get so broken up about it, Doctor. You must handle a dozen or so terminal cancer patients a year, yeah? So let’s not piss our britches over one more or less.’ The General showed his teeth.
‘I’m glad you’re resigned. However –’
‘I’m far from resigned. I’m scared to hell, but there isn’t anything I can do now but die. Except for my work.’
‘Your work?’
‘I want to have enough time to finish this monograph. As long as I’m sane enough, logical enough, I want to go on with it. So no pain-killers. I don’t want anything dulling my brain or shortening my life by a single minute, hear?’
The doctor rose, smiling assent, but behind that smile was another, which said: ‘You poor son of a bitch, you think you can get along without it, do you? A week or two from now, you’re going to be begging for the needle, just like everyone else. And I, healer, physician, Christlike friend, will of course hear your plea, I may even “help you across”, if you ask me nice … we often get such requests.’
‘Where was I?’ he asked Savage.
‘… the beauty of a dream, General.’
(hoped the faceless code-clerk would not turn around. His androgynous father/mother helped him into the rear of the plane, where pretty Miss Glass was already treating the burned child. The medics joking and loitering around the door were drunk. ‘Peace on earth, get it? Don’t you get it?’ Miss Glass began peeling away the bandage roughly. The child screamed. The men began singing ‘When the Khe San Goes Rolling Along’, then ‘Unter-der-Lyndon’. He could see pieces of the burned flesh coming away in the bandage. The singing drowned the screams. One of the medics staggered over and offered the molten face a Hershey bar.)
‘Gentlemen, before we get into the work, I’m reminded of a story – a geographic story, naturally.’ The class had permission to laugh with the colonel. ‘They say a woman at different ages is like the seven continents’ – he thought of Miranda the changeable, kissing him goodbye at the train. He’d wondered how they looked to others, and peered around, but no one was watching them. Off We Go, Into The Wild Blue Yonder, the band played. A frantic, drunken soldier lurched to the train window and vomited into the bell of the tuba. Miranda promised to write, but never did – ‘then she is like North America: fully explored and free with her resources.’)
Plan must do exactly what a good general himself does:
Collect intelligence.
Outline a tentative plan of action, with reasonably accessible alternatives.
Feed in data from past personal and historical experiences.
Compute probable success of each operation.
Re-cost the original plan in terms of maximizing success.
Feed in newer intelligence, and reassess.
Repeat steps 4 through 6 as often as needed.
To do all this, it has been necessary to equip the computer with immense amounts of historical and personal ‘experience’. It is particularly important to clarify the vague notions of historians, and to break down the ‘hunches’ of line officers into analytical operations.
But there remained a further step: developing the scope and predictive ability of the Master Plan, by postulating novel situations and strategies to meet them.)
Psychologically, the subject seems relatively stableand integrated. The TAT shows a high ratio of paranoid fears and compulsive-obsessive enumeration to other characteristics. The MMPI profile showed paranoia more than two standard deviations above the norm, but the lie scale was too excessive to permit significant results. The subject has an I.Q. within the 170-200 range, with 70% certainty.)
‘My own life is in a way an example of failure to consider contingencies,’ he said. Savage leaned forward, ferret-eager. ‘I begin to have bloody thoughts. My marriage has failed, and now my health. It would be pleasant, very pleasant, to blame all this on The Enemy. But ultimately, the responsibility is
‘I’m glad you’re resigned. However –’
‘I’m far from resigned. I’m scared to hell, but there isn’t anything I can do now but die. Except for my work.’
‘Your work?’
‘I want to have enough time to finish this monograph. As long as I’m sane enough, logical enough, I want to go on with it. So no pain-killers. I don’t want anything dulling my brain or shortening my life by a single minute, hear?’
The doctor rose, smiling assent, but behind that smile was another, which said: ‘You poor son of a bitch, you think you can get along without it, do you? A week or two from now, you’re going to be begging for the needle, just like everyone else. And I, healer, physician, Christlike friend, will of course hear your plea, I may even “help you across”, if you ask me nice … we often get such requests.’
‘Where was I?’ he asked Savage.
‘… the beauty of a dream, General.’
(hoped the faceless code-clerk would not turn around. His androgynous father/mother helped him into the rear of the plane, where pretty Miss Glass was already treating the burned child. The medics joking and loitering around the door were drunk. ‘Peace on earth, get it? Don’t you get it?’ Miss Glass began peeling away the bandage roughly. The child screamed. The men began singing ‘When the Khe San Goes Rolling Along’, then ‘Unter-der-Lyndon’. He could see pieces of the burned flesh coming away in the bandage. The singing drowned the screams. One of the medics staggered over and offered the molten face a Hershey bar.)
‘Gentlemen, before we get into the work, I’m reminded of a story – a geographic story, naturally.’ The class had permission to laugh with the colonel. ‘They say a woman at different ages is like the seven continents’ – he thought of Miranda the changeable, kissing him goodbye at the train. He’d wondered how they looked to others, and peered around, but no one was watching them. Off We Go, Into The Wild Blue Yonder, the band played. A frantic, drunken soldier lurched to the train window and vomited into the bell of the tuba. Miranda promised to write, but never did – ‘then she is like North America: fully explored and free with her resources.’)
Plan must do exactly what a good general himself does:
Collect intelligence.
Outline a tentative plan of action, with reasonably accessible alternatives.
Feed in data from past personal and historical experiences.
Compute probable success of each operation.
Re-cost the original plan in terms of maximizing success.
Feed in newer intelligence, and reassess.
Repeat steps 4 through 6 as often as needed.
To do all this, it has been necessary to equip the computer with immense amounts of historical and personal ‘experience’. It is particularly important to clarify the vague notions of historians, and to break down the ‘hunches’ of line officers into analytical operations.
But there remained a further step: developing the scope and predictive ability of the Master Plan, by postulating novel situations and strategies to meet them.)
Psychologically, the subject seems relatively stableand integrated. The TAT shows a high ratio of paranoid fears and compulsive-obsessive enumeration to other characteristics. The MMPI profile showed paranoia more than two standard deviations above the norm, but the lie scale was too excessive to permit significant results. The subject has an I.Q. within the 170-200 range, with 70% certainty.)
‘My own life is in a way an example of failure to consider contingencies,’ he said. Savage leaned forward, ferret-eager. ‘I begin to have bloody thoughts. My marriage has failed, and now my health. It would be pleasant, very pleasant, to blame all this on The Enemy. But ultimately, the responsibility is
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