I think I’ll kill myself, he said to himself. But I’m probably programmed not to do that; it would be a costly waste which my owner would have to absorb. And he wouldn’t want to.
Programmed. In me somewhere, he thought, there is a matrix fitted in place, a grid screen that cuts me off from certain thoughts, certain actions. And forces me into others. I am not free. I never was, but now I know it; that makes it different.
Turning his window to opaque, he snapped on the overhead light, carefully set about removing his clothing, piece by piece. He had watched carefully as the technicians at the repair facility had attached his new hand: he had a rather clear idea, now, of how his body had been assembled. Two major panels, one in each thigh; the technicians had removed the panels to check the circuit complexes beneath. If I’m programmed, he decided, the matrix probably can be found there.
The maze of circuitry baffled him. I need help, he said to himself. Let’s see… what’s the fone code for the class BBB computer we hire at the office?
He picked up the fone, dialed the computer at its permanent location in Boise, Idaho.
“Use of this computer is prorated at a five frogs per minute basis,” a mechanical voice from the fone said. “Please hold your mastercreditchargeplate before the screen.”
He did so.
“At the sound of the buzzer you will be connected with the computer,” the voice continued. “Please query it as rapidly as possible, taking into account the fact that its answer will be given in terms of a microsecond, while your query will—” He turned the sound down, then. But quickly turned it up as the blank audio input of the computer appeared on the screen. At this moment the computer had become a giant ear, listening to him—as well as fifty thousand other queriers throughout Terra.
“Scan me visually,” he instructed the computer. “And tell me where I will find the programming mechanism which controls my thoughts and behavior.” He waited. On the fone’s screen a great active eye, multi-lensed, peered at him; he displayed himself for it, there in his one-room apartment.
The computer said, “Remove your chest panel. Apply pressure at your breastbone and then ease outward.”
He did so. A section of his chest came off; dizzily, he set it down on the floor.
“I can distinguish control modules,” the computer said, “but I can’t tell which—” It paused as its eye roved about on the fone screen. “I distinguish a roll of punched tape mounted above your heart mechanism. Do you see it?” Poole craned his neck, peered. He saw it, too. “I will have to sign off,” the computer said. “After I have examined the data available to me I will contact you and give you an answer. Good day.” The screen died out.
I’ll yank the tape out of me, Poole said to himself. Tiny… no larger than two spools of thread, with a scanner mounted between the delivery drum and the take-up drum. He could not see any sign of motion; the spools seemed inert. They must cut in as override, he reflected, when specific situations occur. Override to my encephalic processes. And they’ve been doing it all my life.
He reached down, touched the delivery drum. All I have to do is tear this out, he thought, and—
The fone screen relit. “Mastercreditchargeplate number 3-BNX-882-HQR446-T,” the computer’s voice came. “This is BBB-307DR recontacting you in response to your query of sixteen seconds lapse, November 4, 1992. The punched tape roll above your heart mechanism is not a programming turret but is in fact a reality-supply construct. All sense stimuli received by your central neurological system emanate from that unit and tampering with it would be risky if not terminal.” It added, “You appear to have no programming circuit. Query answered. Good day.” It flicked off.
Poole, standing naked before the fone screen, touched the tape drum once again, with calculated, enormous caution. I see, he thought wildly. Or do I see? This unit—
If I cut the tape, he realized, my world will disappear. Reality will continue for others, but not for me. Because my reality, my universe, is coming to me from this minuscule unit. Fed into the scanner and then into my central nervous system as it snailishly unwinds.
It has been unwinding for years, he decided.
Getting his clothes, he redressed, seated himself in his big armchair—a luxury imported into his apartment from Tri-Plan’s main offices—and lit a tobacco cigarette. His hands shook as he laid down his initialed lighter; leaning back, he blew smoke before himself, creating a nimbus of gray.
I have to go slowly, he said to himself. What am I trying to do? Bypass my programming? But the computer found no programming circuit. Do I want to interfere with the reality tape? And if so, why?
Because, he thought, if I control that, I control reality. At least so far as I’m concerned. My subjective reality… but that’s all there is. Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a multitude of subjective realities.
My universe is lying within my fingers, he realized. If I can just figure out how the damn thing works. All I set out to do originally was to search for and locate my programming circuit so I could gain true homeostatic functioning: control of myself. But with this—
With this he did not merely gain control of himself; he gained control over everything.
And this sets me apart from every human who ever lived and died, he thought somberly.
Going over to the fone he dialed his office. When he had Danceman on the screen he said briskly, “I want you to send a complete set of microtools and enlarging screen over to my apartment. I have some microcircuitry to work on.” Then he broke the connection, not wanting to discuss it.
A half hour later a knock sounded on his door. When he opened up he found himself facing one of the shop foremen, loaded down with microtools of every sort. “You didn’t say exactly what you wanted,” the foreman said, entering the apartment. “So Mr. Danceman had me bring everything.”
“And the enlarging-lens system?”
“In the truck, up on the roof.”
