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to keep your brain and nervous system active enough to carry out simple specialized work duties. Or while the New System lasts. And I imagine that will be forever." "Forever...." "Yes, yes. You're immortal now," the Manager smiled. "Surely, after all this harrowing indoctrination experience, you realize _that_!" _Immortal. I might have guessed. I might laugh now, but I can't. We who pretend to live in a hell that is worse than death, and you, the Managerials who live in paradise._ We two are immortal. "That is, you're immortal as long as we desire you to be. You'll never grow any older than we want you to, never so senile as to threaten efficiency. That was what you were so interested in finding out on Earth, wasn't it? The mystery behind the Managerials? Why they never seemed to grow old. Why we have all the advantage, no senility, no weakening, the advantage of accumulative experience without the necessity of re-learning?" "Yes," Marquis whispered. The Manager leaned back. He lit a paraette and let the soothing nerve-tonic seep into his lungs. He explained. "Every one of you political prisoners we bring here want, above everything else, to die. It was a challenge to our experimental social order here. We have no objection to your killing yourself. We have learned that even the will to die can be conditioned out of the most determined rebel. As it has been conditioned out of you. You try to die enough times, and you do die, but the pain of resurrection is so great that finally it is impossible not only to kill yourself, but even to think of attempting it." Marquis couldn't say anything. The memory called up by the mention of self-destruction rasped along his spine like chalk on a blackboard. He could feel the total-recall of sensation, the threatening bursts of pain. "No...." he whispered over and over. "No--please--no--" The Manager said. "We won't mention it anymore. You'll never be able to try any overt act of self-destruction again." The bright light from the ceiling lanced like splinters into the tender flesh of Marquis' eyeballs, danced about the base of his brain in reddened choleric circles. His face had drawn back so that his cheekbones stood out and his nose was beak-like. His irises became a bright painful blue in the reddened ovals of his eyes. The Manager yawned as he finished explaining. "Each prisoner entering here has an identification punch-plate made of his unique electro-mag
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