Integration Module

by Daniel B. James

The ball was going to strike the hard earth of the court right at his feet. Joseph dropped back and began his swing in one smooth motion. Whack! The tennis ball licked the edge of the net and sped on to the left corner of his opponent’s court. The triple-jointed silver arm flashed and the ball came hurtling back, but too low; the net lurched as it absorbed the impact. The ball bounced twice before it was plucked out of the air by a plastic-and-metal hand.

Joseph laughed. “That’s two out of three games, Beta. I’m just too good for you.” He walked to the rear of the court, stuck his racket under his arm and bent to pick up a towel.

Somewhere in the building a digital computer performed a rapid calculation, the ball arced up, a racket flashed. Joseph straightened up quickly, having been smacked by a tennis ball square in the gluteus maximus. He rubbed his rear and glared at the two small electronic eyes which protruded slightly from the metal sphere to which the arms attached.

“O. K., O. K. I know what you can do when you have a second or two for calculation; you don’t have to convince me. If you’re going to be a poor sport, I’ll just have to beat you three out of three next time.”

There was an answering laugh from the sphere to which he spoke. “I am not worried, Joseph. In fact, I think I have detected a certain weakness in your game which I promise to fully exploit the next time we play.”

The sphere rotated smoothly, its eyes following Joseph as he walked toward the small shower room. Joseph paused in the doorway and looked up at the sphere. “Well, Beta, you’ll have to wait till Thursday to try out your strategy. Tomorrow I have some new assignments to discuss with you and it will probably take you most of the day to process them.”

“What are they?” the sphere asked eagerly. The hydraulic tube and its movable shuttle to which the sphere was attached moved on its complex track in the ceiling. The tube extended and in a moment Joseph found himself looking into Beta’s eyes.

“Mostly the usual problems from Central,” Joseph said, “but there is one interesting job which will call for restructure.”

“Good. Very good. I was hoping for something like that. A challenge. By the way, Joseph, have you heard anything from Central about the surprise reward that I’m supposed to be surprised by?”

“No,” Joseph said slowly. He knew that if it were possible, Beta’s eyes would be twinkling now with mischievous humor. ‘They don’t know you have them all figured out.”

“It wasn’t hard. They’re going to put in permanent communications between me and the Industries Computer Center at Louisville so that I’ll have wonderfully expanded information access. How nice of them.

Then when they ‘happen’ to stumble on a problem important enough, they’ll assign it to both of us so we can work on it together.”

“Are you unhappy about it?”

“Not at all. But why don’t they be straightforward about what they want?”

“Not the way of government bureaus, Beta. If they can’t obscure something or confuse someone, they’re unhappy. Besides, it’s their way of rewarding you and increasing efficiency at the same time.”

The sphere sighed. “I don’t know what I’d do without you around, Joseph. If I dealt only with the government men, I’d burn out my transistors in six months.”

Joseph pulled some sweat out of his short black beard. He said softly, “I’m a government man, Beta.”

The sphere folded its three-foot arms and rose swiftly to the ceiling and called down, “You’ve taken me aback, Joseph; but I love you anyway and I’ll never tell your terrible secret.”

Joseph laughed and said, “You worthless pile of wires and bolts!” He wadded up his towel and threw it up an ineffectual twenty feet or so.

Beta swooped down, caught the towel, and threw it back at the figure ducking into the doorway. “Joseph, the only thing you have on me is compactness. Otherwise, I’m a much more well-rounded individual.”

Joseph stuck his head out the door. “But you still can’t play tennis for freeze-dried beans!”

Joseph slipped quickly out of his tennis clothes, turned on the shower, tested the temperature of the water and stepped into the cooling stream. On a whim he decided to wash his hair; and as his fingers worked the short, somewhat curly black hair into a white froth a thought came to him unbidden. His eyes were shut against the soap, his fingers busily rubbed his scalp all over, and beneath the scalp the skull and beneath the skull the thought of that white body… long white body lying forever unmoving not more than a hundred yards from where he stood. And on the door of that room in which it lay was a small sign which read: CAUTION! HYPERCRITICAL FACTORY INTEGRATION MODULE.

Joseph finished his shower and dressed quickly. He emerged from the doorway and looked around for the sphere. It hung still in the far left corner of the room. Its arms were neatly folded and its hydraulic tube was telescoped to the minimum length. It looks dead somehow, he thought. But then all of Beta’s secondary bodies looked dead when Beta was gone from them. In all the years Joseph had known Beta he had never got used to either the sudden “coming to life” or the equally sudden temporary “death” of Beta’s autosurrogates.

As he looked at the deactivated sphere, he thought again of the small room and of the body whose only movement was the incredibly slow one of its own growth. How many millions of wires emerged from it? Joseph had forgotten, and it piqued him; he did not wish to forget. He promised himself that he would visit the room soon; for although his official routine called for an inspection of that room by him once a month, he had always gone more often. There was usually nothing for him to do there, but he went anyway to see if all was well with the body and… to see the body. There were no sensors in that room or in the approaching corridor. Beta did not know the room existed.

