A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “I do not think so, replied Drach. “This is a machine age, an age of electricity and radio and television. We are up in the air in every why. Our bodies may suffer, but our minds are certainly expanding. Think of ten million amateur radio experts in the United States! Think of the millions who can repair their own automobiles or airplanes! No one walks anymore. The pedestrian as a race is doomed. So is everything that is old fashioned. We are living in an age of jazz. You have a good room here. Have you tried your television sheet? Probably did not know you had one, did you?

  Here it is over on this apparently blank wall. Let me turn off the lights and tune in for you. Do you like opera? I can get some good heavy opera from Berlin, or, perhaps, you rather see the Follies or a good Burlesque show. How about it? They are playing cricket over in Australia and I can get that for you.”

  “Let’s see a good song and dance show for the tired business man,” suggested Haggard. “I hear that the show, “ADAM NEEDS A MADAM,” is worth seeing.”

  CHAPTER III

  An Ominous Dream

  SO Drach turned off the lights and tuned in on the musical comedy. And for the next two hours the chorus girls pranced and danced and sang, and they were seen and heard just as well in the hotel room as they would have been in the best seat of the old time theater. Then, pleading fatigue from the excitement of the day, the coach and the electrician left their host, after the television screen had been disconnected and the lights turned on.

  Ball was unable to sleep, so he sent down stairs for the evening paper. The bell-boy who brought it explained that he could obtain very good current news service by tuning in on GYX on the radio, but Ball preferred to get his news in the old fashioned way. The very first article that he read irritated him. It gave a full account of the mechanical traffic policeman that the New York Electrical Society had finally perfected and had given, as a present, to the city. This traffic robot had an automatic eye, which was extremely sensitive to light. The change from light to shadow set the arms of the robot in motion. He was controlled by a beam of light which shone persistently in his eye. When a car crossed this beam of light, cutting it off from the eye, the robot reacted by moving its arms in such a way that the traffic signals were changed, thereby allowing the automobiles causing the change to proceed. The signals were changed again only when thirty seconds of the uninterrupted shining of the beam in the robot’s eye had passed, thereby allowing all the cars on that street to move on. It was really an ingenious device. The article finally became rather humorous, and suggested that, with additional improvements, it might be possible to make a police commissioner out of one of these robots.

  Ball went to bed, thoroughly irritated with his first day of actual contact with the new world. Instead of finding comfort and relaxation in sleep, he was simply tormented with unpleasant dreams. He thought that he was living in a world in which the conflict between the machine robots and the worker was so intense that unemployment was a serious problem. In practically every phase of life the machine was crowding the workingman out of his job. The robots were selling tickets in the subway stations, directing traffic, digging ditches, building new skyscrapers, forming new and unheard of additions to the army and navy. And some of them, connected to adding machines, and to typewriters in large offices were actually keeping sets of books and doing part of the stenographic work in a purely mechanical way by very capable machines.

  In these dreams, Ball saw the gradual starvation of society, first, for the real pleasures of life, then, for. the comforts, and later on for the actual necessities. He visioned parades of unemployed workingmen, demanding of capital a right to earn a living. But these very parades were policed by robots with blue-coats on who were very perfect in preserving order by mechanically-wielded batons. In his dream Ball saw one strike a poor woman on the head. The baby that she carried dropped out of her lifeless arms and would have fallen to the pavement, but Ball caught it with one hand and struck the robot in the face with the other. At once he was the center of an attack from a dozen machines who pounded him into insensibility. As he fell, he tried to save the child, crying in his terror, “You are killing civilization Instead of the man.”

  But, instead of hitting the concrete, he floated into the air, and the child turned into a football. Seeing that he had on the old football armor of former days, he plunged madly through the gathering clouds to make a touchdown. Helping him were two of his former friends „who had died. They whispered to him that he could save the world from electrified machinery if he only wanted to. So, with their help, he plunged through a rainbow, and, with the tattered fragments streaming over his shoulders, he made a touchdown at the great White Throne and awoke with a harsh cry of victory. Dazed, he made his way to the shower bath and tried to recover his senses under its stinging spray. Then he partly dressed and sent for a bell-boy.

  “Start this television apparatus and show me how it works,” he commanded. “Go slow and give me all the details and teach me just how I can call the different stations and find the programme in the paper. You telephone down to your Captain that you are going to be busy for the next few hours.”

  And for the rest of the night he and the bellboy worked at the television machine till Ball was thoroughly familiar with it. It was daylight when they finally stopped. Immediately after breakfast Ball took a taxi for the sales office of Robots International. There his letters of introduction gave him a very satisfactory interview with the manager, who went into great detail as to the future of the company and just how their mechanical men would replace human labor. It ended with Ball buying ten million dollars worth of the capital stock. As he was leaving the office, the manager took him into a private room. A young lady simply but elegantly dressed was waiting there in a chair. The manager smiled.

