Episode Transcript
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The Tunnel under the World by FrederickPole. Pinching yourself is no way to
see if you are dreaming surgical instruments, well, yes, but a mechanic's
kid is best of all. Onthe morning of June fifteenth, Guy Burkhardt
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woke up screaming out of a dream. It was more real than any dream
he had ever had in his life. He could still hear and feel the
sharp, ripping metal explosion, theviolent heave that had tossed him furiously out
of bed, the searing wave ofheat. He sat up convulsively and stared,
not believing what he saw at thequiet room and the bright sunlight coming
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in the window. He croaked,Mary, his wife, was not in
the bed next to him. Thecovers were tumbled and awry, as though
she had just left it, Andthe memory of the dream was so strong
that thinctively he found himself searching thefloor to see if the dream explosion had
thrown her down. But she wasn'tthere. Of course she wasn't, he
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told himself, looking at the familiarvanity and slipper chair, the uncracked window,
the unbuckled wall. It had onlybeen a dream. Guy. His
wife was calling him querulously from thefoot of the stairs. Guy, dear,
are you all right? He calledweakly. Sure. There was a
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pause, then Mary said, doubtfully, breakfast is ready. Are you sure
you're all right? I thought Iheard you yelling, Buckhard said, more
confidently, I had a bad dream, Honey, be right down in the
shower, punching the lukewarm and colognehe favored. He told himself that it
had been a beaute of a dream. Still, bad dreams weren't unusual,
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especially bad dreams about explosions. Inthe past thirty years of age bomb jitters
who had not dreamed of explosions,Even Mary had dreamed of them, it
turned out. For He started totell her about the dream, but she
cut him off. You did,her voice, was astonished. Why,
dear, I dreamed the same thing, well, almost the same thing.
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I didn't actually hear anything. Idreamed that something woke me up, and
then there was a sort of quickbang, and then something hit me on
the head, and that was all. Was yours like that? Burkhard coughed,
Well, no, he said,Mary was not one of these,
strong as a man, brave asa tiger women. It was not necessary,
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he thought, to tell her allthe little details of the dream that
made it seem so real. Noneed to mention these splintered ribs, and
the salt bubble in his throat,and the agonized knowledge that this was dead.
He said, Maybe there really wassome kind of explosion downtown. Maybe
we heard it and it started usdreaming. Mary reached over and patted his
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hand absently. Maybe she agreed.It's almost half past eight here, shouldn't
you, Harry, You don't wantto be late to the office. He
gulped his food, kissed her,and rushed out, not so much to
be on time as to see ifhis guests had been right. But downtown
Tylerton looked as it always had.Coming in on the boss, Burkhard watched
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critically out of the window, seekingevidence of an explosion. There wasn't any.
If anything, Tylerton looked better thanit ever had before. It was
a beautiful, crisp day. Thesky was cloudless, the buildings were clean
and inviting they had He observed steamblasted the Power and Light Building, the
town's only skyscraper. That was thepalty of having contro Chemical's main plant on
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the outskirts of town. The fumesfrom the cascade stills left their mark on
the stone buildings. None of theusual old crowd were on the bus,
so there wasn't any one Burkhard couldask about the explosion, and by the
time he got out at the cornerof Fifth and Lehigh and the bus rolled
away with a muted Diesel moan,he had pretty well convinced himself that it
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was all imagination. He stopped atthe cigar stand in the lobby of his
office building, but Ralph wasn't behindthe counter. The man who sold him
his pack of cigarettes was a stranger. Where's mister Stebbins, Burkhard asked.
The man said politely, six,sir, he'll be in tomorrow. A
pack of Marlins today Chesterfields. Burkhardcorrected, certainly, sir, the man
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said, But what he took fromthe rack and slid across the counter was
an unfamiliar green and yellow pack.To try these, sir, he suggested,
they contained an anti cough factor.Ever, notice how ordinary cigarettes make
you choke every once in a while, Burkhard said, suspiciously. I never
heard of this brand, of course, not They're something new. Burkhard hesitated,
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and the man said persuasively. Look, try them out at my risk.
If you don't like them, bringback the empty pack and I'll refund
your money fair enough, Burkhard shrugged, how can I lose? But give
me a pack of Chesterfields too,will you? He opened the pack and
lit one while he waited for theelevator. They weren't bad, he decided,
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though he was suspicious of cigarettes thathad the tobacco chemically treated in any
way, but he didn't think muchof Ralph's stand in. It would raise
hell with the trade at the cigarstand if the man tried to give every
customer the same high pressure sales talk. The elevator door opened with a low
pitched sound of music. Burkhard andtwo or three others got in, and
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he nodded to them. As thedoor closed, the thread of music switched
off, and the speaker in theceiling of the cab began its usual commercials.
No, not the usual commercials.Burkhard realized he had been exposed to
the captive audience commercials so long thatthey had hardly registered on the outer ear
anymore. But what was coming fromthe recorded program in the basement of the
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building caught his attention. It wasn'tmerely that the brands were mostly unfamiliar.
It was a difference in pattern.There were jingles with an insistent bouncy rhythm
about soft drinks he had never tasted. There was a rapid patter dialogue between
what sounded like two ten year oldboys about a candy bar, followed by
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an authoritative bass rumble. Go rightout and get a delicious jacobite and eat
your tangy choco bite. All up, that's joco bite. There was a
sobbing female wine. I wish Ihad a feckle freezer. I'd do anything
for a feckle freezer. Burkhard reachedhis floor and left the elevator in the
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middle of the last one. Itleft him a little uneasy. The commercials
were not familiar brands. There wasno feeling of use and custom to them.
But the office was happily normal,except that mister Barth wasn't in.
Miss Mitkin, yawning at the receptiondesk, didn't know exactly why his home
phoned. That's all he'll be intomorrow. Maybe he went to the plant.
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It's right near his house. Shelooked indifferent. Yeah, a thought
struck Berkhard. But to day isJune fifteenth. It's quarterly tax return day.
He has to sign the return.Miss Mitkin shrugged to indicate that that
was Berkhard's problem, not hers.She returned to her nails. Thoroughly exasperated,
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Berkhard went to his desk. Itwasn't that he couldn't sign the tax
returns as well as Barth, hethought resentfully. It simply wasn't his job,
that was all. It was aresponsibility that Barth, as office manager
for Contro Chemicals Downtown office, shouldhave taken. Pete thought briefly of calling
Barth at his home or trying toreach him at the factory, but he
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gave up the idea quickly enough.He didn't really care much for the people
at the factory, and the lesscontact he had with them, the better.
He had been to the factory oncewith Barth. It had been a
confusing and in a way frightening experience. Barring a handful of executives and engineers.
There wasn't a soul in the factory, that is, Burkhard corrected himself,
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remembering what Barth had told him.Not a living soul, just the
machines. According to Barth. Eachmachine was controlled by a sort of computer
which reproduced, in its electronic snarl, the actual memory and mind of a
human being. It was an unpleasantthought. Barth, laughing, had assured
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him that there was no Frankenstein businessof robbing graveyards and implanting brains and machines.
It was only a matter, hesaid, of transferring a man's habit
patterns from brain cells to vacuum tubecells. It didn't hurt the man,
and it didn't make the machine intoa monster, but they made Burkhard uncomfortable.