He walked out of the silent game room into a long hallway which led him to another room, a small one which had served him as an office since he joined the Beta Project twenty-three years before. He dropped into his comfortable leather chair and lifted a briefcase onto his lap. Better check the memos before leaving. He pulled out a small notebook and opened it to the present date: 6 June, 2047. Damn! He reached out without looking and picked up a small desk microphone.

“Beta,” he said. A tiny red light came on in the small metal sphere which was mounted on the wall. “I just wanted to let you know something I forgot earlier.” “What is that, Joseph?” “A reporter is coming down here with me tomorrow.” “A technical reporter?” “No, Beta, this one’s from Public Media.”

A brief silence followed. Then: “I do hope this one is not quite so dumb as the last reporter you brought.”

“Well, I wouldn’t bring any if it were up to me, but Central decided these things and you and I just have to live with it. Oh, another thing. Central asked me to ask you nicely if you would be a little easier on this one if you could.”

Beta laughed. “O. K. I’ll try, Joseph. But if he asks me if I think I’m worth all the money that’s been spent on me like that last fool did, I’ll let him have it.”

“Beta, I cringe every time I think of that interview. I wish to hell I had never let you lay eyes on The Dictionary of World Slang.” “A birthday present, I believe.” “Check your memory tapes, Beta; it was a Christmas present, and it was with no Christmas spirit that you roasted that poor fellow’s ears in seventeen languages.”

“I promise I’ll be a pleasant host tomorrow, Joseph. See you then.”

“Good-bye, Beta. See you at ten A.M.”

“Oh.” A pause. “One more thing, Joseph.” Another pause. “Do you think… I mean could we… never mind. I’ll talk to you about it later. Bye.”

Joseph switched off the phone, shook his head thoughtfully and stood up. No more to be done today. He would go home to Eleanor and the kids.

The atmosphere had begun to thicken with the approaching dusk as his helicar lifted and, tilting slightly, glided away smooth and silent as a gull.

Later, with supper over and the children finally enticed to bed and asleep with a story, Joseph relaxed with a brandy and soda. Eleanor sat quietly sketching a flower which she had pinned to a sheet of white cardboard in front of her.

“A reporter named Mullroy called today,” she said. “He dropped a couple of hints about getting together with you earlier than the scheduled appointment, so I invited him up for breakfast. But I let him know that meals in my house are for eating and relaxation, not work.”

“Good for you.” He took an extra-deep draft of brandy and soda and sagged even further into his hundred-year-old lounge chair. Somehow he just wasn’t looking forward to this interview at all. It was the wrong time. Beta was going through one of his questioning cycles which had been coming along with increasing frequency.

Joseph knew Beta as well as he knew the woman who had borne his children-no, better; for he had been with Beta every day of the cyborg’s life until the creature was all of ten years old. It had only been possible then for him to marry, to be away from Beta for increasing stretches of time and to think of being able to devote himself to a wife and children. But he would not have had it any other way? Few men had ever been able to devote themselves to truly pioneering work, and in his epoch the great unknown was the human mind. And, thought Joseph, I’ve been dead-center in the exploration.

The next morning began well. Joseph’s nose informed him of Canadian bacon sizzling down below in the kitchen, even before the other senses had fully taken up their duties. Then his ears pricked to an unfamiliar sound—a low unidentifiable rumble. He leaned toward it, listening. He caught a syllable or two and realized that it was a human rumble—a man’s very deep voice. The reporter. Oh, yes, the reporter. He closed his eyes and lay back until the Canadian bacon came again to inhabit his nasal cavities. Perhaps he would get up after all.

When Joseph entered the kitchen, he found Mullroy sitting comfortably with a cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other. The two men greeted one another. Mullroy was tall. He unfolded from his slouch like a carpenter’s rule until Joseph was looking up at the man’s thin, deeply-lined face. The smile was wise and friendly, but the eyes betrayed years of question-asking and answer-doubting. Mullroy’s hands were very large and bony; Joseph felt his own almost disappear into Mullroy’s firm grip.

The breakfast was pleasant in the cool morning air. The two children ate together, laughing and chatting about their plans for the day, under the nearby willow tree on a heavy bench Joseph had built. And true to his promise, the slightly nervous Mullroy asked no questions. The amount of coffee he drank was phenomenal.

Eleanor sat with the two men for a while, talking easily about the flower sketches she was doing; and finally she began gathering up the dishes and urging her children to the few chores they had to do before they ran to the forested fields or down to the river to play. Joseph lit a long, thin cigar, reached for his oversized mug of coffee and suggested to Mullroy that they might walk together down toward the river for a while before they left for the Beta Complex. Mullroy accepted eagerly. The two men walked for a while in silence, leaving as they went small bluish clouds of smoke in the still-cool morning air. After a short time they came to the rounded brow of the hill on whose upper slope Joseph had built his house.

“Eleanor and I used to come here years ago, whenever I could spare a few hours from the Beta Complex, and dream together of that house and the children who rattle it now with their energy.”

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Dr. Beckman,” said Mullroy. “I’ve read your dossier at Central, of course, but that doesn’t help much in getting a feeling for a fellow.”

