"No."
"Run your head against the wall."
"No."
"Let's go on. He's abnormal, Pfaff, but mind you we'll get at him yet."
I shammed loss of will-power just when a sensation of the strongest will flooded my whole being and I felt I could make myself do the impossible.
Checking on my "abnormalities" the doctor put me a few more questions.
"If the happiness of mankind depended on your life, would you give it?"
"Why should I?" I asked dully.
"Can you commit suicide?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to kill the war criminal, Obersturmfuhrer Kraftstudt?"
"What for?"
'Will you collaborate with us?"
"Yes."
"Damned if I can make anything out of him! I hope it's the first and the last time I have such a case to deal with. Loss of will-power at 175. Write that down. Let's go on with it."
And they went on for another half-hour. Finally the frequency chart of my nervous system was complete. The doctor now knew all the frequencies by means of which I could be made to experience any sensation or mood. At least he thought he did. Actually the only genuine frequency was the one which stimulated my mathematical abilities. And that was just what I needed most. The point was that I had evolved a plan of blowing the criminal firm sky-high. And mathematics was to be my dynamite.
It is an established fact that hypnosis and suggestion work best on weak-willed individuals. That was how the Kraftstudt personnel instilled in the calculators-their wills generator-treated- awed obedience and reverence towards their "teacher".
I, too, was to pass through an obedience course, but because of my "abnormal" spectre this;was postponed for a time. I required an individual approach.
While a working place was being specially set up for me I had comparative freedom to move about. I was allowed to go out of the ward into the corridor and glance into the class-rooms where my colleagues studied or worked.
I was not allowed to join in the common prayers held between the walls of a huge aluminium condenser for half an hour every morning, during which Kraftstudt's victims paid homage to the firm's head. Devoid of will and thought, they dully repeated words read to them over a closed-circuit broadcast system.
"Joy and happiness lie in self-knowledge," announced the relayed voice.
"Joy and happiness lie in self-knowledge," the twelve men on bended knees repeated in chorus, their will-power destroyed by the alternating current field "between the walls".
"By understanding the mysteries of the circulation of impulses across neurone synapses we achieve joy and happiness."
"… joy and happiness," repeated the chorus.
"How wonderful that everything is so simple!
What a delight it is to know that love, fear, pain, hatred, hunger, sorrow, joy are all nothing but movement of electrochemical impulses in our bodies!"
"… in our bodies."
"How miserable he who does not know this great truth!"
"… this great truth," repeated the slaves dully.
"Herr Kraftstudt, our teacher and saviour, gave us this happiness!"
"… happiness."
"He gave us life."
"He gave us life."
I listened to this monstrous prayer, peeping through the glass-panel door of a class-room.
Inert and flabby, with eyes half-closed, the men repeated the nightmarish maxims in expressionless voices. The electric generator hardly ten paces away pumped submission into their minds robbed of resistance. Something inhuman, vile to the extreme, bestial and at the same time exquisitely cruel was being done to them. Boggled for comparison at the sight of that herd of miserable creatures with no will of their own, my mind could only suggest dipsomania or drug-addiction at their worst.
The thanksgiving over, the twelve passed into a spacious hall with rows of desks. Suspended over each desk was a round plate of aluminium forming part of a mammoth condenser. A second plate was apparently sunk in the floor.
This hall reminded me somehow of an open-air cafe with shaded tables. But the idyllic impression was swept away as soon as I looked at the men under the plates.
A sheet of paper setting out the problem awaited each one of them. At first the calculators looked at these in dumb incomprehension, still under the influence of the will-destroying frequency. Presently the frequency of ninety-three cycles was switched on and a crisp order to begin work relayed.
And all the twelve, snapping up pad and pencil, pitched into feverish scribbling. This could not be called work. It was frenzy, a kind of mathematical epilepsy. The men writhed and squirmed over their pads, their hands shuttled to and fro till they blurred; their faces turned deep purple with the strain; their eyes started out of their sockets.
This lasted for the best part of an hour. Then, when their hands started moving jerkily, heads lowered almost to the table-tops and livid veins swelled rope-like in their extended necks, the generator was switched to eight cycles. All the twelve at once dropped asleep.
Kraftstudt saw to it that his slaves got some rest!
Then it all began afresh.
One day, while watching this horrible scene of mass mathematical frenzy I saw one of the calculators break down. Suddenly he stopped writing, crazily turned to one of his furiously writing neighbours and stared at him blankly for a while as if at great pains to remember something.
Then he gave a terrible guttural cry and began tearing his clothes. He bit himself, gnawed at his fingers, tore skin off his chest, battered his head on the table. Finally he passed out and slumped down on the floor.
The rest paid not the slightest attention, their pencils still working feverishly.
I was so enraged that I started pounding on the locked door. I wanted to call out to the poor devils, tell them to have done with it, to break out and fall on their tormentors…
"Don't get so worked up, Herr Rauch," I heard a calm voice beside me. It was Boltz.
"You are criminals! Look what you're doing to people. What right have you to torture them?"
He smiled his bland intellectual smile and said:
"Do you remember the myth about Ulysses? The gods offered him the choice between a long but quiet life and a short but turbulent one. He chose the latter. So did those men."
"But they were not offered any choice. It's you who aided by your pulse generator chose to stampede them toward self-annihilation for the sake of dividends!"
Boltz laughed.
"Haven't you heard them say they are happy? And so they are. Look at the way they're working in happy abandon. Does not bliss lie in creative labour?"
"I find your arguments revolting. There is a normal tempo in human life and it is criminal to try to accelerate it."
Boltz laughed again.
"You're not exactly logical, Professor. There was a time when people travelled on foot or horseback. Nowadays they fly by jet. News used to spread from mouth to mouth, taking years to snail-pace round the globe; now radio brings events right into your home even as they happen. Present-day civilisation accelerates the tempo of life artificially and you don't think it's a crime. And the host of all sorts of artificial amusements and delights, aren't they too accelerating life's tempo? So why should you consider artificial acceleration of the functions of a living organism a crime? I'm certain that these people, were they to live a natural life, would not be able to do a millionth part of what they can do now. And the meaning of life, as you know, is creative activity. You will fully appreciate that when you become one of them. Soon you will know what joy and happiness are! In fact, in two days' time. A separate room is being set up for you. You will be working.there alone, because, you will excuse my saying so, you are somewhat different from normal people."
Boltz slapped me amiably on the shoulder and left me alone to ponder his inhuman philosophy.
In accordance with my "spectre" they started my obedience training at a frequency which gave me enough will-power to achieve a feat of defiance. My first feat was easy: again I shammed loss of will-power. Kneeling down and staring ahead as vacuum-eyed as I possibly could, I repeated dully the now familiar thanksgiving balderdash. In addition a few truths about neuro-cybernetics were inculcated in me as a novice.