It Was Almost Normal for People Over Thirty to Be Frightened of Their Own Children

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Excerpt from the novel 1984 icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by George Orwell icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

George Orwell's "1984" book cover. [Formatted]

     ‘They do get so noisy,’ she said. ‘They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging, that’s what it is. I’m too busy to take them, and Tom won’t be back from work in time.’
     ‘Why can’t we go and see the hanging?’ roared the boy in his huge voice.
     ‘Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!’ chanted the little girl, still capering round.
     Some Eurasion prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see it. He took his leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an agonisingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.
     ‘Goldstein!’ bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman’s greyish face.
     Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
     With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother—it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak—‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used—had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.
     The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O’Brien again.

Suddenly We are All Separate, All Alone in Our Private Universes

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Excerpt from the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by Robert M. Parsig icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

Robert M. Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" book cover. [Formatted]

     At one stretch in the long desolate road we see an isolated grocery store. Inside, in back, we find a place to sit on some packing cases and drink canned beer.
     The fatigue and backache are getting to me now. I push the packing case over to a post and lean on that.
     Chris’s expression shows he is really settling into something bad. This has been a long hard day. I told Sylvia way back in Minnesota that we could expect a slump in spirits like this on the second or third day and now it’s here. Minnesota—when was that?
     A woman, badly drunk, is buying beer for some man she’s got outside in a car. She can’t make up her mind what brand to buy and the wife of the owner waiting on her is getting mad. She still can’t decide, but then sees us, and weaves over and asks if we own the motorcycles. We nod yes. Then she wants a ride on one. I move back and let John handle this.
     He puts her off graciously, but she comes back again and again, offering him a dollar for a ride. I make some jokes about it, but they’re not funny and just add to the depression. We get out and back into the brown hills and heat again.
     By the time we reach Lemmon we are really aching tired. At a bar we hear about a campground to the south. John wants to camp in a park in the middle of Lemmon, a comment that sounds strange and angers Chris greatly.
     I’m more tired now than I can remember having been in a long time. The others too. But we drag ourselves through a supermarket, pick up whatever groceries come to mind and with some difficulty pack them onto the cycles. The sun is so far down we’re running out of light. It’ll be dark in an hour. We can’t seem to get moving. I wonder, are we dawdling, or what?
     “C’mon, Chris, let’s go,” I say.
     “Don’t holler at me. I’m ready.”
     We drive down a country road from Lemmon, exhausted, for what seems a long, long time, but can’t be too long because the sun is still above the horizon. The campsite is deserted. Good. But there is less than a half-hour of sun and no energy left. This is the hardest now.
     I try to get unpacked as fast as possible but am so stupid with exhaustion I just set everything by the camp road without seeing what a bad spot it is. Then I see it is too windy. This is a High Plains wind. It is semidesert here, everything burned up and dry except for a lake, a large reservoir of some sort below us. The wind blows from the horizon across the lake and hits us with sharp gusts. It is already chilly. There are some scrubby pines back from the road about twenty yards and I ask Chris to move the stuff over there.
     He doesn’t do it. He wanders off down to the reservoir. I carry the gear over by myself.
     I see between trips that Sylvia is making a real effort at setting things up for cooking, but she’s as tired as I am.
     The sun goes down.
     John has gathered wood but it’s too big and the wind is so gusty it’s hard to start. It needs to be splintered into kindling. I go back over the scrub pines, hunt around through the twilight for the machete, but it’s already so dark in the pines I can’t find it. I need the flashlight. I look for it, but it’s too dark to find that either.
     I go back and start up the cycle and ride it back over to shine the headlight on the stuff so that I can find the flashlight. I look through all the stuff item by item to find the flashlight. It takes a long time to realize I don’t need the flashlight, I need the machete, which is in plain sight. By the time I get it back John has got the fire going. I use the machete to hack up some of the larger pieces of wood.
     Chris reappears. He’s got the flashlight!
     “When are we going to eat? he complains.
     “We’re getting it fixed as fast as possible,” I tell him. “Leave the flashlight here.”
     He disappears again, taking the flashlight with him.
