Page 55 - Like No Business I Know

Get in the POOL!

RALPH: Then the Servotech explained that if I passed a test I would
be offered a job. I agreed, and went to a kind of screening room
where I put on a helmet like the one they have at the medical center
for diagnosing any problem you might have above the neck.

FRANCINE: They never found yours!
RALPH: Well, it was your idea that I had a physiological problem. I
didn’t have any symptoms, and they didn’t find any disease. Do we
have to go over that again?
FRANCINE: No. But the alternative is not pleasant, either.
RALPH: I’ll let that pass. I’m trying to tell you about the employment
test. I had no active part in it. In fact, it was almost like a dream. I
was aware of a series of visual images, sounds, tastes, odors—even
tactile sensations—going through my head. They weren’t anything
strange or frightening: just impressions of ordinary things. People in
different kinds of clothing. Food. Faces. Houses. Voices. I was very
relaxed throughout this experience, almost as if I had been drugged.
Then it was over. A Servotech took me back to Fred’s office. He
congratulated me and said I was hired. I signed a couple of forms and
went across the hall to the POOL.
FRANCINE: Oh—did you get your own desk? Fred has a desk.
RALPH: No, it’s not like that. You must be thinking of those old
bullpen offices they used to have when people had white-collar
jobs—accounting, drafting, writing up orders—that sort of place,
where a whole bunch of workers sat in one big room, each one at a
desk with the tools of the trade. This is more like the old jury
pools—you remember: when people decided legal questions, before
the Uniform Civil and Criminal Justice Act was passed by the Final
Congress? Well, it was a long time ago.

FRANCINE: I’ve seen the televideos, Ralph.
RALPH: Okay, okay. Just trying to relate it to something you knew.
So it was like a big waiting room, about fifty people—men, women
and teenagers, no particular type that I could see—all sitting around
in easy chairs reading or sleeping or watching televideos. I found an
empty seat next to a woman about ten years older than me and I
began wondering what exactly went on in the Personnel Omnibus
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