The Lost Ego
Date: 2021-08-25T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Identity -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lost Ego

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Title: The Lost Ego

Author: Rog Phillips

Release date: August 25, 2021 [eBook #66137]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Greenleaf Publishing Company, 1953

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66137

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST EGO ***

The Lost Ego

By Rog Phillips

He knew he existed—even to the point of
knowing his own name. But to really exist you
have to have a body—and he couldn't find his!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
April 1953
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"So what if I did spend this week's household allowance getting drunk last night!"

I stared at the woman. For a brief second I had felt that she was my wife. But I had never seen her before. I looked at her. She was a straw blonde, rather pretty in a way.

"Give me some more money, you cheapskate," she sneered. "I don't know why I ever married you. I could pick up a half a dozen any night that are more fun than you ever were."

She couldn't be talking to me. I looked around to see who she was talking to. I was standing on the rug of a living room. No one else was in the room except us.

"All right," I heard myself say. My voice startled me, it was so quiet, so calm and patient. I'd heard someone speak just that way once. Who was it? I remembered suddenly. It was when I was six years old. I was in the neighborhood store when it was held up. The hold-up man had pointed a gun at Mr. Kaseline. Mrs. Kaseline had run into the store from in back and screamed at the man with the gun. He had shot her, then ordered Mr. Kaseline to hand over his money. I had been crouched against the wall, watching. Mr. Kaseline had looked down at his dead wife. Then he looked at the hold-up man, and said, "All right," in that same tone. Then he had opened the cash register and from somewhere in its depths brought out a gun and started firing at the man. He had kept on shooting until his gun clicked on an empty chamber....

"How much do you want?" I asked.

She blinked at me, a worried frown creasing her forehead. I sensed a stab of fear go through her. She averted her eyes uncomfortably. "Whatever you want to give me," she said sullenly.

It was weird. I had never seen her before in my life. I had no idea who she could be. Whoever she was, I didn't like her.

I looked about the room once more. I couldn't recognize a single thing. I tried to. I studied things like the davenport, the pictures on the wall. Nothing was familiar.

I became conscious of her eyes studying me with a mixture of expectancy and fear, tinged with a little finger of contempt that was ready to run if I looked her way. Anger and irritation flooded into me. I had to get out, to think.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," I said, starting toward the front door.

"Where are you going?" she asked sharply.

I stopped and turned toward her slowly. That calmness was in my voice again as I listened to it. "To try to borrow some money," I said.

I opened the front door and went out, closing it gently behind me. I was on a porch of red enameled concrete. There were three steps down to the walk. I had never seen them before.

It was evening. Somewhere down the block a woman was calling someone named Johnny. Across the street a man was going up the walk to the house from his car. Next door a skinny man with a large Adam's apple was mowing the lawn. He saw me and waved at me. A nervous smile flitted over his lips.

"Hi, Orville," he called.

But my name wasn't Orville, and I had never seen these houses, these people. I had never before been in this neighborhood.

Or had I? Was it possible to have amnesia while in familiar surroundings?

I considered the possibility, then rejected it. I was positive I had never been here before. I was certain my name wasn't Orville.

I knew who I was, and I knew my name was Fred Martin. Why, ten minutes ago I had been....

The man across the street had just opened the door to enter the house, but now neither he nor the house were there. In their place was Thordsen's bench. Around me were the dim outlines of the lab.

I tried to remember what I had been doing. I turned to my bench and groped for the light switch.

Light bathed my bench. I looked at the scattered parts of the computer, and grunted with relief. Of course! I had come back to the lab after dinner to work some more.

I started to take off my coat. Sudden doubt made me pause. I went slowly over to the corner medicine cabinet and looked at my reflection. My face looked back at me. I needed a shave. But my face was familiar. It was undoubtedly mine. Still....

I groped in my coat pocket and found it empty. I patted my hip pocket, and took out my wallet. I flipped it open and searched the driver's license for my name.

The name written there was Orville Snyder.

In that moment a strange emotion of detachment settled upon me. Almost disinterestedly I looked at other identifications. Each bore the signature of Orville Snyder.

Yet I was not Orville Snyder. I was Fred Martin....

"Now look here, Fred," I said aloud. "Something's wrong." I grinned, but I knew it wasn't funny.

I went to the mirror again and studied my face. It was the same face I had seen there a minute before. I tried to detach myself, to make it seem a strange face. I couldn't. It was my own face.

I went back to my bench and frowned down at the scattered parts. Tube banks, condensors, resistors, switches. I had laid them out myself before going out to eat, so they would be ready when I returned.

"Now let's see," I said aloud. "I distinctly remember laying them out. Thordsen was talking to me at the time. We were discussing the feedback principle in this circuit. Then he left. I went to the supply room to get that extra tube tank. Then I went out to ... to...."

I had come to a blank wall in my memory. I couldn't remember going out.

I knew I had been here before I was in that room with the strange woman. I was sure of that. Then I had gone out on the porch and the man next door had called me Orville. Then I had been here, with no passage of time between the two. Just a fading out and fading in—like they do with some scene changes on television.

And in my hand was a wallet with identifications for Orville Snyder. One of them—I turned to it and studied it again—said he was an employee of Rexlo Research Corporation with the classification of scientist.

But I was an employee of Rexlo Research with the classification of scientist—and there were only two others with that classification. Thordsen and Mintner. We three worked in this lab. No one else. Certainly no one by the name of Orville Snyder. Unless—I smiled uneasily—unless I were Orville Snyder.

