Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online Page A

Unistat 3000 less than an hour to run through all the female files. It comes up with the numbers of nearly fifty women who had amused themselves with long-dead delivery boys. Three are ex-school teachers who centuries before had seduced precocious students in coat rooms and under desks. None of these will do. They had all been middle-aged (some nearly sixty) when they developed a taste for prepubescence and it is feared the age discrepancy might prove too traumatic for Skeets. In order to satisfy the Auditors, the female merge-partner has to be nearly the same age as the boy: an eager virgin with undeveloped breasts and slim athletic hips, seasoned by nothing stronger than puppy-love.
    The Unistat 3000 tries again and draws a blank. The Census Division recommends an early twenty-first-century female; increased Depository population allows for a wider choice and, owing to the liberal mores of the age, a twelve-year-old without sexual experience is a rarity. Again, the Auditors say no. The time difference is too great; memories are liable to be disparate and the resulting merge would seem more like fantasy than reality. What Skeets needs is a strong dose of reality.
    The Auditing Commission is insistent. Top priority must be given the Kalbfleischer affair. Center Control is firmly behind the project and the methodical examination of all possible channels officially encouraged. It is suggested to the Deltron Unistat Coordinator (a machine whose singular lack of humor and fanatic concern for detail make it the most efficient Director of Census in over a century) that a cross-reference check with the files of other divisions might prove productive. The Unistat goes to work immediately and five hours later, while running through a routine batch of old auditing reports, a Series 3000 makes the astonishing discovery. Sometime late in the twenty-second century, when the last private depositories were incorporated, the brain of a mid-twentieth-century cinema actress was inadvertently misfiled.
    To throw the Auditing Commission off track, in case they should be monitoring his telescript console, Obu Itubi submits a study plan along with his new batch of memory-file requests. The plan includes an elaborate apology for his unfortunate philanthropy together with a resolution to overcome a basic prejudice toward machines. As part of his program for achieving tolerance and understanding, Itubi requests the complete plans and wiring diagrams for all of the Amco-pak series above Mark V. If he can learn to appreciate the complexities of even a simple machine like the Amco-pak, Itubi is certain it won’t be long before he is filled with admiration for his cybernetic superiors.
    Memory-merge. The term has always disgusted Vera Mitlovic. There is something repulsive about the blend of mechanics and sentiment. Vera remembers certain drooling lovers (handfuls of ashes in lonesome marble urns), impossible romantics who interpreted a few minutes of pleasant friction and the discharge of a tablespoon of semen as something cosmic, a union of souls. How had she ever endured such fools? In her prime Vera had been an accomplished sexual athlete and if she screamed a bit during orgasm it wasn’t in celebration of the primordial pagan pieties. She paid no homage to the dark gods of the blood. What Vera craved was technique and innovation. She much preferred the skillful application of whip and harness to the attentions of any man who felt his penis was an extension of the Infinite. In fact, of all the young gallants who showed up at her dressing room with expensive bouquets and elegant flattery, the one she remembers best is a wall-eyed count who lashed her naked breasts with his gift offering of long-stemmed roses.
    So if Vera receives the news of her impending memory-merge with something less than elation, it is because she is satisfied with the past as she lived it. What need has she for a metaphysical love affair? Her own recollections are sufficiently