This Perfect Day

"Always a tranquilizer," King said. "And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of."

"And a sexual depressant," Snowflake said.

"That too," King said. "Ten minutes of automatic sex once a week is barely a fraction of what's possible."

"I don't believe it," Chip said. "Any of it."

They told him it was true. "It's true, Chip."

"Really, it's the truth."

"It's true!"

"You're in genetics," King said; "isn't that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color."

"Treatments help us," Chip said. "They help Uni," the woman across the table said.

"And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni," King said. "But they don't help us, at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines." Chip shook his head, and shook it again.

"Snowflake told us"—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—"that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven't you ever noticed that they're stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?" Snowflake said, "I'll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after one." He thought for a moment. "I don't remember," he said, "but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before treatments it was—exciting."

"There you are," King said. "But it was sick excitement!"

"It was healthy," King said, and the woman across the table said, "You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all."

He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisers since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. "Yes," he said, "yes, that could be." He turned his face toward King, toward the woman, toward Leopard and Snowflake, wishing he could open his eyes and see them. "But I don't understand this/' he said. "You get treatments, don't you? Then aren't you-"

"Reduced ones," Snowflake said.

"Yes, we get treatments," King said, "but we've managed to have them reduced, to have certain components of them reduced, so that we're a little more than the machines Uni thinks we are."

"And that's what we're offering you" Snowflake said; "a way to see more and feel more and do more and enjoy more."

"And to be more unhappy; tell him that too." It was a new voice, soft but clear, the other young woman. She was across the table and to Chip's left, close to where King was. "That isn't so," Snowflake said.

"Yes it is," the clear voice said—a girl's voice almost; she was no more than twenty, Chip guessed. "There'll be days when you'll hate Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei," she said, "and want to take a torch to Uni. There'll be days when you'll want to tear off your bracelet and run to a mountaintop like the old incurables, just to be able to do what you want to do and make your own choices and live your own life."

"Lilac," Snowflake said.

"There'll be days when you'll hate us" she said, "for waking you up and making you not a machine. Machines are at home in the universe; people are aliens."

"Lilac," Snowflake said, "we're trying to get Chip to join us; we're not trying to scare him away." To Chip she said, "Lilac is redly abnormal."

"There's truth in what Lilac says," King said. "I think we all have moments when we wish there were someplace we could go, some settlement or colony where we could be our own masters—"

"Not me," Snowflake said.

"And since there isn't such a place," King said, "yes, we're sometimes unhappy. Not you, Snowflake; I know. With rare exceptions like Snowflake, being able to feel happiness seems to mean being able to feel tmhappiness as well. But as Sparrow said, any feeling is better and healthier than none at all; and the unhappy moments aren't that frequent, really."

"They are," Lilac said.

"Oh, cloth," Snowflake said. "Let's stop all this talk about unhappiness."

"Don't worry, Snowflake," the woman across the table, Sparrow, said; "if he gets up and runs you can trip him."

"Ha, ha, hate, hate," Snowflake said.

"Snowflake, Sparrow," King said. "Well, Chip, what's your answer? Do you want to get your treatments reduced? It's done by steps; the first one is easy, and if you don't like the way you feel a month from now, you can go to your adviser and tell him you were infected by a group of very sick members whom you unfortunately can't identify."

After a moment Chip said, "All right. What do I do?" His arm was squeezed by Snowflake. "Good," Hush whispered, "Just a moment, I'm lighting my pipe," King said.

"Are you all smoking?" Chip asked. The burning smell was intense, drying and stinging his nostrils.

"Not right now," Hush said. "Only King, Lilac, and Leopard."

"We've all been doing it though," Snowflake said. "It's not a continuous thing; you do it awhile and then stop awhile."