Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Varley, John. "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank." Galaxy May 1976. Rpt. The 1977 Annual World's Best SF. Donald A. Wollheim, ed. New York: DAW, 1977.

Fingal's body is misplaced while his memory cube is in a lioness in the Kenya disneyland (sic) on the Moon; to save him, his memory cube is interfaced with a computer, in which he spends six hours, world-time, and one year subjective. Fingal studies computer science while in the machine "to feel a sense of power over them"—something important to him, "being a virtual prisoner inside one. He was like a worker on an assembly line. All day long he labors, taking small parts off a moving belt and installing them on larger assemblies. One day, he begins to wonder . . ." (90). "OATMB" is discussed briefly by A. Gordon in TMG (see under Literary Criticism).[[1]] Story is source for PBS broadcast of same title, q.v. Cf. J. T. Sladek, The Müller-Fokker Effect (listed this Category) and the works cross-referenced there.