"You're surviving as a pariah, Mr. Newman, aren't you? Your wife tells
me you've even started to study robot controls, valuable knowledge for
the future and personally satisfying now. Millions of people do survive
as outsiders, as do the planetary colonists who only have limited access
so far to social telepathy. The System has built into it defenses
against Subscribers who lack confidence in it--if it didn't it would
collapse. But people _in_ the System are not forced to remain there.
They can _will_ themselves out any time they close their minds to it, as
I did. But they don't want to will themselves out of it--you certainly
didn't--and their comfortable inertia keeps everything going. I think
you have to know a little about its history, a history which never would
have interested you if you were still comfortably inside it."
He slowly outlined the way it had developed. First those uncertain steps
toward understanding the universally latent powers of telepathy, then
growing chaos as each individual spent most of his time fighting off
unwanted messages. After a period of desperate discomfort a few great
minds, made superhuman by their ability to tap each others' resources,
had devised the Central System Switchboard. Only living units,
delicately poised between rigid order and sheer chaos, could receive
mental messages but this problem had been solved by the molecular
biologists with their synthesized, self-replicating axons, vastly
elongated and cunningly intertwined by the billions. These responded to
every properly-modulated thought wave passing through them and made the
same careful sortings as a human cell absorbing matter from the world.
Then, to make certain this central mind would never become chaotic,
there was programmed into it an automatic rejection of all sceptical
challenges.
"That was the highest moment of our race," Newbridge sighed. "We had
harnessed infinite complexities to our needs. But the success was too
complete. Ever since then humanity has become more and more dependent on
what was to be essentially a tool and nothing more. Each generation
became lazier and there's no one alive who can keep this Central System
in proper working order." He leaned forward to emphasize his point. "You
see, it's very slowly breaking down. There's a steady accretion of
inefficiency mutations in the axons and that's why more and more
switching mistakes are being made--as in your case."
* * *
Connor was dazed by it all. "What's going to be the upshot, I mean,
_how_ is it going to break down?"
Newbridge threw up his hands. "I don't know--it's probably a long way
off anyway. I guess the most likely thing is that more and more errors
will accumulate and plenty of people will be Suspended just because
Central is developing irrational quirks. Maybe the critical social mass
for change will exist only when more are outside the System than inside.
I suspect when that happens we'll be able to return to _direct_
telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are always
blocked." A buzzing sound came out of a small black box on the doctor's
desk, startling Connor who in his executive days had received all such
signals directly in his head. "Well, I've another patient waiting so
this will have to be the end of our chat."
Connor and his wife exchanged glances. He said, "I'd like to come back.
I'll probably have a twenty-hour week so I'll be in town a few days a
week."
"More than welcome to come again," Newbridge grinned. "Just make the
arrangements with Miss Richards, my nurse."