     The wind blows the fire so hard it doesn’t reach up to cook the steaks. We try to fix up a shelter from the wind using large stones from the road, but it’s too dark to see what we’re doing. We bring both cycles over and catch the scene in a crossbeam of headlights. Peculiar light. Bits of ash blowing up from the fire suddenly glow bright white in it, then disappear in the wind.
     BANG! There’s a loud explosion behind us. Then I hear Chris giggling.
     Sylvia is upset.
     “I found some firecrackers,” Chris says.
     I catch my anger in time and say to him, coldly, “It’s time to eat now.”
     “I need some matches,” he says.
     “Sit down and eat.”
     “Give me some matches first.”
     “Sit down and eat.”
     He sits down and I try to eat the steak with my Army mess knife, but it is too tough, and so I get out a hunting knife and use it instead. The light from the motorcycle headlight is full upon me so that the knife, when it goes down into the mess gear, is in full shadow and I can’t see where it’s going.
     Chris says he can’t cut his either and I pass my knife to him. While reaching for it he dumps everything onto the tarp.
     No one says a word.
     I’m not angry that he spilled it. I’m angry that now the tarp’s going to be greasy the rest of the trip.
     “Is there any more?” he asks.
     “Eat that,” I say. “It just fell on the tarp.”
     “It’s too dirty,” he says.
     “Well, that’s all there is.”
     A wave of depression hits. I just want to go to sleep now. But he’s angry and I expect we’re going to have one of his little scenes. I wait for it and pretty soon it starts.
     “I don’t like the taste of this,” he says.
     “Yes, that’s rough, Chris.”
     “I don’t like any of this. I don’t like this camping at all.”
     “It was your idea,” Sylvia says. “You’re the one who wanted to go camping.”
     She shouldn’t say that, but there’s no way she can know. You take his bait and he’ll feed you another one, and then another, and another until you finally hit him, which is what he really wants.
     “I don’t care,” he says.
     “Well, you ought to,” she says.
     “Well, I don’t.”
     An explosion point is very near. Sylvia and John look at me but I remain deadpan. I’m sorry about this but there’s nothing I can do right now. Any argument will just worsen things.
     “I’m not hungry,” Chris says.
     No one answers.
     “My stomach hurts,” he says.
     The explosion is avoided when Chris turns and walks away in the darkness.
     We finish eating. I help Sylvia clean up, and then we sit around for a while. We turn the cycle lights off to conserve the batteries and because the light from them is ugly anyway. The wind has died down some and there is a little light from the fire. After a while my eyes become accustomed to it. The food and anger have taken off some of the sleepiness. Chris doesn’t return.
     “Do you suppose he’s just punishing?” Sylvia asks.
     “I suppose,” I say, “although it doesn’t sound quite right.” I think about it and add, “That’s a child-psychology term—a context I dislike. Let’s just say he’s being a complete bastard.”
     John laughs a little.
     “Anyway,” I say, “it was a good supper. I’m sorry he had to act up like this.”
     “Oh, that’s all right,” John says. “I’m just sorry he won’t get anything to eat.”
     “It won’t hurt him.”
     “You don’t suppose he’ll get lost out there.”
     “No, he’ll holler if he is.”
     Now that he has gone and we have nothing to do I become more aware of the space all around us. There is not a sound anywhere. Lone prairie.
     Sylvia says, “do you suppose he really has stomach pains?”
     “Yes,” I say, somewhat dogmatically. I’m sorry to see the subject continued but they deserve a better explanation than they’re getting. They probably sense that there’s more to it than they’ve heard. “I’m sure he does,” I finally say. “He’s been examined a half-dozen times for it. Once it was so bad we thought it was appendicitis…. I remember we were on a vacation up north. I’d just finished getting out an engineering proposal for a five-million-dollar contract that just about did me in. That’s a whole other world. No time and no patience and six hundred pages of information to get out the door in one week and I was about ready to kill three different people and we thought we’d better head for the woods for a while.
     “I can hardly remember what part of the woods we were in. Head just spinning with engineering data, and anyway Chris was just screaming. We couldn’t touch him, until I finally saw I was going to have to pick him up fast and get him to the hospital, and where that was I’ll never remember, but they found nothing.”
     “Nothing?”
     “No. But it happened again on other occasions too.”
     “Don’t they have any idea?” Sylvia asks.
     “This spring they diagnosed it as the beginning symptoms of mental illness.”
     “What?” John says.
     It’s too dark to see Sylvia or John now or even the outlines of the hills. I listen for sounds in the distance, but hear none. I don’t know what to answer and so say nothing.
     When I look hard I can make out stars overhead but the fire in front of us makes it hard to see them. The night all around is thick and obscure. My cigarette is down to my fingers and I put it out.
     “I didn’t know that,” Sylvia’s voice says. All traces of anger are gone. “We wondered why you brought him instead of your wife,” she says. “I’m glad you told us.”
     John shoves some of the unburned ends of the wood into the fire.
     Sylvia says, “What do you suppose the cause is?”
     John’s voice rasps, as if to cut it off, but I answer, “I don’t know. Causes and effects don’t seem to fit. Causes and effects are a result of thought. I would think mental illness comes before thought.” This doesn’t make sense to them, I’m sure. It doesn’t make much sense to me and I’m too tired to try to think it out and give it up.
