But I couldn’t drum up any real interest. I had too much on my mind — personal worries. Marg’s no-good brother was out of the Army with no desire except to sponge off me. My eldest kid, jimmy, was getting tough to control. Marg herself was getting pretty erratic and nervous, and I suspected that her health wasn’t so good, without knowing just what was wrong with her. Also, the neighborhood where I had bought a house was on the way down. They had re-zoned it, and set up a saloon next door.
During the next eight months my problems grew worse instead of better. Then one day I got a call to go up to Research and bring a Professor Aldous Pendaniels back to New York. Let me make clear that if I hadn’t bought Mr. Genesee Miller the beer, I would never have had to go and pick up Pendaniels.
The guy who met the car, who I thought was the bouncer, turned out to be this Pendaniels. I got a good look at him as he climbed into the front seat before I could get the rear door open. He was built on the general lines of an ape, and his thick skull was covered with very short curly red hair, like copper wire. He had little faded blue eyes, and a jaw that you could use to plow snow. He grinned at me and bobbed his head nervously as he climbed in. He held a small box in his thick hands, and he treated it as though it would blow up in his face if he jarred it.
A raspy little tenor voice came out of the big hulk, startling me. “I presume you are my transportation?” I said that I was, and he continued: “You are having a small share then in what is the most important journey of modern times. Please drive with the utmost care. Should anything happen to this box and to me simultaneously, civilization will be set back ten thousand years.”
“You’re sure it’s exactly ten?” I asked. “Not nine or eleven?”
He frowned. “This is not the time or place for levity. You do not understand. Maybe if, in the language of a layman, I tell you what we have here in the car—”
“I’d like to know, brother.”
“In this box is a small bit of electrical apparatus which is worn in the pocket. In the opposite pocket goes a small powerful battery of my own design. Two wires connect the apparatus and the battery, and terminate in small clamps that fit on the mastoid bones behind each ear. I call it the Pendans Box.”
“Cures deafness?”
“An absurdity! It will be difficult to make you understand. Have you a knowledge of Freud?”
“Just that he was the joker who developed theories of the subconscious.”
“Good that you have that much! The subconscious is the most powerful, majestic part of the mind. It sees all, and remembers all. It thinks with a cold and careful calculation. But the mind of man, the conscious mind, is cluttered with emotions — stupid, unthinking emotions which clutter it up so that all decisions of the entire mind are conditioned by this emotional effect. The subconscious knows the proper course of action, but the emotional conscious mind prevents the perfect course of action from being carried out. We are creatures of whim, of vanity, moving through life in gay idiocy, while all the time we contain within ourselves the subconscious, the perfect reasoning tool — the cold intelligence — the superman!”
“What does the box do? Strengthen the subconscious?”
“The subconscious needs no strengthening. I have devised an electrical means of shunting off, sidetracking, the conscious mind, of paralyzing the censor that always stands between the conscious and subconscious minds. This box enables you to act with cold reason. In other words, while wearing it, your every decision will be unaffected by emotions. Every man will have within himself all of the answers to all of his problems, and the means of putting those answers into effect.”
That hit home. I was a man with problems. I began to wonder what the subconscious would do on my affairs.
He said softly: “Think of peace conferences where every representative wears a Pendans Box. No false patriotism. No greedy grabbing of rights and territory. The affairs of the world settled with the impact of one hundred perfect thinking-machines, uncluttered with nationalistic emotions! Think of the president of this country wearing a Pendans Box! Overnight he could shatter bureaucratic structure and bring efficiency to government. No emotional party ties. The selection of underlings on the basis of ability rather than friendship.
“Also, remember that the subconscious mind forgets nothing. With this attachment you would be able to repeat every word of conversation you have ever heard, every book or paper you have ever read. Think of the simplification in education. You could put a Pendans Box on a child, and have it through college by the time it was ten years old. Think of all the misfits in the world that will benefit.”
He didn’t talk for the rest of the trip down. I was too busy thinking to want to talk to him or listen to him. Maybe the guy was right! Maybe this was the proper next step in civilization, and if Pendaniels hadn’t invented it, some other joker would have. Freedom from war, murder, theft, everything that was nasty in the human race and sprung from emotions like greed, hate, envy, lust... Oh, I had a lot to think about!
I didn’t see Mr. Miller until the next day. He seemed a bit preoccupied. He sat beside me with his chin on his chest and stared at the dashboard. I said: “How about this invention by Professor Pendaniels? What is going to happen with it?”
He looked at me — startled. “You know about it?”
“Yeah, the Professor ran off at the mouth on the way down, and wouldn’t let me go over thirty.”
“You want to know what I’m going to do with it? Frankly, I don’t know. Either the man is wrong, and I’m silly to worry about his gadget — or he’s right, and I have a tremendous responsibility. You see, up to now, he has only tried it on animals. He has proved that a rat, with a variation of his apparatus, can find its way through a maze on the second attempt — a maze that takes the normal rat fifty attempts to master. With it, he has taught dogs tricks in five minutes that usually take months to learn. But of course, with the apparatus detached, both the dog and the rat go back to normal.”
“What does the Professor want?”
“He wants it manufactured in quantity. He’s trying to rush me. He has the gadget fastened to himself, and he’s up in the offices right now dictating to one of the girls a complete book that he read when he was seventeen and hasn’t seen since. I feel that the gadget needs further tests before I can go ahead.”
We rode along silently for a time. Then I said: “Mr. Miller, I haven’t mentioned it, but I have a lot of problems. I’d sure like to see what my subconscious could do with them. If you want some tests, I’d like to try the thing out.”
“I hate to take the risk, Bill. You don’t know what you might do.”
“I’d like to take the risk.”
He sighed. “Okay, Bill. Turn around, and we’ll go on back to the offices and get the gadget from the Professor.”
I was excited as we drove back. Who wouldn’t be, at the prospect of becoming a mental superman?
The Professor was excited too. His pale eyes glittered as he fitted the whosis in my right pocket and the battery in my left. To make the thing inconspicuous, he made little holes inside my pockets and ran the wires up my back, under my coat, and out my collar. The ends of the wires and the fastenings were flesh-colored.
He clamped one on behind my left ear, and I didn’t feel a thing. When he fastened the other one behind my right ear, it was as though a balloon was being slowly blown up inside my head. There was a mist in front of my eyes. When it cleared, everything seemed to be much sharper, more clearly outlined than ever before. I felt no alarm. Only a quiet cold confidence. I felt about nine feet tall.