"As soon as I have advised the patient of our decision, you will all be dismissed. Naturally, I anticipated this decision and have arranged for immediate erasure. After the erasure, Mr. Manz, you will be instructed to appear regularly for suspended animation." * * * * * For some reason, the first thing Bill Walden did when he became conscious of his surroundings was to look out the great window for the flock of birds. But they were gone. Bill looked at Major Grey and said, "What are you going to do?" The officer ran his hand back through his whitening hair, but he looked at Bill without wavering. "You will be erased." Bill began to shake his head. "There is something wrong," he said. "Bill...." the major began. "There is something wrong," Bill repeated hopelessly. "Why must we be split so there is always something missing in each of us? Why must we be stupefied with drugs that keep us from knowing what we should feel? I was trying to live a better life. I did not want to hurt anyone." "But you _did_ hurt others," Major Grey said bluntly. "You would do so again if allowed to function in your own way in this society. Yet it would be insufferable to you to be hospitalized. You would be shut off forever from searching for another Clara Manz. And--there is no one else for you, is there?" Bill looked up, his eyes cringing as though they stared at death. "No one else?" he asked vacantly. "No one?" The two orderlies lifted him up by his arms, almost carrying him into the operating room. His feet dragged helplessly. He made no resistance as they lifted him onto the operating table and strapped him down. Beside him was the great panel of the mnemonic eraser with its thousand unblinking eyes. The helmetlike prober cabled to this calculator was fastened about his skull, and he could no longer see the professor who was lecturing in the amphitheater above. But along his body he could see the group of medical students. They were looking at him with great interest, too young not to let the human drama interfere with their technical education. The professor, however, droned in a purely objective voice. "The mnemonic eraser can selectively shunt from the brain any identifiable category of memory, and erase the synaptic patterns associated with its translation into action. Circulating memory is disregarded. The machine only locates and shunts out those energies present as permanent memory. These are there in part as permanently echoing frequencies in closed cytoplasmic systems. These systems are in contact with the rest of the nervous system only during the phenomenon of remembrance. Remembrance occurs when, at all the synapses in a given network 'y,' the permanently echoing frequencies are duplicated as transient circulating frequencies.