by John Hersey
Senator VOYOLKO. Mr. Leery.
Mr. CLEARY. Cleary.
Senator VOYOLKO. Mr. Whatever-It-Is. Where you go to school?
Mr. CLEARY. Perkins State Teachers.
Senator VOYOLKO. You play basketball?
Mr. CLEARY. As a matter of fact, I did.
Senator VOYOLKO. I thought so. See? I thought he did. Good and tall.
Mr. BROADBENT. If you gentlemen are finished with your questions—
Senator MANSFIELD. Jack?
Senator SKYPACK. I'm finished. I mean, you've got to crack down on these deadbeat kids, there's no other way in the world.
Senator MANSFIELD. All right, Mr. Cleary; thank you. O.K., Mr. Broadbent.
Monday, October 28
Mr. BROADBENT. Mr. Chairman, a few minutes ago Senator Skypack passed me a note that he wants to question the child buyer again.
Senator MANSFIELD. Do you still have him here?
Mr. BROADBENT. I think so. Yes, the committee usher indicates he's still out there.
Senator MANSFIELD. I would certainly want to honor the wishes of my eminent colleague from Sudbury County. Have Mr. Jones brought in. Thank you, Mr. Jones, for bearing with us again. Help yourself to the witness chair.
TESTIMONY OF MR. WISSEY JONES, OF UNITED LYMPHOMILLOID CORPORATION
Senator SKYPACK. There's really only one question I want to ask Mr. Jones, and that is: Do you still want this boy, I mean after this business of stripping and pawing that little girl, the mortician's daughter, and all? Do you still want to buy him?
Mr. JONES. More than ever, sir.
Senator SKYPACK. That surprises me. That definitely surprises me. How could you want a cheap actor like that?
Mr. JONES. This proves he's alive. lie's juicy. lie's not one of your cobwcb-and-lint intellectuals. Oh, this was encouraging, Senator!
Senator SKYPACK. Well, it beats me. That's all I wanted to ask, Mr. Chairman. But you got me with my mouth open, Mr. Jones, if the national defense requires a sneaky actor like that. I mean I'm not surprised about those moon shots fizzling out, the lag in rocketry.
Mr. JONES. You'll just have to take my word for it, Senator. The boy's value is enhanced.
Senator SKYPACK. Oh, I'll go along with you, sir. If that's the way you say things are. I'm going to stand by my promise to do
THE CHILD BUYER
everything I can to help you get him. Fact is, I'll be happier than ever to have him shipped out of this State.
Mr. JONES. I'm grateful for your expressions of support, Senator. I think I should tell you that they have just become rather urgently important to me. It would help me if these hearings could be brought to some fruitful conclusion as soon as possible. I had a telegram delivered to me a few minutes ago outside this chamber, and I believe it's pertinent to these hearings; I'll take the liberty of turning the wire over to your committee. Mr. Counsel, may I—?
Mr. BROADBENT. Thank you, sir. Shall I read it out, Mr. Chairman?
Senator MANSFIELD. I wish you would.
Mr. BROADBENT. It's signed HACK SAWYER. You might tell us, Mr. Jones—
Mr. JONES. Of course. Excuse me. Hack's the prex of U. Lym-pho.
Mr. BROADBENT. The wire seems to be a kind of purchase order, at least the first part of it. It reads here: DESIRE SOONEST DELIVERY TWENTY ADDITIONAL SPECIMENS STOP SHIP BY AIR STOP WE AUTHORIZE YOU TWO HUNDRED PER CENT INCREASE PURCHASE FUND STOP URGENT URGENT STOP REASON FOR HASTE SECURITY BROKEN RESULT THAT AMERICAN PANTOCYANDUM AND CBLIO MILLS HAVE BEGUN PROGRAMS OF SPECIMEN PURCHASE AND EXPERIMENTATION EXACTLY LIKE OURS STOP ENTIRE STORY SPILLED TO MOMENTOUS THE WEEKLY NEWSMAG BY CILIO APPEARING NEXT WEEKS ISSUE WITH STORY EMPHATICALLY FAVORABLE TO U LYMPHOS INITIATIVE BUT ANTICIPATE OTHER COMPETITORS WILL INSTITUTE LIKE PROGRAMS AND CONSEQUENT PROMPT DRASTIC DRYING UP OF SUPPLY OF FIRST RATE SPECIMENS STOP CANNOT OVERSTATE PRESSURE BESTEST HACK SAWYER
Mr. JONES. So you see, Mr. Chairman. Senator Skypack. Senator Voyolko.
