Robert Sheckley - Deep Blue Sleep

"But what do you do with it?"

"Well, you can eat by merely reading the recipe you want. They're all right here in this book."

"Wow, that's a big book!"

"It's the Encyclopedia of All Encyclopedias of All Recipes Ever Conceived Since the Beginning of the World, Together with Their Main Variations. As you can imagine, it's pretty thorough."

"Must have been expensive."

"Yes, but well worth it, especially with its Length of Meal option which lets you set Ingestion Duration anywhere from 5 nanoseconds all the way up to 18 hours for feasts you really want to linger over. And the Intensity scale has an orgasmic level that's new this year. It makes a good meal just that much more enjoyable."

"Too bad I'm not hungry."

"You don't have to be. I also have a Virtual Hunger program that will give you all the appetite you could want."

"I don't want to be hungry right now. I'll just wander around a little more, thank you. What's this, a broom closet?"

"I like to keep things clean."

"In your mind?"

"Of course. Virtual cleanliness is just as important as the real thing."

"Have you got a bathroom here?"

"What would I be doing with a bathroom in my mind? And what would you need it for?"

"A virtual bathroom will do just as well. My, what a lot of doors. And what is this? A winding staircase! I wonder where it leads."

"Don't go down there!"

"Take it easy. I always enjoy looking around men's minds. Now this is interesting. It gets darker as I go down."

"Stay out of there! That staircase leads to the recesses of my mind. Can't you read the sign? It says, `Unconscious Level. Entry Strictly Forbidden Except to Licensed Psychotherapists.' I will thank you to keep your nose out of my personal private business."

"Come on, don't be such a spoilsport. I'm down there already. I just want a peek at what's behind this odd little door..."

"Don't touch that door!"

"Don't get so excited. What makes you think you got anything I ain't seen before?"

"SHUT THAT DOOR!"

There was the virtual sound of a door opening. Then Myra said, "Greck!"

"I beg your pardon?" Gersten said.

"`Greck' is the sort of expression my ex-husband Hubert used when he came across something especially nasty. I think what I just saw qualifies."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I should think not. You are a dirty bit of business, aren't you?"

"I'm perfectly normal. All men's heads have cellar rooms like that."

"You know, I don't think you know men's heads very well. The last guy's head I was in, it was just one big room, you know? No upstairs or downstairs. And this room was empty except for a pile of stuff in one corner. Do you know what it was?"

"Women's dismembered bodies?"

"Golf trophies! Isn't that a scream?"

"I see nothing funny about it. Get out of my Unconscious!"

"In a moment."

"What are you doing now?"

"Looking around. This doorway here...It leads to the Pleasure Center! I knew you had to have one! Everyone's got one!"

"Leave my Pleasure Center alone! And what do you mean, everybody's got one ?"

"Well, everybody whose head I've been in."

"What were you doing in other men's Pleasure Centers?"

"Well, you know. Someone hires you to go into their Pleasure Center, you don't spend a whole lot of time asking them what they want you to do there, you know what I mean?"

"I'm not sure."

"Want me to spell it out?"

"No! Why do you do that sort of thing?"

"Well, it's a job, you know?"

"No, I don't know!"

"You've led a sheltered life."

"So what do you do when you get into a guy's head?"

Myra hesitated, then said, "Look, maybe we shouldn't talk about this."

"No, no, it's all right, tell me."

"You're not going to like it... Okay, a guy usually asks me to sit down, make myself comfortable. Sometimes he offers me a drink. It's not a real drink, of course, it's a virtual drink, but it helps break the ice. Sometimes he'll offer me a joint or two, or a couple of snorts of coke."

"That's against the law."

"Real coke is, but not virtual coke."

"What do you do then?"

"We fool around a little."

"What do you mean, you fool around? There aren't any bodies involved, what can you do?"

"I'm trying to tell you, aren't I? What's this?"

"Wait a minute, what are you doing?"

"It looks so nice and pink in here. I think I'll just touch it..."

"Don't touch anything!"

"Whassa matter, don't you like being touched?"

"Not by people who are in my mind without my permission, no! What are you doing now?"

"It's so nice here, I think I'll just take a little nap. Catch you in a few minutes, lover."

GERSTON WAS in a high state of nervous perplexity. He didn't know what to do. And just to make it worse, at that moment there was a violent knocking sound at the apartment door, the real one, not the virtual one. Gerston knew at once by its slightly hollow sound and over-determined air of realism that it was even more trouble coming his way. And that was really too much.

"I'm busy!" he shouted. "Go away!"

"Open the door," a voice said, "before we kick it in. This is the Thought Police."

"I never heard of the Thought Police. Are you sure -- "

"Of course I'm sure, dummy. Open this door or we'll break it down and kick your forehead in."

"You have no right!" Gerson cried. "It's not legal!"

"The hell it's not! We have a search warrant that permits us to invade your house, and another that allows us ingress to your mind."

"But why are you doing this?

"We have information that you are harboring a dangerous criminal."

"In my apartment?"

"Don't play dumb with me, sucker! You're hiding her in your mind!"

Gerston took a moment off from his panic to wonder, how could they know that? "Don't be silly," he said, fighting for time, space, air. "I'd never do that."

"We know she's in there. An alien sex criminal from a faraway planet. A sex criminal who calls herself Myra. Am I getting through to you? Do yourself a favor, buddy. It's probably not your fault. Let us in and we'll get this cleared up quicklike."

Gerston said, in a deadened voice, "I swear I didn't know she was a criminal. All right, come on in, officers."

He unlocked the apartment door. Three bulky officers in dark blue uniforms came in. They wore silver badges on their shirts which read Thought Police, Squad Three. One of them wore sergeant's stripes.

"Permission to enter?" the sergeant said, tapping Gerston's forehead with a squat forefinger.

"Go ahead, you're going to do it anyway."

The doors of Gerston's mind opened. The three policemen entered in a flurry of virtual black leather jackets and calf-length jackboots. Their feet were dirty and their faces grim. They were frightening despite their virtuality.

"It's too crowded, please hurry!" Gerston cried.

The policemen searched through Gerston's mind. They swept memory-objects off simulated shelves and knocked down the portraits of ancestors so remote that Gerston hadn't known he had them. Their boots made marks on the pink scuff-sensitive surface of Gerston's mind. Their crude remarks lingered near the virtual ceiling like clouds of ill-smelling gas.

"Is this going to take long?" Gerston asked through gritted teeth.

"Better get used to it," the sergeant said.

There was a crash. "Sorry, chief," one of the policemen said. "I dropped one of his golf trophies."

"She's not here," another policeman reported. "We've searched all of the way down to the rotting depths of the stupid insanity he calls his deepest self. We'd a found her if she'd been hiding there."

"Damnation!" the sergeant said. "She got away again! But at least we got you, sucker."

They exited Gerston's mind. A smile of great amusement appeared on the sergeant's tough cop face with the little busted red veins and the tufted eyebrows.