by Mark Clifton
"Let's get down to cases,” I said. “What's the pitch? Which one is George?"
"We're all George,” Number Three said. Their little secret smile was more apparent now, and had a touch of delight in it.
"Great,” I answered dryly. “A valuable asset. Just what industry needs. Your first names are all George."
"Not exactly, sir,” Number Five said, as if he wished I weren't quite so slow in comprehension. “None of our names is George. That's just the name we adopted. He's the only one who really counts. You might say he's the sixth one of us, only that wouldn't be quite right."
"Oh,” I said, and began to realize why the interviewer had passed these guys on to me. “There's a sixth one, and he's the only one who counts. All you fellows are just here to pave the way for his interview. Must be quite a man to get all you fellows to strew rose petals in his path."
"You're close,” Number One said, and his grin grew wider.
"Closer than you know,” Number Two agreed.
"Although you couldn't accurately call him a man,” Number Three qualified.
Numbers Four and Five nodded approvingly.
"All right, guys,” I said. “I know when I'm getting the needle. But this is your job interview, not mine. I've already got a job, such as it is. It's up to you to make the pitch, not me. So trot on out and tell George to come in and speak for himself."
"George is already here,” Number Four said.
"He's been here all the time,” Two agreed.
"Certainly,” One said. “Otherwise this conversation wouldn't make sense."
I felt the first twinge of uncertainty. It wasn't making any sense to me-and it was, to them. They were quite serious, too. I bit down on my lower lip, and glanced over at the psi machine. The arrow was pointing to “Don't do it, Ralph!"
Somehow it failed to satisfy me. Don't get mad? Don't throw ’em out? Don't talk to ’em any more at all? Don't pass up this wonderful opportunity? Nicely ambiguous, it could mean anything.
"Maybe you fellows had better start explaining,” I said mildly. I wasn't taking the lead in the interview any longer.
"Sir,” Two said, and appeared ready to launch into a prepared speech. “You've no doubt noticed that individualism is being replaced in our times with collective effort, teamwork, group activity?"
I nodded affirmatively that I had noticed it. I'd also observed something else just now. Number Two had started the sentence, but Number Three had finished it. The switch was so smooth that I hadn't quite noticed just which word had been used as the pivot.
"I've got some reservations about group effort,” I said, and pretended I hadn't noticed the switch. If it were a gag, I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of being impressed with their drill precision. “I've noticed a group can better develop an old idea, but it still takes an individual to come up with a new one."
They looked at me with pity again. I was in my late thirties, and to them doddering with age. Their faces showed they thought I was ready to turn out to pasture. Suddenly I remembered reading about experiments of free-wheeling idea association groups and the remarkable new ideas that came out of it. Maybe they were right, maybe I was doddering and should be turned out to pasture. But apparently they somehow agreed among themselves to overlook my lapse, which had definitely placed me in a former generation.
"And have you observed,” Number Four smoothly picked up at the point where I'd inanely interrupted, but he transferred the rest of the question to One, “that sometimes a group or a crowd seems to take on a definite mass Personality?"
"Theater entertainers talk about-"
"A hot audience or a cold audience. Rabble rousers can make-"
"Some audiences turn handsprings, and fall flat with others. In a mob-"
"Something seems to take possession of the people, causing-"
"Them to do things they wouldn't dream of doing as separate individuals. Or you take a delinquent gang in a no-reason assault. Afterwards, they don't seem to realize what they did, or why they did-"
"It. Some kind of an interplay and mental feedback takes place, transforming the mental current into a palpable power-"
"Something seems to come into being-"
"A mass entity-"
"A thing-"
"A personality-"
"A being-"
"It exists, and the people in the mob or group are just its parts, its extensions, its senses, hands, feet, eyes, ears-pseudopods!"
"Well, sir, our entity is-"
"GEORGE!"
They all sat there, beaming at me, pleased with themselves-or pleased with George. They seemed to realize I needed a moment to absorb what they had told me. And I did. I was trying to figure out what kind of a con game they were trying to pull. It wasn't anything vicious. I was pretty confident of that. I'd seen my share of angelfaced sadists, but these kids were fine lads, I'd bet on it. I found an explanation which seemed rational.
It was what they'd call an interest catcher. Their vocational counselors would have given them the same old line, “Now when you go out to look for that very special niche in life you deserve, you've got to think of something special, something to catch the employer's interest, make him see you as a person instead of just another applicant.” It was a good theory, and sometimes it worked. They'd tried. They'd offered something very special, with drilled precision that must have cost many hours of rehearsal.
But this time it had failed, because I didn't see them as individuals at all, just as a group. I didn't even know their names, or care to know them. One, Two, Three, Four and Five was quite good enough. So their con game, innocent and harmless but still a con game, had failed.
Or had it? Was that the whole point? That they didn't want me to see them as individuals, but only as a group? A group called George?
