Fun House (13 page)
Authors: Benjamin Appel
But I wouldn’t budge. After the hunt, we returned to the Castle, to his lordship’s hunting den which like all other such dens was a skin-and-head shop. (My dislike for hunting started at Bangani Castle.) On the walls were the stuffed heads of tiger and wildebeest, all shining green from the isotopes they had once absorbed in the stomachs they no longer had. Over the fireplace was an elephant head with pale green tusks. “A wild rogue, that one,” Lord Alpha-B. boasted as he poured the scotch into our glasses.
Fleischy sniffed and frowned, walking over to the liquor cabinet where, true to his worst self, he picked up a bottle of gin.
“Professor!” his master called.
Before us, staring disgustedly at the gin in his hand, was the academician. “Will human genius ever solve the mysteries of human nature?” he asked as he put down the gin and accepted a glass of scotch.
“Now that wild rogue,” Lord Alpha-B. resumed. “I killed him many years ago. That is why the isotopes are fading. Ah, the hunts of yesteryear,” he sighed and settled down in a leather chair. He yawned, rubbed the top of his bald head which reflected the mounted trophies, shining a delicate pale green.
I finished my scotch, refilled, drank again, and with whiskey courage said, “Here we sit as if everything’s all right with the world.”
“There goes that crashing bore again,” Lord Alpha-B. yawned, “You might at least have the courtesy to wait until after dinner. Professor, the menu.”
The menu carried his crest. A Think Machine in gold, and in its center, the head of a magicientist in a black and purple hat, the motto also in black and purple:
EQUALITY UNDER LAW.
I was hungry. Outside of the U-Latu box given to me by Barnum F.’s double, I’d forgotten when I’d eaten my last meal. I ordered steak and roast Sussex duck for my main courses. The professor walked to a panel underneath a lion head and pressed a series of buttons. “I agree with our guest,” he said. “Everything is not right with the world. We are living in a state of permanent crisis, and humanity — I pronounce the word with contempt — has still to learn the profound lessons of the lower kingdoms. The admirable society of the ant, for example, where every Tom, Dick and Harry metaphorically speaking knows his job. What superb concentration on the task in hand. Consider the mantis who will seize an ant in the process of enjoying its well-earned dinner and begin to eat away at its stomach. And the ant, that superb creature, continues dining on its own dinner. There’s concentration, there’s a philosophy for you to meet the vicissitudes of existence. How backward man is in comparison. If I had the rule of the world I would turn men into ants.”
“How would you begin?” Lord Alpha-B. said.
“First, I would remove the faculty of thought and memory, the entire human complex of ambitions, inhibitions and exhibitions.” He smiled at his phrase and then solemn again said, “The trouble with man, sir, is man.”
“I agree with that,” I said. “Man is his own deadliest enemy and the proof of that is the A-I-D!”
“Stop!” Lord Alpha-B. shouted. “I warn you!”
“For God’s sake, Dr. Bangani — ”
“Your constant invocations to the Supreme Dictator are as monotonous as your screams. Do you think I am happy under the Rulers?” He turned to the professor. “Continue.”
“The trouble with man is man,” the professor repeated. “No human society today is without serious flaws. In the words of the Swedish sociologist, Snorkelmut, ‘The United States is pleasure-mad and gadget-glad.’ And the Reservation? What is it but a retreat into the dark womb of the past, a womb pillared with the umbilical cords of work and sweat? As for India and the Congo and all the former colonies of a hundred years ago, with their cult of democracy — what is that but a cultural lag? Neither do I approve of the Communist nations with their cult of multi-radicalism. I find such a social order a multi-plication of the zero of boredom. In the words of Snorkelmut: ‘A utopia is only possible when the
you
of individualism is changed into the
u
of unionism. A
u
that soon becomes the c of collectivism and finally the
d
of despotism.’ ”
“Go ahead!” I cried with despair. “You and your professors! Blow up the world! You killed Barnum Fly. You killed him and you’ve got hold of the A-I-D!”
