talk about sentimental! These twenty-six porcelain figurines were angels. During the hour that the replicant Nancy spent striving to bring symmetry to the display, she had become increasingly disgusted not only with the disorder, but also with all these mawkish, maudlin, insipid, inane angels in their infuriatingly stupid poses of stupid simpering adoration and stupid self-righteous piety. They were an affront to reason, an insult to intelligence, and an offense against efficiency. If the real Nancy Potter had been here, Communitarian Nancy would have beaten her to death but not until she crammed every one of these stupid porcelainangels down the stupid woman’s throat or in some other stupid orifice.
Exasperated, she dropped two of the angels on the floor and stomped on them until they were worthless debris. This left twenty-four figurines, eight per shelf: balance. They were still angels, however, and the shelves looked too empty to please the eye. She plucked two more porcelains from the display and threw them on the floor and stomped on them, stomped, and then two more, and yet two more. Destroying these schmaltzy gimcracks gave her intellectual satisfaction, immense satisfaction, smashing such crass symbols of blithering ignorance. She despised them, these loathsome little winged totems, she hated them, and she hated the foolish human being who had collected them. They needed to die, every last clueless human being needed to be exterminated, because with them would die their idiot fantasies, their moronic, witless, irrational, dull, obtuse, foolish, imbecilic, puerile beliefs and ideas and hopes. Every last preening, self-deluded man, woman, and child needed to die—especially the children, they were the worst, those filthy excretions of an unthinkably messy biological process—they all needed to be stomped, stomped, smashed, pulverized, GROUND INTO MEAT PASTE !
From the archway between the living room and the downstairs hall, Ariel Potter said, “You aren’t obsessing, are you?”
This was not the real Ariel, who had been fourteenyears old. That Ariel was dead. This Ariel was blond and blue-eyed like the other; but she had been programmed and extruded little more than nine days earlier.
“Because if you’re obsessing, I have to report you to our Creator. He’ll have to recall you.”
Members of the Community were as efficient and as focused as machines. Efficiency equaled morality; inefficiency was the only sin their kind could commit. The sole thing that could render one of them inefficient was obsession, to which a few of their kind were prone. Not many. The tendency to obsession was easily recognized by Hive technicians within three days of a Communitarian’s extrusion. The techs identified 99.9 percent of these flawed specimens and dissolved them back into the mother mass from which all of their kind were created. After each crop of Communitarians was tested, the chances of an obsessive making it out of the Hive were virtually nil.
Nevertheless, a single such individual, operating in the world beyond the Hive, might malfunction to such an extent that it would not pass for human. Therefore, each undetected obsessive might expose the existence of the Communitarian race and might alert humanity to the secret war being waged against them.
“I’m not obsessing,” Nancy said.
Ariel regarded her with a bland, nonjudgmental expression, for they were absolute equals. “Then what are you doing?”
“I’m eliminating clutter and bringing order to this hideously disordered house.”
Ariel surveyed the shattered porcelains littering the floor. “This doesn’t look like order to me. Where am I mistaken?”
With a sweeping gesture, Nancy indicated the remaining angels on the shelves, and then her open hand became a tightly clenched fist that she shook at them. “First I have to destroy these stupid icons. That’s only logical. They’re insipid symbols of unreason and disorder. After I utterly and
Exasperated, she dropped two of the angels on the floor and stomped on them until they were worthless debris. This left twenty-four figurines, eight per shelf: balance. They were still angels, however, and the shelves looked too empty to please the eye. She plucked two more porcelains from the display and threw them on the floor and stomped on them, stomped, and then two more, and yet two more. Destroying these schmaltzy gimcracks gave her intellectual satisfaction, immense satisfaction, smashing such crass symbols of blithering ignorance. She despised them, these loathsome little winged totems, she hated them, and she hated the foolish human being who had collected them. They needed to die, every last clueless human being needed to be exterminated, because with them would die their idiot fantasies, their moronic, witless, irrational, dull, obtuse, foolish, imbecilic, puerile beliefs and ideas and hopes. Every last preening, self-deluded man, woman, and child needed to die—especially the children, they were the worst, those filthy excretions of an unthinkably messy biological process—they all needed to be stomped, stomped, smashed, pulverized, GROUND INTO MEAT PASTE !
From the archway between the living room and the downstairs hall, Ariel Potter said, “You aren’t obsessing, are you?”
This was not the real Ariel, who had been fourteenyears old. That Ariel was dead. This Ariel was blond and blue-eyed like the other; but she had been programmed and extruded little more than nine days earlier.
“Because if you’re obsessing, I have to report you to our Creator. He’ll have to recall you.”
Members of the Community were as efficient and as focused as machines. Efficiency equaled morality; inefficiency was the only sin their kind could commit. The sole thing that could render one of them inefficient was obsession, to which a few of their kind were prone. Not many. The tendency to obsession was easily recognized by Hive technicians within three days of a Communitarian’s extrusion. The techs identified 99.9 percent of these flawed specimens and dissolved them back into the mother mass from which all of their kind were created. After each crop of Communitarians was tested, the chances of an obsessive making it out of the Hive were virtually nil.
Nevertheless, a single such individual, operating in the world beyond the Hive, might malfunction to such an extent that it would not pass for human. Therefore, each undetected obsessive might expose the existence of the Communitarian race and might alert humanity to the secret war being waged against them.
“I’m not obsessing,” Nancy said.
Ariel regarded her with a bland, nonjudgmental expression, for they were absolute equals. “Then what are you doing?”
“I’m eliminating clutter and bringing order to this hideously disordered house.”
Ariel surveyed the shattered porcelains littering the floor. “This doesn’t look like order to me. Where am I mistaken?”
With a sweeping gesture, Nancy indicated the remaining angels on the shelves, and then her open hand became a tightly clenched fist that she shook at them. “First I have to destroy these stupid icons. That’s only logical. They’re insipid symbols of unreason and disorder. After I utterly and
Similar Books
