Short Fiction · Chapter
Bullet with His Name explained
Ernie Meeker grapples with the onset of extraordinary mental abilities, including page-at-a-glance reading and a strange sensitivity, which he perceives as a threat to his sanity.
What happens
Ernie Meeker grapples with the onset of extraordinary mental abilities, including page-at-a-glance reading and a strange sensitivity, which he perceives as a threat to his sanity. He attempts to suppress these 'Gifts' through alcohol and by discarding a mysterious blue box that once contained sodium bicarbonate but now appears blank. The chapter also introduces two invisible, negatively massed beings from Galaxy Center who have selected Ernie as a test subject for a series of Little, Big, and Great Gifts, with the fate of his race hanging in the balance. Ernie's daily life is punctuated by odd occurrences, such as a razor blade that remains sharp far longer than normal.
Themes in this chapter
Identity and Illusion
Ernie's perception of his own sanity is challenged by the Gifts, blurring the line between reality and delusion.
Technology and Control
The mysterious blue box and the Gifts represent advanced technology beyond human understanding, controlling Ernie's fate.
Alienation and Otherness
Ernie feels increasingly isolated and alienated from normal life, and the invisible beings are literally otherworldly observers.
Characters to notice
- Ernie Meeker
Protagonist experiencing unsettling mental enhancements and paranoia; discards the blue box and struggles with the implications of the Gifts.
- Mr. Ellenby
Referred to as Mr. Jones; seen conferring with Ernie's sister and involved in arranging milk delivery.
- Bill
Ernie's lunch companion; mentioned in passing during a conversation about razor blades.
Key passages
“He had a picture of himself getting on an airplane, another of renting a room in a slum, another of stopping the car on a lonely, treeless country road and getting out and looking up to the coldly glimmering Milky Way—why?”
Ernie imagines fleeing his situation by plane, hiding in a slum, or standing alone under the stars, but doesn't understand why these visions come to him.
Illustrates Ernie's desperate desire to escape his perceived insanity.
“He had not rejected the Big Gift of Page-at-a-Glance Reading. Not quite. But he had dislocated for tonight at least the imposed nervous field on which it depended.”
Ernie hasn't fully refused the ability to read entire pages instantly, but he has temporarily disrupted the mental state required to use it.
Shows Ernie's ambivalence toward the Gifts and his attempt to regain control.
“The Invisible Being shifted his anchorage a bit in Earth’s gravitational field, which felt like a push rather than a pull to him, and said, 'This featherless biped seems to satisfy Galaxy Center’s requirements.'”
An invisible alien being adjusts his position in Earth's gravity and declares that Ernie Meeker meets the criteria for receiving special gifts from the galactic authority.
Introduces the cosmic perspective and the stakes of Ernie's test.