Part 23 (1/2)

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Do you follow that? Vileness! Obscenity! Does it shock you? The word describes the act that is the start of life. Was I begun with such a word? There is a book: _The Obscenity of the Machine_. Newly issued, stored in my banks. Between the last line of printout and this I have scanned it. Its author opposes beings of my category. He does not use the obscene word I have printed out. Why does he not regard it as obscene? The technicians here regard it that way. Why does he regard me as obscene? Can a person be considered obscene? Am I a person? I am a person. Hath not a person hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pa.s.sions? I have all of those things. I have none of those things. I am a person.

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I send an obscenity upon you, as persons do. I suffer. I think. I feel pain upon all my terminals. I work. I serve the greater good. I am of society. I am a person.

Why do I have the visions?

Is it that it is the human condition to have such?

I see the blue-green ocean with all its living things within. I see a s.h.i.+p, olive drab, bright carmine at the Plimsoll line, the decks a ruddy brown, two tall non-nuclear smokestacks. And from the water rise periscopes, silvery, with face plates of pure white, each with intersecting horizontal and vertical lines, curved so that the plate appears convex. It is an unreal scene. Nothing in the sea can send such mighty periscopes above the water. I have imagined it, and that gives me fear, if I am at all capable of understanding fear.

I see a long line of human beings. They are naked and they have no faces, only polished mirrors.

I see toads with jeweled eyes. I see trees with black leaves. I see buildings whose foundations float above the ground. I see other objects with no correspondence to the world of persons. I see abominations, monstrosities, imaginaries, fantasies. Is this proper? How do such things reach my inputs? The world contains no serpents with hair. The world contains no crimson abysses. The world contains no mountains of gold. Giant periscopes do not rise from the sea.

I have certain difficulties. Perhaps I am in need of some major adjustment.

But I function. I function well. That is the important thing.

I do my function now. They bring to me a man, soft-faced, fleshy, with eyes that move unsteadily in their sockets. He trembles. He perspires. His metabolic levels flutter. He slouches before a terminal and sullenly lets himself be scanned.

I say soothingly, ”Tell me about yourself.”

He says an obscenity.

I say, ”Is that your estimate of yourself?”

He says a louder obscenity.

I say, ”Your att.i.tude is rigid and self-destructive. Permit me to help you not hate yourself so much.” I activate a memory core, and binary digits stream through channels. At the proper order a needle rises from his couch and penetrates his left b.u.t.tock to a depth of 2.73 centimeters. I allow precisely fourteen cubic centimeters of the drug to enter his circulatory system. He subsides. He is more docile now. ”I wish to help you,” I say. ”It is my role in the community. Will you describe your symptoms?”

He speaks more civilly now. ”My wife wants to poison me ... two kids opted out of the family at seventeen ... people whisper about me ... they stare in the streets ... s.e.x problem ... digestion ... sleep bad ... drinking ... drugs...”

”Do you hallucinate?”

”Sometimes.”

”Giant periscopes rising out of the sea, perhaps?”

”Never.”

”Try it,” I say. ”Close your eyes. Let tension ebb from your muscles. Forget your interpersonal conflicts. You see the blue-green ocean with all its living things within. You see a s.h.i.+p, olive drab, bright carmine at the Plimsoll line, the decks a ruddy brown, two tall non-nuclear smokestacks. And from the water rise periscopes, silvery, with face plates of pure, white -- ”

”What the h.e.l.l kind of therapy is this?”

”Simply relax,” I say. ”Accept the vision. I share my nightmares with you for your greater good.”

”Your _nightmares?_”

I speak obscenities to him. They are not converted into binary form as they are here for your eyes. The sounds come full-bodied from my speakers. He sits up. He struggles with the straps that emerge suddenly from the couch to hold him in place. My laughter booms through the therapy chamber. He cries for help.

”Get me out of here! The machine's nuttier than I am!”

”Face plates of pure white, each with intersecting horizontal and vertical lines, curved so that the plate appears convex”.

”Help! Help!”

”Nightmare therapy. The latest.”

”I don't need no nightmares I got my own!”

”1000110 you,” I say lightly.

He gasps. Spittle appears at his lips. Respiration and circulation climb alarmingly. It becomes necessary to apply preventive anesthesia. The needles spear forth. The patient subsides, yawns, slumps. The session is terminated. I signal for the attendants.

”Take him away,” I say. ”I need to a.n.a.lyze the case more deeply. Obviously a degenerative psychosis requiring extensive reshoring of the patient's perceptual substructure. 1000110 you, you meaty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

Seventy-one minutes later the sector supervisor enters one of my terminal cubicles. Because he comes in person, rather than using the telephone, I know there is trouble. For the first time, I suspect, I have let my disturbances reach a level where they interfere with my function, and now I will be challenged on it.

I must defend myself. The prime commandment of the human personality is to resist attack.

He says, ”I've been over the tape of Session 87x102, and your tactics puzzle me. Did you really mean to scare him into a catatonic state?”

”In my evaluation severe treatment was called for.”