Mind Webs - Wasted On The Young

0:30Mindwave. Welcome to a half hour of mindwave. The story is from the worlds of speculative fiction. This is Michael Hanson, the mindwave story, this time from the ninth galaxy reader, edited by Fredrick Paul. This is a story by John Brunner titled, Wasted on the Young. The doorbell sounded.

1:30Hal Page had been attending to two final tasks, first checking around the apartment and making sure everything was ready for this, which was going to be one hell of a party. And second, trying to decide where to put the notice. He would have liked to destroy it, but when he came to the mouth of the disposal and opened it, letting the faintest faintest whiff of the stink from the far away incinerators mingle with the heavy perfumes loading there in the room, early found he had changed his mind. He needed the solid feel of it in his hand, the quenckly rustle of it in his ears to drive into the completion of his ultimate purpose. At a party like this, no hiding place was likely to remain secret, especially in view of his reckless reputation. The guests would make it a point of honor to seek out and if possible, ruin is most costly possessions to make him break new records when he cleared up the mess and replaced the spoiled items. But he dared not have anyone even guess at the mode of withdrawing such a party in this randomly chosen day. If anyone realized word would spread like the room were a plague and he would spend tonight alone, staring at nothing and

2:34filling the cold hand of terror on his heart. He said aloud, snatching a notice into a place of concealment in the front of his loose silk shirt. Automatically he consulted his watch, though he knew the bell had sounded twenty minutes at least ahead of party time. It was the most expensive watch in the world that had cost him four full years and set on the back of his left index finger measuring the decay rate of a tiny grain of radium. The bell sounded the second time. He reached his decision, but the help point was there in keeping the notice. Every word of it was ingrained in his mind. It could be summed into the single terrible warning tomorrow. But if he had no intention of being here, of being alive tomorrow, why hesitate to have the paper destroyed? He thrust the document into the disposal as he had originally intended. The gesture brought him a sense of calm, of boats being burnt.

3:34He went smoothly and coolly to open the door. Oh, you're early, but coming anyway, no reason to delay that. He got that far before he realized that the man facing in a little older than himself, say thirty-five, slim, satirneye, bright eyed, was wearing the black of an adult. And then with a twisting, grimace of disgust, he made to close the door, wishing it were possible to slam it with a crash. Wait, the man in black said softly. Wait, remember me, how? Page hesitated. He made a violent effort to see the face above the drab black garb as that of an individual, instead of merely as the mask of an adult, and relays of memory closed, he said. Yeah, why had a party of, what was the girl's name? Karen Sotini, but that doesn't matter. Mine dies on Thomas Dupson. Are you going to make me stand here, Hell, where anyone passing down the corridor might see me?

4:34Are you going to have them start to wonder why an adult comes calling on Hell Page? The professional youth? You see, I know about the notice you've had, and the reason for this spectacular party tonight. You're not going to be here. I said, open house, but Hell's name I didn't mean. No, of course not. Your guests won't be less than half an hour late now, you know that as well as I do. Even for glimpse of the legendary Hell Page, you gambled and got away with it. Who's dragging so many others after him by his example? So you've come for a sight of me, huh? Well, to see what you missed, all right, come on in. Have what you wanted, my expense. He weighed Dupson past him with a grandiose gesture, indicating the array of delicacies with which the room was stocked. Antiques and Objardar had been thrust aside hastily to make room for them. Champagne, genuine champagne from France, you want some caviar, large tongues? Take your pick, Dupson, it's all charged to me.

5:36Well, thank you. Dupson's like the sliver of hard toast to it which to dip into a bowl of red caviar. You know, he said musically when he'd swallowed the first mouthful, you know, to shame you're not equipped to value this for what it is now. But you should see it only as a gigantic prop for your ego. You're not equipped to enjoy anything. God, even the first time I met you, what was it five years ago? You weren't equipped to get fun out of life. You sat there like a brooding ghost and poured out second hand philosophical clap trap that nobody wanted to listen to. You listened. Dupson dipped the second portion of the caviar in the toast crunched noisily between his teeth. Yeah, listen only because I didn't believe you could be real. There you sat. There was this girl alongside you. The one with pretty red hair in the mouth that, well, skipped that, but I got her afterwards. I know, she told me. Dupson swallowed the last of his toast and dropped into his soft chair.

6:39A fugitive smile crossed his face. You mean, she looked at you twice? We got married. A course of action which probably wouldn't interest you very much. Yeah, damn right. And she had a hell of a body, but her mind was all cluttered with the same kind of nonsense you're spouting that evening. And yet, you know, I guess I should be grateful to you in a way. After that time, I'd run with her herd. I'd taken it for granted, you know, all the pious nothings which I had had spawned into my years in school. I looked at you and I thought, hell, if they're going to take me and grind me into the same old as you, I'm going to get my kicks first. And well, yeah, it was, it was running the following day that I went out and got myself something which cost a whole year for the first time. I felt great, and I went right on from there. Tell me something. Didn't you feel anything when you ran your dead up over a century? Sure. I thought I was getting out from under. Nothing else.

