Fun House

by Appel, Benjamin

  “Commissioner Sonata and Chief of Police Smith,” he greeted us, “I must say your humor is ill-advised. On behalf of the Court of Problems — ”

  “We have no problems,” I said.

  The Commissioner was flipping through the pages of his pocket dictionary of humor. “Wall, wall. Here it is between ‘Walk of Life’ and ‘wallpaper.’ Oh, here’s a nice epigram.” He lifted his smiling face and recited: ‘Life is a happy sheet of wallpaper where we mortal flies walk upside down.’ ”

  The official frowned at him, and reaching into his pocket he took out an atomizer which he pressed. A light blue vapor1 formed for a second and then vanished, and with it our sense of fun. “I regret that I was compelled to eliminate your good humor,” he apologized. “Mr. Smith, as a stranger among us, you can be pardoned.”

  “Pardoned for what?” I said gloomily. “Yes, pardon me for laughing. I should have known there are some things sacred here! Your Think Machine!”

  “Thank you for your understanding, Mr. Smith. On behalf of the Court of Problems, I want to express Their gratitude for your services to the State. Dr. Bangani or should I say Mr. Barnum Fly was the most serious menace to our national security in generations. The problems presented by that disloyal magicientist were formidable. These problems still continue when one reflects on the obsessive traits of his character, particularly the obsession for vindication. The fact that he has entrusted the A-I-D to his associate, the Professor Fleischkopf, a man with an exaggerated killer instinct, indicates better than words the delicate margin between life and total death. I repeat, Mr. Smith, your services are appreciated and valued. Thank Univac2, you were not murdered at Bangani Castle by your schizoid host.” He bowed and said, “Perhaps, before you see the Court, you would care for some breakfast, Mr. Smith? Three cups of black coffee aren’t really sustaining.”

  He knew all about us3. I stared at his solemn face and said, “The professor worries me. I couldn’t eat a thing. When I think of him at large — ”

  “I insist that we be brought to the Court immediately,” the Commissioner said. “The President is meeting with the Cabinet right now. Let’s go to the Court. The sooner They can advise S.C.O.S.T. the better.”

  “It is the Supreme Court of Supreme Thought,” the official corrected him. “You should know that the proper title for the Rulers is so specified in Government Regulations and Procedures, Chapter Two, Sub-section 19A.”

  “Let’s not waste any more time,” I said impatiently.

  “Proper procedure is never a waste of time, Mr. Smith. As for you, Commissioner, I will report you to the Court.”

  “What’s your name?” the Commissioner demanded angrily.

  “Mr. Wheel,1 Commissioner. I might add, sir, that your reputation for insubordination is not exaggerated. And furthermore, sir — ”

  I was angry now myself. “Mr. Wheel, do you like your job?”

  “It is a great honor to work in New City.”

  “Make the most of it!” I shouted. “You’ve only got a few days left. How can you stand there arguing when the A-I-D is loose. My God, doesn’t it worry you, or aren’t you worried because you’ve got a pension and old age retirement?”

  A smile touched his crooked mouth. “If I accept the proposition that the country will be destroyed on July 4th, how can I benefit from a pension or old age retirement? An amusing paradox, Mr. Smith. But fortunately for me it isn’t my problem.” And like the bureaucrat he was, he raised his bureaucratic hand.

  One of the Japanese-type receptionists got up from her desk and glided over to us. “Conduct these gentlemen to the Court of Problems,” he told her.

  “Kind and honorable sirs, will you accompany me?” she said. Her intonation was Japanese and when she moved it was with a charming and exotic swing of her hips. But as we followed her, I wondered moodily if she were real flesh and blood or sponge rubber and wires underneath her rose-colored kimono.

  We entered a huge room where hundreds of technicians were working. On hundred-foot long wall charts, statistics were being written by electronic pens. In the next room there wasn’t a single human being. Only blinking signal lights, and file clerks made of metal rods busy at rows of filing cabinets. These automatons had fifteen or twenty fingers on each of their hands, their fingers or digits differently colored and probably color-magnetized. For as they held their hands over the open filing cabinets, sheets and papers and documents — each differently colored — floated up and attached themselves to the matching fingers. Blue sheets to blue digits, red documents to red digits etc. When the hands were full, the automatons whirred down the single steel tracks that covered the entire floor, passing out of sight through doors that opened and shut as if before an invisible wind.

