Mockingbird

DAY FIFTY-SEVEN

It is nine days since I have written in this journal: nine days. I have learned to add and subtract numbers. From one of the books. But it was boring to learn what is called Arithmetic for Boys and Girls, so we stopped after adding and subtracting. If you have seven peaches and take away three you will have four left. But what is a peach?

Mary Lou is learning very fast—so much faster than I did that it is astonishing. But she has me to help her, and I had no one.

I found some easy books with big print and pictures and I would read slowly aloud to Mary Lou and have her say words after me. And on the third day we made a discovery. It was in the Arithmetic for Boys and Girls book. One problem began: “There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet…” Mary Lou said, “What’s ‘alphabet’?” and I decided to try to find it in Dictionary. And I did. And Dictionary said: “Alphabet: the letters of a given language, arranged in the order fixed by custom. See facing page.” I puzzled for a moment over what a “given” language might be, and a “facing” page, and then I looked at the page on the other side of the book and it was a chart, with the letter “A” at the top and the letter “Z” at the bottom. They were all familiar, and their order seemed familiar too. I counted them, and there were twenty-six, just as Arithmetic for Boys and Girls had said. “The order fixed by custom” seemed to mean the way people arranged them, like plants in a row. But people didn’t arrange letters. Mary Lou and I were, as far as I knew, the only people who knew what a letter was. But of course people—perhaps everybody—had once known letters, and they must have put them into an order that was called an alphabet.

I looked at them and said them aloud: “A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J…” And then it struck me. That was the way the words were put into Dictionary! The “A” words were first, and then the “B” words!

I explained it to Mary Lou and she seemed to understand immediately. She took the book and leafed through it. I noticed that she had already become expert at handling books; her awkwardness with them was gone. After a minute she said, “We should memorize the alphabet.”

Memorize. To learn by heart. “Why?” I said.

She looked up at my face. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in her yellow Synlon dress that I had bought her, and I was sitting at my bed-and-desk, with books piled on it in front of me. “I’m not sure,” she said. She looked back down at the book in her lap. “Maybe it would help us use this book, if we could say the alphabet?”

I thought about that a moment. “All right,” I said.

So we memorized it. And I was embarrassed because she could say it long before I could. But she helped me learn to say it, and I finally did learn. It was difficult—especially the last part that went “W, X, Y, Z”—but I finally got it straight and said the whole twenty-six letters exactly right twice. When I finished Mary Lou laughed and said, “Now we know something together,” and I laughed too. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t really funny.

She looked at my face a moment, smiling. Then she said, “Come here and sit by me.” And I found myself doing it, sitting on the rug next to her.

Then she said, “Let’s say it one after the other,” and she squeezed my arm and said, “A.”

This time the touch of her did not embarrass me or make me self-conscious. Not at all. I said, “B.”

She said, “C,” and turned herself around to face me.

I said, “D,” and watched her mouth, waiting for her to say her letter. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said it softly. “E.” It sounded like a sigh.

I said, “F,” quickly. My heart was beginning to beat fast.

She turned her face and put her mouth next to my ear and said, “G.” Then she giggled softly. And I felt something that almost made me jump. It was warm and wet, on my ear, and I realized it was her tongue. My heart almost stopped.

I did not know what to do, so I said, “H.”

This time her tongue was actually in my ear. It made a shudder, a soft shudder, pass through my body, and something seemed to go loose in my stomach. And in my mind. With her tongue still in my ear she breathed, “I”—stretching it out so that it sounded: “aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeee.”

Frankly I had not had a sexual experience for blues and yellows. And what I was feeling now was something altogether new to me, and so exciting, so overwhelming, so shaking to my body and my imagination that I found myself sitting on the floor with her face against mine and I was crying. My face was becoming wet with tears.

And she whispered, “Jesus, Paul. You’re crying. In front of me.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t…”

“Do you feel bad?”

I wiped at my cheek with my hand, and it brushed against hers. I held still, with the, back of my hand against her cheek, and then I felt her hand turning mine, ever so gently, until my palm was holding her cheek. I felt a wave of a new feeling, a soft, sweet feeling like that of a powerful drug, enter me. I looked at her face, at her wide and curious eyes, now somewhat sad. “No,” I said. “No. I don’t feel bad at all. I feel… something. I don’t know.” I was still crying. “It’s a very good thing, what I feel.”

Her face was very close to mine. She seemed to understand what I was saying, and she nodded her head. “Shall we finish saying the letters?”

I smiled. Then I said, “J.” And I took my hand from her cheek and placed it on her back. “‘J’ is the next letter.”

She smiled.

We did not get to the difficult part of the alphabet. The “W, X, Y and Z.”

DAY FIFTY-NINE

Mary Lou has moved in with me! For two nights now we have slept together in my bed. By unfastening the desk part of it and setting it against the wall, she was able to make room for herself.

