Free The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak Page B

sentence?”
    â€œThat’s what it amounts to.”
    â€œI can’t die,” said Alden.
    â€œSome day,” the calm voice said. “All men must.”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œNo, not yet. You’ll be all right in a few more hours.”
    â€œWhat was the matter with me?”
    â€œYou had some sort of fever.”
    â€œBut no name for it.”
    â€œLook, how would I know? I am not…”
    â€œI know you’re not a medic. Humans can’t be medics—not practicing physicians, not surgeons, not anything at all that has to do with the human body. But a human can be a medical research man because that takes insight and imagination.”
    â€œYou’ve thought about this a lot,” the doctor said.
    â€œSome,” Alden said. “Who has not?”
    â€œPerhaps not as many as you think. But you are angry. You are bitter.”
    â€œWho wouldn’t be? When you think about it.”
    â€œI’m not,” the doctor said.
    â€œBut you…”
    â€œYes, I of all of us, should be the bitter one. But I’m not. Because we did it to ourselves. The robots didn’t ask for it. We handed it to them.”
    And that was right, of course, thought Alden. It had started long ago when computers had been used for diagnosis and for drug dosage computation. And it had gone on from there. It had been fostered in the name of progress. And who was there to stand in the way of progress?
    â€œYour name,” he said. “I’d like to know your name.”
    â€œMy name is Donald Parker.”
    â€œAn honest name,” said Alden Street. “A good, clean, honest name.”
    â€œNow go to sleep,” said Parker. “You have talked too long.”
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    â€œIt will soon be morning.”
    The place was dark as ever. There was no light at all. There was no seeing and there was no sound and there was the smell of evil dankness. It was a pit, thought Alden—a pit for that small portion of humanity which rebelled against or ignored or didn’t, for one reason or another, go along with the evangelistic fervor of universal health. You were born into it and educated in it and you grew up and continued with it until the day you died. And it was wonderful, of course, but, God, how tired you got of it, how sick you got of it. Not of the program or the law, but of the unceasing vigilance, of the spirit of crusading against the tiny germ, of the everlasting tilting against the virus and the filth, of the almost religious ardor with which the medic corps kept its constant watch.
    Until in pure resentment you longed to wallow in some filth; until it became a mark of bravado not to wash your hands.
    For the statutes were quite clear—illness was a criminal offense and it was a misdemeanor to fail to carry out even the most minor precaution aimed at keeping healthy.
    It started with the cradle and it extended to the grave and there was a joke, never spoken loudly (a most pathetic joke), that the only thing now left to kill a person was a compelling sense of boredom. In school the children had stars put against their names for the brushing of the teeth, for the washing of the hands, for regular toilet habits, for many other tasks. On the playground there was no longer anything so purposeless and foolish (and even criminal) as haphazard play, but instead meticulously worked out programs of calisthenics aimed at the building of the body. There were sports programs on every level, on the elementary and secondary school levels, on the college level, neighborhood and community levels, young folks, young marrieds, middle-aged and old folks levels—every kind of sports, for every taste and season. They were not spectator sports. If one knew what was good for him, he would not for a moment become anything so useless and so suspect as a sports spectator.
    Tobacco was forbidden, as were all intoxicants (tobacco and intoxicants