     “What do the psychiatrists think?” John asks.
     “Nothing. I stopped it.”
     “Stopped it?”
     “Yes.”
     “Is that good?”
     “I don’t know. There’s no rational reason I can think of for saying it’s not good. Just a mental block of my own. I think about it and all the good reasons for it and make plans for an appointment and even look for the phone number and then the block hits, and it’s just like a door slammed shut.”
     “That doesn’t sound right.”
     “No one else thinks so either. I suppose I can’t hold out forever.”
     “But why?” Sylvia asks.
     “I don’t know why… it’s just that… I don’t know… they’re not kin“… Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin… sounds like hillbilly talk… not of a kind… same root… kindness, too… they can’t have real kindness toward him, they’re not his kin… That’s exactly the feeling.
     Old word, so ancient it’s almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be “kind.” And everybody’s supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn’t help. Now it’s just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin?
     It goes over and over again through my thoughts… mein Kind—my child. There it is in another language Mein Kinder… “Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.”
     Strange feeling from that.
     “What are you thinking about?” Sylvia asks.
     “An old poem, by Goethe. It must be two hundred years old. I had to learn it a long time ago. I don’t know why I should remember it now, except…” The strange feeling comes back.
     “How does it go?” Sylvia asks.
     I try to recall. “A man is riding along a beach at night, through the wind. It’s a father, with his son, whom he holds fast in his arm. He asks his son why he looks so pale, and the son replies, ‘Father, don’t you see the ghost?’ The father tried to reassure the boy it’s only a bank of fog along the beach that he sees and only the rustling of the leaves in the wind that he hears but the son keeps saying it is the ghost and the father rides harder and harder through the night.”
     “How does it end?”
     “In failure… death of the child. The ghost wins.”
     The wind blows light up from the coals and I see Sylvia look at me startled.
     “But that’s another land and another time,” I say. “Here life is the end and ghosts have no meaning. I believe that. I believe in all this too,” I say, looking out at the darkened prairie, “although I’m not sure of what it all means yet… I’m not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.”
     The coals die lower and lower. We smoke our cigarettes. Chris is off somewhere in the darkness but I’m not going to shag after him. John is carefully silent and Sylvia is silent and suddenly we are all separate, all alone in our private universes, and there is no communication among us. We douse the fire and go back to the sleeping bags in the pines.
     I discover that this one tiny refuge of scrub pines where I have put the sleeping bags is also the refuge from the wind of millions of mosquitoes up from the reservoir. The mosquito repellent doesn’t stop them at all. I crawl deep into the sleeping bag and make one little hole for breathing. I am almost asleep when Chris finally shows up.
     “There’s a great big sandpile over there,” he says, crunching around on the pine needles.
     “Yes,” I say. “Get to sleep.”
     “You should see it. Will you come and see it tomorrow?”
     “We won’t have time.”
     “Can I play over there tomorrow morning?”
     “Yes.”
     He makes interminable noises getting undressed and into the sleeping bag. He is in it. Then he rolls around. Then he is silent, and then rolls some more. Then he says, “Dad?”
     “What?”
     “What was it like when you were a kid?”
     “Go to sleep, Chris!” There are limits to what you can listen to.
     Later I hear a sharp inhaling of phlegm that tells me he has been crying, and though I’m exhausted, I don’t sleep. A few words of consolation might have helped there. He was trying to be friendly. But the words aren’t forthcoming for some reason. Consoling words are more for strangers, for hospitals, not kin. Little emotional Band-Aids like that aren’t what he needs or what’s sought… I don’t know what he needs, or what’s sought.
     A gibbous moon comes up from the horizon beyond the pines, and by its slow, patient arc across the sky I measure hour after hour of semisleep. Too much fatigue. The moon and strange dreams and sounds of mosquitoes and odd fragments of memory become jumbled and mixed in an unreal lost landscape in which the moon is shining and yet there is a bank of fog and I am riding a horse and Chris is with me and the horse jumps over a small stream that runs through the sand toward the ocean somewhere beyond. And then that is broken…. And then it reappears.
     And in the fog there appears an intimation of a figure. It disappears when I look at it directly, but then reappears in the corner of my vision when I turn my glance. I am about to say something, to call to it, to recognize it, but then do not, knowing that to recognize it by any gesture or action is to give it a reality which it must not have. But it is a figure I recognize even though I do not let on. It is Phaedrus.
     Evil spirit. Insane. from a world without life or death.
     The figure fades and I hold panic down… tight… not rushing it… just letting it sink in… not believing it, not disbelieving it… but the hair crawls slowly on the back of my skull… he is calling Chris, is that it?… Yes?…

