by John Brunner
LIKE THEY SAY, IT’S BOUNCE OR BREAK
At Ann Arbor, Michigan, research psychologist Dr. Zoë Sideropoulos had house guests for a week. She was an expert in hypnosis and had written a well-known study of the regression effect which, in suitable cases, makes possible the recovery of memories ordinarily lost to conscious awareness without such crude physical aids as electrodes planted in the subject’s brain.
During the week she made exceptionally intensive use of her home computer terminal. Or rather, that was what the machines believed.
When he was able to take a break from using Dr. Sideropoulos’s terminal—a new and extremely efficient model—Kate brought him omelets and the nearest surviving commercial equivalent of “real beer.”
“Eat before it’s cold,” she commanded. “Then talk. In detail and with footnotes.”
“I’m glad you said that. We’re going to have a lot of time to fill. I need to scramble some circuitry at Canaveral, or wherever, rather more completely than you scrambled these eggs, and I know for sure I’m going to have to make the computers do things they’re specifically forbidden to. But not to worry. When they built their defenses they weren’t reckoning on somebody like me.”
He set about demolishing the omelet; it lasted for a dozen hungry bites.
“But I do worry,” Kate muttered. “Are you certain you can trust Paul Freeman?”
He laid aside his empty plate. “Remember how at Lap-of-the-Gods you upbraided me because I wouldn’t believe anyone else was on my side?”
“Touchée. But I want my answer.”
“Yes. There’s an honest man. And finally he’s figured out what constitutes evil in the modern world.”
“So what’s your definition?”
“One that I already know you agree with, because we talked about Anti-Trauma Inc. If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.”
In a dry voice she said, “I won’t argue.”
At Boulder, Colorado, Professor Joachim Yent of the School of Economics and Business Administration had house guests for a few days. During that time, it was duly recorded that he made exceptionally frequent use of his home computer terminal.
“Kate, when you take a liking to somebody, do you speed up or slow down?”
“Do I what—? Oh, got it. Slow down, I guess. I mean to get where we can talk to each other I quit skipping for a while.”
“And vice versa?”
“Most times, no. In fact you’re the only person I ever met who could work it the other way—uh … Sandy? What is your name, damn it? I just realized I still don’t know.”
“You decide. Stick with Sandy if you like, or switch to what I started out with: Nicholas, Nickie, Nick. I don’t care. I’m myself, not a label.”
She puckered her lips to blow him a kiss. “I don’t care what you’re called, either. I only know I’m glad we slowed down to the same speed.”
At Madison, Wisconsin, Dean Prudence McCourtenay of the Faculty of Laws had house guests for a long weekend. It was’ similarly recorded that during their visit she made more than averagely frequent use of her domestic computer terminal.
It was becoming very cold. Winter had definitely begun.
“Yes, slowing down to the same speed is what everybody needs to do. With a lot of incidental energy to be dissipated. In fact a good many brakes are apt to melt. But the alternative is a head-on flatout smash.”
“Why?”
“Because everybody isn’t like you yet.”
“Sounds like a monotonous world!”
“I mean in the sense of being equally able to cope.”
“But …” She bit her lip. “It’s a fact of existence that some can and some can’t. Punishing those who can’t is cruel, but holding back those who can for the sake of the rest is—”
He broke in. “Our present society is cruel both ways. It does punish those who can’t cope. We bought our veephones and our data-net and our asteroid ore and the rest of it by spending people who wound up dead or in mental hospitals.” His face darkened briefly. “And it holds back those who can cope. I’m an example of that.”
“I find it terribly hard to believe, seeing what you can do now you’re working at full stretch!”
“But I have been held back, damn it. I didn’t know how much I could achieve until I saw you, shaven and limp like a lab specimen due to be carved up and thrown away with no more memorial than entry in a table of statistics. The sight forced me into—I guess you’d say mental overdrive.”
“What was it like?”
“As inexplicable as orgasm.”
In Shreveport, Louisiana, Dr. Chase Richmond Dellinger, a public-health analyst under contract to the city, had house guests during whose stay he had unusually frequent recourse to his home computer terminal. In the south it was still pleasantly warm, of course, but there was a lot of rain this year.
“So I absolutely had to find a way out—not just for you, not just for me, but for everybody. In an eyeblink I had discovered a new urge within myself, and it was as fundamental as hunger, or fear, or sex. I recall one argument I had with Paul Freeman …”
“Yes?”
“The idea came up that it took the advent of the H-bomb to bring about in human beings the response you see in other animals when confronted with bigger claws or teeth.”
“Or a dominant figure in his private cosmos. Like Bagheera rolling over kitten-style to greet me when I get back from school. I do hope they’re looking after him properly.”
“We’ve been promised that.”
“Yes, but … Never mind. I didn’t mean to change the subject.”
“On principle I differed with him, but he was quite justified in saying that for all we know maybe that is the case. Well, if it’s true that our threshold of survival-prone behavior is so high it takes the prospect of total extermination to activate modes of placation and compromise, may there not be other processes, equally life-preserving, which can similarly be triggered off only at a far higher level of stimulus than you find among our four-legged cousins?”
