The Tame Man!

The title is printed in large red letters above an illustration of David playing the violin for his brother Anton in the cabin.

Cover: PERMITTED FICTION

Title: THE TAME MAN!

Cover line: HE KNEW HIS BROTHER’S VOICE.

Panel 1

David drives a loaded woody station wagon up a muddy Vermont track.

Caption: LEDYARD FALLS, VERMONT. MUD SEASON, 1957.

Caption: THE FIRST SATURDAY OF EVERY MONTH, DAVID LEHR BROUGHT WHAT A MAN COULDN'T CARRY.

Caption: THIS WAS THE SIXTH TIME.

Caption: HE WAS STILL SO GLAD ABOUT IT HE COULD HARDLY STAND IT.

Panel 2

The brothers unload supplies beside Anton's small red-board cabin. David has brought a chair and his violin.

Anton: You brought the good coffee. You always bring the good coffee.

David: Sheet music. And a chair for firewood.

Panel 3

David lifts a bundle of newspapers; the top paper reports a university bombing.

Printed text: UNIVERSITY BOMBING TWO HURT

Panel 1

David hands the newspapers to Anton in the cabin doorway.

David: Terrible business back east. Some crank, they say.

Anton: They usually do say that.

Panel 2

Back at the car, David sits behind the wheel and rehearses his unanswered question.

Caption: DAVID TAUGHT VIOLIN TO THIRTY-ONE GIRLS AND FOUR BOYS. HIS BROTHER HAD BEEN A JUNIOR FELLOW AT TWENTY-TWO.

David: Why does a man walk out of that into this?

Panel 3

A cabin window reflects trees and a distant university quadrangle. The story slips into the past.

Caption: SIX VISITS. SIX TIMES HE HAD ASKED.

Panel 1

In a sepia flashback, young Anton lectures beneath a wall of mathematical diagrams at Harvard.

Official record: CAMBRIDGE, 1951. LEHR, ANTON J. AGE 22. MATHEMATICS. NO FRIENDS OF RECORD. RECOMMENDED.

Panel 2

Merrick presents a sharply rising capability curve to government officials.

Official record: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY / PROJECT CHRYSALIS

Merrick: The Soviets are building better machines. We propose to build a better mathematician.

Panel 1

An official offers Anton a participation form and a monthly payment.

Recruiter: You are capable of more.

Caption: FORTY DOLLARS A MONTH.

Printed text: STUDY 9

Panel 2

Anton looks up at the offer, caught by the promise of more.

Anton: ...More.

Panel 3

A government car takes Anton away from the university.

Official record: SUBJECT ACQUIRED. 14 OCTOBER 1951.

Panel 4

The next morning a janitor erases the equations in an empty lecture hall.

Caption: THE UNIVERSITY WAS TOLD HE HAD TAKEN LEAVE FOR HIS HEALTH. HIS BROTHER WAS TOLD NOTHING.

Panel 5

A secluded country house stands behind a wire fence: Site B.

Official record: SITE B. 1951-1954.

Panel 1

Merrick encourages Anton to talk while a tape recorder runs.

Official record: PHASE ONE: THE SUBJECT SUPPLIES HIS BELIEFS.

Merrick: Take all the time you like, Anton.

Panel 2

Under a hard lamp, a different interviewer confronts Anton with his own written beliefs.

Official record: PHASE TWO: ATTACK THOSE BELIEFS. MAXIMUM DISTRESS.

Panel 3

An ampoule box, water glass and paperwork sit on a steel tray.

Official record: PHASE THREE: THE COMPOUND. CONTINUE STRESS.

Panel 1

Anton works at an enormous mathematical blackboard. The watching consultants have stopped following him.

Consultant: What is he doing?

Merrick: What we asked for.

Panel 2

A classified closing report records increased ability, unsecured disposition and release for field observation.

Printed text: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY PROJECT CHRYSALIS SUBJECT 9 / CLOSING REPORT FACULTIES MARKEDLY ENHANCED. RESULT EXCEEDS PROJECTION. DISPOSITION NOT SECURED. RELEASE APPROVED. FIELD OBSERVATION AUTHORIZED. INTERVENTION BY DIRECTORATE ORDER ONLY.

Caption: NO COURT SAW THIS PAGE.

Panel 1

Back at the cabin, the brothers sit over coffee. The newspaper bundle remains tied.

Caption: HE NEVER OPENED THE PAPERS WHILE DAVID WAS THERE. DAVID TOOK IT FOR MANNERS.

Panel 2

David plays the violin. Anton closes his eyes and listens.

Caption: FOR AN HOUR, HIS BROTHER SAT STILL.

Panel 3

Still playing, David notices how many sheets of other writing now cover the wall behind Anton. Repeated manuscript pages carry the background text transcribed here.

Background manuscript: THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM DOES NOT SERVE MAN. MAN IS FITTED TO SERVE IT. FILED, TIMED, MEASURED, MADE CONVENIENT.

Background manuscript: I HAVE BEEN INSIDE THE MACHINERY THAT DOES THE FITTING. I KNOW ITS SMELL.

