First Person Peculiar by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online Page B

full of them .
    Ah, fun and games at the Institute! It’s quite an experience.
    We cherish your individuality, they say as they painfully extract all my memories. (Funny: the pain lingers long after the memories are gone.)
    Society needs men with your drive and ambition, they smile as they shoot about eighteen zillion volts of electricity through my spasmodically-jerking body.
    You had the guts to buck the system, they point out as they shred my face and give me a new one.
    With drive like yours there’s no telling how far you can go now that we’ve imprinted a new personality and a new set of ethics onto that magnificent libido, they agree as they try to decide whether to school me as a kennel attendant or perhaps turn me into an encyclopedia salesman. (They compromise and metamorphose me into an accountant.)
    You lucky man, you’ve got a new name and face and memories and five hundred dollars in your pocket and you’ve still got your drive and ambition, they say as they excruciatingly insert a final memory block.
    Now go out and knock ’em dead, they tell me.
    Figuratively speaking, they add hastily.
    Oh, one last thing, they say as they shove me out the door of the Institute. We’re pretty busy here, William Jordan, so don’t come back unless it’s an emergency. A bona fide emergency.
    “But where am I to go?” I asked. “What am I to do?”
    You’ll think of something, they assure me. After all, you had the brains and guts to buck our social system. Boy, do we wish we were like you! Now beat it; we’ve got work to do—or do you maybe think you’re the only anti-social misanthrope with delusions of grandeur who ever got Erased?
    And the wild part is that they were right: most Erasures make out just fine. Strange as it sounds, we really do have more drive than the average man, the guy who just wants to hold off his creditors until he retires and his pension comes through. We’ll take more risks, make quicker decisions, fight established trends more vigorously. We’re a pretty gritty little group, all right—except that none of us knows why he was Erased.
    In fact, I didn’t have my first hint until the truck backfired. (See? I’ll bet you thought I had forgotten all about it. Not a chance, friend. Erasures don’t forget things—at least, not once they’ve left the Institute. What most Erasures do is spend vast portions of their new lives trying to remember things. Futilely.)
    Well, my memory may have been wiped clean, but my instincts were still in working order, and what they told me was that I was a little more used to being shot at than the average man on the street. Not much to go on, to be sure, but at least it implied that the nature of my sin leaned more toward physical violence than, say, Wall Street tycoonery with an eye toward sophisticated fraud.
    So I went to the main branch of the Public Library, rented a quarter of an hour on the Master Computer, and started popping in the questions.
    LIST ALL CRIMINALS STANDING SIX FEET TWO INCHES WHO WERE APPREHENDED AND CONVICTED IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
    ***CLASSIFIED.
    That wasn’t surprising. It had been classified the last fifty times I had asked. But, undaunted (Erasures are rarely daunted), I continued.
    LIST ALL MURDERS COMMITTED BY PISTOL IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
    The list appeared on the screen, sixty names per second.
    STOP.
    The computer stopped, while I tried to come up with a more limiting question.
    WITHOUT REVEALING THEIR IDENTITIES, TELL ME HOW MANY CRIMINALS WERE CONVICTED OF MULTIPLE PISTOL MURDERS IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
    ***CLASSIFIED. Then it burped and added: NICE TRY, THOUGH.
    THANK YOU. HAS ANY ERASURE EVER DISCOVERED EITHER HIS ORIGINAL IDENTITY OR THE REASON HE WAS ERASED?
    NOT YET.
    DOES THAT IMPLY IT IS POSSIBLE?
    NEGATIVE.
    THEN IT IS IMPOSSIBLE?
    NEGATIVE.
    THEN WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MEAN?
    ONLY THAT NO IMPLICATION WAS INTENDED.
    I checked my