It was difficult for me to sleep with another person in the bed with me. I had heard of men and women sharing beds, but never to sleep in. But that was the way she wanted to do it, so I have done it.

I am self-conscious about her body, afraid to touch her or press against her. But I awoke this morning to find myself holding her in my arms. She was snoring lightly. I smelled her hair and kissed her lightly on the back of the neck and then just lay there, holding her sleeping body for a long, long time, until she woke.

She laughed when she woke and found me holding her and snuggled against me warmly. I became self-conscious again. But then we started talking and I forgot my self-consciousness. She talked about learning to read. She said she had dreamt she was reading—had dreamt that she had already read thousands and thousands of books and now knew everything there was to know about life.

“What is there to know about life?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. “They keep us so ignorant.”

I wasn’t certain I understood that—or who “they” were—so I said nothing.

“Let’s have breakfast,” she said. And I called the servo and we ate soybars and pig bacon. I felt very good, even though I had slept little.

During breakfast she leaned over the desk and kissed me. Just like that! I liked it.

After breakfast I decided to work on a film, and Mary Lou watched it with me. It was called The Stock Broker and its star was Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton is a very intense man who has many unusual difficulties in his films. They would be funny if they were not so sad.

Mary Lou was fascinated. She had never seen any films of any kind before and was only familiar with holographic TV, which she did not like.

Early in the first reel, when Buster Keaton was painting a house and kept painting the face of a man who would put his head out the window, Mary Lou said, “Paul, Buster Keaton looks exactly like you. He’s so… serious!”

And she was right.

After the film we spent the day studying reading. She learns amazingly fast and asks interesting questions. I have had many students in the university where I teach, but none like her. And my reading is improving too.

Everything about her is delightful.

It is evening now, and Mary Lou is watching me write this at the desk propped against the wall. I explained to her about writing and she was excited and said that she must learn to do that too so that she could write down the memory of her life. “And write down other things I think of. So I can read them,” she said.

That was interesting. Maybe that is the true reason that I write this—since I write so much more than Spofforth ever meant for me to record—I write it so I can read it. Reading it does something strange and exciting in my mind.

Perhaps one reason Mary Lou is bolder than I is that she lived in a Worker Dormitory before she ran away and I, of course, am a graduate of a Thinker Dormitory. Yet she is so fiercely intelligent! Why would she have been trained to be a Worker and not a Thinker? Perhaps the choices are made on some basis other than intelligence.

I must remember to get more paper, so that Mary Lou can learn to write and can begin to print out the memory of her life.

DAY SIXTY-FIVE

She has lived with me nine days now, against all principles of Individualism and Privacy. I feel guilty at times, compromising my Interior Development by the whims of another person, but I don’t think about the immorality of that very often. In fact, these have been the happiest nine days of my life.

And she already reads nearly as well as I do! Amazing! And she has begun to write the memory of her life.

We are together constantly. It seems at times like Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford—except they were too well-trained to have sex.

There is no sex at all in the old films, although many of the people live together in the most intimate and immoral ways. Porno, of the kind normally taught in Classics courses, was apparently undiscovered, like TV, at the time these silent films were made.

We make love as often as I am able. Sometimes it just happens while we are reading together, with her repeating the sentences after me. Once it took us almost all afternoon to finish a little book called Making Paper Kites because we kept stopping.

Neither of us smokes pot or takes pills. I am often very nervous and excited and feel that I cannot sit still. Sometimes we take short walks when that happens. And, although a part of me seems to cry out against the intensity of the way I am living and working and making love, I know that it is better this way than any other way that I have ever been.

Once, on a walk, we became excited and I suggested we go to a quick-sex bar at Times Square. So we did, and I used my NYU credit card to get the best cubicle they had. There were the usual big porno holographs in the lobby, and two robot doxies with naked breasts and black boots offered to assist us in an orgy, but Mary Lou, thank goodness, told them to bug off. And I turned down the offer of sex-up pills that the bartender made. We went to the cubicle alone, turned off the lights, and made love on the padded floor. But it was not really any good that way.

That was the way my lovemaking had always been before, and the way it is supposed to be. “Quick sex protects,” as my Interpersonal Relations teacher used to say. But I wanted to be at my own place with Mary Lou, making love in my own bed and talking afterward. Except for the sex, I wanted to be like Mother and Father in one of the ancient films. I wanted to buy her flowers and to dance with her.

When we had finished Mary Lou said, “Let’s get out of this sex factory,” and then, as we were leaving, “I think that place is what Simon meant by a ‘Chicago whorehouse.’”

And I did buy her flowers, at a vending machine. White carnations, like Gloria Swanson wore in Queen of Them All.