Monday, October 28
Senator VOYOLKO. Huh? Me? . . . Specimens, specimens. What they talking about specimens?
Senator MANSFIELD. It means children, Peter.
Senator VOYOLKO. Children! Why don't they say so? Nobody ever says what they mean any more these days.
Mr. BROADBENT. Could this wire be admitted into the record, Mr. Chairman?
Senator MANSFIELD. It will be part of the record. I so rule.
(The document referred to was marked 'Jones Exhibit No. 2/ and filed.)
Mr. JONES. You'll appreciate, gentlemen, these hearings have already detained me three days.
Senator MANSFIELD. What time is it? ... It's already late in the day today, Mr. Jones, but I'd hope that with any kind of luck we can finish up here in one more day. Tomorrow. Two at the most.
Mr. JONES. Anything you could do to expedite—
Senator SKYPACK. Look, Jones, you say this whole scheme's coming out in the press. It states there in the telegram that the security is broken on the matter. I therefore want to renew my request to you to admit the off-the-record material you gave us the other day. This record doesn't mean much without that background.
Mr. JONES. Since this article in Momentous has apparently been drafted in a way so favorable to U. Lympho, I hesitate to chance spoiling it; I'm loath to jump the gun without checking.
Senator MANSFIELD. I might point out, Mr. Jones, on Senator Skypack's behalf, that our record won't be published by the State Printing Office for at least two weeks. There's no reason why the off-the-record material couldn't be held in confidence in our files until well after the dateline of the Momentous article and then be released to the State Printer.
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Mr. JONES. I'd have no objection to that.
Senator MANSFIELD. I then order that the off-the-record matter presented by Mr. Jones to this committee in Room 41 yA of this building on last Thursday morning, October 25, be admitted to the record, on the basis just agreed.
Mr. BROADBENT. In extension of this ruling, Mr. Chairman, don't you think you'd better add that the matter in question was not recorded by the committee stenographer but is in the form of a memorandum by the committee counsel which has been reviewed by all members of the committee and by the witness?
Senator MANSFIELD. Right. So ordered.
(The document referred to was admitted to the record, as 'Committee Memorandum No. i,' and is printed herewith.)
COMMITTEE MEMORANDUM No. i
Chairman MANSFIELD asked the witness to proceed in his own way. Mr. WISSEY JONES then deposed that the methods used by United Lymphomilloid to eliminate all conflict from the inner lives of the purchased specimens and to ensure their utilization of their innate equipment at maximum efficiency are and will be the following:
First, Period of Mental and Reflexive Reconditioning, Orientation, and Preparation. During this period, the length of which varies from one to six weeks, depending on the adaptability of the subject, each specimen is placed naked in a bare and confined chamber, six feet cubed, without exterior lighting, dimly lit within, so that the consciousness can take in nothing but the totality of barrenness of the setting. There is nothing. There is silence. There is nothing to do, except during one period of activity each day, when a single meal appears through a trap door and when feces can be removed if the subject desires and takes
Monday, October 28
the step. The discomfort and rather extreme apprehension experienced by the specimen during the first part of this period, together with applications of the drug 'L.T./ introduced through food, produce a complete elimination, or purge, of memory; all experience, education, knowledge are permanently cleared away, with no impairment whatsoever of the mind's acquisitive faculties and capacity for future new memory. As the mind goes blank, all thinking ceases, and the subject experiences a progressive feeling of warmth and relaxation. About three quarters of the way through this period, orientation is begun in the form of constant whispering which is piped into the chamber, barely pe
rceptible at first, gradually increasing in volume and clarity, but never rising above an aspirated murmur, the content of which is entirely devoted to United Lymphomilloid—to the motherly, protective, nourishing qualities of the corporate image, and later to Her creativity, fecundity, and later still to Her great Mystery—the Miracle of the Fifty-Year Project. This whispering continues for several days and produces in the specimen a growing desire, which in due course becomes almost ecstatic, to be exposed to the image and to feel (the subject has forgotten he can think and therefore do anything besides feel) Her benignity and sovereignty, which the specimen apparently pictures as a kind of primitive comfort, a sort of swaddling. Upon its completion, this phase of preparation is followed by Second, Education and Desensitization in Isolation. The specimen is removed from the Forgetting Chamber and is placed in a small but comfortable room, containing a hard bed, a table, a washbasin, and a toilet. (Toilet training is necessary, since the subject has forgotten, of course, how to avail himself of plumbing.) There are no windows in the room—in fact, the specimen will never again look out at the complexity of nature, which would only confuse him. Education now begins. A most important aspect of the United Lymphomilloid method is