All the same. He put Barthand the factory and all of his
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other little irritations out of his mindand tackled the tag's returns. It took
him until noon to verify the figures, which Barth could have done out of
his memory and his private ledger inten minutes, Burkhard resentfully reminded himself.
He sealed them in an envelope andwalked out to miss Mitkin. Since mister
Barth isn't here, we'd better goto lunch in Shifts, he said,
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you can go first. Thanks.Miss Mitkin languidly took her bag out of
the desk, drawer and began toapply makeup. Burkhard offered her the envelope
drop this in the mail for me. Will you wait a minute? I
wonder if I ought to phone misterBarth to make sure. Did his wife
say whether he was able to takephone calls? Didn't say, Miss Mitkin
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blotted her lips carefully with a kleenex. Wasn't his wife anyway? It was
his daughter who called and left themessage. The kid. Burkhard frowned.
I thought she was away at schoolshe called. That's all I know.
Burkhard went back to his own officeand stared distastefully at the unopened mail on
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his desk. He didn't like nightmares. They spoiled his whole day. He
should have stayed in bed like Barth. A funny thing happened on his way
home. There was a disturbance atthe corner where he usually caught his bus.
Someone was screaming something about a newkind of deep freeze, so he
walked an extra block. He sawthe bus coming and started to trot,
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but behind him someone was calling hisname. He looked over his shoulder a
small, harried looking man was hurryingtoward him. Burkhard hesitated, and then
recognized him. It was a casualacquaintance named Swanson. Burkhard sourly he observed
that he had already missed the bus. He said hello. Swanson's face was
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desperately eager. Burkhard, he askedinquiringly with an odd intensity, and then
he just stood there, silently,watching Burkhard's face with a burning eagerness that
dwindled to a faint hope and diedto a regret. He was searching for
something, waiting for something, Burkhardthought. But whatever it was he wanted,
Berkhardt didn't know how to supply it. Burkhard coughed and said again,
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Hello, Swanson. Swanson didn't evenacknowledge the greeting. He merely sighed a
very deep sigh. Nothing doing,he mumbled, apparently to himself. He
nodded abstractedly to Berkhart and turned away. Berkhart watched the slump's shoulders disappear in
the crowd. It was an oddsort of day, he thought, and
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one he didn't much like. Thingsweren't going right. Riding home on the
next bus, he brooded about it. It wasn't anything terrible or disastrous.
It was something out of his experienceentirely. You live your life like any
man, and you form a networkof impressions and reactions. You expect things.
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When you open your medicine chest,your razor is expected to be on
the second shelf. When you lockyour front door, you expect to have
to give it a slight extra tugto make it latch. It isn't the
things that are right and perfect inyour life that make it familiar. It's
the things that are just a littlebit wrong. The sticking latch, the
light switch at the head of thestairs that needs an extra push because the
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spring is old and weak, therug that unfailingly skids under foot. It
wasn't just that things were wrong withthe pattern of Berkhard's life. It was
that the wrong things were wrong.For instance, Barth hadn't come into the
office, yet Barth always came in. Burke Hard brooded about it through dinner.
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He brooded about it despite his wife'sattempt to interest him in a game
of bridge with the neighbors all throughthe evening. The neighbors were people he
liked, and and farley dinnermen.He had known them all their lives,
but they were odd and brooding toothis night, and he barely listened to
Deniman's complaints about not being able toget good phone service or his wife's comments
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on the disgusting variety of television commercialsthey had these days. Burkhard was well
on the way to setting an alltime record for continuous abstraction when around midnight,
with a suddenness that surprised him,he was strangely aware of it happening.
He turned over in his bed andquickly and completely fell asleep. Chapter
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two. On the morning of Junefifteenth, Burkhard woke up screaming. It
was more real than any dream hehad ever had in his life. He
could still hear the explosions, feelthe blast that crushed him against a wall.
It did not seem right that heshould be sitting bolt upright in a
bed in an undisturbed room. Hiswife came pattering up the stairs, darling,
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She cried, what's the matter.He mumbled, nothing, bad dream.
She relaxed, hand on heart.In an angry tone. She started
to say, you gave me sucha shock, but a noise from outside
interrupted her. There was a wailof sirens and a clang of bells.
It was loud and shocking. TheBurkhards stared at each other for a heartbeat,
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then hurried fearfully to the window.There were no rumbling fire engines in
the street, only a small paneltruck cruising slowly along flaring wild speaker horns
crowned its top. From them issuedthe screaming sound of sirens growing in intensity,
mixed with the rumble of heavy dutyengines and the sound of bells.
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It was a perfect record of fireengines arriving at a four alarm blaze.
Burkhard said, in amazement, Mary, that's against the law. Do you
know what they're doing. They're playingrecords of a fire. What are they
up to? Maybe it's a practicaljoke, his wife offered, joke waking
up the whole neighborhood at six o'clockin the morning. He shook his head.
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The police will be here in tenminutes, he predicted, wait and
see. But the police weren't,not in ten minutes or at all.
Whoever the pranksters in the car were. They apparently had a police permit for
their games. The car took aposition in the middle of the block and
stood silent for a few minutes.Then there was a crackle from loudspeaker,
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and a giant voice chanted, fecklefreezers, fekel freezers. Gotta have a
feckle freezer, feckel fe It wenton and on. Every house on the
block had faces staring out of windows. By then the voice was not merely
loud, it was nearly deafening.Burkhard shouted to his wife over the uproar,
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What the hell is a feckle freezer? Some kind of freezer, I
guess, dear, She shrieked back, unhelpfully. Abruptly, the noise stopped
and the truck stood still. Itwas still misty morning. The sun's rays
came horizontally across the rooftops. Itwas impossible to believe that a moment ago
the silent block had been bellowing thename of a freezer, a crazy advertising
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trick, Burkhardt said bitterly. Heyawned and turned away from the window.
Might as well get dressed. Iguess that's the end of it. The
bellow caught him from behind. Itwas almost like a hard slap on the
ears. A harsh, sneering voice, louder than the archangel's trumpet, howled,
have you got a freezer. Itstinks. If it isn't a Feckel
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freezer, it stinks. If it'sa last year's Feckel freezer, it stinks.
Only this year's Feckel freezer is anygood at all. You know who
owns an Ajax freezer, Fairy ZoneAjax freezers. You know who owns a
triple cold freezer, Comi Zone,triple cold freezers, every freezer, but
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a brand new Feckel freezer stinks.The voice screamed inarticulately with rage. I'm
warning you, get out and buya Feckel freezer right away. Hurry up,
Harry for Feckel, Harry for Feckel. Harry, Harry, Harry feel
fee It stopped. Eventually, Burkhardlicked his lips. He started to say
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to his wife, maybe we oughtto call the police about when the speakers
erupted again. It caught him offguard. It was intended to catch him
off guard, It screamed, Feckelfeel Cheap freezers ruin your food. You'll
get sick and throw up, You'llget sick and die. Buy a Feckle
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Ever, take a piece of meatout of the freezer you've got and see
how rotten and moldy. It isbuy a feckle. Do you want to
eat rotten, stinking food or doyou want to wise up and buy a
feckle that did it with fingers thatkept stabbing the wrong holes. Burkhard finally
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managed to dial the local police station. He got a busy signal. It
was apparent that he was not theonly one with the same idea, and
while he was shakingly dialing again,the noise outside stopped. He looked out
the window. The truck was gone. Burkhard loosened his tie and ordered another
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frosty flip from the waiter. Ifonly they wouldn't keep the christafe so hot.
