Murray Leinster - A Logic Named Joe

A Logic Named Joe

Murray Leinster

edited by

Eric Flint & Guy Gordon

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

"The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator" was first published in Astounding in December

1935. "A Logic Named Joe" was first published in Astounding in March 1946, under

Leinster's real name of Will F. Jenkins. Gateway to Elsewhere was first published by

Ace Books as a double novel in 1954 (coupled with A.E. Van Vogt's The Weapon

Shops of Isher). The Pirates of Zan was first published in serialized form in Astounding

in February–April 1959, under the title "The Pirates of Ersatz." It was reissued the same

year by Ace Books as a double novel under the current title (coupled with Leinster's

Med Ship story The Mutant Weapon). "Dear Charles" was first published in 1960 by

Avon Books, as part of Leinster's anthology entitled Twists in Time. The Duplicators

was first published in a shorter version in Worlds of Tomorrow in February 1964, under

the title "Lord of the Uffts." The expanded version contained in this volume was reissued

the same year by Ace Books as a double novel under the current title (coupled with

Philip E. High's No Truce With Terra).

form.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-9910-7

Cover art by Kurt Miller

First printing, June 2005

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH (www.windhaven.com)

Printed in the United States of America

Baen Books by MURRAY LEINSTER

Med Ship

Planets of Adventure

A Logic Named Joe

The Dean of Gloucester, Virginia

by Barry N. Malzberg

"Murray Leinster" was the pen-name William F. Jenkins (1896–1975) used for his science fiction; his

was one of the longest and most honorable careers the genre offered. The breadth of that career is

astonishing; his first science fiction story, The Runaway Skyscraper was published in Argosy magazine

in 1919, seven years before the science fiction genre inaugurated in the 4/26 issue of Amazing Stories

had been established. And the short novel, The Pirates of Zan, included in this volume, was one of the

last serials to appear in Astounding Science Fiction (February through April 1959) before, in February

1960, just after its 30th anniversary, it changed its name to Analog. The January 1960 issue was the last

one under the Astounding name, and Leinster was there with the short story Attention Saint Patrick, 30

years after his first appearance in the magazine.

This is a career and the career is only a part of Jenkins' contribution; he was also an inventor who

obtained many patents. One of them, for the so-called "back-screen projector" used in movie theaters to

this date, is that device which enables you or the annoying person in the row ahead of you at the Bijou to

stand and leave the auditorium in mid-movie without casting a shadow on the screen. Jenkins who lived in

Gloucester, Virginia, for most of his adult life, had four children, wrote much other than science fiction

(appearing frequently in Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, other mass circulation magazine of the

1940's and 1950's) but it is clearly the science fiction by which he will be remembered.

He wrote and wrote to great effect and is one of the very few writers to have contributed more than

one short story to the canon regarded as famous and which reach far out of the genre of science fiction.

(Arthur C. Clarke, author of The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God, is another; Ray Bradbury,

author of The Million Year Picnic and The Sound of Thunder would also qualify.) First Contact, the

first and still best story of humanity's first intersection in deep space with an intelligent, spacefaring alien

race, was publishing in Astounding in 1945, reprinted hundreds of times and is regarded as not only an

extraordinarily effective work of fiction and speculation but as a blueprint, a virtual manual, for how such

contact might be accomplished safely and in a way which protects the parties who are alien to one

another. The other story—which appears in this volume—is A Logic Named Joe, published in

Astounding in early 1946, which brilliantly and with astonishing accuracy not only predicts but maps the

contemporary Internet, Google searches, dial-up remedies and all. Like Arthur C. Clarke's

communications satellite (virtually blueprinted by the young Clarke in 1945) this was here before the

subject was here and not only the accuracy but overlap are remarkable. It is also, as you will note, a

bitterly funny story.

