S.F.

 

S. F. n., abbrev. Geog.: San Felipe, city, Chil.; San Fernando, city, Chil., U.S., Philip., Argent.; Santa Fe, city, riv., U.S.; prov., Argent.; San Francisco, earthquake site, U.S. Other: Sinn Fein (Jr., lit. ‘we ourselves’), Ir. pol. movement, early 20th cent.; sacrifice fly (baseball); sinking fund (econ.); survival factor (ecol); science fiction; selective forgetfulness.

 

— Oxford English Dictionary,

Fourth Supplement

 

 

Thursday 17 Sept ’39

Willie, precious:

How’s my little snookums? How’s my snookums today? As happy as I am? I hope so, because I’m sure there’s never been such a wonderful day! I woke up this morning feeling like a young girl again, and when I looked at your picture above my bed and the sun shining outside my window, there were tears of happiness in my eyes.

And do you know why, precious? Because today I’ve decided to sit down and write you a letter. Imagine, Willie, a letter of your very own! Baby’s First Letter!

There’s so much I have to tell you, and I’m so excited I can hardly begin. Why, I don’t remember the last time I felt so good! Just thinking about you now, and putting your picture here on the table where I can see it better, I feel as if… as if you’re right here in the room with me! Of course, it’s only an old photograph, not one of those holograph things they have nowadays—but it’s a pretty picture just the same. Your Mommy and your Daddy, bless their hearts, are standing behind you looking oh so proud, the light gleaming off their chromium Helmets, and there you are in front of them, in your little plastic sunsuit, fast asleep with your thumb in your mouth, just as cute as can be! It’s as if you’re sitting right here beside me, your Great-Granny can almost reach out and touch you… And if she were with you right now, do you know what she’d do? She’d just give you the biggest kiss you ever saw—and a big hug, too! That’s how much she loves you.

And even though they’ve put her in a Home (it’s for my own good, I know) and she can’t come round to see you like she used to, writing you this letter makes her feel so close to you… Why, so close I think I’ll just reach out and tickle your chinny-chin-chin! There!

I remember the last time I saw you—I’m sure it wasn’t very long ago—you were just the eentsy-weentsiest little baby, all swaddled up in your baby-sheath and looking ever so huggable! You were smiling in your sleep, with nothing but your precious little head sticking out of the top of the plastic like some relic in a museum. Your dear Mommy (God bless her) switched off the vibrator under your crib and went to get your vitamilk bottle, and just as I was leaning over to give you a Great Big Kiss, you woke up and, oh!, did you let out a howl! I guess you’d never seen such an old woman before! (Yes, Willie, your Great-Granny is old—so old she sometimes forgets her age.) Well, your Mommy had to come running back from the kitchen to turn the vibrator on again, so you’d stop crying and go back to sleep. She was a little cross with me, I’m afraid, and I felt sorry that I’d scared you, really I did. Now I’m in this Home, and I won’t be able to come visit you anymore. But maybe after you’ve read this letter, you’ll come visit me! Won’t that be fun!

But oh, Willie, your Great-Granny forgets. You can’t read this letter—I mean, not now, the 17th of Sept, 2039. You haven’t learned to read yet! I’m sure you’re nowhere near three years old… When I was a little girl, no one knew how to read before they were at least five or six—or even seven. Children nowadays are so smart, they’re able to read much sooner than we did! Why, I’ll bet my little Willie is reading and writing and multiplying and dividing by the time he’s two-and-a-half, just like all my other great-grandchildren! There must be nearly a dozen of them by now. Funny that you’re the only one I remember; I guess that’s because yours is the only picture they’ve let me keep.

But it’s a lovely picture, Willie, snookums, and I don’t care if you’re too itty-bitty to read this now. I have such important news for you that I’m going to write it anyway, and Mommy and Daddy (bless their hearts) can save it for you till you’re old enough.

But they’re not allowed to read it themselves. This is your letter, Willie, and it’s just for you. No Grown-Ups Allowed! That’s because what I have to tell you concerns those shiny metal Helmets your Mommy and Daddy wear—and why they make Great-Granny afraid.

