The chauffeur nudged Lee in the ribs.
"Say something, she hears you all right."
"Yes, this is Lee speaking," he said in a startled voice.
The voice appeared delighted.
"Good morning, Dr. Lee: I'm Vivian Leahy of Apperception Center 27; I'm to be your guide on the way up. Now, Dr. Lee, will you please step over to the glideways. They're to your right. Take glideway T, do just as you would in a department store—" she giggled, "—stand on it and it will get you right to the occipital cortex area. I'll be waiting for you over there. I would have loved to come down and conduct you personally, but it's against regulations; I'll explain to you the reasons why in a little while. And if you have any questions while en route, just call out. So long, Dr. Lee; I'll be seeing you...."
Greatly bewildered by this gushing reception Lee found it hard to follow instructions, simple as they were. The array of escalators which he found in a side wing was a formidable one and confusing with movements in all directions, crisscrossing and overlapping one another. Despite the very clear illuminated signs Lee almost stepped upon glideway "P" when "the voice" warned him:
"Oh no, Dr. Lee; just a little to your left—that's fine, that's the one—there."
Obviously his loquacious guardian angel could not only hear him but watch his steps as well. Apart from being uncanny, this was embarrassing; feeling reduced to the mental age of the nursery, he gripped the rails of "T" which went with him into a smooth and noiseless upward slide. The shaft was narrow, there was little light at the start and it grew dimmer as he went. After a minute or so the darkness had turned almost complete and became oppressive. Simultaneously there was a disquieting change from the accepted normal manner in which escalators are supposed to move. Its rise gradually turned perpendicular and in doing so the steps drew apart. Before long Lee felt squeezed into some interminable cylinder, standing on top of a piston as it were, a piston which moved with fair rapidity along transparent walls. That these walls were either glass or transparent plastics he could perceive from objects which came streaking by with faint luminosity. They looked like columns of amber colored liquids in which were suspended what looked like giant snakes, indistinct shapes, but radiant in the mysterious manner of deep sea fishes. They almost encircled the transparent cylinder shaft in which Lee moved; there were many of them; how many Lee couldn't even attempt to guess. The swiftness of his ascent through these floating, waving radiances for which he had no name was nightmarish, like falling into some bottomless well. With great relief he heard the voice of his guide breaking the spell.
"I'm terribly sorry, Dr. Lee, I shouldn't have deserted you, there was some little interruption—" palpably the voice was tickled to death "—my boy friend called from another department and so ... you know how it is. Let's see, where are you? Good lord, already near the end of the Medulla Oblongata with the Cerebellum coming and I haven't told you a thing. Goody, where should I begin; I'm all in a dither: Well, Dr. Lee; most people seem to expect The Brain to be like a great big telephone exchange, but it really isn't that kind of a mechanism at all. We have found—" she sounded important as if it were her very own discovery "—that the best pattern for The Brain would actually be the human brain. So The Brain is organized in nearly identical manner, likewise our whole terminology is taken from anatomy rather than from technology. The glideways for instance, travel along the natural fissures between the convolutions of the various lobes; that's why they are so very winding as you will see as you enter The Brain proper. Those columns you see are filled with liquid insulators for the nerve cables to vibrate in; for they do vibrate, Dr. Lee, as they transmit their messages.
"You have noticed the narrowness of the glideways, the terrible confinement of space. I know it's horrible—many of our visitors suffer claustrophobia, but they just must be built that way. You see even fractions of a millionth of one second count in the coordination of the association bundles and nerve circuits, that's why everything is built as compact as possible, worse than in a submarine.