There is a third work, Sidewise in Time, not nearly as skillfully written, which may be equally

influential: published in the 1930's it is one of the earliest treatment of the alternate/parallel-universe theme

in science fiction, the branching "real" worlds which would have existed had other choices been made and

which adjoin our own. There is a science fiction award, the "Sidewise" for best annual treatment of the

alternate-world concept, named in its honor.

Jenkins was always around; he was a major science fiction writer in the pre–John Campbell

magazines of the 1930's, then was one of the very few writers to effortlessly manage the transition (with

Campbell's installation as editor of Astounding in late 1937) to what we now call "modern science

fiction." He was a constant presence in Astounding in the 1940's and 1950's, won his Hugo finally at the

age of 60 with the 1956 Astounding novella Exploration Team (the Hugos were only instituted in

1953; science fiction had to catch up to Jenkins), wrote one of Astounding's last serials, as I've noted,

and continued publishing through most of the 1960's, most of this latter fiction being the Med Service

stories (published in another volume of this reclamation of his work by Baen Books) and certainly had by

the mid-sixties earned the not at all ironic sobriquet "The Dean of Science Fiction," which phrase in fact

appeared in his obituary in the New York Times.

A remarkable figure, then, one of the central figures (as so noted in the Clute-Nicholls Encyclopedia

of Science Fiction) of "magazine science fiction"—and it was magazine science fiction which drove the

category, at least until the early seventies. Until then, virtually all important and influential science fiction

appeared first in the magazines, only to reach book form later, and Jenkins was one of the ten or a dozen

signal figures of the 1940's Campbell Astounding who were integral to the genre, which had reached its

real maturity under Campbell. There is a consensus that Jenkins' novels were not at the level of his short

fiction; certainly he published none which had a fraction of the reach and force enacted by First Contact

or A Logic Named Joe, and most of the novels have been out of print for many years. The best of the

shorter work is, however, unimpeachable and the span of the career, almost fifty years at or near the very

top of the genre, is close to unparalleled. It should be added, and not parenthetically, that Jenkins also

wrote mysteries and was the editor of an important early science fiction anthology.

A writer of significant range, Jenkins published two stories in Horace Gold's sardonic early-fifties

Galaxy, If You Was a Moklin and The Other Now, which managed to embrace Gold's grim world-view

in no less sprightly fashion than First Contact had embodied Campbell's more positive mien, and there is

little doubt that a Jenkins born fifty or seventy years later could have functioned very well on the cutting

edge of contemporary science fiction. Surely A Logic Named Joe was as savagely innovative in 1946 as

anything published in our celebrated cyberpunk eighties.

A remarkable, irreplaceable figure. Take him out of the history and as with Campbell that history

might collapse. Fortunately we do not have to so speculate; he is here and we are lucky to have him. This

collection is both celebratory and as absolutely contemporary as this great writer.

A Logic Named Joe

It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come

into town, an' that afternoon I saved civilization. That's what I figure, anyhow. Laurine is a blonde that I

was crazy about once—and crazy is the word—and Joe is a logic that I have stored away down in the

cellar right now. I had to pay for him because I said I busted him, and sometimes I think about turning

him on and sometimes I think about taking an ax to him. Sooner or later I'm gonna do one or the other. I

kinda hope it's the ax. I could use a coupla million dollars—sure!—an' Joe'd tell me how to get or make

'em. He can do plenty! But so far I've been scared to take a chance. After all, I figure I really saved

civilization by turnin' him off.

The way Laurine fits in is that she makes cold shivers run up an' down my spine when I think about

her. You see, I've got a wife which I acquired after I had parted from Laurine with much romantic

despair. She is a reasonable good wife, and I have some kids which are hell-cats but I value 'em. If I

have sense enough to leave well enough alone, sooner or later I will retire on a pension an' Social

Security an' spend the rest of my life fishin' contented an' lyin' about what a great guy I used to be. But

there's Joe. I'm worried about Joe.

