A Scanner Darkly

“That is the second one I’ve had.” After a pause Bruce said, “One time I got violent.” He stood, still holding the suitcase; the manager gestured for him to set it down on the ground. “I broke the violence rule.”

“What’d you do?”

“I threw a pillow.”

“Okay, Bruce,” the manager said. “Come with me and I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping. We don’t have a central building residence here; each six persons have a little cabin. They sleep and fix their meals there and live there when they’re not working. There’s no Game sessions, here, just the work. No more Games for you, Bruce.”

Bruce seemed pleased; a smile appered on his face.

“You like mountains?” The farm manager indicated to their right. “Look up. Mountains. No snow, but mountains. Santa Rosa is to the left; they grow really great grapes on those mountain slopes. We don’t grow any grapes. Various other farm products, but no grapes.”

“I like mountains,” Bruce said.

“Look at them.” The manager again pointed. Bruce did not look. “We’ll round up a hat for you,” the manager said. “You can’t work out in the fields with your head shaved without a hat. Don’t go out to work until we get you a hat. Right?”

“I won’t go to work until I have a hat,” Bruce said.

“The air is good here,” the manager said.

“I like air,” Bruce said.

“Yeah,” the manager said, indicating for Bruce to pick up his suitcase and follow him. He felt awkward, glancing at Bruce: he didn’t know what to say. A common experience for him, when people like this arrived. “We all like air, Bruce. We really all do. We do have that in common.” He thought, We do still have that.

“Will I be seeing my friends?” Bruce asked.

“You mean from back where you were? At the Santa Ana facility?”

“Mike and Laura and George and Eddie and Donna and—”

“People from the residence facilities don’t come out to the farms,” the manager explained. “These are closed operations. But you’ll probably be going back once or twice a year. We have gatherings at Christmas and also at—”

Bruce had halted.

“The next one,” the manager said, again motioning for him to continue walking, “is at Thanksgiving. We’ll be sending workers back to their residences-of-origin for that, for two days. Then back here again until Christmas. So you’ll see them again. If they haven’t been transferred to other facilities. That’s three months. But you’re not supposed to make any one-to-one relationships here at New-Path—didn’t they tell you that? You’re supposed to relate only to the family as a whole.”

“I understand that,” Bruce said. “They had us memorize that as part of the New-Path Creed.” He peered around and said, “Can I have a drink of water?”

“We’ll show you the water source here. You’ve got one in your cabin, but there’s a public one for the whole family here.” He led Bruce toward one of the prefab cabins. “These farm facilities are closed, because we’ve got experimental and hybrid crops and we want to keep insect infestation out. People come in here, even staff, track in pests on their clothes, shoes, and hair.” He selected a cabin at random. “Yours is 4-G,” he decided. “Can you remember it?”

“They look alike,” Bruce said.

“You can nail up some object by which to recognize it, this cabin. That you can easily remember. Something with color in it.” He pushed open the cabin door; hot stinking air blew out at them. “I think we’ll put you in with the artichokes first,” he ruminated. “You’ll have to wear gloves—they’ve got stickers.”

“Artichokes,” Bruce said.

“Hell, we’ve got mushrooms here too. Experimental mushroom farms, sealed in, of course—and domestic mushroom growers need to seal in their yield—to keep pathogenic spores from drifting in and contaminating the beds. Fungus spores, of course, are airborne. That’s a hazard to all mushroom growers.”

“Mushrooms,” Bruce said, entering the dark, hot cabin. The manager watched him enter.

“Yes, Bruce,” he said.

“Yes, Bruce,” Bruce said.

“Bruce,” the manager said. “Wake up.”

He nodded, standing in the stale gloom of the cabin, still holding his suitcase. “Okay,” he said.

They nod off as soon as it’s dark, the manager said to himself. Like chickens.

A vegetable among vegetables, he thought. Fungus among fungus. Take your pick.

He yanked on the overhead electric light of the cabin, and then began to show Bruce how to operate it. Bruce did not appear to care; he had caught a glimpse of the mountains now, and stood gazing at them fixedly, aware of them for the first time.

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” the manager said.

“Mountains, Bruce, mountains,” Bruce said, and gazed.

“Echolalia, Bruce, echolalia,” the manager said.

“Echolalia, Bruce—”

“Okay, Bruce,” the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I’ll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won’t puzzle him.

And another vegetable in the other cot, there. To keep him company. They can nod their lives away together, in unison. Rows of them. Whole acres.