Better to watch the pretty changing colors on the screen at the foot of the thing he lay on.
And then someone entered and did things to him and for a long time, he slept.
And when that had passed, the bed was suddenly a bed and he knew he was in a hospital, and the words he remembered made sense.
He sat up: "What's happening?"
The First Speaker was beside him, "You're on the Second Foundation, and you have your mind back - your original mind."
"Yes! Yes!" Channis came to the realization that he was himself, and there was incredible triumph and joy in that.
"And now tell me," said the First Speaker, "do you know where the Second Foundation is now?"
And the truth came flooding down in one enormous wave and Channis did not answer. Like Ebling Mis before him, he was conscious of only one vast, numbing surprise.
Until he finally nodded, and said: "By the Stars of the Galaxy - now, I know."
Part II Search By The Foundation
7. Arcadia
DARELL, ARKADY novelist, born 11, 5, 362 F.E., died 1, 7, 443 F.E. Although primarily a writer of fiction, Arkady Darell is best known for her biography of her grandmother, Bayta Darell. Based on first-hand information, it has for centuries served as a primary source of information concerning the Mule and his times... Like "Unkeyed Memories", her novel "Time and Time and Over" is a stirring reflection of the brilliant Kalganian society of the early Interregnum, based, it is said, on a visit to Kalgan in her youth...
Encyclopedia Galactica
Arcadia Darell declaimed firmly into the mouthpiece of her transcriber:
"The Future of Seldon's Plan, by A. Darell" and then thought darkly that some day when she was a great writer, she would write all her masterpieces under the pseudonym of Arkady. Just Arkady. No last name at all.
"A. Darell" would be just the sort of thing that she would have to put on all her themes for her class in Composition and Rhetoric - so tasteless. All the other kids had to do it, too, except for Olynthus Dam, because the class laughed so when he did it the first time, And "Arcadia" was a little girls name, wished on her because her great-grandmother had been called that; her parents just had no imagination at all.
Now that she was two days past fourteen, you'd think they'd recognize the simple fact of adulthood and call her Arkady. Her lips tightened as she thought of her father looking up from his book-viewer just long enough to say, "But if you're going to pretend you're nineteen, Arcadia, what will you do when you're twenty-five and all the boys think you're thirty?"
From where she sprawled across the arms and into the hollow of her own special armchair, she could see the mirror on her dresser. Her foot was a little in the way because her house slipper kept twirling about her big toe, so she pulled it in and sat up with an unnatural straightness to her neck that she felt sure, somehow, lengthened it a full two inches into slim regality.
For a moment, she considered her face thoughtfully - too fat. She opened her jaws half an inch behind closed lips, and caught the resultant trace of unnatural gauntness at every angle. She licked her lips with a quick touch of tongue and let them pout a bit in moist softness. Then she let her eyelids droop in a weary, worldly way- Oh, golly if only her cheeks weren't that silly pink.
She tried putting her fingers to the outer corners of her eye and tilting the lids a bit to get that mysterious exotic languor of the women of the inner star systems, but her hands were in the way and she couldn't see her face very well.
Then she lifted her chin, caught herself at a half-profile, and with her eyes a little strained from looking out the comer and her neck muscles faintly aching, she said, in a voice one octave below its natural pitch, "Really, father, if you think it makes a particle of difference to me what some silly old boys think you just-"
And then she remembered that she still had the transmitter open in her hand and said, drearily, "Oh, golly," and shut it off.
The faintly violet paper with the peach margin line on the left had upon it the following:
"THE FUTURE OF SELDON'S PLAN"
"Really, father, if you think it makes a particle of difference to me what some silly old boys think you just
"Oh, golly."
She pulled the sheet out of the machine with annoyance and another clicked neatly into place.
But her face smoothed out of its vexation, nevertheless, and her wide, little mouth stretched into a self-satisfied smile. She sniffed at the paper delicately. just right. Just that proper touch of elegance and charm. And the penmanship was just the last word.
The machine had been delivered two days ago on her first adult birthday. She had said, "But father, everybody - just everybody in the class who has the slightest pretensions to being anybody has one. Nobody but some old drips would use hand machines-"
The salesman had said, "There is no other model as compact on the one hand and as adaptable on the other. It will spell and punctuate correctly according to the sense of the sentence. Naturally, it is a great aid to education since it encourages the user to employ careful enunciation and breathing in order to make sure of the correct spelling, to say nothing of demanding a proper and elegant delivery for correct punctuation."
Even then her father had tried to get one geared for type-print as if she were some dried-up, old-maid teacher.
But when it was delivered, it was the model she wanted - obtained perhaps with a little more wail and sniffle than quite went with the adulthood of fourteen - and copy was turned out in a charming and entirely feminine handwriting, with the most beautifully graceful capitals anyone ever saw.
Even the phrase, "Oh, golly." somehow breathed glamour when the Transcriber was done with it.