My pal Adam Rodman is a top writer of motion-type pictures and other things. Today, he called me with a dilemma. He said that he'd been trying to remember the name of a science-fiction story he'd read long ago and it was driving him nuts that he couldn't. I was his second call. His first was to Harlan Ellison and Harlan didn't recall the story from anywhere. I didn't either but I told Adam how brilliant the readership of my blog was. I told him to e-mail me a summary and I'd post it and one of you out there would write in with the correct answer. Here it is. Don't let me down.
I read it back when I was in college or shortly thereafter. The premise is that a guy (journalist) sees this crazy man doing battle with the electric door at the market. The man jumps over the electric eye "defeating" it, only to have the door then close on him. It turns out that the guy was a mathematical prodigy who had been doing battle with machines since he was a child. Eventually, computers grew to powerful and he could not keep up. He drove himself to insanity in the process. We know this because he takes the journalist back to his house where a giant computer has been mutilated. The crazy man prepares to do battle. "Go ahead," he tells the journalist, "Ask it a question." The journalist asks how mush is 2+2 and the badly damaged machine cannot respond. It begins to overheat and a fire erupts. The crazy man won't leave the house until the journalist poses the question to him so that he can defeat the machine. "How much is 2+2?" the journalist asks. The man cannot compute the answer; he, too, is too badly damaged. The goes up in flames with the computer and the crazy man inside.
That's how I remember the story. I probably got a few details wrong, but if anyone recognizes it, I would love to know the title and author.
If you know what the story is that Adam's recalling, please drop me a note. Thanks.