So Joseph began to talk about himself, with only occasional questions from Mullroy or requests for more detail. Joseph’s father had been killed in a helicar accident in the winter of 2003, when Joseph was only four years old. His mother had taken him and his three-year-old sister to live on his grandfather’s farm. Joseph had, from the beginning, loved animals; and by the time he was fourteen he had assumed complete responsibility for the care of all the livestock on the farm.

His grades in school had been excellent, especially in the sciences and in linguistics and mathematics. He had won state prizes in his science fair presentations on animal communications two years in a row. He was awarded college scholarships, and by his sophomore year he had written a paper entitled “Empathetic Feedback and Interspecies Learning” which aroused excitement in the graduate schools. His academic adviser began to subtly urge him to balance his interests in animal psychology with a solid program of human psychology, organic mechanics, the interdepartmental Patterns of Science, and somewhat to Joseph’s surprise but not counter to his interests, his adviser especially urged him to take the full range of courses called Molecular Engineering.

He later found that Central secretly helped him. He had thought it was luck that in his first year in graduate school he was invited to work on the new neuromotor projection experiments under Dr. Oldstead, perhaps the finest psycho-neurophysiologist of his time. The team was able to prove that, particularly in the nervous systems of mammals, there is a large degree of arbitrariness in the projections of the sensorium. This meant that what a brain perceives about the body it is in and the environment around it doesn’t have so much to do with the way it was originally hooked up as with the information it receives from its sensory cells. So, if one changes the sensors and their arrangement, one also changes the perception of both body-and world-image to that brain.

“You mean you could stick a rat’s brain in a cat and the rat would see itself as a cat?” asked Mullroy.

“Yes, theoretically,” said Joseph, “but it is enormously difficult and dangerous to the organic systems, and there as yet seems no practical reason to do it, except for the scientific value. No, very early in our investigations we chose to emphasize the replacement of the normal body sensors of an animal in the late stage of fetal development with artificial sensors.”

“By artificial sensors, do you mean some sort of sensing machine?” asked Mullroy.

“Machines only in the broadest possible meaning of that word. Anything—mechanical devices, crystals, even tuned molecules can be artificial sensors if they respond to a change in their environment in a predictable manner and degree. The response can be chemical, electrical, magnetic—as long as it ‘is reliably consistent in its reaction.

“From what we learned in the experiments with animals, we developed micro-linkages which converted the signals from the artificial sensors to signals that were in the simple electrical code that the human nervous system is used to.

“About that time, Dr. Tell of Zurich Polytechnic developed faciplastic which, as you probably know, will contract like muscle under electrical stimulation. It was child’s play for us to connect the motor nerves of an animal or human through an amplifier to this faciplastic. Never will I forget that first experiment. I watched with awe as a mouse lifted a one-pound weight from across the room by his nervous signal to a crudely-mounted strip of the faciplastic. Oh, those were exciting times!

“Then, at the end of my Ph.D. studies, my adviser introduced me to the representative from Central. He offered me more than a job. He offered me a life’s work: to be a mother, father, companion and technical adviser to the world’s first permanent cyborg. I would assist in the creation of the cyborg, and from the moment of its birth I was to be its primary link with reality.”

“Dr. Beckman,” said the reporter, “could you tell me why you were chosen for this project? I mean, aside from your excellent technical qualifications?”

Joseph was silent for a moment and then he said, “I think it was my ‘motherly’ instincts,” He smiled. “I suspect that the thing which clinched it was my background in animal care. Central realized that the teaching of a permanent cyborg would take patience, calmness and… love.”

“Love,” Mullroy repeated with an irritating flat tone of voice as he scribbled in his notebook.

Joseph’s relaxation vanished. He found himself staring at the faintly cynical downward curve at the corners of the reporter’s mouth.

“You seem to have stumbled over the word ‘love’, Mr. Mullroy. Why?” “Maybe the word clashed in my mind with the thought of a human being wired into a concrete building, Dr. Beckman,” said Mullroy softly, without looking up.

“Look, Mullroy, we’re not ogres!” Joseph paused; he knew he must not be defensive with this man. ‘There are two things I want you to understand. First, because of the human module’s defects he would either have had euthanasia or be forced to endure a life of near-immobility because of the minimum four or five cubic feet of life-support mechanisms that he could not survive without. The second thing, Mullroy, is this: I do love Beta and I’ve done everything in my power to help him live a meaningful, healthy and interesting life.”

“You speak of the ’human module‘, Dr. Beckman, and then you speak of Beta. Don’t you consider Beta human?”

Joseph got up and stretched, consciously calming himself before he answered.

“Beta is an entity—a highly complex cyborgean chemical engineering and manufacturing factory. Beta contains as one of his functioning parts what is the finest integration and feedback device that we have knowledge of—the human nervous system. Because of this system, the factory is aware of himself and his environment in a unified field of consciousness. Millions of bits of information flow into the human module every second to be processed and projected. Why, Mullroy, compared to this the finest computers we have are mere toys!” “And cheap…”

“No, not cheap. Beta cost what eight ordinary factory complexes would cost. That is not to say that Beta hasn’t paid back much of his original cost in increased production and in improved techniques. Not to mention the invaluable scientific knowledge we have gained.”