Maybe they frighten you, too, those Helmets. I think if they’d had such things when I was little, I’d have been frightened… But that was ever so many years ago, and I’m growing a little forgetful.

Or maybe you don’t even think about the Helmets at all; maybe you just “take them for granted,” precious—that means not noticing things—because Mommy and Daddy wear them all the time, and you’ve never seen them with their Helmets off…

Or maybe you think they’re pretty. Yes, that’s it, you think, What pretty Helmets! (And they are pretty, too, snookums, especially when they’re freshly polished. But they’re not as pretty as a certain baby I know!) You’d like to wear one of those pretty Helmets yourself, am I right? You can hardly wait for the Big Day to arrive when, five years old, you’re taken on a Little Trip to the Clinic and come back wearing a Helmet of your own, just like Mommy and Daddy (God bless them) and all the other big people.

Why, I’ll bet you’re counting the days till your Fifth Birthday!

(That’s true, isn’t it, snookums? Don’t tell me you’re five already. No, please don’t tell me that! If I recollect, you should be… still a little baby. Five is a long way off, isn’t it? Sure it is. You’ll be reading this long before you’re five. I know that because I know what a smart baby you are!)

But Willie, precious, even though you’re so looking forward to that Little Trip, even though you want a Helmet of your own more than anything in the world, please listen to what your Great-Granny has to say, because you know your Great-Granny loves you, even if she did make you cry that time, and you know her only thought is what’s best for you. Willie, precious, don’t let them put one of those Helmets on you. They aren’t good for you. You can trust Great-Granny, Great-Granny knows. Don’t go with Mommy and Daddy when they take you down to the Clinic. There are men there who will hurt you, Willie. Great-Granny knows.

Instead, a few days before your Fifth Birthday, sneak out of the house and don’t tell Mommy and Daddy where you’re going. Put some food in your pockets, in case you get hungry. Maybe you could run away and come live with Great-Granny at the Home, wouldn’t that be fun? Wouldn’t you like to live here with me? They take very good care of you here, it’s always quiet and there’s plenty of heat in the winter. And I’d give you all the candy and cake you wanted, even for breakfast. I promise, Willie. Cross my heart.

But the important thing, precious, is not to tell Mommy and Daddy about this part of the letter. Don’t tell them what I’m saying here. And most of all, don’t tell them you’re going to run away before the Big Day. That way, no one will know but you and me. And then we’ll have a Secret! Secrets are fun—but only if you don’t tell anybody about them. Then… Why, then it wouldn’t be a Secret any more!

A Secret is much more fun than a Helmet, Willie. Helmets are no good for you. I know you want one, I know they look pretty, but you mustn’t let Mommy and Daddy take you to the Clinic. They love you, Willie, but I’ll bet you a giant chocolate cake with candy, flowers, and five birthday candles that they don’t love you as much as Great-Granny does. They mean well, but they don’t know what’s best for you.

Great-Granny does. I’m 110 years old, or was the last time I looked, and they say I’m getting a little senile, but I know a thing or two. I know why more people are going to the movies than ever before—and why no more movies are being made. I know why people in this country walk around smiling—and why all the other countries laugh at us. Oh yes, I know a thing or two.

I also know what Feb 24th is. That’s right, Willie, it’s Keyes Day, the day of the big treasure hunt—aren’t you the smart one! But I’ll bet you don’t know what it really is. I’ll bet you think the same as every other child, that Keyes Day is when Mommy and Daddy hide little gifts around the house, locked inside closets and boxes and drawers, then give you a set of keys and turn you loose.

But Keyes Day means more than just getting presents. It’s a very special holiday, for it celebrates the birthday of Alonzo Keyes. (Isn’t that a funny name? I think William is so much prettier!)

And because Great-Granny knows that you like stories—of course you do, snookums, all children like stories—she’s going to tell you one about Alonzo Keyes.

Story-time, snookums.

