Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

“But you try not to act like it.”

“Yes. Ha. Well, you must have heard our advertising.”

“Constantly.”

“Well, let’s see now. Hiram Cloward, Ph.D. Nebraska 1981. English literature, twentieth century, with a minor in Russian literature. Dissertation on Dostoevski’s influence on English-language novelists. A near-perfect class attendance record, and a reputation for arrogance and competence.”

“How much do you know about me?”

“Only the standard consumer research data. But we do have a bit of a problem.”

Hiram waited, but the Aryan merely punched a button, leaned back, and looked at Hiram. His eyes were kindly and warm and intense. It made Hiram uncomfortable.

“Mr. Cloward.”

“Yes?”

“You are unemployed.”

“Not willingly.”

“Few people are willingly unemployed, Mr. Cloward. But you have no job. You also have no family. You also have no friends.”

“That’s consumer research? What, only people with friends buy Rice Krispies?”

“As a matter of fact, Rice Krispies are favored by solitary people. We have to know who is more likely to be receptive to advertising, and we direct our programming accordingly.”

Hiram remembered that he ate Rice Krispies for breakfast almost every morning. He vowed on the spot to switch to something else. Quaker Oats, for instance. Surely they were more gregarious.

“You understand the importance of the Selective Programming Broadcast Act of 1985, yes?”

“Yes.”

“It was deemed unfair by the Supreme Court for all programming to be geared to the majority. Minorities were being slighted. And so Bell Television was given the assignment of preparing an individually selected broadcast system so that each individual, in his own home, would have the programming perfect for him.”

“I know all this.”

“I must go over it again anyway, Mr. Cloward, because I’m going to have to help you understand why there can be no change in your programming.”

Hiram stiffened in his chair, his hands flexing. “I knew you bastards wouldn’t change.”

“Mr. Cloward, we bastards would be delighted to change. But we are very closely regulated by the government to provide the most healthful programming for every American citizen. Now, I will continue my review.”

“I’ll just go home, if you don’t mind.”

“Mr. Cloward, we are directed to prepare programming for minorities as small as ten thousand people—but no smaller. Even for minorities of ten thousand the programming is ridiculously expensive—a program seen by so few costs far more per watching-minute to produce than one seen by thirty or forty million. However, you belong to a minority even smaller than ten thousand.”

“That makes me feel so special.”

“Furthermore, the Consumer Protection Broadcast Act of 1989 and the regulations of the Consumer Broadcast Agency since then have given us very strict guidelines. Mr. Cloward, we cannot show you any program with overt acts of violence.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have tendencies toward hostility that are only exacerbated by viewing violence. Similarly, we cannot show you any programs with sex.”

Cloward’s face turned red.

“You have no sex life whatsoever, Mr. Cloward. Do you realize how dangerous that is? You don’t even masturbate. The tension and hostility inside you must be tremendous.”

Cloward leaped to his feet. There were limits to what a man had to put up with. He headed for the door.

“Mr. Cloward, I’m sorry.” The Aryan followed him to the door. “I don’t make these things up. Wouldn’t you rather know why these decisions are reached?”

Hiram stopped at the door, his hand on the knob. The Aryan was right. Better to know why than to hate them for it.

“How,” Hiram asked. “How do they know what I do and do not do within the walls of my home?”

“We don’t know, of course, but we’re pretty sure. We’ve studied people for years. We know that people who have certain buying patterns and certain living patterns behave in certain ways. And, unfortunately, you have strong destructive tendencies. Repression and denial are your primary means of adaptation to stress, that and, unfortunately, occasional acting out.”

“What the hell does all that mean?”

“It means that you lie to yourself until you can’t anymore, and then you attack somebody.”

Hiram’s face was packed with hot blood, throbbing. I must look like a tomato, he told himself, and deliberately calmed himself. I don’t care, he thought. They’re wrong anyway. Damn scientific tests.

“Aren’t there any movies you could program for me?”

“I am sorry, no.”

“Not all movies have sex and violence.”

The Aryan smiled soothingly. “The movies that don’t wouldn’t interest you anyway.”

“Then turn the damn thing off and let me read!”

“We can’t do that.”

“Can’t you turn it down?”

“No.”

“I am so sick of hearing all about Sarah Wynn and her damn love life!”

“But isn’t Sarah Wynn attractive?” asked the Aryan.

That stopped Hiram cold. He dreamed about Sarah Wynn at night. He said nothing. He had no attraction to Sarah Wynn.

“Isn’t she?” the Aryan insisted.

“Isn’t who what?”

“Sarah Wynn.”

“Who was talking about Sarah Wynn? What about documentaries?”

“Mr. Cloward, you would become extremely hostile if the news programs were broadcast to you. You know that.”

“Walter Cronkite’s dead. Maybe I’d like them better now.”

“You don’t care about the news of the real world, Mr. Cloward, do you?”

“No.”

“Then you see where we are. Not one iota of our programming is really appropriate for you. But ninety percent of it is downright harmful to you. And we can’t turn the television off, because of the Solitude Act. Do you see our dilemma?”

“Do you see mine?”

“Of course, Mr. Cloward. And I sympathize completely. Make some friends, Mr. Cloward, and we’ll turn off your television.”

And so the interview was over.

For two days Cloward brooded. All the time he did, Sarah Wynn was grieving over her three-days’ husband who had just been killed in a car wreck on Wiltshire Boulevard, wherever the hell that was. But now the body was scarcely cold and already her old suitors were back, trying to help her, trying to push their love on her. “Can’t you let yourself depend on rne, just a little?” asked Teddy, the handsome one with lots of money.

“I don’t like depending on people,” Sarah answered.

“You depended on George.” George was the husband’s name. The dead one.

“I know,” she said, and cried for a moment. Sarah Wynn was good at crying. Hiram Cloward turned another page in The Brothers Karamazov.

“You need friends,” Teddy insisted.

“Oh, Teddy, I know it,” she said, weeping. “Will you be my friend?”

“Who writes this stuff?” Hiram Cloward asked aloud. Maybe the Aryan in the television company offices had been right. Make some friends. Get the damn set turned off whatever the cost.

He got up from his chair and went out into the corridor in the apartment building. Clearly posted on the walls were several announcements:

Chess club 5-9 wed

Encounter groups nightly at 7

Learn to knit 6:30 bring yarn and needles

Games games games in game room (basement)

Just want to chat? Friends of the Family 7:30 to 10:30 nightly

Friends of the Family? Hiram snorted. Family was his maudlin mother and her constant weeping about how hard life was and how no one in her right mind would ever be born a woman if anybody had any choice but there was no choice and marriage was a trap men sprung on women, giving them a few minutes of pleasure for a lifetime of drudgery, and I swear to God if it wasn’t for my little baby Hiram I’d ditch that bastard for good, it’s for your sake I don’t leave, my little baby, because if I leave you’ll grow up into a macho bastard like your beerbelly father.