Related Works
Relationship | Work | Contributors | Genre | |
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Adapted from | The Cybernetic Brains | Raymond F. Jones | Short Story |
The first cybernetic brain was that of a brilliant young phisicist who had been killed in an accident. Only the day before, the had expressed a wish that he might take part in just such an experiment. His wife gave permission for the use of his brain.
It had worked, and it was still working. For seventy-five years it had functioned as a vast and complex relay in the merciless machines that drove it and were driven by it in order to solve the problems of industry and commerce. And now no man or woman had to work; now a vast Welfare State, whose technology was based on cybernetics, covered the world.
Then Al Demming, engineer of the Board that administered the Welfare State, began to suspect that something was wrong. And when his sister, Martha, and her husband, John, were killed in an accient, he learned that he was right. For John's was the first brain able to transmit a thought to the men who worked in cybernetic engineering and confirm Demming's suspicion that the brains were really alive, enslaved, suffering.
Demming loathed the Welfare State of which he was a part. He knew that the philosophy of these times was a shallow thing, compounded of indolence and durfeited appetites. Each year there were fewer young people who chose to be workers upon achieving their independent subsidy. Civilization was stagnant, rapidly corrupting in its every phase. Space exploration had come to an end; the Welfare State had smothered whatever it was that made man look up to the stars.
And now it must come to an end. The Board would have to be told and readjustments made before the public learned the terrible secret. Then, just before he went to keep his appointment, Demming learned that every contract with Board members had been canceled. No member's brain would wind up in eternal slavery.
Could it be possible that they knew the truth? Had they learned, somehow, and taken quick measures to protect themselves before they died—to protect themselves from the living death to which thousands of others were condemned by the contracts apparently offered at such generous terms to capable workers and scientists, whose numbers gradually dwindled? Was there any hope of release for those brains?
John and Martha had broken through somehow. They were depending on Al Demming ton convince the Board that cybernetic control must be abandoned. But Demming hadn't the least suspicion of the full truth, or where his efforts would lead him. [from dust jack of Avalon edition]
Relationship | Work | Contributors | Genre | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Adapted from | The Cybernetic Brains | Raymond F. Jones | Short Story |