THE COMPONENT WAS PLACED in operation. It opened its eyes and saw things. The sensory nerves of its limbs felt things. The muscles of its hands and toes operated things.
Where was Glenn Tropile?
He was there, all of him, but a zombie-Tropile. Bereft of will, emptied of memories. He was a machine and part of a huger machine. His s*x was the s*x of a photoelectric cell; his politics were those of a transistor; his ambition that of a mercury switch. He didn’t know anything about s*x, or fear, or hope. He only knew two things: Input and Output.
Input to him was a display of small lights on a board before his vacant face; and also the modulation of a loudspeaker’s liquid-borne hum in each ear.
Output from him was the dancing manipulation of certain buttons and keys, prompted by changes in I
