Morris said. He listened for a moment. "This is Dr. Morris at University Hospital," he said, "and it's an emergency. We have to locate Angela Black. Now, if--" Angrily, he slammed down the phone. "Bitch," he said. Then he shook his head and added, "No luck."

"We don't even know," Ellis said, "if Benson called this girl. He could have called someone else."

"Whoever he called may be in a lot of trouble in a few hours," Ross said. She flipped open Benson's chart. "It looks like a long night. We'd better get busy."

II

The freeway was crowded. The freeway was always crowded, even at one o'clock on a Friday morning. Janet Ross stared ahead at the dense pattern of red taillights, stretching ahead for miles like an angry snake. So many people. Where were they going at this hour?

Usually, she took pleasure in the freeways. There had been times when she had driven home from the hospital at night, with the big green signs flashing past overhead, and the intricate web of overpasses and underpasses, and the exhilarating anonymous speed, and she had felt wonderful, expansive, free. She had been raised in California and she remembered the first of the freeways. The system had grown as she had grown, and she did not see it as a menace nor an evil. It was part of the landscape; it was fast; it was fun.

Later she had begun to recognize the subtle psychological effects of living your life inside an automobile. Los Angeles had no sidewalk cafés, because no one walked; the sidewalk café, where you could stare at passing people, was not stationary but mobile. It changed with each traffic light, where people stopped, stared briefly at one another, then drove on. But there was something inhuman about living inside a cocoon of tinted glass and stainless steel, air conditioned, carpeted, stereophonic tape-decked, power-optioned, isolated. It thwarted some deep human need to congregate, to be together, to see and be seen.

Local psychiatrists recognized an indigenous depersonalization syndrome. Los Angeles was a town of recent immigrants, and therefore strangers; cars kept them strangers and there were few institutions that served to bring them together. No one went to church and work groups were not entirely satisfactory. People became lonely, they complained of being cut off, without friends, far from families and old homes. Many times they became suicidal--and a common method of suicide was the automobile. You picked your overpass and hit it at 80 or 90, foot flat to the floor. Sometimes it took hours to cut the body out of the wreckage.

Moving at 65 miles an hour, Ross shifted across five lanes of traffic and pulled off the freeway at Sunset, heading up into the Hollywood Hills, through an area known locally as the Swish Alps, because of the many homosexuals who lived there. People with problems seemed drawn to Los Angeles. It offered freedom; the price was lack of supports.

She came to Laurel Canyon and took the curves fast, tires squealing, head lamps swinging through the darkness. There was little traffic here; she would reach Benson's house in a few minutes.

In theory, she and the rest of the NPS staff had a simple problem: Get Benson back before six o'clock. If they could get him back into the hospital, they could uncouple his implanted computer and stop the progression series. Then they could sedate him and wait a few days before relinking him to a new set of terminals. They'd obviously chosen the wrong electrodes the first time around; that was a risk they had accepted in advance. It was an acceptable risk because they had expected to have a chance to correct any error. But that opportunity was no longer there.

They had to get him back. After reviewing his chart, they'd all set out for different places. Ross was going to his house on Laurel. Ellis was going to a strip joint called the Jackrabbit Club, where Benson often went. Morris was going to Autotronics, Inc., Benson's employer in Santa Monica; he'd called the president of the firm, who was going to the offices to open them up for him.

They would all check back in an hour or so, to compare notes and progress. A simple plan and one Ross thought unlikely to work. But there wasn't much else to do.

She parked her car in front of Benson's house and walked up the slate path to the front door. It was ajar; from inside, she could hear the sound of laughter and giggles. She knocked and pushed it open. "Hello?"

No one seemed to hear. The giggles came from somewhere in the back of the house. She stepped into the front hallway. She had never seen Benson's house and she wondered what it was like. Looking around, she realized she should have known.