"These ordinary mob entities,” Two began the conversation again, but the phrases were tossed from one to another like a basketball. “-are just flash existences. They come into reality for a while, and then they don't exist any longer. After they go they leave their pseudopods, the people involved, bewildered and ashamed if the entity was an evil thing which made them do evil deeds. Or, if it was something good, like a music jam session, or a football rally, or a panty raid, or maybe just a quiet talk about what is life, then the people remember it. They remember it as one of the deep and lasting experiences of their lives, they long for it to happen again; like army buddies who have been under fire together, there's a kinship deeper than blood, they never forget, they get together again and again trying to make the entity come alive once more so they can enjoy, really enjoy, living in the fullest sense."
All of them had contributed to the speech, but I found it easier to follow the thread of their argument if I half closed my eyes and made no effort to keep track of the rapid shunting of the conversational ball from one to the other. Ridiculous though it seemed, it was easier to accept George as the real entity and these lads as merely his parts, than attempt to keep them separate; easier to conclude it was George speaking without any discrimination as to whose mouth he was using.
"We've been together ever since we were kids living in the same block,” they said, or George said, and I gave up trying to make that distinction, too. “We grew up together. It got so our parents hardly knew which of us was whose. We've always stayed together, even managed to keep in the same company during our military hitch. We don't remember when George became into being, when we stopped being separate boys and all became a part of George. Other entities, bad and good ones, come and go; but as long as we can stay together, and we will, George stays with us."
"So we think there ought to be some kind of a job in your Company for George-"
"Something that five unconnected guys couldn't do, but George could do-"
"Something unusual-"
"And as long as you hire oddballs anyway-"
"Well, unusual achievements require unusual people!"
I wasn't buying any of this, of course. It was clev
er, and marvelously executed. I was intrigued in spite of my years of being subjected to the tricks the brighter applicants could dream up. And of course it would all fall to pieces if I switched the conversation onto a subject they couldn't have rehearsed in advance.
Yet I found myself reluctant to do that. I liked these kids, and behind my expression which I hoped was noncommittal, I was applauding them. If anybody ever deserved A for effort-I'd long ago realized that an applicant didn't stand a chance if I really wanted to take him apart, that my years of experience with every kind of a human dodge and gimmick made it like turning a machine gun on a kid with a toy bow and arrow. Unless something vital was at stake, I usually let people get away with their carefully contrived frameworks simply because destroying them would give me no pleasure.
But I was intrigued beyond this point with these kids.
What if there really were a George? Of course there wasn't, but what if there were? They'd made a powerful case for his, existence, and the idea of a superentity would explain much in mass psychology heretofore unexplainable. The more we learned of electronics the more we were realizing that through interplay and feedback, impalpable force fields were brought into being which had measurable effects-effects impossible to any one of the machines contributing to the whole. The echo effect in a broadcasting studio was a rudimentary example.
Yes, what if there were a George? Why didn't I feel him, if there were? Because I was not one of the parts? Because, like a spectator standing off from a mob scene who looked with incredulous wonder upon their behavior, I could only see the effects from the outside? I felt a twinge of envy, for like everyone else, I, also, in fleeting instances, had known a sense of “belonging together.” The thing the Gestalt school was trying to develop.
"What a basketball or hockey team you guys would make,” I said. “Imagine a team where every member was completely in tune with every other member, the whole acting as one coordinated entity."
"That's the idea, sir,” one of them said. But their faces told me of their disappointment in me. Their idea of something for George to do went far deeper than winning some sports events. George was real, George was earnest, and the gym was not his goal.
"Or a music jam session,” I said. “Wow!"
They sat politely and waited.
"Mind you,” I said, “I'm not convinced of George, but on the hypothesis that he could exist, there must be dozens, hundreds of things, things we've never been able to do in industry or science because of imperfect communication and coordination."
Their faces brightened. At last the old guy was getting down to something solid.
But I was stopped right there. There must be dozens, hundreds. But at the moment I couldn't think of any. Very well, Kennedy, do what you always do with an applicant. Find out what he is trained for, what he can do, then it is simple to fit him in to what you need done-if he qualifies.
These boys qualified, there was no doubt of it. In spite of their closeness, they hadn't taken the same courses in school. One was a mechanical engineer, one an electronics engineer. Another had specialized in cybernetics, and that fitted neatly because our major line was making computers and mechanical brains for hush-hush missiles and so forth. A fourth one had specialized in production control, and the fifth one in industry procedures, such as accounting, purchasing, supervision, organization, things like that.
They were qualified. Every one of them was an ideal trainee.
But it still gave me nothing for George to do! There were a lot of unformed ideas teasing me just back of mental consciousness, and a considerable self-disgust that I couldn't put my finger on anything specific. But, there it was. Given time, I'd no doubt think of something. I didn't want to lose these lads while I thought it over. I'd have hired them like a shot if they'd come in separately, so why let them go on to some competitor while I mulled around trying to dream up something for George-who didn't exist anyway?