I'm a maintenance man for the Logics Company. My job is servicing logics, and I admit modestly that

I am pretty good. I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will

select any of 'steenteen million other circuits—in theory there ain't no limit—and before the Logics

Company hooked it into the tank-and-integrator set-up they were usin' 'em as business-machine service.

They added a vision screen for speed—an' they found out they'd made logics. They were surprised an'

pleased. They're still findin' out what logics will do, but everybody's got 'em.

I got Joe, after Laurine nearly got me. You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It

looks like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what

you wanna get. It's hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you

punch "Station SNAFU" on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an' whatever vision-program

SNAFU is telecastin' comes on your logic's screen. Or you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" an' the

screen blinks an' sputters an' you're hooked up with the logic in her house an' if somebody answers you

got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won

today's race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin' Garfield's administration or what

is PDQ and R sellin' for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a

big buildin' full of all the facts in creation an' all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an' it's

hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an' everything you wanna know or see or hear,

you punch for it an' you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an' keeps books, an' acts as

consultin' chemist, physicist, astronomer, an' tea-leaf reader, with a "Advice to the Lovelorn" thrown in.

The only thing it won't do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, "Oh, you think so, do

you?" in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don't work good on women. Only on things that make sense.

Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us. All on accounta the

Carson Circuit. And Joe shoulda been a perfectly normal logic, keeping some family or other from

wearin' out its brains doin' the kids' homework for 'em. But somethin' went wrong in the assembly line. It

was somethin' so small that precision gauges didn't measure it, but it made Joe a individual. Maybe he

didn't know it at first. Or maybe, bein' logical, he figured out that if he was to show he was different from

other logics they'd scrap him. Which woulda been a brilliant idea. But anyhow, he come off the

assembly-line, an' he went through the regular tests without anybody screamin' shrilly on findin' out what

he was. And he went right on out an' was duly installed in the home of Mr. Thaddeus Korlanovitch at

119 East Seventh Street, second floor front. So far, everything was serene.

The installation happened late Saturday night. Sunday morning the Korlanovitch kids turned him on

an' seen the Kiddie Shows. Around noon their parents peeled 'em away from him an' piled 'em in the car.

Then they come back in the house for the lunch they'd forgot an' one of the kids sneaked back an' they

found him punchin' keys for the Kiddie Shows of the week before. They dragged him out an' went off.

But they left Joe turned on.

That was noon. Nothin' happened until two in the afternoon. It was the calm before the storm.

Laurine wasn't in town yet, but she was comin'. I picture Joe sittin' there all by himself, buzzing

meditative. Maybe he run Kiddie Shows in the empty apartment for awhile. But I think he went kinda

remote-control exploring in the tank. There ain't any fact that can be said to be a fact that ain't on a data

plate in some tank somewhere—unless it's one the technicians are diggin' out an' puttin' on a data plate

now. Joe had plenty of material to work on. An' he musta started workin' right off the bat.

Joe ain't vicious, you understand. He ain't like one of these ambitious robots you read about that

make up their minds the human race is inefficient and has got to be wiped out an' replaced by thinkin'

machines. Joe's just got ambition. If you were a machine, you'd wanna work right, wouldn't you? That's

Joe. He wants to work right. An' he's a logic. An' logics can do a Iotta things that ain't been found out

yet. So Joe, discoverin' the fact, begun to feel restless. He selects some things us dumb humans ain't

thought of yet, an' begins to arrange so logics will be called on to do 'em.

That's all. That's everything. But, brother, it's enough!

Things are kinda quiet in the Maintenance Department about two in the afternoon. We are playing

pinochle. Then one of the guys remembers he has to call up his wife. He goes to one of the bank of logics

in Maintenance and punches the keys for his house. The screen sputters. Then a flash comes on the

screen.

"Announcing new and improved logics service! Your logic is now equipped to give you not only

consultive but directive service. If you want to do something and don't know how to do it—ask your

logic!"

There's a pause. A kinda expectant pause. Then, as if reluctantly, his connection comes through. His

wife answers an' gives him hell for somethin' or other. He takes it an' snaps off.

