"Where do they come from?"
"From overhead; that is, from the teletactile centers of The Brain."
"What do they do to me?"
There was the low chuckle again. "They excite the surface nerves of your body, open up the path for the deep-penetration rays; they proceed from the lower organs to the higher ones; in the end they reach the conscious levels of your brain. It's the tune-in as we call it, Dr. Lee."
A small movie projector began to purr; a bright rectangle was thrown upon the silver screen and then, Lee stirred. Hands, soothing but firm held him down. "Where did you get those." he exclaimed.
"From many sources," a calm answer came, "The papers, the newsreels, the War-Department, old friends of yours...."
What was unrolled on the silver screen were chapters from Lee's own life. They were incomplete, they were hastily thrown together, they were like leaves which a child tears from its picturebook. But knowing the book of his life, every picture acted as a key unlocking the treasures and the horrors amassed in the vaults of memory. It began with the old homestead in Virginia. Mother had taken that reel of the new mechanical cotton picker at work. There it was, a great big thing with the darkies standing around scratching their heads. There he was himself, aged twelve, with his .22 cal. rifle in hand and Musha, the coon dog, by his side; Musha, how he had loved that dog—and how he had cried when it got killed.
Pictures of the Alexander Hamilton Military Academy. Some of the worst years of his life he had spent behind the walls of that imitation castle.
The bombs upon Pearl Harbor.... He had enlisted the following day. On his return from the induction center mother had said.... Her figure, her movements, her voice loomed enormous in his memory.... But now the pictures of the Pacific War flicked across the screen.... They were picked from campaigns in which he, Lee had participated. They were also picked from documentaries which the government had never dared to let the public see ... close-ups of a torpedoed troop carrier, capsizing, coming down upon the struggling survivors in the shark-infested sea. It had been his own ship, the Monticello, but he had never known that an automatic camera had operated in the nose of the plane which had circled the scene....