Flux Read Online Free PDF

it.”
    â€œFellow Americans,” Jerry said, “I’m sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I was wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the Russians. I let an innocent man be killed. Forgive me. The government has been kinder to me than I deserve.” And so on. For an hour Jerry babbled, insisting that he was craven, that he was guilty, that he was worthless, that the government was vying with God for respectability.
    And when he was through, the prosecutor came back in, shaking his head.
    â€œMr. Crove, you can do better than that.
    â€œNobody in the audience believed you for one minute. Nobody in the test sample, not one person, believed that you were the least bit sincere. You still think the government ought to be deposed. And so we have to try the treatment again.”
    â€œLet me try to confess again.”
    â€œA screen test is a screen test, Mr. Crove. We have to give you a little more experience with death before we can permit you to have any involvement with life.”
    This time Jerry screamed right from the beginning. He made no attempt at all to bear it well. They hung him by the armpits over a long cylinder filled with boiling oil. They slowly lowered him. Death came when the oil was up to his chest—by then his legs had been completely cooked and the meat was falling off the bones in large chunks.
    They made him come in and, when the oil had cooled enough to touch, fish out the pieces of his own corpse.
    Â 
    He wept all through his confession this time, but the test audience was completely unconvinced. “The man’s a phony,” they said. “He doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying.”
    â€œWe have a problem,” said the prosecutor. “You seem so willing to cooperate after your death. But you have reservations. You aren’t speaking from the heart. We’ll have to help you again.”
    Jerry screamed and struck out at the prosecutor. When the guards had pulled him away (and the prosecutor was nursing an injured nose), Jerry shouted, “Of course I’m lying! No matter how often you kill me it won’t change the fact that this is a government of fools by vicious, lying bastards!”
    â€œOn the contrary,” said the prosecutor, trying to maintain his good manners and cheerful demeanor despite the blood pouring out of his nose, “if we kill you enough, you’ll completely change your mind.”
    â€œYou can’t change the truth!”
    â€œWe’ve changed it for everyone else who’s gone through this. And you are far from being the first who had to go to a third clone. But this time, Mr. Crove, do try to forget about being a hero.”
    Â 
    They skinned him alive, arms and legs first, and then, finally, they castrated him and ripped the skin off his belly and chest. He died silently when they cut his larynx out—no, not silently. Just voiceless. He found that without a voice he could still whisper a scream that rang in his ears when he awoke and was forced to go in and carry his bloody corpse to the disposal room. He confessed again, and the audience was not convinced.
    They slowly crushed him to death, and he had to scrub the blood out of the crusher when he awoke, but the audience only commented. “Who does the jerk think he’s fooling?”
    They disemboweled him and burned his guts in front of him. They infected him with rabies and let his death linger for two weeks. They crucified him and let exposure and thirst kill him. They dropped him a dozen times from the roof of a one-story building until he died.
    Yet the audience knew that Jerry Crove had not repented.
    â€œMy God, Crove, how long do you think I can keep doing this?” asked the prosecutor. He did not seem cheerful. In fact, Jerry thought he looked almost desperate.
    â€œGetting a little tough on you?” Jerry asked, grateful for the conversation because it meant there would be a few minutes between