“Ha ha,” Washington said, and signaled to one of the technicians. The far door was opened; beyond, he could see a small room, yellowish, with strange walls.
His chair moved forward on the track.
“Enjoy yourself,” Washington said.
The chair moved through the door, and into the room, The door was closed behind him. It shut with a soft, leathery sound.
A very strange sound.
And suddenly, he knew. He looked down: his chair was still on tracks, but suspended in the middle of the room, equidistant from all walls, ceiling and floor. And every wall was the same, with strange baffles and projections.
A sound-killing room.
“Hello,” he said. His voice was odd, muffled and unfamiliar to him.
“I’m in a soundproofed room,” he said. He shouted it, but it came out as little more than a whisper. A soft, dull whisper.
He sat and waited. Nothing happened. He continued to sit in the chair for what seemed like a very long time; how long, he could not be sure. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps half an hour.
Then white smoke began to hiss softly into the room. It was a funny kind of smoke, opaque and totally odorless. He thought it would make him cough, but it did not.
Soon he was surrounded by white smoke, so dense that he could not see the walls. It was as if he were floating in the center of a cloud.
He remained that way for a long time. And then the sound began. It was a bizarre sound, like radio static, and maddening.
White sound.
That was what they called it: a mixture of frequencies of sound, just as white light was a mixture of wavelengths of light. It was a steady, monotonous, unvarying crackling.
White sound.
He spoke. He could hear nothing but the static, his words were lost in it, disappearing into the blanket of sound.
Very neat, he thought. White light, white sound, floating in a foggy cloud. No up, no down, no stimuli. Nothing to look at, nothing to listen to, nothing to smell or feel.
But there was something to feel—he ran his fingers over the wooden arms of the chair. He tensed his arms against the straps until it hurt. He forced himself to pay attention to the sensations in his hands.
He continued to do this for a long time. But then, when next he noticed, his hands and legs were free; someone had taken away the straps.
He must have slept.
But he didn’t remember.
He thought of getting out of the chair, of moving around, but he was afraid to move in the white fog and the white sound which came to him evenly in all directions. He was lost. He told himself that he was in a little room, that outside was a laboratory, and people checking on him, that there was a door outside to the laboratory, and that door was right ahead of him.
Ahead?
No, behind.
Behind where? What if they had turned him around, when they removed the straps. What if they had changed his orientation?
He sighed. Perhaps they had, perhaps not. In any case, it was too much trouble. Too much trouble to bother with. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. There was no point in keeping them open: there was nothing to look at.
He tried to relax.
The first electric shock traveled up his spine, snapping him awake and instantly alert. He blinked his eyes. The fog was still there, and the sound.
What were they doing?
There were more shocks, and still more. He sat limply in the chair, not understanding. Sensory deprivation meant absence of sensation. By shocking him, they were providing stimuli.
Why?
He closed his eyes. He was feeling very tired now. He ran his fingers through his hair, and touched—
Wires.
Wires?
Someone had put wires on his head, he thought sleepily. That was strange of them.
Shocks again. He was sleepy in a way he had never been before; after each shock came, he dozed off immediately afterward. His bones ached and his eyes hurt with fatigue.
Another shock.
Why?
And then he realized that they were keeping him awake, purposely keeping him awake, and the electrodes on his head were connected to an encephalograph.
So they would know when he was dreaming.
Vaguely, he remembered the studies. In sleeping, a normal person dreamed with great regularity ten minutes out of every hour. If you missed a night of sleep, you dreamed twice as much the next night.
If you were awakened each time you started to dream—as indicated by changes in brain wave activity—then the sleep did you no good. You could be awakened during non-dreaming periods without harm. But if you were prevented from dreaming….
Another shock.
He responded sluggishly. Psychosis, that was what it produced. Sleep deprivation psychosis. The absence of dreaming drove a man—
Shock.
Mad. Drove him mad.
He had never been so tired. No one in the history of the world had been so tired. There was no greater blessing than sleep, it was better than cold mountain water, better than caviar, better than Hogarth’s mother.
Hogarth’s mother?
Rocking herself to sleep.
There was another shock.
He saw it all very clearly now, despite the white fog and the white sound and the shocks. He saw that the elephant king had overcome the giants in the land of Peruvian Green, and the queen of the homeostasis had integrated all the mega-functions on the top of her crystal blackboard. Meanwhile the gun was pointed at the cap of the archduke who flew over the castle tops wearing his pink beret while he selected a suitable tree upon which to perch and lay his nest of eggs. That was to be expected since there was Dante’s voyage across the seven seas in glorious meritocracy and seaside playpens of laughing infants who played in the seaside digging sandcastles and innovating in the ocean before they were finally allowed to sleep, and then they were happy and gurgling, and soft voices of their dear departed mother would whisper into their ear, all sorts of marvelous reassurances about the future of the Holy Grail and IBM lost ten points in heavy low rubberneck.
Forester, a rubber of whist, eh? And then we fixed on the fort, all guns blazing for her majesty.
Eh?
20. EIGHTEENTH NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
“YOU’LL BE PLEASED TO know,” George Washington said, smiling kindly, “that everything was a complete success. An unqualified success.”
Clark felt a surging thrill, a moment of great pleasure. “That’s wonderful.”
“We’re still concerned about how long the effects will last—”
Oh dear, Clark thought, suddenly worried.
“—but we can hope, at least, that they are permanent.”
Permanent? How delightful that was, how thrilling. They were truly on the verge of a breakthrough in science. He felt an almost palpable sense of discovery. It was very exciting, working here in Advance. It was the most exciting thing a young man could do.
“I’m very eager to begin work,” Clark said, rubbing his hands together.
Washington gave him a funny look.
“Is something wrong, George?”
“No,” George said. “It’s just…well, sometimes I can’t believe it myself, is all. You’re a new man, Roger.”
“I know it. I feel like a new man.”
“Yes, I’m sure you must,” Washington said. “Well then: down to business, eh? I’ll show you around your lab, and then you can get right to work. Oh, by the way, Harvey wants to see you.”
“Harvey wants to see me?” It was an honor, the president of such a fine company wanting to see him,
“Yes,” George said. “Come along.”
Roger met with Harvey and George in the big office. They were both very happy, and Roger felt happy as well. He was extremely eager to begin his work; he could hardly contain his excitement. It was such a wonderful company, so dynamic and interesting.