The new paint job, searing redsand blind finding yellows was bad enough,
but someone seemed to have the delusionthat this was January instead of June.
The place was a good ten degreeswarmer than outside. He swallowed the
frosty flip in two gulps. Ithad a kind of peculiar flavor, he
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thought, but not bad. Itcertainly cooled you off, just as the
waiter had promised. He reminded himselfto pick up a carton of them on
the way home. Mary might likethem. She was always interested in something
new. He stood up awkwardly asthe girl came across the restaurant toward him.
She was the most beautiful thing hehad ever seen in Tylerton chin height,
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honey blonde hair, and a figurethat well, it was all hers.
There was no doubt in the worldthat the dress that clung to her
was the only thing she wore.He felt as if he were blushing as
she greeted him, mister Burkhard.The voice was like distant tom toms.
It's wonderful of you to let mesee you after this morning, he cleared
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his not at all. Won't yousit down, miss April Horn, she
murmured, sitting down beside him,not where he had pointed, on the
other side of the table. Callme, April, won't you? She
was wearing some kind of perfume.Burghard noted, with what little of his
mind was functioning at all, itdidn't seem fair that she should be using
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perfume as well as everything else.He came to with a start and realized
that the waiter was leaving with anorder for filet mignon for two hey,
he objected, Please, mister Berghard. Her shoulder was against his, her
face was turned to him, herbreath was warm, Her expression was tender
and solicitous. This is all onthe Feckle corporation. Please let them.
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It's the least they can do.He felt her hand barrowing into his pocket.
I put the price of the mealinto your pocket, she whispered,
conspiratorially. Please do that for me, won't you. I mean, I'd
appreciate it if you'd pay the waiter. I'm all fashioned about things like that.
She smiled meltingly, then became mockbusinesslike. But you must take the
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money, she insisted. Why you'reletting Feckle off lightly. If you do,
you could sue them for every nickelthey've got disturbing your sleep like that.
With a dizzy feeling as though hehad just seen someone make a rabbit
disappear into a top hat, hesaid, why, it really wasn't so
bad, April. A little noisy, maybe, but oh, mister Burkhardt,
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the blue eyes were wide and admiring. I knew you'd understand. It's
just that, well, it's sucha wonderful freezer that some of the outside
men get carried away, so tospeak. As soon as the main office
found out about what happened, theysent representatives around to every house on the
block to apologize. Your wife toldus where we could phone you. And
I'm so very pleased that you werewilling to let me have lunch with you
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so that I could apologize too,Because, truly, mister Burkhard, it
is a fine freezer. I shouldn'ttell you this, but the blue eyes
were shyly lowered. I'd do almostanything for Feckel freezers. It's more than
a job to me. She lookedup. She was enchanting. I'll bet
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you think I'm silly, don't you. Burkhard coughed, well, I,
oh, you don't want to beunkind. She shook her head. No,
don't pretend you think it's silly.But really, mister Burkhard, you
wouldn't think so if you knew moreabout Beckel. Let me show you this
little booklet. Burkhard got back fromlunch a full hour late. It wasn't
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only the girl who delayed him.There had been a curious interview with a
little man named Swanson, whom hebarely knew, who had stopped him with
desperate urgency on the street and thenleft him cold. But it didn't matter
much. Mister Barth, for thefirst time since Burkhard had worked there,
was out for the day, leavingBurkhard stuck with the quarterly tax returns.
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What did matter, though, wasthat somehow he had signed a purchase order
for a twelve cubic foot Feckle freezerupright model self defrosting list price six hundred
and twenty five dollars with a tenpercent courtesy discount. Because of that horrid
affair this morning, mister Burkhard,she had said, and he wasn't sure
how he could explain it to hiswife. He needn't have worried. As
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he walked in the front door,his wife said, almost immediately, I
wonder if we can afford a newfreezer. Dear, there was a man
here to apologize about that noise,and well we got to talking, and
she had signed a purchase order too. It had been the damnedest day,
Burkhard thought later on his way upto bed. But the day wasn't done
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with him yet. At the headof the stairs, the weekend spring in
the electric light switch refused to clickat all. He snapped it back in
fourth angrily, and of course succeededin jarring the tumbler out of its pins.
The wires shorted, and every lightin the house went out. Damn,
said Guy Burkhard fuse. His wifeshrugged sleepily. Let it go till
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morning, Tier Burkhard shook his head. You go back to bed, I'll
be right along. It wasn't somuch that he cared about fixing the fuse,
but he was too restless for sleep. He disconnected the bad switch with
a screwdriver, stumbled down into theblack kitchen, found the flashlight, and
climbed gingerly down the cellar stairs.He located a spare fuse, pushed an
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empty trunk over to the fuse boxto stand on and twist it out the
old fuse. When the new onewas in, he heard the starting click
and steady drone of the refrigerator inthe kitchen overhead. He headed back to
the steps and stopped where the olddrunk had been. The cellar floor gleamed
oddly bright. He inspected it inthe flashlight beam. It was metal,
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Some of a gun, said GuyBurkhard. He shook his head unbelievingly.
He peered closer, rubbed the edges, of the metallic patch with his thumb
and acquired an annoying cut. Theedges were sharp. The stained cement floor
of the cellar was a thin shell. He found a hammer and cracked it
off in a dozen spots. Everywherewas metal. The whole cellar was a
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copper box. Even the cement brickwalls were false fronts over a metal sheath.
Baffled, he attacked one of thefoundation beams that at least was real
wood. The glass in the cellarwindows was real glass. He sucked his
bleeding thumb and tried the base ofthe cellar stairs real wood. He chipped
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at the bricks under the oil burner, real bricks. The retaining walls,
the floor, they were faked.It was as though somebody had sure up
the house with a frame of metaland then laboriously concealed the evidence. The
biggest surprise was the upside down boathull that blocked the rear half of the
cellar, relic of a brief homeworkshop period that Burkhard had gone through a
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couple of years before. From above, it looked perfectly normal inside, though
where there should have been thwarts andseats and lockers, there was a mere
tangle of braces, rough and unfinished. But I built that, Burkhard exclaimed,
forgetting his thumb. He leaned againstthe hull, dizzily, trying to
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think this thing through. For reasonsbeyond his comprehension, someone had taken his
boat and his cellar away, maybehis whole house, and replaced them with
a clever mock up of the realthing. That's crazy, he said to
the empty cellar. He stared aroundin the light of the flash He whispered,
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what in the name of heaven wouldanybody do that? For reason refused
an answer. There wasn't any reasonableanswer. For long minutes, Berkhard contemplated
the uncertain picture of his own sanity. He peered under the boat again,
hoping to reassure himself that it wasa mistake, just his imagination. But
the sloppy, unfinished bracing was unchanged. He crawled under for a better look,
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Feeling the rough wood incredulously, utterlyimpossible. He switched off the flashlight
and started to wiggle out, buthe didn't make it. In a moment
between the command to his legs tomove and the crawling out, he felt
a sudden, draining weariness flooding throughhim. Consciousness went not easily, but
as though it were being taken away, and Guy Burkhard was asleep. Chapter
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three. On the morning of Junesixteenth, Guy Burkhard woke up in a
cramped position, huddled under the hullof the boat in his basement, and
raced upstairs to find it was Junefifteenth. The first thing he had done
was to make a frantic, hastyinspection of the boat hale and the faked
cellar floor, the imitation stone.They were all as he had remembered them,
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all completely unbelievable. The kitchen wasits placid, unexciting self. The
electric clock was piring soberly around thedial, almost six o'clock. It said.