And before we went to bed that night I asked her to dance. I pinned a flower to her Synlon dress and I played the background music from a TV program, and we danced together. She had never heard of two people dancing together before, but any serious student of films knows about dancing. I had seen it many times. We were awkward and we stepped on each other’s feet several times, but it was fun.

But when we went to bed something, I don’t know what, frightened me. I held her close until she fell asleep. Then I lay awake for a long time, thinking. Something about the quick-sex place had frightened me, I think.

So I got out of bed and finished writing this. I am tired now, but I still feel frightened. Am I afraid she will leave? Am I afraid I will lose her?

DAY SEVENTY-SIX

She has been here eighteen days now, and I have not written anything down for the last nine.

My happiness has grown! I do not think about the immorality of our cohabitation, or of its being probably against the law. I think about Mary Lou and about what I see in films and what I read and what she reads.

All day yesterday she read a new kind of writing called poems. Some of them she read aloud. In places they were like chess—incomprehensible—and in other places they said strange and interesting things. She read this one to me twice:

I had to look up “thou” in Dictionary. The second time she read the lines I felt the feeling I have felt in watching some of the strong scenes in films. An expansive feeling, painfully joyful, in my chest.

When she had finished I said, for some strange reason, “Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.”

She looked up from the book and said, “What?” and I said it again: “Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.”

“What does that mean?” she said.

“I don’t know. It’s from a film.”

She pursed her lips. “It’s like the words I just read, isn’t it? It makes you feel something and you don’t know what it is.”

“Yes,” I said, astonished, almost awed, to find that she had said what I wanted to say. “Yes. Exactly.”

Then she read more poems, but none of them made me feel that way again. I liked hearing her read them anyway. I watched her sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the book, and listening to her serious and clear voice as she read to us both. She holds the book much closer to her face than I do, and there is something very touching about her when she reads.

We take walks together every day and have lunch in a different place.

DAY SEVENTY-SEVEN

Mary Lou went out this morning, as she often does, to buy some Quik-Serv food for us. She uses my credit card for this. When she was gone I started up the projector and began to watch a film with Lillian Gish and to read the dialogue from it into the recorder when suddenly the door opened and I looked up to see Spofforth standing there in the doorway. He was so tall and so powerful-looking that he seemed to fill up all the space just standing there. And yet I was not frightened by him this time. Spofforth is, after all, only a robot. I turned off the projector and invited him in. He came in and sat in the white plastic chair by the far wall, facing me. He was wearing khaki pants, sandals, and a white T-shirt. His face was unsmiling, but not harsh.

After we had sat silently for a while I said, “Have you been listening to my journal?” I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and he had never been in my room before.

He nodded. “When I have time.”

Something about this annoyed me, and I felt bold with him. “Why do you want to know about me?” I said. “Why do you want me to keep a journal of my life?”

He didn’t answer. After a moment he said, “The teaching of reading is a crime. You could be sent to prison for it.”

That did not frighten me. I thought of what Mary Lou had said about Detection, about how no one ever got detected. “Why?” I said. I was violating a Rule of Conduct: “Don’t ask; relax.” But I didn’t care. I wanted to know why it should be a crime to teach someone to read. And why Spofforth hadn’t told me this before, when I had first suggested teaching reading at NYU. “Why shouldn’t I teach Mary Lou how to read?”

Spofforth leaned forward, putting his huge hands on his knees, staring at me. His stare was a bit frightening, but I did not look away from it.

“Reading is too intimate,” Spofforth said. “It will put you too close to the feelings and the ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.”

I was beginning to feel a bit frightened. It was not easy to be in Spofforth’s presence, and to listen to his deep, authoritative voice and not want to be obedient, and unquestioning. But I remembered something I had read in a book: “Others can be wrong too, you know,” and I held on to that. “Why should it be a crime to be disturbed and confused? And to know what others have thought and felt?”

Spofforth stared at me. “Don’t you want to be happy?” he said.

I had heard that question asked before, by my robot-teachers at the dormitory; it had always seemed unanswerable. But now, here in my room, with Mary Lou’s things in it and with my projector and cans of film, and with my mind undrugged, it made me suddenly angry. “People who don’t read are killing themselves, burning their bodies with fire. Are they happy?”

Spofforth stared at me. Then, suddenly, he looked away, toward the back of another chair where Mary Lou’s red dress was lying, crumpled, with a pair of her sandals sitting on the seat by it. “It is also a crime,” he said, but softer now, “to live for over a week with another person.”

“What is a week?” I said.

“Seven days,” Spofforth said.

“Why not seven days?” I said. “Or seven hundred? I am happy with Mary Lou. Happier than I ever was before, with dope and with quick sex.”

“You’re frightened,” Spofforth said. “I can see that you’re frightened right now.”

Suddenly I stood up. “So what?” I said. “So what? It’s better to be living than to be—to be a robot.”