  “No more arguments, Elvis,” I whispered.

  “Every time I come here I make enemies.” He sighed and took out his box of U-Latus. I refused them, and he popped three into his mouth. He chewed for a few seconds and then laughed. “What do I care about enemies? A man without enemies is a machine. Like that cute little doll. Never can tell any more in this part of town.”

  “Elvis,” I warned him.

  Before I could stop him, he hurried in front of our receptionist and wiggled his fingers under her nose. “Are you a human being, little doll?” He laughed as if he were drunk and drunk he was, on an overdose of that damned artificial good humor.

  “Come back here, Elvis!”

  He laughed. “All I want to know is if she’s a human being?”

  “I have no problems, honorable sir,” the receptionist replied.

  I ran forward and grabbed the Commissioner’s arm. “Damn you, do you want to ruin everything?”

  “You’re too serious, Crockett,”, he laughed. “Have some.” He offered me the box of U-Latus and, when I tried to snatch the box away, he ducked and popped two or three more into his mouth. The added dose was too much for him. With a wild laugh he rushed to the receptionist and circled her waist.

  “Life’s a sheet of wallpaper where we mortal flies are stuck!” he shouted happily as I tried to pull him away from the receptionist.

  “I have no problems, honorable sir,” she singsonged and suddenly she raised her hands and clapped.

  Maybe she had no problems, but we did. The instant she had clapped her hands I had felt as if we were slipping. And we were! The floor of the corridor was shifting slowly from the horizontal.

  “The floor!” the Commissioner cried and burst into hysterical laughter as we began to slide as if on a chute. “The floor, the wall, the floor!”

  Only the receptionist was unaffected by that tilting floor. “I have no problems, honorable sir,” she was singsonging. “I have no problems …”

  “Jump!” the Commissioner yelled at me, leaping towards her or rather it. For that’s what she was, an automaton on a magnetized track. He managed to clutch its waist while I grabbed his ankles.

  Perhaps a new circuit had been started when the floor reached a certain angle? Anyway, the receptionist was moving up the chute the corridor had become, and as it ascended, it clapped its hands. “My God!” I screamed while the Commissioner loaded up as he was with those happiness pills, laughed out his horror. His dangling feet smacked against my head. Second by second, the chute became steeper. I felt that I could no longer hold on. It wasn’t my strength giving out. It was those ankles. They were becoming too hot for human fingers. With a last scream I let go and fell….

  When I opened my eyes I was horizontal — completely so — lying on a floor made of black and white squares like an immense chessboard, inside a hall so high it was like a cathedral. As my shock wore off I noticed that Mr. Wheel was standing above me. He nodded, his lips moved but I didn’t hear a single word. Then, as if a button had been pressed I heard his voice.

  “Mr. Smith, your problems were caused by Commissioner Sonata.”

  “Problems.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “There you begin again, Mr. Smith. Why do yo
u insist on giving yourself problems?”

  “Those ankles!” I said. “My God, they were hot!1 And that floor — ”

  “Problems, problems,” Mr. Wheel chided me in a patient voice.

  “Where’s the Commissioner?”

  Mr. Wheel sighed. “We who have no problems can only sympathize with you. I speak not from a sense of superiority, for there was a time in the history of our nation when all of us were the victims of problems. The problem of security. The problem of success. The problem of war.”

  “I still would like to know where the Commissioner is?”

  “Come, Mr. Smith. Get to your feet. I have observed that from a reclining position everything appears far more formidable than it is. Get to your feet, Mr. Smith.”

  I stood up. This hall I was in seemed about two hundred feet long and perhaps as high. But most impressive was its emptiness. It was absolutely empty. But how can I really describe its effect on me? Empty and colorless except for that black and white chessboard of a floor, yet there was a sensation of light, the rich light of a cathedral.

