"You have said nothing about how the crystal caused you to attempt suicide," said Fenwick.
"The crystal invalidated the molecular tape I had chosen to provide my foundation program for living. The tape was completely shattered, brought to an end. There was nothing left for me to go on."
"Wait a minute!" said Fenwick. "Even supposing this could happen as you describe it, other programs could be selected out of the great number you have described."
"Quite true. But do you know what happens to an adult human being when the program on which his entire life is patterned is destroyed?"
Fenwick shook his head. "What is it like?"
"It's like it was in the beginning, in that moment of first awareness of the external universe. He is aware of the universe, but has no understanding of it. Previous understanding—or what he thought was understanding—has been invalidated, destroyed. The drive to keep living, that was present in that first moment of awareness, has weakened. The strongest impulse is to escape the terror that follows awareness without understanding. Death is the quickest escape.
"This is why men are inflexible. This is why the Urbans cannot endure the Galileos. This is why the Bill Bakers cannot face the Jim Ellerbees. That was what Sam Atkins wanted to find out.
"If a man should decide his basic program is invalid and decide to choose another, he would have to face again the terror of awareness of a world in which understanding does not exist. He would have to return to that moment of first awareness and select a new program in that moment of overwhelming fear. Men are not willing to do this. They prefer a program—a personality—that is defective, that functions with only a fraction of the efficiency it might have. They prefer this to a basic change of programs. Only when a program is rendered absolutely invalid—as mine was by the crystal communicator—is the program abandoned. When that happens, the average man drives his car into a telephone pole or a bridge abutment, or he steps in front of a truck at a street intersection. I drove into a gully in a storm."
"All this would imply that the tape library is loaded with genetic programs that contain basic defects!" said Fenwick.