 What is the Farm?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] MOTHER GOOSE Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. "He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's leaving the Farm. "So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. The first was from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book, and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really get back to work again. In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. "A Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." When they were finally forced to recognize that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds, with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. They were trying to study phenomena which made no sense, observing things that defied logic. And the more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush became— But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a theory to work by— At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "Within the stronghold of psionic research at last. "I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply, "because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. "I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of 'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental controls you keep talking about will actually bear. "If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's false as Satan."
 The Farm is a compound where they research the psionic abilities of children.
 The Farm is Dr. Lessing's home in the country.  The Farm is a compound where they research the psionic abilities of children.  The Farm is where they train CIA agents with telekinetic abilities.  The Farm is where they do genetic testing on children to give them psychic abilities.