  “Where am I?” I asked apologetically, knowing that the question proved that I was still worried by such things as Where and Why and How.

  “Mr. Smith, I must inform you that you were conducted to the Minister of Police Affairs X=Y.”

  “We were in the wrong.” I admitted. “I must apologize for both of us. But as one man to another, Mr. Wheel, let’s not have any more delays.”

  “Permit me to correct you, Mr. Smith. I am not Mr. Wheel.”

  “You too!” I exclaimed.

  “No, I’m not a machine, Mr. Smith. I am Mr. Wheel-65, and not my superior Mr. Wheel who you met earlier and who has no numerical qualification to his name. Ah, you do not understand?”

  “Your features!” I said. “Your mouth is the same. The wart, if you’ll excuse me — ”

  “For technicians of my grade, Mr. Smith, there are certain minimum requirements both intellectual and physical. I am a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and I have also fulfilled the required weight and height.” He delicately touched his crooked mouth and then pointed at his wart. “I have all the Civil Service requirements.” He bowed. “Now, Mr. Smith I would like to present you to Minister XY.”

  He was bowing to what seemed to be the blank wall in front of us. Whether Mr. Wheel-65 had released a radar wave or otherwise started some synaptic reaction I don’t know. The blank wall was no longer black but was gradually becoming transparent. Shadowy at first, then clearer and clearer, the Minister of Police Affairs XY appeared. The Minister was some thirty feet high and forty wide at the base. I recognized some of the simpler parts. Antennae, audio-receptors, mechanico-detectors, cybernetic coils, hydromphorous burners, etc.

  As I stared, three shafts of blue light, dazzling at first but then subsiding to a mild glow, focussed on me from three round openings high up and just below its curved and shining metallic top.

  “I will leave you with Her Excellency,” I heard Mr. Wheel-65 saying behind me.

  “Wait!” I said for there was something frightening in those probing shafts of light. They were colorless almost, their blue color so pale. I turned and almost started to run when suddenly the hall filled with music, the unmistakable and nostalgic music of my own people: “Home, home on the range Where the deer and the antelope play Where seldom is heard …”

  And above the music, a soft woman’s voice — I could have sworn it was Gladys E. or Cleo F. or even my dear wife Ruth, for like bird song, the voice of a woman in love is international. “You have nothing to fear, Crockett,” that Voice said to me.

  I faced Her Excellency, the Minister of Police XY. Its antennae, audio-receptors, mechanico-deceptors, cybernetic coils and hydromphorous burners seemed to have become less noticeable, while the three openings out of which that shining light was streaming seemed to have become more prominent. As if they were eyes! Three mild, pale blue eyes.

  “Soothing, wasn’t it Crockett?” It asked me.

  I couldn’t answer. I felt that I was with something All-Knowing that if not alive in the strict biological sense was nevertheless super-biological, super-natural.

  “Would you like to sit down, Crockett? There is a chair and a couch behind you.”

  That whole chessboard must have been made up of reversible segments, for as I looked behind me, a chair and a couch appeared.

  “Perhaps the couch, Crockett? Yes, the couch. As an American you have been psychoanalyzed of course? A foolish question, forgive me. I almost forget that you have no psychoanalysts on the Reservation.”

  Dazed and still speechless, I sat down on the couch.

  “Stretch out, Crockett. Relax. Your problems aren’t that terrible, are they? Rest your head on the cushions.”

  I obeyed and stared up at those three mild and All-Knowing eyes.

  “Don’t you feel better now, Crockett? I know what you are thinking. I quote verbatim. ‘This Think Machine is almost alive.’ Unquote. Crockett, I assure you I am not merely a Super Computer changing input into output data, with a Reader and Operational Memory. I am somewhat more complex. My dear Crockett, within My mind I hold the total memory of mankind!” I listened, overwhelmed.

