Chapter 11

 The inquisition ended sooner than I thought it would. After the awful intrusion, there isn't any farther awareness¹ of time. After you are thoroughly² invaded, after your private soul, every naked cell of your brain is peeled open, exposed to the raw glaring light, after that you no longer care. What is you has been obliterated³ the way a shadow is eaten by the burn of cold light.

Your identity is gone. They take it. You are theirs, all of you belongs to them. You feel them pouring out your mind down to the pitiful dregs as though they are pouring cups of coffee.

The pain is a shredding⁴, ripping, raveling horror. After that there is no feeling at all, and this is worse.

I told them everything I knew. What I couldn't tell, they tapped, tearing chunks⁵ out the way you would rip pages and chapters out of a book.

The responsible humanists, scientists, intellectuals had known what was coming. They prepared for it, and set up the plan before the last days of the Egghead purge⁶. They set up the future saboteurs by a long intricate process of psychodynamic conditioning. They did it in the Universities before the schools were purged⁷. Promising⁸ students were selected, worked on.

Fredricks, a psychology⁹ student, was subjected to repeated hypnotic experiments. A blind Professor named O'Hara did most of it. It was all there finally in Fredrick's head, but then it was all suppressed and finally Fredricks himself forgot that he knew. A delayed hypnotic response pattern, an analogue¹⁰, is set up. Later it will be triggered off by a phrase, a word, a series of words repeated at conditioned response intervals¹¹.

Ten years later he was working inside, inside Security itself. When circumstances were right, a blind courier was to have triggered off Fredrick's suppressed knowledge allowing him to sabotage¹² the entire Department of Records and Scientific Method. So many scientists and intellectuals had already been purged that few remained among the available personnel of Security who could have repaired a simple gasoline motor without a step-by-step chart taken from the Department of Records.

It would have been a master coup¹³ for the underground.

But Mesner had traced Fredrick's identity back to Drake University, back to O'Hara. He had gotten suspicious, and removed Fredricks from Security.

The blind girl had whispered the key phrase just the same, in order that Fredricks might face the ordeal¹⁴ of the inquisition with as much pride, strength, and courage as possible.

"Only a free man, a man who fully¹⁵ respects himself as an individual and a human being," Fredricks told his inquisitors, "only a man who has learned why he is living, can die like a man."

Then they killed me.

They tried to get more out of me, but what they wanted to know, I knew nothing whatever about. I knew nothing about the underground, or the headquarters of the Eggheads.

But by then I was dead, and what they did was of no importance. I was no longer me. There was no awareness of being me. I had joined Dirkson and the renegade bio-chemist and all the others.

I was hopping¹⁶ up and down in a cage before the Tevee cameras, and a reporter was talking to millions of smiling, care-free citizens and telling them how another vicious crackpot had been captured just in time to avert¹⁷ some terrible disaster which would have disturbed the status quo.

Then I was taken away.

"Are you awake now, Mr. Fredricks?"

I opened my eyes. I was in a clean white room lying near a barred window. An attractive nurse smiled at me. She was holding a clipboard and making notations¹⁸ on a report pad.

"How do you feel now, Fred?" Painfully, I turned and saw several ghosts standing¹⁹ and sitting on the other side of the bed. I could see a door behind them, partly opened onto a softly lit corridor.

There was Dr. Malden, a famous anthropologist²⁰ whom I had last seen in a newspaper headline during the purge. And Dr. Marquand, Nobel Prize winner in electrobiology. And Dr. Martinson, one time head of the UN Research Foundation. Dr. Rothberg, social psychologist. All dead, all purged, bipped and confined years ago. All ghosts.

Only they were there. And they were alive, and they seemed glad to see me. All I knew was that I was alive again. I was aware of being me. And somehow I knew that these forgotten names were also alive again.

Rothberg handed me a cigarette and the nurse lit it for me. I remembered that once I had liked cigarettes.

"So what's happened," I said. My voice was weak. My insides felt as though they were filled with grinding pieces of broken razor blades.

"You're in Zany-Ward No. 104," Dr. Rothberg said.

"I don't believe I quite understand," I said carefully.

"You will," Dr. Rothberg said. "Let's just say for a starter that when a man is bipped and brought here, we try to put him back together again. It's a long painful process. Sometimes he's not quite the same, but we've done pretty good work. We rebuild burned-out circuits. We have to know exactly what you were before you were bipped, and we try to duplicate the pattern. Regeneration is slow and rough. You'll be all right."

They shook hands with me and smiled down at me and went out. The pretty nurse gave me a pill and I lay back and thought about it. It was logical enough, and I started to laugh. During the months after that while the slow process of re-learning and regeneration continued, I learned more about the Zany-Wards. Serious as it was, and as much as there was yet to be done, it was always amusing.