I was frightened. Frightened of Spofforth, frightened of the future. Frightened of my own anger. For a moment I had a strong desire, standing there silently, to take a sopor—to take a whole handful of them and to make myself calm, unruffled, unfeeling. But I liked being angry, and I was not ready to let go of it. “Why should you care if I’m happy?” I said. “What business is it of yours what I do? You’re some kind of machine, anyway.”

And then Spofforth did a surprising thing. He threw back his head and laughed, loud and deep, for a long time. And, crazily, I felt my anger going away and I began to laugh with him. Finally he stopped and said, “Okay, Bentley. Okay.” He stood up. “You’re more than I thought you were. Go on living with her.” He walked toward the door and then turned around and faced me. “For a while.”

I just looked at him and said nothing. He left, closing the door behind him.

When he was gone I sat down on my bed-and-desk again and found that my arms were trembling uncontrollably and that my heart was pounding. I had never talked like that to anyone before and certainly not to a robot. I was terribly frightened of myself. But, deeper, I was elated. It was strange. I had never felt that way before.

When Mary Lou returned I told her nothing about my visitor. But when she wanted to go on with our reading I made love to her instead. She was a little angry with that at first; but my desire for her was so strong, and we made love so powerfully, on the carpet on the floor, with my holding her body tightly and forcing myself into her strongly, that before long she was kissing me all over my face and laughing.

And afterward I felt so good, so relaxed, that I said, “Let’s read for a while.” And we did. And nothing happened. Spofforth did not return.

Mary Lou has been writing down the memory of her life at the same time that I have been writing this. I am at my desk and she is sitting in my< extra chair, using a large book in her lap as a writing surface. She prints beautifully, methodically, in small, neat letters. I am embarrassed that after such a short time she can write better than I. Yet I was her teacher, and I am proud of that. I think now that in my years at the university I never taught anyone anything worth knowing; I have more pleasure from what I have taught Mary Lou than in all my work in Ohio.

DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT

We saw a group immolation today.

We decided to do a new thing and eat breakfast in the Burger Chef. It is a seven-block walk, and I mentioned that to her, telling her how I had got into the habit of counting things. At the dormitories everyone learns to count to ten, but counting is used mainly for the eight different prices of things a person can buy. A pair of pants costs two units and an algaeburger costs one unit and so on. And when you have used up all your units for the day your credit card turns pink and won’t work anymore. Most things, of course, are free—like thought-bus rides and shoes and TV sets.

She counted the blocks and agreed that there were seven. “But I always counted my five sandwiches at the zoo,” she said.

I thought of Arithmetic for Boys and Girls. “After you ate three sandwiches how many were left?” I said.

She laughed. “Two sandwiches.” Then she stopped on the street and made herself look like the moron robot at the zoo. She , held out her left hand stiffly as though it were holding five sandwiches. And she made her eyes blank and held her head cocked to the side and let her lips open slightly, like a moron robot’s, and just stood there, staring stupidly at me.

At first I was shocked and didn’t know what she was doing. Then I laughed aloud.

Some students passing by in denim robes stared at her and then looked away. I was a little embarrassed at her. Making a Spectacle; but I could not help laughing.

We went on to the Burger Chef, and there was an immolation already in progress.

It was exactly the same booth that I had seen it happen in before. It must have been almost over because the smell of burnt flesh in the room was pungent and you could feel the strong breeze from the exhaust fans that were trying to clear the air.

There were three people again—all women. Their bodies had burned black, and in the breeze short flames flickered from what was left of their clothing and hair. Their faces were smiling.

I thought they were already dead when one of them spoke—or shouted. What she shouted was: “This is the ultimate inwardness, praise Jesus Christ our Lord!” Her mouth inside was black. Even her teeth were black.

Then she became silent. I supposed she was dead.

“My God!” Mary Lou said. “My God!”

I took her arm, not even caring if anyone saw me do it, and took her out the door. She walked to the curb and sat down, facing the street.

She said nothing. Two thought buses and a Detection car went by in the street, and people passed her on the sidewalk, all ignoring her as she ignored them. I stood beside her, not knowing what to say or do.

Finally she said, still staring at the street, “Did they do it to themselves?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think it happens often.”

“My God,” she said. “Why? Why would people do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why they don’t do it alone, either. Or in private.”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe it’s the drugs.”

I didn’t answer for a minute or so. Then I said, “Maybe it’s the way they live.”

She stood up, looked at me with a look of surprise, and reached out and held my right arm. “Yes,” she said, “that’s probably right.”

DAY EIGHTY-THREE

I am in prison. I have been in prison five days. Just printing the word “prison” itself, on this coarse paper, is painful to me. I have never felt more alone in my life. I do not know how to live without Mary Lou.