“You would say, then, that Beta is an economic success?”

“Mullroy,” said Joseph, “of all the reporters I’ve talked to, you have come the closest to making me mad. You are a real expert.”

“I admit, Dr. Beckman, that I’m not unaware that a little—not too much, but a little—anger sometimes helps the information flow. What about that last question, then?”

“No, this human module factory has a long way to go before it could be called an economic success. But what is more important” (he stared hard at the reporter to emphasize his point) “is the grand experiment that it is. It involves scientists from fifty nations, many of whom will be dead long before Beta.”

“Why do you say that Beta will die? Won’t it just be the human module that will die?”

“Yes and no. Of course, only the human module can organically die; but it took us eight months to complete wiring the module into the factory, and it took as many years for Beta to learn to control his actions and to integrate his senses as it does a child to do the same with his body. Furthermore, as the years have gone on the. nervous system and the electrical and chemical components of the factory have adjusted to one another in countless ways. No, when the human module dies, the factory in a sense dies too; for it would have to be completely rewired for the next human module.”

Joseph had been pacing around as he spoke. Now he stopped and looked at his watch. “We’d better start back, because I told Beta that we would get there at ten.”

Mullroy got up and stretched. “O. K. Perhaps you could tell me how you see this ‘grand experiment’. I’m not exactly a religious type, but I agree with most religions in their assumption that there is something a little special about man. I don’t see what justifies your taking away a man’s body and sticking him in a machine.“

They walked for a few moments before Joseph replied. “As I said, we didn’t take away the physical body-just disconnected it. Then we gave him another body.

“As to the justification you asked for, I could repeat some of what I’ve said and add a dozen other good reasons having to do with medicine, psychology, economics and so on. But personally I’ve felt at times that it isn’t so much a question of right or wrong as it is a coming to pass of the inevitable.”

“I don’t get you.”

“This isn’t easy for me to talk about, Mullroy, and don’t quote me. What I’m trying to say is that if it hadn’t been us that first helped man step beyond his skin and become another being it would soon be someone else. The cards were dealt long ago by old lady nature herself when she realized that if you could have one form of living thing you could have millions of them. We scientists—and man in general, I might add—can’t help trying to follow her act. It might blow us to kingdom come, but homo sapiens is going to try to do everything it can think of and, Mullroy, be everything if can imagine.”

“Like what? Give me some examples.”

“Use your imagination, Mullroy.

What form would you take if you could choose from among endless varieties? What senses would you have, if you could choose from a list of thousands, including X-ray vision and bat-hearing? What would be the limit of your strength, and how would you design muscle arrangements if those choices were virtually unlimited—as they soon will be? You could be a human version of a bird or deep-sea fish. You could swim in the hot lava of a volcano, or rocket casually off to the moon—not in a space ship, but in your own sensitive, reacting body. And you would live longer, too, because there wouldn’t be the wear and tear on your physical body except for the nervous system and it can live to a ripe old age.“

”Could I be thee Mississippi River?“ Mullroy asked.

“Glad to see you’re getting into the spirit of the thing, Mullroy. Maybe you could, someday. You could be a continent… hell, you could be the entire earth if you wished! At least theoretically, that is. You might have to spread your sensory and motor nerves a little thin-maybe one per square mile.” His voice grew more serious. “But the important thing is that your brain could handle it. It could contain within itself a unified, changing projection of the whole earth. You wouldn’t experience being a nervous system; you would experience being the earth. In a sense, the planet would be inside your brain, but you would never know that except by reason. Just as with your body—I mean your experienced body and not your physical body—it is inside your brain, but you don’t know that because your brain has been evolutionarily biased to pretend otherwise.“

“Now just hold it, Dr. Beckman.” Mullroy stopped and gestured to the sky and surrounding hills. “Are you suggesting that all Mir—what I experience—is within my brain? Along with my experienced body? That makes you a solipsist, I believe.”

“Forget the philosophical tags, Mullroy. They have a way of numbing the mind. To answer your question—yes! Where in hell do you expect your experience to be but in the organ of the human body which is specialized to perform the experiencing function? Everything you experience right now is taking place within the volume of something not much bigger than a softball. For example, that magnolia tree over there, blooming so beautifully, which we see as maybe a hundred yards away is actually within your cranium and, logic informs us, is but a few inches from your body-image at the most.” “One of us is crazy, Doctor,” said the reporter. “I mean—well, I don’t disagree with you, I can’t refute what you say—but it just doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s like finding out how many cells there are in the human body—interesting, but it changes nothing about the way I feel about living or other people or myself.”

“Of course it doesn’t, Mullroy. The brain is a little like the stomach—it takes in some new data and either assimilates it or rejects it. It doesn’t know what to do with something it can neither assimilate into the system nor simply toss out. Mullroy, one of the things which keeps life so interesting for us humans is the fact that we live in terms of paradox. We have a built-in desire for truth; wherever man looks he sees questions—they are as much a part of his gaze as color. We shall seek to answer our questions as long as we are human. Yet we shall never cease fearing the unknown even as we are drawn to it. We shall also attempt the paradoxical effort to contain raw truths within the box of our illusions. Why? Because illusion is our method, a function of our nervous systems. It is the fragile invention of organic systems of atoms trying to know. And ultimately the brain will corner itself somewhere… and fearfully try to encompass within itself the raw truth of its method, its surrogate reality.”

