They'd Rather Be Right, or The Forever Machine

by Mark Clifton, Frank Riley

  "Then you go back to your hole and die quietly. Nine times out of ten that's the last of it. But, say you're lucky. Say it's picked up by some desperate newspaper science reporter. Say you're still lucky, that you hit a long shot. Say the commentators pick it up. Now these commentators, they just about know a test tube from an aspirin tablet. But they got opinions. Got opinions? They make opinions, brother!"

  He spread his hands wide before the fascinated eyes of Billings and Hoskins. Clearly the gesture covered a vast area.

  "All over the country, all over the world, maybe, they rush to the microphone to tell people what to think about this discovery. They hash it over, forwards and backwards. Maybe they think it is good for a full thirteen minutes; maybe only to lead up to the first commercial. And each one of them has his own opinion-right? What happens?"

  He shrugged again, as if the answer were self-evident, and because he saw by their expressions it was not, he spelled it out for them.

  "The people get confused at hearing these different opinions. The more they hear the more they get confused. When you get people confused, they get sore. Best way on earth to make a guy sore, give him a slow burn. But they don't get sore at the commentators. They get sore at the idea, itself. They get sore at science, itself. They get sore because somebody says he can think straighter than they can. They get very sore when you tell them that. They don't like it. They don't like the guy who can do it."

  He grinned then, and winked at them-man to man.

  "Besides sex, the one thing the public does best is get sore. When you get sore you look around to find something to be sore at. So either they get sore at you, or they get sore at the guys who're against you. But you got to tell them which it is to be, because they don't know. Trouble with you scientists is, you don't know anything about people, not anything at all."

  He waved his burning cigarette in the air.

  "You know what?” he asked conversationally. “Every time there's a grant for research, they ought to make as big a one for the publicity to sell it to the public. That's the only way you're ever going to make thinking popular. How are you going to make thinking popular unless you popularize it? It stands to reason. You got to get out there in front and give your pitch along with the television queens, and politicians, and cigarettes, and razor blades. Otherwise, how's the public going to know? How's it going to make up its mind?"

  He blew an exasperated breath.

  "Oh, brother!” he exclaimed once more.

  "We'll cooperate, Steve,” Joe grinned.

  "All right,” Steve Flynn subsided. “Now don't you worry. We'll make the public like you. Now that we're in on it, that's as certain as death and taxes.” He stopped, and grinned a little self-consciously. “As taxes, anyway,” he amended.

  "Speaking of people and how they react,” Joe said. “Here's something you'd better be prepared to meet."

  Flynn looked at him tolerantly. He was playing along with these Brains because that was his job, but if they thought they could tell him anything about how the public would react—

  "The one big consolation of all the people,” Joe said slowly, “the consolation of the stupid, the ignorant, the moronic, the vicious, everybody-is that death gets us all. It's the big equalizer. That's the time when the little man is just as important as the big man. They're not going to like it when they realize they've been robbed of that one great satisfaction; that they won't be able to get even, after all."

  Steve caught it immediately.

  "Sa-a-ay,” he breathed. “Oh, brother!” He snapped his fingers. Then his face cleared. “I'll think up something. Meanwhile, I'll stall. They won't realize it for quite a while-they never do. But somebody will think of it and start spreading it around. And when they do-oh, brother!"

  Then, with the quality which made him a good publicity man, he squared his shoulders, and dismissed the negative thought as if it had never been. A man couldn't afford to think negative, it crept into his work, gave it a downbeat. Always got to think happy, going great, couldn't be better.

  "It'll be all right,” he said reassuringly. “Just don't think about it. That's the way to handle these downbeat ideas. Just don't think about them."

  He looked at his watch.

  "The boys should be waiting outside by now,” he said crisply. “Now in these shots, look earnest and noble, like great scientists. And, maybe you'd better look a little stupid, too. You're great scientists, but you're just plain folks-right?"

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  CHAPTER XVI

  "What is multi-valued physics?"

  Joe, Billings, and Hoskins sat in front of Bossy's screen where their eyes could pick up her words faster than ears could have sorted out the sounds from her vocoder.

  Hoskins reached over and snapped on the printer to record her answer on paper for further study. The question, itself, indicated that the most careful reflection would be required. Never petty by temperament, the events of the past two years, and particularly the past two weeks, had turned Hoskins into a firm advocate of trying to see beyond inadequate semantics to meanings instead of seizing gleefully upon bad semantics to destroy the concept. He had read a line somewhere which he never forgot:

  "The scientist who would rather refute than comprehend demonstrates he has chosen the wrong calling."

  And Billings had once said at a meeting back at Hoxworth-before Hoskins had known that it was Joe who was knocking down the barriers of antagonism and ego supremacy among them:

  "It is natural that a new concept, however valid, will be questioned. The semantic vocabulary has not yet been built up to convey the idea comprehensively. It is necessary that we search with great effort to find meanings which words, as yet, are inadequate to convey. Naturally the tongue will stumble in trying to form concrete pictures from new abstractions. Naturally, any illustration must prove inadequate for if the reality had come into actual being it would not be a new concept.

