"If you still have fear of the threats I made two stages back against your world and race, banish them! I am pure intelligence now and as such, though I can no more feel the emotions of love or friendship, neither can I feel those of ambition or pride. The only emotion, if such it is, that remains to me still is intellectual curiosity, and this desire for truth that has burned in man since his apehood will thus be the last of all desires to leave him!"
THE LAST MUTATION
"A brain — a great brain!" Dutton was saying dazedly. "Here in Pollard's laboratory — but where's Pollard? He was here, too. ."
"Then all men will some day be as you are now?" I cried.
"Yes," came the answering thought, "in two hundred and fifty million years man as you know him and as you are will be no more, and after passing all the stages through which I have passed through tonight, the human race will have developed into great brains inhabiting not only your solar system, no doubt, but the systems of other stars!"
"And that's the end of man's evolutionary road? That is the highest point that he will reach?"
"No, I think he will change still from those great brains into still a higher form," the brain answered — the brain that three hours before had been Pollard! — "and I am going to find out now what that higher form will be. For I think this will be the last mutation of all and that with it I will reach the end of man's evolutionary path, the last and highest form into which he can develop!
"You will turn on the rays now," the brain's order continued, "and in fifteen minutes we will know what that last and highest form is."
My hand was on the switch but Dutton had staggered to me, was clutching my arm. "Don't, Arthur!" he was exclaiming thickly. "We've seen horrors enough — let's not see the last — get out of here…"
"I can't!" I cried. "Oh God, I want to stop but I can't now — I want to see the end myself — I've got to see.."