"Whadda you know?" he says when he comes back. He tells us about the flash. "We shoulda been

warned about that. There's gonna be a lotta complaints. Suppose a fella asks how to get ridda his wife

an' the censor circuits block the question?"

Somebody melds a hundred aces an' says:

"Why not punch for it an' see what happens?"

It's a gag, o' course. But the guy goes over. He punches keys. In theory, a censor block is gonna

come on an' the screen will say severely, "Public Policy Forbids This Service." You hafta have censor

blocks or the kiddies will be askin' detailed questions about things they're too young to know. And there

are other reasons. As you will see.

This fella punches, "How can I get rid of my wife?" Just for the fun of it. The screen is blank for half a

second. Then comes a flash. "Service question: Is she blonde or brunette?" He hollers to us an' we come

look. He punches, "Blonde." There's another brief pause. Then the screen says,

"Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a constituent of green shoe polish. Take home a frozen meal including

dried-pea soup. Color the soup with green shoe polish. It will appear to be green-pea soup.

Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a selective poison which is fatal to blond females but not to brunettes or

males of any coloring. This fact has not been brought out by human experiment, but is a product of logics

service. You cannot be convicted of murder. It is improbable that you will be suspected."

The screen goes blank, and we stare at each other. It's bound to be right. A logic workin' the Carson

Circuit can no more make a mistake than any other kinda computin' machine. I call the tank in a hurry.

"Hey, you guys!" I yell. "Somethin's happened! Logics are givin' detailed instructions for wife-murder!

Check your censor-circuits—but quick!"

That was close, I think. But little do I know. At that precise instant, over on Monroe Avenue, a

drunk starts to punch for somethin' on a logic. The screen says "Announcing new and improved logics

service! If you want to do something and don't know how to do it—ask your logic!" And the drunk says,

owlish, "I'll do it!" So he cancels his first punching and fumbles around and says: "How can I keep my

wife from finding out I've been drinking?" And the screen says, prompt: "Buy a bottle of Franine hair

shampoo. It is harmless but contains a detergent which will neutralize ethyl alcohol immediately. Take one

teaspoonful for each jigger of hundred-proof you have consumed."

This guy was plenty plastered—just plastered enough to stagger next door and obey instructions. An'

five minutes later he was cold sober and writing down the information so he couldn't forget it. It was new,

and it was big! He got rich offa that memo! He patented "SOBUH, The Drink that Makes Happy

Homes!" You can top off any souse with a slug or two of it an' go home sober as a judge. The guy's

cussin' income taxes right now!

You can't kick on stuff like that. But a ambitious young fourteen-year-old wanted to buy some kid

stuff and his pop wouldn't fork over. He called up a friend to tell his troubles. And his logic says: "If you

want to do something and don't know how to do it—ask your logic!" So this kid punches: "How can I

make a lotta money, fast?"

His logic comes through with the simplest, neatest, and the most efficient counterfeitin' device yet

known to science. You see, all the data was in the tank. The logic—since Joe had closed some relays

here an' there in the tank—simply integrated the facts. That's all. The kid got caught up with three days

later, havin' already spent two thousand credits an' havin' plenty more on hand. They hadda time tellin' his

counterfeits from the real stuff, an' the only way they done it was that he changed his printer, kid fashion,

not bein' able to let somethin' that was workin' right alone.

Those are what you might call samples. Nobody knows all that Joe done. But there was the bank

president who got humorous when his logic flashed that "Ask your logic" spiel on him, and jestingly asked

how to rob his own bank. An' the logic told him, brief and explicit but good! The bank president hit the

ceiling, hollering for cops. There musta been plenty of that sorta thing. There was fifty-four more

robberies than usual in the next twenty-four hours, all of them planned astute an' perfect. Some of 'em

they never did figure out how they'd been done. Joe, he'd gone exploring in the tank and closed some

relays like a logic is supposed to do—but only when required—and blocked all censor-circuits an' fixed

up this logics service which planned perfect crimes, nourishing an' attractive meals, counterfeitin'

machines, an' new industries with a fine impartiality. He musta been plenty happy, Joe must. He was

functionin' swell, buzzin' along to himself while the Korlanovitch kids were off ridin' with their ma an' pa.

