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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77316 ***
+
+
+
+
+                               Memorium
+
+                            by Basil Wells
+
+
+  An old man’s memories may be filled with bitterness. But faithfully
+  recorded, they may change the future of mankind.
+
+  _Did you ever wonder what would happen if the thoughts of every man,
+  woman and child on Earth were set down in black and white for future
+  historians to read? Or even present-day historians--or your next door
+  neighbor? Could you endure having all of your thoughts laid bare,
+  from the cradle to the grave? Wait before you answer. Basil Wells may
+  persuade you to change your mind_.
+
+
+“Tell me about Gramr, Granthr,” the thin-faced little boy demanded.
+“You promised to tell me about my three Gramrs.”
+
+Vance Norall’s attention snapped reluctantly back to his visitor.
+It was perhaps not surprising that he should have dropped off for a
+moment. At a hundred and thirty such a lapse was understandable ... His
+eyes cleared.
+
+“Ah, yes. Your great, great grandmothers, Ronnie. First of all there
+was Elsie. A lovely woman. Tall she was--taller than I, and dark. She
+rode well, swam well--even played championship golf. There was nothing
+she could not do.”
+
+_Including lying_, his mind wanted to add. After her death, when in a
+fit of anger she had driven too fast and crashed into a nest of highway
+posts, her memorium tapes had been brought to him in the hospital
+where he was recuperating. And from the tapes he learned what he had
+never really suspected--that her affections were as unstable and as
+unpredictable as her golf game was accurate.
+
+She had loved him. The tapes, at five year intervals, had confirmed
+that. But in the fifteen years of their life together she had had many
+regrettable episodes to recall--times when anger or loneliness had
+driven her to seek other companions.
+
+“We were happy, Ronnie. I was teaching in an upstate college and your
+Gramr Elsie was touring the world collecting trophies. I remember
+seeing her on television talking with kings, prime ministers and
+presidents...”
+
+It had been a miserable, lonely life for Elsie. The tapes told the real
+truth of those years. Her gay letters home had been mainly untruths.
+Yet a hard core of ambition, of a hunger for adulation, had driven her
+on. His first hurt anger at what her memories had revealed had changed
+to sympathy and pity as he came to understand her better.
+
+While the second boy, Arthur, was being born he had resigned from his
+instructor’s position and gone into business. And Arthur’s birth had
+left Elsie in poor health. Her globe-trotting days as an athlete and a
+golfer ended. And in rebellion she had struck back at him blindly and
+secretly--childishly.
+
+The last wild ride that had taken her life, had almost cost him his
+own, and the will to suicide had colored all of her thinking in the
+last long period before that tragic event.
+
+“Of course, Ronny, Gramr Elsie remained at home after your great
+granthr was born. And after she was killed in an automobile crash all
+her trophies were put into a case at the Country Club.”
+
+“And after that you married Gramr Vivian, and became very wealthy, and
+you built this living dome here in Antarctica near the mines.” Ronnie
+smiled gravely. “That part I know very well.”
+
+Yes, that part Ronnie knew very well. But Ronnie had not known the
+austere efficient nurse, his second wife, who had cared for him after
+the accident. She had been a dutiful and thoughtful wife--a perfect
+mother to Elsie’s two sons and their own three daughters--but always
+there had been a feeling of reserve between them. Even in their most
+intimate moments she had seemed self-sufficient and respectful ...
+
+Only after her death in her sleep, when he was sixty and Vivian was
+fifty, had he learned that she had a rheumatic heart, and should have
+slackened her headlong pace years before. And from her memory tapes,
+sent to him by the memorium proctors six months after the burial, he
+learned how distorted and cramped had been her philosophy of life.
+
+She had hated and disliked all men--a silly, slightly sordid romance
+in her girlhood was her mental excuse for this attitude. Inwardly
+she shrank from any sign of affection, or any physical contact with
+him. Yet she desired marriage for the social status and monetary
+independence it afforded. Bitterly she had paid the price ...
+
+“Gramr Vivian was an unusual woman,” Norall told Ronnie, an ironical
+tone to his surprisingly strong old voice. “After she died I did
+not plan to remarry. I spent all my time in Antarctica building
+subterranean highways and developing mines...”
+
+“Until Gramr Eldris Arovvack,” Ronnie rolled the _Arovvack_ on his
+tongue, “came down to visit her son in one of your camps.”
+
+“I think you know all this better than I do, Ronnie,” Norall said,
+laughing. “Maybe I should tell the proctors to destroy my memory tapes
+after I am gone. You will not need them.”