The reporter stopped to light a cigarette. He took a long time at it. He shook his head and spoke; his voice seemed older and tireder. “And what then? What do we do then?”

“I don’t know. I just know it’s something we must do. We really don’t have much choice but to pursue mysteries, including our own, wherever they lead us.” Joseph thought for a moment. “Whatever happens, I think we will find that mystery—like life—doesn’t die, that it changes, mutates into another form. It will be with us as long as we exist.”

The interview went smoothly and Joseph was pleased with the questions the reporter asked, which were intelligent and concisely put. Mullroy was writing in his notebook some impressions concerning Beta’s answer to the last question on the reporter’s list. The sphere made a little nod to Joseph, who sighed inwardly. Beta was up to something.

“And now I have a question for you, reporter,” said Beta.

“Shoot.” Mullroy continued writing furiously.

Beta shot. “What is causing your hand to move right now as you write?”

“Huh!” Mullroy’s eyes rotated up so that they peered at Beta through bushy eyebrows. “I am, of course.” “Are you? I suggest you write a word and tell me what passes through your mind as you do so.”

Mullroy wrote a word, a non-complimentary one, which he directed at Joseph who for the past few moments had been pointedly engrossed in the patterns of the tiles on the ceiling.

“Well,” said Mullroy, “to be honest, I’d have to say that I wasn’t thinking about the act of writing as I did it. It’s just sort of automatic.”

“Would you say that you were not aware of it?” Beta asked quickly.

“Certainly I was aware of it. I did it. I watched it as it happened.“

”Try it again and tell me what is in your awareness besides just your experience of the act.“

Mullroy paused and sighed. Slowly he guided his pen in the writing of a long word.

“Nothing. There is nothing in my mind as I write except the experience itself.”

Beta chuckled. “So the causing of the writing is unconscious to you. How can you take credit for doing something that you’re not even aware of?”

“Look,” said Mullroy with a touch of exasperation in his voice, “I wrote the word. I decided to write it. It was my act. Just what are you getting at?” “I wonder if you really did decide,” Beta said serenely. “Joseph, would you mind telling Mr. Mullroy that story of yours about the time you ‘noticed’ your hand?”

Joseph shuddered inwardly. “Oh, I doubt if Mr. Mullroy would care to…”

“But I would, I would.” Mullroy leaned forward in an exaggerated expression of great interest.

“All right. I’ll be brief. One time when I was sitting in school, a very bored eleven-year-old boy, I noticed my hand lying on my knee. I use the word ‘noticed’ because it was the first time that I had seen my hand as an object—a physical object like a banana or a rock. So I began thinking how strange it was for me to be able to cause this object to move just by telling it to do so. I remember feeling a strange sense of power and magic. In this frame of mind I began to order my hand—this object—to move, to drum fingers on my knee, to make a fist and so on. Of course nothing happened; the hand just lay there. I clearly recall summoning up all my force of will and commanding my hand to rise. Arise, hand! I was amazed to see that the hand did not move at all.“

“You must have been telling your hand not to move,” Mullroy said.

“Not consciously, I wasn’t. The point is…”

‘The point is, Mr. Mullroy,“ said Beta, ”that perhaps you did not ’decide‘ to write the word any more than Joseph was able to decide that his hand should move, assuming of course that you are constructed more or less the same as Joseph.“

“I was not constructed. I grew.” Mullroy said archly.

There was a short pointed silence from Beta. Then: “Joseph, I think I am getting that ‘Dictionary of World Slang’ feeling again.”

“Yes,” said Joseph. “I think this is a good time to terminate the interview. Unless you have any more questions… ?”

“No, I have all I need. Thank you very much, Beta. Sorry I couldn’t follow your little philosophy lesson better. I never did too well in it in college.”

“You are welcome, Mr. Mullroy,” said Beta, a decided chill in his voice. Joseph led the confused reporter to his office, poured two mugs of coffee and sat down, waiting.

“O. K.,” Mullroy said, “would you mind telling me what in hell that was all about?”

Joseph smiled, although he was not at all at ease. “Don’t worry about it, Mullroy. Beta does that to me, too. It is his nature to, well, speculate on things. With you he was trying to show that you can observe your hand guiding the pen, but you can’t observe nor directly control that which causes your hand to move. The cause remains as unknown to your consciousness as, say, the center of the earth.“

“You seem to have actually encouraged Beta in these… speculations. Which reminds me, how come you told Beta that story about your hand?“

“God knows! I don’t remember the circumstances. As you know, one of Beta’s advantages is that besides his ordinary human memory, which is as fallible as ours, he has connections to a memory tape system. I never know while I’m talking with him if he’s taping or not. He spends hours of his off-duty time randomly scanning his memory tapes until he finds something interesting to think about I think that’s how he came up with that ‘hand’ story.”

