Benson goes back to the computer room and finds Ross. Ross and Anders go down into the basement, where Anders exchanges fire with and injures Benson before becoming lost in the maze of corridors. The hospital's computers begin to malfunction, as if somebody was disturbing the mainframe. Morris finds a mechanic who has been beaten by Benson, and is himself attacked and injured.īack at the hospital, Ross receives a phone call from Benson, which is traced to somewhere inside the building. Morris uses a book of matches found on Angela's body to track Benson to an airport hotel. Just before losing consciousness, Ross manages to turn on her microwave oven, the radiation of which affects the power pack in Benson's shoulder and forces him to flee. Benson confronts Ross in her house and attacks her upon having a seizure.
After Benson's dogtag is found at the murder scene of Angela Black, Ross is questioned by police. Morris meets Benson's boss, who tells him that Benson disliked University Hospital because of its ultra-modern computer system, an upgraded IBM System/360. Ross goes to Benson's house, where she finds two girls who say he has a gun and possesses blueprints for the basement of the hospital, where the computer mainframe is located. She then finds out that Benson, using the wig and disguising himself as an orderly, has evaded the police officer assigned to guard him and escaped from the hospital. Ross further discovers that, due to a clerical error by the nurses, Benson has not been receiving thorazine.
She explains that Benson is learning to initiate seizures involuntarily because the result of these seizures is a shock of pleasure, which leads to him having more frequent seizures. Gerhard, one of the technicians administering the test, shows his findings to Ross, who discovers that the seizures are becoming more frequent. Each electrode produces different results one stimulates a sexual pleasure. McPherson, the head of the NPS, interviews Benson and realizes Manon and Ross were right about his psychosis, ordering nurses to administer thorazine to Benson.Īfter resting for a day, Benson goes through "interfacing." The electrodes are activated one by one to test which ones would stop a seizure. He recalls a Norwegian man with schizophrenia, who was allowed to stimulate himself as much as he wanted, and did so much that it actually gave him brain damage. Morris refuses a man who volunteers to have electrodes put into his brain to stimulate pleasure, but realizes that people like Benson could potentially become addicts. While he is recovering, a woman identifying herself as Angela Black gives Morris a blonde wig for Benson, whose head was shaved prior to the operation. Benson must wear a dogtag that says to call University Hospital if he is injured, as his power pack may emit radiation. Despite the concerns voiced, the team decides to go ahead with the operation.įorty electrodes are implanted into Benson's brain, controlled by a small computer that is powered by a plutonium power pack in his shoulder. Ellis rationalizes his approach by pointing out that he is not convinced that not operating on Benson will do him any favors his condition threatens his life and those of others, has already undermined his legal status three times, and is worsening. It would prevent a seizure but not cure Benson's personality disorder. Ellis admits that what they are doing is not a cure, simply a way to stimulate the brain when the computer senses a seizure coming on. Manon raises concerns that Benson is psychotic and predicts that the crimes he commits during the blackouts will not be curtailed. The ramifications of the procedure are questioned by the NPS's staff psychiatrist, Janet Ross, and later by her former teacher, Manon, an emeritus professor. Two NPS surgeons, John Ellis and Robert Morris, are to perform the unprecedented surgery.
He is a prime candidate for an operation to implant an electronic "brain pacemaker" in the amygdala region of his brain in order to control the seizures, which will be performed in the Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) of University Hospital. During these seizures, he severely beats two people the day before his admission, he was arrested after attacking a third. He often has seizures followed by blackouts, and then wakes up hours later with no knowledge of what he has done. Harold Franklin "Harry" Benson, a computer scientist in his mid-thirties, is described as suffering from "psychomotor epilepsy" following a car crash two years earlier. The events in the novel take place between March 9–13, 1971.
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