Mind Webs - Wasted On The Young

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2:25My way. Finally, let's go. Welcome to a half hour of mind waves. Short stories from the worlds of speculative fiction. This is Michael Hansen, the Wide Web Story. This time from the ninth galaxy reader edited by Fredwick Paul. This is a story by John Brunner titled Wasted on the Young.

3:30The doorbell sounded. Hal Page had been attending the 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 incinerator's 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 crinkly 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 his 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 motive for throwing such a party in this randomly chosen day. If anyone realized word would spread like the rumour of plague

4:32and he would spend tonight alone staring at nothing and filling the cold hand of terror on his heart. Hard dim, he sent a loud 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 20 minutes at least ahead of party time. It was the most expensive watch in the world that had cost him four full years and sat on the back of his left index finger measuring the decay rate of a tiny grain of radium. The bell sounded a second time. He reached his decision. What the hell 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.

5:35He went smoothly and coolly to open the door. Well, 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 35, slim, satternide, 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? The page has a page. 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 at a party of, what was the girl's name? Karen Satini, but that doesn't matter. Mine does, I'm Thomas Thompson. Are you going to make me stand here, Hal, where anyone passing down the corridor might see me?

6:35Are 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, 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 glimpses 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. I have what you wanted, my expense. He waved out some past him with a grandiose gesture, indicating the array of delicacies with which the room was stocked. Antiques and Abjadar had been thrust aside hastily to make room for them. Champagne, genuine champagne from France. You want some caviar, larks, tongues? Take your pick, Dopson. It's all charged to me.

7:37Well, thank you. Dopson's like the sliver of hard toast to it licks to dip into a bowl of red caviar. You know, he said musingly when he'd swallowed the first muffle. 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. Yeah, even the first time I met you, oh, it was a five years ago, and you weren't equipped to get fun out of life. You sat there like a brooding ghost and poured out secondhand philosophical clap-trap that nobody wanted to listen to. You listened. Dopson dipped the second portion of the caviar and 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. Well, I'll skip that. But I got her afterwards. I know, she told me. Dopson swallowed the last of his toast

8:38and dropped into his soft chair. A 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, Dan Wright. She had a hell of a body, but her mind was all cluttered with the same kind of nonsense that you were 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 and nothings which I had had spooned into my ears and school. I looked at you and I thought, hell, if you're going to take me and grind me into the same mold as you, I'm going to get my kicks first. And well, yeah, it was right on 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 felt I was getting out from under.

9:38Nothing else. I 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. A minimum of 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 week past 30. I'd sort of lost counter in a weekend party but it kept on and it kept on. And here I am, 32 years, one month and four days. Stop. It's a dobs and quietly, and reach another good, good career. 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 spent. 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 day so that when they call from me I'd go fawning and say, look here I'm already acting like one of you please be kind to me.

10:40A sudden thought broke his train of words like a railman he shot out an accusing finger. Hey, hey, dobs and how do you know about the... The question trailed off in the silence colored with more than a little alarm. Dobs and 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 the responsibilities which go with all the privileges you've enjoyed. Sure, I understand them fine. Now, look, sports you got on your way and lead me to have my last fling. Sorry. I have to do the job now 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 around. You know how superstitious everyone in your group

11:40is about someone who's been given notice. As though they had suddenly carried the pain of a deadly disease. He'd been comparing it mentally to play earlier and that's how I've got through pages of annoyance he dropped into a chair facing Dobson inside. I'd rather take you and push your smug face down to this pose hall, but all right, spit it out and make it short. Dobson, full of his hands, come we on his lap. You know what? It sucks to be bored. I get on my phone and play real casino games on SpinQuest.com. The time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite spots. Live Black Check, live preps with a live dealer. New players, 30 dollar coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play SpinQuest.com and you'll never be bored again. SpinQuest is a free to play social casino. Boydware prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details. Warning. When Zippercruder radio spot you're about to hear is going to be filled with F words.

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14:43But 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. 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. Well, 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? Clearly Shaw said in his old age that youth was wonderful, or the pity it had to be wasted on the young. For in his view, as expounded at some length and back to Methuselah, only the wisdom which age and trains can fit an individual to make optimum use of the energies of youth.

