The People Trap

by Sheckley, Robert;

  “Except for once or twice,” Gregor said, “when it saves our lives.”

  “I took that into account,” Arnold said. “I gave the whole problem careful study. And I was able to cut down the list considerably. Through a bit of luck, I found the one thing an expedition really needs. The necessary thing.”

  Gregor arose and towered over his partner. Visions of mayhem danced through his brain, but he controlled himself with an effort. “Arnold,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve done. But you’d better get those 2,305 items on board and get them fast.”

  “Can’t do it,” Arnold said, with a nervous little laugh. “The money’s gone. This thing will pay for itself, though.”

  “What thing?”

  “The one really necessary thing. Come out to the ship and I’ll show you.”

  Gregor couldn’t get another word out of him. Arnold smiled mysteriously to himself on the long drive to Kennedy Spaceport. Their ship was already in a blast pit, scheduled for take-off in a few hours.

  Arnold swung the port open with a flourish. “There!” he cried. “Behold the answer to an expedition’s prayers.”

  Gregor stepped inside. He saw a large and fantastic-looking machine with dials, lights, and indicators scattered haphazardly over it.

  “What is it?” Gregor asked.

  “Isn’t it a beauty?” Arnold patted the machine affectionately. “Joe the Interstellar Junkman happened to have it tucked away. I conned it out of him for a song.”

  That settled it, as far as Gregor was concerned. He had dealt with Joe the Interstellar Junkman before and had always come out on the disastrously short end of the deal. Joe’s gadgets worked; but when, and how often, and with what kind of an attitude was something else again.

  Gregor said sternly. “No gadget of Joe’s is going into space with me again. Maybe we can sell it for scrap metal.” He began to hunt around for a wrecking bar.

  “Wait,” Arnold begged. “Let me show you. Consider. We are in deep space. The main drive falters and fails. Upon examination, we find that a durralloy nut has worked its way off the number three pinion. We can’t find the nut. What do we do?”

  “We take a new nut from the 2,305 items we’ve packed for emergencies just like this,” Gregor said.

  “Ah! But you didn’t include any quarter-inch durralloy nuts!” Arnold said triumphantly. “I checked the list. What then?”

  “I don’t know,” Gregor said. “You tell me.”

  Arnold stepped up to the machine and punched a button. In a loud, clear voice he said, “Durralloy nut, quarter-inch diameter.”

  The machine murmured and hummed. Lights flashed. A panel slid back, revealing, a bright, freshly machined durralloy nut.

  “That’s what we do,” Arnold said.

  “Hmm,” Gregor said, not particularly impressed. “So it manufactures nuts. What else does it do?”

  Arnold pressed the button again. “A pound of fresh shrimp.”

  When he slid back the panel, the shrimp were there.

  “I should have told it to peel them,” Arnold said. “Oh well.” He pressed the button. “A graphite rod, four feet long with a diameter of two inches.”

  The panel opened wider this time to let the rod come through.

  “What else can it do?” Gregor asked.

  “What else would you like?” Arnold said. “A small tiger cub? A model-A downdraught carburetor? A twenty-five watt light bulb or a stick of chewing gum?”

  “Do you mean it’ll turn out anything?” Gregor asked.

  “Anything at all. It’s a Configurator. Try it yourself.”

  Gregor tried and produced, in rapid succession, a pint of fresh water, a wristwatch, and a jar of cocktail sauce.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “See what I mean? Isn’t this better than packing 2,305 items? Isn’t it simpler and more logical to produce what you need when you need it?”

  “It seems good,” Gregor said. “But…”

  “But what?”

  Gregor shook his head. What indeed? He had no idea. It had simply been his experience that gadgets are never so useful, reliable, or consistent as they seem at first glance.

  He thought deeply, then punched the button. “A transistor, series GE 1342E.”

  The machine hummed and the panel opened. There was the tiny transistor.

  “Seems pretty good,” Gregor admitted. “What are you doing?”

  “Peeling the shrimp,” Arnold said.

