Joy Ride

by Mark Meadows

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  joy ride

  By MARK MEADOWS

  Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

  Men or machines--something had to give--though not necessarily one or the other. Why not both?

  * * * * *

  (HISTORIAN'S NOTE: _The following statements are extracted fromdepositions taken by the Commission of Formal Inquiry appointed by thePeloric Rehabilitation Council, a body formed as a provisionalgovernment in the third month of the Calamity_.)

  1

  My name is Andrews, third assistant vice president in charge ofmaintenance for Cybernetic Publishers.

  It is not generally known that all the periodical publications for theworld were put out by Cybernetics. We did not conceal the monopolydeliberately, but we found that using the names of other publishinghouses helped to give our magazines an impression of variety. Ofcourse, we didn't want too much variety, either; only the tried andtested kind.

  Cybernetics gained its monopoly by cutting costs of production. It hadsucceeded in linking electronic calculators to photo-copyingmachines. Through this combination, all kinds of texts andillustrations could be produced automatically.

  * * * * *

  Formula punch cards, fed to the calculators, produced articles andstories of standard styles and substance. Market analysts in theresearch division designed the formulas for the punch cards. Anediting machine shuffled the cards before giving them to thecalculating machines.

  The shuffling produced enough variation in the final product tosuggest novelty to the reader without actually presenting anythingstrange or unexpected.

  Once the cards were in the machine, they set off electronic impulseswhich, by a scanning process, projected photographic images of typeand illustrations to a ribbon of paper. This ribbon ran through abattery of xerographic machines to reproduce the exact number ofcopies specified by the market indicator.

  Everything worked smoothly without the necessity for thought, which,as you know, is expensive and often wasteful.

  In the second week of the Calamity, one machine after another seemedto go put of order. I couldn't tell whether the trouble was in thecards, in the research office, or in the machines.

  First, one produced something entitled "A Critique of the BureaucraticCulture Pattern." Then another would give out nothing but lyric poems.A third simply printed obvious gibberish, the letters F-R-E-E-D-O-M.And one of our oldest machines ran off a series of limericks of adecidedly pungent flavor.

  I did all I could to straighten them out. Even our cleaning compoundswere analyzed for traces of alcohol. But we weren't able to locate thetrouble. And we didn't dare shut off the power because that would havebacked up our continuous stream of pulp and paper all the way toCanada, Alaska and Scandinavia. There didn't seem to be anything to dobut let the publications go on through to the distribution center.

  Before they were returned to the pulp mills, some of the publicationsreached private hands and created something of a stir, especially thelimericks. One of them went something like this: "There was ayoung...." (Passage defaced.)

  2

  My name is Minton, traffic officer emeritus on the ExtrapolatedParkway.

  The Parkway was equipped with the usual electronic controls to propelcars magnetically, to maintain a safe distance between all cars, andto hold them automatically in their proper lanes. The controls alsoturned cars off the Parkways at the proper exit, according to thesettings on the individual automobile's direction-finder.

  On the ninth day of the Calamity, the controls became erratic. Carsran off the highway at the wrong exits, even though theirdirection-finders seemed to be in good order. Many turned around incircles at entrances to the Parkway and failed to enter. Driversabandoned cars in despair and actually made their way on foot. Thosewho remembered how to steer by hand, mainly persons with obsoletecars, were able to travel by using back country roads. It was almostlike old times, when we used to have accidents.

  Meanwhile, I kept getting radio calls from motorists whose cars weretrapped on the highway. They were unable to turn off anywhere, even atthe wrong exit. The magnetic propellers forced them to continuetraveling a circular route for hours. I don't know what they expected_me_ to do about it.

  They tried to say I tampered with the controls, but I had no suchorders. There was nothing in the Traffic Officer's Manual to coverthis situation, so I naturally did nothing.

  Anyway, I think that the trouble lay with the direction-finders in thecars rather than with the Highway Controls. For several dayspreviously, a great many cars no matter how the automaticdirection-finders were set, had been known to head for water if theyweren't watched. Because of the fact that so many motorists had formeda habit of snoozing, once the car was in motion, there were a numberof drownings. If we could have done anything to prevent them, weprobably would have, though that wasn't our job.

  3

  MY name is Elder, sound director for Station 40 N 180.

  We had noticed nothing unusual about our broadcasts until the thirdday of the Calamity. That was the first time one of ourultra-sensitive microphones began to pick up and broadcast speechesfrom unknown sources.

  Our third assistant monitor was the first to notice. He called andtold me that interference was disrupting the program. A few minuteslater, he said that the sponsor's message, as broadcast, did notconform to the copy which had been put on the tape. (To eliminatestudio errors, all our broadcast programs were first recorded onelectro-magnetic tape and edited before they were released.)

  We checked and found that none of the commercial messages were goingthrough properly. The fact is that they were broadcast veryimproperly.

  I tested the microphone myself and was reported as saying, "Whatdifference does it make?" I had used the conventional testing phrases,"One, two, three, four," yet all three monitors swore that the othersentence had been uttered in my voice.

  We switched at once to broadcasting music exclusively as analternative to verbal programs, but the microphones continued topickup vocal interference. The voices were of many kinds and notalways distinct. They sounded sincere and the words were plain, but Icould not discern any meaning in them.

  * * * * *

  For a while, until the Calamity affected wire communications, too, wereceived telephone comments from our audience.

  A few people complained about the confusion, but most asked us to turnoff the music and let the voices come through clearly.

  One of the listeners said to us, "I haven't heard men speak theirminds so plainly since the morning Grandma wrecked Grandpa's newhelicopter."

  4

  My name is Wilson. I manned the remote control panel for theDuplicator Construction Company.

  As you know, we directed a battery of building machines which erectedmass housing projects. I directed only the destination of ourmachines. Once I sent them to a site, they completed their workautomatically with the materials installed at our supply depot.

  A single machine could prepare a site and erect a complete house inone day. With an army of 5,000 machines, our firm had succeeded inbuilding as many houses as there was room for, and we had started onthe demolition of our original buildings for replacement with themodern economy-size model. This made room for three families where onehad lived before. We started this replacement program t
he week beforethe Calamity.

  The first hint of trouble was a call from a checker to the frontoffice. I happened to be there when he appeared on the vid-screen andsaid that one of our machines had built a Chinese pagoda. He seemed tothink it was funny.

  Then we began to receive other reports. Our machines were buildinggrape arbors, covered bridges, cloisters, music halls, green houses,dancing pavilions and hunting lodges.

  One machine was not building at all, but had gone on a rampage,clearing ground where we had just completed one thousand of the neweconomy-size dwelling units.

  The machine was dynamited by our emergency squad.

  5

  My name is Fisher. On the first day of the Calamity, I was a member of anaudience which had been employed by the Spectacle Commission to observe thestart of the Forty-Ton-Shovel-Cross-Continent-Ditch-Digging Contest.

  This was the first time that power shovels of this size had been usedto dig a ditch more than a thousand miles long. I was very proud to bein that audience.

  The contest started on time. The shovels