Totally unfamiliar, but a kitchen nonetheless.
He hesitated a long time before entering because it occurred to him that this might not actually be his house. He may only think it is his house – how could he know for sure? Maybe it belonged to the woman who he’d just brought here? No, the car was his, and it was the car’s autopilot that had driven him here, to his home. Saul took a cautious step through the door and just as it closed behind him a beautiful blond woman rushed into the room.
It was his wife, Mirro; she looked at him gravely. He recognized her without a problem, knowing everything about her – and at the sight of her he felt a surging rush of affection.
“She’s okay, Saul,” Mirro said. “I gave her some NoBlues and now she’s calmed down. She’s resting.”
Saul looked at her helplessly.
“I’m glad you called me,” she told him, a curious edge to her voice. It sounded uncomfortable and apologetic. “This is a big blow to her, she loves her son very much. Her ex-husband wouldn’t have been much of a comfort to her even at a time like this.” She paused, licking her lips, and took a deep breath. “This was very … this was very sensitive of you, Saul. I didn’t think you …” She trailed off, staring at him. Then in a rush she crossed the room and grabbed him, kissing him on his numb lips. Letting go, she turned and strode out of the kitchen, back into the depths of the house. The unfamiliar house.
Is it possible, Saul thought, dazed, that this is the way normal perception is without Mataphin? Everything like this?
Jumbled? Confusing? Unfamiliar? It seemed like it now, now that Saul was thinking about it. Yes, he thought. Mataphin makes things clearer. It’s the only thing that helps me put everything together in a way that makes sense.
Saul reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the dispenser, and took four. Then he walked out of the kitchen into the unfamiliar hall, past the dining room and beyond. His wife, he had to find his wife. She had gone down here somewhere. At one point he found a door, opened it, and peered inside. A bathroom. Empty.
He stared at it for a long time, his mind blank. What was it I was going to do? he thought. He stepped in, kneeled impulsively beside the large white tub and started the bath cycle. The temperature control blinked and Saul set it for 100 degrees Celsius. A buzzer went off somewhere; the control blinked again. Bubbling, hissing water came sputtering out of the jets, splashing him. He jerked when the water touched him, he had no idea why. What was going on?
He was just reaching down to stick his hand in the tub when someone from behind Saul grabbed his arm.
“Saul!” his wife exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“What?”
“You want to cook yourself? What are you doing?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have boiling water coming out of that tap!”
“Boiling? It’s only …” He stared at the temperature readout in shock: 100 degrees Celsius. “How in the hell did that happen?” he exclaimed.
“Saul, are you feeling okay? Vicky says you nearly drove into oncoming traffic on the way over here.” She tugged on him, pulling him to a standing position. He wavered on his feet, staring down at the tub.
Mirro bent over and shut off the water, set the tub to drain.
Saul, watching, realized the tub was familiar, as was the entire bathroom. Then he thought, Why shouldn’t the bathroom be familiar?
What a stupid thought! What is wrong with me? And the house –
why shouldn’t my own goddamn house look familiar to me? And that woman, Vicky … poor woman, it’s such a rotten thing about her son. In jail for rape! Facing a long sentence and sterilization.
How awful.
I wish I’d been sterilized. I wish we’d had our kid aborted.
“I know that, Saul,” his wife said in a low voice. Saul realized that he must have been speaking out loud. “But we have her,” she told him, “and we can’t change that.”
He said nothing, feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
She stood in front of him and peered up into his eyes. With one hand she reached out and felt his forehead. “You look pale.
Are you sick? Please tell me.”
“I’m fine,” he said, pulling away from her. He strode out of the bathroom and back toward the kitchen, knowing that he lied, knowing that there was something terribly wrong. He had the kitchen fix him a fried steak, watched the robot arms with bleary eyes. It could be the Mataphin, he thought. I’ve been eating it like candy.
And, in a flash of clear thought, Saul realized how disoriented he’d been, how frighteningly disjointed the whole afternoon was – ever since Vicky had been called by her ex-husband with the bad news. But then he thought, Was the day really like that, or is it just the way I remember it?
He had no idea.
14. EUTHANASIA Sheila didn’t help him in preparing the meal. She remained in the living room, trapped. He’d managed to get her to shower and dress up, but having finished that she was right back at the television, the Travels sphere reflecting in her blank eyes. Dodd had given up trying to get it disconnected – now he was thinking of getting rid of the television system altogether. What is she escaping from? he wondered as he and the robot arms stirred and mixed the dinner. Is she trying to escape some ancient sorrow that she hasn’t told me about? A bad experience? Or is she escaping from life itself? Too complicated and too much effort, she doesn’t want to deal with it and instead of checking into a euthanasia center she simply turns off her mind.
Suicide is a sin, he thought. Watching Travels is not.
Letting the robot arms take over completely, Dodd walked into the living room and stared at the television. It was interesting, it was colorful, and the images and the music drew him in–-
–-and he turned abruptly away, angry. It had almost got him. Averting his eyes he walked to the video components and, instead of turning it off, he changed the channel. Here’s an experiment, he thought. Would Sheila even notice?
He had tuned into the Politico Network, but there was a commercial on that was patterned very closely to Travels. A man folded a piece of paper into an airplane and tossed it out what looked like a 200th story window; it flew through various landscapes, lush and colorful, then zoomed straight up into space at a terrific speed. The announcer, speaking in a rich and mesmerizing voice, said, “… due to our exclusive tachyon carrier-wave systems, we can get your data anywhere, faster than anyone, with clarity and power that nobody else can match. We’re Global Telesis. We invented faster-than-light technology. We’re on the leading edge of tomorrow …”
There was perhaps 3 seconds of blank screen with a low hollow-sounding tone, then a man’s face appeared, his features rough and timeworn like a weathered old skull. It was the President of the United Americas, Dodd realized. “New Millennial Marxism has spread throughout most of the world, but Capitalistic freedom has infiltrated it. People in Marxist countries are freer now than they ever had been before–-”
“What is this?” Sheila said, her voice betraying shock and panic. “What happened? Who is that man?”
“That’s our President,” Dodd told her.
“What’s he doing on Travels?”
Dodd shrugged. “I don’t know! Maybe we’re at war again?”
“Oh no!”
Dodd felt guilty at the panic-stricken look on her face, but then again, was she panicked because of the possibility of war or because she may lose her Travels channel? The President continued, and as it turned out it was a commercial for his political party, the Free Exchangers. There was a quick blurb for the famous Free Speech Forum show and then a Politico Network station identification.
“This isn’t Travels!”
Dodd made an astounded expression. “No! It isn’t! Hey, that was weird, huh?”
“Yeah!” She made a motion for the channel changer but Dodd beat her to it.
“Let’s watch the Free Speech Forum,” he said. “It’s on next.”
“What?”
He smiled at her, but said nothing. Let her figure out what I said, he thought. Thirty seconds ticked by.
“Dodd, change it back,” she said.
“What?”
“Change it back.”
“Change what back?”
“Change the channel back to Travels!”
“This is Travels.”
“It is not.”
“Yes it is. This is Travels.”
Sheila’s expression was that of a person who’d just experienced a spontaneous lobotomy. Dull confusion and pain.
Struggling to make sense of small words. “This isn’t Travels,” she said, unsure.
“Yes it is.”
“It is?”
“Yes, they changed it. It’s going to be a talk show from now on.”