“If You Turn Me In to the Cops, One Day I Swear I Will Take You Down”

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Excerpt from the novel Rising Storm icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by S.M. Stirling icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

S.M. Stirling's "Rising Storm" book cover. [Formatted]

MIT CAMPUS

     “Who the hell is Sarah Connor?” Snog asked.
     Wendy smacked his leg. “I told you about her, remember? She’s kind of a Luddite heroine.”
     “Oooh, her,” Carl said.
     “You’re Sarah Connor’s son?” Yam asked.
     “Yup.”
     “You’re daddy was from the future?” Snog asked.
     “That’s right,” John agreed. He wondered if Snog was worth the trouble.
     “Cool,” Carl said. He leaned forward eagerly. “So how does that work anyhow?”
     “Wait a minute!” Snog snapped. “You can’t just come in here and claim you’re John Connor! Give us some proof, for cryin’ out loud.”
     John laughed at him. “Do you seriously think I carry around some kind of irrefutable ID?” He shook his head, grinning. “Call up the FBI or Interpol Web site and scroll to my name. Look at the age-enhanced photo, then look at me.” He shrugged. “Best I can do for ya, buddy. Or you could just take me at my word.”
     They all stared at him, then turned toward Snog’s computer as he began to type in an address. In a few minutes they were looking at a photo of a smooth-shaven, rather young-looking John Connor. It had been blown up from a class picture taken when John was nine.
     John took off his glasses and turned his head to resemble the photo.
     “It’s kind of hard to tell with the fake beard,” Yam objected.
     John blushed. “Yeah, I’m finding it a little hard to take it off.”
     They all crowded close to the screen to study the image, then looked at John, then back at the screen.
     “Damn!” Brad said, impressed. “It really is you!”
     “Waaaiit a minute!” Snog protested. “I thought that we all agreed with the site about Sarah Connor being a victim of government mind-control experiments and that there are no Terminators except in her mind.” He turned to John. “You want me to believe you’re John Connor, show me a Terminator.”
     John chuckled; he couldn’t help it. “Well, they’re a little unwieldy to carry around since they run about six feet tall and weigh in at about five hundred pounds. But there is this.”
     He drew what looked like a candy bar from his pocket and peeled off the wrapper to reveal a tiny series of interconnected black blocks. “This is a Terminator’s CPU.”
     They gathered around, their eyes alight with pure greed, just one step away from their tongues hanging out.
     “It’s weird,” Snog conceded.
     “How does it work?” Wendy asked.
     “Well, people, that’s why I brought it with me.” John looked at each of them in turn, making eye contact. “I won’t leave it with you, however, unless you’re prepared to meet certain conditions.”
     “Hey, man,” Snog jeered, “we could promise you the world on a string and then when you leave do whatever the hell we want. I mean, what are ya gonna do about it?”
     John addressed himself to Snog. “First of all, we’re not certain that all the Terminators were taken out of play. So if you light this up without putting it in a Faraday cage, you might find yourself being visited by a whole Terminator. Second, if you exploit this with the wrong people you might be responsible for bringing on Judgment Day. Third, if the government finds out about this you just might disappear. Fourth, if you turn me in to the cops, one day I swear I will take you down.”
     “Oooo,” Wendy said. “Tough guy.”
