They'd Rather Be Right, or The Forever Machine

by Mark Clifton, Frank Riley

  As he seated himself in her best chair, Joe smiled inwardly, and tenderly, at her little vanity. Even in this, she was intensely human, for she chose to be vain on a point where there was no justification for it. Her mind was too simple and direct, her honesty was too innate, she lacked the hard-eyed viciousness which comes from forcing the psyche into deformities unnatural to it. No, even if she had tried, Mabel lacked the basic characteristics which would have qualified her for respectability.

  Not that she lacked inner conflicts. Her complex of arthritis and her fat were sufficient evidence that she had not been free from these.

  Even her considerable wealth was not a result of calculated avarice, but was the accidental result of an odd whimsy. In her younger days, some of the important men, finding in her qualities they could not find at home, seemed to receive some defiant pleasure out of freely giving her the things which their wives schemed and trapped and blustered to gain. In that small boy mischievousness of males, they built up a solid fortune for her in a mood of perverse gratitude.

  Ordinarily it is only the blackmailers and shakedown artists of the police who grow rich from her profession, but as the influence of her clientele grew her numerous arrests ceased, and she no longer found it necessary to turn over all surplus monies as the price of being let alone.

  Instantaneously, her life flashed through Joe's mind as he settled back in his chair.

  "We need your help, Mabel,” he said without hedging on the purpose of his visit.

  "In what way, son?” she asked, and her booming voice was quieter than usual.

  He told her, briefly, the facts about Bossy, how they had come to build the machine, some of the things they expected from it. She made only one comment.

  "It ain't the first time the newspapers have got things all twisted up."

  He went on then to tell her how they hoped to make Bossy into a machine which would cure the ailments of man, such as her arthritis. Billings was a genuine medical doctor, and if she had paid any attention at all she would know he had a world-wide reputation.

  Mabel nodded that she did know. She asked the obvious question.

  "Why could a machine do things a doctor couldn't?"

  "Doctors are human,” Joe answered, “and, therefore, limited. The secret of any psychotherapy is that the doctor should be less twisted than the patient. This is seldom possible. True, he may be twisted in some other way, but if he simply substitutes one twist for another he has gained nothing. The greatest care was used, when Bossy was being educated, to feed in only absolutely proved and undeniable fact. Bossy did her own interpreting. She rejected unfounded opinion, or prejudice built on false premises. She is more capable of unbiased therapy than any man could be."

  "I don't think I understand what you're talking about, Joe,” Mabel said frankly.

  He developed for her the basics of psychosomatic therapy. To bring it into her own experience, he recalled how her stomach would be upset if she tried to eat when she was acutely worried.

  "The cell,” he said, “is like the stomach. It refuses to function properly when such things as repressions, inhibitions, suppressions and the like affect it. Before long it gets twisted out of its healthy pattern into an unhealthy one. The idea of all the psychotherapies is to lift these suppressors so that the human can function again. Most of the psychologists work with some mysterious thing they call mind. The psychosomatic men work directly with the body cells. Not only in the brain but all over the body, each cell seems to have a mind and memory of its own. Each one is capable of getting its own twists of inhibitions and repressions. The idea is to go clear down to the cellular level and take the load off of each cell so it can stretch and grow and function again."

  "Like being in a strait jacket and getting out,” Mabel commented. “I got me a general idea, son. I guess, being ignorant, that's all I can hope for."

  "We don't know how Bossy is going to work,” Joe told her frankly. “I don't see how it can hurt you. The worst that can happen is that you won't get cured. And, of course, you won't get cured if you hang on to the ideas which caused the trouble. That's the toughest part, Mabel, to be willing to admit that you might not know what is right and what is wrong."

  She threw back her head and laughed her free, booming laughter. “Son,” she said heartily, “I never did know that."

  "You might be changed-a lot,” he warned her. “You might not want to go on living here as you do now. You might ... anything might happen. It's a chance you would have to be willing to take. Nobody has ever had a look at reality except through smoked glasses. We haven't got any idea of what it's really like without them. You'd be the first."

  She looked down at her broad thighs, her old black skirt. She lifted her wrinkled hand with its enlarged knuckles.

  "What good am I, like this?” she asked.

  "I don't know for sure, Mabel,” Joe said simply, “but I think you'll be giving a lot to mankind."

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  CHAPTER VII

  It was not to be expected that the psychosomatic therapy would go smoothly. Carney greeted the announcement that Mabel would undergo the test with flatfooted opposition. His suspicion and resentment came close to the surface and showed itself in alternating sulks, in his forbidding Mabel to have anything to do with Bossy, and then in actual threats to do his plain civic duty and turn them all in to the Feds.

  He seemed determined to demonstrate the old truism again: that the only enemy man has is man. The universe does not care whether man unlocks its secrets or leaves them closed. Water does not care whether man bathes in it or drowns in it; whether it waters his fields or washes them away. If man masters its laws and utilizes his knowledge, water becomes a force in his favor. But enemy or servant, water does not care.

  Of all the forces, only man seems determined that man shall not master the universe.

