Brother to the Machine
by Richard Matheson
Page Three
   
   All through those long days and nights of plotting destruction, the truth
was growing in my brain.  Connections were weakening, indoctrinations
faltering as effort fought with apathy and, finally, something gave, and all
that was left was weariness and truth and a great desire to be at peace.
  And now he had escaped and he would never go back.  His brain had
snapped forever and they would never adjust him again.  He came to the
citizen's park, last outpost for the old, the crippled, the useless.
Where they could hide away and rest and wait for death. He entered
through the wide gate and looked at the high walls which stretched
beyond his eye. The walls that hid the ugliness from outside eyes. It
was safe here.  They did not care if a man died inside the citizen's park.
  This is my island, he thought.  I have found a silent place.  There are no
probing photo-cells here and no ears listening.  A person can be free here.
  His legs felt suddenly weak and he leaned against a blackened dead
tree and sank down into the mouldy leaves lying deep on the ground.
An old man came by and stared at him suspiciously.  The old man
walked on.  He would not stop to talk for minds are still the same even
when the shackles had been burst.
  Two old ladies past him by.  They looked at him and whispered to one
another. He was not an old person.  He was not allowed in the citizen's
park.  The Control Police might follow him.  There was danger and they
hurried on, casting frightened glances over their lean shoulders.  When he
came near they scurried over the hill.  He walked.  Far off he heard a
siren.  The high screeching siren of the Control Police cars.
Were they after him?  Did they know he was here?
He hurried on, his body twitching as he loped up a sun-baked hill and
and down the other side.  The lake, he thought, I am looking for the lake.
  He saw a fountain and stepped down the slope and stood by it.  There
was an old man bent over it.  It was the man who had passed him.  The
old man's lips enveloped the thin stream of water.....
he stood there quietly, shaking,  The old man did not know he was there.
He drank and drank.  The water dashed and sparkled in the sun. His hands
reached out for the old man.  The old man felt his touch and jerked away,
water running across his gray bearded chin.  He backed away, staring
openmouthed. He turned quickly and hobbled away.
  He saw the old man run. Then he bent over the fountain.  The water
gurgled into his mouth.  It ran down and up into his mouth and poured out
again tastelessly.  He straightened up suddenly, a sick burning in his chest.
The sun faded to his eye, the sky became black.  He stumbled about on the
pavement, his mouth opening and closing.  He tripped over the edge of the
walk and fell to his knees on the dry ground.  He crawled in on the dead
grass and fell on his back, his stomach grinding, water running over his
chin.   He lay there with the sun shining on his face and he looked at it
without blinking.  Then he raised his hands and put them over his eyes.....
an ant crawled across his wrist. He looked at it stupidly.  Then he put the
ant between two fingers and squashed it to a pulp.
copyright 1952 by Greenleaf Publications