Arthur Hughes La Belle Dame Sans Merci painting

Arthur Hughes La Belle Dame Sans Merci paintingAlbert Bierstadt Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains California paintingAlbert Bierstadt In the Mountains painting
real authority: they only attended the dials and switches whose actual instructions came not even from the Chancellor, but from that bank of tapes -- in short, from WESCAC.
"WESCAC!" I frowned at the pulsing spools and tingled as if ambushed. "I thought WESCAC was in Tower Hall!"
"Oh well, this is just one arm of the thing, you know. Not even that: a finger. It programs the power needs for West Campus, itself included." As we strolled among the consoles (Stoker thrusting out his tongue at various attendants), he charged me not to forget that last fact: WESCAC, people rightly held, was the seat and instrument of West-Campus power -- brain-power, military power, and thus political and economic power as well, indirectly. But it was essentially no more than a tool and manager, dependent absolutely on the power supplied to it, at its own governance, from the realm "down below." In short, the power that ultimately controlled the Power Plant originated in the Power Plant, necessarily and exclusively -- and the Power Plant was his, Stoker's, domain.
"If you don't mind my asking: how did you get to be in charge of it?"