His wife would be waking at anymoment. Burkhard flung open the front
door and stared out into the quietstreet. The morning paper was tossed carelessly
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against the steps, and as heretrieved it he noticed that this was the
fifteenth day of June. But thatwas impossible. Yesterday was the fifteenth of
June. It was not a dateone would forget. It was quarterly tax
return day. He went back intothe hall and picked up the telephone.
He dialed for weather information and gota well modulated chant and cooler saw him
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shower. Barometric pressure thirty point zerofour rising. United States Weather Bureau forecast
for June fifteenth, warm and sunny, with high around. He hung up
the phone. June fifteenth, HolyHeaven, Burkhard said, prayerfully, things
were very odd. Indeed, heheard the ring of his wife's alarm and
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bounded up the stairs. Mary Burkhardwas sitting upright in bed with the terrified,
uncomprehending stare of someone just waking outof a nightmare. Oh, she
gasped as her husband came in theroom, Darling, I just had the
most terrible dream. It was likean explosion. And again Burkhard asked,
not very sympathetically, Mary, something'sfunny. I knew there was something wrong
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all day yesterday. And he wenton to tell her about the copper box
that was the seller and the oddmock up someone had made of his boat.
Mary looked astonished, then alarmed,then plaque tory and uneasy. She
said, dear, are you sure, because I was cleaning that old trunk
out just last week and I didn'tnotice anything positive, said guy Burkhard I
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dragged it over to the wall tostep on it to put a new fuse
in. After we blew the lightsout, and after we what Mary was
looking more than merely alarmed. Afterwe blew the lights out, you know,
when the switch at the head ofthe stairs stuck. I went down
to the cellar and Mary sat upin bed. Guy, the switch didn't
stick. I turned out the lightsmyself last night. Burkhard glared at his
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wife. Now I know you didn'tcome here and take a look. He
stalked out to the landing and dramaticallypointed to the bad switch, the one
he had unscrewed and left hanging thenight before. Only it wasn't. It
was as it had always been.Unbelieving, Burkhard pressed it, and the
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lights up in both halls. Mary, looking pale and worried, left him
to go down to the kitchen andstart breakfast. Burkhard stood staring at the
switch for a long time. Hismental processes were gone beyond the point of
disbelief, in shock. They simplywere not functioning. He shaved and dressed
and ate his breakfast in a stateof numb introspection. Mary didn't disturb him.
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She was apprehensive and soothing. Shekissed him goodbye as he hurried out
to the bus without another word.Miss Mitkin, at the reception desk greeted
him with a yawn. Morning.She said, drowsily, mister Barth won't
be in today. Burkhard started tosay something, but checked himself. She
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would not know that Barth hadn't beenin yesterday either, because she was tearing
a June fourteenth pad off her calendarto make way for the new June fifteenth
sheet. He staggered to his owndesk and stared unseeingly at the morning's mail.
It had not even been opened yet, but he knew that the factory
distributor's envelope contained an order for twentythousand feet of the new acoustic tile,
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and the one from Feinbeck and Sonswas a complaint. After a long while,
he forced himself to open them.They were by lunch time. Driven
by a desperate sense of urgency,Burkhard made Miss Mitkin take her lunch hour
first, the June fifteenth that wasyesterday. He had gone first. She
went, looking vaguely wearied about hisstrained insistence, but it made no difference
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to Burkhard's mood. The phone rangand Burkhard picked it up, abstractedly contro
chemicals downtown. Burkhard speaking, thevoice said this is Swanson and stopped.
Burkhard waited expectantly, but that wasall he said. Hello again the pause.
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Then Swanson asked, in sad resignation. Still nothing, eh, nothing,
what Swanson? Is there something youwant? You came up to me
yesterday and went through this routine you, the voice crackled Burkhard, Oh my
good heavens you remember. Stay rightthere, I'll be down in half an
hour. What's this all about?Never mind, the little man said,
(33:15):
exultantly, tell you about it whenI see you. Don't say any more
over the phone. Somebody may belistening. Just wait there, say hold
on a minute. Will you bealone in the office? Well no,
miss Mitkin will probably hell. Look, Burkhard, where do you eat lunch?
Is it good and noisy? Why? I suppose so? The Crystal
(33:37):
Cafe. It's just about a block. I know where it is. Meet
you in half an hour, andthe receiver clicked. The crystal cafe was
no longer painted red, but thetemperature was still up, and they had
added piped in music interspersed with commercials. The advertisements were for Frosty Flip Marlin
cigarettes. They're sanitized, the announcerpurred, and something called Choco Bite candy
(34:01):
bars that Burkhard couldn't remember ever havingheard of before, but he heard more
about them quickly enough. While hewas waiting for Swanson to show up,
a girl in the cellophane skirt ofa nightclub cigarette vendor came through the restaurant
with a tray of tiny, scarletwrapped candies. Choco bites her tangy,
she was murmuring as she came closeto his table. Choco bites are tangier
(34:24):
than tangy. Burkhard, intent onwatching for the strange little man who had
phoned him, paid little attention.But as she scattered a handful of the
confections over the table next to his, smiling at the occupants, he caught
a glimpse of her and turned tostare, Why miss Horn, he said,
the girl dropped her tray of candies. Buckhard rose concerned over the girl
(34:49):
is something wrong? But she fled. The manager of the restaurant was staring
suspiciously at Burkhard, who sank backin his seat and tried to look inconspicuous.
He hadn't insulted the girl. Maybeshe was just a very strictly reared
young lady, he thought, inspite of the long bare legs under the
cellophane skirt. And when he addressedher she thought he was a masher.
(35:13):
Ridiculous idea. Berkhard scowled uneasily andpicked up his menu. Berkhard, it
was a shrill whisper. Burkhard lookedup over the top of his menu startled.
In the seat across from him,the little man named Swanson was sitting
tensely poised Berkhard. The little manwhispered again, Let's get out of here.
(35:34):
There are to you now. Ifyou want to stay alive, come
on. There was no arguing withthe men. Berkhard gave the hovering manager
a sick, apologetic smile and followedSwanson out. The little man seemed to
know where he was going. Inthe street. He clutched Berkhard by the
elbow and hurried him off down theblock. Did you see her, he
demanded that horn woman in the phonebooth. She'll have them here in five
(35:58):
minutes, believe me, so hurryit up. Although the street was full
of people and cars. Nobody waspaying any attention to Burkhard and Swanson.
