e that I am Homer, with a complete but false
set of memories and an artificially stimulated intelligence.

"As the Challon, I realized that the embryo Homer was of low actual
intelligence, but high potential intelligence. The dangerous peculiarity
of this planet is that several of the higher species have no known or
recognized function for the most important portion of their brain. It
lies fallow, unused, blocked off much as Timmy's whole mind is blocked
off from his service. In eight years I have done no more than form the
mere skeleton of a theory to account for that, but the means of
correction was obvious from the start. Like the appendix that floats
free at one end and serves no known purpose, the brain has an incomplete
neural path of an unusual nature that has effectively camouflaged its
true purpose. The intended function of the connection was the energizing
of that prime center which you have not yet discovered and without which
you differ from Timmy only in degree, for you cannot realize more than a
fragment of your incredible potential.

"The same condition exists among the higher mammals. Releasing Homer's
blocked potential placed at his service the intellectual capacity of a
very clever human--according to your false standards--but not of a human
genius. If I had not imposed my ego on him ... you see, I cannot help
thinking of myself as the Challon, although I know I am Homer ... if
I had not robbed Homer of his identity and self-will, of his right
to possess and control himself, he would have developed personality,
characteristics and aptitudes of his own, appropriate to a canine of
high intelligence. As it is, there are false memories of aptitudes Homer
never had nor could have. Physical limitations alone make some of them
impossible. How could a dog tinker with machinery, for example? Yet I
'remember' working on machines of my own design. Homer's mind, in other
words, remembers as first-person data experiences it never had.

"In actual fact, 'I' who speak to you now am no more than the record
contained in a book. In terms of personality, Homer is the hidden
structure giving strength and substance to a false facade. 'I' am the
false facade, faithfully copied from another structure. 'I' am a
superimposure of ephemeral data, governing its own employment by a mind
that has been restricted from developing its own data. The 'I' that
speaks to you has no real existence, though its pattern is being subtly
and