noon
Then , as he rounded a corner , he was suddenly face to face with his new enemy . A large flat park stood before him and there in the middle was a hundred-story tower of smooth seamless material , the home of the Central System 's brain . There were smaller towers at many points in the world but this was the most important , capable of receiving on its mile-long axons , antennas of the very soul itself , every thought projected at it from any point in the solar system . The housing gleamed blindingly in the sun of high noon , as perfect as the day it had been completed . That surface was designed to repel all but the most unusual of the radiation barrages that could bring on subtle changes in the brain within . The breakdown , he thought bitterly , would take too many centuries to consider . He turned away and headed into an Employment Exchange .