THE CHILD BUYER
that the specimen shall have no contaminating (in a mental sense) contact with other human beings. All teaching must therefore be done mechanically—by the technique of whispering to which the specimen is already conditioned, by films and symbols projected against walls of the room, by recorded material infiltrated into the subject's hard pillow during sleeping hours, and by other devices so far too secret to discuss—Mr. JONES simply said that one of them involves, for example, hypnotic high-frequency vibrations. Reading is taught entirely by sound film. Gradually, as the student progresses (because of the emptiness of the mind at first and the possibility of excluding all irrelevancies, great and small, the progress is astonishingly rapid, so that in mathematics, for instance, which begins with adding one and one, the calculus is reached in five weeks of teaching, and logarithm tables are quite unnecessary), his life is made more comfortable. Television, radio, and books are introduced into his room, but the specimen is never exposed to anything that does not relate to the Miracle of the Fifty-Year Project. The television programs he sees have all been specially taped for him and him alone, the radio programs specially recorded, the books specially written and printed and bound. Everything the specimen learns has been built around the fecund female corporate image of U. Lympho. She is Truth. She is the Source and Secret of Life. She is the One and Only Television Sponsor. She becomes the motivating force for all activity—indeed, She, U. Lympho, becomes the Divinity. By slow and subtle training, in which rhythms of repetition play a great part, the specimen's relationship to Her becomes ritualistic. He begins to worship Her by solving problems—simple ones, to begin with, then increasingly trying ones. His whole life becomes an attempt to please Her by spurts of creative mental activity, which are seen as worshipful acts. This religion is, however, entirely intellective. Emotion of all kinds is eliminated as far as possible
Monday, October 28
from the specimen's life, partly by keeping from his emptied mind all images and ideas that might stimulate feeling, and partly by a drug, enthohexylcenteron, related to the tranquiliz-ers used in psychiatric therapy but specially developed by United Lymphomilloid researches to deaden all affective responses without, however, removing the elements of pain and joy in the specimen's new motivation—specifically, the particularly intense motivation to genuflect before Her, as it were, by problem-solving. This schooling period lasts about four months and is followed by
Third, Data-feeding Period. The specimen is now almost prepared to work for Her on the Mystery of the Fifty-Year Project —or at least on one isolated corner of the project. Into his mind is fed an enormous amount of data that will be needed in finding episodic solutions to certain problems in connection with the Mystery. Mr. JONES pointed out to the committee that it is common knowledge that electronic calculating machines have proved fallible because they are fed data by human beings. United Lymphomilloid reverses the process. The subject's human mind, capable of illimitable subtlety, is fed data by absolutely reliable and matter-of-fact calculating machines. (The machines are fed, in turn, by previously conditioned specimens.) The specimen's mind is now working so fast, and his motivation is so powerful, that this stage takes only about three weeks and is followed by
Fourth, Major Surgery. The subject is now perfectly prepared to do Her work. There are, however, two dangers. One is that through some inadvertence, unforeseen by the minds of technicians who have not been conditioned as the specimen has, scraps of information that are not wholly related to the subject's particular area of worship-solving may creep into his mind. The second is that he may develop emotions; it has been found that, despite the prophylaxis and enthohexylcenteron, extremely dan-
THE CHILD BUYER
gerous emotions may arise, apparently stemming from tiny doubts about Her, the source of which Project researchers have not yet been able to pin down. The specimen therefore undergoes major surgery, which consists of 'tying off' all five senses. Since the subject need not take in any more data, he has no further need of sight or hearing. Smell and taste have long since been useless to him, since he regards the intake of food as a mechanical process that he carries on only for Her sake. Only so much sense of touch is left the specimen as to allow him to carry on his bodily functions and 'write* on a Simplomat Recorder, a stenographic machine the use of which has long since become a ceremonial rite for the subject. Most specimens are also sterilized, though a certain few will be left their reproductive equipment in order to breed further specimens for the Project. It is thought that some of these breeders, after they have solved most of the problems arising from their data, will be retired to stud— the servicings for which will of course all be mechanical. The surgical period lasts about two months, whereupon ensues
Fifth, Productive Work. The specimen worships U. Lympho by offering up to Her solutions of incredibly difficult problems relating to the Mystery.
