Nakedness
but trailing clouds
of glory do we come
from god
who is our home
heaven lies about us
in our infancy
shades of the
prison house
begin to close upon
the growing boy
metrazol
which is a stimulant
to the nervous system
has been used
to improve
the learning ability
of mice
and a strain
of stupid mice
outperformed
untreated mice
with superior heredity
by 40 percent
in learning mazes
water
reservoir
7
has
a
high
coliform
count
sterilize
and
then
check
the
recycler
“Was it caring?” the Mnemonist asked. “Was it doing for others?” If he were to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that what he cared about was the information that flowed through his body, and that what he did was only a natural consequence of that process. He served himself, and if, in doing that, he served the urban center and its population, he did not mind, but it was a by-product of his need to keep the center going so that he could keep doing what he enjoyed, what he needed, what kept him alive. Besides, what was the alternative?
true
i talk of dreams
which are
the children
of an idle brain
begot of nothing
but vain fantasy
Puromycin
an antibiotic
that blocks
protein formation
has been used
to inhibit
the memory of goldfish
fabric
machine 5
is producing
defective gowns
check
the quality
of the fiber
He searched the memories that were uniquely, and obscurely, his own. “Did my experience with chemical memory recapitulate the early experiences of humanity?” he asked. He could imagine—there were no racial memories to draw upon—the first fascination of people with the shortcuts made possible by chemical learning: the knowledge they could ingest, the skills they could acquire, the abilities they could assume. No more puzzling over meaning; no more stretching the mind to encompass the unpredictable, the uncommunicable, the unthinkable. And then the slow realization that chemical memory was not just a shortcut but the royal road to perfection: total memory, absolute communication, and knowledge, skills, and abilities sharpened to the cutting edge of possibility.
i broider
the world
upon a loom
i broider
with dreams
my tapestry
Here
in a
Little
Lonely room
i am master
of earth
and sea
and the planets
come to me
if the memory molecules
can be identified
and synthesized
mcconnell said
scientists might even
be able to implant
artificial memories
in human beings
obviously education
would be quite
a different matter
if students could be
injected with
algebra memories
or spanish memories
spray
fields
27
and
28
for
mosaic
and
check
the
other
fields
for
possible
spread
After the first rush of enthusiasm for learning had faded into commonplace acceptance—or perhaps while new developments in education were still being introduced—people would have begun to adapt synthetic memories to other uses. First, thrill seekers would have explored alien memory for its own sake, just as the general availability of automobiles introduced indiscriminate automobile riding, or the introduction of television was greeted by the watching of test patterns. Then, as tastes became more sophisticated, simple stories would have been developed out of patterned memories, and then would have come the avalanche of capsuled other lives.
dreamer
of dreams
born out of
my due time
why
should
i strive
the crooked
straight
through a combination
of psychology and chemistry
krech said
we may be able
to raise verbal abilities
in some
Arithmetical abilities
in others
artistic ability
in still others
the
party
in the
commons
is getting
frenetic
spray
depressant
into
the air ducts
The Mnemonist considered the opinions of historians and philosophers and asked, “Was the evolution of this world of dreamers inevitable once chemical memory was perfected and made generally available, or were there points at which events could have been diverted into other channels?” No one had recorded any such decision points, he knew. The first crude synthetic experiences had flowed imperceptibly into more expert storytelling and then into various pathways of specialization. First came artistry, then decadence, and finally perversion—until popping capsules became a way of life and then a culture, while earlier uses of chemical memory remained embedded in society like scarred boulders dropped from retreating glaciers.
o sleep
o gentle sleep
natures soft nurse
how have
i frighted thee
that thou
no more
wilt weight
my eyelids down
and steep my senses
in forgetfulness
the day is very near
krech believes
when the
intellectual capacities
of human beings
will be subject
to the products
of the chemical
as well as the teaching
laboratory
psychoneurobiochemistry
Blood
Analyzer
24
Is
Cycling
Off
And
On
shut it down
And
check it out
“Could I be looking in the wrong place for someone who might find this pallet a place of pleasure and not a bed of pain?” the Mnemonist asked. He had been searching for a person who dealt in data, whose love for information matched his own, or for a volunteer whose concern for the welfare of others led him to sacrifice easy satisfactions for the general good. What he should have been looking for all this time, he thought, was someone already accustomed to the pallet and the flow of information, who used it without being used, who could dream without becoming a poppet.
he never saw
never before today
what was able to take
his breath away
a face
to lose youth for
to occupy age
with the dream of
meet death with
If he
And other workers
&
nbsp; Succeed
Krech says
With mock exuberance
The world
Of the
Mind
Is ours
in the flow
of
chemical
memories
are those
who change them
but
are not changed
by them
The Dreamer
Hecabe dreamed that she gave birth to a bundle of sticks that turned into countless fiery serpents. She awoke screaming that Ilium was in flames.
Helen comes to me as she came that first night at Cranaë, the most beautiful woman in the world, her face like alabaster lit from within, her eyes dark with mystery, her body smooth and youthful, and her passions and skills in lovemaking as great as those of Aphrodite herself.
I do not believe in this barbarous world whose petty gods walk among their believers in disguise or shrouded in mist, guiding weapons, preserving favorites, instilling fear or courage, determining destinies, controlling fates, lying, cheating, seducing, raping. And the people—I am another kind of man than these credulous savages. I shrink from their shouting and wailing, the stench of their unwashed bodies, their angers, their pride, their cruelty.