Once upon a time there was a young man named Alonzo who lived on an island named Trinidad, where he spent all day playing with his pets. His pets were called guinea pigs, but they weren’t real pigs, and they didn’t go “oink oink!” They were fat, furry little things, like hamsters, only bigger, and Alonzo liked nothing better than watching them as they scampered around their cage, feeding them all sorts of delicious food and teaching them the most wonderful tricks. He taught them to find their way through long twisty tunnels, and to ring a bell when they got thirsty, and to guess which trapdoor led to their supper.

Alonzo was what was called a Brain Researcher.

You know what a brain is, don’t you, precious? It’s the lump of meat that fills the inside of your head, and it’s what hurts when you try too hard to remember something that happened long ago. It’s colored grey and wrinkled all over like a soyburger, but the really strange thing is that, just as people’s faces wrinkle as they grow older, so do their brains. My face and brain are very, very wrinkled.

Every morning Alonzo used to look inside the brains of his pets. I’m sorry to say that, to do this, he usually had to cut them open, but I’m sure he did it in a nice way. Sometimes he also had to give his pets injections in their brains. Injection means sticking someone with a needle, and then squirting some sort of drug into the hole you’ve made. (When I was a girl I was very scared of needles—but they don’t use them anymore, not even for sewing. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve never even seen a needle, so don’t go having nightmares. Nightmares—yes, that’s something else brains are good for.)

Alonzo was brown as a walnut and very, very smart. He worked in a building called a laboratory—a little red-brick building filled with glasses and cages and needles on the inside and palm trees on the outside—where he spent his time teaching his guinea pigs so many wonderful tricks that they’d forget the ones they’d learned the week before. Then he would inject different sorts of drugs into their brains to see which ones helped them remember the trick they’d forgotten.

Alonzo was working on a Memory Drug.

So far, he hadn’t found a single one that worked.

Some people thought that Alonzo was doing all this for a Good Cause: if he could find a way for guinea pigs to remember their old tricks, he could find a way for people to do the same. But the truth was, he was doing all this for money—that is, he was getting an allowance, just like someday you’ll get an allowance.

Your allowance, though, will come from Daddy or, better yet, from me. (I’ll start giving you one just as soon as you come live with me here in the Home.) Alonzo’s allowance, though, came from a group of men called the Trinidad Police Department. You know what Police are, don’t you, snookums? They’re men dressed in blue sunsuits who hit people who are bad. You’ve seen them on TV, and if you’d lived thirty years ago you’d have seen them on the street.

The Chief of the Trinidad Police Department—the Daddy of the Department, the man who told everyone else what to do—was a fat black man named Jubal. Jubal’s tummy was so big that he always had to sleep on his back; if he’d tried to sleep on his tummy, or so the story goes, he would have tipped back and forth like an old-time rocking horse, a kind of wooden toy. Jubal loved to eat more than anything else in the world, and I’m sure he always cleaned his plate. Next to food, he loved his wife; for unlike him, Mrs. Jubal was thin and very pretty. Everyone on the island thought so, in fact. So did Alonzo.

The Memory Drug was Jubal’s idea; he decided that if the men in the laboratory could make him such a drug, it would help in his Police work by making it easier to catch Criminals. (A Criminal is a grown-up who does something naughty. The only place you can see them now is on TV, along with Police.) When the Police caught a Criminal, they would hit him. But before they could catch him, they had to know what he looked like. Sometimes, when a Criminal did something naughty, other people might see him do it; but after a few days they’d often forget what they’d seen—and if they saw the Criminal again, they might not know him. Jubal wondered if a drug might help people remember, and he set Alonzo to work finding out.

This very thing had once happened to Jubal himself: he had seen a Criminal with his very own eyes and, only a few days later, had forgotten what the man looked like. His memory must not have been very good—though of course, the whole thing had happened in the dark… It seems Jubal had walked, or rather, rolled into his bedroom late one night, long after his wife was asleep, and in the moonlight pouring through the curtains he’d seen the dark shape of a man standing over his wife’s bed. The man looked as if he’d just given Mrs. Jubal a Big Hug and a Kiss. When Jubal yelled, the man scampered across the room and climbed out the window—but not before Jubal saw, for barely a second, his face outlined in the moonlight.

