Read Dr. Futurity (1960) for Free Online Page A

gravity and importance entered his appearance.
    Stenog said, "As Director of the Fountain, I have the authority to pass judgment on you." From beneath his peruke, he scrutinized Parsons. "What we mainly have to consider is the formal procedure of exile."
    "Exile!" Parsons echoed.
    "We don't maintain our prison colonies here. I forget what system your culture employed. Work camps? C.C.C. in Soviet Asia?"
    After a pause, Parsons managed to say, "By my time the C.C.C. camps were gone. So were the slave labor camps in Russia."
    "We make no attempt to rehabilitate the criminal," Stenog said. "That would be an invasion of his rights. And, from a practical standpoint, it doesn't work. We don't want substandard persons in our society."
    "The shupos ," Parsons said, with dread. "They're involved in these colonies?"
    Stenog said, "The shupos are too valuable to be sent off Earth. A good deal of them are our youth, you understand. Especially the active element. The shupo organization maintains youth hostels and schools set apart from society, operated in the Spartan manner. The children are trained both in body and in mind. They're hardened. The activity that you saw, the raid on the illegal political group, is incidental, a sort of field expedition. They're quite zealous, the boys from the hostels. On the streets they have the right, as individuals to challenge any person they feel is not acting properly."
    "What are the prison colonies like?"
    "They're city sized. You'll be free to work, and you'll have a separate dwelling of the apartment type where you can pursue various hobbies or creative crafts. The climate, of course, isn't favorable. Your life-span will be cut down enormously. Much depends on your own stamina."
    "And there's no way I can appeal your decision?" Parsons demanded. "No trial system? The government brings the charges and then acts as the judge? Merely by putting on a medieval periwig--"
    "We have the girl's signed complaint," Stenog said.
    At that, Parsons stared at him. He could not believe it.
    "Oh, yes," Stenog said. "Come along." Rising, he opened a side door, beckoning Parsons to follow him. Formidable and solemn in his wig, he said, "Possibly this will tell you more about us than anything you have seen so far."
    They passed by door after door; Parsons, in a daze, followed the bewigged younger man, barely able to keep up with his springy step. At last Stenog halted at a door, unlocked it, and stepped aside for Parsons to enter.
    On the first of several small stages lay a body, partly covered by a white sheet. Icara. Parsons walked toward her. Her eyes were shut and she did not move. Her skin had a faded, washed-out quality.
    "She filed the complaint," Stenog said, "just before she died." He switched on a light; gazing down, Parsons saw that beyond any doubt the girl was dead, possibly had been for several hours.
    "But she was recovering," he said. "She was getting well."
    Reaching down, Stenog lifted the sheet back. Along the side of the girl's neck, Parsons saw a careful, precise slash. The great carotid arteries had been cut, and expertly.
    "In her complaint, she charged you with deliberately obstructing the natural process of seelmotus," Stenog said. "As soon as she had filled out this form she called her residential euthanor and underwent the Final Rite."
    "Then she did it herself," Parsons said.
    "It was her pleasure. By her own will she undid the harm you had attempted." Stenog shut off the light.

FIVE
    In his own personal car, Stenog took him to his house for dinner.
    As they drove through the afternoon traffic, Parsons tried to see as much of the city as possible. Once, when the car halted for a three-level bus, he rolled down the window and leaned out. Stenog made no move to inhibit his actions.
    "There's where I work," Stenog said once. He slowed the car and pointed. A flat building, larger than any others that Parsons had seen, lay to their right. "That's where we were-- in my office at the Fountain.