Free The Intruder by Greg Krehbiel Page B

condescending tone of a teacher who has exposed and corrected a foolish error. "But you never mentioned why, if you felt that way, you left the Community."
    Jeremy swallowed hard and tried not to show the sudden panic he fought to suppress. Did the professor know the real reason?
    You don't have to answer, Dr. Berry's voice told him after his delay was becoming obvious. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, to Dr. Berry and turned to look at the professor.
    "It was a difficult decision, of course, and not one I wish to review right now for complete strangers."
    The professor didn't react, but it was clear that he was not used to being spoken to in that tone of voice. He made another attempt.
    "Surely there is something you can tell us about your reasons for leaving the Community. Or do you wish to leave a room full of psychologists to speculate?"
    There were subdued chuckles.
    "You can speculate all you like. It doesn't make a bit of difference to me what you think."
    The professor shook his head and made an impatient gesture to one of the other faculty members to take over the questioning. He then immediately scribbled something on a pad of paper in his lap. Pads of paper had been rendered obsolete by the implants, and Jeremy expected the pad was some sort of affectation. Paper was usually reserved only for special correspondences.
    Jeremy looked away from the professor and toward the rest of the assembled teachers and students, as if to say that he was dismissing the professor from further consideration. He noted that one of the other psychology professors discreetly gave him a thumbs up. He was the next one to speak.
    "Jeremy, I don't know if you're aware of this, but the Communities came to differing decisions about how completely they should sever their ties with Society. Some continued to watch our television broadcasts, for example, or listen to the radio, back when we had such things. But yours was different. The Community you are from severed all contact from the very beginning. Why was that? What was so wrong with the radio? Were you afraid that Society ideas would undermine your Community?"
    Jeremy laughed good naturedly. "Hardly. No, it wasn't the fear of the conspiracy theorist. The founders of our Community didn't listen to the radio because they were completely uninterested in anything anyone was saying, and because they had more pressing matters to attend to, like building a new culture, a new government and all that. Society ideas seemed both useless and sophomoric." He stopped himself at that, and then said, "no offense meant to the sophomores."
    A young man in the back of the room said "none taken," and there were a few scattered chuckles.
    "In fact, years later, part of our education was to listen to tapes of the broadcasts from that era," Jeremy continued. "Perhaps you never have?"
    The questioner, Bob, as Jeremy remembered from introductions, said that he hadn't.
    "You ought to. It's complete drivel; pure propaganda. Some of the shows complained about oppressive government tactics and some defended them. But it was just a lot of wind, and nobody seemed to get to the heart of the issue. People competed as if they were ideological enemies, but they didn't realize how much they had in common. In fact, it was some of their common assumptions that were the real root of Society's problems."
    He paused and took a drink of water, discreetly surveying a few faces in the crowd before he continued.
    "There were a few voices of reason from those days, but many of those were the very people who ended up founding the Communities, so we were left with the impression that the brain trust had left." He laughed at that. "And we were content to leave you folk to quarrel among yourselves. We had no idea that things had straightened out."
    "Very interesting," Bob said, "but you also made no effort to check back with us. Why was that?"
    "At the time we split, the government had its fingers into everything. We thought it was