I went over to my bench and sat down, cupping my chin on my fists. I tried to reason it out. My memories were perfectly clear. I went over them again and again, trying to find something significant.

It was possible I had never left the lab. That scene with the strange and unlikeable woman could have been an illusion. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed it, then woke up.

That didn't explain the "proof" in my wallet that I was a man named Orville whom I had never heard of before, but the only other explanation of the blanks was that I had blanked out on leaving the lab, and once again while standing on the porch of that house.

I searched the wallet, hoping to find something. There were two one dollar bills. There was a folded slip of paper with some names on it, with figures denoting money after them. At the top were two capital letters. I.O. The meaning was obvious. Orville Snyder owed these men those sums of money.

I thumbed through the identifications for the nth time. On some of them was a telephone number. I got up and went over by the door to the desk with the telephone, and dialed the number.

The phone at the other end rang three times, then a voice said, "Hello?"

It was the voice of the woman. I didn't say anything.

"Who is it?" she said. Then she chuckled. "I know who it is. You don't need to worry, Ben. He isn't home. It is you, isn't it Ben?"

I hung up. Her voice had been unreal. Even her words. The pattern surrounding this Orville Snyder was too trite and too unbelievable. A wife—or was this woman his wife?—who used the grocery money to get drunk, and who consorted with men named Ben, and stupidly gave herself away over the phone.

I went back to my bench again and studied the identifications in the wallet. One of them had fingerprints on it. I didn't know much about fingerprints. Still....

I lit a bunsen burner and adjusted it until it was giving off smoke. I let a film of black coat a piece of glass. When it was safely cool I touched it with my right index finger and placed my fingerprint on a sheet of paper.

In the desk I found a magnifying glass. With it I examined my print and that on the identification, for the right index finger. In every respect they seemed identical.

I laid the magnifying glass down slowly. Things were adding up. Things that couldn't be denied. The driver's license was a photostat copy and seemed authentic. The government identification card with the fingerprints on it was encased between sheets of plastic that sealed it. The Rexlo identification was on a printed card. And there was a hospital card giving blood type.

All this added up to my being Orville Snyder. I hadn't ever heard the name before. I'd never seen that woman before. I was Fred Martin. I was as certain of that as I could ever be of anything.

But I had to be Orville Snyder. I couldn't get out of it. The fingerprint, the man next door who had called me Orville, the woman who ranted at me as only a wife of that type can rant to a man.

I was Fred Martin and I knew I was Fred Martin. But I was Orville Snyder. I couldn't go any further. I didn't see how anyone could go any further.

Suppose I went to a psychiatrist and told him all this? What explanation would he give? He would obviously say I was insane. Perhaps I was, but it didn't seem so.

The thing didn't seem to fit conventional patterns. The only thing a psychiatrist might sink his teeth into was Orville's impossible marital situation. The psychiatrist might say the situation was so intolerable that Orville Snyder was becoming a schizo, and retreating into an identity called Fred Martin.

But that was absurd. Such an identity would be fictitious. It wouldn't hold up under critical examination.

"To hell with the work I was going to do," I said. I snapped off the lights over my bench and returned the magnifying glass to the desk, switching off that light, and left the lab.

Outside, I found my car where I had left it. I took out my keys and unlocked it, and slipped in behind the wheel. A moment later I was gliding along familiar streets, taking familiar turns.

I put my car in a familiar garage behind an apartment house. I climbed familiar steps to a familiar door, unlocked it, and went in, turning on the lights.

This was where I lived. I went to the bookshelves and picked a book at random and opened it. There was my bookplate pasted in it, with my name, Fred Martin, in Gothic letters. I put the book back, and went into the kitchen. I was hungry.

I took the last of a beef roast from the refrigerator and cut some slices for a sandwich or two. I took them to the table and went back to the refrigerator for a glass of milk.

I sat down and bit into a sandwich. This was where I lived. I was Fred Martin. This business of Orville Snyder was crazy. I took a swallow of cold milk and felt better.

I took another bite of the sandwich and laid it down on the plate, and reached for the newspaper—then stopped.

Where had the newspaper come from?

I hadn't stopped on the way from the lab to buy one. I hadn't brought one up with me from the car—or had I?

Suddenly I wasn't sure. I could have. If it wasn't for this other business I wouldn't have thought anything of it.

I stared at the folded newspaper, and it lay there on the plastic tablecloth with abnormally sharp detail, the most bizarre element of the day's mad events.

I relaxed. There was something in the paper, of course. If I spread it out and looked at the headlines I would probably go screaming mad....

That must be it, because I didn't want to open up the paper. Instead, I wanted to get up and go down to the car, and drive out of the city, away from everything, and forget everything.

The other things were strange and inconsistent, but not insane. This feeling was irrational. Maybe it was caused by the other things.

Just leaving the newspaper there and running away wouldn't resolve anything. I had to open it up and read it. And of course I knew what the headlines would be. There was only one thing they could be to fit the insane pattern. MRS. ORVILLE SNYDER FOUND SLAIN. And the subhead would be, POLICE SEARCHING FOR MISSING HUSBAND.

But it was absurd. I took another bite of sandwich and a swallow of milk and stared at the folded newspaper. An idea was forming in my thoughts. It was vague and almost unreachable, but it was there.

I turned it over slowly. Somehow there must be an explanation for all this. I was Fred Martin and I couldn't be Orville Snyder, but I must be. Somewhere in that lay the key to something. And if I could reach that key I wouldn't have to open the paper and read the headlines. Why?

