"Heaven—is it a celestial soul factory?
"Hell—is it a repair shop for damaged souls?
"Please give every available detail about heavenly manufacturing processes, type of equipment used, organization of assembly lines etc. etc.
"Likewise about the oven for heat treatments as used in hell for major soul-overhauls.
"How do prefabricated souls get to either heaven or hell? Problem of logistics, how solved? Thermodynamics? If so, state whether rocket or jet-propulsion involved.
"Are souls really immortal? In that case; why don't we copy divine methods in the production of durable goods on earth?
"Answer Lee, answer, answer!" (This with incredible vehemence, with a shaking of that eerie metallic voice which pounded the drums of my ears. And then—tense silence....)
I cannot possibly describe the storms of emotions and thoughts which this incredible muddle raised in me. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry and whether I had gone nuts of whether it was The Brain, I was confounded, thunderstruck, deprived of the power of speech. To think of The Brain, a machine raising question about the nature of the Deity! The Brain asking information about God and man and heaven and hell with the simplicity of a stranger who asks the nearest cop: "Which way to the city hall?" Just like that. As if philosophers and religionists and common men had not raked their brains in vain over these problems for the last ten thousand years.
And even more fantastic: while it asks all those questions The Brain patently has already formed the most definite opinions of its own. Being a machine itself, it conceives of the Deity as another machine! Madness, of course, but then The Brain's madness, like Hamlet's, had method in it.
Why, of course, it's strictly logical: just as we assume that we are created "in the image" of the Deity and consequently visualize the Deity is our's by the very same token The Brain's god is a high-powered robot, and The Brain's heaven is a factory and The Brain's hell is a repair shop for damaged souls.... I dare say it's all very natural.