He spoke more calmly now, and retired behind his podium to talk rather airily.
‘There’s no such thing as “soul”. It’s a medieval concept. Our brains are just very elaborate quantputers. Maybe we do still have to tune a few parameters a bit better, but that’s basically all there is to it. Even Euclid would have a mind if he had been constructed with greater sophistication and better tuned parameters. But you can see he has a long way to go – haven’t you, Euclid?’
Euclid: ‘But I think I have a mind. A different kind of mind, perhaps. Maybe after a few more years, research will detect…’
‘The only kind of minds so far we have direct reason to believe in are possessed by humans and animals, since they alone give the clear physical signal which shows up positively in the French experiment.’
Euclid: ‘You are being anthropocentric and trying to prove you are better than I.’
‘I am better than you, Euclid. I can switch you off.’
‘Well, what has all this to do with smudges?’
‘The mind is a product of the brain, our physical brains, so that mind depends on the physics of our brains. We need to know that physics just a little better. As we shall do when the Omega Smudge reveals all. Shall we soon be able to reproduce mind artificially? Smudge is clearly central to these questions.
‘Here I need to retire to relax my throat for five minutes. I shall return to answer your questions.’
He motioned me to follow him, and he, I and Euclid trooped off the platform to general applause.
His performance had converted me from mistrust to admiration. ‘A brilliant exposition,’ I said, as we went into the rest room. ‘You must have enlarged the understanding of—’
‘Those fools out there!’ he exclaimed. As he spoke, he turned the lock in the door behind his back. ‘What did they understand? It was all gobbledy-gook to them. They show no inclination to learn. I’m not going back. I came over here to see you, you minx, and now I’m going to have you!’ As he spoke, he was tearing off his overall. His face entirely altered from one of philosophical contemplation to a mask of lust and determination, its lines working angrily.
Never had I seen a man change so rapidly. I dreaded to think what thoughts he had been storing up in his mind during his long disquisition.
‘Look, Jon, let’s just talk—’
‘You’re going to be my payment—’
He tore from his pants the instrument with which he intended to rape me. I regarded it with interest. It differed from a dog’s pizzle, mainly in having a padded bulb at the top for comfort during the penetration. This must have been, I thought, an evolutionary development tending towards producing better relationships between the sexes. Nevertheless, although I admired the design, I could not conceive of having it in my body.
Or not without a lot of consideration.
Making some absurd compliments about it, I took hold of the thing and began to stroke it. Thorgeson’s ‘No, no, no,’ turned quickly to ‘Oh oh oh,’ as I hastened my strokes. I moved aside as he ejaculated on the floor.
All the while this embarrassing episode was taking place, Euclid stood there, smiling his blank smile. I ran past him, unlocked the door, and rushed into the passage.
Testimony of Tom Jefferies