  Carney paid lip service only to the boon of health which Bossy might bring to Mabel and to all mankind. He could react only that Mabel had deserted him, had gone over to these men from the other side of the tracks. It was a bitter realization that his long friendship with her counted for so little.

  More than knowledge or enlightenment or understanding, man values his ascendency over something or someone. The fate of mankind is of little consequence to him if he must lose his command in the process. Carney felt alone and deserted. It took a great deal of somatic comforting from Joe, and Mabel's stern commands for him to mind his own business, to settle him down.

  The second hitch came from Bossy.

  There had been a considerable argument from Hoskins that inasmuch as the hunt for them had concentrated in San Francisco, and discovery was inevitable, their best course was to initiate contact with the government, turn themselves in and hope for the best. Or as an alternative, they should make contact with Howard Kennedy, whose interview had been so liberal, and let that industrialist negotiate for them. Joe had countered these arguments with the fact that the public was still bitterly fanatic on the subject of Bossy, and that government would not dare go against the will of the people and their blood thirst.

  He pointed out, however, that if they could demonstrate, with an accomplished fact, Bossy was a master healer, then Kennedy would have something to work with to make the public change its mind about Bossy. Hoskins agreed, reluctantly.

  Almost day and night for the past week, Billings had fed his lifetime of knowledge into Bossy on every facet of psychosomatic therapy. And his knowledge represented the accumulated knowledge of the world. It was, therefore, a bitter disappointment that their first question to Bossy for an estimate of time required for the therapy on Mabel should cause an instant flashback of an unwanted answer.

  "Insufficient data."

  It was the old familiar phrase which, even back at Hoxworth, they sometimes viewed with impatience. A human being is seldom bothered with insufficient data; often the less he has the more willing he is to give a firm opinion; and man prefers some answer, even
a wrong one, to the requirement that he dig deeper and find out the facts.

  Here, under the pressure of time, knowing they might be discovered any day, Bossy's bland reply, flashed on her screen, made them sick at heart. Yet, without even a survey of the problem, what else could they expect?

  The problem had not been Mabel, herself. She had been more than cooperative. In view of the situation, Billings had decided to make the therapy continuous, and Mabel had willingly arranged her affairs with her attorney for a ten-day absence. As willingly, she had fitted herself into the network of electrodes and lay on the couch with complete confidence. Her last words, before Billings began to induce the hypnosis, were to Carney who had watched the preparations with hostile eyes.

  "Don't be an old fool,” she said, “give me a chance to get well again."

  For the first four hours Billings, in tandem with Bossy, played her memories back and forth, trying to uncover the central tensions which were the source of her troubles. At the end of the fourth hour, while she was in a rambling, repetitious incident of her childhood, Billings again put the question to Bossy for a time estimate.

  "Insufficient data,” Bossy flashed back again.

  "What data do you need?” Hoskins snapped at Bossy irritably.

  "A complete survey of every cell memory to determine the quantum of repressers,” Bossy flashed.

  Joe, who had been hovering in the background, stepped forward.

  "Based on techniques now in use,” he asked, “how long would that take?"

  "Insufficient data,” Bossy's screen said.

  "What do you need to get the data?"

  "Cessation of interference,” Bossy said. “By verbal methods now used, a survey would take years, or never be accomplished. The past failure of psychosomatic therapy is not in theory but in technique. A human mind is too slow, reactions are too gross. The best the human can accomplish is a few obvious snarls."

  "If left alone, how would you accomplish it?” Billings asked curiously.

  "It is simple,” Bossy said, “for me to use the principles of the electroencephalogram. I would run all combinations of my entire storage unit against the patient. Any disturbance to the alpha-rhythms would indicate the source of a tension in the patient-on the order of the lie-detector principle. All such tensions could be released by replacing fallacy with understanding."

  "How long would that take?” Hoskins asked.

  "Insufficient data,” Bossy answered.

  "It makes sense, though,” Billings said. “We've always known that time was our greatest enemy; that even in months we could only uncover a few of the most obvious. Bossy can operate on a thousands per second review of her storage units."

  "What would be the effect of the tension release?” Joe asked Bossy.

  "When the repressers are removed from the cells,” Bossy answered,"they can again function normally, restoring themselves."

  "Which would mean that health is restored, obviously,” Billings said.

  "Any objections to Bossy taking over, gentlemen?"

  "You're the doctor,” Hoskins said.

  And it was not until a week later, a week of constant watching, intravenous feeding, physical body care, while Mabel lay on the couch in an apparent coma, that they saw any change.

  It was on the morning of the seventh day, after Hoskins had spent his vigil through the night sitting beside Mabel, that they saw how startling a change had occurred. It was as if accumulated releases were, all at once, showing their effect.

  The puffiness was disappearing from her cheeks, the deep pouches under her eyes were less swollen, the roll of fat around her neck had shrunk. Slowly, like a face emerging from a sculptor's shapeless blob of clay, there was another Mabel-a younger Mabel.

  It was more than a skin health and tautness, than the relaxation of rest, than the disappearance of wrinkles, than the reduction of swelling in the joints.

  The three men stood looking down at her recumbent form on the couch. They stared at her with wide, incredulous eyes. Mabel was growing young again!

