Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online

six-gun to fasting, navel contemplation, and walking on water. As far as he is concerned, one man’s karma is another man’s dharma.
    Obu Itubi remembers the bee: a million identical larvae pupating within the privacy of their waxen cells—one million identical dreams. All share a common destiny, all but a dozen or so selected at random by the workers in charge of the hatchery cells. These fortunate few are fortified with an infusion of Royal Jelly, an extract that transforms any ordinary larva into a Queen. A drop is all it takes. Instant royalty. And the new Queen is wise in the ways of monarchy from the moment of her birth. Her first official act is political assassination. Even before her wings have dried, the newly hatched Queen seeks out the cells of potential rivals and quickly stings them to death while they drift in embryonic sleep.
    A sweet thought: Obu Itubi would like to be so chosen. He imagines an Amco-pak Mark X adding some magic elixir to the electrolyte solution in his cranial container and emerging from the Depository a king, all-powerful and absolute. He would roam the aisles until he found the deposit drawer containing his new Auditor. Let the bastard enjoy his spiritual superiority while he has the chance, Itubi thinks. My triumph will be complete when I puncture the sanctity of his computerized dreams and skewer him like a shish kebab on the tip of my envenomed blade. A fitting final lesson in the Illusion of Identity.
    A Unistat Magnetic Calculator, series 3000, assigned to the Census Division of Center Control, has discovered an error so incredible that the machine suspects a short circuit and turns itself in for an overhaul and parts checkup. But Maintenance and Repair can find nothing amiss and a doublecheck by the Census Division verifies the Unistat’s findings: a resident of Level I (the lowest in the System) has been misfiled.
    For a time it seems this alarming discovery will necessitate a review of the entire filing system. Any calculator error is considered inexcusable by Center Control and an order consigning the Unistat Series 3000 to the junkheap is immediately issued. The controversial series 4000A, which has languished on the drawing boards for seventy-five years, is hurried into production.
    The indirect cause of all this turmoil is Skeets Kalbfleischer. In his Auditor’s opinion, Skeets’ failure to advance spiritually is the result of being trapped in Eternal adolescence. His fantasies are purely masturbatory. His phobias the result of puberty. In short, the boy needs to get laid.
    Skeets, of course, has already experienced orgasm. It can be induced electronically in the cranial container at the flip of a switch. Special electrodes are directly wired to the appropriate nerve endings. A resident only has to dial the corresponding code key on his telescript console. Technology has improved upon nature; a biological orgasm lasts a few seconds; the electronic version continues until the current is switched off.
    Acting on the advice of Philip Quarrels, Skeets endures a climax lasting almost three days. Shock treatment to satisfy the voracious sexual demands of his adolescent mind. The experiment is a failure. Skeets enjoys the pornographic memory-files, but, all in all, it is a run-of-the-mill wet dream. Spontaneity and imagination are preferable to long-distance mileage.
    But the Auditing Commission is undaunted. Mere sensation obviously isn’t the answer. What the boy needs is actual experience, his own private love affair. An easy matter to arrange. A two-party memory-merge requires only the most basic rewiring, nothing like the multiple hookups needed for more sophisticated group experience. The only problem is locating the correct partner. The Census Division is asked to find a resident female, born in the middle of the twentieth century, who had sexual relations with a twelve-year-old boy.
    The twentieth century has the lowest population in the Depository System and it takes a