There is a small window in my cell and if I look out it I can see the long, dirty green buildings of the compound, with their rusted metal roofs and heavily barred windows, under the late-afternoon sun. I have just come back from an afternoon working in the fields, and the blisters on my hands have opened and are wet, and the tight metal bracelets on my wrists sting the chafed skin beneath them. There is a bluish bruise on my side that is bigger than my hand where a moron guard clubbed me for losing time when I stumbled, my first day in the fields; and my feet ache from working in the heavy black shoes that were issued me when I first came here. I can hardly hold the pen that I am writing with, because of the cramping in my hand.

I do not know what has become of Mary Lou. The pains I can stand, for I know they could be worse and they will probably get better; but not knowing if I will ever see Mary Lou again and not knowing what has been done with her are more than I feel I can bear. I must find a way to die.

At first, without Mary Lou and with the shock of what had happened to me, I did not want to write again. Not ever. I was allowed to keep my pen and the pages of my journal, which I stuffed into my jacket pocket without thinking when I was taken away. But I had no fresh paper to write on, and I made no effort to find any. I know I had started my journal with no reader in mind—for I was, then, the only person alive who could read. But I came to realize later that Mary Lou had become my audience. I was writing my journal for her. It seemed to me, then, than it was pointless to go on writing in prison, in this horrible place, without her.

I know I would not be writing now if a strange thing had not happened this noon, after I had finished my morning shift at the shoe factory and had gone to wash my face and hands before eating the wretched lunch of bread and protein soup they serve us here and that we are required to eat in silence. It happened in the little steel washroom with its three dirty washstands. I had washed my sore hands as well as I could with cold water and no soap and reached up to pull a paper towel out of the dispenser. As I touched the dispenser, awkwardly because my hands were stiff and cramped from yesterday’s fieldwork, it fell open and a high stack of folded paper towels dropped into my hands. I grabbed them instinctively and then winced with the pain of it. But I held on to them, staring at them, and I realized that I was holding a stack of hundreds of sheets of strong, coarse paper. Paper that could be written on.

So much of what is important in my life seems to happen by accident. I found the reading film and books by accident, and I met Mary Lou by accident, and found Dictionary by accident. And the paper I am now writing on fell into my hands by accident. I do not know what to think about this; but I am glad to write again, even if no one will read it and even if I find a way to die tomorrow.

I will stop now. I have dropped the pen too many times. My hand will not hold it.

Mary Lou. Mary Lou. I cannot stand this.

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

It is five days since I last wrote. My hands are better now, stronger, and I can hold the pen fairly well. But my back and side still ache.

My feet are better. After several days here I noticed that many of my fellow prisoners were barefoot, and I reported for work the next morning without my shoes. My feet are still sore, but they are healing. And my muscles are beginning to feel stronger, tighter.

I am not happy! I am very unhappy, but I no longer am certain that I want to die. Drowning is a possibility. But I will wait awhile before I decide.

The robot guards are horrible. One has beaten me, and I see them beat other prisoners. I know it is terribly wrong of me, but I would like to kill the one who beat me, before I die. I am shocked at myself for wanting that, but it is one of the things that make me want to live. He has tiny red eyes like some hateful and cruel animal, and heavy muscles that bulge under his brown uniform. I could smash his face with a brick.

And, before I die, I want to bring my journal up to now. It is still daylight outside. If I work steadily I think I can write about how I came to be sent here before I must go to sleep.

For several days Mary Lou and I had been coming back, over and over, to the book of poems. We would read them aloud to one another, only barely understanding them. One poem we kept coming back to is called “The Hollow Men.” Early one afternoon I was reading it aloud while sitting on the floor next to Mary Lou. I believe I can write the words down:

And that was as far as I got. The door opened and Dean Spofforth walked in. He stood over us hugely, folded his arms, and stared down. It was shocking to see him in my room like this. Mary Lou had never seen him before, and she was staring up at bun with her eyes very wide.

There was something odd about his appearance and it took me a moment to tell what it was. And then I realized it; Spofforth was wearing a broad black armband with the white face of Privacy printed on it. I recognized it from a school lesson somewhere long ago; it was the armband of a Dectector.

Mary Lou was the first to speak. “What do you want?” she said. She did not sound frightened.

“You are both under arrest,” Spofforth said. And then, “I want you both to stand.”

We stood up. I was still holding the book. “Well?” Mary Lou said.

Spofforth looked her steadily in the face. “I am a Detector, and you have been detected.”

I could tell that she was shocked and trying not to show it. I wanted to put my arm around her, to protect her somehow. But I just stood there.

Spofforth was much taller than either of us, and his dignity and force were overwhelming. I had always been afraid of him and now his saying that he was a Detector had me speechless.

“Detected doing what?” Mary Lou said. There was a slight trembling in her voice.