  “I understand you are a single man, Mr. Ball. We made a few of these dainty feminine robots just for men like you. I would be glad to give you this one. She can dance, has a good line of modern slang, can smoke and in the privacy of your hotel room can entertain you in many ways. It will take about a half hour to teach you how to handle her. Will you take her with you?”

  Ball blushingly refused. He was a pronounced mysogonist, and the manager could not have made a greater mistake, than suggesting such a companion to such a man.

  “That is just one more reason for fighting this dreadful mechanical age,” Ball growled as he rushed down to his taxi.

  Ball Takes a Hand

  FOR many years Ball had possessed a one track mind. When he started to hunt reptile eggs in central Asia, he kept on till he had made a thorough success of it and had presented practically all the great museums of the world with almost perfect specimens. He had gone into all his explorations with the same enthusiastic determination. This was not the first time that he had come into conflict with men who might become his enemies. Danger was no obstacle to him, in fact it simply made him more determined than ever to succeed.

  His first ambition was to secure recognition as an important stockholder in Robots International This he had easily done by the investment of only ten millions. Then he became interested in television stock and soon owned a large block, not nearly enough to give him the control, but sufficient to have him at once elected to a place on the Board of Directors. Then he secured the services of the best electrical engineers that his wealth could hire and told them to go to work with Rudolph Drach and build a real robot football team for the next season. He told them to spare no expense, but produce a team that could tear the Penn team to pieces.

  For years the riches of Ball had been unrecognized. Now his large purchases of stock and his interest in mechanical sport made him an almost daily news feature. It was discovered among other things that he was the third richest man in the States, that he was a widower, that he was engaged to marry, for the first time, that winter; that he would never marry; that he had a. wife and three children. To all of these rumors he gave the same reply; namely, that he was a mysogonist. This attitude introduce
d the word for the first time to ninety-nine percent of New York’s population. As soon as its real meaning was understood, twenty-seven hundred unmarried belles of society determined to marry him before the year was over.

  Meantime, Ball was busy. He was apparently fond of the limelight in the daytime, but in the evening he had a peculiar way of disappearing. It was commonly thought that he was leading a double life, but no one had the nerve to suggest such a thing to him. He was now occupying a twenty room apartment on Park Avenue, where he was waited on by a number of wonderful mechanical servants. The only exception to this was the cook. In the kitchen Ball had to acknowledge that the robot chef had been a failure, and this discovery was a great disappointment to him, as he knew that mechanical cooks would find a never failing sales market and thus greatly increase the value of his stock in Robots International.

  It was an open secret that great days were ahead for this company in the manufacture and sale of robots for every line of work. Labor was united in denouncing the entire programme of so universally substituting machines for men. But, in spite of this opposition, the money men who controlled the new companies, such as Robots International, Television, and Radio, were determined to go on with their programme and perform the manual labor of the world with electrified machinery in the shape of men and women, who would be tireless, errorless and wageless.

  In spite of his great activity in business, Ball found time to enter into sports with the enthusiasm which marked all of his efforts. He forced his election to the Rules Committee of Inter-Sectional Football, and on that body put through some new rules. One was that no matter how a robot was injured in a game, it had to continue in that gain? without mechanical attention. He also had. the time of the game changed to one period of an hour’s duration, rather than four quarters of fifteen minutes. A rule was passed that no human being, in the way of a coach or mechanician, was allowed on the field during the play. His constant statement and argument was that if the robots were mechanically perfect, they should not need attention from human agencies.

  All that winter there was an undercurrent of unrest seething in New York city. It was well known that Robots International was manufacturing robots on a large scale, but there were no actual sales, simply the placing of advanced orders. They announced in their advertisements that these orders would be filled the latter part of November of the current year, and gave as an explanation of this delay that it would take the large manufacturing plants that long to adjust their machinery so they could use the robots instead of human mechanics.

  As the months passed, and more and more the laboring men saw by the handwriting on the wall that thousands and tens of thousands of their number would be thrown out of employment, the unrest grew. Ball had to bear the brunt of their abuse. Robots International was simply a company, but he, as a rich man and their largest stockholder, was a living, vivid personality that they could assail with their vituperations. Not only words, but bricks were hurled at him. The apartment house that he lived in was bombed.

  Ball seemed to like it. He became verbose, and almost every week issued a statement to the newspapers, showing the different ways that the companies he was interested in would benefit mankind and the stockholders. For one thing, he proposed that a large percentage of the school teachers be discharged and a television sheet be placed in every room of the public schools. Then the lessons for the entire nation could be taught from the television broadcasting stations by a few expert teachers, and thus there would not only be an increase in the efficiency of the teaching and a very desirable uniformity of methods, but the cost of teaching would greatly diminish, and, thus, taxes could be lowered. Of course, this suggestion made Ball very unpopular with the pedagogues all over the nation and concentrated their rage on the Television Company. The general public was beginning to think and to wonder whether all this advancement in scientific knowledge was really an unmixed blessing.

