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. You can add 'animism'
to the list of nonsense notions to which I do not subscribe."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Richard, because this job will be touchy and
difficult. I need your healthy skepticism to keep me straight."
"I'm going to have to write that down and examine it carefully."
"Do that, Richard. Now here is what happened back in 2075 and -6: One of my
adoptive fathers, Manuel Garcia, was the technician who took care of the big
computer of the Authority. This one computer ran almost everything... handled
all the utilities of this city and of most of the other warrens-except
Kong-bossed the first catapult, ran the tubes, handled banking, printed the
Lunatic-did practically everything. The Authority found it cheaper to expand the
functions of this one big computer than to spread computers all through Luna."
"Neither efficient nor safe."
"Probably, but that's what they did. Luna was a prison then;
it did not have to be either efficient or safe. There was no high tech
industry here and in those days we had to accept whatever was handed us. As may
be, dear, this one master computer got bigger and bigger... and woke up."
(It did, eh? Sheer fantasy, my sweet... and a cliche that has been used by
every fantasy writer in history. Even Roger Bacon's Brass Head was one version
of it. Frankenstein's monster is another. Then a spate of stories in later years
and still they come
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