Fondly Fahrenheit

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Fondly Fahrenheit is a science fiction short story by Alfred Bester. It was first published in 1954.

The story is remarkable in that it constantly shifts viewpoint, sometimes within a single sentence. The central element of the plot is that a rich playboy, James Vandaleur, and his expensive "multiple aptitude android" have become two aspects of a single insane personality. Thus the narrative shifts constantly from third-person narrator to first person in Vandaleur, first person the android, and a plural first person. The opening paragraph sets the mood:

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 mood is maintained by repetition of phrases. When the android kills, the tagline to the episode is a remark on the temperature: "And the thermometer .... registered 98.1 degrees beautifully Fahrenheit." Fragments of a song the android sings underscore other events in the story.

In many ways it is a horror story in a science fiction context. Vandaleur's doom is as incomprehensible as it is inescapable. It defies all his attempts to avoid it. Vandaleur, for his part, is as useless as any rich kid who never had to scratch for a living. His father is dead, having lost the family fortune, and Vandaleur only has the android which, if it works correctly, can bring in more than enough income to keep him in relative luxury. Unfortunately...

[edit] Plot

On a warm humid planet, vast paddy fields raise a huge crop of rice. In these fields men are searching for a lost child. They find the young girl dead, and under her fingernails is blood. Android blood. It's a very hot day.

James Vandaleur flees with his android. The android has progressed from acts of defiance, to random destruction, to murder. Each time they flee, each time with less money. They take a space liner to another planet. Vandaleur hires out the android and becomes the plaything of a rich older woman. Vandaleur uses a false name, but she easily identifies the man and his android. In the hot furnace room of her jewelry manufacturing business, the android pours molten gold over her, killing her horribly and painfully. In the heat, it capers, twiddling its fingers and singing an old song.

Oh it's no feat to beat the heat.

All reet! All reet!

So jeet your seet

Be fleet be fleet

Cool and discreet

Honey...

From a pair of inquisitive students trying to solve the android mystery, to an old scholar who makes the connection between the temperature and the android's crimes, the two kill again and again. A "psychometric consultant" diagnoses the problem as synesthesia complicated by projection. The android's insanity infects Vandaleur, or possibly it is the other way around. Naturally Vandaleur kills the consultant. He aims to flee to a cold planet, but before he can the two are tracked down by police. In the resulting chase the android perishes in a wildfire, capering, singing and twisting its fingers as the heat sets off its madness.

Vandaleur escapes to a cold planet, and tries to live off the earnings of a simple robot instead of an expensive android. But the robot is twitching and humming, and now it has taken a young girl for a walk. And so the last line of the story is:

Cool and discreet, honey, in the dancing frost while the thermometer registers 10 degrees fondly Fahrenheit.