XIII
Since this account of my life and adventures is not being writtenwithout some plan, it is no mere coincidence that this particularsection comes under Chapter Thirteen. Old Unlucky Thirteen covers ninetydays which I consider the most dismal ninety days of my life. Things,which had been going along smoothly had, suddenly got worse.
We started with enthusiasm. They cut and they dug and they poked needlesinto me and trimmed out bits of my hide for slides. I helped them bydigging my own flesh and letting their better telepaths read my resultsfor their records.
They were nice to me. I got the best of everything. But being nice to mewas not enough; it sort of made me feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.They were so over-strong that they did not know their own strength. Thiswas especially true of the youngsters of Mekstrom parents. I tried tore-diaper a baby one night and got my ring finger gummed for my efforts.It was like wrestling Bad Cyril in a one-fall match, winner take all.
As the days added up into weeks, their hope and enthusiasm began tofade. The long list of proposed experiments dwindled and it becameobvious that they were starting to work on brand new ideas. But brandnew ideas are neither fast in arriving nor high in quantity, and timebegan to hang dismally heavy.
They began to avoid my eyes. They stopped discussing their attempts onme; I no longer found out what they were doing and how they hoped toaccomplish the act. They showed the helplessness that comes of failure,and this feeling of utter futility was transmitted to me.
At first I was mentally frantic at the idea of failure, but as thefutile days wore on and the fact was practically shoved down my throat,I was forced to admit that there was no future for Steve Cornell.
I began at that time to look forward to my visit to reorientation.
Reorientation is a form of mental suicide. Once reoriented, the problemsthat make life intolerable are forgotten, your personality is changed,your grasp of everything is revised, your appreciation of all thingscomes from an entirely new angle. You are a new person.
Then one morning I faced my image in the mirror and came to theconclusion that if I couldn't be Me, I didn't want to be Somebody Else.It is no good to be alive if I am not me, I told my image, whoobediently agreed with me.
I didn't even wait to argue with Me. I just went out and got into my carand sloped. It was not hard; everybody in Homestead trusted me.