They talked a while longer, then as the reporter was taking his leave he paused in the doorway. “One last question, Dr. Beckman. Since information on the human module is considered ‘sensitive’ rather than secret, how do you prevent Beta from finding out about himself?“

“Well, the Sensitive‘ classification enables Central to keep the media from sensationalizing the information on this project That keeps the public calm, and the scientific community can function better in an atmosphere of free exchange of information. All we have to do is be very careful what Beta reads, as he has no other way of finding out about the human module. And Beta prefers tapes, which are cleared, to books anyway.“

Mullroy nodded, waved his hand in farewell, and closed the door behind him. Joseph sat for a few minutes finishing his coffee and thinking. His thoughts were troubled by vague little fears. The cyborg was hunting for something; these speculations of Beta’s were not idle. They were part of a pattern of behavior which went back years into the past.

He put it firmly out of his thoughts and reached for the button which would call Beta to activation. As he did so, he realized with horror that the red light was already on. “Beta! How long have you been activated?“

Came the answer as soft as his question was sharp, “Only about five seconds, Joseph. Why? Were you and the reporter talking about something I shouldn’t hear?”

Joseph’s heart stopped beating quite so rapidly. “No. I just… was surprised, that’s all.” He hurried on. “Are you ready for the briefing?

There are some restructure problems which should interest you.“

Pause. “Certainly, Joseph. Proceed.”

The briefing took more than an hour. Joseph could hear the moving of massive machinery in the Main Room as Beta moved parts of himself about, trying first this arrangement and then that in his search for the most efficient one for the production of the new plastics. Finally he was satisfied.

“No problem, Joseph. Central can pick up their sixty tons of TCP-19 by tomorrow afternoon at the south loading dock. I may have some problems with one of the components for the other plastic, though. I can produce it O. K., but it tends to lump in the gross transport pipes. I’ll have to experiment with flow vibration frequencies until I can find the right one. That may take a while.”

“No rush on that order anyway, Beta. I’ll put it in the project data tapes so you can get busy. Anything else you need?”

“Not for these projects, but… Joseph, I can have most of this worked out and set up for the Automatic Section by eight o’clock tonight…” Beta could set up a process, work it a while, then let it proceed as effortlessly and unconsciously as digestion in a man.

“You don’t have to do it that fast, Beta. You can quit at the regular time,” said Joseph.

“I know, but I want to have everything done… if I can talk you into coming back over here tonight.“ Joseph was surprised. It was the first time in years that Beta had asked him to come at an unscheduled time. ”What’s up?“ he asked.

“I want to talk about some things But not during working hours. See, this is personal…” his voice trailed off.

Joseph hesitated. He was afraid, and he didn’t know why. There was a suppressed excitement in Beta’s voice, an urgency. But he said that he would come.

On his way back to Beta that night, Joseph thought through the events of the past few days, then he raced through his memory as one might through fields. Beta was as complex as anyone he had ever known. And just as unpredictable. All he knew for sure was that this was important—not only for the experiment which had consumed the entirety of his professional career, but for Beta’s life and mind as well. Joseph felt he had to be more than a guide and a father-he had to be a friend to a cyborg who, had become a mature organism.

He parked the helicar and walked the few yards to the entrance. In the beginning, he had felt that he was entering Beta’s body when he walked through these doors; but now he only felt that way when he entered the Main Room where most of Beta’s apparatus and sensors were. The Main Room was full of complex noises, although the sound level was not uncomfortably high. The sphere was hung in the corner, unmoving. The job he was working on seemed to take all his attention, for he said nothing to Joseph, who was watching quietly.

Finally Beta spoke. ‘There! All finished. I’ve got that sequence on tape and it can go on automatic as soon as the other job is done. It took me a little longer than I thought.“

Beta activated the autosurrogate and it moved down from its corner until it hung a few feet from Joseph. The sphere and the man stared at each other without speaking for several moments; then Joseph spoke.

“Well, Beta, what’s on your mind?”

“A million things, Joseph. But they all have to do with what I am.” “Are you unhappy?” The sphere made a small gesture of surprise. “No, not at all. I’m content enough, but even so I find myself asking questions which lead not to answers but to more questions. Frankly, Joseph, I’m confused.”

Joseph laughed. “You can join the club, Beta. Nearly everyone I know who has the wit to question existence is confused. You wouldn’t be a true child of the human species if uncertainty weren’t part of your heritage.”

“I appreciate your kindness,” Beta said with mild irony, “in telling me that it is natural and acceptable to be confused. But I want more than that. I want the answers—and I feel you can give them to me.”

“Really?” Joseph said slowly. “Maybe so, bat I doubt it.”

“Consider, Joseph, what I was saying to that reporter toward the end of the interview. What did you think of that?”

“I told Mullroy, when he asked me, that you were trying to demonstrate that voluntary control is re’ally a nonconscious control.”

“In other words,” said Beta, “we don’t really know what we are going to do, only what has just been done.“

“Yes, that’s what I told him you were getting at.“

“Joseph, a couple of years ago I was talking with you about something and I remember that I was quite voluble. I was discoursing on something I knew well and I spoke fluently, even brilliantly—or so it seemed. Then a strange thing happened. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know what words were going to come out of my speaker until they were already echoing off the walls. I was amazed. It was as if the words were streaming out of eternity through me. I began to think about this. My thoughts have clustered around this experience. Joseph, it is almost an obsession with me now. Where do the words come from? How are they strung together in such logical order?”