Yet Helen makes a believer.
She is my shrine, and I almost believe that, as rumor has it, she has found on the walls of Troy a stone that drips blood when rubbed against another, and she uses it to keep my love alive. But I am not such a fool, and I remember that I am a dreamer.
At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the god of strife, rolled a golden apple to the feet of Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite. The apple was inscribed, “For the Fairest."
I remember also—for my memory is divided in half, like my brain—my first sight of Helen. It was in Sparta at the palace of Menelaus. Helen was twenty-five, no longer a girl, and the mother of four children by Menelaus. I was the guest of a great and proud king of the Achaeans. None of this mattered. Helen bedazzled my eyes. I could not stop watching her.
If you award me the prize, I will make you king of all Asia and the richest man alive.
I knew that I was making myself ridiculous—I was not such a simple cattle herdsman as not to realize how a Trojan behaves at court—but I could not stop the glances, the sighs, the signals of my love. Once I picked up the goblet from which she had sipped and placed my lips on the very spot where hers had rested, and once, in a moment of exquisite rashness, I wrote in wine on the tabletop, “I love you, Helen."
If you choose me, I will make you victorious in all your battles, and the handsomest and wisest man in the world.
The king noticed nothing. He was too proud, too powerful, to suspect that anyone would dare to approach his wife, and he sailed off to Crete for the funeral of his grandfather. That night Helen and I eloped. She was as much in love with me as I with her; she abandoned two sons and a nine-year-old daughter, taking along only little Pleisthenes. We also took as much treasure from the palace as my fleet could carry. It was the custom—not theft, as later generations might consider it, but a way of redistributing wealth, just as the traditional exchange of gifts was a method of trading when money had not yet been invented. At least that is what my dreaming self remembered, although my consciousness continually reminded me of other customs, other systems.
If you award me the golden apple, Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world, will be yours.
Some say that Helen's love was the gratitude of Aphrodite, but I don't believe in gods or prophecies. All I know is Helen's beauty and the passion of her love. Women are cheap in this world. They are taken and enslaved, made concubines or servants; they are objects to be traded, used, and bred; and if one is abducted or caught in adultery, it is not the loss of the woman that is resented but the injury to the man's pride.
Not Helen. All this world is only a frame to enhance her loveliness; the Achaeans encamped outside these embattled walls for nine long years and the destruction they bring are only the spice to make our love more savory.
Men die every day because of me, because of Helen. The generations to come will never stop singing about her beauty, about our love. All Troy fell in love with her, and Priam swore that he would never let her go. They die unlovely deaths outside the walls, and worse things are to come, I fear. Beautiful Cassandra, Priam's daughter and my sister, has been imprisoned in a pyramidal building on top of the citadel for fear her dire prophecies, including the fall of Troy, will dishearten the Trojans. But she is not believed.
The people say that Cassandra is a false prophet; how they decide this I have not been able to determine. Cassandra says that Apollo offered to teach her the art of prophecy if she would lie with him, but after he taught her, she refused to carry out her end of the bargain. He begged her for a kiss at least, and when she agreed, he spit in her mouth, thus ensuring that her prophecies would never be believed.
I think that Cassandra is mentally ill, but every time I come within range of her voice, she screams that I will bring the destruction of Troy. I don't believe her, but I'd rather she stopped.
But all of this is only the accompaniment to our love, the shouts of warriors and the wailing of widows the music that makes our lovemaking more sweet, the blows of battle on the plains leading to the black Achaean ships only the clash of cymbals that celebrate our orgasms.
Helen comes to my bed by day and by night. Although she is a matron now of more than forty years and she has born me three sons—all killed, alas, when a roof collapsed—and a daughter, she is as beautiful, as breath-stopping, as when we first met, and every time we touch, my senses reel with a sickness that only her passion can cure.
Helen, Helen, Helen.... It is the litany by which I chant myself to paradise. The most beautiful woman in the world. If I can celebrate that beauty in my own special way, if I can make it live again, like Faust, it will be worth my soul.
And yet there is something about this strange, barbaric world that worries me. It is like no other world I have ever dreamed. It throbs to the rhythm of our lovemaking, and yet it seems strangely resistant to my will. Am I in control or not?
* * * *
Samuel awoke to the lassitude that always followed a dream. It was a good feeling generally—like relaxation after passion, like the quiet of isolation after the demands of other people. Occasionally, after one of his darker dreams, he would feel a carryover of guilt or depravity flowing like ichor through dull veins, but even that would soon be gone. That was one of his great assets as a dreamer: There was little carry-over from one dream to another. Each seemed freshly drawn from the well of his unconscious.
For him dreaming had always been like therapy.
This dream, though, was different. It clung to him like sleep itself with gritty hands, unwilling to let him go. He felt tired, burned-out. “Refresher!” he said to the console, and then, “Stimulant!"
He felt the injections like a lover's touch upon his arms and legs. With a last, soothing burst of healant, the console's tiny needles withdrew. He slowly revived. Finally he sat up on the round bed, eased himself to his feet, and walked unsteadily to the lavatory. He relieved himself and showered.
He emerged from the shower feeling a little better and took a robe from the dispenser in the lavatory wall. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His eyes wore dark circles like mascara. They looked sunken as if they had seen too many things and remembered too much.