Mrs. Jubal told everyone she’d been fast asleep and hadn’t seen the Criminal. Jubal wondered if maybe she was Telling a Fib. But anyway, he knew he wouldn’t need his wife’s help—not if Alonzo came up with a Memory Drug.

But Alonzo seemed stuck. He worked hard, injecting the brains of guinea pig after guinea pig—yet maybe he didn’t work hard enough.

True, if he found the drug, it would make him rich and famous, and Alonzo very much wanted to be rich and famous; he wanted people to point and stare, to know his name, to smile at him. And above all he wanted Mrs. Jubal to smile at him.

But it was Mr. Jubal he was worried about. He didn’t want Mr. Jubal to point and stare; he didn’t even want Mr. Jubal to look at him too closely. Because you see, precious, Alonzo had been the man in the Jubals’ bedroom, and Mr. Jubal was the only one who didn’t know it.

Alonzo went on testing drugs, but he never found the one he’d been paid to find—or if he did, he poured it down the sink. His guinea pigs remained as forgetful as an old woman.

He did find a drug, though, that had a very interesting effect: it made his guinea pigs forget even more.

Remember what I said about the brain, snookums? How it looks as wrinkled as a lump of grey soyburger? (Sure you do, your memory’s OK!) Well, even though everyone’s soyburger is special and belongs to them alone, they’re all just about the same shape and have wrinkles in just about the same places. And there’s one certain place, a little lump on a bigger lump, where everyone has a certain set of wrinkles for remembering things. Do you know what we call it? Why, IT, of course! Isn’t that funny? IT is short for a certain complicated name you’ll learn when you go to school. (In fact, it will probably be the first thing they teach you, though I didn’t learn it—or IT—till much later.) The name is Inferior Temporal Gyrus—that’s funny too, isn’t it?—and Alonzo found that when he injected a certain drug into that certain set of wrinkles and then stuck two wires into the hole and did a certain complicated thing to them (sort of like touching them to a wall socket; do you know what electricity is?), he could make his little pets forget the trick they’d just learned.

He called it “snuffing a memory,” and it worked almost every time.

As for the drug, he called it simply Number 57, which we sometimes write like this: #57. (That little tic-tac-toe board means Number.) He’d been searching for a Memory Drug, but even though #57 was exactly the opposite—a Forgetfulness Drug—Alonzo decided that it had its uses.

He didn’t tell anyone about what he’d found; he worked alone for the rest of the year. Then, on New Year’s Eve, just as 1976 was turning into 1977, he brought a batch of #57 to the Chief of Police.

The Jubals were in the middle of having a big party, and the house was filled with policemen and their wives. There were broken bottles everywhere—bottles that had once held a certain kind of old-time drink called rum—and everyone was doing the thing he liked best: the policemen were drinking rum and laughing and fighting, their wives were drinking rum and laughing and talking, Mrs. Jubal was dancing, and Jubal himself was in his private room upstairs doing his own Favorite Thing, which was eating his New Year’s dinner. There was too much food for even a man as big as Jubal to eat, but he didn’t mean to eat it all himself. Every year at this time he would stuff himself full of goose and chicken and pork and lamb and other precious meats that today only kings can eat; and after he had stuffed himself just as full as a soy sausage, he would give what was left over to his guests.

After saying hello to Mrs. Jubal and giving her a little wink (can you close just one eye at a time?), Alonzo went upstairs, where Mr. Jubal was busy eating, and showed him the #57. I’m afraid, though, that he Told a Fib: he told Jubal that #57 would help him remember the man in the bedroom.

The Chief of Police asked Alonzo to pour some of the drug into the tall glass of rum he was drinking, and Alonzo did as he was told. He also taped some wires to the man’s head and ran them to a little machine he had made. Jubal drank his glass of rum, just like a good little boy drinking his vitamilk, and then nodded to Alonzo, who pressed a little button on his machine. All of a sudden Jubal’s eyes closed, his mouth hung open, and he hiccupped. Alonzo let go of the little button, and the man’s eyes opened again.