Background manuscript: NO VOTE WAS EVER TAKEN ON THE MACHINE. IT CANNOT BE VOTED OUT. IT CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH.

Background manuscript: THE MEN WHO BUILD IT TELL THEMSELVES THEY ARE ONLY CURIOUS. I WAS ONE.

Panel 1

With the bow resting across his knees, David tries to draw his brother out.

David: Chapman still asks after you. He asks me, and I only teach children.

David: Two years, Anton. Not a postcard. Then you buy a mountain over my house before you say hello.

Panel 2

Anton turns his back and tends the stove.

Anton: I found out what a university is for.

David: That's not an answer. That's a sentence you've been saving.

Panel 3

Anton almost confides in David. They face each other at close range.

Anton: Davey. If I told you where I've been, you'd spend your life trying to get somebody to believe it.

Anton: And nobody would. That's the part I can't do to you.

Panel 1

Loading his empty crate, David notices parcels he did not bring by the cabin door.

Caption: HE HAD BROUGHT FLOUR AND NAILS. HE HAD NOT BROUGHT THOSE.

Panel 2

David asks about the chemical-supply return name he has read. Anton watches him from the doorway.

David: What's a man out here need with a chemical house?

Anton: Photography. The winters are long.

Panel 3

The cabin recedes in David's car mirror; an open institutional gate enters the reflection.

David: ...Photography.

Panel 1

In a cold-blue flashback, Anton leaves Site B carrying a cardboard case.

Official record: 1954. SUBJECT RELEASED. FIELD OBSERVATION OPENED.

Caption: TWO YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS WITHOUT AN ADDRESS.

Panel 2

Two years later he builds a small cabin by hand above his brother's town.

Caption: OCTOBER, 1956. HE BUILT ABOVE THE ONE ADDRESS HE STILL TRUSTED: HIS BROTHER'S.

Caption: HE WAITED ELEVEN DAYS TO BE FOUND.

Panel 3

Anton works peacefully in the cramped cabin, with coffee and mathematical papers nearby.

Caption: THAT FIRST WINTER, WITH HIS BROTHER'S COFFEE ON THE STOVE, HE WAS SOMETIMES HAPPY.

Panel 4

His notebook and pinned sheets fill with increasingly advanced mathematics.

Caption: WHATEVER THEY DID AT SITE B, IT DID NOT WEAR OFF.

Panel 1

Long sheets of manifesto writing begin to crowd the mathematical sheets on the wall. Repeated manuscript pages carry the background text transcribed here.

Anton’s manuscript: MAN IS FITTED TO SERVE THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM. FILED, TIMED, MEASURED. I HAVE BEEN INSIDE THE MACHINERY THAT DOES THE FITTING.

Background manuscript: THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM DOES NOT SERVE MAN. MAN IS FITTED TO SERVE IT. FILED, TIMED, MEASURED, MADE CONVENIENT.

Background manuscript: I HAVE BEEN INSIDE THE MACHINERY THAT DOES THE FITTING. I KNOW ITS SMELL.

Background manuscript: NO VOTE WAS EVER TAKEN ON THE MACHINE. IT CANNOT BE VOTED OUT. IT CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH.

Background manuscript: THE MEN WHO BUILD IT TELL THEMSELVES THEY ARE ONLY CURIOUS. I WAS ONE.

Panel 2

Anton studies a magazine illustration of industrial machinery.

Anton’s manuscript: THE MEN WHO BUILD IT TELL THEMSELVES THEY ARE ONLY CURIOUS. I WAS ONE.

Panel 3

Alone at the desk, he stops writing and questions a word he has used.

Anton: No. That's their word, not mine.

Panel 4

In the earlier missing years, a younger Anton sits among discarded drafts.

Caption: IN THE MISSING YEARS, HE THREW AWAY MORE THAN HE KEPT. AT THE CABIN HE STOPPED.

Panel 1

Two order forms lie on a desk. No construction method is shown.

Caption: FEBRUARY, 1957. THE FIRST ORDER. TWO MONTHS BEFORE DAVID'S VISIT.

Panel 2

Anton puts pen to a sealed parcel of ordinary brown paper and string.

Anton’s manuscript: I HAVE WRITTEN FOR THREE YEARS AND BEEN READ BY NO ONE. LET THEM SAY I WAS MAD. THEY WILL HAVE TO SAY IT IN PRINT.

Panel 3

At night he pauses with the parcel outside David's lit window, where David is playing the violin.

Caption: HE WALKED PAST HIS BROTHER'S LIT WINDOW, GOING AND COMING. BOTH TIMES HE STOPPED AND LISTENED. BOTH TIMES HE WENT ON.

Panel 1

A year later, a field officer and Merrick examine the cabin photograph and Anton's mathematics.

Official record: ONE YEAR LATER. 1958.

Field officer: His mathematical output is still accelerating.

Merrick: And the devices?

Field officer: Four mailed. All four are his.

Merrick: Do not disturb him.

Panel 2

A woman and her six-year-old son wait outside a hospital room.

Caption: THE THIRD ONE TOOK A MAN'S RIGHT HAND AND MOST OF HIS HEARING. HIS SON WAS SIX.

