r. "For instance, suppose there's a TV show
you want to catch tomorrow night at twenty-two hundred." He touched
the buttons. There was the faintest whirring. The clock face blurred
briefly three times before showing the setting he'd mentioned. Then
Fay spoke into the punctured area: "Turn on TV Channel Two, you big
dummy!" He grinned over at Gusterson. "When you've got all your
instructions to yourself loaded in, you synchronize with the present
moment and let her roll. Fit it on your shoulder and forget it. Oh,
yes, and it literally does tickle you every time it delivers an
instruction. That's what the little rollers are for. Believe me, you
can't ignore it. Come on, Gussy, take off your shirt and try it out.
We'll feed in some instructions for the next ten minutes so you get
the feel of how it works."

"I don't want to," Gusterson said. "Not right now. I want to sniff
around it first. My God, it's small! Besides everything else it does,
does it think?"

"Don't pretend to be an idiot, Gussy! You know very well that even
with ultra-sub-micro nothing quite this small can possibly have enough
elements to do any thinking."

Gusterson shrugged. "I don't know about that. I think bugs think."

* * * * *

Fay groaned faintly. "Bugs operate by instinct, Gussy," he said. "A
patterned routine. They do not scan situations and consequences and
then make decisions."

"I don't expect bugs to make decisions," Gusterson said. "For that
matter I don't like people who go around alla time making decisions."

"Well, you can take it from me, Gussy, that this tickler is just a
miniaturized wire recorder and clock ... and a tickler. It doesn't do
anything else."

"Not yet, maybe," Gusterson said darkly. "Not this model. Fay, I'm
serious about bugs thinking. Or if they don't exactly think, they
feel. They've got an interior drama. An inner glow. They're conscious.
For that matter, Fay, I think all your really complex electronic
computers are conscious too."

"Quit kidding, Gussy."

"Who's kidding?"

"You are. Computers simply aren't alive."

"What's alive? A word. I think computers are conscious, at least while
they're operating. They've got that inner glow of awareness. They sort
of ... well ... meditate."

"Gussy, computers haven't got any circuits for meditating. They're not
programmed for mystical lucubrations. They've just got circuits for
solving the problems they're on."

"Okay, you adm