Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION “Is the whole thing an illusion, a trick played upon me by the unconscious? Such things have happened . . . especially to psychotics. I straighten my tie. My hands are shaky and clammy with perspiration. Better forget the whole thing, I tell myself. ““T walk out of the lab and take the elevator down to the canteen. The place is crowded as usual. Some day [ll get enough sense to go down for lunch before the rush. I join the slow moving line. Eventu- ally I reach the hot-plate and start picking up food, piling it automatically on my tray. “IT get that ‘people-are- looking-at-me’ feeling. That tall girl over there—what’s she laughing at? Snap out of it, Bridger, or you'll be back in the laughing academy! I sit down at an unoccupied table and sort out my plates. I find that there are two portions of soup, and no dessert ... But I’m not going back to change them. I start to eat. The food tastes like nothing. Somebody sits opposite—it’s Pat Colson, who works in Electronics, the next lab to mine. ** ‘Hello there, Martin,’ he says. ‘Mind if I join you?’ I attempt a smile. Colson is a good joe, one of the few 108 people who treat me as a normal human being, instead of being transparently jovial or visibly uncomfortable like the rest. This is my chance to unioad the story of the motor —I put it to him as a hypo- thetical case, of course. Any- thing else would be asking for trouble, even with him. He doesn’t seem impressed. ***You think that guy would have trouble?’ he says. ‘You remember that U.H.F. rig I told you about? I thought I'd got the whole thing assembled just dandy, and before lunch I switched on the juice with an oscillograph hooked in to test the wave form. The screened results were way off the beam, so I started to make some minor adjustments to the variables. “““That did it! After a couple of minutes the whole darn thing folded up. Several soldered connections came adrift and two of the tubes were loose in their holders—I hadn’t bothered with retaining clips. Anyway, what’s the difference? The rig wasn’t up to the specifications the top brass want, that’s for sure. I could have staked my reputa- tion on that circuit. When I get back I shall have to try it again with different compon- conmicloooks.comn