From the outside, it was an ordinary wood-frame structure, a ranch-style house as unobtrusive in its appearance as Benson himself. But the inside looked like the drawing rooms of Louis XVI--graceful antique chairs and couches, tapestries on the walls, bare hardwood floors. It was a complete re-creation of an earlier day.

"Anybody home?" she called. Her voice echoed through the house. There was no answer, but the laughter continued. She followed the sound toward the rear of the house. She went into the kitchen--antique gas stove, no oven, no dishwasher, no electric blender, no toaster. No machines, she thought. Benson had built himself a world without any sort of modern machine in it.

The kitchen window looked out onto the back yard. There was a small patch of lawn and a swimming pool, all perfectly ordinary and modern. Benson's ordinary exterior again. The back yard was bathed in greenish light from the underwater lights. In the pool, two girls were laughing and splashing. Ross went outside.

The girls were oblivious to her arrival. They continued to splash and shriek happily; they wrestled with each other in the water. She stood on the pool deck and said, "Anybody home?"

They noticed her then and moved apart from each other. "Looking for Harry?" one of them asked. "Are you a cop?"

"I'm a doctor."

One of the girls got out of the pool lithely and began toweling off. She wore a red bikini. "You just missed him," the girl said. "But we weren't supposed to tell the cops. That's what he said." She put one foot on a chair to dry her leg with the towel. Ross realized the move was calculated, seductive and demonstrative. These girls liked girls, she was now convinced.

"When did he leave?" Ross asked.

"Just a few minutes ago."

"How long have you been here?"

"About a week," the girl in the pool said. "Harry invited us to stay. He thought we were cute."

The other girl wrapped the towel around her shoulders. "We met him at the Jackrabbit. He goes there often. He's a lot of fun," she said. "A lot of laughs. You know what he was wearing tonight? A hospital uniform. All white." She shook her head. "What a riot."

"Did you talk to him? What did he say?"

The girl in the red bikini started inside. Ross followed her. "He said not to tell the cops. He said to have a good time."

"Why did he come here?"

"He had to pick up some stuff from his study."

"Where is the study?"

She led Ross into the house and through the living room. Her wet feet left small pools on the bare floor. "Isn't this place wild? Harry's really crazy. All this old stuff."

"He's sick," Ross said, "and I've got to see him."

"He must be," the girl said. "I saw those bandages. What was he, in an accident?"

"He had an operation."

"No kidding. In a hospital?"

They went down a corridor to bedrooms. The girl turned right into one room, which was a study--antique desk, antique lamps, overstuffed couches. "He came in here and got some stuff."

"Did you see what he got?"

"We didn't really pay any attention. But he took some big rolls of paper." She gestured with her hands. "Real big. They looked like blueprints or something. They were blue on the inside of the roll and white on the outside and they were big." She shrugged.

"Did he take anything else?" Ross asked.

"Yeah. A metal box. It looked like a tool kit, maybe. I saw it open for a moment, before he closed it. It seemed to have tools and stuff inside."

"Did you notice anything in particular?"

The girl was silent then. She bit her lip. "Well, I didn't really see, but"--she paused--"it looked like a gun in there."

"Did he say where he was going? Or when he was coming back?"

"Well, that was funny," the girl said. "He kissed me, and he kissed Suzie, and he said to have a good time, and he said not to tell the cops. And he said he didn't think he'd be seeing us again." She shook her head. "It was funny. But you know how Harry is."

"Yes," Ross said. "I know how Harry is." She looked at her watch. It was 1:47. There were only four hours left.

III

The first thing that Ellis noticed was the smell: hot, damp, fetid--a dark warm animal smell. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. How could Benson tolerate it?

He watched as the spotlight swung through the darkness and came to rest on a pair of long tapering thighs. There was an expectant rustling in the audience. It reminded Ellis of his days in the Navy, stationed in Baltimore. That was the last time he had been in a place like this, hot and sticky with fantasies and frustrations. That had been a long time ago. It was a shock to think how fast the time had passed.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the incredible, the lovely, Cyn-thia Sin-cere. A big hand for the lovely Cynthia!"