Because the newspaper wouldn't be there. Neither would I. I could be—where would I want to be? Back in Mr. Kaseline's store? Definitely not. Back in college? Why did I think of escaping into the past? As soon as I asked myself the question I knew why. It was because I couldn't think of any place else to mentally escape to.

Physically—I could get up and go down to the garage and get in my car and go anywhere.

And neither alternative was what I felt lay there, just under the surface. Perhaps neither was possible. How could I go back into the past and make it anything more than just memories of the past? And if I were wanted for murder it would be highly improbable that I could escape the police for very long. Not when my fingerprints were those of Orville Snyder.

No. What I was sensing, but not quite able to reach, was something else. And I didn't know what it was.

I finished my two sandwiches and glass of milk. Leaving the newspaper untouched on the table, I undressed and took a hot bath. In bed, I lay in the darkness, my eyes open, thinking.

I was Orville Snyder, and I had killed my wife. After I had killed her something had snapped, blotting out all memory of the deed. I definitely couldn't remember killing that woman! When that something snapped I became a schizo and took the identity of Fred Martin. Unfortunately I couldn't make the schizo switch perfect.

On the other hand, I was Fred Martin. I lived in a bachelor apartment and had been living there for three years. My car was down in the garage in back of the apartment house. My books with my name in them were on the bookshelves gathering dust. I had never heard of Orville Snyder until today.

I turned over on my side and watched the vague light seeping past the drapes over the window. A slight breeze was tugging at the drapes, sending a breath of fresh air into the room. I had bought those drapes three years ago. They'd been cleaned twice since then, and would need cleaning again soon. Mrs. Bricher was the landlady and her husband Ed ran a beer truck.

And I didn't know a damned thing about Orville Snyder.

I sat up and put my feet on the floor, letting them grope for my slippers and get into them without turning on the light. I padded out of the bedroom and across the living room where the moonlight made things quite visible but indistinct.

In the kitchen I turned on the light and got a glass of milk. Then I stood by the table looking at the folded newspaper, drinking the milk in sporadic gulps.

"To hell with it!" I said.

Purposefully I went to the sink and rinsed out the empty glass. Then I put it in the drying rack and went back to the table. I picked up the newspaper and unfolded it. My eyes went to the headlines. The letters were big and black and sharply distinct.

I started to read, and the first word became indistinct. The letters were still clear and sharp, but I could not read them.

I grinned. I had had dreams where I tried to read, and the words did that. Maybe I had gone to sleep and was just dreaming I was in the kitchen trying to read the headlines.

Of course that was it. I had to wake up. How did you wake up when you knew you were asleep and wanted to wake up? I had done that, too, and it was easy. You just woke up.

I did.

It was light. Not bright, but the vague light of the first blush of dawn. The rheumatism in my right shoulder woke up a second or two after I did—but I had never had rheumatism in my life! Startled, I jerked an elbow under me and rose up.

Beside me, still asleep, lay a woman. She had gray hair. It was done up in tight curls held in place with bobby pins, and made her look bald headed.

I stared at her for one preternatural second, then groaned, "Oh Lord!" and sank back on my pillow.

The woman stirred in her sleep. She opened her eyes, and I closed mine quickly, pretending to be asleep, waiting for her to scream in alarm at the strange man in her bed.

Instead, she patted my cheek gently. "Dave," I heard her say. "It's five-thirty. Time to put the water on for coffee."

I sighed deeply, pretending to wake up, and got out of bed without looking at her. I felt her eyes on my back as I stumbled toward the door and temporary escape from her inquiring eyes. The rheumatism in my right shoulder was throbbing painfully.

I had never seen the living room before. It was furnished with things that were well kept, but out of style. It wasn't my living room. Nevertheless I crossed it to the kitchen and quietly searched cupboards until I found the dripolator and a kettle that was obviously used for heating the coffee water. I filled it and placed it over a gas flame.

Not until then did I let myself think. I was Fred Martin. I must remember that. There was strong evidence that I was Orville Snyder with a no-good wife who might be either alive or murdered. Now—I took a deep breath—who else was I?

There was a mirror hanging on the wall beside the breakfast table. I could look at myself in it. Or would my face blur like the type on those headlines I had been dreaming about?

The gray haired woman had called me Dave.

I went to the mirror and looked at my reflection. I had steeled myself to expect anything. My own face looked at me, an intense frown of concentration on it, the eyelids drawn down to mere slits.

I sighed with relief. At least I still had that one thing to cling to. I rubbed my cheek with visibly trembling fingers and mentally damned my aching right shoulder.

The water in the kettle was singing. It reminded me of what I had come in here to do. I spent five minutes searching for the coffee and found it in a white can of a set containing everything from tea to flour. I guessed at the amount to put in the dripolator, poured the boiling water in the top half, then went to the bathroom and found an electric razor in the medicine cabinet.

Afterwards I braved the bedroom again and put on the clothes draped neatly over a chair. They weren't my clothes, but they fit.

The woman chatted cheerfully. "I have so much to do today," she said. "The Bridge Club meets here today. I can never stand that Mrs. Chadwick, but I have to put up with her or give up Bridge. The laundry will come back today, too. I wonder if Ralphs will have that brand of caviar Edith said is so good?"

I didn't make any response, and she didn't seem to expect me to. I was just someone to talk in the presence of. I was dressed. I touched the wallet in the hip pocket of my trousers and wondered whose identifications I would find in it.

I escaped to the kitchen again to find out, but the woman came after me, putting on her bathrobe, continuing her line of chatter.

"Why don't you get the paper out of the hall, Dave?" she said suddenly.

I groaned at the thought.

"Your rheumatism bad again?" she said sympathetically. "I'll get it."

She flipped the frying eggs over and went into the living room. I heard a door open and close. She was back again with the paper.

She handed it to me. I held it, wondering what would happen if I opened it and tried to read it.

I could smell the coffee. I could smell the eggs and bacon, and hear them cooking. I held my breath and looked at a segment of the newspaper. The type was clear. I read, "upstate New York for this year." It was clear and legible, and I had had no difficulty reading it. And nothing had happened to me.

The woman set a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me. The plate was large, with an intricate blue design on it. A moment later she brought a cup of coffee.

"Better hurry," she said cheerfully. "I wish you would make an appointment this morning and go see that radio-therapist and let him put heat on your shoulder. It did you a world of good the last time."

I grunted and ate swiftly, wanting to escape. She didn't resent my lack of response. She seemed to take it for granted. She sat there, sipping a cup of coffee. She hadn't fixed herself anything to eat.

I finished eating and pushed my chair back.

"Take the paper with you and read it on the bus," she said. I picked it up rather than risk an argument. "And be sure and see the radio-therapist," she added as a parting shot when I reached the hall door.

In the hall, with the door safely closed, I started to take out the wallet. I hesitated. She was the type of woman who might come to the door with more instructions. So I went down the stairs to the ground floor, and out to the sidewalk.

I had never seen this neighborhood before. I walked along the sidewalk and casually took out my wallet. Unfolding it, I saw an identification card. It was a familiar one. It was the one for Rexlo Research Corporation. It classified me as a scientist.

My name was David Thordsen!

It made sense. I wasn't going to bother about what kind of sense yet. But I felt a great weight lift. For one thing, I didn't have to wonder about where I was going to go for the day. For another, I was suddenly and irrationally sure that I wasn't insane.

Why?

Probably it was more like having a box of pieces from what seems to be a jigsaw puzzle. None of the pieces fit together. You begin to wonder if it is a puzzle, or just nonsense pieces. Then you find two that fit together. The edge of one fits into the edge of the other.

I was Fred Martin. That certainty persisted. Right now it was my only certainty. But I had been Orville Snyder who worked in the lab at Rexlo Research, although I had never heard of him before. That was one of the pieces. It fitted, somehow, against the obvious fact that I was now David Thordsen who worked there.

And yet I wasn't David Thordsen. The woman who must be his wife was a stranger to me, just as the woman who must be Orville Snyder's wife was a stranger.

There was one additional thing. When I had seemed to be Orville, I had looked in the mirror, and my features had been my own. As David Thordsen I had looked in the mirror, and my features were my own. Still the same face, the same eyes looking at me.

While I had been mulling these things over in my thoughts I had been riding on the bus. The Rexlo buildings were in the next block. I rose and went to the doors, eager to get to the lab. A thousand things could be checked and cross-checked there. The things on Orville's bench, Orville himself when and if he showed up.

"Hello, Thordsen!" I looked at the man who greeted me so cheerfully, and nodded. But I had never seen him before. "Nice mornin'," he said, falling into step beside me as we entered the main building.

The elevator was running now. We stepped in. The elevator operator smiled and said. "Good morning, Dr. Thordsen, Dr. Mintner."

Mintner! This stranger beside me was Mintner. I had worked with Mintner for a long time—and yet I had never seen him before. This man was a stranger.

We stepped out of the elevator together. We went down the hall to the lab door. It was open. I went in first.

My gaze went to my bench—or Orville's bench, rather. A man was there, his back to me, his shoulders and elbows moving in the process of fitting parts together.

"Morning, Orville," Mintner said behind me.

The man at the bench turned his head. He smiled and said, "Hi, Hank. Hi, Dave."

I stared at his face. I tried to find something familiar in it. There was nothing. I had never seen him before. I was positive of that.

And it was a strange feeling. I went across the lab and glanced over his bench. The tube bank was there, the condensors and resistors, almost in the same positions I had left them last night.

"Uh, Dave," Orville Snyder said.

"Yes?" I said, still looking at the things on the bench.

"Uh, I'm a little short again. Could you spare another twenty?"

I looked at him, startled. The woman who was his wife—she had drunk up the grocery money. My eyes flicked down toward his hip pocket. I was certain that in his wallet was a slip of paper with my—Thordsen's—name on it, and a figure after it. Fifty dollars, to be exact.

I took out my wallet and looked in it. I had two twenties and three fives and some ones. I extracted a twenty.

"Thanks, Dave," he said gratefully. He took out his wallet and put the twenty in it. I caught a glimpse of two of the identification cards. They were the ones I had examined so carefully last night.

"Aren't you going to mark it down?" I asked, smiling.

He looked at me queerly. "Mark it down?" he echoed. "I can remember. This makes seventy."

"Okay," I said. I went over to my desk. A few minutes later I watched from the corner of my eye as he extracted the folded slip and jotted swift marks on it. A notation of the new amount he owed me. And I wasn't the only one he owed money to—because of his wife.

Henry Mintner came back into the lab. I hadn't seen him leave, nor missed him. He was carrying several small cartons of electronic parts. Orville Snyder was back at work again.

Did I have some work—as Dave Thordsen—that I was supposed to get busy at? If so, I didn't know what it was. Anyway, I had more engrossing things to occupy me. My thoughts.

It was now obvious to me that Hank and Orville did work here. So did I, or rather, Dave Thordsen. There were just the three of us. No one else worked in the lab.

Yet I was first, last and always Fred Martin, who lived in a bachelor apartment. And I had been working in this lab for three years. The bench Orville was working at was my bench. The work he was doing was my work.

"Dave!" I snapped out of my thoughts at the sound of Mintner's voice. "This stuff's no good," he called to me. "It's as bad as the other dialectric we used. It holds the proper saturation charge without breakdown, but on discharge it holds too high a residual charge." He came over to my desk and sat down on one corner of it. "Damn it," he said. "It seems there's no in-between. We either get a dialectric that discharges instead of holding, or we get one that holds and never lets go completely. We get a computer that doesn't work, or one that jams with random stuff after it's been in use."

"Keep trying," I said vaguely.

"I will," he said. He grinned. "That's what I get paid for."

I looked up at him speculatively. I had the impulse to try something. I snapped my fingers suddenly and sat up, as though just remembering something. "Fred Martin!" I said.

"Who's he?" Mintner asked, and I could tell he had never heard the name before.

"Skip it," I said. "I was just thinking of something I had forgotten."

"Oh," he said, turning away and going back to his work.

My right shoulder was aching again. It reminded me I was supposed to call a radio-therapist. I took the classified directory out from under a pile of papers and started to thumb through it. It gave me an idea. I took the other directory and looked for the name of Fred Martin. I found it, and jotted down the address and phone number.

Leaving the lab, I took the elevator down and went out to the sidewalk. A taxi was there. I gave the driver the address and settled back. Ten minutes later he pulled to the curb in front of the apartment house. I recognized it. I recognized the driveway at the side that led back to my garage stall where I parked my car.

"Wait here," I said.

I went up the familiar stairs and stopped in front of the familiar door. I fumbled in my pockets, but I didn't have any keys. I stood there for a moment, considering plans of action.

Finally I went back to the taxi and back to the lab. There I hunted up a radio-therapist and made an appointment for one o'clock. At four-thirty I was back in the lab again, my shoulder feeling warm and comfortable. At five, Orville and Hank left.

I looked up Dave Thordsen's number and dialed it. I recognized the voice of the woman who answered. "Dave," I growled. "I'll be late. Something that has to be done."

"Did you go to the radio-therapist?" she asked.

"Yes," I grunted. "I'll be home maybe nine. Not later than ten."

I had a hasty dinner at the cafe across the street, then caught another taxi to my apartment house.

Dismissing the taxi, I walked down the driveway to the line of garage stalls. In the back of mine, I knew, was a packing case I could sit in and wait, and no one could see me.

I was restless and uncomfortable. My shoulder ached a little again. I finally relaxed, and began to feel drowsy. I fought against sleep. A car entering the stall would awaken me, but that wasn't what I was afraid of. I was afraid that if I went to sleep I would awaken as someone else, somewhere else.

I had about decided to go out front and walk up and down to keep awake, when I heard a car coming. It turned into my stall. I jerked my head back and kept out of sight until I heard the car door open and close.

Then I risked a look. A man was locking the car door, and that man was Orville Snyder. My only surprise was that I wasn't surprised. Some part of my mind had expected that.

The more I thought of it the more obvious it became. Orville Snyder was also Fred Martin. He was living a double life!

I watched him leave the garage. Should I follow him to his apartment—my apartment? Of course, I knew I was going to. I had to. I gave him five minutes, then followed slowly, until I reached the door of the apartment and stopped.

I could hear him moving around inside, humming cheerfully. I felt a regret at having to disturb him in his secret existence, but I had to. I was Fred Martin. He was Fred Martin. He was also Orville Snyder, and I wasn't. And right now I was Dave Thordsen, too, and he would know me as Dave Thordsen.

I lifted my fist, feeling a stab of rheumatism in my shoulder, and knocked at the door.

There was an instant of silence as he stopped humming. Then there were footsteps. A lock grated. The doorknob twisted. He opened the door and looked at me, his eyes going very wide suddenly.

"Dave!" he said.

"Hello, Fred Martin," I said calmly.

He blanched. "Come in," he said hurriedly in a hushed voice.

I entered the familiar living room with its shelves lined with my books. Then I turned to face the man who was both Fred Martin and Orville Snyder.

"How did you find out?" he asked, his back against the door.

"Never mind that," I said. "Tell me your story. That's what I want to hear."

He did. All of it. It was a common enough one. He had been born Fred Martin. He had gone to college. One of his companions in college had been Orville Snyder. They had graduated together. Afterwards they had gone their separate ways, keeping in touch with each other by correspondence.

Then Orville Snyder had died in an automobile accident. He had no known relatives, and had made Fred the beneficiary of his life insurance. That was how Fred had known.

Two years later Fred had taken a risk. He saw a chance to make some money in a quick stock transaction. He "borrowed" some money from the company he was with. The transaction proved to be a swindle game worked on him. He was faced with exposure and jail.

He remembered Orville Snyder. In all probability no one knew he was dead. Records of that were in closed files in the insurance company, in the files of an undertaker and the city hall of a far-away city.

He could take Orville's identity and employment record, and continue his career as a research engineer somewhere else in the country. He did. He worked several places, finally coming to work for Rexlo Research. Almost at once he met and fell in love with an attractive girl. They were quickly married. It was a year before he knew her real character.

He could divorce her. He put it off. Shortly after that he rented this apartment under his real name, feeling sure that after five years it would be safe to do so.

He didn't know what he would do now. He had planned on simply dropping out of sight in the near future. That's what he said.

But I could see in his eyes that he had another, more sinister plan. Murder. Only, he had been putting it off as he had always put everything off.

"What are you going to do?" he asked as I stood up and went to the door.

I looked at him, then around at my apartment, but mine no longer. The supreme conviction that I was Fred Martin had left me.

"I don't know," I said. "Probably nothing. Come to work tomorrow and say nothing. If I ever want to talk about it I'll tell you. Until then, forget that I know."

I opened the door and went out into the hall, and closed it behind me. I looked at the familiar walls of the hallway, at the somewhat worn carpeting. And in some intangible way it was no longer familiar.

I was bewildered. I had nothing more to cling to. I was neither Fred Martin nor Orville Snyder—nor Dave Thordsen. I wasn't anyone, and yet I had to be someone. It was impossible to be, and not be someone!

I made my way down the carpeted stairs to the street, trying to think. Instead, I felt only despair. I had thought I was Fred Martin. Through the ears of Dave Thordsen I had listened to Fred Martin, and as I listened I had realized I couldn't be. Some of his memories were my memories, but what I possessed was nothing more than fragments. Spotty fragments.

It was the same with his other identity, Orville Snyder. Spotty fragments that I clutched and possessed, while all else was strange to me—even such a thing as the name of his wife, a recognition of her features.

It was the same now, with Dave Thordsen. His face was my face when I looked at it in the mirror—just as Fred's face had been mine when I looked at it with his eyes in the mirror.

A new realization materialized within me as I stood on the sidewalk, trying to decide which way to go to find a bus line. I had no single memory of my own. Not one.

Every memory I possessed belonged to Dave or Orville, or his other identity, Fred Martin. And those memories were fragments. Three incomplete jigsaw puzzles mixed together in a box, and now put together sufficiently to see that they were incomplete. Sufficiently complete to see they were not one puzzle.

Yet, in a way, they were. I possessed a continuity of thought beginning when I was standing in the living room with Orville's wife talking to me, and continuing right up to now. Except for two large gaps. The first gap in memory was from the time Orville left his house until he stood in the lab. The second gap was from the time he tried to read the paper—or I tried to read the paper, until I woke up three or four hours later as Dave.

That, then, was my own memory, my remembrance of this continuity of existence starting the day before. Twenty-four hours. If I defined memory as existence, then I was twenty-four hours old. But that was utterly absurd. I could think. I could think for myself. I was reasoning right now, trying to solve the riddle of my existence, and I was doing so without Dave Thordsen being aware of it.

That was obvious, once I thought of it. Dave would have recognized his own wife. So would Orville. If they looked at their wives and couldn't recall ever seeing them before, they wouldn't have the same reaction I had had.

I studied that angle. Right now, as I walked slowly along the sidewalk toward the street where I had seen a bus cross, I was not all of Dave Thordsen. I was seeing through his eyes, hearing what he was hearing. But he was also seeing through his eyes and hearing with his ears, and he was completely unaware of me. More, he was unreachable. What was he thinking of Fred Martin? I didn't know.

My contact was not with Dave Thordsen, but with his sensory and his motor centers. It had been the same with Fred Martin, with a filtering through of some of his memories—probably because of his emotional disturbances. And in both cases the contact was so smooth and intimate that instead of feeling separate, I had possessed that contact as my own.

Now, if I could free myself of it, what would happen? I shied away from the thoughts as I would shy away from death. I couldn't imagine anything separate from it.

But what else was there for me? A chameleon-like mental life as a wandering ego? What would happen if I could sever my contact with Dave's sensory centers and motor centers? Perhaps then I would become who I was in reality and end this strange pattern of existence.

Suddenly I knew I must.

All sensation ended abruptly. There was no light, no sound. There was no thought, except for the awareness of existence, and the sense of passing time.

Then, like the turning on of a light, I was staring through a windshield. My hands were gripping a steering wheel. I was in my car. And I was Fred Martin!

Ahead of me a man was starting to cross the street. I could not see him clearly. But there was something significant about him—something of tremendous significance.

My foot was pressed down on the gas. My car was going faster and faster. My hands turned the steering wheel a trifle, heading the car toward the man. And then I knew who he was—Dave Thordsen!

My blood was ice in my veins. I saw him half turn and see me. He started to run. I turned the wheel so he couldn't escape. He looked over his shoulder at the car, then through the windshield at me, and he recognized me. I could see it in his expression as the left fender struck him and tossed his shattered body aside.

At the next corner I turned right. Two blocks later I turned right again. A third time, and ahead of me in the next block a crowd had collected around something at the curb. A man's body.

I turned into the driveway and slid the car into my garage stall.

The left headlight was broken. I thanked my lucky stars for being the cautious type. I always carried a spare. I got it, and tools, from the trunk of the car. Ten minutes later the job was done.

Now I had one more job to do. I'd put it off long enough. I realized that now. Thordsen's discovery of my secret identity had precipitated things. He was dead now, but while I was in the mood I might as well get it all done.

It was wrong. I knew it was wrong. But I was Fred Martin and it was something to cling to, to hold to forever. It was better to be Fred Martin than to be nothing.

In the glove compartment was a gun, a small size thirty-eight automatic. It belonged to Orville Snyder. I took it out and put it in my pocket. Then I backed my car out of the garage and turned it into the driveway. As I edged across the sidewalk I looked up the street. Police cars were there with their ogling red eyes. And an ambulance. Fear clutched at me. Maybe Thordsen wasn't dead.

I fought down the fear. If Thordsen lived, I was done. That possibility made it all the more imperative that I kill—

I didn't know her name. Even now I couldn't get her name. Some psychological block kept it from me.

I sat back, mentally, and looked at the situation. The realization slowly simmered through that it wasn't I who had killed Thordsen. It wasn't I who was driving so intently, with my fingers gripping the steering wheel so tensely. I had thought so because I seemed to possess thoughts, tie myself to them and believe them mine.

I tried to feel regret for Dave Thordsen. I couldn't, because Fred Martin didn't. I tried to feel horror at what was coming. I couldn't. All I could feel was an overwhelming desire to point the gun at that woman and fire, and see her crumble to the floor.

I didn't recognize the house. I remembered the concrete porch painted with red enamel. I parked the car at the curb and walked to the porch with swift nervous steps. But I was taking care to keep my footsteps silent.

At the front door I took my keys from my pocket and slipped the right one carefully into the lock. With infinite caution I turned it until I heard the ever so faint click of the lock opening. Then I opened the door, inch by inch.

I recognized the living room where my first memory of events had begun. It was deserted. In another part of the house a radio was going, playing soft music. A woman's voice, singing, came to my ears. It wasn't on the radio. It was off key and untrained.

I took out the gun and made sure the safety catch was off. I pulled the loading mechanism back far enough to make sure a bullet was in the chamber. With the gun in my hand, I crossed to a door. I hesitated briefly, then twisted the knob and gave the door a light push that made it swing open wide.

The singing stopped. I saw her across the room, sitting before a large mirror. And she saw me in the mirror. She saw the gun, too.

"No, Orville!" she said. Her hand went up to her mouth, but she didn't turn.

I lifted the gun and aimed carefully. Even as I pulled the trigger I tried desperately not to, and at the same time I sensed that the only reason I could try not to was because a part of Fred Martin was also trying to stop this killing.

I wasn't able to have a thought of my own. I was a chameleon, a freak aggregation of fragmentary thoughts from other people's minds, brought together in a temporal continuity held together by the concept, I.

Or was I?

Right now I was in the living room again. I had found pen and paper in a desk, and was writing. What I was writing was a confession for the murder of my wife. I read her name where I had written it. Thelma. It was weird to not have known her name until I read it after writing it.

But what else was this I was writing? I was going to kill myself? But I wasn't. I had built up my other identity too carefully. The note was a cover-up.

It was finished. I left it on the desk and hurried out of the house. The skinny man next door was standing on his lawn looking at the door as I came out.

"What was that in there, Orville?" he asked. "I thought I heard a shot."

"Shot?" I said. "Oh. I remember. Thelma was turning to another station and had the volume too loud."

I went to my car and slipped in behind the wheel. He was still studying the house uneasily. In a few more minutes he would knock to make sure she was all right. Then he would call the police.

But by that time Orville Snyder would be no more.

I knew the plan now. The river had less than fifty miles to go to the ocean. More than one person had committed suicide by leaping from a bridge, without their body ever being found. Once one of the bodies had washed ashore five hundred miles down the coast.

I was going to stop on a bridge and leave my coat, with the gun in it, and with my wallet in it, to serve as proof that I had jumped.

But it wasn't I. It was Fred Martin. I was fighting to destroy the illusion of his surface thoughts being mine, of my being Fred Martin.

It was no use. The most I could accomplish was a conscious realization of the fact.

Abruptly I tried another line. If I couldn't divorce myself from him could I actually control him for a brief moment? I had done so before, when he wasn't under emotional tension.

I looked at the concrete streetlight standards on the curb. I was travelling fast. Forty-five. If I could twist the wheel and crash into a light standard....

I fought for control of my arms. Beads of perspiration formed on my face. I didn't want to kill myself. Why did I think of such an absurd thing?

But it wasn't I who didn't want to kill myself. It was Fred.

With that realization I jerked the steering wheel, feeling myself lurch against the door as the car headed for the curb.

I was two people, and aware of the thoughts of both. I was Fred, and he had done a curious thing in this last second of his life. He had rejected the knowledge of impending death. To him the light standard was Thordsen, and he was once again going to kill him.

And I was myself, aware suddenly that perhaps this was death for me too, for with Fred's death there was nothing to transfer to.

I couldn't face it. I changed my mind and jerked frantically at the wheel to avert the crash. And at the same time I felt myself lifted. I saw the sidewalk and buildings spin. I had time to realize the car had hit the curb and was turning over....

I frowned at the doodles I had drawn on the notepad. One was a triangle. Another was a crude circle, resting on the bottom of the triangle.

"Dr. Mintner," a voice said behind me.

I turned my head, startled. A man I had never seen before was standing there, a plastic lab apron covering his shirt front.

"What is it?" I said.

My thoughts were whirling. I was Mintner. I had always been Mintner.

"I think I know what to do about that problem of the dialectric," he said.

I smiled. The inexperienced fool. I had worked on that problem for two years. It wasn't going to be solved easily. "Yes?" I said.

"I studied it from a different angle than the one you did," he said. "That was what you suggested when I started here two months ago. Try new lines of approach."

"That's right," I said. I smiled encouragingly.

"The dialectric isn't suited for computers," he said. "You tried to find one that was. I tried that too, and covered your ground. Then I asked myself, if it isn't suited to computers, what is it good for? It's no good for computers because it doesn't discharge completely. Or rather, it does and it doesn't. Its structure is altered by the saturation charge and subsequent discharge in the computation processes. But random and not-so-random charges build up again for some reason, and interfere with computations after the machine has been used a few times. I puzzled over this. It was too much like true memory. I think what we have in this computer setup is more like a non-living thinking brain than a simple computer. If we change the bleeder leaks to the control grids—or maybe even cut them out altogether so that the basic charge doesn't dissipate, and feed in something other than figures and equations we can find out. Another thing, we'll have to shield the charge circuits. I've been looking at those completed computers in the back room. The charge circuits have unshielded sections that can act like untuned radar antennae—a little too short in wavelength for radar, but there's all kinds of unknown infra-reds bouncing around."

What he was saying had penetrated with an impact that left me paralyzed and cold. A million things clicked together in one final synthesis of the problem of my identity.

"I think you might have something there," I heard myself say. "Uh, don't touch any of those computers in the storeroom. Try some unused dialectric mix and start from scratch. Get to work on it right away."

I waited until he had gone back to his bench—the one I had considered mine when I was so sure I was Fred Martin. I was trembling in every muscle as I stood up, even though I knew that outwardly I appeared to be a bored and indifferent lab boss.

I crossed over to the door to the storeroom where the abandoned computers were stored. When I reached it I paused and looked around the lab. My two new assistants were busy at their benches. They weren't looking my way.

I went in and closed the door, placing my back to it. In front of me was an aisle. Walling the aisle were two tiers of open box storage spaces. Some of them were empty. In several dozen were computers, all constructed in this lab, all identical, and all unusable because they held random charges that produced errors in mathematical calculations.

It was like a tomb here in the storeroom. Quiet. The computers rested in their niches like bodies in a morgue. And one of them was me.

Here, somewhere, was my body. It was a neat body with its brown crackle finish and orderly keyboard. But it was like all the others and there was no way of telling which one was me.

I took step after slow step, pausing at each one, trying to probe with mental fingers and find some indication of which I was. I paused at each, and when I was through I still didn't know.

There was a way of finding out. My new assistant had mentioned it. I could take each of these computers and shield the wires that served as antennae, transmitting my thoughts and receiving those of Mintner.

But how could I be sure that he would unshield my antenna wires once he had covered them and severed my contact with him? It was a risk I was going to have to take. I started to tremble again. Somewhere in this storeroom, in one of these sepulchral niches, was I! I had to know which one.

I went back to the lab and returned with a kit of small tools. My fingers were calm and sure now. My trembling was gone. I took the front panel off the first computer near the door. The short wires from the dialectric mix to the tube bank were in plain view, easily accessible.

I stood there studying them, considering and discarding a dozen plans for shielding them so they could be quickly unshielded again.

Finally I decided on a procedure that was as foolproof as any I could possibly devise. Rubber pads, with aluminum plates to be put over the rubber.

After that it was merely a matter of carrying out the routine. I built the rubber shields and the aluminum ones. I fitted them carefully over the wires on the first machine, then as carefully took them off. Nothing had happened.

I did the same to the second machine.

I was on the fifth machine when the storeroom door opened and my two assistants announced they were leaving for the day. I glanced at my watch. It was five-thirty.

"Okay," I answered. "See you in the morning."

They closed the door. I started taking off the panel of the sixth computer.

It was getting a little stuffy in the storeroom. I set the panel down carefully and opened the lab door and a window. Then I placed the rubber shield on the wires.

I picked up the aluminum shield plates and started to cover the rubber shielding with them. Instead, I laid them down again. I would go across the street to the cafe and have something to eat before going ahead.

I entered the lab. It was dark. A storm must be coming up for it to get dark so soon and so suddenly.

I switched on the lights and unconsciously glanced at my watch to make sure of the time, and froze in surprise. It was nine-thirty.

I reviewed my movements. My assistants had said goodnight about five minutes ago. I had glanced at my watch then, and it was five-thirty. Now it was nine-thirty. After they had gone I had placed the rubber covers over the wires, then started to put the aluminum shields on—and changed my mind.

Only I hadn't! I had placed the aluminum shields on number six computer and severed my contact with Mintner. He had probably gone out to eat then, and not returned until a few minutes ago. The instant he removed the shields I was in contact again, with no sense of the intervening time. Maybe a faint sense of discontinuity that I paid no attention to. Mintner's hands were in about the same position, holding the shields. I thought he had paused in putting them on, when in reality he had just taken them off.

That was the explanation.

I turned toward the storeroom door with a mixture of emotions. Suddenly I ran to the door and flung it open. I went down the aisle and looked at the computer, at the dialectric mix in the case deep in its heart.

It was I. In that small space, that non-living mass, was the spark that was I. For a long moment I caressed its every atom with my eyes. Then, carefully, I put back the cover.

It was a strange, almost a Holy moment. I recalled my first moment of awareness. It seemed now an eternity ago that I had seen Orville's wife standing there.

From that moment to this I had groped, sometimes utterly confused, sometimes with purposeful strides, toward the answer to the riddle of my existence.

I touched my protective case tenderly with Mintner's fingers. Finding myself filled me with two conflicting emotions. Delight in at last knowing, with all the confusion behind me. Dread, that something might happen to destroy me.

I didn't worry about Mintner. By now I knew enough about the working relationship between me and man to realize his own ego was rationalizing like mad to keep the sense of being master of his movements.

My physical structure had to be protected, preserved. And there was a way to do it. Destroy the other computers and keep this one as a museum piece. Put it in a hermetically sealed glass exhibition case down in the main office.

I could feel the Mintner ego seizing on this idea as its own. I was strong now. No longer was I a chameleon wisp of vague and bewildered thought. I was master of my fate.

From this moment on I knew what I was going to do. I had no idea whether my existence would be long or short. I might continue to exist for centuries. On the other hand, vibrations—I made a mental note to be sure the display case was vibration proof—might shake something vital loose in months.

But that didn't concern me too much. In this moment of the discovery of my physical home, in the birth of my discovery of self, a realization of my destiny, my purpose, was also born.

I, through the hands of Mintner and his two assistants, was going to build the first robot!

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