They come back at seven o'clock, the kids all happily wore out with their afternoon of fightin' each

other in the car. Their folks put 'em to bed and sat down to rest. They saw Joe's screen flickerin'

meditative from one subject to another an' old man Korlanovitch had had enough excitement for one day.

He turned Joe off.

An' at that instant the pattern of relays that Joe had turned on snapped off, all the offers of directive

service stopped flashin' on logic screens everywhere, an' peace descended on the earth.

For everybody else. But for me—Laurine come to town. I have often thanked Gawd fervent that she

didn't marry me when I thought I wanted her to. In the intervenin' years she had progressed. She was

blonde an' fatal to begin with. She had got blonder and fataler an' had had four husbands and one

acquittal for homicide an' had acquired a air of enthusiasm and self-confidence. That's just a sketch of the

background. Laurine was not the kinda former girlfriend you like to have turning up in the same town with

your wife. But she came to town, an' Monday morning she tuned right into the middle of Joe's second

spasm of activity.

The Korlanovitch kids had turned him on again. I got these details later and kinda pieced 'em

together. An' every logic in town was dutifully flashin' a notice, "If you want to do something and don't

know how to do it—ask your logic!" every time they was turned on for use. More'n that, when people

punched for the morning news, they got a full account of the previous afternoon's doin's. Which put 'em in

a frame of mind to share in the party. One bright fella demands, "How can I make a perpetual motion

machine?" And his logic sputters a while an' then comes up with a set-up usin' the Brownian movement to

turn little wheels. If the wheels ain't bigger'n a eighth of an inch they'll turn, all right, an' practically it's

perpetual motion. Another one asks for the secret of transmuting metals. The logic rakes back in the data

plates an' integrates a strictly practical answer. It does take so much power that you can't make no profit

except on radium, but that pays off good. An' from the fact that for a coupla years to come the police

were turnin' up new and improved jimmies, knob-claws for gettin' at safe-innards, and all-purpose keys

that'd open any known lock—why—there must have been other inquirers with a strictly practical

viewpoint. Joe done a lot for technical progress!

But he done more in other lines. Educational, say. None of my kids are old enough to be int'rested,

but Joe bypassed all censor-circuits because they hampered the service he figured logics should give

humanity. So the kids an' teen-agers who wanted to know what comes after the bees an' flowers found

out. And there is certain facts which men hope their wives won't do more'n suspect, an' those facts are

just what their wives are really curious about. So when a woman dials: "How can I tell if Oswald is true

to me?" and her logic tells her—you can figure out how many rows got started that night when the men

come home!

All this while Joe goes on buzzin' happy to himself, showin' the Korlanovitch kids the animated

funnies with one circuit while with the others he remote-controls the tank so that all the other logics can

give people what they ask for and thereby raise merry hell.

An' then Laurine gets onto the new service. She turns on the logic in her hotel room, prob'ly to see

the week's style-forecast. But the logic says, dutiful: "If you want to do something and don't know how to

do it—ask your logic!" So Laurine prob'ly looks enthusiastic—she would!—and tries to figure out

something to ask. She already knows all about everything she cares about—ain't she had four husbands

and shot one?—so I occur to her. She knows this is the town I live in. So she punches, "How can I find

Ducky?"

O.K., guy! But that is what she used to call me. She gets a service question. "Is Ducky known by

any other name?" So she gives my regular name. And the logic can't find me. Because my logic ain't listed

under my name on account of I am in Maintenance and don't want to be pestered when I'm home, and

there ain't any data plates on code-listed logics, because the codes get changed so often—like a guy gets

plastered an' tells a redhead to call him up, an' on gettin' sober hurriedly has the code changed before she

reaches his wife on the screen.