“Fleischy!” his master said and instantly the professor changed into a cave-man. The old magicientist glowered at me and then waved his hand at his human dog. “That’s what I could do to you, my friend. Remove that conscience of yours once and for all. This man you see here was once a famous scientist, a biophysicist, a specialist in enzyme chemistry. Do you want to hear him sing the silly song I’ve taught him? A silly song that amuses me. Fleischy, sing ‘The Biology of Life.’ ”
The hybrid grinned and lifting his huge head he sang:
“Inside the living human cell
Tiny, tiny, hidden in a well
The nooky nucleus swims around
Tinier still, inside it, spinning round and round
The chromosomes, the spiraling iraling chromes
And inside them are the poems
The poems of life called the genes
The tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny genes.”
“Very good, Fleischy,” his master said, and his eyes fixed on me. “I told you how I made him grow a foot by pressuring his genes, my friend. I warn you for the last time. I’ll hybridize you! I’ll unconscience you!”
“You threaten me with removing my conscience,” I said. “But I still have it and speak up I will. I don’t know what you want. All I know is that the A-I-D is threatening all of us. All of us!” I cried. “And that’s wrong, Dr. Bangani. That’s wrong!”
“You’ve got courage,” he said. “And that’s what I had to know, my friend. I need a man with courage. Come!”
I was stunned but I followed him. He led me out of the den and five minutes later we were on the upper floor of the Castle, walking down the corridor with its equations on the walls. We passed the Sex Laboratory, the Time Stream Room, and finally he paused in front of a door with no sign. Inside was a complicated machine with hundreds and hundreds of electric tubes. Attached to its top was a yellow and red hobby horse. “This is a Think Machine,” he explained swiftly. “It can work a million times faster than the human eye, the human hand or human mind. The human eye has been duplicated and surpassed in those rows of tubes. The human hand with its five digits have been multiplied into a series of holes on a strip of tape, into current in an electromagnet. The human mind has been copied in the memory device and calculator.”
I stared at him, not knowing what to think. He pointed up at the yellow and red hobby horse. “Get up on it. There’s a ladder behind the machine.”
He chuckled when I hesitated. “Ah, you are afraid I’m going to operate on that conscience of yours?” He shook his fingers at me. “Wanted in this hour of crisis,” he said mockingly. “A man of courage!”
Without a word I walked to the rear of the machine and climbed the ladder. I seated myself on the hobby horse, and he stared up at me, grinning. “You have courage,” he said and rubbed his hands together. Then he advanced on the machine and pressed a button. The hobby horse began to rock up and down and to speak:
“An electric signal has caused the quartz crystal inside my bowels to expand and press against my mercury. It ripples, it ripples, and in 1/3000 of a second it presses against another crystal, generating a new electric impulse. Hey, hey, and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine! Rider, do you feel the electric impulses?”
I did feel them. They came in waves …
“Hey, hey, and a hi nonny-nonny. Electric impulses to amplifier, and a hi-nonny-nonny. Feedback to computing circuits, and a hi-nonny-nonny. Magnetic tape for intermediate, erasable memory, and ask my rider any question, ask my rider any question and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine!”
As those electric impulses flowed into me, as I rocked up and down on the talking horse, I saw the old magicientist hold up a card with a series of punched holes on them. Then he stepped close to the machine and I could no longer see him. The electric impulses doubled, and the hobby horse as it rocked spoke:
“Quartz crystal, oh my liver, oh my mercury. Hey, ho, and a hi nonny-nonny. You-Too-Can-Be-A-Think-Machine. Oh, my amplifier, my feedback, I shouldn’t have eaten that, and a hi nonny-nonny. To answer the question:
Am I Dr. M. E. Bangani? The answer is: No, you are Magicientist Barnum Fly.”
1
Magicientists when their eyesight began to fail had first priority at the Bio Bank, or Biological Bank, where eyes and other vital organs salvaged from the deceased were kept in preservative vaults.
1
The Trans-rec or Transmittor-Recorder or Third Ear (slang) had been declared illegal within a week after its release on the grounds that reading thoughts spoiled the pleasure of anticipation. It operated on a philosophical principle — Everything Passes. Its clock-face collected passing thoughts and reversed them into the consciousness of the listener.
1
Bred in such establishments as the Lilliputian Live Animal Breeding Farms.
