"But you," said Caroline. "The personal pronoun that you use. The 'I' you speak of. What is that?”
"I am the mind," the voice told them, "and the mind is me. I am the race. I have been the race for many million years.”
"And you play God," said Caroline. "You bring lesser things together, into the arena of this world, and you make them fight while you sit and chuckle…”
"Why, of course," the voice said. "Because, you see, I'm crazy. I'm really, at times, quite violently insane.”
"Insane!”
"Why, certainly," the voice told them. "It's what would be bound to happen.
You can't perfect a mind, a vast communal mind, a mighty racial mind to the point that my mind is perfected and expect it to keep a perfect balance as a good watch would keep perfect time. But the mind's behavior varies.
Sometimes," the voice said, quite confidentially, "I'm battier than a bedbug.”
"And how are you now?" asked Gary.
"Why, now," the voice said, "as funny as it seems, I'm quite rational. I'm very much myself.”