Theodore Sturgeons berättelse "Vem?" (Mars 1955 Galaxy; vt "Bulkhead" i A Way Home , coll 1955) handlar om avsiktlig uppdelning av en astronauts personlighet för att rädda honom från galenskap under en lång rymdflygning ensam. Men jag tror att den andra personligheten var en rivaliserande astronaut och inte hans fru, så det här kanske inte är rätt ID.
Sammanfattning från Jennre Blog HÄR
“Bulkhead,” Theodore Sturgeon, 1955 – A cadet and captain-in-training endures an extended “test run” simulation in a facsimile of a typical ship. He’s been told that if he presses a button, he can communicate with another cadet, but he resists the temptation to need human contact due to pride. When he finally presses the button, he finds that a young boy (Skampi) has been sealed inside the bulkhead. Skampi is miserably lonely, crying, and the cadet is disgusted. Worse, an irrational fury seizes him when the boy asks to learn more about piloting. He assumes that the boy is the real candidate and that his role is to train him. He assembles a diamond-tipped drill to get through the bulkhead and to the boy, with the intent of murdering him. Slowly, he regains control of his emotions, feels pity for the boy, so pathetic, trapped. He resolves to teach the boy, despite his reservations.
When the run is complete, months (?) later, the psychodynamics (PD) men explain that the bulkhead was empty. They reveal that every cadet has his childhood memories suppressed through hypnosis. The boy in the bulkhead was a version of himself in his youth–weak, pathetic, bullied–with whom he needed to empathize, to prevent childish behavior and unresolved issues from childhood from appearing under the stress and isolation of space travel. While the cadet seems to accept this explanation, he also earnestly asks after the situation of the boy. He’d like to be reassigned with the boy on his next mission, he explains. It’s implied that PD has intentionally made him into a schitzophrenic in order to better suit him for space travel. In the closing lines, he takes his inner child out for ice cream.