Spofforth stared at her, unblinking. “Detected in cohabitation. Detected in the teaching of reading and detected in the act of reading itself.”

“But, Dean Spofforth,” I broke in, “you already knew I could…”

“Yes,” he said, “and I told you clearly that reading would not be taught at this university. The teaching of reading is a crime.”

Something sank deep inside me. I felt the strength and excitement that had been so much of my life for recent days all go away and I was standing in front of this massive robot like a little child. “A crime?” I said.

“Yes, Bentley,” he said. “Your hearing will be tomorrow. You are to remain in your room until I return in the morning.”

Then he took Mary Lou by the arm and said, “You will come with me.”

She tried to pull away from him and then, finding she could not break his grip, she said, “Bug off, robot. Bug off, for Christ’s sake.”

He looked at her and seemed to laugh. “That won’t work,” he said. But his voice softened and he added, “No harm will come to you.”

And as he went out the door he turned and looked at me. “Don’t be too unhappy, Bentley. This may all be for the best.”

She went with him without a struggle, and he pulled the door shut behind himself.

No harm? What worse harm could there be than this separation? Where is she? Where is Mary Lou?

I am crying as I write. I cannot finish now. I will take sopors and sleep.

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

There is more to tell than I can say in the time that I have. But I will try.

Spofforth himself took me to court. I was handcuffed and he brought me on a black thought bus to a place in Central Park called Justice House. It was a two-story plastic building with dirty windows.

The courtroom was large. There were many pictures of strange-looking men on the walls. Some of them were wearing the suits and ties that I had seen in ancient films. One man stood in front of a bookcase, much like Douglas Fairbanks. And under his picture there was writing. It said: “Sydney Fairfax, Chief Justice.” And under this, in smaller print, were the numbers 1997-2014. I believe those numbers were what are called “dates.”

There was a black-robed robot judge sitting in an armchair at the far end of the courtroom, facing the entranceway. I started when I saw him; I had seen his face before. It was the face of the Make Seven headmaster at the dormitory in Ohio where I had been educated. An Upper-Management Robot. I remembered hearing once, “All Make Sevens look alike.” And I, being just a child, had said, “Why?” and the child I was talking to had said, “Don’t ask; relax.”

The judge was dormant when we came in. That is, his power had been turned off. Next to him was sitting, also dormant, and in a lower, simpler chair, a Make Four clerk robot.

When we got closer I could see that there was yellowish dust, like that in the sealed-off part of the library, all over each of them. The intelligent-looking creases on the judge’s face were filled with yellow dust. His hands were folded in his lap, and from his right forearm to his chin a spider had built a web, some time ago. There were holes in the web, and dust on it. A few tiny bodies of insects, like dried snot, hung on the remains of the web. There was no spider visible.

Behind the judge was the Great Seal of North America, just like the one in Piety House at the Thinker Dormitory. It too was covered with dust, which had settled thickly on the relief images of dove and heart; and the plasticasts of the twin Holy Goddesses of Individualism and Privacy, which flanked the Great Seal, were also covered with dust.

Spofforth placed me in the defendant’s chair, which was made of something called wood and was uncomfortable. Then he removed my handcuffs, with a surprisingly gentle touch, and had me place my right hand in the Truth Hole that sat directly in front of me. He said quietly, “For each lie you tell, a ringer will be severed. Answer the judge with care.”

I had, of course, learned of Truth Holes, and of courts, in my Minimal Civics classes. But I had never seen these things before and I found myself trembling with fright. Perhaps the fright was made worse by the resemblance so many things bore to the dormitories, and to the time I was punished for Privacy Imposition as a child. I shifted my weight in the hard seat, tried to make myself comfortable, and waited.

Spofforth looked around the room as though he were studying the holes in the plaster, or the pictures of ancient men, or the empty wood benches. Then he walked over to the judge and ran a finger down the side of the robot’s cheek and then looked at the little pile of dust on his finger. “Inexcusable,” he said.

He turned to the clerk and said, in an authoritative voice, “Activate yourself, Clerk of the Court.”

The clerk did not move except for his mouth. He said, “Who commands the court?”

“I am a Robot Rational. Make Nine. I command you to awaken.”

Immediately the clerk stood. Some debris fell from his lap onto the floor. “Yes, your honor. I am awake and active.”

“I want you to summon a cleaning crew and have the judge cleaned. Immediately.” Then Spofforth looked at the bits of yellow dust and debris that were clinging to the clerk’s lap and said, “Have yourself cleaned up too.”

The clerk spoke respectfully. “The court servos and cleaning crew are no longer operable, your honor.”

“Why not?”

“Dead batteries and general malfunction, your honor.”

“Why haven’t they been repaired?”

“There have been no repair crews in Central Park for sixty yellows, your honor.”