The spotlight widened onstage, to show a rather ugly but spectacularly constructed girl. The band began to play. When the spotlight was wide enough to hit Cynthia's eyes, she squinted and began an awkward dance. She paid no attention to the music, but no one seemed to mind.

Ellis looked at the audience. There were many men there--and a lot of very tough-looking girls with short hair.

"Harry Benson?" the manager said at his elbow. "Yeah, he comes in a lot."

"Have you seen him lately?" Ellis asked.

"I don't know about lately," the man answered. He coughed. Ellis smelled sweet alcoholic breath. "But I tell you, I wish he wouldn't hang around, you know? I think he's a little nuts. And always bothering the girls. You know how hard it is to keep the girls? Fucking murder, that's what it is."

Ellis nodded and scanned the audience. Benson had probably changed clothes; certainly he wouldn't be wearing an orderly's uniform anymore. Ellis looked at the backs of the heads, at the area between hairline and shirt collar. He looked for a white bandage. He saw none.

"When did you see him last?"

The man shook his head. "Not for a week or so." A waitress went by, wearing a rabbitlike white-fur bikini. "Sal, you seen Harry lately?"

"He's usually around," she said vaguely and wandered off with a tray of drinks.

"I wish he wouldn't hang around, bothering the girls," the manager said and coughed again, sweetly.

Ellis moved deeper into the club. The spotlight swung through smoky air over his head, following the movements of the girl onstage. She was having trouble unhooking her bra. She did a sort of two-step shuffle, hands behind her back, eyes looking vacantly out at the audience. Ellis understood, watching her, why Benson thought of strippers as machines. They were mechanical, no question about it. And artificial--when the bra came off, he could see the U-shaped surgical incisions beneath each breast, where the plastic had been inserted.

Jaglon would love this, he thought. It would fit right in with his theories about machine sex. Jaglon was one of the Development boys and he was preoccupied with the idea of artificial intelligence merging with human intelligence. He argued that on the one hand, cosmetic surgery and implanted machinery were making man more mechanical, while on the other hand, robot developments were making machines more human. It was only a matter of time before people began having sex with humanoid robots.

Perhaps it's already happening, Ellis thought, looking at the stripper. He looked around at the audience, satisfying himself that Benson was not there. Then he checked a phone booth in the back and the men's room.

The men's room was small and reeked of vomit. He winced again and stared at himself in the cracked mirror over the washbasin. Whatever else was true about the Jackrabbit Club, it produced an olfactory assault. He wondered if that mattered to Benson.

Once outside, he breathed the cool night air and got into his car. The notion of smells intrigued him. It was a problem he had considered before but never really resolved in his own mind.

Because his operation on Benson had been directed toward a specific part of the brain, the limbic system. It was a very old part of the brain, in terms of evolution. Its original purpose had been the control of smell. In fact, the old term for it was rhinencephalon--the "smelling brain."

It had developed 150,000,000 years ago, when reptiles ruled the earth. It controlled the most primitive behavior--anger and fear, lust and hunger, attack and withdrawal. Reptiles like crocodiles had little else to direct their behavior. Man, on the other hand, had a cerebral cortex.

But the cerebral cortex was a recent addition. It was only about 100,000 years old; its modern development began only about 2,000,000 years ago. The cortex had grown around the limbic brain, which remained embedded deep inside the new cortex. That cortex, which could feel love, and worry about ethical conduct, and write poetry, had to make an uneasy peace with the crocodile brain at its core. Sometimes, as in the case of Benson, the peace broke down and the crocodile brain took over intermittently.

What was the relationship of smell to all this? Ellis was not sure: Of course, attacks often began with the sensation of strange smells. But was there anything else? Any other effect?

