Brother to the Machine
by Richard Matheson
Page Two
   
To be a man, he thought. No longer is it a blessing, a pride, a gift.
To be brother to the machine, used and broken by invisible men who kept
their eyes on poles and their fists bunched in ships that hung over all
their heads, waiting to strike at opposition.  When it came to you one day
that this was so, you saw there was no reason to go on with it.
  He stopped in the shade and his eyes blinked. He looked in the shop
window.  There were tiny baby creatures in a cage.....
Buy a Venus Baby for your Child, said the card.
  He looked into the eyes of of the small tentacled things and saw there
intelligence and pleading misery.  And he passed on, ashamed of what
one people can do to another people.
  Something stirred within his body.  He lurched a little and pressed his
hand against his head.  His shoulders twitched. When a man is sick, he
thought, he cannot work.  And when a man cannot work, he is not wanted.
He stepped into the street and a huge Control truck ground to a stop
inches before him.
  He walked away jerkily, leaped upon the sidewalk. Someone shouted and
he ran. Now the photo-cells would follow him.  He tried to lose himself in the
moving crowds.  People whirled by, an endless blur of faces and bodies.
  They would be searching now.  When a man stepped in front of a vehicle
he was suspect.  To wish death was not allowed. He had to escape before
they caught him and took him to the Adjustment Center.....
he couldn't bear that.
  People and robots rushed past him, messengers, delivery boys, the
bottom level of an era.  All going somewhere. In all these scurrying
thousands, only he had no place to go, no bundle to deliver, no slavish duty
to perform.  He was adrift.
  Street after street, block on block.  He felt his body weaving. He was going
to collapse soon, he felt.  He was weak. He wanted to stop.  But he couldn't
stop.  Not now.  If he paused - and sat down to rest - they would come for
him and take him to the Adjustment Center.  He didn't want to be adjusted.
He didn't want to be made once more into a stupid shuffling machine.
It was better to be in anguish and understand.
  He stumbled on.  Bleating horns tore at his brain.  Neon eyes blinked down
at him as he walked.  He tried to walk straight but his system was giving way.
Were they following?  He would have to be careful.  He kept his face blank
and he walked as steadily as he could.  His knee-joint stiffened and, as he
bent to rub it in his hands, a wave of darkness leaped from the ground and
clawed at him.  He staggered against a plate glass window.
  He shook his head and saw a man staring from inside.  He pushed away.
The man came out and stared at him in fear.  The photocells picked him up
and followed him.  He had to hurry.  He couldn't be brought back to start all
over again..... he'd rather be dead.
  A sudden idea.  Cold water.  Only to drink?
I'm going to die, he thought.  But I will know why I am dying and that will be
different. I have left the laboratory where, daily, I was sated with calculations
for bombs and gases and bacterial sprays.
copyright 1952 by Greenleaf Publications