“All right,” Spofforth said. “Then get cleaning materials yourself and clean the two of you up.”

“Yes, your honor.” The clerk turned and walked slowly out of the room. He limped badly, with one of his legs almost dragging behind him.

A few minutes later he returned with a pail of water and a sponge. He walked up to the judge and, dipping the sponge in water, began wiping off the judge’s face. Some of the yellow dust smeared, but most of it came off. Then he began cleaning the judge’s hands, slowly and awkwardly.

Spofforth appeared impatient. I did not know that there was such a thing as an impatient robot; but Spofforth was tapping a foot audibly. Then, abruptly, he strode to the seated judge, stooped, picked up the hem of the judge’s robe, and shook it vigorously. Dust flew everywhere. As it began to settle I saw that the spider web was gone.

Then Spofforth stood back and faced the judge. He told the clerk to stop and he stopped immediately, leaving a greenish stain on the judge’s left hand, still folded in his lap.

“Your services will not be needed for this hearing,” Spofforth told the clerk. “I will record the proceedings myself. While the hearing is in progress you may phone General Maintenance to send a City Cleaning and a City Repair robot immediately.”

The clerk looked at Spofforth stupidly. I think he was a Make Three—green lobes—and they are only a bit above moron robots. “The telephone doesn’t work,” he said.

“Then walk to General Maintenance. It’s about five blocks from here.”

“Walk?” the robot said.

“You clearly know how. Do you know where to go?”

“Yes, sir.” The clerk turned and began to limp toward the door. Spofforth said, “Wait,” and then, “Come here.”

The clerk turned around, came to him, and stood facing him. Spofforth bent down, took the clerk’s left leg in his hand, felt of it a moment, and then gave it an abrupt wrench. Something inside it made a heavy scraping sound. Spofforth stood up. “Now go,” he said.

And the clerk walked out of the court with his gait perfectly normal.

Spofforth turned and faced the judge again. The judge was cleaner now, but a bit streaked and rumpled.

“I call the court to session,” Spofforth said, just as our Civics class had taught us any citizen could do. They had never said anything about robots doing it, though. They had told us how important courts were for protecting our sacred rights to Privacy and Individuality, and how helpful a judge could be, but you somehow got the idea that it was a good idea to stay away from courts altogether.

The judge’s head came awake, although the rest of him remained motionless. “Who calls the court?” he said, in a deep, grave voice.

“I am a Make Nine robot,” Spofforth said quietly, “programmed for Detection and so empowered by the Government of North America.”

The rest of the judge woke up at that. He adjusted his robe, ran fingers through his grayish hair, then placed his chin in his hand and said, “The court is in session. What is the citizen robot’s request?”

Citizen robot? I had never heard that term before.

“A criminal case, Judge,” Spofforth said. “The defendant will give his name.” He turned to me. “Say your name, title, and place of residence.” And then, nodding toward the Truth Hole, “Be careful.”

I had almost forgotten about the Truth Hole. I avoided looking at it and said carefully, “My name is Paul Bentley. I am Professor of Mental Arts at Southeast Ohio University and my official residence is at Professor House on campus. Currently I live at the Arts Library of New York University, where I am temporarily employed by the Dean of Faculties.” I did not know whether I should say that Spofforth was the dean I worked for, but I did not.

“Very good, son,” the judge said. He looked at Spofforth. “What is the criminal charge?”

“There are three charges,” Spofforth said. “Cohabitation, Reading, and the Teaching of Reading.”

The judge looked at him blankly. “What is Reading?” he said.

Spofforth said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “You are a Make Seven, designed in the Fourth Age. Your Legal Program would not contain the charge. Consult your archives.”

“Yes,” the judge said. He flipped a switch on the arm of his huge chair and a voice somewhere said, “This is the Archives of Law for North America,” and the judge said, “Is there a civil crime called Reading? And is it a different crime to teach the first crime?”

The archives voice was a long time replying. I had never heard a computer take so long. Or maybe it was merely the way I felt. Finally the voice came back and said, “Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth ages. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.”

The judge switched off the computer. Then he said, “This is clearly a grave business, young man. And you are charged with Cohabitation also.” Then, to Spofforth, “With what has he cohabited? Man, woman, robot, or beast?”

“With a woman. They have lived together for seven weeks.”

The judge nodded and turned to me. “That is not as grave as the other, young man. But it is a serious risking of Individuality and Personhood and it has been known often to lead to far more serious behavior.”

“Yes, Judge,” I said. I started to say that I was sorry, but I realized just in time that I was not at all sorry—just frightened. I could have lost a finger.

“Is there anything else?” the judge asked Spofforth.

“No.”

The judge looked at me. “Take your hand from the Honesty Regulator and rise and face the court.”

I took my hand out of the Truth Hole and stood.

“How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?” the judge said.

