do, and like a man trained to busy-ness, loafing was their hardest task. Gone was every sensory stimulus. His heart pumped from habit, not controlled by the feedback of sound or feeling. He breathed, but he did not hear the inrush of air. Brain told him to be careful of his mouth, the sharp teeth could bite the dead tongue and he could bleed to death never feeling pain nor even the swift flow of salty warmth. Habit-trained nerves caused a false tickle in his throat; he never knew whether he coughed or whether he thought that he coughed.

The sense of time deserted him when the metronome of heartbeat died. Determined Brain compromised by assuming that crude time could be kept by the function of hunger, elimination, weariness. Logical Brain pointed out that he could starve to death and feel nothing; elimination was a sensory thing no more; weariness was of the body that brought no information anyway—and what, indeed was sleep?

Brain considered this question. Brain said, I am Jerry Markham. But is it true that no brain can think of nothing? Is it possible that "Sleep" is the condition that obtains when the body stops conveying reliable information to the brain, and then says to Hell with Everything and decides to stop thinking?

The Brain called Jerry Markham did not stop thinking. It lost its time sense, but not completely. A period of time passed, a whirlwind of thoughts and dreamlike actions went on, and then calmness came for a while.

Dreams? Now ponder the big question. Does the brain dream the dream as a sensory experience—or is a dream no more than a sequence of assorted memories? Would a dying brain expire in pleasure during a pleasant dream—or is the enjoyment of a pleasant dream only available to the after-awakened brain?

What is Man but his Memories?

In one very odd manner, the brain of Jerry Markham retained its intellectual orientation, and realized that its physical orientation was uncontrollable and undetectable and therefore of no importance. Like the lighthouse keeper who could not sleep when the diaphone did not wrneeee-hrnawwww for five seconds of each and every minute, Jerry Markham's brain was filled with a mild concern about the total lack of unimportant but habitual data. There was no speckle of light to classify and ignore, no susurrus of air molecules raining against the eardrum. Blankness replaced the smell and taste and their absence was as disturbing as a pungence or a poison. And, of course, one should feel something if it is no more than the tonus of muscle against the mobile bones.

Communication is the prime drive of life. Cut off from external communication entirely, section A, bay 6, tier 9, row 13 hollered over to box Q, line 23, aisle F and wanted to know what was going on. The gang on the upper deck hailed the boiler room, and the crew in the bleacher seats reported that the folks in charge of C.I.C.—Communication Information Center—were sitting on their hands because they didn't have anything to do. One collection of bored brain cells stirred. They hadn't been called upon since Jerry Markham sang "Adeste Fidelis" in memorized Latin some fifteen years earlier and so they started the claque. Like an auditorium full of people impatient because the curtain had not gone up on time, bedlam broke loose.

Bedlam is subject to the laws of periodicity, stochastic analysis, and with some rather brilliant manipulation it can be reduced to a Fourier Series. Fourier says that Maxwell is right and goes on to define exactly when, in a series of combined periodicities of apparently random motion, all the little particles will be moving in the same direction. Stochastic analysis says that if the letter "U" follows the letter "Q" in most cases, words beginning with "Q" will have "U" for a second letter.

Jerry Markham began to think. Isolated and alone, prisoner in the cell of bone, with absolutely nothing to distract him, the Brain by common consent pounded a gavel, held a conference, appointed a chairman and settled down to