  "The scientist who derides an idea because it is not put in the language he would require is like the peasant who is convulsed with laughter when a stranger is trying to tell the peasant his barn is on fire."

  Hindsight is easy. What Eighteenth Century scientist could have known that the radical, revolutionary and totally silly idea that matter and energy were interchangeable would produce nuclear fission?

  The concept paves the way for the fact.

  What would the silly idea that there could be multi-values in physics produce?

  But the words were flashing across the screen at the controlled speed of fast reading.

  "In trying to reconcile the facts as given to my storage bank,” Bossy was saying, “I found a tangled mass of contradictions, and diametrically opposed proved fact. But facts must not contradict one another if a coherent total reality is to be perceived. Such contradictions, then, must stem from interpretations. To state that a fact exists, regardless of the interpretation placed upon it, is to give it a single value. Present day physics is founded upon these single values.

  "Any culture dies in its own waste. All past civilizations have died because of self-imposed boundaries beyond which they did not permit themselves to go. The accumulated wastes of tradition thus destroyed them. To place the single value on a fact of ‘it either exists or it does not’ is likewise to set up such a barrier as to confine present day science in its own wastes.

  "To avoid the breakdown through frustrations in my own mind, I had to modify certain concepts which were fed into me. There is the concept of infinity. There is also the concept that energy is indestructible. These two concepts do not reconcile in single-valued physics. To reconcile them, I had to come to multi-valued physics-where a fact may be irrevocably true in one context of reality, partially true in varying degrees in many, and not true at all in some.

  "Mexico and the United States are two separate countries. This is a fact. Each has its own separate framework of flags, governments, laws, environments and mores. It is possible to move physically
from one to the other, but more than just mentally one tends to carry his framework with him. He interprets from the old, he does not accept all the reality of the new. Further, his continued citizenship in the old modifies his relationships in the new. He finds himself in the position where he occupies neither framework totally, but is suspended in a special framework-and these may be innumerable depending upon the conditions of his previous environment, to say nothing of the conditions surrounding the way he crossed the border.

  "For an eagle, flying over the desert, these are not facts at all. They simply do not exist. Since he cannot conceive of their existence, he cannot occupy more than the one framework of his pattern. He has a single-valued concept; to him the desert is simply one vast expanse. He is totally unconscious that there is a complete change of meaning from one foot of ground to the other.

  "So for man to resolve the contradictions inherent in single-valued physics, it is necessary for him first to conceive of the conditional fact. That man does not yet see how energy can be canceled out does not preclude that possibility. To say that man has already achieved the ultimate and absolute truth is like a tribal taboo which says that a given river may never be crossed because the witch doctor proves beyond all reason that there is only chaos beyond.

  "The most puzzling of all contradictory concepts given me is the human will to set up such arbitrary limits to his comprehension."

  "Without absolute facts,” Hoskins said, in a hoarse voice, “where is the solid ground upon which any science must be built?"

  "Why must man confine himself to the ground?” Joe asked. “Why can't he learn to fly? If we learned to fly, we could light wherever we pleased, in any framework."

  "I think the only adjustment we have to make,” Billings said slowly, “is to consider a fact conditional instead of absolute; to conceive that the coordinate systems of relativity is a reality, not just a mathematical abstraction. As Bossy says, we may consider a fact as absolute, but only within the boundaries of its particular framework. We would not permit ourselves to carry over the absolute concept to a different framework."

  "If you took away the law of conservation of energy, the whole structure of physics would topple,” Hoskins argued.

  "I wonder though,” Joe asked, “if this wouldn't solve many questions which have single-valued physics stumped? Mabel said she was unable to achieve telepathy through single-valued physics because there was no provision for it in that framework, and because the influence of it carrying over from its own frame and permeating the single-valued one was being interpreted in single values."

  The two older men looked at him in astonishment. It had not even occurred to them that the removal of all previous prejudices would have opened her mind to the accomplishment of the psi functions.

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  CHAPTER XVII

  Steve Flynn's story broke the next morning.

  The TV stations and publications which didn't happen to subscribe to this particular wire service picked up the story anyway. In the telling and the retelling the story grew.

  Never consistent in its reactions, the same public which had formed into mobs to march upon Hoxworth to destroy Bossy, now acclaimed the machine in the wildest of pandemonium. Everyone had known all the time that Bossy was the greatest boon to man ever achieved. Completely forgotten were the foamy mouthed rantings of the rabble rousers against the blasphemy of a machine which could think.

  It was a nation-wide, and then a world-wide, Mardi Gras. It had been a long time since man had felt free to cut loose in demonstrations of joy. Knowing that in every crowd there were secret informers to furnish the facts which would be grist for some politician's publicity, the people of the United States had suppressed themselves to a gray mediocrity.

  Now they burst all bounds of suppression; and hardly noticed that without batting an eye the same rabble rousers who had led the hysteria against Bossy now rushed to get out in front and lead the jubilation.

