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In the last episode, Rev. Rollins informs Buck that he’s going to call for the brrkup to be outlawed. The people with the clip implanted in their heads
don’t have free will.
Episode 30
After a tasty dinner of boiled brains, and before Edith served up some Indian pudding, I told my family what the minister had said that morning. I told them also we were going to church tomorrow, just as we had done before.
"He's just saying what he thinks is right. He's got a right to," I said.
"They're all going to laugh at us!" Becky said, storming out of the room, then calling out from the door to her room, "I don't want to be the laughingstock of Contention City!"
"You get right back here and help clear these plates!" Edith yelled.
"Don't know why you want to go Pa," Caleb said, much more calmly.
"I want to let him know the brainclip is all right and nothing he says . . ." I started. Fine for me alone, but why exactly did I want to bring my family to a den of lions? When everyone discovered the truth-telling mandates of the brainclip, it would open us all up to all kinds of hostilities. I tried again to phrase my words.
"Caleb, I want everyone to know what we believe in and that we'll stand up for it," I said. "People won't know that if we stay home."
"Your father's right, dear. We should go," Edith said, spooning up the pudding into four dishes. "We have every reason to hold our heads high. We've done our best."
I loved that woman; she was so beautiful, so smart, so wise, and such a good cook. "Thank you," I said.
I hadn't told her everything. There was no reason to. No sense in two of us being nervous and jittery.
"Remember what this town was before we came? Look at it now," I said proudly.
We ate the cornmeal concoction in silence as the sounds of hammering and sawing echoed off in the distance. The brrkup wasn't perfect—nothing in this world is. But, by God, it had done some good!
This is the part I don’t want to write about but I have to because, otherwise, my story ain’t going to make much sense.
As it turned out, the secrets of the brrkuped residents weren't safe. If someone asked a brrkuped person a question and pushed the area beside the bridge of the nose, the answer would follow. If the push was slightly off, the brrkup would not be triggered, and he'd tremble. But when the same area was pushed again correctly, the answers would flow again. A wire projected outward from the brrkup in the brain is what sparked the truthful replies. As far as I could tell, the brainclipped had no choice in what they were saying.
The procedure was very easy. And scary.
This was not a problem for the bad guys. As far as I was concerned, their right to secrets ended when they broke the law. The brrkups served a good purpose. We needed to figure out who the victims were so they could be sure to make amends. However, it was a terrible bit of knowledge for the good people who'd asked for implantation. They were stuck with these things in their heads with no way to remove them and stay alive.
"This troubles you Buck?" Graax said.
"Yes it does," I said, telling him how a person wants to keep some things to himself.
"I don't understand. Why wouldn't people only want to do things they're happy about?" Graax said. "And if they've done something wrong, they wouldn't do it after the brrkup."
I shook my head amazed and disgusted at his ignorance. I'd been a fool. "Sometimes they don't think that far. Sometimes they might want to do something without the rest of the world knowing what they were doing."
"I don't understand."
"Then you've got a lot to learn about us," I snapped.
I never yelled at him before—like that anyway. Graax started twittering. He shot up and started to walk out the office door.
I had to say something, or I knew our partnership—and friendship—would be over. "Graax, stop! This is my fault. I just wish you'd told me all about the brrkup before I went and put them in the heads of half the people in town."
"I'm sorry you're upset," Graax said, "I didn't have the time to tell you everything about them. You didn't ask questions. Yes, Buck, I can understand you would have feelings of regret about some of your decisions."
"Well, this is helping your experiments. I'm glad for you," I said, about how some people were going to want to skin me for not telling them about this problem with the brainclip.
The Golden Rule seemed too vague then. Would they want to tar and feather me? It depended on whether or not they believed me when I insisted I didn't know about the problem of removing the brrkups.
I had to see how well the recall functions of the brrkup worked in humans. To do that, I prepared to learn more about Stanley Haby than I ever wanted to know.
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