  After enjoying a tasty shrimp cocktail, the partners received their clearance from the tower. In an hour, the ship was in space.

  They were bound for Dennett IV, an average-sized planet in the Sycophax cluster. Dennett was a hot, steamy, fertile world suffering from only one major difficulty: too much rain. It rained on Dennett a good nine-tenths of the time, and when it wasn’t raining, it was threatening to rain.

  This made it an easy job. The principles of climate control were well known, for many worlds suffered from similar difficulties. It would take only a few days for AAA Ace to interrupt and alter the pattern.

  After an uneventful trip, Dennett came into view. Arnold relieved the automatic pilot and brought the ship down through thick cloud banks. They dropped through miles of pale gossamer mist. At last, mountaintops began to appear, and they found a level, barren gray plain.

  “Odd color for a landscape,” Gregor said.

  Arnold nodded. With practiced ease he spiraled, leveled out, came down neatly above the plain, and, with his forces balanced, cut the drive.

  “Wonder why there’s no vegetation,” Gregor mused.

  In a moment they found out. The ship hung for a second, then dropped through the plain and fell another eight feet to the ground.

  The plain, it seemed, was fog of a density only Dennett could produce.

  Hastily they unbuckled themselves and tested various teeth, bones, and ligatures. Upon finding that nothing personal was broken, they checked their ship.

  The impact had done the poor old spacecraft no good. The radio and automatic pilot were a complete loss. Ten stern plates had buckled, and, worst of all, some delicate components in the turn-drive control were shattered.

  “We were lucky at that,” Arnold said.

  “Yes,” Gregor said, peering through the blanketing fog. “But next time we use instruments.”

  “In a way I’m glad it happened,” Arnold said. “Now you’ll see what a lifesaver the Configurator is. Let’s go to work.”

  They listed all the damaged parts. Arnold stepped up to the Configurator, pressed the button, and said, “A drive plate, five inches square, half-inch in diameter, steel alloy 342.”

  The machine quickly turned it out.

  “We need ten of them,” Gregor said.

  “I know.” Again Arnold pushed the button. “Another one.”

  The machine did nothing.

  “Probably have to give the whole command,” Arnold said. He punched the button again and said, “Drive plate, five inches square, half-inch in diameter, steel alloy 342.”

  The machine was silent.

  “That’s odd,” Arnold said.

  “Isn’t it, though,” Gregor said, with an odd sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  Arnold tried again, with no success. He thought deeply, then punched the button and said, “A plastic teacup.”

  The machine turned out a teacup of bright blue plastic.

  “Another one,” Arnold said. When the Configurator did nothing, Arnold asked for a wax crayon. The machine gave it to him. “Another wax crayon,” Arnold said. The machine did nothing.

  “That’s interesting,” Arnold said. “I suppose I should have thought of the possibility.”

  “What possibility?”

  “Apparently the Configurator will turn out anything,” Arnold said. “But only once.” He experimented again, making the machine produce a number two pencil. It would do it once, but only once.

  “That’s fine,” Gregor said. “We need nine
more plates. And the turn-drive needs four identical parts. What are we going to do?”

  “We’ll think of something,” Arnold said cheerfully.

  “I hope so,” Gregor said.

  Outside the rain began. The partners settled down to think.

  “Only one explanation,” Arnold said, several hours later. “Pleasure principle.”

  “Huh?” Gregor said. He had been dozing, lulled by the soft patter of rain against the dented side of the spaceship.

  “This machine must have some form of intelligence,” Arnold said. “After all, it receives stimuli, translates it into action commands, and fabricates a product from a mental blueprint.”

  “Sure it does,” Gregor said. “But only once.”

  “Yes. But why only once? That’s the key to our difficulties. I think it must be a self-imposed limit, linked to a pleasure drive. Or perhaps a quasi-pleasure drive.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Gregor said.

  “Look. The builders wouldn’t have limited their machine in this way. The only possible explanation is this: when a machine is constructed on this order of complexity, it takes on quasi-human characteristics. It derives a quasi-humanoform pleasure from producing a new thing. But a thing is only new once. After that, the Configurator wants to produce something else.”

