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167
The Status Civilization
·
Robert Sheckley
161
The
robot-confessor
had
passed
the
obligatory
sentence
and
Barrent
had
left
the
booth.
Well-trained
in
the
lessons
of
the
classroom,
he
had
taken
himself
into
custody,
had
gone
to
the
nearest
thought-control
center
in
Trenton.
Already
a
partial
amnesia
had
taken
place,
keyed
to
and
triggered
by
the
lessons
of
the
closed
classroom.
The
skilled
android
technicians
in
the
thought-control
center
had
labored
hard
to
complete
this
amnesia,
to
obliterate
any
remnants
of
memory.
As
a
standard
safeguard
against
any
possible
recovering
of
his
memory,
they
had
implanted
a
logical
construct
of
his
crime
beneath
the
conscious
level.
As
the
regulations
required,
this
construct
contained
an
implication
of
the
far-reaching
power
of
Earth.
When
the
job
was
completed,
an
automatized
Barrent
had
marched
out
of
the
center,
taken
a
special
expressway
to
the
prison
ship
depot,
boarded
the
prison
ship,
entered
his
cell,
and
closed
the
door
and
left
Earth
behind
him.
Then
he
had
slept
until
the
checkpoint
had
been
passed,
after
which
the
newly
arrived
guards
awakened
the
prisoners
for
disembarkation
on
Omega....
Now,
staring
at
his
own
face
in
the
mirror,
the
last
of
the
conscious
lessons
of
the
classroom
became
conscious:
The
lessons
of
the
closed
classroom
must
never
be
consciously
known
by
the
individual.
If
they
become
conscious
the
human
organism
must
perform
an
immediate
act
of
self-destruction.
Now
he
saw
why
his
conquest
of
Earth
had
been
so
easy;
it
was
because
he
had
conquered
nothing.
Earth
needed
no
security
forces,
for
the
policeman
and
the
executioner
were
implanted
in
every
man's
mind.
Beneath
the
surface
of
Earth's
mild
and
pleasant
culture
was
a
self-perpetuating
robot
civilization.
An
awareness
of
that
civilization
was
punishable
by
death.
Marker
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Fine marker
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Circle
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Hand
Scalpel
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Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