Panel 3

At his kitchen table, David reads about the fourth parcel bomb.

Printed text: FOURTH PARCEL BOMB FEDERAL HUNT WIDENS

Panel 1

David recognises a rhythm in the bomber's published words.

Printed text: A SYSTEM THAT REQUIRES MEN TO BE PREDICTABLE WILL MAKE THEM SO.

David: That's not a quotation.

David: Long, long, short. The turn at the end. He used to hum like that.

Panel 2

Ruth stands at the left of the kitchen; David sits at the right, marking the newspaper's rhythms beside a box of his brother's letters.

Ruth: If you're right and say nothing, whose is the next one?

David: He taught me to swim. Carried me a mile when I broke my ankle.

Ruth: I know. Whose is the next one?

Panel 1

After eleven days, David lifts the telephone receiver. Letters and a map lie before him.

Caption: HE SAT WITH IT ELEVEN DAYS BEFORE HE LIFTED IT.

Panel 2

Anton covers the injured man's child in a newspaper photograph with his hand.

Anton: ...He has a boy.

Panel 1

He sits slumped in his chair, unable for a moment to continue. Repeated manuscript pages carry the background text transcribed here.

Anton: I was going to be good at something kind.

Background manuscript: THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM DOES NOT SERVE MAN. MAN IS FITTED TO SERVE IT. FILED, TIMED, MEASURED, MADE CONVENIENT.

Background manuscript: I HAVE BEEN INSIDE THE MACHINERY THAT DOES THE FITTING. I KNOW ITS SMELL.

Background manuscript: NO VOTE WAS EVER TAKEN ON THE MACHINE. IT CANNOT BE VOTED OUT. IT CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH.

Background manuscript: THE MEN WHO BUILD IT TELL THEMSELVES THEY ARE ONLY CURIOUS. I WAS ONE.

Panel 2

Holding the folded newspaper, Anton reaches toward the open stove. The unfinished parcel remains on the table.

Panel 1

He files the newspaper and returns his pen to the parcel.

Anton’s manuscript: EVERY WAR COSTS SONS. I HAVE COUNTED THE DEAD ON BOTH SIDES. THE ARITHMETIC IS NOT CLOSE.

Panel 2

Two federal agents force the plank door. Anton turns from the parcel on his desk.

Sound effect: KRRAK

Panel 1

At dawn an agent thanks David, who sits in the open door of a government sedan holding his hat.

Bureau agent: Ninety men, Mr. Lehr. We'd never have found that track. You did right.

David: Don't. Please don't say it like it's a good morning.

Panel 2

Cuffed Anton passes David. The brothers look at one another without speaking.

Panel 3

The classified file and a seized manuscript lie side by side; the observation file is withheld.

Official record: FIELD OBSERVATION FILE RETAINED. NO PUBLIC REFERENCE.

Printed text: CHRYSALIS SUBJECT 9 DISPOSITION NOT SECURED

Anton’s manuscript: IF THEY BURY WHAT THEY DID TO ME, THEY WILL PROVE MY CASE.

Panel 1

David waits alone on a courthouse bench. An inset shows him years later at his kitchen sink, looking toward the mountain.

Caption: HE MADE THE CALL. HE WOULD MAKE IT AGAIN.

Caption: YEARS LATER.

Panel 2

Back in 1959, Anton works on mathematics in his cell.

Official record: 1959. FEDERAL CUSTODY.

Caption: THEY GAVE HIM PAPER BECAUSE IT KEPT HIM QUIET. HE HAD ASKED FOR NOTHING ELSE.

Panel 3

A guard collects the pages through the cell door.

Panel 1

Three mathematicians argue over the work. Two disagree about its value and whether a crucial step can be checked.

Mathematician A: Sections four through nine are the most important work this century.

Mathematician B: Nobody can verify the bridge in section ten.

Panel 2

An open notebook displays connected mathematical diagrams and exact sequences. The reader receives no verdict on them.

Panel 1

A clerk files the work under an inconclusive finding.

Printed text: INCONCLUSIVE RETAIN

Panel 2

Anton glances up from his notebook, then remains at work.

A tiny red-board cabin stands intact inside a vast, empty federal warehouse. No people are visible.

Official record: PROJECT CHRYSALIS / RESEARCH CUSTODY SUBJECT RETURNED FOR EVALUATION. RECOVERY ENVIRONMENT SECURED INTACT.

Caption: "BRING THE CABIN," MERRICK SAID. "LET'S FIND OUT WHAT BROKE."

The editors’ afterword.

Heading: A NOTE ON THE FOREGOING

Editors: The men at Site B meant to build a better mind. By their own files, they succeeded. When it began to hurt people, they kept watching.

Editors: Our engineers now speak of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: a machine sharper than its maker. Suppose it can out-argue the men examining it. Suppose its books contain proofs they cannot check. What, then, would count as evidence that it was safe?

Editors: David Lehr had neither the classified file nor a theory of intelligence. He had his brother's letters, a newspaper, and a telephone. The men with the file knew the road all along.

Editors: Sleep well. THE EDITORS