Free Prototype by Brian Hodge Page B

be fair, I even looked it up in one of my old academic texts, and it was in error, too."
    "Is he fixated on this?"
    Adrienne nodded. "To an extent. He mentioned it in our third session and didn't much dwell on it, and once I'd explained that he shouldn't consider himself a candidate for it — because of his intelligence and height — I didn't think it was significant. But he brought it up again yesterday."
    She silently cursed all scientists and exploiters everywhere who, with half-baked brains, trumpeted baseless conclusions that served only to inspire panic, like ripples across a calm pond. She no longer paid attention to the latest findings of dietitians who announced new reasons to scorn old foods. They would undoubtedly be contradicted soon enough, and hopefully go to their graves someday with all the obscurity they deserved.
    How much more fundamental, if less widespread, was the fear generated by those who attached stigmas to abnormal variations of body and mind? Such deviations were so deeply borne that, to those affected by them, it was like giving them cause to loathe their own bodies.
    "I think if we have his karyotype run and supply him with picture-perfect proof that he's not a double-Y," said Adrienne, "it'll help alleviate the anxiety he's feeling over it. And free him up for the things that do matter."
    Mendenhall sat with pursed lips and frowning eyes, while the desktop held his gaze. "What kind of expenditure would this be?"
    Always the cost; alleviation of misery was next in line. "If you want a dollar figure, I can't say. But negligible. It's a very routine, simple screen. We can't do it on the premises but we can keep it local: the Genetics Center of Arizona Associated Labs."
    He progressed from pursed lips to gnawing at the inside of one corner of his mouth. "Find out how much. I can't give you the authorization until I know."
    Adrienne smiled, a thin, shrewd, dealmaker's smile that just managed to conceal her irritation that he did not wholly trust her word.
    "Thank you, Ferris," she said, and knew just when to leave.

    *

    The psycho ward didn’t allow televisions in the rooms — this was a surprise? On or off, TVs were notorious for implanting thoughts into heads. Clay had conversed with few of his ward mates, but enough to conclude that as far as most were concerned, denying them unlimited video access was wise. There was a large set in the dayroom, but it usually remained under the control of the staff, and whoever feared its influence — the home of the cathode-ray gods, perhaps — did not have to come near it.
    Clay, however, soaked it up whenever he was able.
    A tie to home; whenever he was home the TV was always on, although he didn't know why. It commanded attention, if not respect. He viewed it not as entertainment, but as a conduit of information. He could wire in with optic and auditory nerves; pipe in news and documentaries, commentary both rational and apocalyptic. He could define the state of the world in any given half hour, and it was always maddened.
    Fringe shows on syndication and cable access were best, the gleam on the cutting edge of media psychosis.
    It took him a week of attempts, whenever TV security was lax, to locate The Eye of Vigilance , coming out of a Phoenix station. It had a late-night time slot in Denver, but early-evening here. Curious. Perhaps in Arizona it met with a wider receptive audience.
    Clay's rational side found that mildly scary, while the deconstructionist rejoiced — one more sign of Armageddon.
    The Eye of Vigilance was the half-hour province of one Milton Wheeler, who lorded over his airwaves from behind a polished oak desk, and whose introductory fanfare announced to sycophants and heretics that he was "appointed by God as the conscience of the nation." No one knew if he really believed this or not, but it never hurts to call in the big guns.
    There was much that made him rabid, and this stocky fellow with wagging jowls and manicured hands and