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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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What do you like better, Thought Bus or Cat Bus?
Thought Bus
excerpts from Mockingbird by Walter Tevis (1980)
"...nervous and excited now, [I] spoke aloud to the door. "Open," I said. And it opened! I got in and seated myself in the front seat, and set my tool box by me. Then I concentrated and thought: Take me out of the Mall and to the front of the obelisk. I pictured the place in front of the obelisk in my mind, just to make sure. And immediately the bus closed its door and began to roll.
[...]
My God! I thought. I think I know where this voice [in my head] is coming from. "But who are you?" I said.
"I am this bus. I am a Metallic Intelligence, with Kind Feelings."
"And you can read my mind?"
"Yes. But not very deeply. It disturbs you a little."
"Yes," I said aloud. My voice sounded strange.
"But it's not too bad. It's not as bad as being lonely." It was reading my mind. I tried to think to it, silently. Are you ever lonely?
"I don't mind if you talk aloud. No, I'm never lonely the way you humans are. I am always in touch, somewhere. We are a network and I am a part of it. We are not like you. Only a Make Nine is like you, alone. I have the mind of a Four, and am telepathic."
The voice in my head was soothing to me. "Would you make a light come on — a dim one?" I said. A bulb overhead began to glow softly. I looked down at my hands, at my dirty fingernails. Then I rolled up my sleeves. For some reason I was enjoying looking at my arms, at the fine, light hairs on them. "Are you as intelligent as [the cat] Biff?" I said.
"By all means," the voice said. "Biff is really stupid in most ways. It's just that she's very real — is very much a cat — and that makes her seem intelligent to you. I can read her whole mind at a glance, and there's very little there. But she feels good. She would not want to be anything other than a cat."
"And I don't feel good?"
"Most of the time you are sad and lonely. Or yearning."
"Yes," I said mournfully. "I am sad. I yearn a lot."
"And now you know it," the voice said.
Cat Bus
excerpt from My Neighbour Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki (1988)
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