Ernest Hill - Atrophy

“Say!” he shouted. “This an A or a B?”

“It’s all right,” Elvin told him. “It’s an A.”

“You might have let me know,” Waldorf grumbled. “No sense in us all breaking our necks, is there?”

“Sorry,” Elvin apologized, “I was just going to see you up.” Physicists contacted. Management informed. Evacuation under way. Radiation quotient—10 milliPennies.

For ten minutes Elvin sat in an agony of concentration, checking the light sequences against the Foreman’s indicators. There would be an intentional error somewhere. There always was. A 18 dead. Foreman checked. 19,20,21- still activated. Foreman approved. 35–35. 36–36. 37–37. 41 dead. He had it! He had it! Foreman checked 41 live. He stabbed his finger on the “Management alert” button. Dubois, the Personnel Director, pale and podgy-faced, appeared on the screen.

“Faulty Foreman, sir!” Elvin stammered. “A41 dead. Foreman checked live. Ackled on full sequence but no ackle on 41.”

“OK, Elvin, good work! Re-activate!” The image faded and Dubois settled comfortably back on the couch under a dome of lights and knobs and micro-screens. To concentrate. To Personnel Control. Dubois was a Thinker.

Elvin lit a cheroot, vastly pleased with himself. “Good work!” Personnel had said. He, Elvin, had done good work. Dubois had said so. A very fine face, had Dubois. What was the rest of him like? Short and tubby probably. Curved back, shaped to the couch. Great responsibility. Dubois was a Thinker.

Elvin pressed the “Re-activate” and the lights travelled in their usual sequence. Buzz! Waldorf appeared on the video.

“All over?” he asked, amiably enough.

“All over!” Elvin told him.

“Lot of flapdoodle!” Waldorf grumbled. “One of these days, you chaps will have a B and we shall forget to come. Then you’ll all look silly.”

“I don’t dream these things up,” Elvin explained, wearily. “They happen to me just the same as to you. I only work here.”

“You know it’s an A.” Waldorf complained. “Why not reactivate and leave us in peace?”

“And lose my bonus?” Elvin asked sarcastically.

“What do you make in that fortress, anyway?” Waldorf was curious.

“Make?”

“Well, you must make something!”

Elvin supposed that they did. After all, everyone made something or other. Or did something. Like despatch along the residence supply tubes. Or broke things down. What did they make? Someone had told him once, long ago, at his first interview. Fresh from Tech and with some interest outside the Specialities. Zirconium something. What did one make with zirconium?

“Well?” Waldorf probed.

“Zirconiums,” he said.

“Oh!” Waldorf was satisfied Obviously, if they made zirconiums, zirconiums were used for something or other. His interest faded and he returned to his fire-floats.

No more As. Thank goodness, no Bs. He had read of Bs. In the headlines. No one ever read farther than the headlines. There was a B every now and again in the headlines. Once there had been a B 1. Somewhere. A reactor wild. It had sounded quite frightening. An operator running over the routine formulae, but knowing that it was really it. A B! Imagine a B 1 and a faulty Foreman. A non-ackle like the A 41. What exactly would happen? What in fact was a wild reactor? He shuddered. He had no idea. Only the routine light sequences. Foreman checks and the knowledge that the rescue services were automatically contacted, even on an A. Only the warning news flash on the public screens was withheld until the B. Contact was made, but the vocal tape was non-ackled. Panic avoidance.

It had been quite a day. He was glad when Gallen, his relief appeared promptly at 1600 on the travelator, yawning, puppet-like, half comatose.

“We had an A!”

Gallen nodded abstractedly and settled at the panels, his eyes blinking in synchronous relation to the nictating lights. Elvin left. Poor old Gallen! He would certainly atrophy. Even constant sequence change and A alarms could not hold his attention much longer. Had Dubois noticed? On the Workers’ Welfare Monitor? Probably. Oh, well! None of his business, anyway. Home and tell Meryl about the A. Excited. Animated for once. Surely that would please Meryl. It was what she had always wanted. Life. A flicker of interest in the eyes. Conversation. About something.

The lift swept him up to the 27th floor. Home. The pad. Empty. The positive emptiness of nothing that had been something. Or very nearly.

My dear Elvin [he read]. I cannot stand it any longer. The daze. The monotony. The dreary waiting for the sexometer to buzz. I don’t suppose you will notice I have gone. Not for some days at least. It buzzes again tomorrow at 1815hours. But when your disinterested eyes finally, by accident, light upon this note, I shall be far away. I hope happier. As happy as anyone can be in this dead, weary world. I have left you for a Thinker.

He had never felt such emotion before. Only once, vaguely, long ago, with Carmine. He had responded dutifully to the buzz. With animation almost. He had been younger then. He had kissed her quite passionately and there had been a dead thing beneath him. Carmine had atrophied. He sat, rocking his body, his face in his hands. A strange wetness oozed between his fingers. He looked at his hands. They were wet. Tears. Streaming down his cheeks. He had forgotten tears. Even the motion of the sensors had never triggered such a response. The simulation of sensor weeping was subjective. You felt the weeping but the tears were dry and latent in their ducts.

His hand stopped over the tranquillizer dispenser. He didn’t want to be tranquillized. In this, the hour of his agony, he wanted to feel, to sense the vivid ache of his loneliness. To cry. To feel the salt rush of the tears on his cheeks. To know that it was he who was there, feeling, weeping, lonely, alone.

“Nothing else meant anything,” he thought. “Only Meryl. This pad is an empty box. A coffin. A casket for the ashes of what had been just a little more than an ash itself. A something.”

No escape. Nothing to do. No dead-eyed woman to take her place. Four dead eyes between four dead walls. A new sexometer tuned to a new rhythm. No. Never. But what else could he do? Narcotics and the sensories, bud-stimulants and the pale red fluid?

“I’m so lonely,” he groaned. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely. An empty bed at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal. Taste bud tea and the programmes. There was no one to whom he could talk. There was no one who could generate a flicker of interest in his problems, smaller and less poignant than the problems of the programmes. No one at all.

There was IT. The respect proferred to the wiser, the cleverer, the great. To these one turned in times of trouble. It was not IT’s function, of course. Comment on emotional outpourings. But somehow, IT understood. A great IT. A greater IT than any of the other ten million ITs in ten million other Workers’ pads.

“Work!” said IT.

That was the answer, of course. Work. He had really enjoyed the A alarm, the responsibility, real responsibility, even if only simulated real. The happening of something. But how did one work? At what? His shift was 1000 till 1600 hours. Fourteen hours to wait. To wait, sleepless and weeping. Swop with the night shift? Oppel! 2200 till 0400 hours. Oppel was only slightly comatose. He would listen to reason and agree. Elvin saw him up on the video. Oppel, disturbed at his programme viewing was hostile, testy, un-forthcoming and conventional.

“You can’t swop shifts,” he said. “You are conditioned to 1000 till 1600. Your efficiency is impaired if you change sequence and rhythms.”

“Please!” Elvin begged. “Just this once as a favour. We can both do the job well enough, conditioned or not.”