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[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Dr. Kennedy's examination room]
[Illustration: the machine]
_The way we feel about another person, or about objects, is often
bound up in associations that have no direct connection with the
person or object at all. Often, what we call a "change of heart"
comes about sheerly from a change in the many associations which
make up our present viewpoint. Now, suppose that these associations
could be altered artificially, at the option of the person who was
in charge of the process...._
_Sentiment, Inc._
_by_ POUL ANDERSON
She was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, full of life and
hope, and all set to conquer the world. Colin Fraser happened to be on
vacation on Cape Cod, where she was playing summer stock, and went to
more shows than he had planned. It wasn't hard to get an introduction,
and before long he and Judy Sanders were seeing a lot of each other.
"Of course," she told him one afternoon on the beach, "my real name is
Harkness."
He raised his arm, letting the sand run through his fingers. The beach
was big and dazzling white around them, the sea galloped in with a
steady roar, and a gull rode the breeze overhead. "What was wrong with
it?" he asked. "For a professional monicker, I mean."
She laughed and shook the long hair back over her shoulders. "I wanted
to live under the name of Sanders," she explained.
"Oh--oh, yes, of course. Winnie the Pooh." He grinned. "Soulmates,
that's what we are." It was about then that he decided he'd been a
bachelor long enough.
In the fall she went to New York to begin the upward grind--understudy,
walk-on parts, shoestring-theaters, and roles in outright turkeys.
Fraser returned to Boston for awhile, but his work suffered, he had to
keep dashing off to see her.
By spring she was beginning to get places; she had talent and everybody
enjoys looking at a brown-eyed blonde. His weekly proposals were also
beginning to show some real progress, and he thought that a month or two
of steady siege might finish the campaign. So he took leave from his job
and went down to New York himself. He'd saved up enough money, and was
good enough in his work, to afford it; anyway, he was his own
boss--consulting engineer, specializing in mathematical analysis.
He got a furnished room in Brooklyn, and filled in his leisure time--as
he thought of it--with some special math courses at Columbia. And he had
a lot of friends in town, in a curious variety of professions. Next to
Judy, he saw most of the physicist Sworsky, who was an entertaining
companion though most of his work was too top-secret even to be
mentioned. It was a happy period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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