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"...a few centuries of coherent humanist thought, set against a million odd years of evolved killer ape tendency. No-one's going to give you very good odds on humanism, are they?"
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Analogue Treatment | ||
| Hypnotic drug treatment that normalizes behavior in humans. |
| I'm immune to analogue treatment. I didn't know it
for sure till I was ten, but I think
I was born that way. From
seven on, I remember the other
kids talking about their Guardians, and me pretending I had
one, too. You know how kids
are — anything to be part of
the gang.
"But for a long time, years, I wasn't certain whether everyone else was pretending like me, or whether I really was the only one without an invisible Guardian to talk to. I was pretty sure the kids were lying when they said they could see theirs, but whether they were there at all or not was another question... "When I was ten, I stole some- thing... Funny, I was halfway out before it struck me that I'd just proved I had no Guardian. "I had sense enough, thank God, to burn that book after I'd finished reading it. If I hadn't, I don't suppose I would have lived to grow up." "Should think not" Wolfert said, his eyes fixed on Falk, alert, wary. "One man without any control could turn the whole applecart over. But I thought immunity was theoretically impossible." "I've thought about that a good deal. According to classic psychology, it is. I'm not unusually resistant to hypnotic drugs; I go under all right. But the censor mechanism just doesn't respond. I've had the notion that I may be a mutation, developed in response to the analogue treatment as an anti-survival factor. But I don't know. As far as I've ever been able to find out, there are no more like me." |
| Technovelgy from Ticket to Anywhere,
by Damon Knight. Published by Galaxy Magazine in 1952 Additional resources -
|
This treatment has been applied to everyone:
Wolfert grimaced wryly. "Well?
It's a peaceful world, anyhow."
"Sure," said Falk. "No war or
possibility of war, no murders,
no theft, no crime at all. That's
because every one of them has a
policeman inside his skull.
Compare to the control helmet from Easy Money (1938) by Edmond Hamilton, the Methuen Treatment from The Exalted (1940) by L. Sprague de Camp and CAN-D from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick.
"There are fewer and fewer
people who have to be put away
in madhouses — not because of
any improvement in therapy, but
because the analogue techniques
are getting better and better. The
guy who would have been hopelessly insane fifty years ago now
has a little man inside his head,
controlling him, making him act
normal. On the outside, he is
normal; inside, he's a raving mad-
man. Worse still, the guy who
would have been just a little bit
cracked, fifty years ago — and
gotten treatment for it — is now
just as mad as the first guy. It
doesn't matter any more. We
could all be maniacs and the
world would go on just as before."
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
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'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
