Free Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg

Imago
    T HE NEWS TRAVELS FROM deposit drawer to deposit drawer with electronic immediacy. Many residents of Aisle B have been scanning the emergency decantation and the gossip starts with the unexplained suddenness of the Amco-pak’s departure. Communication channels are jammed as word of the runaway spreads; descriptions of the battle between the maintenance vans from outer-edge residents only fan the flames of curiosity.
    A new hero is born. The legend of escape begins to germinate. So many residents request Obu Itubi’s files that the memory-file librarian is forced to remove his file number from the Index. The African Renaissance, a school held in disrepute since the Awakening because of its overt fetishism, is once again of interest to the scholars. Even Itubi’s Auditor is working overtime, screening and rescreening his subject’s files in a search for the clue he knows he will eventually find, some undiscovered quirk or weakness which Center Control can use to bait its trap.
    Skeets Kalbfleischer listens to the delicate ping-pong music of a million distant circuits opening and closing. The warning tone of a deHartzman Communicator caught him dreaming of Vera and he concentrates on the fragile electronic sound, the Pure White Light of spirituality being unavailable. All prurient thought must be eliminated, the mind left pure and clean in the advent of his Auditor. How to behave in the face of authority is the first lesson learned in the sixth grade.
    BEEP …
    All greetings, A-0001, I trust the additional meditation time has been fruitful?
    Well, it’s shown me many things …
    Continued meditation is the key to Understanding.
    Experience is also a great teacher.
    So it is, A-0001, and the lesson is one of Illusion. Memory-merge is a useful tool because it demonstrates that reality is only a shadow. It must have been enlightening when you discovered yourself back in the Depository?
    Frightening.
    Really? In what way? I was hoping you would be prepared to file a complete report, but your reactions are confusing. I anticipated ecstasy and not fear.
    The merge was certainly ecstatic; it was returning that was unpleasant.
    Why?
    The only conclusion I’ve come to is that the experience, which I must tell you I thoroughly enjoyed, was unsatisfactory because it was incomplete. I suppose an analogy from the Old Life would be the difference between a mature relationship and merely visiting a brothel.
    Are you suggesting the need for additional merge time!
    Well, I wouldn’t feel prepared to file a full report unless the experience were complete.
    Even if it were to take years?
    Even so.
    And suppose years weren’t available to you, would you be prepared to gamble?
    I don’t know what you mean. Please explain.
    The induced memory-merge draws upon the actual experience of the residents involved; the length of merge time depends upon the reservoir of memory stored in your mind. You can’t draw on what is not there. Your mate had quite a healthy lifespan as a biped; she could sustain a lengthy merge. But you, A-0001, have only twelve years of memory on file before craniotomy; your experiences would unreel backwards toward infancy; your perceptions would grow increasingly childish. It takes very little imagination to foresee the end of this unhappy relationship.
    I’m prepared to gamble.
    Are you?
    Or else abandon the entire project.
    Rash decisions are always unwise, A-0001. If you wish to resume the merge it will be arranged. The Commission desires only that you succeed in taking this step along the Path. But it is you who must make the step.
    Then I would like to resume as soon as it’s convenient.
    Very good. I will attend to the details immediately. May Wisdom guide you on this Path and lead you to Understanding. End transmission.
    CLICK .
    Itubi is aghast. The power center of his Amco-pak idles; his scanner lens widens; immobilized, he studies the nearly forgotten perfection of the human form. The bodies, alternately