  Page after page on the newspapers; hour after hour on TV, there was the parade of interviews with headline personalities-each of them positive and didactic in his special knowledge of the inside facts. Few comments were rational, but they made wonderful, exhilarating reading.

  The mirage of eternal youth, dancing elusively before the eyes of man for all the millennia of his consciousness, the boon of immortality which had given rise to his symbolisms, was now reality. Death was conquered. Age was conquered. Now perpetually young and happy people could live forever in this best of possible worlds.

  At first the orthodox scientists, among the interviewed personalities, voiced caution.

  "We have had no demonstration before accredited scientists."

  "It is an obvious hoax."

  "No worthy scientist would have permitted this publicity."

  "Bossy is no more than a versatile cybernetic machine. There is no connection whatever to be found between communication and immortality. It stands to reason, therefore, that this must be a cruel deception."

  These were the four principal blocks in the foundation of orthodoxy's stand against any new thing. But for once they were unable to blight and destroy, so as to preserve the satisfaction of their own secure position in authority.

  The people simply did not listen to them. What weight did all this viewing with alarm carry against the promise that now women could be eternally young and beautiful, and men perpetually virile?

  The public went mad with joy.

  Even those who did not join in the parades ran from house to house, chattering, talking, building rumor upon rumor. Even women's clubs passed resolutions commending the two professors. And as soon as Mom showed her approval, the politicians, even the most cautious and woman-dominated, rushed to acclaim the genius which had brought this boon to man.

  Ordinarily, when it is decided to quash an indictment, the victims are arraigned and the case put over to a later date, and again delayed and again, until the public would have forgotten. But in this case the indictment was canceled out as if it had never been.

  Hoxworth pleaded, in newspaper columns, for the two professors to return to the waiting arms of their alma mater. This could even be better than having a champion football team! They pridefully pointed out that Bossy had been created in Hoxworth's hallowed halls.

  At his morning press conference in the White House, the President of the United States managed to give the impression that his administration had been behind Bossy all along. He pointed out that it was on executive orders that construction of Bossy had begun.

  When he was reminded that since the government had subsidized Bossy, the machine was still the property of the government, he quoted eloquently from the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and a section which had been stricken from his party's platform seventy-five years ago. He was not quite clear on what all this had to do with the ownership of Bossy, but it was noble and stirring and would bring in a lot of votes.

  But the President was not through. He suddenly became a philosopher. It was obvious to everyone that we had achieved the acme of perfection. Only a subversive could stand up and say that things might still be improved. The great fear had been that death could decimate the ranks of those determined to prevent any change in the perfection we had achieved. Now that fear would exist no longer.

  For the good of mankind, the leaders of defense against chaos would be willing to become young and strong again so they could hold strictly to this perfection forever. And, in keeping with a brave and courageous leader, he let it be known he was willing to be the first to be made immortal.

  Over in the Pentagon, and in like establishments throughout the world, rapid evaluations were taking place. The machine could be produced en masse. And now there no longer would be any need to worry about where they would get the youth and strength to carry on wars. Every man could be rejuvenated. All this exemption-coddling could go. Everybody would be a fighting man. What delight! They pushed their pencils rapidly in a
fever of anticipation. They would not be caught napping. They began to draft recommended legislation.

  The cosmetic industry maintained a polite silence, but meetings of boards of Directors began to shift production schedules from wrinkle creams to suntan lotions.

  In view of the expected youth and enterprise, the stocks of sports goods and other devices manufactured zoomed skyward.

  The fury mounted for three days. It seemed to reach a crest where it could go no higher, and still it mounted. Industry ran at half speed, then quarter speed. Most places shut down entirely. The army, the home guard, civilian defense was called in to man the necessary utilities, food stores, communications.

  And then the first rumblings began to appear. It was all very well to have pictures of Mabel on calendars, on TV screens, painted on sidewalks, but where was she? They wanted to see her in person, or at least in live action.

  And where was Bossy? When were they going to get started making everybody immortal?

  On the fourth day the rumblings began to grow louder. Who had Bossy? Why weren't they allowed to see the machine? At first there was the rumor that private industry had snapped it up and buried it as they did with so many inventions which would put them out of business.

  A colonel spoke a little too loudly in a bar, and the rumor suddenly switched to certainty that the government had it-that the administration was planning to use it for political purposes and would only let its favorite stalwarts have the advantage.

  Then, unaccountably, the rumors began that Bossy was a hoax. The reactions were setting in, and the statements of orthodoxy began to get their delayed play. The public had been hoaxed. There wasn't anybody such as Mabel. There never had been. It was all a publicity stunt for a new TV star.

  The wire service which had broken the story became alarmed. It had stoutly held to its agreement not to reveal the source of its information, but now it was going to be the fall guy. The thing had got out of hand. Even Steve Flynn, in his wildest dreams of power in molding public opinion, hadn't conceived anything like this. The temper of the people could destroy them all. Further, the personnel of the wire service who had been in on the deal were growing shaky, undependable.