Well! Joe is stumped. That's prob'ly the first question logics service hasn't been able to answer.

"How can I find Ducky?" Quite a problem! So Joe broods over it while showin' the Korlanovitch kids

the animated comic about the cute little boy who carries sticks of dynamite in his hip pocket an' plays

practical jokes on everybody. Then he gets the trick. Laurine's screen suddenly flashes:

"Logics special service will work upon your question. Please punch your logic designation and leave

it turned on. You will be called back."

Laurine is merely mildly interested, but she punches her hotel-room number and has a drink and

takes a nap. Joe sets to work. He has been given a idea.

My wife calls me at Maintenance and hollers. She is fit to be tied. She says I got to do something.

She was gonna make a call to the butcher shop. Instead of the butcher or even the "If you want to do

something" flash, she got a new one. The screen says, "Service question: What is your name?" She is

kinda puzzled, but she punches it. The screen sputters an' then says: "Secretarial Service Demonstration!

You—" It reels off her name, address, age, sex, coloring, the amounts of all her charge accounts in all the

stores, my name as her husband, how much I get a week, the fact that I've been pinched three

times—twice was traffic stuff, and once for a argument I got in with a guy—and the interestin' item that

once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks an' had her address changed to her folks'

home. Then it says, brisk: "Logics Service will hereafter keep your personal accounts, take messages,

and locate persons you may wish to get in touch with. This demonstration is to introduce the service."

Then it connects her with the butcher.

But she don't want meat, then. She wants blood. She calls me.

"If it'll tell me all about myself," she says, fairly boilin', "it'll tell anybody else who punches my name!

You've got to stop it!"

"Now, now, honey!" I says. "I didn't know about all this! It's new! But they musta fixed the tank so it

won't give out information except to the logic where a person lives!"

"Nothing of the kind!" she tells me, furious. "I tried! And you know that Blossom woman who lives

next door! She's been married three times and she's forty-two years old and she says she's only thirty!

And Mrs. Hudson's had her husband arrested four times for nonsupport and once for beating her up.

And—"

"Hey!" I says. "You mean the logic told you this?"

"Yes!" she wails. "It will tell anybody anything! You've got to stop it! How long will it take?"

"I'll call up the tank," I says. "It can't take long."

"Hurry!" she says, desperate, "before somebody punches my name! I'm going to see what it says

about that hussy across the street."

She snaps off to gather what she can before it's stopped. So I punch for the tank and I get this new

"What is your name?" flash. I got a morbid curiosity and I punch my name, and the screen says: "Were

you ever called Ducky?" I blink. I ain't got no suspicions. I say, "Sure!" And the screen says, "There is a

call for you."

Bingo! There's the inside of a hotel room and Laurine is reclinin' asleep on the bed. She'd been told

to leave her logic turned on an' she done it. It is a hot day and she is trying to be cool. I would say that

she oughta not suffer from the heat. Me, being human, I do not stay as cool as she looks. But there ain't

no need to go into that. After I get my breath I say, "For Heaven's sake!" and she opens her eyes.

At first she looks puzzled, like she was thinking is she getting absent-minded and is this guy

somebody she married lately. Then she grabs a sheet and drapes it around herself and beams at me.

"Ducky!" she says. "How marvelous!"

I say something like "Ugmph!" I am sweating.

She says: "I put in a call for you, Ducky, and here you are! Isn't it romantic? Where are you really,

Ducky? And when can you come up? You've no idea how often I've thought of you!"

I am probably the only guy she ever knew real well that she has not been married to at some time or

another.

I say "Ugmph!" again, and swallow.

"Can you come up instantly?" asks Laurine brightly.

"I'm . . . workin'," I say. "I'll . . . uh . . . call you back."

"I'm terribly lonesome," says Laurine. "Please make it quick, Ducky! I'll have a drink waiting for you.

