He sat on the edge of the cot and listened, trying to control his excitement. After a long time, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside his door. He would speak about that with the doctor. They would award him all possible patient privileges. That locked door gave him a moment of panic which he sternly controlled. He stood up and walked slowly around his small room. It was very good of them he felt tears of gratitude start in his eyes. Kindly doctors were working to restore his memory, to replace his identity, to restore his judgment apparatus, to tell him who and what he was. He knew that there were many important things which he did not know, which he once had known. He possessed in addition a limited amount of general knowledge. (Did that mean that there were other languages?) He knew the commonplace names for things: room, light, chair. He spoke a language which he knew was English. He knew that he was a man, species Homo sapiens, an inhabitant of the planet Earth. He tried to catalogue all his knowledge, and the implications of that knowledge.
He held his chin in his hand and closed his eyes. The room had a bed and a single chair, and nothing else. Light came into the room from some hidden source, perhaps from the ceiling itself. On the other, through a curtained alcove, he could see a tiny lavatory. He was sitting on a bed in a small gray room. When it didn't, he looked around, seeking in his surroundings some clue to his identity. He sat up hastily and willed memory to return. He awoke, rubbed his eyes, and waited for further memories to come. Sheckley was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.Kind of man. His stories first appeared in science fiction magazines of the 1950s.His quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical. Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author. The Status Civilization first appeared under the title Omega in Amazing Science Fiction Stories. But it was only a momentary ordeal, a prelude to a return to Earth and the subtle terrors of its own status civilization.
Omega was a world of horror, a savage, ruthless way of life. Now he was serving his sentence on Omega - a prison planet walled by a ring of hovering guard-ships from which there was no escape. THE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF A NEW ARRIVAL ON OMEGA AVERAGED THREE EARTH YEARS Will Barrent could choose-exile on a nightmare planet, or life under the tyranny that had taken over Earth! Barrent had been tried, convicted, and memory-washed on Earth - an Earth strangely altered and stratified by fear of the radical and non-conformist.
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