“What am I doing here?” he asked. “And what are these wires on my head?”

“You’re just sitting down to your New Year’s dinner,” said Alonzo. “Don’t you remember? You’d been waiting so long for it that you fainted from hunger. These wires brought you back.”

“Well, leave them on,” said the Chief of Police. “I don’t want to faint again, I want to eat.” He reached for a leg of lamb with one hand and his glass of rum with the other. The glass was empty, but Alonzo quickly filled it with rum and #57.

As Alonzo watched, Jubal ate till he could eat no more. “Strange,” he said, blinking, “I seem to get filled up faster than I used to.” Alonzo pressed the little button, and again the Chief’s eyes closed, his mouth hung open, and he hiccupped. When he woke again, Alonzo told him the same story and refilled his glass. Once more the Chief began to eat his New Year’s dinner.

An hour later, as the New Year was almost upon them, the people downstairs heard a loud crash, followed by the tinkling of breaking glass. They rushed into the kitchen to find Alonzo bent over the shape on the floor. He seemed to be reading the dial of a little machine from which two wires dangled.

“Just as I thought,” said Alonzo, and shook his head. He put the machine in his pocket. “We’re too late, friends. The man’s dead.”

He was right. Indeed, Jubal had split open like an overstuffed soy sausage. He had eaten himself to death.

And that, snookums, is the story of Alonzo Keyes. Please don’t let it frighten you. I do hope, though, you can learn something from it: A Good Boy Always Cleans His Plate, but he doesn’t make a pig of himself.

Death? You don’t know what Death means? Not now, precious…

I wish his story ended here, but I’m sorry to say that Alonzo Keyes went on to marry Mrs. Jubal. He put aside his guinea pigs and brain machines and lived happily—but not happily ever after. Within a few years, Alonzo and Mrs. Jubal took to fighting, and with great bitterness and gloom they decided to break up. The entire marriage had been a Mistake.

It was Mrs. Jubal’s idea to bring out the old machine and the #57. She thought that all her sadness could be erased if, somehow, Alonzo could make her forget she’d ever seen him. Alonzo agreed; it seemed like a fine idea, and after “snuffing” their memories of the marriage, they could go their own ways without regret. So the very next day he cooked up some #57 on the kitchen stove, took out the little machine, and gave it a few adjustments (which means turning the knobs an eentsy-weentsy bit). Then he and his wife sat down on the living room sofa, drank a glass of the drug, and fitted the wires to their heads. After giving his wife one last angry look, Alonzo pressed the button.

The machine worked. Both closed their eyes, sagged to the floor, and hiccupped. The wires fell away, and when they awoke they didn’t know one another.

But Alonzo had made a bad mistake: he’d forgotten that people tend to repeat their own bad mistakes. As soon as he came to his senses and saw the beautiful stranger on the floor beside him, he immediately fell in love with her all over again.

Can you guess what happened, snookums? That’s right: they got married, and then broke up, and then erased their memories of the marriage, and then got married again, and then… Well, it took Alonzo almost twenty years to realize what had happened.

When he did, he took the #57 and the wonderful machines and put them On the Market; that means he put together a lot if them and left them in stores for people to buy. Once again it seemed he had done it for a Good Cause: he went on TV and told everyone that, used correctly, his little machines could cure troubled thoughts. He saw the day, he said, when every Clinic and Home would have one, and they would be used to make people happy—people who were worried and fearful and full of regrets for things that had happened in the past. (Sometimes, you see, a memory gets “locked away” deep inside us like a Keyes Day Treasure Hunt, and it gives us Problems years later. A boy whose Mommy made fun of him while he was learning to talk might, years later, have a stutter, a kind of shivering, at certain words. A woman whose Daddy had hit her when she was little might, years later, find it hard to fall in love. Alonzo thought his machines could help people like this by “snuffing out” the unhappy memories.)