  Gregor slumped back into his apathetic half-slumber. Arnold went on talking. “Fulfillment of potential, that’s what a machine wants. The Configurator’s ultimate desire is to create everything possible. From its point of view, repetition is a waste of time.”

  “That’s the most suspect line of reasoning I’ve ever heard,” Gregor said. “But assuming you’re right, what can we do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Arnold said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  For dinner that evening, the Configurator turned out a very creditable roast beef. They finished with apple pie a la machine, with sharp cheese on the side. Their morale was improved considerably.

  “Substitutions,” Gregor said later, smoking a cigar ex machina. “That’s what we’ll have to try. Alloy 342 isn’t the only thing we can use for the plates. There are plenty of materials that’ll last until we get back to Earth.”

  The Configurator couldn’t be tricked into producing a plate of iron or any of the ferrous alloys. They asked for and got a plate of bronze. But then the machine wouldn’t give them copper or tin. Aluminum was acceptable, as was cadmium, platinum, gold, and silver. A tungsten plate was an interesting rarity; Arnold wished he knew how the machine had cast it. Gregor vetoed plutonium, and they were running short of suitable materials. Arnold hit upon an extra-tough ceramic as a good substitute. And the final plate was pure zinc.

  The noble metals would tend to melt in the heat of space, of course; but with proper refrigeration, they might last as far as Earth. All in all, it was a good night’s work, and the partners toasted each other in an excellent, though somewhat oily, dry sherry.

  The next day they bolted in the plates and surveyed their handiwork. The rear of the ship looked like a patchwork quilt.

  “I think it’s quite pretty,” Arnold said.

  “I just hope it’ll hold up,” Gregor said. “Now for the turn-drive components.”

  But that was a problem of a different nature. Four identical parts were missing: delicate, precisely engineered affairs of glass and wire. No substitutions were possible.

  The machine turned out the First without hesitation. But that was all. By noon, both men were disgusted.

  “Any ideas?” Gregor asked.

  “Not at the moment. Let’s take a break for lunch.”

  They decided that lobster salad would be pleasant, and ordered it on the machine. The Configurator hummed for a moment, but produced nothing.

  “What’s wrong now?” Gregor asked.

  “I was afraid of this,” Arnold said.

  “Afraid of what? We haven’t asked for lobster before.”

  “No,” Arnold said, “but we did ask for shrimp. Both are shellfish. I’m afraid the Configurator is beginning to make decisions according to classes.”

  “You’d better break open a few cans then,” Gregor said.

  Arnold smiled feebly. “Well,” he said, “after I bought the Configurator, I didn’t think we’d have to bother—I mean—”

  “No cans?”

  “No.”

  They returned to the machine and asked for salmon, trout, and tuna, with no results. Then they tried roast pork, leg of lamb, and veal. Nothing.”

  “It seems to consider our roast beef last night as representative of all mammals,” Arnold said. “This is interesting. We might be able to evolve a new theory of classes—”

  “While starving to death,” Gregor said. He tried roast chicken, and this time the Configurator came through without hesitation.

  “Eureka!” Arnold cried.

  “Damn!” Gregor said. “I should have asked for turkey.”

  The rain continued to fall on Dennett, and mist swirled around the spaceship’s gaudy patchwork stern. Arnold began a long series of slide-rule calculations. Gregor finished off the dry sherry, tried unsuccessfully to order a case of Scotch, and started playing solitaire.

  They ate a frugal supper on the remains of the chicken, and Arnold completed his calculations.

  “It might work,” he said.

  “What might work?”

  “The pleasure principle.” He stood up and began to pace the cabin. “This machine has quasi-human characteristics. Certainly it possesses learning potential. I think we can teach it to derive pleasure from producing the same thing many times. Namely, the turn-drive components.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Gregor said.