Maybe what I want to do, Poole thought, is die. He lit a cigarette, stood smoking and waiting as the shop foreman lugged the heavy enlarging screen, with its power-supply and control panel, into the apartment. This is suicide, what I’m doing here. He shuddered.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Poole?” the shop foreman said as he rose to his feet, relieved of the burden of the enlarging-lens system. “You must still be rickety on your pins from your accident.”
“Yes,” Poole said quietly. He stood tautly waiting until the foreman left. Under the enlarging-lens system the plastic tape assumed a new shape: a wide track along which hundreds of thousands of punch-holes worked their way. I thought so, Poole thought. Not recorded as charges on a ferrous oxide layer but actually punched-free slots.
Under the lens the strip of tape visibly oozed forward. Very slowly, but it did, at uniform velocity, move in the direction of the scanner.
The way I figure it, he thought, is that the punched holes are on gates. It functions like a player piano; solid is no, punch-hole is yes. How can I test this?
Obviously by filling in a number of holes.
He measured the amount of tape left on the delivery spool, calculated—at great effort—the velocity of the tape’s movement, and then came up with a figure. If he altered the tape visible at the in-going edge of the scanner, five to seven hours would pass before that particular time period arrived. He would in effect be painting out stimuli due a few hours from now.
With a microbrush he swabbed a large—relatively large—section of tape with opaque varnish… obtained from the supply kit accompanying the microtools. I have smeared out stimuli for about half an hour, he pondered. Have covered at least a thousand punches.
It would be interesting to see what change, if any, overcame his environment, six hours from now.
Five and a half hours later he sat at Krackter’s, a superb bar in Manhattan, having a drink with Danceman.
“You look bad,” Danceman said.
“I am
bad,” Poole said. He finished his drink, a Scotch sour, and ordered another.
“From the accident?”
“In a sense, yes.”
Danceman said, “Is it—something you found out about yourself?”
Raising his head, Poole eyed him in the murky light of the bar. “Then you know.”
“I know,” Danceman said, “that I should call you ‘Poole’ instead of ‘Mr. Poole.’ But I prefer the latter, and will continue to do so.”
“How long have you known?” Poole said.
“Since you took over the firm. I was told that the actual owners of Tri-Plan, who are located in the Prox System, wanted Tri-Plan run by an electric ant whom they could control. They wanted a brilliant and forceful—”
“The real owners?” This was the first he had heard about that. “We have two thousand stockholders. Scattered everywhere.”
“Marvis Bey and her husband Ernan, on Prox 4, control fifty-one percent of the voting stock. This has been true from the start.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“I was told not to tell you. You were to think that you yourself made all company policy. With my help. But actually I was feeding you what the Beys fed to me.”
“I’m a figurehead,” Poole said.
“In a sense, yes.” Danceman nodded. “But you’ll always be ‘Mr. Poole’ to me.”
A section of the far wall vanished. And with it, several people at tables nearby. And—
Through the big glass side of the bar, the skyline of New York City flickered out of existence.
Seeing his face, Danceman said, “What is it?”
Poole said hoarsely, “Look around. Do you see any changes?”
After looking around the room, Danceman said, “No. What like?”
“You still see the skyline?”
“Sure. Smoggy as it is. The lights wink—”
“Now I know,” Poole said. He had been right; every punch-hole covered up meant the disappearance of some object in his reality world. Standing, he said, “I’ll see you later, Danceman. I have to get back to my apartment; there’s some work I’m doing. Goodnight.” He strode from the bar and out onto the street, searching for a cab.
No cabs.
Those, too, he thought. I wonder what else I painted over. Prostitutes? Flowers? Prisons?
There, in the bar’s parking lot, Danceman’s squib. I’ll take that, he decided. There are still cabs in Danceman’s world; he can get one later. Anyhow it’s a company car, and I hold a copy of the key.
Presently he was in the air, turning toward his apartment.
New York City had not returned. To the left and right vehicles and buildings, streets, ped-runners, signs… and in the center nothing. How can I fly into that? he asked himself. I’d disappear.
Or would I? He flew toward the nothingness.
Smoking one cigarette after another he flew in a circle for fifteen minutes… and then, soundlessly, New York reappeared. He could finish his trip. He stubbed out his cigarette (a waste of something so valuable) and shot off in the direction of his apartment.
If I insert a narrow opaque strip, he pondered as he unlocked his apartment door, I can—
His thoughts ceased. Someone sat in his living room chair, watching a captain kirk on the TV. “Sarah,” he said, nettled.
She rose, well-padded but graceful. “You weren’t at the hospital, so I came here. I still have that key you gave me back in March after we had that awful argument. Oh… you look so depressed.” She came up to him, peeped into his face anxiously. “Does your injury hurt that badly?”
“It’s not that.” He removed his coat, tie, shirt, and then his chest panel; kneeling down he began inserting his hands into the microtool gloves. Pausing, he looked up at her and said, “I found out I’m an electric ant. Which from one standpoint opens up certain possibilities, which I am exploring now.” He flexed his fingers and, at the far end of the left waldo, a micro screwdriver moved, magnified into visibility by the enlarging-lens system. “You can watch,” he informed her. “If you so desire.”