The air had a nip in it, more like October than June, Burkhard
thought, in spite of the weatherbureau, and he felt like a fool,
following this mad little man down thestreet, running away from some them
(36:19):
toward what the little man might becrazy, But he was afraid, and
the fear was infectious in here,panted the little man. It was another
restaurant, more of a bar really, and a sort of second rate place
that Burkhard had never patronized. Rightstraight through, Swanson whispered, and Burkhard,
(36:40):
like a biddable boy, sidestepped throughthe massive tables to the far end
of the restaurant. It was lshaped with a front on two streets at
right angles to each other. Theycame out on the side street, Swanson
staring coldly back at the questioned lookingcashier, and crossed to the opposite sidewalk.
They were under the marquee of amovie theater. Swanson's expression began to
(37:04):
relax lost them. He crowed softly, We're almost there. He stepped up
to the window and bought two ticketsBurkhard trailed him into the theater. It
was a weekday matinee and the placewas almost empty. From the screen came
sounds of gunfire and horses hoofs.A solitary usher leaning against a bright brass
(37:27):
rail looked briefly at them and wentback to staring boredly at the picture.
As Swanson led Burkhard down a flightof carpeted marble steps, they were in
the lounge and it was empty.There was a door for men and one
for ladies, and there was athird door marked manager in gold letters.
Swanson listened at the door and gentlyopened it and peered inside. Okay,
(37:51):
he said, gesturing. Burkhard followedhim through an empty office to another door,
a closet, probably because it wasunmarked, but it was no closet.
Swanson opened it, warily, lookedinside, then motioned Burkhard to follow.
It was a tunnel, metal walled, brightly lit, empty. It
(38:12):
stretched vacantly away in both directions fromthem. Burkhard looked wandering around. One
thing he knew, and knew fullwell no such tunnel belonged under Tylerton.
There was a room off the tunnelwith chairs and a desk in what looked
like television screens. Swanson slumped ina chair, panting, We're all right
(38:34):
for a while here, he wheezed. They don't come here much any more.
If they do, we'll hear themand we can hide. Who demanded
burkhard? The little man said,Martians. His voice cracked on the word,
and the life seemed to go outof him. In morose tones,
he went on, well, Ithink they're Martians, although you could be
(38:57):
right. You know, I've hadplenty of time to think it over these
last few weeks after they got you, and it's possible they're Russians after all.
Still start from the beginning. Whogot me? When Swans inside?
So we have to go through thewhole thing again. All right. It
was about two months ago that youbanged on my door late at night.
You were all beat up, scared, silly. You begged me to help
(39:21):
you. I did, Naturally,you don't remember any of this. Listen
and you'll understand. You were talkinga blue streak about being captured and threatened,
and your wife being dead and comingback to life and all kinds of
mixed up nonsense. I thought youwere crazy, But well I've always had
a lot of respect for you,and you begged me to hide you.
(39:42):
And I have this dark room,you know, it locks from the inside,
only I put the lock on myself. So we went in there just
to humor you, and along aboutmidnight, which was only fifteen or twenty
minutes after we passed out, passedout, Swanson non, both of us.
It was like being hit with asandbag. Look, didn't that happen
(40:05):
to you again last night? Iguess it did. Burkhard shook his head
uncertainly. Sure, And then allof a sudden we were awake again,
and you said you were going toshow me something funny, and we went
out and bought a paper and thedate on it was June fifteenth. June
fifteenth, But that's today. Imean, you got it, friend,
(40:27):
it's always today. It took timeto penetrate, Burkhard said, wonderingly.
You've hidden out in that dark roomfor how many weeks? How can I
tell? Four? Or five?Maybe I lost count? And every day
the same, always the fifteenth ofJune. Always my landlady missus Keefer is
sweeping the front steps. Always thesame headline in the papers at the corner.
(40:52):
It gets monotonous Friend, chapter four. It was Burkhard's idea, and
Swanson despised it, but he wentalong. He was the type who always
went along. It's dangerous, hegrumbled, worriedly. Suppose somebody comes by,
they'll spot us, and what havewe got to lose? Swanson shrugged.
(41:17):
It's dangerous, he said again,but he went along. Burkhard's idea
was very simple. He was sureof only one thing. The tunnel went
somewhere Martians or Russians, fantastic plotor crazy hallucination. Whatever was wrong with
Tylerton had an explanation, and theplace to look for it was at the
(41:37):
end of the tunnel. They joggedalong. It was more than a mile
before they began to see an end. They were in luck. At least
no one came through the tunnel tospot them. But Swanson had said that
it was only at certain hours thatthe tunnels seemed to be in use.
Always the fifteenth of June, why, Burkhard asked himself, never mind,
(42:00):
how why, and falling asleep completelyinvoluntarily everyone at the same time, it
seemed, and not remembering, neverremembering anything. Swanson had said, how
eagerly he saw Burkhard again the morningafter Burkhard had incautiously waited five minutes too
many before retreating into the dark room. When Swanson had come too, Burkhard
(42:24):
was gone. Swanson had seen himin the street that afternoon, but Burkhard
had remembered nothing, and Swanson hadlived his mouse's existence for weeks, hiding
in the woodwork at night, stealingout by day to search for Burkhart and
pitiful Hope, scarrying around the fringeof life, trying to keep from the
(42:44):
deadly eyes of them them. Oneof them was the girl named April Horn.
It was by seeing her walk carelesslyinto a telephone booth and never come
out that Swanson had found the tunnel. Another was a man at the cigar
stand in Burkhard's office building. Therewere more, at least a dozen that
(43:05):
Swanson knew of or suspected. Theywere easy enough to spot once you knew
where to look for. They aloneand Tylerton changed their roles from day to
day. Burkhard was on that eightfifty one bus every morning of every day
that was June fifteenth, never differentby a hare or a moment, but
April Horn was sometimes gaudy in thecellophane skirt, giving away candy or cigarettes,
(43:30):
sometimes plainly dressed, sometimes not seenby Swanson at all. Russians,
Martians, whatever they were, Whatcould they be hoping to gain from this
mad masquerade? Burkhard didn't know theanswer, but perhaps it lay beyond the
door at the end of the tunnel. They listened carefully and heard distant sounds
(43:51):
that could not quite be made out, but nothing that seemed dangerous. They
slipped through and through a wide chamberand up a flight of steps. They
found they were in what Burkhard recognizedas the contro chemicals plant. Nobody was
in sight by itself. That wasnot so very odd. The automatized factory
(44:12):
had never had very many persons init, But Burkhard remembered from his single
visit the endless, ceaseless business ofthe plant, the valves that opened and
closed, the vats that emptied themselvesand filled themselves, and stirred and cooked
and chemically tasted the bubbling liquids theyheld inside themselves. The plant was never
populated, but it was never still. Only now it was still. Except
(44:38):
for the distant sounds. There wasno breath of life in it. The
captive electronic minds were sending out nocommands. The coils and relays were at
rest. Burkhard said, come on. Swanson reluctantly followed him through the tangled
aisles of stainless steel columns and tanks. They walked as though they were in
(44:59):
the pre presence of the dead.In a way, they were, For
what were the automatons that once hadrun the factory, if not corpses.
