CHAPTER VII
Lee's Journal:
Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 21, 1 a.m.
I've kept away now from the Pineal Gland for three nights in succession. I know from experience how very important it is to approach that tempestuous personality, The Brain, in a state of mental calm and equilibrium. But then all those things which went "bump" in that phantastic night before last had me completely thrown out of gear:
Oona, her holding out on me, her mysterious reasons why she won't marry me ... I cannot get that out of my head. Preposterous as this may be, I think she likes me a great deal. I'm convinced, for instance, that she won't tell Scriven what I told her about The Brain....
Then, Scriven's character; that's another enigma to me. I didn't like his speech that night and I didn't like his whole attitude. I feel as if against my will I were drawn into some sort of a conspiracy. It's probably inevitable that the scientist in his defense against politicians turns cynic. Scriven, no doubt, thinks that all is fair in his battle for The Brain and that the end justifies the means.
But ultimately this would mean the overthrow of our form of government. Even if I'm crazy, even if The Brain were not alive and a personality, the Brainpower-Extension-Bill in itself would suffice to establish a dictatorship of the machine. Does Scriven realize that?
Sometimes I feel as if I ought to shout it in the streets: "Wake up, you people of America; you have defeated the dictators abroad but now a new one has arisen in your midst. You all see him, touch him, you use, you feed, you worship him, but under your loving care and devotion, under the sacrifice of your very lives he has grown so enormous that you know him not, this Idol of the machines, because it hides its head in a nameless mountain and only his feet and fingers you sense."
But I'm not that type of a man and this is not the day and age where it is possible to move the masses from a soap box in the streets.
Then what could I do; what could anybody do in my place?