Aparadigmatic psychosis had sunk its talons into their psyches. These people were representative of the mass mental disturbances currently spreading across the globe.
Tinker felt contemptuous of them. They aroused in him a vast disdain for their inability to master the changing conditions of this new world they all so suddenly found themselves in.
But as Tinker thought more closely about the matter, contempt began to be replaced by fear and guilt.
Without cheep, would he not soon succumb to the same set of symptoms, the classic Fours A’s: autism, ambivalence, loose associations and altered affect? And were not he and the other flashers instrumental in fashioning the world where this mental virus could spread? Surely claiming that he and his fellows had been simply following governmental orders was an excuse which, in this third decade of the twenty-first century, had long been outworn.
The answers to these questions were suddenly so obvious to Tinker that he knew he had been deliberately deluding himself until now, refusing to face up to the reality of his new position.
Yes, one day, when the mental disciplines left over from his years as a flasher failed through lack of reinforcement, he too would fall victim to aparadigmatic psychosis.
And yes, he and the others at the NIS were totally responsible for the current screwed-up mess the world was in.
But—damn it!—they had only been following orders.
The bus rumbled to a halt at the stop down the block from the Department of Employment Security. Tinker stood, and moved off down the aisle. While halted, the old bus began to fill with exhaust fumes through hidden cracks. The diesel odor struck Tinker like a mailed fist between the eyes, and suddenly brought with it the feeling of danger and entrapment that made his palms sweat. Another leftover from cheep. His amygdala—control node for the olfactory sense, among other, more crucial talents—had been left susceptible to hyperexcitation. Smell was now Tinker’s dominant sense, and he could be easily exalted or depressed by a vagrant odor, thanks to the amygdala’s interconnections with his hippocampus and limbic system.
Sometimes nowadays he felt like a dog or cat, slave to his snout. It was hard to remember that once to the contrary he had always felt more than human.
Tinker was the only one getting off here. From past weeks, he recognized several of his other passengers as fellow dolebodies, who should have been coming with him. But they sat motionless instead, lost in their private worlds that were so much more reassuring than the common one. Perhaps they would ride the bus through its route several more times before they summoned up enough will and awareness to get off.
Knowing he could do nothing for them, and uneasily aware of what they foretold for him, Tinker descended the bus’s steps.
A crowd was waiting to board. All dolebodies who had just left DES, they exhibited little excitement at having garnered another week’s stipend. Rather, they stood apathetically, not eager to face the ride home to the deadly boredom of unemployment and total obsolescence. For the most part, they were just realizing that they faced a life of total inutility, since even retraining was not a possibility. New waves of flasher-derived technology flooded out of the NIS daily, altering the whole employment equation in ways no program could possibly anticipate.
Tinker shouldered through the crowd, anxious to report to DES and be away from those who reminded him so painfully of his own stature. Although what he would do after keeping his appointment, he had no idea.
At the end of the bus queue, Tinker saw a man with one arm. He was undergoing a slo-gro.
Tinker stopped dead.
The slo-gro was one of his flashes.
The stump on the man’s left side was exposed to the chilly November drizzle. Strapped around the arm-stub was a small metal pack. The end of the stump was pink with new cellular growth, stimulated by the complex electromagnetic fields generated by the pack. Soon, following the body’s own blueprints, the growth would become a totally functional regenerated arm.
The circuitry for the pack flashed through Tinker’s mind again in its entirety. He didn’t understand it this time anymore than he had the first time. Of course, neither biology nor electronics was his field. However, experts in those areas had no more idea of why the device worked than Tinker did. Which was, at the root, the source of aparadigmatic psychosis.
But work it did, and this man was proof.
Tinker, managing to salvage a little pride from this sight, resumed his walk toward the DES building at a slightly brisker pace.
Inside the cavernous building, he took his place in the long line at his station.
At first, Tinker recalled, there had been talk of doing away with DES as a government agency. That had been years ago, when worldwide unemployment stood at only two percent, thanks to the stimulus the first flasher inputs had given to the economy. What a vibrant, exciting time that had been! It had seemed as if a real golden age were descending, borne on the wings of a miracle drug.
But that had slipped away all too soon. As the products of the National Institute of Synchrogenesis (finally split off from the NIMH) became more and more radically unexplainable and destabilizing, unemployment had begun to swell, until now it stood at fifteen percent, with no signs of slowing.
DES now absorbed more funds than the military.
Tinker’s line moved forward only slowly, and he had plenty of time to ponder such matters. His thoughts were not comforting.
At last he reached the head of the queue. A new caseworker awaited him, and Tinker sighed with exasperation, knowing that he would probably have to explain his situation to the new man, who looked improbably officious, considering the human wreckage around him. What stupid nonsense, to abide by these rules while the world was disintegrating! Why couldn’t they just pass legislation granting a minimal income to everyone? So what that some would call it socialism? But no, they had to use the same cumbersome machinery that had made sense only under much different conditions, pretending that all these poor souls here were just temporarily unemployed, and would soon find nonexistent jobs, all the while extending the benefit period time after time.
“Your card,” the man said to Tinker. He showed traces of MS palsy that even artificial myelin couldn’t eradicate.
Tinker presented his ID, and the man brought up Tinker’s case on his terminal. The caseworker’s bland face lost its sternness and assumed a look of utter bafflement and awe.
“You were employed by the NIS?” he asked with amazement.
“Yes,” Tinker admitted.
“As a synchrogenesist?”
“Yes,” Tinker said, knowing what would happen with his admission.
All around him, in his line and others, applicants and clerks fall silent and turned to stare. They looked at him as if he were simultaneously devil and angel, scum and superman. Edgy and contemptuous again, denying in his mind that these people meant anything to him, Tinker raked them with his own gaze. Eyes dropped, as if to meet his would be to surrender their most private thoughts. Tinker savored this small triumph among his degradation.
The caseworker recovered himself and continued. “You were fired. Why?”
They loved to force him to utter the word, although Tinker knew it was right there shining on their screens.
“Malfeasance,” he said. Then: “But I’ve been through the waiting period. I’m entitled to collect.”
To beg, thought Tinker. Goddamn you, Thorngate!
“All right,” said the clerk, satisfied with this obesiance. He tapped a key and the printer by his elbow stuttered out a check, which he handed to Tinker. “Continue to look for work in the following week,” he concluded.
Tinker nodded, as if the