But once again he’d made a bad mistake. People went out and bought them, but not to cure their troubled thoughts. They bought them, rather, as a toy. Correctly adjusted, with the drug taken at just the right time and in just the right amount, the machines could be made to snuff the tiniest and most recent memories. It gave many people the chance they had been looking for all their lives: to repeat, as if for the first time, whatever they liked best. A young girl whose happiest moments had been the first time she sat through Gone With the Wind (a popular movie which I’m sure you’ll see someday) could sit through it again—for the first time. A man who liked reading could select his favorite book and, after correctly adjusting the machine, could read it again as if it were brand new.

There had never been anything like this before. Once upon a time, people used to “drink to forget.” That meant that they drank glasses of rum, just like Jubal, and for an hour or two could escape from the past. But suddenly, overnight, everyone was drinking #57—and rum itself was forgotten. There had even been a rum-drinkers’ club (it was known as the AA) where, night after night, sad people met and talked about their troubled thoughts. Now it changed its name to the Nepenthe Society. People came for just one night and went home cured.

As you might expect—since the drug’s first use had been to commit a murder, a terrible thing, Willie—Criminals immediately saw the drug as a useful tool. A Criminal would walk into a shop, force the shopkeeper to give him all the money in his money-box (which was called a cash register), and then make the man forget he’d just been robbed. The poor shopkeeper would go about his day, never thinking to summon the Police, and only that night—after he’d looked inside his cash register—would he know that a Criminal had visited him.

(Finally somebody very very smart went to the Police with a good idea: whenever they caught a Criminal, instead of hitting him, they would simply snuff the man’s whole past away. He would forget all the people and places that had taught him to become a Criminal and, inside his head, would become a little child again—a child who could be trained in Good Habits the way Alonzo had trained his guinea pigs.)

Those were memorable days, those first days of the Forgetfulness Drug.

I, too, was caught up in the craze, and so was my husband, your dear Great-Grandaddy (God bless him). We were much younger then, and saw no danger. We returned to Paris, a beautiful city in another country, and there we visited a certain garden named Versailles—a garden we had always loved because we’d spent the day after our wedding there. As we walked the broad paths, passing statues buried in greenery and bushes in the shapes of animals, gazing at ourselves in the reflecting pools and dodging the spray from the fountains, we knew somehow that we’d done it all before—that much the machine had not erased—yet it was just as wonderful as if it were the first time. Once again we thrilled to the vistas; once again we felt the vague Presence wherever we walked…

Pardon me, Willie. Great-Granny does go on. It’s you I should be thinking of. I see I’ve written of the Presence. That’s not the same as Presents, Willie, like the kind you get for Keyes Day, the kind I’ll give you when you come visit me. I mean that your Great-Grandaddy and I had the feeling we were being watched by Something…

Well, Something was watching us all, I guess, because less than a month after Alonzo’s machines appeared in the stores, the Government passed a law calling #57 a Dangerous Drug and stopping sales of the wonderful machines. (If you want to know what the Government is, snookums, I’ll tell you when you get here. Don’t ask Daddy about it, he doesn’t know. He’ll only tell you a fib.) Policemen went from house to house searching for machines that had already been sold; most of them were taken and melted down like oleo on a slice of soy toast, and the drug was dumped into the ocean. But your Great-Grandaddy (bless his heart) unscrewed the machine into little pieces and hid them inside our TV set, where they looked like they belonged, and he poured the #57 over an aspidistra plant we had in the bedroom, where it seeped through the soil and collected in a little puddle at the bottom of the dish long after the Policemen had gone.

We weren’t the only ones who found a way to “save our snuffer” (as the machines came to be called). Many others did, too, and some men even made their own machines and drugs in their basements. I guess it wasn’t so very hard to do.

So when the Government saw that its laws weren’t working, and that Alonzo’s snuffers were themselves hard to snuff, it quickly passed some new laws saying that people were allowed to own snuffers—but only if they bought them from the Government.

The ones the Government made were much better than Alonzo’s; all you had to do was press them against your head, and there was no drug to worry about. The snuffer did it all.

Soon the new snuffers became as popular as TV and as common as cars. Everybody owned one—everybody, that is, but your Great-Grandaddy (God bless him) and me. Some might say he was too cheap to buy the new model—I’m sure that’s what your Mommy and Daddy would tell you—but the truth is, he just plain didn’t trust the Government.