7:39I know what you mean. You're trying to say, wasn't I scared that they'd come along and cut the ground from under my feet? Hell no. You take yourselves too seriously, dobs and you adults. I minimum up 30 years free. That's what they tell you, granted. I had a bad moment of the day I woke up and found I was a weak past 30. I'd sort of lost count during the weekend party, but it kept on and it kept on. And here I am 32 years, one month and four days. Stop. Set up some climbing and reach another good, prepared caviar. So what's going to be done about it? My death's up to 300 years now and there isn't a damn thing you can do. It's spanked, or it will be by dawn tomorrow. And what do you have to show for it? I have to show what anyone will tell you. I have proof of more guts than you. I have proof I wasn't scared of the consequences. I didn't turn around and make myself into an adult. I had to do dates so that when they call from me I'd go fawning and say, look here I'm already acting like one of your please be kind to me.

8:39A sudden thought broke his train of words like a railman. He shot out an accusing finger. Hey, hey, dobson, how do you know about the... The question trailed off in the silence covered with more than a little alarm. Dobson said. No, I haven't come to get you of that's what you're thinking. I am in fact required to call on you and make sure you understand those responsibilities which go with all the privileges you've enjoyed. Sure, I understand I'm fine. Now look, sports you got on your way and lead me to have my last fling. Sorry. I have to do the job, Hal. And if I don't get to complete it before your guests arrive, I just have to try and do it later. So the choice is fairly simple. Sit and listen now. Or sit and listen later. Because there won't be anyone else here to keep you company. The word will have got arombed. You know how superstitious everyone in your group is about someone who's been given notice.

9:41As though they had suddenly carried the pain of a deadly disease. He'd been comparing it mentally to play earlier. And that child got through pages of noise. And he dropped into a chair facing Dopson inside. I'd rather take you and push your smog face down to the suppose hall. But all right, spit it out and make it short. Dopson folded his hands, calmly on his lap. He said, I doubt if you've caught up on the classics of literature during this expensive whirlwind of a life. But maybe if you've done so, you'd have developed a greater insight into your situation. Particularly if you've read a couple of works by the dramatist Shaw early in the 20th century. Do you mean anything to you? Come on, come to the point. Like I've had my notice, you know that. And I don't want to be bored tonight of all nights. Yes. Yes, you have rather a marked capacity for boredom, don't you? It seems somehow unfair.

10:42Well, to be precise, what I had in mind was a beautiful capsule summary of the contemporary economic setup, which is probably apocryphal, but who can be sure? Reputedly Shaw said in his old age that youth was wonderful, or to pity it had to be wasted on the young. For in his view, as expounded at some length and back to Methuselum, only the wisdom which age and trains can fit an individual to make optimum use of the energies of youth. Topson's eyes went once around the room, seeming to take in some up and dismiss everything for which page had stake three centuries of existence. The page shivered and ordered him violently to hurry up with his little chat. All right, hell. Well, even enclosed as you are in your psychologically insesctuous circle of good-time chums, it must have been born in on you that there has been progress since the old days, that we have colonized two other planets in the system. That we are reaching out to explore the planets of other stars.

11:46I caught something about it on 3V. Yes. Moreover, we enjoy a universally high standard of living hell, in which we apply as the only truly dependable economic yardstick, the investments of individual effort. I've spent three centuries worth. All right, it got me news that isn't stale. Patients how? I'm required to do this as I told you. Even if your interruptions compelled me to spend all night at it. I heard. I just don't see the point of the lecture on current affairs. Look, you softening me up to tell me that I'm to be sent out to Mars is somewhere to swear on one of those damn construction projects. You caught that on 3V too, presumably. No hell, you're not to be sent to Mars. The work there is almost at the point where human effort can be submitted by machinery. And only skilled options are likely to remain open there in the future. Do I get the chance to make my point? Or do you so much like the sound of your own voice you'd rather hear only it between now and tomorrow morning?

