IT WAS a ball-round new-steel marvel deep-swung in the very exact mathematical center of my complex. And the center of gravity of my hip-snuggie chair, the throne of authority and of good rest, was positioned in the very exact mathematical center of this ball-round place. The walls were the rind of a room-orb, shiny new-metal skin-orb, so perfect in its globular perfection that I used to gloat on the number of perfect circles that must be thus enclosed—nay, not only enclosed, but part and parcel of the room-orb. Sometimes I sat for days, near-hypnotized, but imagining, “counting” the perfect circles that must be thus enclosed and part and parcel of this great steel onion. It staggered the brain, even a Moderan man’s brain, honed to the precision of a billion computers of the Old Days, each one of the billion computers complementing the others to make completely unfathomable to any ordinary mind the power by which a Moderan man’s brain outclassed the computer from the Old Days. And yet I could not “count” the perfect circles that had to be there contained in the room-orb.
Sometimes I thought that this must surely be that highest thing for which man was made up, to finally sit, completely invulnerable as forever-man, in the innermost part of the onion of his world, a Stronghold hollow ball, and pull the final count of the layers of his onion home in an innermost room of meditation and authority of the self. For each circle of that gleaming globular room must be a kind of final closing of our safety, emblematic of our Victory, our total win through Great Science Plan over all the inadequacies that once were US. YES! And yet the skins were not infinity, although they were close, very close to that. Given the right instrument, or instruments, to augment my billion-computered brain, surely these circles could be counted, no matter how they crossed and spiraled and tangled and were each part of many others in the room-orb. For this was a thing with limits, I could, with the help of ladders (or tin men to hold me, sometimes making great pyramids of tin men with me at the top for the high parts) touch it, feel it all over on the inside to my heart’s content. And then I could, toggling my hinges and braces, “dash” out and with that inside feeling still warm in my steel hands and my steel mind take tin men, or extensions of ladders and tin men, and feel the room all over on the outside—with, necessarily, a bit of tough climbing. So I had it contained! There was an Inside and there was an Outside. In a word, it was a Thing in my hands. So therefore, the circles must be countable. Although it almost staggers MY brains to think of the true difficulty of the task of the counting.
The large circles of these circular walls are quite quite many in number, when you really consider them with a clear-headed brain. And then each material circle is filled with those pesky atoms, which of themselves are not the end (it’s perfectly conceivable—to me, at least—that within each of these pesky atoms there may be a peopled Stronghold, complete with “little” tin men, all organized for war and fighting, as we in Stronghold 10 are organized for war and fighting; it staggers the mind, even a Stronghold master’s mind, really does, but I can think of it—sometimes) and each of all this would have a goodly number of its own circles. And when we had done all this—OHHOHHHWEEOOOH!—think of the tasks not done. There would still be the hollow space around me and under my hip-snuggie throne in this Innermost Room of Authority that, alas, was not quite empty-hollow space, but was beset with the common air, a gas containing countables. So each perfect circle in the particles of the gas would have to be taken the measure of after the larger circles of the room and air had all been tabulated in this not-quite-hollow place. But it can be done by a dedicated man, and I am a dedicated man, a new-metal man! This is not any kind of infinity, because, as I have just told you, I can “feel” the walls on the inside. And I can “feel” the walls on the outside. Anything that I can thus contain must be such that I can take its measure, full-number it and mentally bring it to account.
So do you wonder that I sit in my hip-snuggie throne in the Innermost Room of Authority, sometimes for days on end, calm as a cold bowl of oil, my heart on REST, my brain on MAX and think on Universal Deep Problems? I have so many problems! We have so many problems, inlooping problems, intertwining problems, interwoven problems. And, really, how to do these circles is not even a beginning of THE PROBLEM.