     He looked at her. He genuinely liked Wendy, but she was expendable if necessary. He’d hate himself, but he’d do it.
     She saw something in his eyes that caused her to back down. “So what do you want from us?”
     “When we disconnected this the Terminator was probably changing or erasing information. If it’s possible I’d like to stop it from doing anything else and perhaps recover whatever information it tried to eliminate. This could be a gold mine.”
     “Or a crap mine,” Yam interjected. He reached out one long finger but didn’t touch the chip. “Fascinating design.”
     John’s lips tightened. He didn’t want to let go of the chip, but he couldn’t learn anything from it himself and he didn’t know any scientists. These kids were the best chance he had of utilizing this resource. It wasn’t a sure bet, but then neither was any other option.
     “If I entrust this to you to work on,” John said, “you could give us the edge that will allow us to beat Skynet. But you have to know that Skynet is capable of putting agents in the field anytime, anywhere. And it’s desperate. So you can’t afford to take any chances. Which means you can’t show or tell anybody about this without my clearance.”
     “Why would you trust us?” Snog asked, sounding for the first time as though he was willing to cut John some slack.
     “I’ve checked you guys out,” he said. “You’re all brilliant, this work is definitely within your capabilities. You have access to facilities that I don’t. And, you’re close enough to my age that I felt I could trust you.” Actually, that wasn’t true, but he thought they’d like hearing it.
     The guys looked smug, but Wendy said, “Hey, wait a minute! You just met my friends tonight. How could you possibly have checked them out?”
     John could feel the color rising in his face. “Uh. There was a slight—”
     “Invasion of privacy,” she snapped. Her eyes glittered with fury. “How dare you?”
     “I’m sorry, Wendy, I really am. But if I hadn’t been able to check you and your friends out, I wouldn’t have been able to come here.”
     She crossed her arms. “Yeah, well, I did a little checking on you, too, when I got interested in Sarah Connor’s story. You’re wanted for murder.”
     With a sigh John rewrapped the CPU. “I’ve never killed anybody in my life,” he said. Well, nobody human. Do sentient killing machines from the future count?
     “What about that ‘I’ll take you down’ stuff?” Snog mocked.
     “Nice to know somebody here knows bullshit when they smell it,” John said.
     Snog laughed. “He’s all right. “He held out his hand. “I’m in.”
     The relief in the room was palpable and Brad, Carl, and Yam all offered their hands as well. Only Wendy sat scowling at him. “I want you to promise me you’ll never invade my privacy again,” she said.
     John shook his head. “I can’t promise that. All I can promise is to respect your privacy as much as I can.” He could see that she didn’t like that. “Somethings are greater than our personal likes and dislikes,” he explained. “I genuinely don’t like making you unhappy with me. But I’m not going to lie to you if I can help it. What I’m trying to accomplish, what you’ll be helping me to accomplish, is more important than any one person or their privacy. I won’t abuse it. That’s all I can promise.” He met her eyes, willing her to believe him.
     “I don’t like it,” Wendy said frankly. She turned her head away, then gave a half shrug; looking back, she frowned at him. “I’ll have to get back to you on it. Meanwhile”—she looked around and let out her breath in a little huff—“I’m starved. Who’s up for pizza?”
     “Thought you’d never ask,” Carl muttered.