Have you ever thought of me?"

"Yeah," I say, feeble. "Plenty!"

"You darling!" says Laurine. "Here's a kiss to go on with until you get here! Hurry, Ducky!"

Then I sweat! I still don't know nothing about Joe, understand. I cuss out the guys at the tank

because I blame them for this. If Laurine was just another blonde—well—when it comes to ordinary

blondes I can leave 'em alone or leave 'em alone, either one. A married man gets that way or else. But

Laurine has a look of unquenched enthusiasm that gives a man very strange weak sensations at the back

of his knees. And she'd had four husbands and shot one and got acquitted.

So I punch the keys for the tank technical room, fumbling. And the screen says: "What is your

name?" but I don't want any more. I punch the name of the old guy who's stock clerk in Maintenance.

And the screen gives me some pretty interestin' dope—I never woulda thought the old fella had ever had

that much pep—and winds up by mentionin' a unclaimed deposit now amountin' to two hundred eighty

credits in the First National Bank, which he should look into. Then it spiels about the new secretarial

service and gives me the tank at last.

I start to swear at the guy who looks at me. But he says, tired:

"Snap it off, fella. We got troubles an' you're just another. What are the logics doin' now?"

I tell him, and he laughs a hollow laugh.

"A light matter, fella," he says. "A very light matter! We just managed to clamp off all the data plates

that give information on high explosives. The demand for instructions in counterfeiting is increasing minute

by minute. We are also trying to shut off, by main force, the relays that hook in to data plates that just

barely might give advice on the fine points of murder. So if people will only keep busy getting the goods

on each other for a while, maybe we'll get a chance to stop the circuits that are shifting credit-balances

from bank to bank before everybody's bankrupt except the guys who thought of askin' how to get big

bank accounts in a hurry."

"Then," I says hoarse, "shut down the tank! Do somethin'!"

"Shut down the tank?" he says, mirthless. "Does it occur to you, fella, that the tank has been doin' all

the computin' for every business office for years? It's been handlin' the distribution of ninety-four per cent

of all telecast programs, has given out all information on weather, plane schedules, special sales,

employment opportunities and news; has handled all person-to-person contacts over wires and recorded

every business conversation and agreement— Listen, fella! Logics changed civilization. Logics are

civilization! If we shut off logics, we go back to a kind of civilization we have forgotten how to run! I'm

getting hysterical myself and that's why I'm talkin' like this! If my wife finds out my paycheck is thirty

credits a week more than I told her and starts hunting for that redhead—"

He smiles a haggard smile at me and snaps off. And I sit down and put my head in my hands. It's

true. If something had happened back in cave days and they'd hadda stop usin' fire— If they'd hadda

stop usin' steam in the nineteenth century or electricity in the twentieth— It's like that. We got a very

simple civilization. In the nineteen hundreds a man would have to make use of a typewriter, radio,

telephone, teletypewriter, newspaper, reference library, encyclopedias, office files, directories, plus

messenger service and consulting lawyers, chemists, doctors, dieticians, filing clerks, secretaries—all to

put down what he wanted to remember an' to tell him what other people had put down that he wanted to

know; to report what he said to somebody else and to report to him what they said back. All we have to

have is logics. Anything we want to know or see or hear, or anybody we want to talk to, we punch keys

on a logic. Shut off logics and everything goes skiddoo. But Laurine—

Somethin' had happened. I still didn't know what it was. Nobody else knows, even yet. What had

happened was Joe. What was the matter with him was that he wanted to work good. All this fuss he was

raisin' was, actual, nothin' but stuff we shoulda thought of ourselves. Directive advice, tellin' us what we

wanted to know to solve a problem, wasn't but a slight extension of logical-integrator service. Figurin' out

a good way to poison a fella's wife was only different in degree from figurin' out a cube root or a guy's

bank balance. It was gettin' the answer to a question. But things was goin' to pot because there was too

Murray Leinster - A Logic Named Joe

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: