Mockingbird

by Walter Tevis

Spofforth had been designed to live forever, and he had been designed to forget nothing. Those who made the design had not paused to consider what a life like that might be like.

‘Reading is too intimate,’ Spofforth said. ‘It will put you too close to the feelings and the ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.’

‘Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth ages. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood.

Being in love feels terrible.

But now it’s all robots. Robots and the pleasure principle. Everybody’s head is a cheap movie show.’

But nowhere does it speak of a possibility that there might be no children at all. And that, I think, is the way the world has come to be. I do not think there are any more children. After we all die, there may be no others. I do not know whether that is bad or good. Yet I think it would be in many ways a good thing to be the father of a child, and to have Mary Lou be the mother. And I would like to live with her, and for us to be a family—despite the great risks to my Individuality. What is my Individuality good for, anyway? And is it truly holy, or was I only taught that because the robots who taught me were programmed by someone, once, to say it?