Ira Levin - This Perfect Day

They went through a door, up steps, through another door, and into an echoing hall of some kind, where they walked and turned, walked and turned, as if by-passing a number of irregularly placed objects. They walked up a stopped escalator and along a corridor that curved toward the right.

She stopped him and asked for his bracelet. He raised his wrist, and his bracelet was pressed tight and rubbed. He touched it; there was smoothness instead of his nameber. That and his sightlessness made him suddenly feel disembodied; as if he were about to drift from the floor, drift right out through whatever walls were around him and up into space, dissolve there and become nothing.

She took his arm again. They walked farther and stopped. He heard a knock and two more knocks, a door opening, voices stilling. “Hi,” she said, leading him forward. “This is Chip. He insists on it.”

Chairs scuffed against the floor, voices gave greetings. A hand took his and shook it. “I’m King,” a member said, a man. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Another hand gripped his harder. “Snowflake says you’re quite an artist”—an older man than King. “I’m Leopard.”

Other hands came quickly, women: “Hello, Chip; I’m Lilac.” “And I’m Sparrow. I hope you’ll become a regular.” “I’m Hush, Leopard’s wife. Hello.” The last one’s hand and voice were old; the other two were young.

He was led to a chair and sat in it. His hands found tabletop before him, smooth and bare, its edge slightly curving; an oval table or a large round one. The others were sitting down; Snowflake on his right, talking; someone else on his left. He smelled something burning, sniffed to make sure. None of the others seemed aware of it. “Something’s burning,” he said.

“Tobacco,” the old woman, Hush, said on his left.

“Tobacco?” he said.

“We smoke it,” Snowflake said. “Would you like to try some?”

“No,” he said.

Some of them laughed. “It’s not really deadly,” King said, farther away on his left. “In fact, I suspect it may have some beneficial effects.”

“It’s very pleasing,” one of the young women said, across the table from him.

“No, thanks,” he said.

They laughed again, made comments to one another, and one by one grew silent. His right hand on the tabletop was covered by Snowflake’s hand; he wanted to draw it away but restrained himself. He had been stupid to come. What was he doing, sitting there sightless among those sick false-named members? His own abnormality was nothing next to theirs. Tobacco! The stuff had been extincted a hundred years ago; where the hate had they got it?

“We’re sorry about the bandage, Chip,” King said. “I assume Snowflake’s explained why it’s necessary.”

“She has,” Chip said, and Snowflake said, “I did.” Her hand left Chip’s; he drew his from the tabletop and took hold of his other in his lap.

“We’re abnormal members, which is fairly obvious,” King said. “We do a great many things that are generally considered sick. We think they’re not. We know they’re not.” His voice was strong and deep and authoritative; Chip visualized him as large and powerful, about forty. “I’m not going to go into too many details,” he said, “because in your present condition you would be shocked and upset, just as you’re obviously shocked and upset by the fact that we smoke tobacco. You’ll learn the details for yourself in the future, if there is a future as far as you and we are concerned.”

“What do you mean,” Chip said, “’in my present condition?”

There was silence for a moment. A woman coughed. “While you’re dulled and normalized by your most recent treatment,” King said.

Chip sat still, facing in King’s direction, stopped by the irrationality of what he had said. He went over the words and answered them: “I’m not dulled and normalized.”

“But you are,” King said.

“The whole Family is,” Snowflake said, and from beyond her came “Everyone, not just you”—in the old man’s voice of Leopard.

“What do you think a treatment consists of?” King asked.

Chip said, “Vaccines, enzymes, the contraceptive, sometimes a tranquilizer—”

“Always a tranquilizer,” King said. “And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of.”

“And a sexual depressant,” Snowflake said.

“That too,” King said. “Ten minutes of automatic sex once a week is barely a fraction of what’s possible.”

“I don’t believe it,” Chip said. “Any of it.”

They told him it was true. “It’s true, Chip.” “Really, it’s the truth.” “It’s true!”

“You’re in genetics,” King said; “isn’t that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color.”

“Treatments help us,” Chip said.

“They help Uni,” the woman across the table said.

“And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni,” King said. “But they don’t help us , at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines.”

Chip shook his head, and shook it again.

“Snowflake told us”—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—“that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven’t you ever noticed that they’re stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?”

Snowflake said, “I’ll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after one.”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said, “but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before treatments it was—exciting.”

“There you are,” King said.

“But it was sick excitement!”

“It was healthy,” King said, and the woman across the table said, “You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all.”

He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisers since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that could be.” He turned his face toward King, toward the woman, toward Leopard and Snowflake, wishing he could open his eyes and see them. “But I don’t understand this,” he said. “ You get treatments, don’t you? Then aren’t you—”

“Reduced ones,” Snowflake said.

“Yes, we get treatments,” King said, “but we’ve managed to have them reduced, to have certain components of them reduced, so that we’re a little more than the machines Uni thinks we are.”

“And that’s what we’re offering you ,” Snowflake said; “a way to see more and feel more and do more and enjoy more.”

“And to be more unhappy; tell him that too.” It was a new voice, soft but clear, the other young woman. She was across the table and to Chip’s left, close to where King was.

“That isn’t so,” Snowflake said.

“Yes it is,” the clear voice said—a girl’s voice almost; she was no more than twenty, Chip guessed. “There’ll be days when you’ll hate Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” she said, “and want to take a torch to Uni. There’ll be days when you’ll want to tear off your bracelet and run to a mountaintop like the old incurables, just to be able to do what you want to do and make your own choices and live your own life.”

“Lilac,” Snowflake said.

“There’ll be days when you’ll hate us ,” she said, “for waking you up and making you not a machine. Machines are at home in the universe; people are aliens.”