In a way, I think he may have been right. There was something very funny about those snuffers… They’d been On the Market for a year or two, and suddenly they all began breaking down. People had to take them to be repaired—you know, the way a man comes to fix the air-conditioner—only the repairs weren’t made at offices. No, you had to take your broken snuffer somewhere else.

To a Clinic.

And when you came back, you’d be wearing the snuffer.

The new models, it seems, were made to fit over the head, covering all the hair, like the chromium Helmets your Mommy and Daddy wear. This way, it was easier for people to have their snuffer with them all the time. And that’s just the way people wanted it; they liked to keep their Helmets on all day and all night, when they were handy for snuffing out nightmares.

In short, SF had become a way of life.

(Some people think SF stands for snuffers. It doesn’t. It stands for Selective Forgetfulness, which is what snuffers are for.)

And it’s still a way of life today. Thanks to SF, certain books have become amazingly popular; others have been left to crumble into dust. People find the book they like best and spend all their time reading it, over and over, snuffing out each previous reading. The Classics are doing well, and so is something we call Adult Fiction, which means it was written for lonely people. Mysteries are doing best of all; every home and Home, it seems, has a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I know it’s a big favorite with your Mommy and Daddy—I remember seeing a copy of the special plastic-coated “Permanent Edition” at your house—and maybe someday it will be a favorite of yours. I hope, though, that you choose to read it only once.

As your Great-Grandaddy used to say, SF has made it possible for a man to find a well-thumbed book on his bookshelf, a book almost falling apart from years and years of reading, with his own thoughts written in the margins—a book he knows he’s read dozens of times, and studied dozens of times, and discussed, and loved—and still not remember ever having read it.

A funny feeling, right, snookums?

Most people, of course, don’t have bookshelves anymore. After all, they own only one book. That’s all they’ll ever need.

In movies the same thing has happened, only worse, since reading’s too hard for many people. Young men and women quit their jobs and spend all day in downtown movie theaters, growing pale, living on popcorn and orange drink, watching the same film again and again, reel after reel, until they sicken or starve.

And there’s no longer any question of spending time and money on a film that turns out to be bad; there are no more unhappy surprises. All the uncertainty has been taken out of it, and whenever people go to the movies, they know they’re going to see their Favorite Film. There’s no further need for new films, and no interest in them. No one’s made a film in years; the Old Greats are good enough.

TV has been even crazier, maybe because each part of the country has its own choice. In Birmingham, England, episode #114 of Coronation Street was at one time shown every day for more than a year, and no one complained. But the record goes to the citizens of Calhoun County, Arkansas, who voted twenty-six years ago to have a favorite segment of I Love Lucy—“Lucy Buys a Dachshund”—shown every morning, seven days a week, rerun after rerun.

You guessed it, snookums. It’s still on the air.

Live-action sports were hard-hit, too; men have taken to watching “instant replays” of their favorite football games on TV. There was even a terrible tragedy many years ago (that means something that ends badly) during the National Crew Races of 2024. During a crew race, Willie, eight men sit in a long thin rowboat and row as fast as they can, while a ninth man cheers them on. And in the races of 2024 the men did row as fast as they could—nine times, after which six men on one crew and four on the other died of heart attacks. It seems the audience was so excited by the races that they snuffed them, and persuaded the crews to do the same. The men in the boats couldn’t understand why, the sixth and seventh and eighth time around, the race seemed so tiring…

Of course, bad mistakes like that had to be stopped, and they were. People have learned to be more careful. And then, a lot of things, such as music, seem almost unchanged. People listen to good music—and bad music—pretty much as they did before SF. The reason, I guess, is that music depends on repetition to be enjoyed; that means hearing it over and over, snookums. I’ll bet you didn’t like your nursery rhymes the very first time you heard them.

Of course, there are certain pieces that are just made for snuffing. The most popular is something by a man named Haydn; it’s called The Surprise Symphony.

