>And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.
>Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. "Where am I?" Barney asked it. "And how far am I from New York?" That was the main point...
>The mechanism which was the portable extension of Dr. Smile, connected by micro-relay to the computer itself in the basement level of Barney's own conapt building in New York, the Renown 33, tinnily declared, "Ah, Mr. Bayerson." "Mayerson," Barney corrected, smoothing his hair with fingers that shook.
Are you afraid that you're so sane that you'll be shipped off to Mars? There's an app for that!
>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch leaves its readers questioning their own sense of what constitutes “reality”. The novel begins by introducing one of the major characters, Barney Mayerson, a precog who works for Bulero and is trying to evade the draft (joining the colonists on Mars) through the use of Dr. Smile, a computerized psychiatrist he carries in his briefcase. The purpose of the psychiatrist is not, unlike the human version, to make one well, but to make one sick - sick enough for the short term, anyway, to evade being sent to Mars.
>The precog Roni Fugate spends the night with Barney, both knowing by their precognitive talents that they’d hit it off at some point in the future, so why wait until later for the inevitable? In the morning, Roni asks Barney if Dr. Smile has helped much yet, if he has made Barney “sick enough.” Barney doesn’t directly answer her, but asks the same question of Dr. Smile. He answers: “Unfortunately you’re still viable, Mr. Mayerson; you can handle ten Freuds of stress. Sorry. But we still have several days; we’ve just begun.”
genuinely is difficult to switch off coding brain isn't it? I'm fairly sure I now consciously use deterministic algorithms for the majority of my life decisions.