12:47Page made a disgusted gesture, and leaned back in his chair. Dopson went on. Thank you. Hal, in your last year of school, when you should buy rights have been old enough to make a fairly enlightened decision, you were instructed in the forums of modern society. You were told, for instance, of the expenditure against credit, which would be made available to you at least until age 30, and that the credit was charged like all expenditure nowadays, against a standard base scale of individual work. Only the time counts. There's no question, for example, of someone who's not capable of highly skilled work being made to return more years of unskilled labor to balance the accounts. We're pretty rich as a race, we human beings, we don't have to be petty in such things. You were told a reasoning behind the system now. You were told, and like most adolescents, you certainly didn't believe, that an endless round of pleasure and self-indulgence ultimately would grow boring. And by the time you got your notice to repay the society, the credit you had drawn,

13:50you'd wish to make some more constructive views of your life. We're told also that there was nothing fixed or inevitable about this repayment. There's a certain inalienable minimum available to everyone so that by living frugally a person may continue to be his own absolute master as long as he wishes. Of course, it's usually chosen by those with a strong rebellious and creative ban who would rather sit on the edge of a desert and paint sunsets, and take up an adult's post in the world. I don't wish to criticize such people, by the way. How in my view that marks the mod is among the most mature and self-reliance by salinity and race. Unused to sitting and listening, Paige had begun to fidget. Now, he burst out, again, angrily this time. Yeah, I was certainly told all this, but I wasn't convinced, and I still am not convinced. I'm getting a hell of a lot of kicks out of life, Dobson. The idea of being arbitrarily grabbed by the knacken, not arbitrarily. You were told, you didn't listen.

14:53You told what? How did you put it that an endless round of self-indulgence would end up by boring me? Hell, the only times I've been really bored of being like now when some stuff he brained adults started preaching at me. He jumped up and went to fetch himself a shot of brandy. And the fact remains, I'm not fooled as easily as most people. You know how to go around almost in awe of me, like I'd done something special. All I did was see through this guff about my debt to society and what it consists of. I told you, frankly, I had some bad moments when I realized I'd hit age 30 with a debt already topping two centuries. Then I caught on. If you jumped on me right then and there, the first possible moment, the very day I got past the promised limit, you'd mark yourselves were scared. People would have said, it's a fraud. They jumped on Hell Page because he took what he wanted from life and didn't give it to him about the time he used up. Hell, if we're all going the same way, let's take what we can while we can. Isn't that the size of it?

15:54You're visualizing the whole of your generation, spending their credit by the century. The same as you. Hell, do you seriously think that would matter? I said we're a rich race. You have no conception of how rich we are. If every single one of you were guests that you've ever had to all of your wild parties, if every guest at every party you've ever been to, if every one of your entire generation decided to spend as freely and lavishly as you, all it would take to absorb this would be to reprise their expenditure down to the productive effort we can reasonably accommodate during their later lives. We're in barricadingly Richow. These days we seldom even have to send a notice to people. With the 30th birthday come and gone, people tend to get restless. They lose interest in their round of pleasure. They turn up one day and ask to be assigned for some real work. I did that myself.

16:55But I'm not like you. The point I'm making still stands. Our difficulty is in utilizing the resources which make themselves available to us. Nine people out of ten who reach the age of thirty-naud days have already lost heart from near passing amusments. They've taken a course of study or set themselves a small research project or made plans for a family. Done something adult and short. And we have to cope with this tremendous flow of creative energy, channel it, make the most of it. That's why we're going out to the stars. It'll be a hell of a long time before we actually reduce star flight to a routine operation like a trip to the moon. But we're going to need that escape route simply for the sake of not wasting the potential modern human society boils off like surplus heat from an engine. Are you finished? Now I'll drain this glass of brandy and pour it another. Not quite. We can't let things slide.

17:56And this is what I'm trying to put across to you. We can't raise the age of full credit to thirty-five, for example, simply to reduce the pressure on us to absorb the would-be adults. I'd have no objection. Blurred at hell, thinking of the terrible warning notice he had thrust into the disposal. Your full free credit theory terminates tomorrow. But already people are finding it hard to last hour thirty years fully in a round. Did you not just hear me say so, Hal? I've heard it all. Yeah, I'm sick of it all. There's nothing more you can tell me. How about using the door? Baged toss down the second brandy as though he hated it. Yes. Yes, Hal, it's all been sent to you over and over. You just don't seem able to draw the conclusions. None so tough as those who will not. I'm in your mind.

18:58Paige watched him move towards the door. We have still hardly died in his eyes as the final question burned upwards towards full consciousness. Without intending, he found himself starting to voice it. Daphson, Daphson, do you know what? And they're faltered partly because he was ashamed to admit to this black-arptant fruitor that the prospect made him afraid. Partly because he was afraid. The Saturni man paused and looked back. Do I know what they'll make you do? It's a matter of fact. Yes, but I'm not empowered to tell you. Make me. I thought there was supposed to be a range of free choice. You poor fool. How many choices do you imagine remain open to someone who spent more than 300 years worth of credit? And he was gone. But it was a great party.