As Eggheads were apprehended²¹ and confined, they were rehabilitated²², put back together again, in a way you could say fissioned. The Eggheads are the inmates²³. They run the Zany-Wards which are used also as bases of operation in a continuing attempt to disrupt the Era of Normalcy. Great scientific labs are concealed²⁴ underground.

When Security inspection²⁵ committees appear on the scene, we all put on our acts. We dance, make faces, act like monkeys and giggle²⁶.

Doctor Rothberg told me yesterday that if our sabotage work doesn't soon cause people to rebel against the Era of Normalcy, it won't be long before we'll be the only sane²⁷ people left in the world.

The End

1 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

2 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

3 obliterated   

v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭

参考例句：

• The building was completely obliterated by the bomb. 炸弹把那座建筑物彻底摧毁了。
• He began to drink, drank himself to intoxication, till he slept obliterated. 他一直喝，喝到他快要迷糊地睡着了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 shredding   

v.撕碎，切碎( shred的现在分词 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件）

参考例句：

• Like the Tehran experience, the shredding may be all for naught. 如同德黑兰事件中的情况一样，切碎文件可能是徒劳的。 来自时文部分
• How shredding began is subject to some guesswork. 粉碎处理行业的起源是个有争议的问题。 来自时文部分

5 chunks   

厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分

参考例句：

• a tin of pineapple chunks 一罐菠萝块
• Those chunks of meat are rather large—could you chop them up a bIt'smaller? 这些肉块相当大，还能再切小一点吗？

6 purge   

n.整肃，清除，泻药，净化；vt.净化，清除，摆脱；vi.清除，通便，腹泻，变得清洁

参考例句：

• The new president carried out a purge of disloyal army officers.新总统对不忠诚的军官进行了清洗。
• The mayoral candidate has promised to purge the police department.市长候选人答应清洗警察部门。

7 purged   

清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响

参考例句：

• He purged his enemies from the Party. 他把他的敌人从党内清洗出去。
• The iron in the chemical compound must be purged. 化学混合物中的铁必须清除。

8 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。

9 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

10 analogue   

n.类似物；同源语

参考例句：

• The gill of a fish is the analogue of the lung of a cat.鱼的鳃和猫的肺是类似物。
• But aside from that analogue standby,the phone, videoconferencing is their favorite means of communication.除了备用的相似物电话，可视对话是他们最喜欢的沟通手段。

11 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

12 sabotage   

n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏

参考例句：

• They tried to sabotage my birthday party.他们企图破坏我的生日晚会。
• The fire at the factory was caused by sabotage.那家工厂的火灾是有人蓄意破坏引起的。

13 coup   

n.政变；突然而成功的行动

参考例句：

• The monarch was ousted by a military coup.那君主被军事政变者废黜了。
• That government was overthrown in a military coup three years ago.那个政府在3年前的军事政变中被推翻。

14 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

15 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

16 hopping   

n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The clubs in town are really hopping. 城里的俱乐部真够热闹的。
• I'm hopping over to Paris for the weekend. 我要去巴黎度周末。

17 avert   

v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等)

参考例句：

• He managed to avert suspicion.他设法避嫌。
• I would do what I could to avert it.我会尽力去避免发生这种情况。

18 notations   

记号，标记法( notation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was frowning and wishing he could decode the notations on the slips. 他皱着眉，挖空心思地想认出赌签上的记号。 来自教父部分
• In section 2, we give some notations and some lemmas. 在本文第二部分，我们给出一些符号及引理。

19 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

20 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

21 apprehended   

逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解

参考例句：

• She apprehended the complicated law very quickly. 她很快理解了复杂的法律。
• The police apprehended the criminal. 警察逮捕了罪犯。

22 rehabilitated   

改造（罪犯等）( rehabilitate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使恢复正常生活； 使恢复原状； 修复

参考例句：

• He has been rehabilitated in public esteem. 公众已恢复对他的敬重。
• Young persons need to be, wherever possible, rehabilitated rather than punished. 未成年人需要受到尽可能的矫正而不是惩罚。

23 inmates   

n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• One of the inmates has escaped. 被收容的人中有一个逃跑了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The inmates were moved to an undisclosed location. 监狱里的囚犯被转移到一个秘密处所。 来自《简明英汉词典》

24 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

25 inspection   

n.检查，审查，检阅

参考例句：

• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。
• The soldiers lined up for their daily inspection by their officers.士兵们列队接受军官的日常检阅。

26 giggle   

n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说

参考例句：

• Both girls began to giggle.两个女孩都咯咯地笑了起来。
• All that giggle and whisper is too much for me.我受不了那些咯咯的笑声和交头接耳的样子。

27 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。