No longer having my hand in the box, I could have lied. But then I supposed my hand would be put back in if I said “not guilty” and we proceeded to have a trial. And, indeed, I have found out from another prisoner here that that is exactly the case. Almost everyone pleads guilty.

I looked at the judge and said, “Guilty.”

“The court commends your honesty,” the judge said. “You are sentenced to six years in the North American Penitentiary, at hard labor for the first two years.” The judge lowered his head slightly and looked at me sternly. “Come forward,” he said.

I walked up to his chair. He rose, slowly, and then reached out his arms. His large hands, one still with the green stain, grasped my shoulders. I felt something stinging my skin, like a drug in-jection. And I went unconscious.

I awoke in this prison.

That is all I can write today. My writing hand and arm ache from what I have already written. Besides, it is late and I must do physical work tomorrow.

DAY NINETY

My room—or “cell”—at the prison is not much bigger than a small thought bus, but it is comfortable and private. I have a bed, a chair, a lamp, and a TV wall with a small library of recordings. The only recording I have played so far is of a dance-and-exercise program, but I did not feel like dancing and took the BB out of the holder before the program was finished.

There are about fifty other prisoners in identical cells in the same building; we all leave for work together after breakfast. In the mornings I work in a prison shoe factory. I am one of fourteen inmate inspectors. The shoes are made, of course, by automatic equipment; my job is to examine one shoe out of each fourteen for flaws. A moron robot watches over us and I have been warned that if I do not pick up a shoe after the man on my left picks one up, each time, I will be punished. I have found that it is not really necessary to look at the shoe, so I do not. I merely pick up one out of each fourteen.

Since I am trained at Mental Arts it is easy for me to spend much of the shoe-inspection time in gentle hallucinating, but I am dismayed at times to find that there is one aspect of my hallucinations over which I have no control; images of Mary Lou will come, with shocking vividness, into my mind. I will be trying to amuse myself with hallucinated abstractions—colors and free-form shapes—when, without warning, I will see Mary Lou’s face, with that intense and puzzled stare. Or Mary Lou sitting cross-legged on the floor of my office with a book in her lap, reading.

When I was teaching, I used to make a little joke during my hallucinating-to-orgasm lecture. I would say to my classes, “This would be a good technique to learn in case you are ever sent to prison.” It never got much of a laugh, since I suppose you have to be well-educated in Classics—James Cagney films, for instance—to understand the prison reference. Anyway, that was a joke I used to make. But I do not now hallucinate to orgasm—even though I am expert at the technique. At night in my cell I masturbate—as I suppose the other prisoners do. I want to save my most intimate thoughts of Mary Lou for when I am alone at night.

We are given two joints and two sopors with our evening meal but I have been saving mine. After supper I can smell the sweet smell of marijuana in the big prison dormitory and hear the music of erotic TV coming from the other cells, and imagine the synthetic bliss on the faces of the other prisoners. Somehow the thought of that, writing it now, makes me shudder. I want Mary Lou here with me. I want to hear her voice. I want to laugh with her. I want her to comfort me.

A year ago I would not have known what I was feeling. But after all those films I know what it is: I am in love with Mary Lou.

It feels terrible. Being in love feels terrible.

I don’t know where this prison is. Somewhere by the ocean. I was brought here unconscious and woke to find myself being given a blue uniform by a robot. I could not sleep the first night, wanting her with me.

I want her. Nothing else is real.

DAY NINETY-ONE

In the afternoons I work in a field at the edge of the ocean. The field is vast, with about two miles of shoreline; it is full of a coarse synthetic plant called Protein 4. The plants are big ugly things, about the size and shape of a man’s head, purple-green in color and with a rancid smell. Even out in the sunny fields, the smell is sometimes almost overpowering. My job is feeding them individually with chemicals that are prescribed by a computer each day. I have a little squirt gun that is loaded with pellets by a computer terminal at the end of each long row, and I hold it to a little plastic mouth that is imbedded in the yellow soil at the base of each plant and squeeze a pellet in.

It is backbreaking to do, under the hot sun, keeping up the fast tempo that is created by the constant music in the field. Forty of us work there, with a five-minute break each hour. We all perspire constantly.

Ten moron robots could do this work. But we are being rehabilitated.

Or that is what the television we must watch during our after-lunch social time tells us. We are not allowed to talk during social time, so I do not know if the others feel as angry as I do, and as weary.

Two robots in brown uniforms watch over us while we work. They are short, heavy, and ugly, and whenever I look toward the one who has beaten me he seems to be staring at me, unblinking, with his android’s mouth hanging slightly open, as if he is about to drool.

My hand is still so tired and sore from squeezing the trigger on that pistol that I cannot write any more.

Mary Lou. I only hope that you are not as unhappy as I. And I hope that you think of me, from time to time.