He didn't know and, as he drove, he reflected that it didn't much matter. The only problem was to find Benson before his crocodile brain took over. That had happened once with Benson, in the NPS. Ellis had been watching through the one-way glass. Benson had been quite normal--and suddenly he lashed out at the wall, striking it viciously, picking up his chair, smashing it against the wall. The attack had begun without warning and it had been carried out with utter, unthinking viciousness.

Six a.m., he thought. There wasn't much time.

IV

"It's true that Harry has gotten strange," Farley said. "It seemed to begin during Watershed Week--that was in July 1969. You probably never heard of it." Farley, a tall, slender man with a slow manner, was the president of Autotronics. He'd responded to Morris' emergency phone call and they had met at the offices. They had gone back into the cavernous room occupied chiefly by scattered desks and several pieces of enormous, glittering machinery. Farley had indicated Benson's desk and Morris had just searched it, finding nothing more than paper, pencils, a slide rule, scribbled notes and some business letters. Now Farley had heated up some instant coffee and they were each having a cup.

"What was Watershed Week?" Morris asked.

"That's just what we named it," Farley said. "Everybody in our business--computer scientists all over the world--knew it was coming and watched for it. In that week, the information-handling capacity of the world's computers exceeded the information-handling capacity of all the human brains in the world. Computers could receive and store more data than three and a half billion brains."

Morris sipped his coffee; it burned his tongue. "Is that a joke?"

"Hell, no," Farley said. "It's true. The watershed was passed in 1969 and computers have been steadily pulling ahead since then. By 1975, they'll lead human beings by fifty to one in terms of capacity." He paused. "Harry was awfully upset about that. And that was when it began for him. He got very strange, very secretive."

Morris looked around the room at the large pieces of computer equipment standing in different areas. It was an odd sensation: the first time he could recall being in a room littered with computers. He realized that he had made some mistakes about Benson. He had assumed that Benson was pretty much like everyone else--but no one who worked in a place such as this was like everyone else.

"You know how fast this is moving?" Farley said. "Damned fast. We've gone from milliseconds to nanoseconds in just a few years. When the computer Illiac I was built in 1952, it could do eleven thousand arithmetical operations a second. Pretty fast, right? Well, they're almost finished with Illiac IV now. It will do two hundred million operations a second. It's the fourth generation. Of course, it couldn't have been built without the help of other computers. They used two other computers full time for two years designing the new Illiac."

Morris drank his coffee. Perhaps it was his fatigue, perhaps the spookiness of the room, but he was beginning to feel some kinship with Benson. Computers to design computers--maybe they were taking over, after all. What would Ross say about that? A shared delusion?

"Find anything interesting in his desk?"

"No," Morris said. He sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked around. He was trying to be Benson, to act like Benson, to think like Benson. "How did he spend his time?"

"I don't know," Farley said, sitting on another desk across the room. "He got pretty distant and withdrawn the past few months. I know he had some trouble with the law. And I knew he was going into the hospital. I knew that. He didn't like your hospital much."

"How is that?" Morris asked, not very interested. It wasn't surprising that Benson was hostile to the hospital.

Farley didn't answer. Instead, he went over to a bulletin board, where clippings and photos had been tacked up. He removed one yellowing newspaper item and gave it to Morris.

It was from the Los Angeles Times, dated July 17, 1969. The headline read: "University hospital gets new computer." The story outlined the acquisition of the IBM System 360 computer that was being installed in the hospital basement and would be used for research and assistance in operations, as well as a variety of other functions.

"You notice the date?" Farley said. "Watershed Week."

V

They were all tired, but none of them could sleep. They stayed in Telecomp, watching the computer projections as they inched up the plotted line toward a seizure state. The time was 5:30 a.m., and then 5:45.

When Ellis had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, he left to get another. Morris stared at a journal in his lap but never turned the page; from time to time, he glanced up at the wall clock.

Ross paced and looked at the sunrise, the sky turning pink over the thin brown haze of smog to the east.

Ellis came back with his cigarettes.