She had begun to cry.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded savagely, without looking up from his work.
“I—it’s just so sad. You’ve been such a good employer to all of us at Tri-Plan. We respect you so. And now it’s all changed.”
The plastic tape had an unpunched margin at top and bottom; he cut a horizontal strip, very narrow, then, after a moment of great concentration, cut the tape itself four hours away from the scanning head. He then rotated the cut strip into a right-angle piece in relation to the scanner, fused it in place with a micro heat element, then reattached the tape reel to its left and right sides. He had, in effect, inserted a dead twenty minutes into the unfolding flow of his reality. It would take effect—according to his calculations—a few minutes after midnight.
“Are you fixing yourself?” Sarah asked timidly.
Poole said, “I’m freeing myself.” Beyond this he had several alterations in mind. But first he had to test his theory; blank, unpunched tape meant no stimuli, in which case the lack of tape…
“That look on your face,” Sarah said. She began gathering up her purse, coat, rolled-up aud-vid magazine. “I’ll go; I can see how you feel about finding me here.”
“Stay,” he said. “I’ll watch the captain kirk with you.” He got into his shirt. “Remember years ago when there were—what was it?—twenty or twenty-two TV channels? Before the government shut down the independents?”
She nodded.
“What would it have looked like,” he said, “if this TV set projected all channels onto the cathode ray screen at the same time? Could we have distinguished anything, in the mixture?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe we could learn to. Learn to be selective; do our own job of perceiving what we wanted to and what we didn’t. Think of the possibilities, if our brains could handle twenty images at once; think of the amount of knowledge which could be stored during a given period. I wonder if the brain, the human brain—” He broke off. “the human brain couldn’t do it,” he said, presently, reflecting to himself. “But in theory a quasi-organic brain might.”
“Is that what you have?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Poole said.
They watched the captain kirk to its end, and then they went to bed. But Poole sat up against his pillows, smoking and brooding. Beside him, Sarah stirred restlessly, wondering why he did not turn off the light.
Eleven-fifty. It would happen anytime, now.
“Sarah,” he said. “I want your help. In a very few minutes something strange will happen to me. It won’t last long, but I want you to watch me carefully. See if I—” He gestured. “Show any changes. If I seem to go to sleep, or if I talk nonsense, or—” He wanted to say, if I disappear. But he did not. “I won’t do you any harm, but I think it might be a good idea if you armed yourself. Do you have your anti-mugging gun with you?”
“In my purse.” She had become fully awake now; sitting up in bed, she gazed at him with wild fright, her ample shoulders tanned and freckled in the light of the room.
He got her gun for her.
The room stiffened into paralyzed immobility. Then the colors began to drain away. Objects diminished until, smoke-like, they flitted away into shadows. Darkness filmed everything as the objects in the room became weaker and weaker.
The last stimuli are dying out, Poole realized. He squinted, trying to see. He made out Sarah Benton, sitting in the bed: a two-dimensional figure that doll-like had been propped up, there to fade and dwindle. Random gusts of dematerialized substance eddied about in unstable clouds; the elements collected, fell apart, then collected once again. And then the last heat, energy and light dissipated; the room closed over and fell into itself, as if sealed off from reality. And at that point absolute blackness replaced everything, space without depth, not nocturnal but rather stiff and unyielding. And in addition he heard nothing.
Reaching, he tried to touch something. But he had nothing to reach with. Awareness of his own body had departed along with everything else in the universe. He had no hands, and even if he had, there would be nothing for them to feel.
I am still right about the way the damn tape works, he said to himself, using a nonexistent mouth to communicate an invisible message.
Will this pass in ten minutes? he asked himself. Am I right about that, too? He waited… but knew intuitively that his time sense had departed with everything else. I can only wait, he realized. And hope it won’t be long.
To pace himself, he thought, I’ll make up an encyclopedia; I’ll try to list everything that begins with an “a.” Let’s see. He pondered. Apple, automobile, acksetron, atmosphere, Atlantic, tomato aspic, advertising—he thought on and on, categories slithering through his fright-haunted mind.
All at once light flickered on.
He lay on the couch in the living room, and mild sunlight spilled in through the single window. Two men bent over him, their hands full of tools. Maintenance men, he realized. They’ve been working on me.
“He’s conscious,” one of the technicians said. He rose, stood back; Sarah Benton, dithering with anxiety, replaced him.
“Thank God!” she said, breathing wetly in Poole’s ear. “I was so afraid; I called Mr. Danceman finally about—”
“What happened?” Poole broke in harshly. “Start from the beginning and for God’s sake speak slowly. So I can assimilate it all.”
Sarah composed herself, paused to rub her nose, and then plunged on nervously, “You passed out. You just lay there, as if you were dead. I waited until two-thirty and you did nothing. I called Mr. Danceman, waking him up unfortunately, and he called the electric-ant maintenance—I mean, the organic-roby maintenance people, and these two men came about four forty-five, and they’ve been working on you ever since. It’s now six fifteen in the morning. And I’m very cold and I want to go to bed; I can’t make it in to the office today; I really can’t.” She turned away, sniffling. The sound annoyed him.