The machines were controlled by computers thatwere really not computers at all, but
the electronic analogs of living brains.And if they were turned off, were
they not dead? For each hadonce been a human mind. Take a
(45:22):
master petroleum chemist, infinitely skilled inthe separation of crude oil into its fractions,
Strap him down, probe into hisbrain with searching electronic needles. The
machine scans the patterns of the mind, translates what it sees into charts and
sign waves. Impress these same waveson a robot computer, and you have
your chemist, or a thousand copiesof your chemist, if you wish,
(45:45):
with all of his knowledge and skilland no human limitations at all, Put
a dozen copies of him into aplant, and they will run at all,
twenty four hours a day, sevendays every week, never tiring,
never overlooking anything, never forgetting.Swanson stepped up closer to Berkhard. I'm
scared, he said. They wereacross the room now, and the sounds
(46:07):
were louder. They were not machinesounds, but voices. Burkhard moved cautiously
up to a door and dared topeer around it. It was a smaller
room lined with television screens, eachone a dozen or more at least,
with a man or woman sitting beforeit, staring into the screen and dictating
(46:28):
notes into a recorder. The viewersdialed from scene to scene. No two
screens ever showed the same picture.The pictures seemed to have little in common.
One was a store where a girldressed like April Horn was demonstrating home
freezers. One was a series ofshots of kitchens. Burkhard caught a glimpse
of what looked like the cigar standin his office building. It was baffling,
(46:52):
and Burkhard would have loved to standthere and puzzle it out, but
it was too busy a place.There was the chance that someone would look
their way or walk out and findthem. They found another room. This
one was empty. It was anoffice, large and sumptuous. It had
a desk littered with papers. Burkhardstared at them briefly at first, then
(47:14):
as the words on one of themcaught his attention, with incredulous fascination,
he snatched up the topmost sheet,scanned it and another. While Swanson was
frenziedly searching through the drawers. Burkhardswore unbelievingly and dropped the papers to the
desk. Swanson, hardly noticing,yelped with delight. Look. He dragged
(47:35):
a gun from the desk, andit's loaded too. Burkhard stared at him
blankly, trying to assimilate what hehad read. Then, as he realized
what Swanson had said, Burkhard's eyessparkled. Good man, he cried,
we'll take it. We're getting outof here with that gun, Swanson,
and we're going to the police,Not the cops in Tylerton, but the
FBI. Maybe take a look atthis. The sheaf he handed Swanson was
(48:00):
headed Test Area Progress report subject MarlinCigarettes campaign. It was mostly tabulated figures
that made little sense to Burkhardt andSwanson, but at the end was a
summary that said, although test fortyseven K three pulled nearly double the number
of new users of any of theother tests conducted, it probably cannot be
(48:22):
used in the field because of localsoundtruck control ordinances. The tests in the
forty seven K twelve group were secondbest, and our recommendation is that retests
be conducted in this appeal, testingeach of the three best campaigns with and
without the addition of sampling techniques.An alternative suggestion might be to proceed directly
(48:43):
with the top appeal in the Ktwelve series if the client is unwilling to
go to the expense of additional tests. All of these forecast expectations of an
eighty percent of probability of being withinone half of one percent of results forecast
and more than ninety nine percent probabilityof coming within five percent. Swanson looked
up from the paper into Berkhard's eyes. I don't get it, he complained.
(49:07):
Burkhard said, I don't blame you. It's crazy, but it fits
the facts, Swanson, it fitsthe facts. They aren't Russians and they
aren't Martians. These people are advertisingmen. Somehow, heaven knows how they
did it. They've taken Tylerton overThey've got us, all of us,
(49:28):
you and me and twenty or thirtythousand other people right under their thumbs.
Maybe they hypnotize us, and maybeit's something else, but however they do
it. What happens is that theylet us live a day at a time.
They pour advertising into us, thewhole damn day long, and at
the end of the day they seewhat happened, and then they wash the
day out of our minds and startagain the next day with different advertising.
(49:53):
Swanson's jaw was hanging. He managedto close it and swallow nuts, he
said flatly. Burkhard shook his head. Sure it sounds crazy, but this
whole thing is crazy. How elsewould you explain it. You can't deny
that most of Tylerton lives the sameday over and over again. You've seen
(50:15):
it, and that's the crazy part. And we have to admit that that's
true unless we are the crazy ones. And once you admit that, somebody
somehow knows how to accomplish that,the rest of it makes all kinds of
sense. Think of it, Swanson, They test every last detail before they
spend a nickel on advertising. Doyou have any idea what that means,
(50:36):
Lord knows how much money is involved. But I know for a fact that
some companies spend twenty or thirty milliondollars a year on advertising. Multiply it,
say, by a hundred companies,say that every one of them learns
how to cut its advertising costs byonly ten percent, and that's peanuts.
Believe me. If they know inadvance what's going to work, they can
cut their costs in half, maybeto less than half, don't know,
(51:00):
but that's saving two or three hundredmillion dollars a year. And if they
pay only ten or twenty percent ofthat for the use of Tylerton, it's
still dirt cheap for them, anda fortune for whoever took over Tylerton.
Swanson licked his lips. You mean, he offered hesitantly that we're a well,
(51:21):
a kind of captive audience. Burkhardfrowned. Not exactly. He thought,
for a minute. You know howa doctor tests something like penicillin.
He sets up a series of littlecolonies of germs on gelatin discs, and
he tries the stuff on one afteranother, changing it a little each time.
Well, that's us, we're thegerms. Swanson only it's even more
(51:45):
efficient than that. They don't haveto test more than one colony because they
can use it over and over again. It was too hard for Swanson to
take in. He only said,what do we do about it? We
go to the lease. They can'tuse human beings for guinea pigs. How
do we get to the police?Burkhard hesitated. I think he began slowly.
(52:10):
Sure, this place is the officeof somebody important. We've got a
gun. We'll stay right here untilhe comes along, and he'll get us
out of here, simple and direct. Swanson subsided and found a place to
sit against the wall, out ofsight of the door. Burkhard took up
a position behind the door itself andwaited. The weight was not as long
(52:32):
as it might have been. Halfan hour perhaps. Then Burkhard heard approaching
voices and had time for a swiftwhisper to Swanson before he flattened himself against
the wall. It was a man'svoice and a girl's. The man was
saying, reason why you couldn't reporton the phone. You're ruining your whole
day's test. What the devil's thematter with you? Janet? I'm sorry,
(52:55):
mister Dorchin, she said, ina sweet, clear tone. I
thought it was important, the mangrumbled, important. One lousy unit out
of twenty one thousand. But it'sthe Burkhard one, mister Dorchen again.
And the way he got out ofsight, he must have had some help.
All right, all right, itdoesn't matter, Janet. The Choco
(53:19):
bike program is ahead of schedule anyhow. As long as you're this far,
come on in the office and makeout your worksheet, and don't worry about
the Burkhart business. He's probably justwandering around. We'll pick him up tonight.
And they were inside the door.Burkhard kicked it shut and pointed the
gun. That's what you think,he said, triumphantly. It was worth
(53:40):
the terrified hours, the bewildered senseof insanity, the confusion and fear.
It was the most satisfying sensation Burkhardhad ever had in his life. The
expression on the man's face was onehe had read about but never actually seen.
