Eric Flint & Murray Leinster & Guy Gordon - A Logic Named Joe, Angielskie [EN](4)(2)
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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.
Copyright © 2004 by the estate of Murray Leinster.
"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
).
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any 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
Page 1
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 Skyscraperwas published in Argosymagazine in
1919, seven years before the science fiction genre inaugurated in the 4/26 issue of Amazing Storieshad
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 Starand The Nine Billion Names of God, is another; Ray Bradbury,
author of The Million Year Picnicand The Sound of Thunderwould 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 Astoundingin 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
Page 2
Astoundingin 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 Astoundingin late 1937) to what we now call "modern science fiction." He was a
constant presence in Astoundingin the 1940's and 1950's, won his Hugo finally at the age of 60 with the
1956 Astoundingnovella 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 Astoundingwho 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 Moklinand The Other Now, which managed to embrace Gold's grim world-view
in no less sprightly fashion than First Contacthad 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 Joewas 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
Page 3
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.
Page 4
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
Page 5
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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.
Copyright © 2004 by the estate of Murray Leinster.
"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
).
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any 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
Page 1
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 Skyscraperwas published in Argosymagazine in
1919, seven years before the science fiction genre inaugurated in the 4/26 issue of Amazing Storieshad
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 Starand The Nine Billion Names of God, is another; Ray Bradbury,
author of The Million Year Picnicand The Sound of Thunderwould 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 Astoundingin 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
Page 2
Astoundingin 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 Astoundingin late 1937) to what we now call "modern science fiction." He was a
constant presence in Astoundingin the 1940's and 1950's, won his Hugo finally at the age of 60 with the
1956 Astoundingnovella 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 Astoundingwho 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 Moklinand The Other Now, which managed to embrace Gold's grim world-view
in no less sprightly fashion than First Contacthad 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 Joewas 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
Page 3
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.
Page 4
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
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