A Taste of Sarah Connor’s Reality

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Excerpt from the novel Rising Storm icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12 by S.M. Stirling icon-external-link-12x12 icon-search-12x12

S.M. Stirling's "Rising Storm" book cover. [Formatted]

ENCINAS HALFWAY HOUSE

     Dr. Silberman’s nervousness was affecting the group. Most of the participants were scowling, and fidgeting to an even greater extent than nicotine withdrawal usually produced. They cast glances around the room looking for the disturbance and those glances usually landed on Sarah, where they became accusing. Clearly the participants liked their doctor.
     That came as a surprise to Sarah; she remembered him as condescending, not at all a lovable trait.
     It was something of a mixed group. Few of these people were severely mentally ill. Those that were functioned very well if they kept up their medications. One was a recovering drug addict. Sarah supposed that she must be listed as one of the most severely ill, given her record.
     The session had been going on for a while, through obviously well-worn channels; the participants didn’t even seem to be paying attention to what they themselves were saying. Eventually the discussion petered out and all eyes were on Sarah again.
     “Yes, I’m sorry, Sarah,” Silberman said at last. “I’d meant to introduce you immediately, but we began rather quickly. Group, this is Sarah Connor.”
     “Hey, I’ve heard of you!” a man said. “You blew up that company, right?”
     Sarah’s head flopped forward as though she were embarrassed and she looked up through her bangs, smiling shyly. “I’m afraid so.” Straightening up, she asked, “What can I say?”
     She let them draw the whole story out of her. She squirmed and hesitated and made them work for it. Through it all Silberman just watched her.
     Well, he always did have her number. Her best efforts to tell him what he wanted to hear had always failed. He knew she still believed in Skynet and Judgment Day—which probably meant he still thought she was a homicidal loon. Busting out of the violent ward by breaking his arm, taking him as a hostage, and threatening to hypo his carotid full of drain cleaner had probably reinforced that conviction, and God knew he’d had enough time to rationalize away the glimpse he’d had of the T-1000 pulling its liquid body through a door of steel bars.

Silberman could barely take his eyes off her. Sarah Connor evoked feelings that made him want to call his own therapist. In fact, he should call her. He should also not have allowed himself to become involved in her therapy. Precisely because he knew she didn’t need therapy. She needed to be believed. He now understood, all too well, how that felt.
     But that little pissant Ray had made noises about how good it would be for him to face her, face his fears, and so on. So he’d decided to play the good little professional and include her in his group. Besides, he’d rather slit his wrists than let Ray see how rattled he was.
     After her escape he’d told anyone who’d listen exactly what he’d seen. He completely forgot that he was the only one left conscious except for the Connors and their big friend. So he was the only one who’d see that thing squeeze itself through the bars, then turn its hands into pry bars to open the elevator doors. He’d seen it shrug off a shotgun blast to its chest.
     Obviously they’d sent him on medical leave; also obviously they hoped never to welcome him back. To them his story represented a severe psychotic break brought on by trauma. You don’t want a crazy doctor trying to treat the insane. Though to be honest he hadn’t wanted to go back. Being unwanted was unpleasant enough—but Pescadero was the scene of the most terrifying events of his life. It had been very easy to turn his back on that place.
     He’d taken a long break from work, as long as his benefits and his savings would allow. And since he wasn’t working with patients, he worked on himself, trying to put himself back together. He’d sought therapy and willingly allowed the doctors to convince him that he’d imagined the whole thing. They assured him that in his understandable terror he’d bought into his own patient’s delusions. And he agreed.
     In time the nightmares had begun to fade and his belief in his therapist’s diagnoses became firm. What he’d seen was impossible; therefore it hadn’t happened. When it was time to go back to work he found that his attitude toward his profession had changed. Once it had been about his career; now he wanted to help people. So he’d sent in his formal resignation to Pescadero and begun looking into clinics.
     But after they found out about his reason for leaving his previous position, he got a lot of rejections. Which was ironic. How did they expect their patients to reintegrate with society when they wouldn’t reintegrate one of their own colleagues?
     Then a friend had told him about the halfway house. He’d felt comfortable here and he’d done good work with his patients, work he was proud of.
     But now here was Sarah Connor, and he had some decisions to make all over again. Because now he knew he hadn’t had a psychotic break; what he’d had was a taste of Sarah Connor’s reality.