Joseph thought he saw a way out of the coming confrontation. “Put it out of your mind, Beta. The mind of man which created you as another stage among endless stages of evolution does not understand everything it creates. Just as you create new associations of atoms without a complete knowledge of molecular relationships, so we have generated you as another version of ourselves without knowing everything “there is to know about ourselves. You have as many unknowns in you as we have in us. We don’t know where our words come from either.”

“I find it hard to believe that you don’t know.”

Joseph was so shocked that he said nothing.

Beta continued. “But let us continue. Another thing which has occupied my thoughts is something subtle that I’ve identified in my experience. Not only have I decided that somewhere there is something doing what I have thought I was doing, but I’ve begun to wonder about my perceptions. You, Joseph, taught me long ago about my sensors. And, whenever I wish, I can look them up in my tape memory. Sensors for this, sensors for that—I have thirty-one different kinds of sensors.”

“So?” Joseph sank into a chair for the duration.

“So—somewhere the millions of bits of data are all put together into a unity. Otherwise I would experience no unity. Somewhere all the data is examined and censored and pruned and trimmed. Then I receive what’s left.”

“I give you my word,” said Joseph, “that we do not interfere with your sensory experience.”

“I thank you for telling me and I believe you. But that information changes nothing. I am convinced that there must be a device which integrates my data and then sends it to me. Which brings me to my last point.“

The sphere moved closer to Joseph until their eyes were about a foot apart.

“Joseph, where is my experience?”

“What! Your experience?”

“You needn’t be so surprised, Joseph. I’ve just thought about the things you have taught me. What I think is as much your ideas as mine.”

Joseph thought ruefully of his conversation with Mullroy and of the magnolia tree that the reporter did not wish to have in his head, preferring the useful illusion of “out there.”

Beta went on. “Joseph, I’ve got millions of sensors, but only one unified awareness of my world. As far as I can see, that unity could not be the result of scattered functions or devices. It’s impossible. Everything I experience has an underlying similarity, despite the apparent differences in quality or form. Somehow these seemingly different things undergo a similar process—the end result of which is my total experience at any one time.”

“What can you conclude from that, Beta?”

“I conclude that there is a device-one single device—which provides the ultimate integration of all the relevant information available to my waking being. I think that what we call ‘consciousness’ is this complete integration. If this is true, then where is this device? Joseph, please tell me.“

“Do you think it’s something you can just go look at?“ ”Yes, why not?“

“Before we go any further, tell me why it means so much to you.”

“Don’t you understand, Joseph? That device holds the secret to where I am and what I am. It’s where I really live. It’s where everything I have ever known has its location and existence and overlay of meaning.” “I don’t understand…” “You do, you do!” Beta said, nearly shouting. “I can tell!” Then, more calmly, “I know that I don’t experience myself directly—the atoms and molecules of me. I know myself only in the way that I know other things, things external to my physical machinery. I only experience myself. The self that I know by experience must logically be within that device, along with everything else I experience.”

Joseph shook his head sadly. “What can you possibly gain by pursuing this?”

“I am not thinking in terms of gain anymore. All I know is that neither myself nor my world is what I thought it was, nor where I thought it was.” The sphere started to sway to and fro. “Oh, Joseph, am I some flickering image somewhere who only thinks he has will and self? Help me, Help me.”

“Be quiet,” Joseph said sharply.; “Do you think you are ready for any understanding of yourself if you act this way?”

The swaying stopped abruptly. Then came Beta‘s Voice, cool and calm as ever. “Sorry, Joseph. It’s very rare that I feel that way. Usually it is the curiosity which drives me in this search. Sometimes, though, I become confused and lonely and the thinking becomes fuzzy, difficult to follow. The more difficult it becomes, the more I feel compelled to attack the problem. To be honest with you, I confess that I must find out about myself, this device, what my world is made of. It’s not just curiosity anymore.”

“What you ask is not possible,” Joseph said.

“Tell me about it then. You must know! I am a child of the human species, you said. You must know how my consciousness was made.”

“Man,” said Joseph cryptically, “makes many things that he doesn’t really understand.” “Is this one of them?” Joseph couldn’t lie now. Beta would know and the precious trust would die.

“No, Beta, it isn’t,” he said softly. “Joseph, take me to it.” “Beta, for God’s sake! It’s against regulations…”

‘Then I was right! It does exist!“ Joseph exploded. ”Yes, it exists! But can’t you forget it? It would do you no good to see it.“

“I don’t care about doing myself good. This is something I need. “Beta, most of the men who brought you into existence feel that it would be bad for you. I am forbidden even to mention the matter to you, let alone allow you to see the Integration Module.“

“So that’s what you call it.”