2
The veiled women were also employees of the Chamber of Commerce. The leaflets were bogus St. Ewagiow leaflets with the motto:
3
The D.O.V. Inc. or Daughter of Venus Inc.
1
The leading St. Ewagiow theoreticians condemned those elements, arguing that in death all men were equal, and all skeletons were made of common bone.
2
The hydrogen hat in which the black skullcap represented the nucleus of this simplest of atoms, the white ring the orbit of its single electron.
1
H
3
, the symbol for three atoms of hydrogen which when fused with one atom of Hydrogen — H
3
+H, or H
4
hv — produced an energy yield of 20 million electric volts. Sufficient to blast a city like Greater Miami. See Appendix for paper on ‘H-Bomb Stockpiles of the 20th Century’.
1
The human equivalent of automatons. Trained to give a man the double treatment, to break his head or his complex. They were first employed as L. and O. operatives.
1
See Appendix for section entitled ‘Psychiatry in the Funhouse.’
1
SHOCKO, a tropical insect-repellant that operated on the electric-magnetic principle. Manufactured by the Roughitinstyle Co., who also made some fifty other gadgets for people who liked to fish and hunt.
2
The Aag or All-American Gadgeteer, another Roughitinstyle product. In addition to a pocket knife and miniature saw operated by atomic energy there was also a compass, a distance calculator etc.
1
The Mercy Needle was in extensive use for hopeless invalids when administered by doctors, who alone were permitted to use them. The Rulers, however, were very liberal. Whenever a citizen became tired of life, under the 28th Amendment, he or she, could apply for a Suicide Certificate.
2
American ‘Africa’ was located south of the Reservation and included most of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. It was a lush hunting paradise. The Department of Meteorology had literally made the desert bloom. The Department of Agriculture had transplanted mahogany, palm trees and other trees and shrubs indigenous to Africa proper; The Bureau of Wild Life had stocked it with elephants, lions, gnu and zebra. All these Government agencies had worked as a team under SPFAMH or The Secretary of Pleasure, Fun, and Miscellaneous Hobbies.
1
Megaton blue, a popular color despite its unhappy origins. Megaton — a scientific term representing the explosive power of 1,000,000 tons of TNT. Fusion bombs of 20 megatons, 50 megatons and 100 megatons had been a commonplace for years prior to the invention of the weapon to end all weapons, the A-I-D.
1
Typical institutions on the Outside to be found in all cities. I will report on them later in this eyewitness report.
2
The twentieth-century movie producer and director famous for such spectacle films as
Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments
.
1
Shocko was manufactured in a wide range of power frequencies.
1
See Appendix for Barnum Fly’s complexes.
1
All boxes, receptacles and containers were edible unless made of glass or such materials. Containers of the edible type were — as their manufacturers claimed — Good To The Last.
1
One of the great entertainers in the early days of television, a parlor game of the twentieth century.
1
A-E-S or Auto-Erotic Suggestion, a psychological depressant. Research into the Freudian writings on inhibitions had inspired its invention.
1
Transistors were used everywhere.
2
The physicists employed in the Department of Pleasure, Fun and Miscellaneous Hobbies were responsible for this effect in the American Africa. See Appendix for ‘Lunar Satellites, Devices and Lunacies’.
l
Flammos: flame-throwing weapons.
1
A magicientifical trick using the reactivated electricity of firebugs, glowworms and electric eels.
1
I never really understood the nature of the split-to-split mechanism. It might be described as functioning through some psychological neurological transistor that
at will
altered the brain waves.
1
Faster than the recorded 105 m.p.h. of the specially-bred Antelopus Pluribus Unum developed by the Bureau of Game and Fisheries.
2
Uranium 235, the heavy atom used in the first primitive A-Bombs.
3
Made of Transparo which was in wide use wherever it was necessary for one reason or another to keep an eye on things. Popularly known as Seeing-Eye.
1
The Mechanico-Atomo-Company of Chicago that early in its history had specialized in slot-machines, pin-ball games and such simple mechanisms.
2
An atmospheric effect. A prepared smell in the form of smoke or steam issuing from a chimney disguised as a tree.
