The fusion box
“It would be immoral not to fuse with Mercer in gratitude,” Iran said. “I had hold of the handles of the box today and it overcame my depression a little—just a little, not like this. But anyhow I got hit by a rock, here.” She held up her wrist; on it he made out a small dark bruise. “And I remember thinking how much better we are, how much better off, when we’re with Mercer. Despite the pain. Physical pain but spiritually together; I felt everyone else, all over the world, all who had fused at the same time.”
“Get in, Rick. This’ll be just for a moment. You hardly ever undergo fusion; I want you to transmit the mood you’re in now to everyone else; you owe it to them. It would be immoral to keep it for ourselves.”
In their living room, at the empathy box, Iran swiftly snapped the switch, her face animated with growing gladness; it lit her up like a rising new crescent of moon. “I want everyone to know,” she told him. “Once that happened to me; I fused and picked up someone who had just acquired an animal. And then one day—” Her features momentarily darkened; the pleasure fled. “One day I found myself receiving from someone whose animal had died. But others of us shared our different joys with them—I didn’t have any, as you might know—and that cheered the person up. We might even reach a potential suicide; what we have, what we’re feeling, might—”
“They’ll have our joy,” Rick said,
“but we’ll lose. We’ll exchange what we feel for what they feel. Our joy will be lost.”
The screen of the empathy box now showed rushing streams of bright formless color; taking a breath, his wife hung on tightly to the two handles. “We won’t really lose what we feel, not if we keep it clearly in mind. You never really have gotten the hang of fusion, have you, Rick?”
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