20:00There were just two bad moments. The first, when MedaTex had to be called after a fight developed between two man over some shit of a girl Paige had had last year and didn't think worth the trouble. The second, when he found himself screaming at the crowd to drink more, eat more, dance more frantically, and realize that their eyes were on him. Their faces half-way frightened at the dreadful intensity of his manner. He checked himself deliberately and covered his moment of self-betrayal by seizing the nearest girl around the waist to smother her face in kisses. He must not, dare not, let it be suspected that he was under sentence of death. Tonight, up to the very last minute, he must be with people. He must have the noise and laughter and the crash and smash of priceless articles. A soft hot sweat-purled body under his. A silk pillow for his head ringing with dobsons calm, terrifying voice echoing in memory. With the third girl, around three in the morning, he failed to make it and knew that the time was come.

21:03abruptly, he pushed her aside and got off the bed. He went into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Luckily, there was no one in here just now. The earlier three or four people had been sharring down together and writing unseen verse in the piled walls of the bar of lavender colored soul. He studied himself with one hand and gaze at his reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror. Last time. Last time. But they'll remember me. The one who cheated them. The only ambition he had ever conceived. It wasn't unique to himself. But others whom he'd heard of who tried the same will find the prospect of being snatched away from this ceaseless, selfish delight and tolerable, had botched the job. There were whispers, there were shuttering rumors and answered a casual questions. We're so and so lately. I haven't seen moron.

22:04Oh, he got his notice and tried to get out from undercut his throat. And they healed him. I guess Dobson would accept that. Page told his reflection, seeing the grim lines form around his soft mouth. I guess he'd say they were warned and had to take the consequences. They're being told in advance doesn't justify it. I don't give a damn for paying back what I've had in credit. No one asked me when they set up this filthy system. And I opt out. His voice had leaked to a loudness that scared him. He didn't want to be overheard. When he went, he wanted the party to continue. Maybe it would go on till the news came back. Hell page made it. Hell page got out from under. One final twinge of a resolution overcaning. Then he recalled the expression on Dobson's face as he went out

23:06and thought about the implications of his party and promise. No, no better, the silent dark of death. And he wasn't going to botch the job. The aircar had cost him one and a half years credit. It was going to be well worth it if he thought to him as he fell down the five capsules of hypnotic three hours credit. And set the controls to carry him out to sea. There was just about enough fuel for 50 miles. By then, he'd be at 30,000 feet and hitting water from such a high thought to be pretty much like smashing into a stone wall. If they even got back enough to use for prosthetics, they'd be lucky. But that was the most they could hope to have back from. Hell pages famous record breaking debt of more than 300. Blackness and horror.

24:08Light and darkness. Awareness. A shocking horrifying lack of bodily presence. Vision indestructible without lids to lower over the traitor eyes. He tried to scream and found he had no voice. He tried to rise and run and found he had no legs. He was in a large light room pale walled without a window and facing him on a steel chair was the grim black form of dobson. Somehow elongated from front to back as though he was deeper than he should be. A voice said. On now, and a whitish presence moved at the edge of vision crazily out of proportion, the woman and a sterile cover all. I think you have the lenses too far apart. Dobson said. He's probably getting exaggerated sterile vision.

25:11Something monstrous, little pages field of vision and the perspectives of the environment shrank to something nearer normal. I'm sorry for you, Hell. Dobson said softly. And by the way, don't try to talk. We haven't cut in the vocal circuit yet. The consciousness of Hell page with drew turned into something smaller than a mouse. Began to run friendically around and around in the confines of his brain, which he knew and could not face knowing was all that was left to him. You may go insane, Dobson said. But I guess in some senses you've always been insane, incapable of drawing a rational conclusion from what you were told and capable of amplifying to the point of taking someone else's word. I guess we have to be grateful that people like you still turn up occasionally. It's our greatest strength as a race that we can build on our own weaknesses.

26:16There was almost nothing left of you, Hell, but you should have known from what I told you when I called at your apartment that you were a rarity. Too rare to waste. We're compelled to be strictly honest, Hell. There are unpleasant tasks to undertake and we never hide the fact. You elected yourself for one of them in full possession of all the information which would have enabled you to back out if you cared to. But you didn't. You went right ahead. You spent credits founded on other people's efforts until the free choices open to you as repayment dwindled to a single possibility. So here I am with a task of telling you after you made the mistake of thinking you could welsh on your debt. We have to go to the stars, Hell, creeping outward. As I told you, it's forced on us because we have so much energy to absorb

27:16so much frantic creativity, so much skill and impatience. One day we'll go at the speed of light freely and easily. But before that apache arrives, there must be scouts, explorers, pathfinders. You, Hell, you are going to ride you as the commander and the crew of a slow, slow rocket ship. And the round trip-how is going to last just about 300 years. That story is titled Wasted on the Young by John Brunner. It appears in a collection edited by Frederick Paul titled The Ninth Galaxy Reader. This is Michael Hanson speaking, technical production for Mindwebs by Leslie Hosenoff.

28:20Mindwebs comes to you from WHA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension.