One thing, however, can be said with absolute certainty. Before the use of machine intelligence no thinker or author ever had such ardent, unfailingly attentive, and uncompromising readers! That is why, in the cry that burst from the lips of a certain first-rate thinker when he was offered, by MENTOR V, a critique of his work—“This one has really read me!”—there was so much of the frustration typical of the present day, when humbug and perfunctorily acquired erudition replace genuine knowledge. The thought that has haunted me while writing these works—that it is not human beings who will be my most conscientious readers—is indeed full of bitter irony.