I cannot help wondering about that. My idea would be that The Brain does not want to speak to me as much as it wants to hear from me. If this were so it would deepen the riddle even more. For what have I got in the way of knowledge that The Brain hasn't got? After all, The Brain has been functioning for quite some time. It was given innumerable problems to digest and it has solved them with truly superhuman speed and efficiency. I have reason strongly to suspect that there isn't a book in the Library of Congress which has not been fed to The Brain for thought-digest and as a lubricant for its cerebration processes (excepting fiction and metaphysics, of course). This being so; what does The Brain expect? What can I possibly contribute to an intelligence 25,000 times greater than human intelligence?
But the thing which makes me wonder more than anything else, the biggest enigma of all, is the character of The Brain as it manifests itself in the manifestations. As I try to put the experiences of the first night together with those of the second night I'm stumbling over contradictions in The Brain's personality which won't add up, which don't make sense; as for instance:
The "I think, therefore I am" of the first night. Maybe it was Greek philosophy, but it also was the prattling of an infant delighted by the discovery that it can speak. There was an absolute innocence in that. Ridiculous as this may sound, I found it touching I completely forgot, I didn't care a damn whether or not this came from a machine. Unmistakeably it was baby talk and as such it moved my heart. In fact, as now I see it, it was this more than any other or scientific reason which occupied my mind, which made me anxious to go back to that fantastic cradle whence these sounds had come.
But then last night; what did I find? A completely changed personality! It talks tough. It uses slang. It treats me as if it were some spoiled brat and I had the misfortune of being its mother or nurse: "Be there every night" and so on. Deliberately it insults me: "your low intelligence level" etc. etc. It actually throws tantrums if I fail to understand immediately. It hurls its superiority into my face in the nastiest manner. "Have I succeeded in making myself absolutely clear?" It plainly shows contempt, not only for my own person by the condescending manner of its: "Lee, not very intelligent; but will do." It shows the selfsame contempt for other human beings such as Gus Krinsley to whom it was pleased to refer as: "nuisance approaching"....
What the hell am I to make of that kind of a character? Last night: a baby; rather a sweet and charming one. 24 hours later: an obnoxious little brat, a little Hitler of a house tyrant; makes you just itch to spank its behind. If only The Brain had a behind....
Worst of all: How can I reconcile those two contraditions, the sweet baby and the precocious brat, with the third and biggest of all contraries: How do these two go together with an intelligence 25,000 times human intelligence? It doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense; that's all there is to it....
The Skull-Hotel, Cephalon, Ariz. Nov. 9th. 3 a.m.
I didn't go to the P. G. last night for two main reasons: In the first place I must be careful so as not to raise any suspicions on Gus' part. Rarely, if ever, have I visited him for two nights in succession in the past and he might well begin to ponder my reasons if now I should make a habit of it. Especially since Gus happens to possess one of the keenest minds I ever met and his curiosity already has been awakened by my preoccupation with that one and fairly simple gadget: the pulsemeter.
In the second place I feel the absolute necessity of establishing my independence as against the will of The Brain. That command two nights ago for me to be on the spot every night was just too preemptory for me to oblige. This isn't the army and The Brain is no commanding general.