15:44Thompson'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 this little chat. All right, hell. Well, even enclosed as you are in your psychologically incestuous 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're reaching out to explore the planets of other stars. I 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 artistic investments of individual effort. I spent three centuries worth. All right, it got me knows it isn't stale. Patience, hell. I'm required to do this, as I told you. Even if your interruptions compel me to spend all night at it.

16:46I heard. I just don't see the point of the lecture on current affairs. Are you softening me up to tell me that I'm to be sent out to Mars in some way to sort of 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? Page made a disgusted gesture, and leaned back in his chair. Dobson went on. Thank you. Hell, in your last year of school, when you should by 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.

17:48Only 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, you'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 vent who would rather sit on the edge of a desert and paint sunsets and take up an adult's post in the world.

18:50I don't wish to criticize such people, by the way. Hell, in my view, that marks the mod is among the most mature and self-reliance by salons of the 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 knack and nuts arbitrarily. You were told. You didn't listen. Told what? That 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 been 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?

19:52All 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? You'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

20:53decided 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 embarrassingly rich hell. These days we seldom even have to send a notice to people. With the 30th birthday coming 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. But 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 30 nowadays have already lost heart from near-passing amusements. 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.

21:55And 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 board another. Not quite. We can't let things slide. This is what I'm trying to put across to you. We can't raise the age of full credit to 35, for example, simply to reduce the pressure on us to absorb the would-be adults. I'd have no objection. Worded hell, thinking of the terrible warning notice the atrust into the disposal. Your full free credit period terminates tomorrow. But already people are finding it hard

22:56to last hour 30 years fully in a round. Did you not just hear me say so, Hell? 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? And Paige tossed down the second brandy as though he hated it. Yes. Yes, Hell, 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. Never mind. Paige watched him move towards the door. We hastily 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 at faulted partly because he was ashamed to admit to this black, carved, and fruiter that the prospect made him afraid, partly because he was afraid.

23:58The satanine man paused and looked back. Do I know what they'll make you do? As 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. There were just two bad moments. The first, when MediTex had to be hauled after a fight developed between two men over some shit of a girl Paige had had last year and didn't think worth the trouble. The second, when he found himself screening at the crowd to drink more, eat more, dance more frantically. And realized that their eyes were on him. Their faces halfway frightened at the dreadful intensity of his manner. He checked himself deliberately,

24:58and 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 in 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. abruptly, 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. So, earlier, three or four people had been charring down together and writing unseemed verse in the tiled walls of the barb lavender colored soul. He studied himself with one hand and gazed at his reflection in the floor to sealing mirror. Last time.

25:59Last 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 lightly. I haven't seen moron. Oh, he got his notice. And tried to get out from under, cut 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.

26:59The 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 peaked 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. Hal Page made it. Hal Page got out from under. One final twinge of our resolution over Canaan. Then he recalled the expression on Dobson's face as he went out and thought about the implications of his parting promise. No, no better, the silent dark of death. And he wasn't going to watch the job. The aircar had cost him one and a half years credit. It was going to be well worth it if he thought dreamily as he fell down the five capsules of hypnotic

28:00three 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 height ought 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. Hal Page's famous record breaking debt of more than 300. Blackness. And horror. Light 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.

29:02He 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 white-ish presence moved at the edge of vision crazily out of proportion to woman and a sterile cover all. I think you have the lenses too far apart. Dobson said. He's probably getting exaggerated stereo vision. Something monstrous little pages field of vision and the perspectives of the environment shrank to something nearer normal. I'm sorry for you Hal. Dobson said softly. And by the way, don't try to talk. We haven't cut in the vocal circuit yet.

30:03The consciousness of hellpage with Drew turned into something smaller than a mouse began to run frantically 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. And capable of drawing a rational conclusion from what you were told and capable of empathizing 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. There was almost nothing left of you Hal, but you should have known from what I told you when I called that your apartment that you were a rarity. Too rare to waste. Working pal to be strictly honest Hal, there are unpleasant

31:03tasks 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 too. But you didn't. You went right ahead. You spent credits found it on other people's efforts until the free choice is 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 Hal, creeping outward. As I told you it's forced on us because we have so much energy to absorb so much frantic creativity, so much skill and impatience. One day we'll go at the speed of light freely and easily. But before that epic arrives there must be scouts, explorers, pathfinders.

32:07You, Hal, 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 three hundred 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 Hilsenov. Mindwebs comes to you from WHA Radio in Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension.

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