One night he thought it might be interesting to plan big buildings, like the little ones he had built with a construction set he had had a long time before (winking red no from Uni). That was the night before a treatment, which Papa Jan had said was a good time for wanting things. The next night big-building planner didn’t seem any different from any other classification. In fact, the whole idea of wanting one particular classification seemed silly and pre-U that night, and he went straight to sleep.
The night before his next treatment he thought about planning buildings again—buildings of all different shapes, not just the three usual ones—and he wondered why the interestingness of the idea had disappeared the month before. Treatments were to prevent diseases and to relax members who were tense and to keep women from having too many babies and men from having hair on their faces; why should they make an interesting idea seem not interesting? But that was what they did, one month, and the next month, and the next.
Thinking such thoughts might be a form of selfishness, he suspected; but if it was, it was such a minor form—involving only an hour or two of sleep time, never of school or TV time—that he didn’t bother to mention it to Bob NE, just as he wouldn’t have mentioned a moment’s nervousness or an occasional dream. Each week when Bob asked if everything was okay, he said yes it was: top speed, no friction. He took care not to “think wanting” too often or too long, so that he always got all the sleep he needed, and mornings, while washing, he checked his face in the mirror to make sure he still looked right. He did—except of course for his eye.
In 146 Chip and his family, along with most of the members in their building, were transferred to AFR71680. The building they were housed in was a brand-new one, with green carpet instead of gray in the hallways, larger TV screens, and furniture that was upholstered though nonadjustable.
There was much to get used to in ’71680. The climate was somewhat warmer, and the coveralls lighter in weight and color; the monorail was old and slow and had frequent breakdowns; and the totalcakes were wrapped in greenish foil and tasted salty and not quite right.
Chip’s and his family’s new adviser was Mary CZ14L8584. She was a year older than Chip’s mother, though she looked a few years younger.
Once Chip had grown accustomed to life in ’71680—school, at least, was no different—he resumed his pastime of “thinking wanting.” He saw now that there were considerable differences between classifications, and began to wonder which one Uni would give him when the time came. Uni, with its two levels of cold steel blocks, its empty echoing hardnesses … He wished Papa Jan had taken him down to the bottom level, where members were. It would be pleasanter to think of being classified by Uni and some members instead of by Uni alone; if he were to be given a classification he didn’t like, and members were involved, maybe it would be possible to explain to them…
Papa Jan called twice a year; he claimed more, he said, but that was all he was granted. He looked older, smiled tiredly. A section of USA60607 was being rebuilt and he was in charge. Chip would have liked to tell him that he was trying to want something, but he couldn’t with the others standing in front of the screen with him. Once, when a call was nearly over, he said, “I’m trying,” and Papa Jan smiled like his old self and said, “That’s the boy!”
When the call was over, Chip’s father said, “What are you trying?”
“Nothing,” Chip said.
“You must have meant something,” his father said.
Chip shrugged.
Mary CZ asked him too, the next time Chip saw her. “What did you mean when you told your grandfather you were trying?” she said.
“Nothing,” Chip said.
“Li,” Mary said, and looked at him reproachfully. “You said you were trying. Trying what?”
“Trying not to miss him,” he said. “When he was transferred to Usa I told him I would miss him, and he said I should try not to, that members were all the same and anyway he would call whenever he could.”
“Oh,” Mary said, and went on looking at Chip, now uncertainly. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” she asked.
Chip shrugged.
“And do you miss him?”
“Just a little,” Chip said. “I’m trying not to.”
Sex began, and that was even better to think about than wanting something. Though he’d been taught that orgasms were extremely pleasurable, he had had no idea whatsoever of the all-but-unbearable deliciousness of the gathering sensations, the ecstasy of the coming, and the drained and boneless satisfaction of the moments afterward. Nobody had had any idea, none of his classmates; they talked about nothing else and would gladly have devoted themselves to nothing else as well. Chip could hardly think about mathematics and electronics and astronomy, let alone the differences between classifications.
After a few months, though, everyone calmed down, and accustomed to the new pleasure, gave it its proper Saturday-night place in the week’s pattern.
One Saturday evening when Chip was fourteen, he bicycled with a group of his friends to a fine white beach a few kilometers north of AFR71680. There they swam—jumped and pushed and splashed in waves made pink-foamed by the foundering sun—and built a fire on the sand and sat around it on blankets and ate their cakes and cokes and crisp sweet pieces of a bashed-open coconut. A boy played songs on a recorder, not very well, and then, the fire crumbling to embers, the group separated into five couples, each on its own blanket.
The girl Chip was with was Anna VF, and after their orgasm—the best one Chip had ever had, or so it seemed—he was filled with a feeling of tenderness toward her, and wished there were something he could give her as a conveyor of it, like the beautiful shell that Karl GG had given Yin AP, or Li OS’s recorder-song, softly cooing now for whichever girl he was lying with. Chip had nothing for Anna, no shell, no song; nothing at all, except, maybe, his thoughts.
“Would you like something interesting to think about?” he asked, lying on his back with his arm about her.
“Mm,” she said, and squirmed closer against his side. Her head was on his shoulder, her arm across his chest.
He kissed her forehead. “Think of all the different classifications there are—” he said.
“Mm?”
“And try to decide which one you would pick if you had to pick one.”
“To pick one?” she said.
“That’s right.”
“What do you mean?”
“To pick one. To have. To be in. Which classification would you like best? Doctor, engineer, adviser…”
She propped her head up on her hand and squinted at him. “What do you mean?” she said.
He gave a little sigh and said, “We’re going to be classified, right?”
“Right.”
“Suppose we weren’t going to be. Suppose we had to classify ourselves.”
“That’s silly,” she said, finger-drawing on his chest.
“It’s interesting to think about.”
“Let’s fuck again,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Just think about all the different classifications. Suppose it were up to us to—”