Mr. JONES then asked if there were any questions.
Senator MANSFIELD asked if all this wasn't a little drastic, and Mr. JONES replied that by the same token the results represented a major break-through in the development of the human intellect—as great and startling a break-through in its field as the one represented in another field by the first setting off of an atomic chain reaction in the lattice pile in the cellar of the squash courts at the University of Chicago in 1942. He would cite one fact to show the extent of the implications of the United Lymphomil-loid method. This method has produced mental prodigies such as man has never imagined possible. Using tests developed by company researchers, the firm has measured I.Q.'s of three fully
Monday, October 28
trained specimens at 974, 989, and 1005, whereas 100 is the median in the general population, and 200, estimated by the psychologist Terman to have been approached by only a handful of world geniuses such as Goethe, Pascal, and John Stuart Mill, had previously been considered the absolute tops. The company intends, incidentally, Mr. JONES said, to use as breeders only subjects who test for I.Q/s at over the one-thousand figure.
Senator SKYPACK asked if this system wasn't prohibitively expensive, considering those special closed-circuit television programs, special books, and so on, and Mr. JONES replied that it was indeed costly, but that the firm had set its training facility up as an institution of higher learning, known as Hack Sawyer University, which is naturally tax-deductible, so that everything the company puts into it can be written off. Mr. JONES remarked that this feature might in due course have important beneficial ramifications for both private education and private enterprise in this country; they might, in effect, merge.
Mr. BROADBENT asked what the drug referred to by Mr. JONES as 'L.T/ was, and Mr. JONES said it was an herbal drug, of ancient origin, known as Lethe terrae, loosely, 'forgctfulness of
this world/ Lethe on earth. He reminded the committee that in classical mythology Lethe was a river in Hades, the drinking of whose waters would produce amnesia, and he said this herbal drug was used in certain pre-Columbian sacrificial rituals in Peruvian mountain cultures—indicating, the witness remarked in passing, that some of the newest things in the world come straight from some of the oldest.
Senator VOYOLKO asked if Hades and Hell weren't one and the same, and Mr. JONES let the question pass.
Senator MANSFIELD asked how, if the specimens were permanently isolated and were given only small portions of the Mystery of the Fifty-Year Project to solve, the major parts of the
THE CHILD BUYER
necessary solutions would be brought together in the end, and Mr. JONES said he didn't want to talk too much about this, but, on account of the extraordinary development of the specimens' intellects, co-ordination was definitely being achieved by a process of telepathy between them—that when cognate solutions are reached by two specimens, each becomes aware of the other's answers. Senator SKYPACK asked whether this took place right through walls and everything, and Mr. JONES said it did, concrete walls.
Senator SKYPACK asked what the Mystery of the Fifty-Year Project actually is, and Mr. JONES said that that was a foolish question. He didn't even know himself. He believed it had to do with satisfying man's greatest need—to leave the earth.
If that was in fact the end and aim of the Project, Senator MANSFIELD then asked, how did Mr. JONES justify the claim that his purchase of BARRY RUDD was for purposes of 'defense'? Mr. JONES said he justified the claim on the ground that the Project is being carried on by United Lymphomilloid under government contract. Besides, he added, in the present state of affairs the best defense might be departure.
The committee members thanked and heartily congratulated Mr. JONES, and the off-the-record session was brought to a close.
Senator MANSFIELD. Jack, he's your witness. Anything more?
Senator SKYPACK. Only this, and I ask it again: You're sure, are you, that you want this boy, after what he's done?
