The Mind Spider and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

Your Superiority,’ which last year won a Lasker Group Award of the American Public Health Association."
    Miss Rawvetch broke in eagerly: “And which was dramatized to the public by that still-popular 3-D show, The Useless Five, featuring the beloved characters of the Inferior Superman, the Mediocre Mutant, the Mixed-up Martian, the Clouded Esper and Rickety Robot."
    Diskrow nodded. “And which also has led, by our usual reverse-twist technique, to our latest program of ‘Accent the Monster in You.’ Might as well call it our Monster Program.” He gave Wisant a frank smile. “I guess that’s the item that’s been bothering you gentlemen and so I’m going to let you hear about it from the young man who created it—under Dr. Gline’s close supervision. Dave, it’s all yours.”
    Dave Cruxon stood up. He wasn’t as tall as one would have expected. He nodded around rapidly.
    “Gentlemen,” he said in a deep but stridently annoying voice, "I had a soothing little presentation worked up for you. It was designed to show that IU’s Monster Program is completely trivial and one hundred percent innocuous.” He let that sink in, looked around sardonically, then went on with, “Well, I’m tossing that presentation in the junk-chewerl —because I don’t think it does justice to the seriousness of the situation or to the great service IU is capable of rendering the cause of public health. I may step on some ties but 111 try not to break any phalanges.”
    Diskrow shot him a hard look that might have started out to be warning but ended up enigmatic. Dave grinned back at his boss, then his expression became grave.
    “Gentlemen,” he said, “A spectre is haunting America—the spectre of Depersonalization. Mr. Diskrow and Dr. Gline mentioned it but they passed over it quickly. I won’t. Because depersonalization kills the mind. It doesn’t mean just a weary sense of sameness and of life getting dull, it means forgetting who you are and where you stand, it means what we laymen still persist in calling insanity.”
    Several pairs of eyes went sharply to him at that word. Gline’s chair creaked as he turned in it. Diskrow laid a hand on the psychiatrist’s sleeve as if to say, “Let him alone—maybe he’s building toward a reverse angle.”
    “Why this very real and well-founded dread of depersonalization?” David Cruxon looked around. “I’ll tell you why. It’s not primarily the Machine Age, and it’s not primarily because life is getting too complex to be easily grasped by any one person—though those are factors. No, it’s because a lot of blinkered Americans, spoonfed a sickeningly sweet verson of existence, are losing touch with the basic facts of life and death, hate and love, good and evil. In particular, due to a lot too much hypno-soothing and suggestion techniques aimed at easy tranquility, they’re losing a conscious sense of the black depths in their own natures—and that’s what’s making them fear depersonalization and actually making them flip —and that’s what IU’s Monster-in-You Program is really designed to remedy!”
    There was an eruption of comments at that, with Dickrow starting to say, “Dave doesn’t mean—”, Gline beginning, “I disagree. I would not say—”, and Snowden commencing, “Now if you bring in depth psychology—” but Dave added decibels to his voice and overrode them.
    “Oh yes, superficially our Monster Program just consists of hints to our customers on how to appear harmlessly and handsomely sinister, but fundamentally it’s going to give people a glimpse of the real Mr. Hyde in themselves—the deviant, the cripple, the outsider, the potential rapist and torture-killer—under the sugary hypno-soothed consciousness of Dr. Jekyll. In a story or play, people always love the villain best—though they’ll seldom admit it—because the villain stands for the submerged, neglected, and unloved dark half of themselves. In the Monster Program we’re