Robert Silverberg - How it Was When the Past Went Away

Ten minutes later they were close enough to see the stage. A tall, thin, wild-looking man with unruly yellow hair was on the stage. Beside him was a small, scrawny man in ragged clothing, and there were a dozen others flanking them, carrying ceramic bowls.

“What’s happening?” Mueller asked someone in the crowd.

“Religious ceremony.”

“Eh?”

“New religion. Church of Oblivion. That’s the head prophet up there. You haven’t heard about it yet?”

“Not a thing.”

“Started around Friday. You see that ratty-looking character next to the prophet?”

“Yes.”

“He’s the one that put the stuff in the water supply. He confessed and they made him drink his own drug. Now he doesn’t remember a thing, and he’s the assistant prophet. Craziest damn stuff!”

“And what are they doing up there?”

“They’ve got the drug in those bowls. They drink and forget some more. They drink and forget some more.”

The gathering fog absorbed the sounds of those on the stage. Mueller strained to listen. He saw the bright eyes of fanaticism, the alleged contaminator of the water looked positively radiant. Words drifted out into the night.

“Brothers and sisters…the joy, the sweetness of forgetting…come up here with us, take communion with us…oblivion…redemption…even for the most wicked…forget…forget…”

They were passing the bowls around on stage, drinking, smiling. People were going up to receive the communion, taking a bowl, sipping, nodding happily. Toward the rear of the stage the bowls were being refilled by three sober-looking functionaries.

Mueller felt a chill. He suspected that what had been born in this park during this week would endure, somehow, long after the crisis of San Francisco had become part of history; and it seemed to him that something new and frightening had been loosed upon the land.

“Take…drink…forget…” the prophet cried.

And the worshippers cried, “Take…drink…forget…”

The bowls were passed.

“What’s it all about?” Carole whispered.

“Take…drink…forget…”

“Take…drink…forget…”

“Blessed is the sweet oblivion.”

“Blessed is the sweet oblivion.”

“Sweet if it is to lay down the burden of one’s soul.”

“Sweet it is to lay down the burden of one’s soul. ”

“Joyous it is to begin anew.”

“Joyous it is to begin anew.”

The fog was deepening. Mueller could barely see the aquarium building just across the way. He clasped his hand tightly around Carole’s and began to think about getting out of the park.

He had to admit, though, that these people might have hit on something true. Was he not better off for having taken a chemical into his bloodstream, and thereby shedding a portion of his past? Yes, of course. And yet—to mutilate one’s mind this way, deliberately, happily, to drink deep of oblivion—

“Blessed are those who are able to forget,” the prophet said.

“Blessed are those who are able to forget,” the crowd roared in response.

“Blessed are those who are able to forget,” Mueller heard his own voice cry. And he began to tremble. And he felt sudden fear: He sensed the power of this strange new movement, the gathering strength of the prophet’s appeal to unreason. It was time for a new religion, maybe, a cult that offered emancipation from all inner burdens. They would synthesize this drug and turn it out by the ton, Mueller thought, and repeatedly dose cities with it, so that everyone could be converted, so that everyone might taste the joys of oblivion. No one will be able to stop them. After a while no one will want to stop them. And so we’ll go on, drinking deep, until we’re washed clean of all pain and all sorrow, of all sad recollection, we’ll sip a cup of kindness and part with auld lang syne, we’ll give up the griefs we carry around, and we’ll give up everything else, identity, soul, self, mind. We will drink sweet oblivion. Mueller shivered. Turning suddenly, tugging roughly at Carole’s arm, he pushed through the joyful worshipping crowd, and hunted somberly in the fogwrapped night, trying to find some way out of the park.