Drchen's mouth fell open and his eyeswent wide, and though he managed
(54:00):
to make a sound that might havebeen a question, it was not in
words. The girl was almost assurprised, and Burkhard, looking at her,
knew why. Her voice had beenso familiar. The girl was the
one who had introduced herself to himas April Horn. Dorchin recovered himself quickly.
Is this the one? He askedsharply. The girl said yes.
(54:23):
Dorton nodded. I take it back. You were right you, Burkhard,
what do you want? Swanson pipedup watch him, he might have another
gun. Search him. Then Burkhardsaid, I'll tell you what we want,
Torchune. We want you to comealong with us to the FBI and
(54:44):
explain to them how you can getaway with kidnapping twenty thousand people kidnapping.
Dorchin snorted, that's ridiculous, man, put that gun away. You can't
get away with this. Burkhard heftedthe gun grimly. I think I can.
Drechon looked furious and sick, butoddly not afraid. Damn it.
(55:06):
He started to bellow, then closedhis mouth and swallowed. Listen. He
said, persuasively, you're making abig mistake. I haven't kidnapped anybody.
Believe me. I don't believe you, said Burkhardt bluntly. Why should I?
But it's true. Take my wordfor it. Burkhart shook his head.
The FBI can take your word ifthey like, we'll find out.
(55:29):
Now, how do we get outof here? Dorchin opened his mouth to
argue, Burkhardt blazed, don't getin my way. I'm willing to kill
you if I have to. Don'tyou understand that I've gone through two days
of hell, and every second ofit I blame on you. Kill you.
It would be a pleasure, andI don't have a thing in the
world to lose. Get us outof here. Dorechan's face went suddenly opague.
(55:53):
He seemed about to move, butthe blonde girl he had called Janet
slipped between him and the gun.Please, she begged, Burkhard, you
don't understand, you mustn't shoot.Get out of my way. But mister
Burkhard, she never finished. Dorchin, his face unreadable, headed for the
door. Burkhard had been pushed onedegree too far. He swung the gun,
(56:16):
bellowing. The girl called out sharply. He pulled the trigger, closing
on him with pity and pleading inher eyes. She came again between the
gun and the man. Burkhard aimedlow, instinctively, too cripple not to
kill, but his aim was notgood. The pistol bullet caught her in
the pit of the stomach. Dorchinwas out and away, the door slamming
(56:38):
behind him, his footsteps racing intothe distance. Burkhard hurled the gun across
the room and jumped to the girl. Swanson was moaning, that finishes us.
Berkhard, Oh, why did youdo it? We could have gotten
a way, We could have goneto the police. We were practically out
of here wheat Burkhard wasn't listening.He was kneeling beside the girl. She
(57:00):
lay flat on her back, armshelter skelter. There was no blood,
hardly any sign of the wound,but the position in which she lay was
one that no living human being couldhave held. Yet she wasn't dead.
She wasn't dead, and Burkhard,frozen beside her, thought she isn't alive
either. There was no pulse,but there was a rhythmic ticking of the
(57:22):
outstretched fingers of one hand. Therewas no sound of breathing, but there
was a hissing, sizzling noise.The eyes were open and they were looking
at Burkhard. There was neither fearnor pain in them, only a pity
deeper than the pit. She saidthrough lips that writhed erratically. Don't worry,
(57:44):
mister Burkhard, I'm all right.Burkhard rocked back on his haunches,
staring where there should have been blood. There was a clean break of a
substance that was not flesh, anda curl of a thin golden copper wire.
Burkhard moistened his lips. You're arobot, he said. The girl
(58:05):
tried to nod the twitching lips saidI am, and so are you.
Chapter five. Swanson, after asingle inarticulate sound, walked over to the
desk and sat staring at the wall. Burkhard rocked back and forth beside the
shattered puppet on the floor. Hehad no words. The girl managed to
(58:30):
say, I'm sorry all this happened. The lovely lips twisted into a rictus
sneer, frightening on that smooth youngface until she got them under control.
Sorry, she said again. Thenerve center was right about where the bullet
hit makes it difficult to control thisbody. Burkhard nodded automatically, accepting the
(58:52):
apology. Robots. It was obviousnow that he knew it. In hindsight,
it was inevitable. Pete thought ofhis mystic notions of hypnosis or martians
or something stranger, still idiotic,for the simple fact of created robots fitted
the facts better and more economically.All the evidence had been before him,
(59:14):
the automatized factory, with its transplantedminds. Why not transplant her mind into
a humanoid robot, give it itsoriginal owner's features and form. Could it
know that it was a robot?All of us? Burghardt said, hardly
aware that he spoke out loud.My wife and my secretary, and you
and the neighbors, all of usthe same. No, the voice was
(59:37):
stronger, not exactly the same,all of us. I choose it,
you see, I this time theconvulsed lips were not a random contortion of
the nerves. I was an uglywoman, mister burghard and nearly sixty years
old. Life had passed me by. And when mister Dorchin offered me the
chance to live again as a beautifulgirl, I jumped at the opportunity.
(01:00:00):
He believe me, I jumped inspite of its disadvantages. My flesh body
is still alive. It is sleepingwhile I am here. I could go
back to it, but I neverdo. And the rest of us different,
mister Burkhard. I work here.I'm carrying out mister Drton's orders,
mapping the results of the advertising tests, watching you and the others live as
(01:00:22):
he makes you live. I doit by choice, but you have no
choice, because you see, youare dead, dead, cried Burkhart.
It was almost a scream. Theblue eyes looked at him unwinkingly, and
he knew that it was no lie. He swallowed, marveling at the intricate
(01:00:42):
mechanisms that let him swallow and sweatand eat. He said, oh,
the explosion in my dream it wasno dream. You are right, the
explosion that was real, and thisplant was the cause of it. The
storage tax let go when what theblast didn't get The fumes killed a little
later, but almost everyone died inthe blast, twenty one thousand persons.
(01:01:07):
You died with them, and thatwas Dorchan's chance, the damned ghoul,
said Burkehard. The twisted shoulders shruggedwith an odd grace. Why you were
gone, and you and all theothers were what Dorchen wanted, a whole
town, a perfect slice of America. It's as easy to transfer a pattern
(01:01:29):
from a dead brain as a livingone easier. The dead can't say no.