Ross became aware of the ticking of the wall clock. It was strange that she had never noticed it before, because, in fact, it ticked quite loudly. And once a minute, there was a mechanical click as the hand moved another notch. The sound disturbed her. She began to fix on it, waiting for that single click on top of the quieter ticking. Mildly obsessive, she thought. And then she thought of all the other psychological derangements she had experienced in the past. Déjà vu, the feeling that she had been somewhere before; depersonalization, the feeling that she was watching herself from across the room at some social gathering; clang associations, delusions, phobias. There was no sharp line between health and disease, sanity and insanity. It was a spectrum and everybody fitted somewhere on it. Wherever you were on that spectrum, other people looked strange to you. Benson was strange to them; without question, they were strange to Benson.

At six a.m. they all stood and stretched, glancing up at the clock. Nothing happened.

"Maybe it's coming at six-oh-four exactly," Gerhard said. They waited.

The clock showed 6:04. Still nothing happened. No telephones rang, no messengers arrived. Nothing.

Ellis slipped the cellophane wrapper off his cigarettes and crumpled it. The sound made Ross want to scream. He began to play with the cellophane, crumpling it, smoothing it out, crumpling it again. She gritted her teeth.

The clock showed 6:10, then 6:15. McPherson came into the room. "So far, so good," he said, smiled bleakly and left. The others stared at one another. Five more minutes passed.

"I don't know," Gerhard said, staring at the computer console. "Maybe the projection was wrong, after all. We had only three plotting points. Maybe we should run another curve through."

He sat down at the console and punched buttons. The screen glowed with alternative curves, streaking white across the green background. Finally he stopped. "No," he said. "The computer sticks with the original curve."

"Well, obviously the computer is wrong," Morris said. "It's almost six-thirty. The cafeteria will be opening. Anybody want to have breakfast?"

"Sounds good to me," Ellis said. He got out of his chair. "Jan?"

She shook her head. "I'll wait here awhile."

"I don't think it's going to happen." Morris said. "You better get some breakfast."

"I'll wait here." The words came out almost before she realized it.

"OK, OK," Morris said, raising his hands. He shot a glance at Ellis and the two of them left. Ross remained in the room with Gerhard.

"Do you have confidence limits on that curve?" she said.

"I did," Gerhard said. "But I don't know anymore. We've passed the confidence limits already. They were about plus or minus two minutes for ninety-nine percent."

"You mean the seizure would have occurred between six-oh-two and six-oh-six?"

"Yeah, roughly." He shrugged. "But it obviously didn't happen."

"It might take time before it was discovered."

"It might," Gerhard nodded. He didn't seem convinced.

She returned to the window. The sun was up now, shining with a pale, reddish light. Why did sunrises always seem weaker, less brilliant, than sunsets?

Behind her, she heard a single electronic beep.

"Oh-oh," Gerhard said. She turned. He pointed across the room to a small mechanical box on a shelf in the corner. The box was attached to a telephone. A green light glowed on the box.

"What is it?" she asked.

"That's the special line," he said. "The twenty-four-hour recording for the dog tag."

She went over and picked up the telephone from its cradle. She listened and heard a measured, resonant voice saying "Should be advised that the body must not be cremated or damaged in any way until the implanted atomic material has been removed. Failure to remove the material presents a risk of radioactive contamination. For detailed information--"

She turned to Gerhard. "How do you turn it off?"

He pressed a button on the box. The recording stopped.

"Hello?" she said.

There was a pause. Then a male voice said, "With whom am I speaking?"

"This is Dr. Ross."

"Are you affiliated with the"--a short pause--"the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit?"

"Yes, I am."

"Get a pencil and paper. I want you to take an address down. This is Captain Anders of the Los Angeles police."

She gestured to Gerhard for something to write with. "What's the problem, Captain?"

"We have a murder here," Anders said, "and we've got some questions for your people."

This is the second of three installments of a condensed version of "The Terminal Man." The final installment of the novel will appear in the May issue.