  The faint hum of Bossy, working at top level speed, buzzed in their ears.

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  CHAPTER VIII

  It was not a miracle.

  The regeneration and rejuvenation of Mabel was no more than the end result of completely applied psychosomatic therapy. Yet it was a result which a human therapist, unassisted by Bossy, could never attain. However he may strive for detachment from bias, no man can grow to maturity without at least something of a framework of prejudice; and the therapist, in removing the warping deformations of one matrix, unconsciously supplies another.

  Further, thousands of hours of verbal therapy were reduced to seconds by Bossy. Never before had anyone known what a complete therapy could produce. And they did not know now. Dr. Billings, Professor Hoskins, Joe Carter, the three men stood looking down at Mabel who lay on the couch, the center of a network of conduits connecting her to Bossy, and marveled.

  They did not understand the obvious reformation of Mabel's body. But they were witnessing it.

  It was characteristic of Billings that even in the moments of astonishment he remembered to check the gross aids of therapy. To his surprise, the last drops of the synthetic plasma, fed from the suspended tank to Mabel's veins, were running out of the container. He had put on a fresh bottle the night before, and at her low threshold of activity, it should have lasted for two more days.

  Almost instantly, as the last drops ran down the transparent tube, Mabel's lips began to move.

  "Hungry,” she muttered. “Hungry, hungry, hungry, HUNGRY!"

  Bossy's screen was flashing on and off in emergency signals.

  "Cells cannot regenerate without food,” the machine said, over and over. The statement of fact seemed, to the men, to carry a connotation of contemptuous impatience, as if these human beings should be expected to know at least that much.

  Quickly Billings ran across the room, grabbed up one of the few remaining bottles of plasma, broke the seal on his way back, and replaced the empty bottle with the full one. As the liquid began to flow down the tube, Mabel's mutterings ceased, and she lay still and quiet again. Almost visibly, Joe, Dr. Billings and Professor Hoskins could see the changes in her appearance taking place, and wondered what mental changes could account for them.

  Joe tried to follow, but the thought-patterns were so rapid and so varied it was like trying to pick up and follow one spoke in the blur of a speeding wheel.

  "Hunger creates tensions to act as cell repressants, hindering therapy,” Bossy volunteered a flash on her screen, as if to reproach them and warn them not to let it happen again. In the pattern of human beings generally, they had given her a job to do, and then followed a procedure to hamstring her and prevent her from doing it. As with human beings generally, they did not intend to thwart her, they merely let their lack of comprehension do it for them.

  Perceptibly the level in the bottle was lowering. At this rate the supply, expected to last for another two days, would be gone in two hours. And they had only one more bottle in reserve.

  Synthetic fortified plasma cannot be cooked up in the ordinary apartment kitchen, and none of them were sufficient biochemists to attempt it. The only alternative to halting the therapy, and none of them would consider that, was to obtain more plasma quickly, within the four hours their total supply would last. And even that time was a rough estimate, the consumption of the supply might be progressively accelerated.

  They called Carney into their living room.

  He had been hanging around the outskirts of the experiment for a week, since it had started; not admitted to the workroom, nor asking to be admitted since Mabel, herself, had told him to stay out. His sulks and belligerence had disappeared, replaced by anxiety. His anxiety was mitigated by confidence. He realized that inasmuch as Mabel had made the decision and had stuck to it, she could not be in better hands.

  But their reports to him did create some doubts. The
y were all identical, and to him they were vague and unsatisfactory.

  "Mabel is resting naturally and progressing normally."

  He had not had much real experience with hospitals. His concept of what probably went on was drawn from motion picture script writers’ efforts to knock themselves out with drama piled upon drama, one near-fatal crisis after another, ever trying with the same old tricks to excite a public long since immune to further emotional response. Yet, without it, something seemed lacking to Carney.

  His reaction, when Joe told him that more plasma must be obtained at once, was one more nearly relief than alarm. This was more like it. As with the script writers, it did not occur to him that crisis piled upon crisis is usually a sign of inefficiency and bungling. It did not occur to him to ask the very normal question of why this need for further plasma had not been foreseen, or what change had occurred in Mabel to make their estimates fall short.

  Actually, he was flooded with a sense of satisfaction. He would be of some use after all, Mabel's life depended upon him. He, Carney, was as important to her as these Brains.

  He was cooperative. That is, he wanted to be.

  "But I don't know where I could buy that stuff on short notice,” he blurted. “I had plenty of warning on the last and put out the word I could use it. In a few days the word came back that it was ready. You got to be careful on things like that. It's different from tools and electrical stuff."

  Billings, standing beside Joe, was visibly shaken.

  "We simply have to get more,” he insisted. “Our present supply will last less than four hours. Mabel can't be cured without it. It's dangerous to try."

  Carney blanched. His fingers shook as he tried to light a cigarette.

  "If I had more time,” he muttered, “but four hours, and in broad daylight."

  Joe glanced at his wristwatch.

  "It's nine o'clock now. That means we must be back by noon, to give us margin. Where's the nearest big hospital?"

  "There's an emergency just a couple of blocks over,” Carney said.