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BEYOND BEDLAM

by Wyman Gain

THE OPENING afternoon class for Mary Walden's ego-shift

was almost over, and Mary was practically certain the teacher

would not call on her to recite her assignment, when Carl

Blair got it into his mind to try to pass her a dirty note.

Mary knew it would be a screamingly funny Ego-Shifting

Room limerick and was about to reach for the note when

Mrs. Harris's voice crackled through the room.

"Carl Blair! I believe you have an important message.

Surely you will want the whole class to hear it. Come forward,

please."

As he made his way before the class, the boy's blush-cov-

ered freckles reappeared against his growing pallor. Halting-

ly and in an agonized monotone, he recited from the note:

"There was a young hyper named Phil,

Who kept a third head for a thrill.

Said he. It's all right,

I enjoy my plight.

I shift my third out when it's chill."'

The class didn't dare laugh. Their eyes burned down at

their laps in shame. Mary managed to throw Carl Blair a

compassionate glance as he returned to his seat, but she in-

stantly regretted ever having been kind to him.

"Mary Walden, you seemed uncommonly interested in read-

ing something just now. Perhaps you wouldn't mind reading

your assignment to the class"

There it was, and just when the class was almost over.

Mary could have scratched Carl Blair. She clutched her paper

grimly and strode to the front.

"Today's assignment in Pharmacy History is, 'Schizophrenia

since the Ancient Pre-pharmacy days.' " Mary took enough

breath to get into the first paragraph.

"Schizophrenia is where two or more personalities live m

the same brain. The ancients of the 20th Century actually

looked upon schizophrenia as a disease! Everyone felt it was

very shameful to have a schizophrenic person in the family,

and, since children lived right with the same parents who had

borne them, it was very bad. If you were a schizophrenic

child in the 20th Century, you would be locked up behind

bars and people would call you"

Mary blushed and stumbled over the daring word"crazy".

"The ancients locked up strong ego groups right along with

weak ones. Today we would lock up those ancient people."

The class agreed silently.

"But there were more and more schizophrenics to lock up.

By 1950 the prisons and hospitals were so full of schizophren-

ic people that the ancients did not have room left to lock

up any more. They were beginning to see that soon everyone

would be schizophrenic.

"Of course, in the 20th Century, the schizophrenic people

were almost as helpless and 'crazy' as the ancient Modern

men. Naturally they did not fight wars and lead the silly life

of the Moderns, but without proper drugs they couldn't con-

trol their Ego-shiftability. The personalities in a brain would

always be fighting each other. One personality would cut the

body or hurt it or make it filthy, so that when the other

personality took over the body, it would have to suffer. No,

the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were almost

as 'crazy' as the ancient Moderns.

"But then the drugs were invented one by one and the

schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were freed of their

troubles. With the drugs the personalities of each body were

able to live side by side in harmony at last. It turned out that

many schizophrenic people, called overendow6d personalities,

simply had so many talents and viewpoints that it took two

or more personalities to handle everything.

"The drugs worked so well that the ancients had to let

millions of schizophrenic people out from behind the bars of

'crazy' houses. That was the Great Emancipation of the

1990s. From then on, schizophrenic people had trouble only

when they criminally didn't take their drugs. Usually, there

are two egos in a schizophrenic personthe hyperalter, or

prime ego, and the hypoalter, the alternate ego. There often

were more than two, but the Medicorps makes us take our

drugs so that won't happen to us.

"At last someone realized that if everyone took the new

drugs, the great wars would stop. At the World Congress of

1997, laws were passed to make everyone take the drugs.

There were many fights over this because some people want-

ed to stay Modern and fight wars. The Medicorps was or-

ganized and told to kill anyone who wouldn't take their

drugs as prescribed. Now the laws are enforced and every-

body takes the drugs and the hyperalter and hypoalter are

each allowed to have the body for an ego-shift of five

days...."

Mary Walden faltered. She looked up at the faces of her

classmates, started to turn to Mrs. Harris and felt the sickness

growing in her head. Six great waves of crescendo silence

washed through her. The silence swept away everything but

the terror, which stood in her frail body like a shrieking rock.

Mary heard Mrs. Harris hurry to the shining dispensary

along one wall of the classroom and return to stand before

her with a swab of antiseptic and a disposable syringe.

Mrs. Harris helped her to a chair. A few minutes after the

expert injection, Mary's mind struggled back from its core of

silence.

"Mary, dear, I'm sorry. I haven't been watching you closely

enough."

"Oh, Mrs. Harris..." Mary's chin trembled. "I hope it

never happens again."

"Now, child, we all have to go through these things when

we're young. You're just a little slower than the others in

acclimatizing to the drugs. You'll be fourteen soon and the

medicop assures me you'll be over this sort of thing just as

the others are."

Mrs. Harris dismissed the class and when they had all

filed from the room, she turned to Mary.

"I think, dear, we should visit the clinic together, don't

you?"

"Yps, Mrs. Harris." Mary was not frightened now. She was

just ashamed to be such a difficult child and so slow to ac-

climatize to the drugs.

As she and the teacher walked down the long corridor to

the clinic, Mary made up her mind to tell the medicop what

she thought was wrong. It was not herself. It was her hypoal-

ter, that nasty little Susan Shorrs. Sometimes, when Susan had

the body, the things Susan was doing and thinking came to

Mary like what the ancients had called dreams, and Mary

had never liked this secondary ego whom she could never

really know. Whatever was wrong, it was Susan's doing. The

filthy creature never took care of her hair, it was always so

messy when Susan shifted the body to her.

Mrs. Harris waited while Mary went into the clinic.

Mary was glad to find Captain Thiel, the nice medicop, on

duty. But she was silent while the X-rays were being taken,

and, of course, while he got the blood samples, she concen-