On his ranch in northern Texas, political historian Rush Compton and his wife Nerice, some years his junior and in occasional practice as a market-research counselor, entertained a couple of house guests. Considerable use was made of their home computer terminal. The weather was fresh and clear, with intermittent gusts of sharp northerly wind.
“Wait a moment. That threshold may be dangerously high. Think of population.”
“Yes indeed. I started with population. Not having a fixed breeding season was among the reasons why mankind achieved dominance; it kept our numbers topped up at an explosive rate. Past a certain stage restrictive processes set in: male libido is reduced or diverted into nonfertile channels, female ovulation is regularized and sometimes fails completely. But long before we reach that point we find the company of our fellow creatures so unbearable we resort to war, or a tribal match. Kill one another or ourselves.”
“So our evolutionary advantage has turned unnoticed into a handicap.”
“Kate, I love you.”
“I know. I’m glad.”
At his secluded home in Massachusetts, Judge Virgil Horovitz, retired, and his housekeeper Alice Bronson—he was widowed—entertained house guests and used his computer terminal for the first time since his retirement. A gale had stripped most of the trees around his house of their gorgeous red-gold foliage; at night, frost made the fallen leaves crackle and rustle underfoot.
“But what the hell can we do with an insight like yours? We’ve had insights before, from social theorists and historians and politicians and preachers, and we’re in a mess in spite of all. The idea of turning the entire planet into a madhouse in the hope of triggering off some species-saving reflex—no, it’s out of the question. Suppose at some early stage of your scheme we hit a level where a billion people go collectively in-insane?”
“That’s the best we can look forward to, and I
do mean the best, if the people at Tarnover are allowed their way.”
“I think you’re serious!”
“Oh, maybe it wouldn’t be a whole billion. But it could be half the population of North America. And a hundred and some million is enough, isn’t it?”
“How would it happen?”
“Theoretically at least, one of the forces operating on us consists in the capacity, which we don’t share with other animals, to elect whether or not we shall give way to an ingrained impulse. Our social history is the tale of how we learned to substitute conscious ethical behavior for simple instinct, right? On the other hand, it remains true that few of us are willing to admit how much influence our wild heritage exercises on our behavior. Not directly, because we’re not still wild, but indirectly, because society itself is a consequence of our innate predispositions.”
With a rueful chuckle, he added, “You know, one of the things I most regret about what’s happened is that I could have enjoyed my arguments with Paul Freeman. There was so much common ground between us. … But I didn’t dare. At all costs I had to shake his view of the world. Otherwise he’d never have toppled when Hartz pushed him.”
“Stop digressing, will you?”
“Sorry. Where were we? Oh, I was about to say that at Tarnover they’re mistakenly trying to postpone the moment where our reflexes take over. They ought to know that’s wrong. Freeman himself cited the best treatment for personality shock, which doesn’t use drugs or any other formal therapy, just liberates the victim to do something he’s always wanted and never achieved. In spite of evidence like that, though, they go on trying to collect the people most sensitive to our real needs so that they can isolate them from the world. Whereas what they ought to be doing is turning them loose in full knowledge of their own talent, so that when we reach the inevitable overload point our reflexes will work for instead of against our best interests.”
“I recall a point made in one of the Disasterville monographs. I think it was number 6. Stripped of the material belongings which had located them in society, a lot of refugees who formerly held responsible, status-high positions broke down into whining useless parasites. Leadership passed to those with more flexible minds—not only kids who hadn’t ossified yet, but adults who previously had been called unpractical, dreamers, even failures. The one thing they had in common seemed to be a free-ranging imagination, regardless of whether it was due to their youth or whether it had lasted into maturity and fettered them with too great a range of possibilities for them to settle to any single course of action.”
“How well I know that feeling. And wouldn’t an injection of imagination be good for our society right now? I say we’ve had an overdose of harsh reality. A bit of fantasy would act as an antidote.”
Near Cincinnati, Ohio, Helga Thorgrim Townes, dramatist, and her husband Nigel Townes, architect, had house guests and were debbed for an exceptional amount of time rented on the data-net. Slight snow was falling in the region, but as yet had not settled to any marked extent.
“I’m not sure that if I hadn’t met people from Tarnover I would believe you. If I can judge by them, though …”
“Be assured they’re typical. They’ve been systematically steered away from understanding of the single most important truth about mankind. It’s as though you were to comb the continent for the kindest, most generous, most considerate individuals you could find, and then spend years persuading them that because such attitudes are rare, they must be abnormal and should be cured.”
“What most important truth?”
“You tell me. You’ve known it all your life. You live by its compass.”
“Anything to do with my reason for getting interested in you in the first place? I noticed how hard you were trying to conform to a stock pattern. It seemed like a dreadful waste.”