Oh, it took work and money. The town was a wreck,
but it was possible to rebuild itentirely, especially because it wasn't necessary to
have all the details exact. Therewere the homes where even the brains had
been utterly destroyed, and those areempty inside, and the sellers that needn't
(01:01:52):
be too perfect, and the streetsthat hardly matter. And anyway, it's
only had to last for one day, the same day, June fifteenth,
over and over again. And ifsomeone finds something a little wrong somehow,
the discovery won't have time to snowballwreck the validity of the tests, because
all errors are canceled out at midnight. The face tried to smile. That's
(01:02:15):
the dream, mister burkhard that dayof June fifteenth, because you never really
lived it. It's a present frommister Dorchin, a dream that he gives
you and then takes back at theend of the day when he has all
his figures on how many of youresponded to what variation of which appeal,
And the maintenance crews go down thetunnel to go through the whole city,
(01:02:36):
washing out the new dream with theirlittle electronic drains, and then the dream
starts all over again on June fifteenth, Always June fifteenth, because June fourteenth
is the last day any of youcan remember alive. Sometimes the crews miss
someone, as they missed you,because you were under your boat. But
it doesn't matter. The ones whoare missed give themselves away if they show
(01:02:59):
it, and if they don't,it doesn't affect the test. But they
don't drain us, the ones ofus who work for Dorchin. We sleep
when the power is turned off,just as you do when we wake up,
though we remember the face contorted wildly. If I could only forget,
Burkhard said, unbelievingly, all thisto sell merchandise. It must have cost
(01:03:23):
millions. The robot called april Hornsaid it did, but it has made
millions for Dorchin two. And that'snot the end of it. Once he
finds the master words that make peopleact. Do you suppose he will stop
with that? Do you suppose thedoor opened, interrupting her. Burkhard whirled
(01:03:44):
belatedly, remembering Dorchin's flight. Heraised the gun. Don't shoot, ordered
the voice calmly. It was notDortune. It was another robot, this
one not disguised with the clever plasticsand cosmetics, but shining plain said metallically,
forget it, Burkhard, you're notaccomplishing anything. Give me that gun
(01:04:04):
before you do any more damage.Give it to me now, Burkhard bellowed
angrily. The gleam on this robottorso was steel. Burkhard was not at
all sure that his bullets would pierceit or do much harm. If they
did, he would have to putit to the test. But from behind
him came a whimpering, scurrying whirlwind. Its name was Swanson. Hysterical with
(01:04:27):
fear, he catapulted into Burkhard andsent him sprawling. The gun flying free.
Please, begged Swanson, incoherently,prostrate before the steel robot, he
would have shot you. Please don'thurt me. Let me work for you
like that girl. I'll do anythinganything you tell me. The robot said,
we don't need your help. Ittook two precise steps and stood over
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the gun and spurned it, leftit lying on the floor. The wrecked
blonde robot said, without emotion,I doubt I can hold out much longer.
Mister Dorchen, disconnect if you haveto, replied the steel robot.
Burkhard blinked, but you're not dorchin. The steel robot turned deep eyes on
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him. I am, it said, not in the flesh. But this
is the body I am using atthe moment, I doubt that you can
damage this one with the gun.The other robot body was more vulnerable.
Now, will you stop this nonsense. I don't want to have to damage
you. You're too expensive for that. Will you just sit down and let
the maintenance crews adjust you? Swansongroveled, you won't punish us. The
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steel robot had no expression, butits voice was almost surprised. Punish you,
it repeated, on a rising note. How Swanson quivered as though the
word had been a whip, butBurkhard flared adjust him. If he'll let
you but not me, you're goingto have to do me a lot of
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damage, Dorchun. I don't carewhat I cost or how much trouble it's
going to be to put me backtogether again. But I'm going out that
door. If you want to stopme, you'll have to kill me.
You won't stop me any other way. The steel robot took a half step
toward him, and Burkhard involuntarily checkedhis stride. He stood, poised and
shaking, ready for death, readyfor attack, ready for anything that might
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happen, Ready for anything except whatdid happen for Dorchin's steel body merely stepped
aside between Buckhart and the gun,but leaving the door free go ahead invited
the steel robot. Nobody's stopping yououtside the door, Burkhard brought up sharp
it was insane of Dorchuan to lethim go robot or flesh, victim or
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beneficiary. There was nothing to stophim from going to the FBI or whatever
law he could find, away fromdorch and synthetic Empire and telling his story.
Surely the corporations who paid door andfor test results had no notion of
the ghoul's technique he used. Dorchenwould have to keep it from them,
for the breath of publicity would puta stop to it. Walking out meant
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death, perhaps, but at thatmoment in his pseudo life, death was
no terror for Burkhard. There wasno one in the corridor. He found
a window and stared out of it. There was Tylerton and Erzat's city,
but looking so real and familiar thatBurkhard almost imagined the whole episode a dream.
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It was no dream, though hewas certain of that in his heart,
and equally certain that nothing in Tylertoncould help him. Now it had
to be the other direction. Ittook him a quarter of an hour to
find a way, but he foundit, skulking through the corridors, dodging
this suspicion of footsteps, knowing forcertain that his hiding was in vain.
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For Dorchen was undoubtedly aware of everymove he made. But no one stopped
him, and he found another door. It was a simple enough door from
the inside, but when he openedit and stepped out, it was like
nothing he had ever seen. Firstthere was light, brilliant, incredible,
blinding light. Burkhard blinked upward,unbelieving and defrayed. He was standing on
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a ledge of smooth, finished metal. Not a dozen yards from his feet.
The ledge dropped sharply away. Hehardly dared approach the brink. But
even from where he stood, hecould see no bottom to the chasm before
him, and the gulf extended outof sight into the glare on either side
of him. No wonder Torchun couldso easily give him his freedom from the
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factory. There was nowhere to goBut how incredible, this fantastic gulf.
How impossible the hundred white and blindingsuns that hung above. A voice by
his side said inquiringly Burkhard, andthunder rolled the name mutteringly soft, back
and forth in the abyss before him. Burkhard wet his lips. Yes,
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he croaked, This is Dorchen,not a robot this time, but Dorchin
in the flesh, talking to youon a hand mike. Now you have
seen Buckhard. Now will you bereasonable and let the maintenance crews take over?
Burkhard stood paralyzed. One of themoving mountains in the blinding glare came
toward him. It towered hundreds offeet over his head. He stared up
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at its top, squinting helplessly intothe light. It looked like impossible.
The voice and the loudspeaker at thedoor, said Burkhard, but he was
unable to answer. A heavy rumblingsigh, I see, said the voice.
You finally understand that there's no placeto go. You know it now.
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I could have told you, butyou might not have believed me,
so it was better for you tosee it yourself. And after all,
Burkhard, why would I reconstruct acity, just the way it was before.
I'm a businessman, and I countcosts. If a thing has to
be full scale, I build itthat way. But there wasn't any need
to in this case. From themountain before him, Burkhard helplessly saw a
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lesser cliff descend carefully toward him.It was long and dark, and at
the end of it was whiteness,five fingered whiteness. Poor little Burkhard crooned
the loudspeaker, while the echoes rumbledthrough the enormous chasm that was only a
workshop. It must have been quitea shock for you to find out that
you are living in a town builton a tabletop. Chapter six. It
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was the morning of June fifteenth,and Guy Burkhard woke up screaming out of
a dream. It had been amonstrous and incomprehensible dream of explosions and shadowy
figures that were not men, andterror beyond words. He shuddered and opened
his eyes. Outside his bedroom window, a hugely ample fied voice was howling.
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Burkhard stumbled over to the window andstared outside. There was an out
of seasoned chill to the air,more like October than June, but the
scent was normal enough, except forthe sound truck that squatted at curbside halfway
down the block. Its speaker hornsblared, Are you a coward? Are
you a fool? Are you goingto let crooked politicians steal the country from
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you? No? Are you goingto put up with four more years of
graft and crime? No? Areyou going to vote straight Federal Party all
up and down the ballot? Yes, you just bet you are. Sometimes
he screams, Sometimes he wheedles,threatens, begs, cajoles, but his
voice goes on and on through oneJune fifteenth, after another end of The
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Tunnel Under the World by Frederick Pole