It wasn’t easy. It took him %alf the night to free the required four hundred feet of cable which ran behind the paneling of walls and ceiling of the Main Room to the autosurrogate. There had been no way to splice a section of cable into it; it was far too complex for that. He didn’t know what Beta was doing meanwhile; no doubt he was going over his memory tapes to review everything he had recorded about this matter. Damn! He couldn’t find anything to carry the autosurrogate in. The thing was far too heavy for him to lift. Childishly, he wondered if he wouldn’t have to call this madness off. No,, pot so lucky. His mind’s eye presented him with the answer and he realized Beta would think of it too: the 9hair in his office with the little casters.

They were ready by two-thirty in the morning. With the help of Beta’s arms and hands supporting the weight of the heavy sphere, Joseph was able to wrestle the excited, orb into the heavily cushioned seat.

“Right side up, if you would.” Beta was staring out upside down. It made him feel a little funny.

Using one of the arms for a lever, Joseph carefully turned the autosurrogate over. Beta still felt strange and said so.

“You’ve’lost your hydraulics, Beta. Your reflexes are sending out balance and posture control messages, but now nothing happens. Are you dizzy?”

“I’m all right. I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” Joseph said sarcastically. “Look, let me know if you start to get sick.”

Beta assured him that he would. And then slowly, very slowly, Joseph anxiously began wheeling the chair toward the corridor. The journey was not long, but it took almost an hour. Joseph had to stop every few feet to pull the cable forward, to check the floor surface over which the chair would pass, to pause and relax his own tense muscles. Injury to the autosurrogate and the unknown possibility of damage to Beta’s psyche if there were an accident—all unthinkable! With agonizing slowness they crept down the narrow corridor; painfully they turned the corner; slow as plant growth they approached the forbidden door.

Beta stared at it for a long while. Joseph could hardly breathe now. There was a prickle at the back of his neck. Madness. Madness. A wave of vertigo nearly swept him to the ground. Emotion splashed through him as though he were a bucket with no bottom. Above all was embarrassment, shyness. As always when he tiptoed here. For here was housed the soul of his friend…

There was a trembling in Beta’s arms as he repeated “integration module, integration module” over and over very softly. Finally he visibly steadied himself and said that he was ready to go in.

Joseph pushed open the door. The room was dark. Moving like a man at the bottom of an ocean, he pushed the chair and its silent occupant through the soft light which angled into the room from the hall and into the blackness.

Beta waited quietly. Joseph moved to the light switch.

“Have courage, Beta, my friend,” he breathed. “We should have told you, but they were afraid; now it will go hard for you. I am with you, my friend.” The light slowly increased. Out of the gloom came that unbelievable image: the long white body so still upon its electronic bier, so perfect beneath its protective plastic cover. Faint rhythms played through the muscles. At first Beta did not move as he stared at the young male form. Then his arm twitched up and dropped back. He raised his hands and cupped them around his eyes. He shuddered and a groan filled the room. And then he began to cry in short, harsh sobs. And not just the autosurrogate was crying, but the whole cyborg. Joseph could hear deep rhythmic throoming sounds from all over the factory.

Not knowing what to do, Joseph knelt beside the chair and waited. Beta put out a blind hand, groping, found Joseph’s shoulder, gripped it hard. Joseph winced with pain but did not move. Beta spoke then with great difficulty, tearing each word from the fabric of his crying.

“… there… inside there!… now… I’m in THERE, Joseph… now! And I… always was.”

After a time, Beta grew quiet and the great sounds throughout the factory died away. Joseph reached to his shoulder and took Beta’s hand which lay there. Beta gave a start.

“Now I know,” Beta said, “why the warmth of human touch always felt so good to me. Joseph… why didn’t you tell me? Why does that… lie there instead of walking…” His voice broke.

“It never would have walked, Beta, never done a hundredth of what you can do. Listen to me, Beta, it had such serious defects it would probably not have lived or if it lived it would have been confined to a room somewhere. Oh, Beta, I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry…”

Silence filled the little room. Beta continued to stare at the body. “Defects,” he said finally. “If that is so then I have no regrets. I’ve had a hand, you know, in making myself what I am.” His voice was a strange mixture of irony and pride.

The tension of fear in Joseph broke and melted. Beta would be all right. He was strong. Now a wetness came to Joseph’s eyes as he too gazed at the form which housed Beta’s essence and his world.

“No one should have to go through what you have, Beta.” His voice seemed small and far away.

“You’re wrong, Joseph,” said Beta slowly, “doubly wrong. For years my thinking and questioning have made ideas like so many arrows all pointing to the same unknown place.” He gestured around the room. ‘This is that place. I had to know what was in that place.“ He looked at the body and said, ”I’m glad I know.“

“You said I was doubly wrong.” Beta thought for a while. “I fol-‘ lowed an unmarked path in my mind until I found that the core of myself is human. I, never expected that. And now I’ see that the end of my journey is where I join you on your path and begin again. All my questions still apply; the arrows point to a new unknown place.”

“I see,” said Joseph“. ”Yes, the questions still apply. Our words come, but we don’t know from where. The bright world leaps up like flames in the brain, but we don’t know how. And all is soaked in meaning, and we ask why.“ He smiled. ”Welcome, my friend, to one hell of a long, confusing, and fascinating journey!“