“That’s it. One charge I made against Freeman which I won’t retract: I accused him of dealing not in human beings but in approximations to a preordained model of a human being. I really am glad he decided to give it up. Bad habit!”
“Then I know what you’re talking about. It’s the uncertainty principle.”
“Of course. The opposite of evil. Everything implied by that shopworn term ‘free will.’ Ever run across the phrase ‘the new conformity’?”
“Yes, and it’s terrifying. In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfill ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical? The plug-in life-style makes me puke.”
“But the concept has been sold with such persistence, the majority of people feel afraid not to agree that it’s the best way of keeping track in a chaotic world. As it were: ‘Everybody else says it is—who am I to argue?’ ”
“I am I.”
“Tat tvam asi.”
During the six weeks that the process took, approximately thirteen percent of households owning domestic computer terminals made above-average use of the machines in excess of the normal variation plus-or-minus ten percent. This was up by less than one percent over last year’s figures and could be ascribed to the start of the academic year.
SHADOWS BEFORE
“Hey, those odds … they doubled kinda fast, didn’t they?”
“What do you mean you can’t raise him? He’s a five-star priority—his phone can’t be out. Try again.”
“Christ, look at this lot, will you? Can’t the twitches keep their minds made up two days together?”
“Funny to get this on a weekend, but … Oh, I’m not going to complain about the chance to pick our new location from a list this long. Makes a change, doesn’t it, from all the time going where we’re told and no option?”
“But—but Mr. Sullivan! You did authorize it! Or at any rate it has your code affixed!”
HOMER
“It feels so strange,” Kate said as the cab turned the corner of her home street. Her eyes darted from one familar detail to another.
“I’m not surprised. I’ve been back to places, of course, but never to resume the same role as when I was there before … nor shall I this time, of course. Any objections?”
“Reservations, maybe.” With a distracted gesture. “After having been so many different people in such a short time that I can’t remember all my names: Carmen, Violet, Chrissie …”
“I liked you specially when you were Lilith.”
She pulled a face at him. “I’m not joking! Knowing that here if anywhere I’m bound to be recognized, even though we made sure the croakers pulled their watch—I guess I wasn’t quite ready for it.”
“Nor was I. I’d have liked to run longer and do more. But they’re no fools, the people who monitor the Fedcomps. Already I’m pretty sure they have an inkling of what’s about to crash on them. Before they react, we have to capitalize our last resources. You’re still a cause célèbre around KC; and judging by how she looked and sounded Ina is boiling with eagerness to put a good heavy G2S code between us and disaster.”
“I’m sure you’re right. Your logic is flawless. Even so—”
“You don’t have to live by logic. You’re wise. And that can transcend logic. No matter how logical your choice may seem in retrospect.”
“I was going to say: even so it’ll feel strange to go in and not have Bagheera come to rub against my ankles.”
The apt had been searched by experts. That aside, it was unchanged, though dusty. Kate picked up the paintbrush she had been using when “Fessier” called and grimaced at its clogged bristles.
“Anything missing?” he inquired, and she made a fast check.
“Nothing much. Some letters, my address-and-code book … Things I can live without. Most are still furnishing my head. But”—she wrinkled her nose—“the power was off for some time, wasn’t it, before you had it restored?”
“Sure, from the day after you were ’naped.”
“In that case, the moment I open the refrigerator the apt will be uninhabitable. I distinctly recal
l I’d laid in two dozen extra eggs. Come on, we have a lot of garbage cans to fill. There’s going to be a party here tonight.”
“A party?”
“Naturally. You never heard of Doubting Thomas? Besides, students are a gabby lot. What you’ve done is going to be on all strands of the net by this time tomorrow. I want it on the mouth-to-mouth circuit too.”
“But you know damn well I’ve written in a program that will call a press conference—”
“At noon the day after the balloon goes up,” she cut in. “Nick, Sandy, whatever the hell, darling, the avalanche you plan to start may have swept us into limbo long beforehand. If you’re going to hurt them as much as you think, you and I can’t safely plan so far ahead.”
He thought about that for a long moment. When he answered his voice shook a little.
“I know. I just haven’t faced the idea. Right, leave the clearing-up to me. Get on that phone and contact everybody you can. And you might as well enroll Ina’s help, get her to bring some friends from G2S.”
“I already thought of that,” she said with composure, and punched her mother’s code.
THE HATCHING OF THE WORM
On her way to visit friends for dinner, Dr. Zoë Sideropoulos paused before her home computer terminal long enough to activate a link to the continental net and strike a cluster of three digits on the board. Then she went out to her car.
Returning from an evening seminar, Professor Joachim Yent remembered what day it was and punched three digits into the board of his computer terminal.
Dean Prudence McCourtenay was in bed with a cold; she was a martyr to them every winter. But she had five veephones in her seven-room house, one being at her bedside.
Dr. Chase R. Dellinger took five from unexpected work at his lab—something suspect about a batch of newly imported mushroom spawn, perhaps contaminated with a mutant strain—and on his way back paused at a computer remote and tapped three digits into the net.
