Fondly Fahrenheit

Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester - On Paragon III, amidst endless rice fields under a burning orange sky, a sinister discovery sparks an intense manhunt. Escape and survival hinge on unraveling the mystery of an android capable of murder. He doesn’t know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death ... or else you will die another’s. The rice fields on Paragon III stretch for hundreds of miles like checkerboard tundras, a blue and brown mosaic under a burning. sky of orange. In the evening, clouds whip like smoke, and the paddies rustle and murmur. A long line of men marched across the paddies the evening we escaped from Paragon III. They were silent, armed, intent; a long rank of silhouetted statues looming against the smoking sky. Each man carried a gun. Each man wore a walkie-talkie belt pack, the speaker button in his ear, the microphone bug clipped to his throat, the glowing view-screen strapped to his wrist like a green-eyed watch. The multitude of screens showed nothing but a multitude of individual paths through the paddies. The annunciators uttered no sound but the rustle and splash of steps. The men spoke infrequently, in heavy grunts, all speaking to all. "Nothing here.” "Where’s here?” “Jenson’s fields.” “You’re drifting too far west.” “Close in the line there.” “Anybody covered the Grimson paddy?” “Yeah. Nothing.” “She couldn’t have walked this far.” “Could have been carried.” “Think she’s alive?” “Why should she be dead?”