I launched into my young-grad-industrial-trainee speech, all about the need for converting knowing about things to doing them, the necessity for taking a beginning place while they learned the ropes. While they were learning, we would be observing them, finding out where they would best fit in our total organization, et cetera, et cetera. The same old line each young grad accepts cynically because there is nothing else he can do.
A little to my astonishment, they accepted enthusiastically. That was the idea. They realized that it was too much to expect something unusual for George right away, that like any other new employee, George would have to prove himself before he could expect anything of importance.
I was further astonished that the menial jobs I described for them didn't insult them. Usually a young grad's idea of starting at the bottom means Assistant to the President.
I called in the interviewer who had shunted the boys on to me, and told him to process the lads for the trainee jobs, the three engineers as draftsmen in their respective fields, a production control man as a stock chaser and expediter, and the business administration lad as a clerk in the purchasing department.
These were the open jobs, and it should be obvious to any interviewer that these were the lads to fill them. The interviewer looked at me with mingled emotions. Part of him was asking, “How do you do it?” with admiration, and the other part was sore at me because I had been able to do it, when all he'd got was irrational confusion.
I failed to reveal that I was also somewhat irrationally confused.
* * * *
I had never run a personnel department on the usual policy of forgetting your promises as soon as you saw the back of the employee. One of the reasons we had so little organization trouble was because they knew that if I failed to keep my promise it wasn't because I hadn't tried.
In the days that followed, I tried to find something for George. I talked to various supervisors whose intelligence I respected. I went to administrative engineers. I threw the problem into the theoretical research lab. Everyone had the same reaction.
"Why sure, there must be dozens, hundreds-"
"Name me one, just one,” I'd say. “Name me something that theoretically we know how to do, but can't do, because we can't ever get the perfect coordination and communication to meet unforeseen developments."
Of course they accepted my statement that this was just a hypothetical situation. I wasn't sticking out my neck any farther than that. But it was an intriguing thought, and the more imaginative engineers pounced upon it with delight. Why there must be dozens. Name one, just one.
And they did name problems by the score. But these always fitted into one of two categories-either science didn't yet know how to solve the problem even with perfect communication and coordination, or it was only a little better performance than five separate guys could do without complete empathy. Never anything that only a George could do, a thing that couldn't be done without a George.
Some of them tried a different approach.
"Tell me what qualities George has, and then it should be easy to think of something that only he could do."
I learned to counter that one, because it led into endless discussions about qualities of mind, and never produced anything specific for George to do anyway.
"Give him any rational qualities you want,” I'd say. “Anything that fits into our present framework of science and industry. Let's don't deal in magic, or this time in the usual concepts of psi. Here we've got five guys, who are just ordinary guys without any wild talents. But they've worked out Gestalt empathy to the point where they think and act as a unit, as one organism. Now, granted this organism as a whole may equal more than the sum of its parts, still it doesn't have any wild talents. It can't turn the Auerbach cylinder into an antigravity unit, for example. But it is greater than the sum of its parts, it is more than just five well-trained guys who would bog down in confusion as soon as an unforeseen circumstance arose, who would have to stop whatever they were doing to compare notes and agree on where to go from there. This ... this George, wo
uld react instantly, drawing his decision from the combined minds and talents of the whole group, and all parts of the group would carry out the decision just as if they were parts of one body directed by one brain. Give him any background, any training, any knowledge, any rational qualities you like. What good is he? What could he do that we can't already do?"
They'd grin and mumble something about if I didn't have anything more important than that to occupy my time they certainly did. They'd agree to think about it, because, like myself, just behind the frame of consciousness there was the teasing certainty that there must be dozens, hundreds-
That, in itself, intrigued me. Was man evolving into a kind of group entity, instead of separate individuals? Some philosophers had said so. The whole social structure was trending in that direction. Were we on the verge of a whole new concept of mind and existence? Something we could intuitively feel but not put into words?
It became important to me, far beyond the importance of merely keeping my promise to think of something for George to do, my promise to the five lads. The five boys had settled into their new jobs without a disturbing ripple on the surface of the organization, and a couple of supervisors had gone out of their way to tell me that if there were any more of the same floating around to grab them.
One supervisor said it was astonishing the way his man seemed to grasp total orientation in his job, seemed to know without being told how the work he did fitted into the total structure. He thought this very unusual, because it usually took months or years for the concept to dawn that each job fitted into the pattern of all other jobs, like a big jigsaw puzzle.
I agreed that it was unusual. And felt a chill run down my spine. It wouldn't be unexpected if what was being taught the other four trainees was instantly available to him! Where did empathy leave off and telepathy begin?
I went beyond my usual conversations with the engineers and theoretical scientists. I even thought of taking the problem to Old Stone Face, and then got the practical thought that the general manager would flay me alive for wasting time on a hypothetical problem when there were so many real ones to solve-such as how to make people behave like machines.