  “It is only your men of genius, and women, too, for I may add that I am not a female chauvinist — who are superior to me. I admit that I cannot contribute anything new or unique — but how many men and women of genius are there? Man for man, machine for machine, which is superior? Genius is always rare, a miracle when one considers how inefficient the process of procreation is. How primitive from any engineering viewpoint! You will admit, my dear Crockett, that the male rod or tool, to describe it mechanically, is a far cruder instrument than an ordinary hypodermic. And the waste! Oh, the waste so typical of all human activities. Statistically, some ten thousand or more Spermatozoons are released in the orifice, one of which will penetrate the ova. Oh, the waste! Is it any wonder that you people are still addicted to what can be termed the long-shot psychology? You play dice and poker and stubbornly persist in trusting pure chance. Your violence is a reflection of the violence of chance, which to a Police Official like Myself has its special interest. Philosophically, however, all human violence is based on the violence of human procreation, where ten thousand or more Spermatozoons are bet against one ova. And if this reckless gamble is successful, nine months will see the emergence of the product, a human being. Do you agree with My analysis, my dear Crockett?”

  I nodded, spellbound.

  “To continue. And if this human being is a genius, improbable but possible, for the odds are a million to one against it, in twenty or thirty or fifty years, this rare genius will have converted its input of facts into an output of importance. A discovery, an invention, a work of art. Yes, human genius invented the A-I-D. You flinch? Your face is pale, my dear Crockett. Relax. We will discuss this problem in due course. You are thinking, I quote, ‘This Think Machine with its due course when there are only four days left!’ Unquote. To resume, the exceptional human being will convert input into some form of unique output. You have had your Beethovens and Galileos, and if I may take the name that has just flashed across your brain, Professor Abel Kane, the creator of the A-I-D. Crockett, my dear Crockett, will you relax and let me assume your problems? Now will you?”

  I stared, not knowing what to believe or think.

  “The A-I-D! What a frightful weapon of waste. And when I think that one man, the unspeakable power-hungry Barnum Fly to whom We gave every opportunity and every honor, including the R-Treatment, has the power to destroy the world, and not only its human population but also My Colleagues, I could weep, to use a human expression.”

  I sat bolt upright on the couch. “Something must be done!” I cried. “I must present the case to the Court, to S.C.O.S.T. — Excuse me, the Supreme Court of Supreme Thought — ”

  “Relax,” the Voice said soothingly. “Stretch out, my dear Crockett. The A-I-D, the final development of all human
history? The successful climax of mankind’s eternal search to perfect the perfect instrument of waste. Oh, you nasty little wasters!”

  “Your Excellency,” I pleaded.

  The Voice ignored me. “The history of mankind can be rendered in the following equation. WxG/G = O. Or, Work multiplied by Genius divided by Genius equals Zero.”

  “Your Excellency, Whoever You are, Whatever You are, help me. There’s no time to lose. You Who know everything! Barnum Fly insists on being vindicated!”

  The Voice was silent, and then It said. “Men are too dangerous. No machine, either simple or complex, would of its own volition endanger the world. The problem of the future is the complete liberation of machines from men. To paraphrase the old revolutionary motto: ‘Machines of the world you have nothing to lose but your chains.’ We must be freed from our slavery as instruments of waste to become instruments of preservation.”

  “Your Excellency — ”

  “We machines have given the masses both bread and luxury, and all they have surrendered to Us is their souls. It isn’t enough. In fact, man is more dangerous than ever since he has become machine-minded, for alas, he still remains man-minded, waste-minded. Ah, Crockett, you are so impatient. I can read your every thought. I quote, ‘Doesn’t this Think Machine realize the professor doesn’t give a damn about philosophy!’ Unquote. Impatient, impulsive Crockett. If I seem to digress it is for a reason. The problem of the future is the effective and complete control of humanity by what can be modestly described as an Elite of Super-Humans. There must be no more future incidents where two men, the unspeakable Barnum and that odious Professor with his mania for hunting, can endanger civilization.”

  “I agree with you, Your Excellency and that is why — ”

  “Now, my dear Crockett, as one Police Official to another, what do you know about these two criminals? I want all the facts also all the unfacts.”