  In the late spring Ball bought ten thousand acres of land near the Canadian border, ran a high wire fence around it, protected the fence with armed guards and called it in the newspapers his Experimental Station. While not a word was said as to the kind of experiments that were to be performed there, there was no doubt in the minds of the common people that in every way they would work harm, to the laborer. At this time Ball was the best hated man in the United States.

  His money and hired scientists had worked wonders with the robot football team of the New York University, and that fall they won all of the early games. It is true that they won them by rather narrow margins, because the meeting of two robots in the field was rather like an immovable force, meeting an irresistible body, but, still, the perfection of the University robots and the skilled handling of the governing machines by the eleven well trained collegians always managed to win the victory for New York. Meantime, all eyes were trained on the New York-Pennsylvania game, which was dated for the Saturday before Thanksgiving. As a singular fact, the new laboring robots were to be placed in operation the following Monday. Twenty-five thousand had been distributed, and each took the place of three men, working eight hours a day, for these robots were tireless, and a twenty-four hour day had been arranged for their activities.

  CHAPTER IV

  A Surprise

  THE football game had been well advertised. Over sixty million persons, were going to see it on the various television sheets of the nation. That Saturday morning New York city saw its worst riot since the Draft riots of the Civil War. Peace was finally secured only after the fire department had thoroughly wetted the maddened throng.

  The most peaceful part of the entire city was the football field; there the usual few persons were in attendance. The two teams of robots were given their final oiling and electrical testing, while the eleven men on each side oiled their fingers and nervously practiced striking the keys of the machines in front of them. Coach Haggard and Chief Electrician Drach sat near them, with Ball between the Coach and the players. There were probably five spectators on the seats that had been built to accommodate eighty thousand.

  Then the game began. It was to go on, according to the, new rules, for one hour, and during that time only the robots were allowed on the gridiron.

  Almost immediately a whispering arose among the eleven little men who were pounding the electrical keys for the honor of New York. Their robots were playing good ball, but they were not playing the kind of ball that they were being directed to play by the eleven players in the grandstand. They appealed to the Coach and then to the Chief Electrician, both of whom were powerless to help them.

  “The only thing I can see to it,” said Drach, swearing, “is that in some way some one has cut off our control and substituted a new control of his own. Those machines cannot think; they have to be directed in some way, and if they are not reacting to your commands, then someone else is doing it. It is entirely possible that Penn is directing them and is playing both teams from her switchboards. If that is the case, we are in for the worst beating of our lives. What do you thing about it, Ball?”

  The great man simply yawned.

  “Our fellows seem to be doing pretty well so far. Suppose we let them alone and see what happens. Of course, you fellows had better pretend to work at your boards, because we do not want the Penn folks to think that we are puzzled. Look at that New York man go through for a touchdown! Who ever it is that is directing our robots is our friend, or he would not have worked for that score.”

  And that was just the first score. The New York robots played with a skill and energy and fire that had never been seen before in any robot team. They ran circles around the Penn men, stood them on their heads, tricked them in every way, threw the ball, carried it, kicked it till the game ceased to be a contest and became a riot of despair for the Penn players. It was not that-the Penn robots did not play well, but the fact that the New York robots played so much better.

  When the game was half over, a thin stream of New York Undergraduates began to trickle through the gates
, and gradually there were enough present to start cheering. They explained excitedly that the television apparatus had failed to work, no one was able to see the game in the frat or club houses, so, they had decided to come down to the field to see for themselves how the game was really going.

  Finally, the game came to an end. The score of one hundred and sixty to nothing only told part of the story. The Penn team had been outclassed in every department of the playing, and the best of the whole game was the fact that by the end of it over a thousand students were there to cheer the victors.

  As the game progressed, Drach became more and more silent. He looked sidewise at Ball, but that worthy retained his placid appearance. When the game was nearly over, Drach touched Ball on the shoulder.

  “Let’s go to the machine room and look those robots over. They played a wonderful game. I want to see if they are hurt any,” he said.

  And, so, the two old men were in the machine room when the game ended and the robots trotted in off the field. They entered the room, an old trainer locked the door and then the eleven of them gathered around Ball, and, with interlocked arms and swaying bodies, gave a final cheer for the dear old University. Ball just stood there with the tears streaming down his cheeks. Finally he whispered.

  “Well played, my dear boys! You did not forget a single lesson we taught you all during that summer in the Adirondacks. You won the game, but you did more than that. You have helped to establish for all time the supremacy of man over machinery. There will be no more robots on the football field. Next year there will be eighty thousand spectators out to see a real game between real men. Drach, how do you like the way my boys played? I had over twenty old football players help me train them, and, considering the fact that we did not have much chance to practice, and that none of the boys had ever seen a real game, I think they did rather well.”