Short Fiction - R. A. Lafferty (i can read book club .txt) 📗

I have all the people in the world in my brain, and still I am not able to think. This power should have come to someone able to take advantage of it.”

He went into the Plugged Nickel Bar, but the man on duty knew him for a restricted person from the filter center, and would not serve him.

He wandered disconsolately about the city. “I know the people in Omaha and those in Omsk. What queer names have the towns of the earth! I know everyone in the world, and when anyone is born or dies. And Colonel Cooper did not find it unusual. Yet I am to be on the lookout for things unusual. The question rises, would I know an odd thing if I met it?”

And then it was that something just a little bit unusual did happen, something not quite right. A small thing. But the colonel had told him to report anything about anything, no matter how insignificant, that struck him as a little queer.

It was just that with all the people in his head, and the arrivals and departures, there was a small group that was not of the pattern.

Every minute hundreds left by death and arrived by birth. And now there was a small group, seven persons; they arrived into the world, but they were not born into the world.

So Anthony went to tell Colonel Cooper that something had occurred to his mind that was a little bit odd.

But damn-the-dander-headed-two-and-four-legged-devils, there were the kids and the dogs in the street again, yipping and hooting and chanting:

“Tony the tin man. Tony the tin man.”

He longed for the day when he would see them fall like leaves out of his mind, and death take them.

“Tony the tin man. Tony the tin man.”

How had they known that his father was a used metal dealer?

Colonel Peter Cooper was waiting for him.

“You surely took your time, Anthony. The reaction was registered, but it would take us hours to pinpoint its source without your help. Now then, explain as calmly as you can what you have felt or experienced. Or, more to the point, where are they?”

“No. You will have to answer me certain questions first.”

“I haven’t the time to waste, Anthony. Tell me at once what it is and where.”

“No. There is no other way. You have to bargain with me.”

“One does not bargain with restricted persons.”

“Well, I will bargain till I find out just what it means that I am a restricted person.”

“You really don’t know? Well, we haven’t time to fix that stubborn streak in you. Quickly, just what is it that you have to know?”

“I have to know what a restricted person is. I have to know why the children hoot ‘Tony the tin man’ at me. How can they know that my father was a junk dealer?”

“You had no father. We give to each of you a sufficient store of memories and a background of a distant town. That happened to be yours, but there is no connection here. The children call you Tony the Tin Man because (like all really cruel creatures) they have an instinct for the truth that can hurt; and they will never forget it.”

“Then I am a tin man?”

“Well, no. Actually only seventeen percent metal. And less than a third of one percent tin. You are compounded of animal, vegetable, and mineral fiber, and there was much effort given to your manufacture and programming. Yet the taunt of the children is essentially true.”

“Then, if I am only Tony the Tin Man, how can I know all the people in the world in my mind?”

“You have no mind.”

“In my brain then. How can all that be in one small brain?”

“Because your brain is not in your head, and it is not small. Come, I may as well show it to you; I’ve told you enough that it won’t matter if you know a little more. There are few who are taken on personally conducted sightseeing tours of their own brains. You should be grateful.

“Gratitude seems a little tardy.”

They went into the barred area, down into the bowels of the main building of the center. And they looked at the brain of Anthony Trotz, a restricted person in its special meaning.

“It is the largest in the world,” said Colonel Cooper.

“How large?”

“A little over twelve hundred cubic meters.”

“What a brain! And it is mine?”

“You are an adjunct to it, a runner for it, an appendage, inasmuch as you are anything at all.”

“Colonel Cooper, how long have I been alive?”

“You are not.”

“How long have I been as I am now?”

“It is three days since you were last reassigned, since you were assigned to this. At that time your nervousness and apprehensions were introduced. An apprehensive unit will be more inclined to notice details just a little out of the ordinary.”

“And what is my purpose?”

They were walking now back to the office work area, and Anthony had a sad feeling at leaving his brain behind him.

“This is a filter center, and your purpose is to serve as a filter, of a sort. Every person has a slight aura around him. It is a characteristic of his, and is part of his personality and purpose. And it can be detected, electrically, magnetically, even visually under special conditions. The accumulator at which we were looking (your brain) is designed to maintain contact with all the auras in the world, and to keep a running and complete data on them all. It contains a multiplicity of circuits for each of its three billion and some subjects. However, as aid to its operation, it was necessary to assign several artificial consciousnesses to it. You are one of these.”

The dogs and the children had found a new victim in the streets below. Anthony’s heart went out to him.

“The purpose,” continued Colonel Cooper, “was to notice anything just a little bit peculiar in the auras and the persons they represent, anything at all odd in their comings and goings. Anything like what