The Project Gutenberg eBook of Memorium
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Title: Memorium
Author: Basil Wells
Illustrator: Mel Hunter
Release date: November 24, 2025 [eBook #77316]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1956
Credits: Tom Trussel
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIUM ***
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 MEMORIUM ***
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