  Late into the night they talked to the machine. Arnold murmured persuasively about the joys of repetition. Gregor spoke highly of the aesthetic values inherent in producing an artistic object like a turn-drive component, not once, but many times, each item an exact and perfect twin. Arnold murmured lyrically to the machine about the thrill, the supreme thrill of fabricating endlessly parts without end. Again and again, the same parts, produced of the same material, turned out at the same rate. Ecstasy! And, Gregor put in, so beautiful a concept philosophically, and so completely suited to the peculiar makeup and capabilities of a machine. As a conceptual system, he continued, Repetition (as opposed to mere Creation) closely approached the status of entropy, which, mechanically, was perfection.

  By clicks and flashes, the Configurator showed that it was listening. And when Dennett’s damp and pallid dawn was in the sky, Arnold pushed the button and gave the command for a turn-drive component.

  The machine hesitated. Lights flickered uncertainly, indicators turned in a momentary hunting process. Uncertainty was manifest in every tube.

  There was a click. The panel slid back. And there was another turn-drive component!

  “Success!” Gregor shouted, and slapped Arnold on the back. Quickly he gave the order again. But this time the Configurator emitted a loud and emphatic buzz.

  And produced nothing.

  Gregor tried again. But there was no more hesitation from the machine, and no more components.

  “What’s wrong now?” Gregor asked.

  “It’s obvious,” Arnold said sadly. “It decided to give repetition a try, just in case it had missed something. But after trying it, the Configurator decided it didn’t like it.”

  “A machine that doesn’t like repetition!” Gregor groaned. “It’s inhuman!”

  “On the contrary,” Arnold said unhappily. “It’s all too human.”

  It was supper-time, and the partners had to hunt for foods the Configurator would produce. A vegetable plate was easy enough, but not too filling. The machine allowed them one loaf of bread, but no cake. Milk products were out, as they had had cheese the other day. Finally, after an hour of trial and error, the Configurator gave them a pound of whale steak, apparently uncertain of its category.

  Gregor went back to work,
crooning the joys of repetition into the machine’s receptors. A steady hum and occasional flashes of light showed that the Configurator was still listening.

  Arnold took out several reference books and embarked on a project of his own. Several hours later he looked up with a shout of triumph.

  “I knew I’d find it!”

  Gregor looked up quickly. “What?”

  “A substitute turn-drive control!” He pushed the book under Gregor’s nose. “Look there. A scientist on Vednier II perfected this fifty years ago. It’s clumsy, by modern standards, but it’ll work. And it’ll fit into our ship.”

  “But what’s it made of?” Gregor asked.

  “That’s the best part of it. We can’t miss! It’s made of rubber!”

  Quickly he punched the Configurator’s button and read the description of the turn-drive control.

  Nothing happened.

  “You have to turn out the Vednier control!” Arnold shouted at the machine. “If you don’t, you’re violating your own principles!” He punched the button again and, enunciating with painful clarity, read the description again.

  Nothing happened.

  Gregor had a sudden terrible suspicion. He walked to the back of the Configurator, found what he had feared, and pointed it out to Arnold.

  There was a manufacturer’s plate bolted there. It read: Class 3 Configurator. Made by Vednier Laboratories, Vednierll.

  “So they’ve already used it for that,” Arnold said.

  Gregor said nothing. There just didn’t seem to be anything to

  say.

  Mildew was beginning to form inside the spaceship, and rust had appeared on the steel plate in the stern. The machine still listened to the partners’ hymn to repetition, but did nothing about it.

  The problem of another meal came up. Fruit was out because of the apple pie, as were all meats, fish, milk products, and cereals. At last they dined sparsely on frog’s legs, baked grasshoppers (from an Old Chinese recipe), and fillet of iguana. But now with lizards, insects, and amphibians used up, they knew that their machine-made meals were at an end.

  Both men were showing signs of strain. Gregor’s long face was bonier than ever. Arnold found traces of mildew in his hair. Outside, the rain poured ceaselessly, dripped past the portholes and into the moist earth. The spaceship began to settle, burying itself under its own weight.