"Leinster, Murray - A Logic Named Joe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)
IT WAS ON the the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, and 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 axe to him. Sooner or later I'm gonna do one or the other. I kinda hope it's the axe. I could use a couple million dollars, sure!----and Joe'd tell me how to get or make them. He can do plenty! But so far I've been scared to take a chance. After all, I figure I really saved a civilization by turning him off.
The way Laurine fits in is that she makes cold shivers run up and 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 hellcats but I value them. If I have sense enough to leave well enough alone, sooner or later I will retire on a pension and Social Security and spend the rest of my life fishing contented and lying 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 seventeen 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 using them as business-machine service. They added a vision screen for speed, and they found out they'd make logics. They were surprised and pleased. They're still finding out what logics will do, but everybody's got them.
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 and whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecasting comes on your logic's screen. Or you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" and the screen blinks and sputters and you're hooked up with the logic in her house and 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 during Garfield's administration or what is PDQ and R selling for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big building full of all the facts in creation and all the recorded telecasts whatever was made-and it's hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country-and anything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it and you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, and keeps books, and acts as consulting chemist, physicist, astronomer, and tealeaf reader, with a "Advice to 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 accounts the Carson Circuit. And Joe should have been a perfectly normal logic, keeping some family or other from wearing out its brains doing the kids' homework for them. But something went wrong in the assembly line. It was something 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, being 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, and he went through the regular tests without anybody screaming shrilly on finding out what he was. And he went right on out and was dully installed in the home of Mr. Thaddeus Konlanovitch 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 and seen the Kiddie Shows. Around noon their parents peeled them away from him and piled them in the car. Then they come back in the house for the lunch they'd forgot and one of the kids s№eaked back and they found him punching keys for the Kiddie Shows of the week before. They dragged him out and went off. But they left Joe turned on.
That was noon. Nothing happened until two in the afternoon. It was the calm before the storm. Laurine wasn't in town yet, but she was coming. I picture Joe sitting 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 digging out and putting on a data plate now. Joe had plenty of material to work on. And he must started working right off the bat.
Joe ain't vicious, you understand. He ain't like one of these ambitious robots you read about that make lip their minds the human race is inefficiant and has got to be wiped out and replaced by thinking 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. And he's a logic. And logics can do a lotta things that ain't been found out yet. So Joe, discovering the fact, begun to feel restless. He selects some things us dumb humans ain't thought of yet, and begins to arrange so logics will be called on to do them.
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 and gives him hell for something or other. He takes it and 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 and the censor circuits block the question?"
Somebody melds a hundred aces and says:
"Why not punch for it and see what happens?"
It's a gag, ci' course~ But the guy goes over. He punches keys. In theory, a censor block is gonna come on and the screen will say severely, "Public Policy Forbids This Service." You hafta have censor blocks or the kiddies will be asking 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 and we come look. He punches, "Blonde." There's another brief pause. Then the screen says, "Hexymetacryloaminoacetifle 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, HexymetacryloaminOacetifle is a selective poison which s fatal to blonde 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 corn-putting machine. I call the tank in a hurry.
"Hey, you guys!" I yell. "Somethin's happened! Logics are giving 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 something 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 hundredproof you have consumed."
This guy was plenty plastered - just plastered enough to stagger next door and obey instructions. And 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 off that memo! He patented "SOBUH, The Drink that Makes Happy Homes!" You can top off any souse with a slug or two of it and go home sober as a judge. The guy's cussing income taxes right now!
His logic comes through with the simplest, neatest, and the most efficient counterfeiting device yet known to science. You see, all the data was in the tank. The logic-since Joe had closed some relays here and 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 and having plenty more on hand. They hadda time telling his counterfeits from the real stuff, and the only way they done it was that he changed his printer, kid fashion, not being able to let something that was working 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. And 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 and perfect. Some of them 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 and fixed up this logics service which planned perfect crimes, nourishing and attractive meals, counterfeiting machines, and new industries with a fine impartiality. He musta been plenty happy, Joe must. He was functioning swell, buzzing along to himself while the Korlanovitch kids were off riding with their ma and pa.
They come back at seven o'clock, the kids all happily wore out with their afternoon of fighting each other in the car. Their folks put them to bed and sat down to rest. They saw Joe's screen flickering meditative from one subject to another and old man Korlanovitch had had enough excitement for one day. He turned Joe off.
And at that instant the pattern of relays that Joe had turned on snapped off, all the offers of directive service stopped flashing on logic screens everywhere, and peace descended on the earth.
For everybody else. But for me. Laurine come to town. I have often thanked God fervent that she didn't marry me when I thought I wanted her to. In the intervening years she had progressed. She was blonde and fatal to begin with. She had got blonder and fataler and had had four husbands and one acquittal for homicide and had acquired an air of enthusiasm and self-confidence. That's just a sketch of the background. Laurine was not the kinda former girl-friend you like to have turning up in the same town with your wife. But she came to town, and 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 them together. And every logic in town was dutifully flashing a notice, "If you want to do something and don't know how to do it-ask your logic!" every time they were turned on for use. More'n that, when people punched for the morning news, they got a full account of the previous afternoon's doings. Which put them 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, and then comes up with a set-up using the Brownian movement to turn little wheels. If the wheels ain't bigger than an eighth of an inch they'll turn, all right, and practically it's perpetual motion. Another one asks for the secret of transmuting metals.. The logic rakes back in the data plates and integrates a strictly practical answer. It does take so much power that you can make no profit except on radium, but that pays off good. And from the fact that for a couple years to come the police were turning up new and improved jiifimies, knob-claws for getting 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 interested, but Joe bypassed all censor-circuits because they hampered the service he figured logics should give humanity. So the kids and teenagers who wanted to know what comes after the bees and flowers found out. And there is certain facts which men hope their wives won't do more and suspect, and 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-your can figure out how many rows got started that night when the men come home!
All this while Joe goes on buzzing happy to himself, showing 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.
And then Laurine gets onto the new service. She turn on the logic in her hotel room, probably 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 probably looks enthusiastics 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 occ 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 want to be pestered when I'm home, and there ain't an data plates on code-listed logics, because the codes changed so often, like a guy gets plastered and tells redhead to call him up, and on getting sober hurried has the code changed before she reaches his wife on screen.
Well! Joe is stumped. That's probably the first question logics service hasn't been able to answer. "How can I find Ducky?" ! ! Quite a problem! So Joe throw over it while showing the Korlanovitch kids the animated comic about the cute little boy who carries stick of dynamite in his hip pocket and plays practical joke 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 and 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 interesting item that once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks and 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 walls. "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 rectining asleep on the bed. She'd been told to leave her logic turned on and she'd 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.
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