Title: The Lost Ego
Author: Phillips, Rog
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "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!_



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Lost Ego" ***

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