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LIES, INC. -- CHAPTER ONE |
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The SubInfo computers owned by Lies Incorporated had been caught in an unnatural act by a service mechanic. Sublnfo computer Five had transmitted information which was not a lie. It would have to be taken apart to see why. And to whom the correct information had gone. Probably there would be no way to discern to whom the correct information had gone. But a carrier check maintained an automatic record of all subinformation transmitted by the bank of computers located here and there on Terra. The information had to do with a rat. According to the carrier check the rat lived with a colony of other rats in a garbage dump in Oakland, California. What importance could information dealing with a rat have? Lewis Stine, the chief mechanic for Lies Incorporated, pondered this as he broke the flow of current to SubInfo computer Five and prepared to begin taking it apart. Of course he could ask the computer ... but the computer, being programmed to lie, would of course lie -- even to Lies Incorporated itself. That was an irony which Stine did not appreciate. This problem always surfaced when it came time to dismantle one of the computers. Any other bank of computers, Stine thought, could be asked. Just for a moment he restored power to SubInfo computer Five and punched buttons on the console of a terminal. Whom did you transmit to? he asked. BEN APPLEBAUM, RACHMAEL
"Fine," Stine said. At least he knew that. Somebody on Terra with the name Rachmael ben Applebaum probably now knew more about rats than he cared to know, albeit on a subliminal basis. You're probably thinking a lot about rats these days, Mr. ben Applebaum, Stine said to himself. And you are wondering why. Again he cut the power to the computer. And began to go to work. *** Standing before his bathroom mirror shaving, Rachmael ben Applebaum thought about the delicious taste of cheeseburger fragments -- not a whole cheeseburger (you rarely found those) but the wonderful dried bits lying here and there among the coffee grounds, grapefruit rinds and egg shells. I'll fly over to Bob's Big Boy, he decided, and order a cheese burger for breakfast. And then he thought, It's those damn dreams. Actually it was one dream over and over again. And he always had it around three a.m.; several times he had awakened, gotten out of bed, bewildered and disturbed by the intensity of the dream, and noted the clock. The place he dreamed of; it was awful. And yet, for some reason, while he was actually there -- actually dreaming -- the place seemed great. And this was the part that bothe:red him the most: that he liked it so. It seemed familiar; it seemed to be a place he regarded as home. However, so did a number of other people -- People. They hadn't looked exactly like people, although they had talked like people. "That's mine," Fred said, holding on to an armload of dog kibble. "The hell you say, " Rachmael said angrily. "I saw it first. Give it here or I'll pop you." He and Fred fought over the armload of dog kibble, and Rachmael finally won. But he won in an odd way: by biting Fred on the shoulder. He hadn't hit him; he had bitten him. Strange, Rachmael thought as he continued to shave. I'm going to have to see a psychiatrist, he said to himself. Maybe it's memories of a former life. Millions of years ago before I ... before I had evolved into a human being. Far lower on the evolutionary scale. Biting people, or rather biting animals. Yes, he thought; Fred was an animal of some kind. But we talked English. In his dream he kept a secret hoard of valuables which the others in the settlement knew nothing about. He thought of them now, those precious artifacts which he cherished, which he had gone to such lengths -- and effort -- to acquire. Mostly food, of course; nothing was more important than food. And yet -- you could sometimes find string. He had a lot of string: fine brown string; he had wound it up into a heap and, during the day, he slept in the midst of it. The pile of string comforted him; it lulled him and made his dreams peaceful. All but one; there at the settlement, asleep during the day in his pile of string, he had one dreadful dream which kept coming back. It had to do with a huge fish opening its mouth wide ... and vast ugly teeth strove to crunch him, crunch him with avid relish. Jeez, Rachmael said. Maybe I'm not here shaving; maybe I'm just dreaming this. Maybe I'm asleep in my pile of string, and having a good dream, not the bad one; having the dream where I'm a -- He thought, A man. So then, by inference, he thought, I'm not a man when I'm at the settlement. That would explain why I bit, and why Fred bit, That son-of-a-bitch, he said to himself. He knows where a lot of dog kibble is and he won't tell any of the rest of us. I'll find it; I'll find his trove. But then, he realized, while I'm out doing that, maybe Fred (or someone else) will find my trove and take away my string. My wonderful string which was so hard to drag back to my hiding place; it kept snagging and catching on things ... I'll defend that string with my life, Rachmael said to himself. Any son-of-a-bitch who tries to steal it will wind up without his face. He looked at his wristwatch. Got to hurry, he said to himself. It's late; I overslept again. And I can't get the dream out of my head. It was too vivid for a dream. It wasn't a dream; maybe it was involuntary telepathy of some kind. Or contact with an alternate universe. That's probably what it was: another Earth on which I was born as an animal rather than a human being. Or a microwave transmission, using my brain as a transducer without an electronic interface. They have those, especially the police agencies. He was very much afraid of the world-wide police agencies. Especially Lies, Incorporated, the worst police agency of them all. Even the Soviet police were afraid of them. They're beaming psychotronic signals at me subliminally while I'm asleep, he thought. And then he realized how paranoid that was. Christ; no sane person would think that. And even if Lies, Incorporated did transmit microwave-boosted telepathic information to him in his sleep, would it have to do with rats? With rats! I'm a goddamn rat, he realized. When I go to sleep I abreact back millions of years to when I was once a rat, and I think rat thoughts and have rat ideas; I cherish what a rat cherishes. That explains my fighting with Fred for the dog kibble. It's simple: memories from the paleocortex, rather than the neocortex. There's an anatomical explanation. Has to do with accretional layers of the brain; the brain has old layers which come to wakefulness during normal sleep. That's the trouble with living in a police state, he said to himself; you think -- you imagine -- the police are behind everything. You get paranoid and think they're beaming information to you in your sleep, to subliminally control you. Actually the police wouldn't do that. The police are our friends. Or was that idea beamed to me subliminally? he wondered suddenly. "The police are our friends." The hell they are! He continued shaving, feeling glum about the whole thing. Maybe the dream will stop coming, he said to himself. Or -- Pausing, he thought, Maybe the dream is trying to tell me some thing. For a long time he stood without moving, the razor held away from his face. Tell me what? That I'm living in a garbage dump where there's dried scraps of food, rotting food, other rats? He trembled. And, as best he could, continued shaving. |
