Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Teenage boys -- Fiction
"What's the matter?" Larry asked angrily. "What's so funny?"
"You say you don't know how to worry? Why, you're practically an
expert at it!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Suppose you tell me what you've been thinking of, the past two days.
Everything."
Larry stood up, walked to the door. The robonurse was waiting in the
next room, patient, unmoving. After a moment, he turned to his father.
"Well--I've been thinking that I don't like the City. That I'm afraid I
wasn't properly prepared for it. That I think raising me on the unworry
drug robbed me of any chance I'd have to learn to stand the strains of
City life. That even so I don't like the Playground either, and I'm
caught between." He checked each item off on his fingers. "That--"
"That's enough, Larry. You've analyzed it nicely."
Slowly, the truth opened out before him and an embarrassed grin widened
on his face. Resistance to strain could be acquired overnight--by nine
out of ten. Nine out of ten didn't need a long, grueling childhood to
prepare them for adulthood; the tenth would never grow up anyway.
"I've _been_ worrying," he said. "I'm the worrying kind. I've been
worrying since yesterday, and I didn't even know it!"
His father nodded. Larry took the capsule-box from its shelf, opened
it, stared at the three different kinds of capsule inside. "There never
really was any choice after all, was there?"
"No. Your choice was made yesterday morning. If you didn't have the
stuff for City life, you'd have grabbed for the unworry capsule the
second you saw it. But you didn't. You stopped to make a decision--and
won your citizenship right then and there. You proved it to us--and by
fighting with yourself over the decision you thought you still had to
make, you proved it to yourself."
Larry's smile spread. "Sure. The ability to worry is the measure of
successful City life," he said. "And I'm a regular worry wart already."
The excitement of the past two days still thumped in his stomach--and
it was only the beginning. "I belong _here_. Why--it won't be long
before I'll get my first ulcer!"
His father was radiant with paternal pride. "Welcome to your heritage,
son--the heritage of the civilized man. You've got the makings of a
first-rate citizen!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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