ounded the rail of the
chair: "... _But then We BUILT THE BRAIN._"

He said it almost in a triumphant cry.

Mounting tension had Lee almost frozen to his seat. Now he stirred and
leaned forward.

"It actually exists? I mean it works? It is not limited to the analysis
of mathematical problems but capable of cerebrations after the manner of
the human brain?"

Scriven, with a startling change, sounded dry, very factual in a tired
way as he answered: "I appreciate your difficulty of realization, Dr.
Lee. The whole idea is new to you and I have presented it in a rather
abrupt and inadequate way. In time, and if we get together, as I hope we
will, you shall get visual impressions which are better than words. For
the moment, just to give you a general idea and to prove that this is
not a small matter, let me give you a few facts: Our first monetary
appropriation for The Brain, as an unspecified part of the military
budget, of course, was for one billion dollars. We have since received
two more appropriations of an equal size."

Lee's gasp made a sound like a low whistle. With a depreciating gesture
Scriven waved it away.

"While these funds could only cover the first stages in the construction
of The Brain," he calmly went on, "we have been able to build a
mechanical cortex mantle composed of ninety billion electronic cells.
Considering that the cortex mantle of the human brain contains over 9
billion cells, this doesn't sound like much. Our synthetic or mechanical
cells are a little better than the organic, natural cells, but not very
much. So alone and by themselves their number would indicate only a ten
times superiority of The Brain over its human counterpart. If that were
all the result of our labors, a brain of, let's say, twice genius
capacity, we would be a miserable failure. But then we _have_ achieved a
very considerable improvement in the _utilization_ of the The Brain's
cortex capacity. In the first place we have full control over the
intake of thought impulses; and more important, we use multiple wave
lengths in feeding impulses to The Brain and throughout all the
impulse-processings. Even the human brain has some capacity of
simultaneous thought on different levels of consciousness, but its range
in this respect is extremely limited. The Brain by way of contrast
operates on two thousand different wave lengths, which means that The
Brain can process at least 2000 problems at one time. Finally, the
absence