"It was an uncanny phenomenon. I remembered the uneasiness with which I heard it. And when I saw several of them (house-servants of mine) whispering together, I was filled with alarm.

(Mentanicals cover art)

'Come!' I said sharply, 'stop loitering; get your work done.' They stared at me. That is a funny thing to say of metal cylinders. Never before had I inquired very closely into their construction. But now it came over me, with a shock, that they must possess organs of sight — some method of cognizing their environment — akin to that of vision in man.

"It was at about this time that Bane Borgson — the creator of the multiple mechanical-cell which had made the super-Mentanical possible — wrote an article in "Science And Mechanics" which riveted the attention of all thoughtful people. He said, in part: 'It is scarcely within the province of an applied scientist to become speculative, yet the startling fact that the Mentanicals have begun to acquire a faculty not primarily given them by their inventors — the faculty of speech, for their whispering can be construed as nothing else — implies an evolutionary process which threatens to place them on a par with man.

'What is thought ? The Behavorists claim it is reflex action. What is language? It is the marshalling of our reflex actions in words. Animals may "think", remember, but lacking a vocabulary save of the most primitive kind (a matter of laryngeal structure), their thinking, their remembering, is on the whole vague and fleeting, incoherent. But Man, by means of words, has widened the scope of his thinking, remembering, has created philosophy, literature, poetry, painting, has made possible civilization, the industrial era. Vocabulary — the ability to fix his reflex actions into coherent speech — has crowned him supreme among animals. But now comes the Mentanical of his own creation, evolving language in its turn. Without speech the Mentanical was, to all intents and purposes, thoughtless and obedient, as thoughtless and obedient as trained domestic animals. But with vocabulary comes memory and the ability to think. What effect will this evolving faculty have on Man, what problems, dangers, will it pose for him in the near future?"

"So wrote Bane Borgson, seventy years of age, fifteen years after his invention of the multiple mechanical-cell, and — God help us ! — we had not long to wait for the Mentanicals to supply an answer to his questions.

"I have told of the whispering of: my servants. That was a disquieting thing. But more disquieting still it was to hear that whispering coming over the radio, the telephone, to observe cylindrical Mentanicals listening, answering. Frankenstein must have felt as I felt in those days. During that period, which lasted several years, things went smoothly enough; to a great extent people became accustomed to the phenomenon and decided — save for a few men and women here and there, like to myself — that the whispering was an idiosyncrasy of the Mentanicals, implicit in their make-up, and that the various scientists and thinkers who wrote and talked with foreboding were theorists and alarmists of the extremest type. Indeed there were certain scientists and philosophers of reputation, who maintained them in this belief. Then came the first blow : The Mentanical servants ceased waiting on man!