As you can see, everything has slowed down; in fact, we’re standing still. People are too busy reliving the favorite days of their pasts to worry about the future. When someone asks, “What’s new?” there’s only one answer: “Nothing.”

And it’s been this way for… for twenty, thirty years now. Oh, snookums, it’s been awful! The past was never like this! We’re in a kind of Living Death. (It’s not necessary that you know what Death means, snookums.)

The rest of the world smiles at us and shakes their heads, yet the Government doesn’t seem to care. I guess they’re happy they’ve been re-elected time and again for the past two decades. (All this may be too complicated for you, Willie, but I simply mean everyone seems to like the Government now.)

I’ve never voted for them myself; and now, of course, they won’t let me, because I’m 110. Your Great-Grandaddy (God bless him) never voted for them either. I wonder what he’d say if he were alive today.

No, we didn’t vote. But then, neither of us ever wore the Helmets. Everyone else bought them, but we were… afraid, I guess. Those Helmets don’t work right. They snuff things even when nobody’s asked them to, as if someone else is holding the switch. And so people these days forget things you’d think they’d want to remember. Like the time the Government promised all that money for the cities, and the cure for cancer, and the solar energy plants in every county. (That meant that your air-conditioner would work whenever the sun shines on your house.)

The Government seemed to forget those promises—but the people did, too. All the people with Helmets, that is. They were busy watching TV Greats and The Classics Hour. I’d tell your Mommy and Daddy about the Mayor’s promise to leave office six years ago, to “give someone else a chance”—and they’d only smile and vote for him again…

That’s one reason I’m afraid of the Helmets. Oh, please don’t think I’m just an old scaredy-cat, Willie; it’s you I’m afraid for. I don’t want you to make that Little Trip to the Clinic, and I’m so glad it won’t happen till you’re five. Someone here at the Home said that soon children will be fitted with Helmets when they’re born, and I said I didn’t see how that could be true, because during the first five years the head grows too fast… But she said it’ll be a new kind of Helmet that grows right along with it.

That means that someday everyone will wear a Helmet. But not me, I don’t want one and I don’t need one. I still have our old machine, the first one we bought, and what’s left of Alonzo’s #57, and sometimes, when the need is great, I take it out. But I only use it for very special things, precious. Harmless things. Like the time someone (I forget who) died—someone I must have loved—and I wanted to erase the pain from my memory.

Sometimes the need is very great.

But I’ve never worn one of the Helmets. They frighten me. And I wish they frightened you as well. Listen and I’ll tell you another Secret: I know why your Mommy and Daddy never take their Helmets off.

They can’t. The Helmets are part of their heads.

It’s true, I know it’s true. A few days before they put me in this Home, I saw a man jump from the roof of his building. He fell toward the sidewalk, ten floors down. He fell on his head. And when it hit the sidewalk, the Helmet cracked open, and there was no head under it, so that everything that was inside ran out, and the wires were exposed.

So Willie, precious, please come visit Great-Granny before your Trip to the Clinic. Please come to the Home and live here with me. I won’t let them find you, and I’ll let you try out my #57, and that will be good enough.

I’m so glad I’ve written you this letter, teaching you, warning you, scaring you, perhaps, but that’s all to the good, because it means you’ll come to me. Writing has made me feel so close to you, but it’s nothing like having you here with me would be, having you here safe with your old Great-Granny who loves you so dearly. I’d give you all the cookies and cake you could eat. I’d even let you try the #57; it will be good enough…

Sorry, snookums. Great-Granny repeats herself.

I’ll end here, praying for your reply, and I’ll be waiting, even if it takes years.

 

Your loving Great-Granny

 

*      *      *

 

Friday 18 Sept ’39

Willie, precious,

How’s my little snookums? As happy as I am? I hope so. I woke up this morning feeling like a young girl again, and when I looked at your picture above my bed and the sweet rain beating against my window, there were tears of happiness in my eyes, because today I’ve decided to sit down and write you a letter. Imagine, Willie. Baby’s First Letter!

There’s so much I have to tell you, and I’m so excited I can hardly begin. Why, I don’t remember the last time I felt so good…