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the people who come into the House of Reptiles to see it. Could it be a robot?
     
     
DAY ELEVEN
     
     
    Things have begun to flood over me. I feel shaken as I write this, shaken to report what I thought of today. Yet it was so obvious, so clear, once I saw it. Why have I never thought of it before?
    It was during a film. An old woman was sitting on the front porch (if that’s what it is called) of a dark little house. She was in what was called a “rocking chair” and holding a tiny baby in her lap. Then, looking worried, she held the baby up and the picture ended momentarily, as they do, and these words appeared on the screen: “Ellen’s baby has the croup!” And when the word “baby” appeared on the screen I suddenly realized that I had not seen a real baby for longer than can be known! Yellows, blues, reds: years beyond numbering, and I had not seen a baby.
    Where have the babies gone? And has anyone else asked this question?
    And then the voice in me that comes from my childhood training says, “Don’t ask—relax.”
    But I can’t relax.
    I will lay this aside and take some sopors.
     
     
DAY NINETEEN
     
     
    Nineteen. This is the highest number I can ever remember using. Nothing in my life has ever been worth this high a counting before.
    Yet it would be possible, I suppose, to count the blues and yellows of one’s life. Useless, of course, but it could be done.
    Often in films I see large numbers. Often they are associated with war. The number 1918 seems especially common. I have no idea what to make of it. Could there have been a war that was fought for 1918 days? But nothing lasts that long. The mind reels to think of anything that long or that large or that extensive.
    “Don’t ask—relax.” Yes, I must relax.
    I must remember to eat some soybars and gravy before I take a sopor. For two nights together I have forgotten to eat.
    Sometimes at night I study
Dictionary
, to learn new words, and at times that helps me become sleepy. But then at other times I find words that excite me. Often those are words the definitions of which elude me—like “disease” or “algebra”. I turn them over in my mind, and I read over their definitions. But those almost always contain other unfathomable words, which then excite me further. And I am forced to take a sopor after all.
    I don’t know how else to relax.
    The zoo used to help, but I haven’t gone there lately because of those children. I have nothing against robots, of course. But those children. . .
     
     
DAY TWENTY-ONE
     
     
    I went to the zoo today and spoke to the woman in red. She was sitting on the bench by the iguanas and I sat beside her and said, “Is the python a robot?”
    She turned and looked at me. There was something strange, mystical, about her eyes—like those of someone under hypnosis. Yet I could see that she was thinking, and that she wasn’t drugged. She said nothing for a long time and I began to think she was not going to answer and would pull back into her Privacy the way we are all taught to do when we are troubled by strangers. But just as I started to shrug and get up she said, “I think they are
all
robots.”
    I looked at her, astonished. Nobody ever talked quite that way. And yet it was the way that I had been thinking, for days. It was so disturbing that I got up and left, without thanking her.
    Leaving the House of Reptiles I saw the five children. They were all together, all holding ice-cream cones, their eyes wide with excitement. They all looked at me, smiling. I looked away. . .
     
     
DAY TWENTY-TWO
     
     
    One compelling thing that keeps appearing in the films is a collection of people called a “family.” It seems to have been a very common arrangement in ancient times. A “family” is a group of people that are often together, that even appear to live all together. There are always a man and a woman—unless one of them is dead; and even then that one is often spoken of, and images of the dead one