+
+“Oh, no, Granthr! It is against the law. Only after a hundred years
+without a withdrawal from the files can a memorium tape be destroyed. I
+wish to keep in touch with you--it will be like talking with you again.”
+
+“I see the proctors are doing a good job of indoctrination in the
+schools, Ronnie.” Norall sighed. “When I was your age, back in
+nineteen-fifty, the universal recordings of all citizens’ memories was
+not even imagined.
+
+“That came in the seventies. The Communists developed the system of
+brain stripping and recordings to weed out subversives and disloyal
+party members. They adapted it from our own process of clearing a
+disordered brain, in our mental institutions, and giving the individual
+a fresh start with a blank memory.
+
+“By the Twenty-first Century all the major nations were keeping mental
+checks on their citizens, and eventually even the party leaders, much
+to their horror, were checked and removed from office.”
+
+“I know all that, Granthr,” Ronnie cried impatiently. “We have it in
+school on ever so many _edutapes_. They say that the memorium is the
+greatest deterrent to crime and vicious thinking.
+
+“But I want to hear about the olden times--when there were wars and
+singing commercials and big ugly cities.”
+
+“It was not so wonderful, Ronnie. Today is much nicer, and safer. When
+I was a boy we worshipped cowboys and pirates. Today it is the G.I. and
+the city gangster.”
+
+“Tell me about how you and Gramr Eldris Arovvack were caught in the
+vehicular subway for three days after that earthquake, Granthr.”
+
+“You know that by heart, Ronnie,” Norall protested, “but if you
+insist...”
+
+Eldris Arovvack was in his mind’s eye even as his voice went on
+speaking. Eldris, so slight, so daintily feminine and so girlishly
+blonde and beautiful despite her forty years and her grown engineering
+son. They had been trapped together for three days in a subway shuttle
+and he had fallen in love despite the twenty-five years between their
+ages.
+
+For her, he had realized, this was a marriage of companionship and
+luxury. She had always known poverty. His two previous marriages had
+given him an insight into why women marry, but so deep was his love for
+Eldris that he wanted to be with her under any conditions.
+
+And they had been happy. Despite the continual gnawing realization that
+only his money and position had drawn them together, Norall had enjoyed
+a long sixty-three years of life with Eldris.
+
+She had died but two years before...
+
+“Granthr, I think I liked Gramr Eldris better than either of my other
+gramrs,” Ronnie was saying. “Of course she’s the only gramr I knew.”
+
+Norall squeezed the little boy’s shoulder, hard.
+
+It had been harder to accept the memorium tapes of Eldris than it had
+been to see her body disappear into the crematorium. For days he had
+refused to open the small sealed packets and insert the tapes into the
+reproducer. He felt that he could not endure to contact that beloved
+mind and feel there hatred, distaste and hidden foulness that humans
+too well know.
+
+And when, in his great loneliness, he finally did renew contact with
+the recorded memories of Eldris, he was astounded--and humiliated.
+
+For Eldris, through all the years of their marriage, had loved him. Her
+first marriage had ended in hatred, yes, and in pity for a weakling,
+but for Norall there was only a deepening respect and sincere affection.
+
+And he had returned that love with a never-ending mistrust and cynical
+suspicion of her motives!
+
+But he was happy now. After Ronnie left he would be alone again with
+her memorium tapes. Together they would relive the long happy years of
+their marriage. He would share her sadness as she felt that Norall did
+not care enough and he would feel her joy as their grandchildren, and
+_their_ children, came to visit and to be married in the old family
+dome.
+
+He must have been napping for the fraction of a second...
+
+“I must go now, Granthr. You are tired. Mother says I am not to tire
+you.”
+
+“Come again tomorrow. And Ronnie!” His bony arm reached out for the
+boy’s gay blue tunic. “After I am gone and you are old enough to
+withdraw my tapes from the memorium library and contact them--”
+
+He paused, his frail old fingers tightening on the fabric.
+
+“Do not think too harshly of me and of your other granthrs and gramrs.
+When we were young we could not know that after death all our thoughts
+would be laid bare. Our parents and our nations did not know, and we
+were fed untruths that colored all our lives.”
+
+The little boy’s thin face was puzzled.
+
+“Run along,” Norall said softly. “Some day you will understand.”
+
+He sent the wheelchair buzzing over toward the memorium tapes and the
+soft gray helmet for his head even as the door closed behind the boy.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note:
+
+
+  This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe, March 1956 (Vol. 5,
+No. 2.). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed.
+  Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this
+version.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77316 ***