Public-domain ebook
The Cyberene
by Rog Phillips
English430 downloads on Project GutenbergDownload EPUB
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66163.
About this book
The Cyberene is a science-fiction adventure combining artificial intelligence and time travel with laboratory mystery and escalating scientific speculation. Dr. Victor Glassman has built an enormous artificial brain, awaiting the chemical breakthrough that will bring its non-human mind to life. Nearby, researchers working on synthetic nerve fluid encounter a baffling phenomenon: a strange, damaged object, weightless colored spheres, and miniature green- and blue-skinned people who appear under impossible circumstances. The book invites you into a world where advanced research, unexplained visitors, and the limits of human knowledge collide.
Written in a brisk, explanatory style characteristic of mid-century science fiction, the novel balances technical detail with quick dialogue, romantic banter, suspense, and startling visual reveals. Its scientists speak plainly about machinery, pressure, nerve chemistry, and artificial thought, while the narration builds unease through precise observation and sudden turns toward the uncanny. It should appeal to readers who enjoy classic speculative fiction, mad-science atmosphere, questions about artificial intelligence, and time-travel stories presented with energetic pulp-era imagination.
Characters in The Cyberene
- Dr. Victor GlassmanMiddle-aged laboratory scientist in white coat, dark trousers, spectacles, stern thoughtful expression.
The opening · free to read
Then--a sound answered. A faint sound. Footsteps. Movement appeared through the grillwork of steel catwalks above. Trousered legs. A hand sliding along a railing of chrome pipe. More rapid steps as the man descended a steep stair well. Sharper as the man reached the marble floor.
Dead video camera eyes let his passage go unregistered. Sensitive quartz crystals inside glistening microphone shells vibrated to the sound of his footsteps, his soft breathing, sending feeble currents along wires--to dead amplifying circuits.
"What is it, Ethel?" Dr. Victor Glassman said to his wife.
"Don't you realize it's almost an hour past your lunch time?" she chided. "Why do you come in here anyway? The Brain was completed six months ago. It won't run away--and it won't come to life until someone finds the proper chemical for the nerve fluid to make it work. My goodness. Eight hundred and fifty million dollars sitting idle in here. It gives me gooseflesh. Now you come and eat your lunch so I can get the dishes out of the way. I'm going to be busy the rest of the afternoon getting ready for the crowd--or did you forget that your ten scientists are invited to dinner this evening?"
"Of course not, Ethel," he said, putting his arm around her waist. He pulled her around so they were side by side, looking upward into the maze of catwalks, seeing the marble panels of the wall that served as a covering for the huge man-made brain. "_You_ know why I come in here," he said. "I like the feel. The sleeping giant. Not sleeping, really. Just not born yet. Not living yet. Someday soon that will change. The first non-human...."
"I understand, Victor," Ethel said softly. "It scares me. I know it will be just like a human mind--same principles of thought--even if it will be housed in so vast a brain. But how much do we know of the capabilities of the human brain? I'm afraid."
Dr. Glassman's eyes crinkled goodnaturedly. He tightened his arm around her waist.
"I'll protect you, Ethel," he said.
She looked up at the giant structure that dwarfed them to insignificance. "Against that?" she snorted. "What with? A lance and prancing nag of leather and bones like Don Quixote of old?" She slipped her arm around his shoulders, her expression softening. "But I know what you mean. Only ... it's...."
"And I know what you mean, too. Sometimes even I'm afraid of it. But once we activate it, it will take years for it to build up a self-integrated mind even equal to a child's. And we'll both be long dead before its intelligence starts climbing above that of man. You know, I'm hungry."
Together, arm in arm, they departed, closing the door. And once again the echoes died away, leaving only the silence.
And the Brain.
"How about being quiet for a minute so I won't get these mixed up?" Earl Frye said, a mask of tolerant good nature concealing his irritation. "By the way, what's wrong with p. n. 9? Bottleneck?"
Irene Conner clapped her hand over her mouth and spoke from between her fingers. "Go ahead and pour," she mumbled. "I'll keep quiet for five minutes."
"Okay," Earl said, unaffected by the twinkle in Irene's clear blue eyes, the smooth wave of her blonde hair, the quiet unscientific curves under her lab apron.
He picked the first vial off the tray, read the number on its label and carefully jotted it down on the lab card. He emptied the vial into the small opening on top the pump and flicked the toggle switch. With a smooth whir the pump started. The pressure gauge needle broke from zero and started upward, finally hovering near the seven ton per square inch mark. He watched as the fluid he had poured emerged into glass tubing no thicker than a human hair, and, under the tons per square inch pressure, stretched into fine fluid columns less than half a dozen molecules thick.
He repeated the performance with another vial and another pump, and another, until all ten pumps were working. He went back to the first one. The fluid had reached the slightly enlarged bubble several inches up the thread-like glass tubes. He shut off the pump, then went through the same routine with the other ten.
"That show I want to see is on at the Rialto, Earl," Irene said. "Just tonight and tomorrow night."
"Good," Earl grunted, starting to recheck the charts. "Let me know if you liked it. If it's any good I might go see it."
"Why don't you come see it with me?" Irene said.
"Uh," Earl hesitated, not looking up from a chart he was studying.
He was saved by the hall door opening.
"Hi, Basil," he said, taking in Basil Nelson's expression of mild haste, and the empty test tube in his hand.
Irene frowned in annoyance.
Basil looked at her with a mixture of apology and hopefulness, then turned to Earl. "Uh, I came in to borrow some base formula," he said. "Just need a few cc's and didn't want to take the time to get a full gallon from the storeroom."
"Help yourself," Earl said. He grinned sidewise at Irene. "By the way, Irene is looking for someone to go with her to see some show that's on at the Rialto."
"I'll be glad to," Basil said eagerly.
"No thanks," Irene said. "I'm going with my aunt."
"Your aunt?" Basil said. "I didn't know you had an aunt living in Crestmont." He went to a supply shelf over a wall bench and poured some base formula from a rubber tube dangling from a large bottle.
"She just arrived in town," Irene said dryly.
"Can I meet her?" Basil said coming back from the supply shelf. He was facing Irene and half facing Earl. He was in a position so that there was nothing between him and the window across the room.
"Sorry," Irene said. "She's leaving town in the morning. I'm sure--Oh, how can you be so clumsy, Basil?"
The test tube had dropped from his hand. Small glass fragments and the oily fluid were spattered on the floor and his shoes. He was examining a small cut on the inside of his thumb that was beginning to bleed.
"Clumsy?" he said absently. "Oh no. I didn't drop the test tube. It broke in my hand."
"It couldn't have," Irene said accusingly. "You dropped it."
"What's the difference?" Earl said. "Here. I'll get you another test tube with some base fluid. No harm done."
He opened a drawer and took out a new test tube. When he was closing the drawer he glanced absently toward the window. His eyes widened. "What the devil!" he exclaimed. "Look at that. The window's broken too."
"That's odd--too strange a coincidence," Basil frowned.
"Supersonic vibrations?" Earl said, smiling. "Maybe a foreign spy has heard of Project Synthetic Nerve Fluid and was trying to kill Basil with a new secret weapon!"
"Ha ha," Basil said without humor. He accepted the test tube of base formula from Earl. "Thanks, Earl," he said. He went to the door. There he turned appealingly to Irene. "I would like to take you--and your aunt--to the show, Irene," he said.
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