Sarah explained, “Dr. Ray says that now that I’ve stopped this project from going forward and Cyberdyne has dropped it from their roster, I’ll probably never want to destroy their factory again. Obsession works that way sometimes, he says. So the board of review agreed to let me come here prior to my release.”
     “Will you have to go to jail after here?” a woman asked.
     Sarah shook her head. “Apparently not. Since I was insane at the time.”
     “Well, Sarah,” Dr. Silberman said with a weary smile, “we hope we can help you to overcome this obsession of yours.”
     “Thank you, Doctor.” Sarah smiled tentatively at him. “I know I was very hard on you when I knew you before and I’d like to apologize. I really can’t even imagine ever being that person again.”
     “I think, Sarah, that you will always rise to the occasion,” Silberman said enigmatically. He checked his watch. “Well, group, that’s it for today. We’ll meet again on Thursday.” He smiled, nodded, and rose from his seat.
     “I didn’t get to say anything,” a heavy young man protested.
     “I’m sorry about that, Dan.” Silberman patted his shoulder. “We’ll be certain to let you talk on Thursday.”
     As Sarah went by him at the door he leaned in close and said, “Sarah, I need to talk to you.”
     Well, I don’t want to talk to you, Connor thought. “Now?” She looked around nervously.
     “Now would be good.” Silberman gestured down the hallway toward his office.
     Her full lips jerked into a smile. “Sure,” she said, and preceded him down the hall.
     “Sit down,” he said as he closed his office door. Then the doctor went to his desk and sat. He looked at her for a long time, until she felt it was necessary to fidget. “After you left”—he spread his hands—“escaped, rather, I was in therapy for a long time.”
     “I’m sorry about that, Doctor,” Sarah said. And sincerely meant it. She didn’t like knowing what she knew either and she’d certainly never enjoyed therapy.
     “After about five years I was able to convince myself that what I saw was a delusion brought on by stress. Of course”—he rubbed a finger across his nose—“dealing with the fallout caused by having a complete breakdown under stress has been keeping me pretty involved ever since. Running a halfway house is a considerable step down the career ladder from my former position, you realize.”
     Sarah shifted uncomfortably.
     “And now you’re here,” he continued. “And… it’s all come back to me. As clear as the day it happened. And that’s the thing, Sarah. It did happen. So what I want to know is… how can I help?”
     Sarah’s jaw dropped. “Doctor?” she said.
     “I know.” He raised a hand to stop her. “How can you possibly trust me? You broke my arm, you threatened to kill me, and so on.” He leaned forward, his eyes eager. “But now I know for certain. What I saw was real!”
     She narrowed her eyes and looked at him sidelong. “Doctor, I’ve been over this with Dr. Ray. My obsession with Cyberdyne relates to my deeply buried resentment of their lawsuit when I was in the hospital years ago. He explained that I somehow displaced my legitimate anger and grief at the man who hurt me and murdered my mother onto the more accessible Cyberdyne. I bought into those other people’s psychotic fantasies because I’d been so hurt and traumatized. None of it was real. None of it could be real.”
     Silberman let out his breath with a huff. “I just want you to know, if you ever need my help, you have it.”
     “Thank you, Doctor.” Either he’s crazier than I ever was, or he’s telling the truth. But how was she supposed to tell?
     “I mean that sincerely, Sarah.”
     “I know you do,” she said gently. “Thank you.”